hoovercj

[hoovercj]

May - September 2018

Boy did I drop the ball on blogging this year. Each month I intended to write a post, but there was always something that came up at the end of the month that made me wait. Well, the wait is over. Here's a rundown of what mattered to me over the last several months.

Weight Loss

I started my journey on January 1, and by the end of June I hit my new "maintenance" weight of 142 lbs, which is a full 55 lbs lost this year! I don't worry too much about daily fluctuations, but if I get below 140 then I know I need to eat more, and if I go above 144, then I know to eat less. Fortunately, the healthy choices I make for most meals leaves room for ice cream and cake when I want. Which is good, because this summer was perfect for ice cream so I ate a lot of it :-)

Here's a brief overview of my journey:

Jan 1: 197 lbs (89.3 kg) / 32% body fat

April 29: 153.4 lbs (69.6 kg) / 17.7% body fat

Late June: 142 lbs (64.4 kg) / 13% body fat

Now: Same!

Running

I mentioned in my last post that running was never meant to be a goal of mine this year. I tried to get back into running a couple times over the last few years and I failed each time. After the weight was off, though, I decided to give it another try. Well, it's safe to say that this time I succeeded. So much so that it's actually taken over my life. I hit great milestones across a variety of distances and am currently in the middle of training for my first ever marathon which is just 5 weeks from today. Here's a breakdown of my major races:

April - First race of the season after hardly any running: 10k in 42:47

June - Dam to Dam!: 20k in 1:28:47

July - First 5k of the year: 5k in 20:00

August - Second 5k of the year: 5k in 18:37

September - Copenhagen Half Marathon (Seeking redemption after my very painful experience last year): HM in 1:24:08

My primary source of training was the book "Faster Road Racing" by Pete Pfitzinger and Philip Latter, which does a great job providing both the science and reasoning behind their training plans and practical, effective training plans that are easy to follow. I found it so valuable, that I bought Advanced Marathoning by the same author to train for my marathons.

Other Goals

Be social: I haven't done great on this front. I've done some things here and there, but not as much as I should have. I've been caught up in a few side projects that I'll explain below. Between those projects and running I've turned into a bit of a recluse lately.

Crafting: Other than the wallet I made myself out of an IKEA bag, I haven't done as much as I'd hoped. I started knitting a sock but I stopped when I needed to turn the heel. I bought a couple sweater patterns, but never started them. I started a crochet project, but gave it up after an hour. The only "success" I've had is that I've finished knitting 75 out of 100 squares for my Hue Shift Afghan! But it's already been a month or two since I touched that, so I need to get back on the wagon if I hope to finish it this year.

Gym Routine: I'm doing it! I'm not doing much, averaging maybe 2 times a week for a couple upper body lifts and a 10 minute ab session, but it's better than nothing. I cut back on the gym as I got closer to the Copenhagen Half Marathon, and I'll probably stay conservative until the marathon in November, but then I'll probably hit the weights a bit harder for a few months.

Finish "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" by Italo Calvino: Nope. Once again, I got about halfway through and stopped. It's a shame because I love the concept of the book, it just gets a bit tiresome and I can't plow through it. I also failed to get through "Norse Mythology" by Neil Gaiman. I've mentioned before how much "American Gods" resonated with me, but I can't help but feel that his writing is a bit flat in this one. This time he isn't inventing the stories himself, he's writing his own versions of classic norse myths. Unfortunately, it's not the stories that I dislike, but rather his way of telling them. O well, I've moved on to "Galápagos" by Kurt Vonnegut. I loved "Cat's Cradle" when I read it earlier this year and when my Uncle Randy posted about this, a book by Vonnegut that I wasn't familiar with, I decided to order it and give it a go. So far no regrets!

Other Highlights

Programming Projects: I've been a busy beaver and published 2 websites and made one project to help out Silvia. For the geeks in the room: All three were built using Azure Functions, and the two websites were built using React and Office UI Fabric and hosted on Github Pages.

Strava Weather Reporter: Strava is hugely popular service for tracking and sharing runs, bike rides, and other athletic activities. "Strava Weather Reporter" is a service I wrote for automatically adding weather information to the description of Strava activities. So now when I run, I can automatically see what the temperature, wind, and other factors are on my run. And when I complain to somebody else about how cold it was, they can see that I wasn't lying! It's fully functional and operational, so try it out today! (Website) | (Backend).

PointSaber: At work we have a room called "The Garage" which has all sorts of gadgets and gizmos, including a virtual reality headset hooked up to a game called "Beat Saber". "Beat Saber" is a bit like Guitar Hero with light sabers and is addictively fun. A group of us in the office play it a lot, but we had no easy way to see our scores and compare with each other. So I wrote a mod for the game which uploads the scores to the cloud so I can show them on the website. If anybody has the game and wants to get this set up for themselves, let me know. It's as easy as installing the mod and configuring a name. (Game Mod) | (Website)

Shift Scraper: Silvia works at an event center and gets to "self serve" shifts from an online portal. Unfortunately, there's no warning when shifts will be posted and no built in way to get notifications, so I wrote up a small service to help her out. It signs in to the website, checks the calendar, and emails her links to any new shifts it finds. (Source)

Travel: I was fortunate enough to travel to London to see "Hamilton", to Spain and Boston for some weddings, to Seattle for a work conference, and to Iowa to see my family!

