brett's logjam

When I first discovered I was going to become a father, I was really overwhelmed by the feeling of WOW.

The second time is just as awesome, but a lot less nerve-wracking. It’s just plain exciting.

Merrystar and I are expecting a baby girl sometime around July 28th. T is very excited about his new little sister.

As are we all.

Yeah, I took another vacation, this time down to Marco Island, Florida.

I, along with much of my family, had the flu down there. But really - there are worse places to have the flu.

The first few days were foggy. That’s okay. I like foggy beaches.

And then it was windy, and then it was calm. Very, very calm.

More photos are on Flickr.

I finished up my year-long project in November with a lot of delayed vacation to take and a need to do something very mindless for a while. The mantra I’d learned at Trilogy still remains: shipping code is the only thing. And we shipped, and shipped it on time, but I was really ready for a break.

So I used most of my vacation to take most December off and do a whole lot of nuthin’. And that meant a whole lot of not doing stuff on the internet, which was a surprising relief.

Instead, I picked up a video game. World of Warcraft, to be exact.

You know what? Tons of fun. Love it. It’s gorgeous, immersive, and exciting to explore. But I’m also glad that I’m trying it out now, in my mid-thirties with a family and job, and not in my single early twenties. I totally see why people spend to much time on it.

But best of all, even though I was online, I didn’t feel any stress about it.

The stress of being online is the stress of wanting to do quality work for you to see. Is a post well-written and interesting, is this tweet funny, is this picture any good? All small questions that aren’t a big deal unless you’re really ready to set it all aside.

The only stress I felt in World of Warcraft was how to kite some mobs, or apply my DoTs in the best order. I mean, c’mon — the worst that can happen is that you die and have to spend a few minutes running back to your corpse. It’s not a high pressure situation.

Anyhow. I spent a lot of time on my vacation running around with my wife and kid. I twittered about it, a little. I played some video games and took a few pictures, some of which will be making their way online.

Eventually.

There just seems to be less of a rush now.

I came back from my two-week vacation this week, ignored my overflowing inbox for two days, and then demolished it in under two hours. No stress, just 800 email messages gone and me getting back to work.

Here’s how I did it.

• Archive everything into a single folder and use search. In Outlook, I create a rule that puts a copy of everything that comes into my Inbox into a folder called Archive. I always have a copy filed away without ever having to think about it.
• Don’t manage tasks out of your inbox. Read each email and ask: do I need to do something here? Put it on your task list and then delete the message.
• Delete ruthlessly. Once you’ve extracted whatever information or tasks you have from a message, delete it. Don’t leave it hanging around in your Inbox taking up mental space — it’s already filed in your Archive!
• Read in Conversation view. Most Outlook users top-post (it’s the default), so any given message will contain the entire thread in it. Conversation view (or Threaded view) lets you delete the entire thread once you’re done.
• Work in chunks. Spending all day in your email is a good way to not get any real work done; process it twice a day and then get back to work.

I’m really a big fan of deleting my email. Deleting is satisfying. It says: I have extracted what I need out of this message, and it no longer serves any purpose. Deleting is also quick. It is a single button to push, a single action to take. There is no thought about where to file a message — just remove it from the queue.

My strategy is directly influenced from two places: The Best Outlook Tip in the World, and Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero series. I used to be a compulsive Ctrl-Shift-V email filer, but watching Merlin’s Inbox Zero video really changed how I thought about email.

This system may not be right for you. It’s not even always right for me.

But this week, it worked pretty well.

I’ve had a frustrating couple of weeks with my camera. The clouds seem to roll in every time I grab my camera to go out, and my tourist trip to Washington DC this week was no exception.

I lived in the DC suburbs for five years. In all that time, I think I went in to the city as a tourist more than three times. I’d visited the sights of DC more often when I lived in other places than I ever did as a resident, sadly.

Which is really too bad, because DC does show well.

I’d been to most of the memorials before, but never to the FDR Memorial on the tidal basin. It was a pleasant surprise, with the story of his presidency unfolding as you walk through the site.

Of all the memorials I visited that day, the FDR seemed to offer the most hope for our present situation.

Given the number of cherry trees in the area, I imagine that this is stunning in the springtime.

The grey skies lent themselves to the Korean War Memorial. The faces rising out of the black wall seemed to fit the cold, wet day.

More pictures at the Washington DC 2008 set on Flickr.

