Time Points - Life is a Series of Sprints

This upcoming Sunday, my youngest daughter, "The Queen" will turn three years old. It's the first time in my life as a parent where the child turning three doesn't have a younger sibling waiting behind him or her.

It's an odd feeling. One of those milestones that sneaks up on you, much like realizing that The Queen's oldest brother has started Sixth grade and will be wanting his Learner's Permit in about three years.

Big milestones are a typical time to reflect, and I think it's beneficial to do so. It's what drives us to make New Year's resolutions, start workout programs after a significant birthday, or make somewhat irrational purchasing decisions.

It's also one of the points of Agile methodology and the Sprint system. I've been working on this for the past month and a half, and am currently on Sprint #3, with each Sprint being a two-week increment. The idea was to focus on being better organized, and getting more things done by setting specific goals for each sprint period.

It's working. I'm slowly seeing long running projects start making progress, as I focus on knocking out one or two components of a major project each sprint period. Daily tasks are becoming easier too, as I start falling into more of a cadence.

Where will this go? Hopefully to a better, more productive me. I've always been good at grinding along, but as I've noted previously, I have a tough time closing out on personal initiatives. If I don't want to pass that particular issue on to my kids, I need to make progress on showing them better ways of managing time and resources.

My current desktop image and reminder.

This is my current desktop photo. Relentless. Why? Aside from the obvious (that the NXT is one of the best looking piston aircraft ever designed) it's because the name is a visual reminder for what my daily outlook needs to be. It's a good, visual reminder that you can accomplish a lot, provided you're willing to cut out superfluous things.

Rediscovering Simple Pleasures - Baseball Card Collecting

For my recent birthday, my wife allowed our kids to give their daddy a few packs of new 2016 Topps Series 1 baseball cards.

This may have been a mistake, as it re-ignited (with spousal permission), a collecting bug that has lain essentially dormant since our oldest son was born ten years ago. One trip to the local card shop later, and I was tearing into wax packs from a blaster box just like old times.

I should probably add here, that I've been playing with the Topps Bunt app on my phone since last September. It's pretty fun, but while I've fully embraced the power of digital gaming and e-books without much remorse, there's something about digital collectible cards that really doesn't scratch the itch. I like the Bunt app, don't get me wrong here, the daily contest elements in particular are great, but when I'm collecting something, I want to a tangible good. Especially for cards, tapping a button to watch an animation of a pack unwrapping is a poor facsimile of actually ripping open a pack for yourself and flipping through your new cards.

I also picked up a subscription to Beckett.com's card tracker and pricing service. Let's be honest here, one of the worst nightmares for any collector (of anything) is losing his or her collection and having to make an insurance claim. For me, aside from the main organizational value, there's a huge potential benefit there that if I ever have to make an insurance claim, having a full inventory of my collection will be a huge help. Having the collection live on Beckett's cloud is another benefit.

This of course, means I've also starting going through my old stuff that I never organized. Scratch that, I had organization. Twelve-year-old me organized his cards by team. Which is somewhat less helpful when attempting to inventory a set-based collection. No wonder I never had time to tackle this project before.

The finest cards of 1994, minus a few hundred still in pages

It feels good to be flipping through my old cards again. It's another project I never could have taken on with my old job and commute, but one that desperately needs doing. Since I'm doing most of my work at the kitchen table, it's also giving me some good interaction opportunities with my kids, both to share some of my old cards with them, and show them some newer stuff as well. 

Streaming Schedule This Week:

Youtube: TIE Fighter finally hits the campaign. Missions 1-5 of Campaign 1, Aftermath of Hoth, will be going up this week.

Twitch: Quantum (won't) Break me with this last boss battle. I'm going to finish this game, and then start checking out ChromaGun. I should be back to my regular-ish 9:45-10:15pm Power Half-Hour weeknight stream, plus the longer weekend runs.

Right Here: On Thursday we'll continue our series on Night Fighters.