Baking: I made brownies and peanut butter cookies and scotcheroos and shared them with friends. They were all super tasty!

TV Shows: I've watched some great shows this year. The best is probably season 1 of "The Bridge", which we watched entirely in Danish/Swedish with Danish Subtitles! I love that I could follow along in the original language and look forward to watching more seasons of it or other Danish shows/films. We're also up to season 7 in "Modern Family" and Silvia and I finally finished Peter Capaldi's seasons of "Doctor Who". I caught up on "The 100" (the seasons available in Denmark) and for some reason I've willingly watched more seasons of "Scorpion" (why? It is so bad in every conceivable way from bad acting to product placement to absurdly unrealistic plots). As I do every year, I'll put a complete list in my "end of year" post.

Next Goals

We're well into the year and I've overachieved on some goals and underachieved on others. So, after reevaluating a bit, here is what I hope to achieve by the end of the year:

Finish knitting my Hue Shift Afghan: Doing other knitting would be a bonus, but this is the one thing that I really need to get this done.

Read 3 books:

Consistently hit the gym: After my marathon, I need to get in the gym more regularly.

Scale Strava Weather Reporter: There's a bit more "behind the scenes" work needed before I can get more people on it. But when that's done, I'd like to start sharing it more widely. By Christmas I'd like to have more than 5000 users.

[hoovercj]

March-April 2018

I didn't write about March because half the month was spent traveling, and when I got back at the beginning of April I had a lot to do and writing kept getting put off. So here is an overview of my goal progress over the last two months:

Running

This wasn't one of my goals at the beginning of the year. In fact, I started the year by saying I explicitly did not have any running goals for the year because I was focusing on weight loss. Well, as you'll read below, I'm doing very well on that front so I feel comfortable focusing on running again. For the last 4 weeks I've been running 3-4 times per week and I'm really happy with my progress. I even went out and bought a pair of "fast" shoes and a matching singlet / tanktop to wear in races and in the speed workouts that I'll be doing.

And speaking of races, I was originally planning to run a half marathon this weekend like I did at this time last year. Last year I ran "Den Grønne Halvmaraton", also without much training (and a lot of extra weight), and somehow came in under 2 hours, but it was really hard on my body and I ended up in the medical tent afterwards to rest. I wasn't worried about that happening this year, but I knew it was more responsible to run a shorter race for now until I've done more longer runs. Fortunately, this year they offered a 10k version of the race, so I registered for that instead.

I don't know if it was the weight loss, the better training, or the shoes (definitely the shoes), but I kicked ass at my first race of the season! Before the race, my Garmin watch predicted that I could run a 10k in 43:10 seconds...My official finish time was 42:47! I beat the prediction by over 20 seconds! And I beat my previous fastest 10k time from June of last year by nearly 7 minutes (49:37).

I have a couple more "short" 1 mile, 5k, or 10k races this year, but the two races I'm most focused on right now are the Dam to Dam 20k at the beginning of June and the Copenhagen Half Marathon at the end of September. I can't wait to see what I can do!

Lose weight

When I wrote my last update I weighed 169 and said my next milestone was 160. I was sure that going on vacation for two weeks with cheap, delicious food was going to ruin my diet and push that milestone off. But guess what? It didn't! I've done such a good job building good habits and self control over the last few months that I kept mysef from over-indulging. That, plus a few morning workouts and a LOT of daytime walking, meant that I actually lost a few pounds during the trip and weighed in right at 160 when I got back to Denmark at the beginning of April. Yay! Don't worry, though, I didn't stop myself from trying everything I wanted on the trip. I just made sure not to try it all on the same day.

Jan 1: 197 lbs (89.3kg) / 32% body fat

March 4: 169 lbs (76.6kg) / 23% body fat

April 29: 153.4 lbs (69.6kg) / 17.7% body fat

I'm down nearly 45 lbs and 15% body fat since the beginning of the year! Of course, the progress has been slower in the last two months than in the first two months (28 lbs vs 16 lbs), but that's a good thing, I'm getting really close to my next goal of 150 lbs (68kg) and there really isn't much left to lose.

My plan for now is to get a few pounds below 150 and then try to transition to maintenance, keeping my weight between 145 and 150. I don't want to drop too low, but I don't want to bounce back up above the line. Check back in a month or two to see how it goes!

Stop biting my nails

I thought this would be hard for me. It's a habit that I've had for a couple decades, surely it should take me more than a couple months to ditch completely, right? Wrong. I'm doing great and not having any issues. The only problem I have is being annoyed at how my nails feel after I clip them and thinking "man, I should really get a file to smooth these out" and then forgetting about it after a couple days. Pretty boring, so I'm going to stop writing about this every month unless something noteworthy happens.

