I’m sitting at Zoka early on a Saturday morning, doing some coding, drinking some coffee, and enjoying the moment.  It’s been a very odd week, lots of disruptions to my usual rhythms, and it’s nice to get back to a treasured marker, this early morning Zoka time, and reflect.

This week Winnie, my 8-year-old Bouvier, went in for an emergency splenectomy.  The veterinarian removed an 8.8-pound tumor.  Amazing.  She has a long, ugly, 40cm scar on her stomach.  She also has to wear a cone (the “cone of shame”) so she won’t pull out her stitches.  I won’t find out until early next week when the lab results get back whether or not the tumor was malignant or benign, and thus, whether or not my time left with her is measured in weeks or years.  I won’t tell you what the surgery cost to save you from choking.  It was a lot, however.

I’ve been super busy in other areas.  I’ve got a couple projects I’m working on, and truthfully, right now, it helps to be busy.  A new project involving Twilio’s state-of-the-art telephony API may be right around the corner.  And of course I’m always trying to figure out how to find time to push Crowdify forward.  I’ve had a lot of interest recently in Crowdify – a little odd, to maintain the theme of the post – but it’s nice.  My goals is to find and keep a little momentum going.

Terrible news from the Olympics, where the death of the Georgian luge athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili saddened the world even before the games begin.  At least he probably didn’t feel a thing.  The big news from last night’s opening ceremony was probably the pants worn by the small Azerbaijani contingent – spectacular and colorful.  Oh, and there was some sort of snafu with the cauldron.  No big deal IMHO.

This week I attended some of the 2010 Agile Open Northwest conference and forgot to mention one thing: Alan Shalloway, the CEO of Net Objectives, was super helpful and knowledgeable.  In a couple sessions, particularly one on Kanban, he chimed in and really helped me and the rest of the group understand some of the thorny, subtle details.  Thank you Alan.

Also odd is that I haven’t exercised since Monday.  Ye gods!  I’ve been feeling a lot more stressed than usual and, well, that negative streak ends today.  I’m going to the gym come hell or high water or the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Hope you’re having a good day and hope you have a great weekend!

[8:25] I’m sitting in a conference room in Bellevue at the Net Objectives corporate office, waiting for Day 2 of an Agile symposium – “Team and Technical Agility” to begin.  Registration began at 8:30, which involved checking your name off of a list and filling out a name tag.

[8:32] I got WiFi access!  there are helpful instructions on the wall next to me.

[8:37] Other teammates start showing up.  Mary, Michelle, and Sumair are all here; rumor has it that Nate will show up.

[8:44] Reviewing the brochure-ware.  Everything says “Lean-Agile,” instead of just “Agile”, which tells me (a) how far the term “Lean” has come, and (b) how relatively deprecated the term “Agile” is as a standalone term.

[8:47] Glad I brought healthy food on the advice of a coworker who attended Day 1 of the symposium yesterday.  These doughnuts do not look like toga-enhancing foodstuffs.  I brought a banana and a fruit and cheese plate from Starbucks, which should last me.

[8:55] Random phone call from home  Gah.  People are still filing in and getting acquainted.

[9:00] Getting started.  The presenter, Net Objectives CEO Alan Shalloway, tells us that there will be a little overlap with previous sessions.  Several people are here for the 2nd or 3rd day in a row.

[9:02] Alan tells us that the course materials will be up on the web in a day or two.  I’ll link to them when they’re available.

[9:03] Alan has written a lot of books.

[9:04] Whiteboard cleaner smell is making me woozy.  I’m seeing double.  Where am I again?

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Well, let’s see: an enjoyable day.  It started off with a 3.5-mile run on the treadmill at the gym.  I’m telling you, this intense morning exercise thing is the way to go – I felt energetic and metabolitic (is that a word?) all day.  Then on to work, which lately has had both the possibility for both soothing- and anxiety-inducing circumstances.  Today my team got hit with a major hotfix request stemming from some system problems downstream from a release we did a few weeks ago.  Fire drill; chaos; chickens flapping and clucking, all warily circling around in a Mexican standoff – who will accept blame first? you know the deal.  Luckily my team stepped up, kept our heads about us, isolated the issues (there were five separate issues), got an estimate in, and got consensus on starting in on the fix.

My team have good heads on their shoulders.  I’m thankful for that.

I’ll be out tomorrow so will get to miss most of the fix part, but my team is totally capable – in fact, they’ll probably do a better job with me out of the way   I’ll be attending an Agile seminar in Bellevue put on by Net Objectives.  A coworker attended the first day of the seminar and I heard through the grapevine that they’ve done pretty well the first day, so I’m looking forward to going tomorrow.  Sometimes these free seminars are too heavily focused on vendor marketing; this one sounds like it’s got more meat on the bone.  I also got an insider tip about bringing my own healthy food/snacks, which I really appreciate, given my fitness and diet goals for the next forty days.

I actually had an enjoyable appointment with the doctor this afternoon.  It turns out they don’t have to transplant my brain after all.  Shocked?  So was I.

My mega-short-term project that was due last night by 11:59 PM went off really well and I finished with time to spare.  I love that feeling of super-productivity that I occasionally get.  It’s like I can do anything; I’m transported; I’m in the flow; I can do no wrong.

Here’s a great TED talk about flow, given by the guru of flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:

So what’s not so good?  It IS Monday, after all – it can’t all be peaches and cream, no matter how rosy the color of my lenses.  I’m still trying hard to forget the anti-flow I experienced this past Friday.  Comedy equals Tragedy plus Time, so when I start laughing about what happened, you’ll know I’m past it.  Can I get a little chuckle right now? (tries chuckling) Not yet.  Maybe tomorrow   I’m sure if I was capable of sharing that you’d think it was hilarious.  Maybe I can write it out in Morse Code or hexadecimal Unicode or something so only my most dedicated readers would be willing to take the time to figure out what I’m talking about.

F347A32DE746B1CC984AF398324…

Ha ha!  That was gibberish.  Hope you didn’t try to translate that.  No, what happened is between me and my journal, and you get to live with uncertainty.    Don’t you just hate that?

Finally, on pins and needles regarding an investor meeting that took place today that involved some work I’ve been doing with a business acquaintance.  Won’t know until tomorrow what the outcome is, but there may be some good stuff on the horizon, career-wise.  I’ll be sure to let you know.

Have a great Monday night.  A happy “Ciao!” to my regular readers and I hope you have a great Tuesday.