Chill

The holiday break has been wonderful here, albeit a bit colder in weather than I would have hoped (which is mostly unnecessary whining, as we still wore shorts to the beach on Christmas Eve).

20121231-074438.jpg

(Yeah, I’m wearing thermals in the pic above, but swear I was actually wearing shorts over them.)

Mostly it’s been a quite chill-as-in-relaxing holiday week for me more than the get-a-sweater variety, and I’ve spent the entirety of it with my wife and son. Doing randomly stupid but oh-so-therapeutically-beneficial tasks like shooting stomp rockets at the beach, kinda like this:

But that’s not all…

[…]

Proud

In retrospect, I’m honestly not sure how 2012 turned out so well, given how it started.

Last December I was suffering a job that demanded more and more of me in my time, ethical compromises, sanity and grey hairs, yet returned less and less as time wore on (salary and benefits notwithstanding).  My wife was increasingly depressed, struggling to keep a therapy business afloat in an area (Oakland) that was already ravaged by the macroeconomic landscape before Occupy Oakland and the Oscar Grant riots tore it even further apart.  My son was happy but at great financial and emotional cost – a very expensive school that would only support him for another year before we had to choose between bad, worse or unacceptable options locally, or ship him off to somewhere with an affordable option for the attention that his wicket-smart brain already demands.  (With a lot less of Oakland’s well-documented senseless crime to either tempt or threaten it.)  Looking back now, I can easily see how I rarely felt proud as a father, or even as a person in that environment.

So believe me, to say I’m really proud of 2012 is something I hadn’t seen myself doing, not by a long shot. And there’s a lot of reasons why.

[…]

Trimmer

I love numbers and graphs. They help you visualize progress and data over time, and although I’ve gotten really good at data acquisition and analysis in regards to web sites and applications, not a bit of it was helping me in my quest to get – and stay – more fit until recently. That said, I think I’ve finally cracked the nut on this whole tech/fitness thing, at least for my own personal needs. In my earlier post ‘Trim‘, I talked about my earlier forays and stumblings at tech-enabling fitness efforts – but have now settled down to a much better, more robust solution now that covers all my primary goals.  I’ll lay out what I wanted, what I had, and what I ended up with after kissing a lot of frogs.

What I wanted(!)

  • GPS/Map tracking of runs/bike rides
  • Track/monitor heart rate
  • Track general daily activity
  • Track sleep effectivity
  • Track of calories burned
  • Track body measurements
  • Track workout and total distances/efforts
  • Set goals across workouts/general fitness
  • Share results & workouts with friends
  • Connect with friends on Nike+
  • Connect with friends on Fitbit
  • Connect with friends on Runkeeper
Um, yeah. Pretty tall order for any one system to provide all that, which is why I had so much trouble early on. Using different apps/systems just wasn’t easy or working out- I generally gave up on the setup/prep if it was too convoluted. So I wanted to find one way to track my run/workout that fit in with whatever I was using to track, dashboard and monitor my biometrics and ideally share/collaborate/compete with my friends online too.
What to do?

[…]

Cans

Yeah, all the cool kids call them ‘beats’ now, but I never got down with the shoe/kicks vibe either. To me, headphones will always be cans (thanks for that, studio life), and an integral part of my life both personally and professionally. Obviously a clear, uncolored set of cans/headphones are great for studio work so you can translate your mixes/etc to the real world more effectively, but I’ll admit for recreational listening I tend to go for a little more ‘oomph’ in the low end. Having tried a TON of headphones (and headsets) over the years, I’m slowly settling down to three pairs (plus one ‘wildcard’). Here they are, why I still use them all regularly, and their pros/cons from my perspective.

Beats by Dr Dre - Wireless

Beats Wireless – General Listening
Somewhere between the Pro & Studio and the Solo models, the Beats Wireless cans have a great balance of fidelity with some fat low end for a rich listening experience. Although the Studio model is much more accurate, there’s just something about the sound of these that I’ve come to love, they tend to warm up the bass guitar range (my personal focus area of the spectrum) and have a pleasing high end, not too brittle or crisp. But the convenience is the best part, they’re so comfortable and easy to use without the connecting cable that I often forget I’m wearing them, or need to stay within range of my phone/tablet/laptop.

[…]

Smooth

Damn, Death Cab for Cutie’s latest album “Codes and Keys” is smooth and silky like butter. It’s been on shuffle/repeat all day (when I’m not scouring random Spotify tracks). Enjoy.

Trim

Time to cop to it in public- I gained a lot of weight while living up in the Bay Area.  Part of the root cause was simply taking advantage of the amazing San Francisco restaurants/food trucks/eateries, and another large part being the reduced amount of daily activity I engaged in after fast-tracking myself into the
-> Continue reading Trim

Fresh

It’s my second Monday at lynda.com today.  I’m such a fresh n00b here it’s kinda funny.  I do the expected n00b things like show up in the wrong conference room at the right time, call people by the wrong name, and refer to Adobe as ‘us’.  All of which I’m expecting will smooth out in
-> Continue reading Fresh

Momentum

Things are moving quickly now. We have a condo down South, movers scheduled to shuttle our belongings down to it, but have not yet sorted out renting our home in Oakland- which is proving to be a bit more challenging than I’d hoped. If we can close this game of property manager phone tag this
-> Continue reading Momentum

Home

Friday afternoon I turned in my ID badge at the guard booth as I pulled out of the Adobe garages. “Oh, sorry” said the guard, making the safe assumption that like pretty much everyone else who leaves the ‘country club’ at 600 Townsend Street I just got handed a pink slip. I felt a bit
-> Continue reading Home

Home?

It’s been almost 12 years since we left Carpinteria, but it feels like I never left once my feet hit the sand. Down South for ‘serious matters’, but trying to enjoy the zen of our old hometown while I’ve got the chance. Didn’t realize I missed this place so much.