Hang out with friends outside of bars/parties twice a month

March

Morocco took up a lot of time in March, but we squeezed in a couple outings before leaving. First, Silvia and I met up with a friend from Iran to see an Iranian movie called "A Man of Integrity". It was illuminating, though a bit depressing, but well worth watching so I definitely recommend it.

We also met up with some friends to try indoor skydiving and it was awesome! I wish I had tried it before I went real skydiving so I had a better idea of the physical experience so I could be more present and conscious of what was happening when jumping out of the plane. But o well, I guess this just means that I'll have to take Silvia skydiving for real, now :-)

April

April was a busy month, especially with work related people. I started off by helping out at a student hackathon hosted in the Microsoft office; then had two or three "going away" events for a colleague at restaurants; a video game night in the office where I got my ass kicked at some absurd, decade old racing game; and finally we had a "release party" to celebate shipping the latest version of our product.

I was also fortunate enough to meet a few non-work friends including taking Anais, a good friend from my exchange semester, and her family out for dinner when they visted Copenhagen. Silvia and I also spent a day in Tivoli enjoying the sun and listening to a Gospel Festival with a Danish friend.

Crafting Checklist

Finish Hue Shift Afghan: I made progress! See my mini-goals below.

Socks (baby socks count): Some day...

Something with Cables (knit or crochet): I sure hope I find time for this, even if it's just a kindle case or a hate or something.

Mini Goals

Each month I want to set one or two new goals. These could be anything from “learn to roll my R’s”, “try macrame”, “practice a new programming language”, “eat a piece of fruit every day when I get to work”, etc. If you have suggestions, let me know.

My March / April Goals:

Finish 9 squares for my hue shift afghan blanket in April: I went above and beyond and finished 14 squares before coming back from Morocco, completing the first quarter of the blanket. Then, in April, I completed another 10 more, so now I only have 65 left!...So. Many. Squares. I'm actually not sure if I'll finish this this year or not, but as long as I make progress every month, I'll consider it a success.

Call somebody other than my parents each week – I failed this hard in March. And again in April. I could blame it on the time difference, getting numbers, etc...but that would just be an excuse. I'm keeping this as a goal for May because my family and friends deserve better and I don't like giving up.

May Goals:

Call somebody other than my parents each week: Third time is the charm, right?

Start a gym routine: Now that my weight is getting down to where I want it and I have a good running plan in place, I want to start a basic gym routine to help convert some of the remaining fat to muscle while maintaining my goal weight. I signed up for a gym chain with a location close to work and one that's only a 5 minute bike ride / 15 minute walk from home and my goal is to go at least twice a week.

Go to a public social meetup: There are a couple meetups in town that I've been wanting to go for board games, knitting, language and culture exchange, etc. to but for some reason I've developed a social anxiety that I don't think I used to have and I've been too afraid to go alone. Unfortunately, Silvia either has schedule conflicts or isn't interested in them so I've been doing other things instead. This month I'm going to go to one and remind myself that they aren't worth being afraid of!

Finish "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" by Italo Calvino: This is a book that I "read" in high school for a paper in literature class. I've tried to read it at least 3 times and I've always stopped around halfway through. Once again I find myself about halfway through, but this time I'm going to finish it, damnit.

Other Highlights

Traveling to Morocco! There's so much I could say about that, but this post is already too long, so I'll have to write a dedicated post about it...some day.

I hit my 2 year anniversary as a full-time employee of Microsoft on April 15. Has it really been two years already??

And speaking the magic 2 year mark...Due to Danish housing laws which place a lot of protections on renters, especially ones who have lived in a property for more than two years, most apartments rented out by individuals are limited to 2 year leases. Our lease was set to expire at the end of May so we started aparment hunting right when we got back to Denmark at the beginning of April. We weren't finding any reasonable priced "old" apartments so we'd accepted that we'd have to pay too much for a new apartment. Fortunately, before we actually signed a new lease, we asked our landlord if we could extend our current lease for 2 more years. Against all odds, he agreed! So we get to continue paying only moderately overpriced rent instead of criminally overpriced rent and we don't have to go through the hassle of moving!

I read "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut. I really, really liked the book and the writing style. Short chapters made it incredibly easy to consume on the way to and from work, around the house, etc. I wish I'd read it sooner.

That was a long post, so thanks for sticking with me until the end, and for inspiring me to stay dedicated to these goals. I'm in awe at the great work so many of you have done -- losing weight, running incredible times, being a brave adventurer, and so much more. You inspire me, I'm just along for the ride.

[hoovercj]

February 2018

I'm not sure if it's because February is a short month, or because time gets faster as you get older, but I simply cannot believe that it's already March! So what did I accomplish?

Lose weight

Like January, my main focus in February was this goal. I kept up my healthy eating habits (portion control, no fast food/kebabs, lots of veggies) and the only alcohol I had was a small glass of port wine on my birthday.