If you haven’t been following along on Twitter, you may not know that I’m on vacation for the next two weeks.

I took the opportunity to tag along with Merrystar as she went to work in Charlottesville at the NRAO this week. I had gone up for the NRAO 50th Anniversary Symposium last year, but never actually got to the NRAO offices.

They are perfectly nice offices.

That’s the funny thing about astronomy: it’s incredibly cool science, but it’s still a job. There are budgets and offices and management just like your job. The trappings of the job just don’t have much to do with the actual work that’s done there. Yes, there’s a big TV running video news of recent advances in astronomy instead of CNN. But it’s still a place to work.

About the only real difference between it and a technology startup was that there are no cubicles or open-space work areas: it’s all offices.

Well, that and the fact that practically everyone has a PhD.

I spent some time wandering the UVA campus. The stadium is very nice, but I couldn’t get in to take some of the obviously good shots. (I’m sure there are non-obvious good shots, too. But it’s a moot point.)

I went up to the McCormick Observatory, which was very quiet and peaceful. Saw two Pileated Woodpeckers, but didn’t get decent photographs of them.

The clouds rolled in so I didn’t stay. I went down to wander the university campus proper instead. The light was just not good once the clouds arrived, and I felt like I was forcing a lot of shots. This one — totally cliché, I’m sure — is one of the better ones. I took a lot of shots of the rotunda which just didn’t work.

It was honestly frustrating to see the picture, have the composition in one’s head, but have terrible light. Oh well.

So I gave up and went and got a burger.

UVA has an order of magnitude more students than my alma mater, so I was really not ready for the crowds streaming across the campus at 10:55. I took refuge in the rotunda and warmed up.

I headed over to Monticello after lunch. I wasn’t sure what to expect, to be honest. It’s very pretty, but I was a little disappointed not to meet people running around in period dress.

(What can I say? Living in Colonial Williamsburg definitely spoils you for historical recreation.)

The clouds also finally cooperated as the sun was setting, so I got pictures to turn out the way I wanted. Froze my fingers getting them, though.

More pictures at the Charlottesville 2008 set on Flickr.

This is one of my favorite pictures from November, of two Canadian Geese coming in for a landing at the Newport News reservoir. It’s a cameraphone shot off my iPhone, run through CameraBag to look like a Holga film camera.

Yeah, I’m having a lot of fun with CameraBag. I’m okay with that.

Some things for you to read tomorrow while waiting in line to vote:

Andrew Sullivan, Barack Obama For President —

If I were to give one reason why I believe electing Barack Obama is essential tomorrow, it would be an end to this dark, lawless period in American constitutional government. The domestic cultural and political reasons for an Obama presidency remain as strong as they were when I wrote “Goodbye To All That” over a year ago. His ability to get us past the culture war has been proven in this campaign, in the generation now coming of age that will elect him if they turn out, in Obama’s staggering ability not to take the bait. His fiscal policies are too liberal for me - I don’t believe in raising taxes, I believe in cutting entitlements for the middle classes as the way to fiscal balance. I don’t believe in “progressive taxation”, I support a flat tax. I don’t want to give unions any more power. I’m sure there will be moments when a Democratic Congress will make me wince. But I also understand that money has to come from somewhere, and it will not come in any meaningful measure from freezing pork or the other transparent gimmicks advertized in advance by McCain. McCain is not serious on spending. But he is deadly serious in not touching taxes. So, on the core question of debt, on bringing America back to fiscal reason, Obama is still better than McCain. If I have to take an ideological hit to head toward fiscal solvency, I’ll put country before ideology.

The Economist, It’s Time —

And this cannot be another election where the choice is based merely on fear. In terms of painting a brighter future for America and the world, Mr Obama has produced the more compelling and detailed portrait. He has campaigned with more style, intelligence and discipline than his opponent. Whether he can fulfil his immense potential remains to be seen. But Mr Obama deserves the presidency.

Wick Allison, A Conservative for Obama —

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Matt Taibbi, My Campaign Memories —

We were all educated in this culture of blame-the-other-sap, and that’s why we Americans are always whining about getting jobbed by someone: the media, Hollywood, Big Tobacco, anybody. But this year, the more the other side whined and pointed fingers, the higher Obama’s star climbed. It’s reassuring to see that someone in this country is finally doing some growing up. Let’s hope that it says as much about us as it does about the presidency.

Barack Obama, Closing Argument —

Good night. I’ll see you at the polls tomorrow.