My proudest achievement, though? I completed INSANITY! I've started it at least twice before but never got past the first month. This time I had the motivation and stable schedule necessary to succeed. I only missed two days (one normal workout because I ran to/from the Ice Skating arena and spent a couple hours skating and one rest day because I didn't eat enough the day before and my body just didn't have it in me to do the workout).

And it paid off!

Jan 1: 197 lbs (89.3kg) / 32% body fat

Jan 31: 182 lbs (82.5kg) / 27% body fat

March 4: 169 lbs (76.6kg) / 23% body fat

That's 13 pounds (6kg) and 4% body fat this month* for a total of 28 pounds (12.7kg) and 9% fat this year!

And I know BMI is an incomplete metric, but it's worth mentioning:

Jan 1: BMI 29.5 -- That's .5 away from obese!!

March 4: BMI 24.9 -- I'm officially a "healthy" weight instead of "overweight" :-)

So what's next? I cruised past my first goal (175) and I've made good progress towards my second goal: 160 pounds. Now that I'm done with Insanity, I'll be transitioning to running 3 days a week + Insanity (or other videos) 3 days a week until I travel at the end of the month. Then when I get back I need to go full-in on running because I have a few races at the end of April.

Stop biting my nails

I'm kicking ass at this, too. No slip ups in February! My main problem is knowing when to clip my nails. I've spent so many years biting them without thinking that now I don't know the normal time to clip them. Now I mostly just clip them when I think they are interfering with my typing, but I suspect by that point they are already too long. I guess I'll go clip them now.

Hang out with friends outside of bars/parties twice a month

Check! First I went ice skating with friends and we stayed until they closed. By the end, it was the emptiest skating rink I've ever used which meant I had space to practice without fear of crashing into people. It was great. Shortly after there was (unfortunately) a going away dinner at a restaurant with friends. Bittersweet. Then another day I met friends at a ramen place. I can't believe I've never had good ramen before, I've only ever had the 10 cent packets. Real ramen is delicious. So delicious, in fact, that Silvia and I went to the same place again last night.

Crafting Checklist

Zero progress on this. I keep meaning to, but between my other goals and a spontaneous programming side-project, I just haven't found the time. I'll be traveling at the end of March, though, so I know I'll get SOME knitting or crocheting done this month.

Finish Hue Shift Afghan

Socks (baby socks count)

Something with Cables (knit or crochet)

Mini Goals

Each month I want to set one or two new goals. These could be anything from “learn to roll my R’s”, “try macrame”, “practice a new programming language”, “eat a piece of fruit every day when I get to work”, etc. If you have suggestions, let me know.

My January mini-goals (do Insanity + not drink) continued into February! I'm done with Insanity, but I intend to stay dry in March as well.

My February Goals:

Brush my teeth after lunch at work - I think I did this most days. I set an alarm, but I kept snoozing it. I need to get better at doing it earlier, but hey, starting was the main goal. Now I can work on doing better.

Finish "Fire Emblem: Awakening" - I finished it! This is the first game I've finished* in...10 years? 15 years? The last major games I played were League of Legends in college and before that it was Team Fortress 2 in high school, and neither of those can be "finished".

*I say "finished", but of course I didn't 100% the game. There are still side quests and extra things I could do, but I beat the main story.

My March Goals:

Finish 9 squares for my hue shift afghan blanket - I was hoping not to use mini goals for this, but after 2 months without progress, I feel like I have to. I currently have 11 out of 100 done, so that would put me at 20...but it will take me ~30 hours to do. So we'll see.

Call somebody other than my parents each week -- Being far away from home means that my main contact with my family and friends is through facebook. This month I'll try calling a few to reconnect.

Other Highlights

I watched Te doy mis ojos (Take My Eyes), an incredible award-winning Spanish film about a woman who is in and out of an abusive relationship. The acting was powerful and the story does a great job of showing the manic ups and downs of the relationship. The movie was directed by a woman and her humanization (though not absolution) of the abuser was quite controversial. At the time, domestic abuse was (and still is) an important issue in Spain and coincidentally, they even passed strong domestic abuse legistlation not long after the movie was released.

I saw "The Room" and it was worth every minute. I definitely recommend going to a public showing, if you can, because watching it alone probably doesn't have the same charm.

Dark on Netflix is a short MUST-SEE series. It is in German but it has subtitles and it's very good. It's a bit Stranger Things meets Broadchurch meets True Detective. If you're a fan of any of those then you'll probably like Dark as much as I did.

Conclusion

Despite the bitter cold in Copenhagen, February was a good month and March is looking to be even better. Until next time, take care of yourselves and those around you.

[hoovercj]

January 2018

January 2018

After a mostly successful 2017, I'm looking forward to a good 2018. I didn't have space to explain them last month, so I'll do that now and let you know how I'm doing.

My goals for the year

Lose weight

Let's start with my biggest goal of the year (pun intended). This is where most of my energy was focused this month. When I graduated high school I weighed between 130 and 140 pounds (60kg). I finished 2018 weighing just under 200 (90kg). I’d like to see myself get back down to 160 someday, but my immediate goal is 175. The goal is “simple”, but as many of you know it isn’t “easy”. Different things work for different people and I don't know what will work for me long term. That said, there’s three obvious pillars that I'm focusing on now:

The first is to simply eat (and drink!) less -- Success! No drinking this month and I've controlled my portions both at work and at home.

Next is eating healthier -- I've been filling half my plate at work with veggies and planning healthy meals for evenings at home. And the food has been delicious (homemade butternut squash and coconut milk soup has been my favorite) and filling (who knew how tasty and filling spelt was? a couple weeks ago I didn't even know WHAT it was!). I've stopped eating out at fast food places and I have to say, I can really feel the difference. I didn't realize before how often I felt bloated and uncomfortable from the food. Now I feel fresh and light most of the day.

Lastly, I need to exercise more -- I naively thought last year that if I simply set a goal for running a half-marathon quickly, that my lifestyle would adjust. That didn’t happen. This year I don't have any running goals, I'm just going to try to be active. And so far so good! I've been working out every day before work and waking up early to work out on Saturdays. Some days it was hard to get out of bed, but I always felt like it was worth it afterwards.

So, what has all this gotten me?

I bought a Nokia Body+ scale to track my weight and body composition (body fat, muscle mass, water) and the results are clear:

Jan 1: 197 lbs (89.3kg) / 32% body fat

Jan 31: 182 lbs (82.5) / 27% body fat

That's 15 pounds and 5% body fat down, over halfway to my first goal! Of course, the first half of that was mostly water weight, but thanks to my scale I can see that the body fat % is steadily going down too, so that means my diet and exercise are working. I hope I can keep these habits up in February and with some hard work and luck, maybe I'll hit 175 by the end of it.

Stop biting my nails

This is a big one for me. I’ve been biting my nails since I was a child, and I really want to ditch the habit. I’ve actually been working on this one since Halloween and I’ve only had a couple small lapses since then. But January was a good month! I haven't bit them at all and I've clipped them a couple times. There are still some urges, but they haven't won yet.

Hang out with friends for non-drinking events twice a month

I love the people I work with and 2017 was a great year, but I realized that I wasn’t meeting up with people nearly as often as I’d like to, and when I did it was mostly parties. I don’t want those to stop, I just want to add more. I want 2018 to be a year of board games, dinner nights, knitting meetups, and yet-to-be-determined adventures.

This month, Silvia and I went to a couple movies (Pitch Perfect 3 and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) and I went to alone to a Spanish movie called Insomnio. When it comes to friends, though, I only saw them at parties or the bar (even if I wasn't drinking), so it doesn't count.

Silvia and I did attend a Danish-German language event at my language school and spent the evening speaking almost no English, so maybe that was half a victory?

Crafting Checklist

Now that I have a healthy habit of crafting I have a small checklist of things that I want to do at some point this year. I know that the blanket I’m working on now will take me at least a few months, maybe even longer if I take breaks between the parts of it, but I’m comfortable committing to it. Also, there are two “challenges” that I also want to complete this year. I might change my mind during the year, but I hope not :-)

Finish Hue Shift Afghan

Socks (baby socks count)

Something with Cables (knit or crochet)

Unfortunately I spent so much time focusing on my weight loss goal that I didn't complete even a single stitch this month.

Mini Goals

Each month I want to set one or two new goals. These could be anything from “learn to roll my R’s”, “try macrame”, “practice a new programming language”, “eat a piece of fruit every day when I get to work”, etc. If you have suggestions, let me know!

Last month I had two mini-goals that I wanted to nail to kick-start my weight loss goal:

Survive month 1 of Insanity - I did it! 6 mornings a week before work + Saturday I got up and kicked ass.

Not drink - As I mentioned earlier, I didn't have a single beer or shot or any other alcoholic beverage this whole month! Part of it was to see if I could, part of it was to help with my weight loss. It was actually pretty great, I went to bed feeling good and woke up Saturday and Sunday mornings feeling even better!

I have two goals for this month, too:

Brush my teeth after lunch at work - This just seems like a nice habit to get into instead of just morning and evening

Finish "Fire Emblem: Awakening" - I bought myself a Nintendo 2DS XL for Christmas and I started playing this game. It's been a lot of fun and I want to finish it in February.

Well, that's it! It was very much a month focused on one thing, but I'm very happy with the results. Hopefully the next months will be a bit more balanced, but of course only time will tell.

[hoovercj]

2017 Year in Review

2017 was the most stable year I’ve had since at least high school, or maybe even ever. I lived in the same place all year, had the same job, and had the same loving relationship. It was also the first year that I’ve set explicit goals for myself and I am sooo glad that I did. The stability let me really focus and I achieved so much and I learned a lot about what makes a good goal. I’m really excited to start working towards my 2018 goals, but first let’s take a look at what I did this year.

Travel

Relatively speaking, this was a quiet year for travel. I guess that’s what happens when you work full time. I only traveled 4 times this year:

Zagreb -> Plitvice Lakes -> Zadar -> Split -> Dubrovnik - Croatia is an amazing country! Plitvice Lakes is the most stunning place I’ve ever been. If anything could make you say “I’ve seen enough waterfalls”, this is the place.

London - I love that the West End is only a weekend trip away. We saw David Tennant in person performing in “Don Juan in Soho”. Incredible.

Des Moines - It’s always great to come home and the trip is always too short. It’s a shame I can’t do it more often.

Hamburg -> Malaga -> Granada -> Zaragoza - German Christmas Markets, Seafood galore, my first time visiting Caves, and of course seeing Silvia’s family again. A great way to end the year.

Netflix / HBO Go / etc.

I watch a lot of TV while I knit or crochet. My netflix history proves it. I calculate around 500 episodes worth of TV throughout the year, but I reckon it was actually higher.

Riverdale (Seasons 1 and 2) - I didn’t think I liked it...but of course I did. A spooky high school drama played by attractive adults? What’s not to love!

Last Week Tonight - I wish it was “Yesterday Today” so I could watch it every night

The Voice - I just love this show. I don’t know why I like it so much more than the other singing competitions, but I do.

Rick and Morty (Seasons 1-3)

Modern Family (Seasons 1 and 2) - I wish I’d watched this sooner. A hilarious and wholesome show.

Scorpion (Seasons 1 and 2) - What an awful show

Mindhunter (Season 1) - A surprisingly good show. It wasn’t what I expected, but I can’t wait for season 2

Stranger Things (Season 2) - I don’t think it was quite as good as the first season, but it was definitely one of the better shows I watched this year

Degrassi: The Next Class (Seasons 1-4) - Not as good as the Degrassi I grew up watching, but it was entertaining enough that I couldn’t stop watching.

The 100 (Seasons 1-3) - It passed the time while crocheting.

Brooklyn Nine Nine (Seasons 1-3) - Andy Samberg cracks me up so hard. Looking forward to season 4 when it comes to netflix

13 Reasons Why - A show that deserved the controversy it got, but was also well worth watching.

Suits (Season 5) - I just love the characters in this show. I’m sad that Meghan Markle is marrying Prince Harry, though, because I don’t want her to leave :-(

The Expanse (Season 1) - I love sci-fi shows and need season 2 on netflix asap!

Star Trek: Discovery - It is trying to sate my sci-fi lust. It is OK for now, but I want something more.

Game of Thrones - No comment needed

Westworld (first 7 episodes, haven’t seen the end, NO SPOILERS!) - then my HBO stopped working. I need to watch the rest!

The Shannara Chronicles (Season 1) - I remember the books being better than the series...

Goals

Become somewhat conversational in Danish: 8 months ago I said that I couldn't understand Danish TV at all. 4 months ago I watched "Big Hero 6" in Danish without subtitles and understood enough to enjoy the movie. 2 months ago I read the text of an opera in Danish and understood it. Also, when Silvia and I travel and we don’t want people to understand us, we switch to Danish.

Verdict: Success!

Read at least one book a month, even in months that I don’t travel:

The Daylight War, Peter V. Brett (817 pages)

The Skull Throne, Peter V. Brett (769 pages)

The Core, Peter V. Brett (800 pages)

The Angel Wore Wings, Sandra Hill (387 pages)

Farenheit 451, Ray Bradburry (243 pages)

American Gods, Neil Gaiman (565 pages)

Life's That Way, Jim Beaver (320 pages)

Dune, Frank Herbert (894 pages)

The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss (676 pages)

The Wise Man's Fear, Patrick Rothfuss (1007 pages)

Snapshot, Brandon Sanderson (98 pages)

Legion, Brandon Sanderson (88 pages)

Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson (1248 pages)

Total Price: ~$105 (2016: Same) Total Novels/Novellas: 13 (2016: 16) Total Pages: 7912 (2016: 5278) Average Pages per Title: 608 (2016: 330)

I read a few fewer titles than last year but on average they were bigger and I ended up reading nearly 3000 pages more!

Verdict: Success!

Complete at least one sewing, crocheting, or knitting project per month:

At the end of 2016 I had only ever knitted or crocheted “hot pads” (i.e. plain squares) and hadn’t crafted anything else of substance. It’s safe to say that I did much better this year!

Sewing:

2 Curtains

2 Sock Creatures

Cross Stitch:

"Mr. Meeseeks"

“I’ll love you forever” piece for my Mom

Crochet:

8 Hats

Shirt

Blanket

Plant Hanger

Triangle Shawl

“Poro” Amigurumi

2 coozies

Knitting:

2 Phone Cases

2 Scarves

11/100 squares in a blanket

Verdict: Resounding Success!

Watch a foreign language film each month:

Episodes of “El Ministerio del Tiempo”

“La Ardilla Roja” (The Red Squirrel)

Akira

Blinkende Lygter (Flickering Lights)

"Big Hero 6" in Danish

“Magic Flute” Opera in German with Danish “subtitles”

Instead of one per month, I averaged one every other month. Not bad, and definitely the most foreign language content I’ve watched in a single year.

Verdict: Mixed Success!

Complete a full marathon OR run a half-marathon under 1:40:

I described in a previous post why I think this goal was fundamentally flawed I’ll start with the positive. I averaged almost 1 race per month of various distances, including TWO half-marathons!

4 x 5k

3 x 10k

1 x 7-mile

2 x Half-Marathon

Now the negatives...I didn’t get anywhere near my goal times for the half marathons and I almost didn’t even finish the second one. That’s mostly because of lack of running. I don’t have perfect records but I estimate that I only ran between 225-250 miles this year. That might sound like a lot, but that’s less than 5 miles per week. Ideally next year I’d get up to 750 miles for the year.

Verdict: Mixed Failure

Write my own just-for-fun programming language and virtual machine: I didn’t get past initial reading and experimentation for this goal, but I kept it on the list every month to remind myself of one thing: I should be very careful about making “do this specific thing” goals for a year because I never know how my priorities and interests will shift or what other opportunities will present themselves.

Verdict: Complete Failure

Lessons Learned

Let’s look at my most successful goals:

Read a book each month. Complete a crafting project each month.

And my least successful goals: Complete a full marathon OR run a half-marathon under 1:40 Write my own just-for-fun programming language and virtual machine.

My successful goals allowed me to read ANY book or complete ANY crafting project to match my interests for the month. They were also very forgiving -- if I came up short one month, I could make up for it in the next month. Ultimately, the goals were about developing sustainable habits that I could carry throughout the year and beyond.

My failed goals drew a line in the sand and said “do this big thing”. That’s not a bad thing if the “big thing” is something that I already have a habit of doing. For example, now that I have established habits of crafting and reading in 2017, I could set a goal of “complete this complicated blanket” in 2018 or “read these hard books that I always wish I had read”.

But running simply isn’t a part of my lifestyle yet. A better goal for 2017 would have been “Run a race every month” or “run 10 times per month”.

So what do I hope to achieve in 2018?

Looking ahead to 2018

Using what I learned from my 2017 goals, there are a couple habits I want to make (or break!) in 2018. You can read the “headlines” below, but I’ll elaborate more at the end of January when I check in with my progress.

Stop biting my nails

Hang out with friends for non-drinking events twice a month

Knitting/Crochet Checklist [ ] Hue Shift Afghan (Ravelry) [ ] Socks [ ] Make Something with cables

Monthly Mini-Goal

Lose weight

Happy New Year and have a great 2018!

[hoovercj]

October 2017 Update

October was a very busy month at work as we prepared to ship Microsoft Invoicing which we released on the first of November. The overtime (and my laziness) totally wrecked my chances of getting runs in, but I was pretty successful in my other goals.

Become somewhat conversational in Danish: Work interfered a lot with my classes, but I got some great practice outside of class, including a couple evenings speaking almost exclusively Danish. I have a long way to go, but it's great to see progress.

Read at least one book a month, even in months that I don’t travel: The final book of the Demon Cycle series by Peter V. Brette came out. The Core (800 pages) isn't a perfect book, but I enjoyed it, and I look forward to the future works in the universe that he has planned.

Complete at least one sewing, crocheting, or knitting project per month: I crocheted a LOT this month:

An asymmetrical triangle shawl for Silvia. It should be worn kinda like this.

A "Poro" amigurumi as a goodbye present for my friend Dominik who moved back to Croatia.

A hat for another friend

A present for someone. That will stay a surprise for now :-)

Watch a foreign language film each month: Silvia and I went to see Historias del Kronen (Stories from the Kronen), a Spanish film about Spanish youth in the 90s, experimenting with drugs and alcohol and feeling invincible...until they aren't. It was quite weird, but I really enjoyed it.

Complete a full marathon OR run a half-marathon under 1:40: I ran maybe once or twice this month?Nothing good to report here, but I do have a race in November in Iowa and a race in December in Spain, so I should probably get back out there.

Write my own just-for-fun programming language and virtual machine: Maybe next year.

Only two months left in 2017! And less than 2 weeks until I visit the US.

[hoovercj]

September 2017 Update

It feels like I wrote my last post just yesterday, but apparently it has been a full month. And now that I look back at what I've done, it's been a rather long one! I went to a maker fair, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, had two international visitors, published a major update to VS Code Powermode and probably more things that I can't remember. And that's on top of my great progress towards my goals.

Become somewhat conversational in Danish: I rocked my Module 3 test and started Module 4 (out of 5). I don't think I practiced as much outside of class as I normally do, though.

Read at least one book a month, even in months that I don’t travel: I read a LOT this month, at least relative to other months. I started the Kingkiller Cronicle trilogy by Patrick Rothfuss, but I didn't realize until AFTER the second book that the third book doesn't even have a release date!! O well, the books were great and definitely worth reading.

I finished the last 25% of Dune (894 pages) and I loved it. Definitely recommend it.

The Name of the Wind (676) by Patrick Rothfuss

The Wise Man's Fear (1007) by Patrick Rothfuss

Complete at least one sewing, crocheting, or knitting project per month: I didn't do anything big this month, but I did make several small things. * Knit Silvia a second phone case, this time actually big enough to fit her phone * Crocheted a beer coozy * Learned a bit of Tunisian Crochet * Crocheted a small piece of cake

I also ordered ~$100 worth of yarn for future knitting projects, so I am going to be BUSY this winter :-)

Watch a foreign language film each month: I took care of this one right away so I wouldn't forget. I watched the iconic cyberpunk anime Akira. I was impressed with the visuals, but altogether underwhelmed. I thought it held up incredibly well for being 30 years old, but it just didn't click for me.

Complete a full marathon OR run a half-marathon under 1:40: The Copenhagen Half Marathon was this month. I finished the race, but 30 minutes slower than my goal (~2:10). I simply didn't train enough for the race and I paid for it. I don't intend to run any more half marathons this year so strictly speaking this goal was a "failure". More generally speaking, though, it was a success because I did keep doing the races and I've learned more about how I need to approach running for the rest of the year and for next year.

Write my own just-for-fun programming language and virtual machine: Why do I waste your time by even including this line anymore?

I hope next month is as successful as this one!

[hoovercj]

August 2017 Update

First things first: The moths are gone! A few stuck around even after we tossed all the food, so we spent an entire day scrubbing every surface of the kitchen and emptying our cupboards. They are still empty a few weeks later, but no moths!

Back in April I wrote a review of the first part of the year, so now I suppose it's time to check in on the second part of the year. But first let's take a quick look at how August went:

August

Become somewhat conversational in Danish: Danish classes started up again and I've had a couple good Danish conversations outside of class, too, so I'd say this was a positive month.

Read at least one book a month, even in months that I don’t travel: I haven't read a full book for a while so I started the month easy with a couple novellas by Brandon Sanderson:

Snapshot (98)

Legion (88 pages).

In the last week or two, though, I've been reading through one of the most famous sci-books of all time: Dune (894 pages). I have a bad habit of hearing about things that are super hyped and then ignoring them on principle and then when I do try them out, I instantly regret having waited so long. That's exactly what happened with Doctor Who and Breaking Bad, and it happened again with Dune. Why did I wait so long?? It is so good. I'm about 75% done according to my kindle, and I can't wait to finish the last 25%.

Complete at least one sewing, crocheting, or knitting project per month: I did it! I finished my largest project to date. I crocheted a top for Silvia based on these two patterns. I was originally going for the first one but it seemed to short, so I followed the second one to add the top waffle section. I'm not thrilled with the boat netckline, but as far as first garments go I think I did alright. I really enjoy knitting, but after this I think I might prefer crochet...

Watch a foreign language film each month: Another success! Between episodes of Game of Thrones I managed to watch a foreign language film! Well, it was "Big Hero 6", but I watched it in Danish. What a great movie. Of course, I didn't understand everything, but I understood a lot. And what I understood I really liked. On top of that, I finished Orange is the New Black. Wow, what a season. I'm still speechless. I didn't finish West World, though, but that's because I started reading instead. I'll finish it after I finish Dune.

Complete a full marathon OR run a half-marathon under 1:40: I had 3 races this month! I didn't have stellar times in any of them, but that's because I didn't train enough in between. But the last race...that was the craziest. It is called the "DHL Relay" and all the companies in Copenhagen sign up as many teams as they can to compete in a 5 person relay. Each person runs 5k (3.1 miles) before handing off the baton to the next person. There are so many teams that register that they split them up throughout the week. Each day this nearly 5000 teams competed for a total of over 120,000 runners! It had a great atmosphere and was a fun race.

Write my own just-for-fun programming language and virtual machine: ::crickets::

All in all, I'd say I had a good month. And now let's put that in context for the last 4 months:

May - August

Become somewhat conversational in Danish: 4 months ago I said that I couldn't understand Danish TV at all. This month I watched "Big Hero 6" in Danish without subtitles and understood enough to enjoy the movie. I'd call that progress!

Read at least one book a month, even in months that I don’t travel: In the first 4 months I read 5 books, but in these most recent 4 months I've read about 3 books worth, so I'm on pace so far. Looking ahead, a couple of my favorite authors have books coming out this Fall so I think come December I'll be able to call this one a success. * Life's That Way by Jim Beaver (320 pages) * Some short stories and novellas (~200 pages) * Most of Dune (894 pages)

Complete at least one sewing, crocheting, or knitting project per month: I destroyed this goal and I already have two projects lined up for September!

Curtain #2

Cross Stitched "Mr. Meeseeks"

Crocheted Hat

Knit Phone Case (even though it was too small)

Sock Creature

Crocheted Shirt

Watch a foreign language film each month: I only watched 2 in the first 4 months of the year...and only 2 more in the next 4 months. I'm actually going to see a foreign film today, but that doesn't help for this time period.

“La Ardilla Roja” (The Red Squirrel)

"Big Hero 6" in Danish

Complete a full marathon OR run a half-marathon under 1:40: I realized two things today while I was out for a run.

The number of times I've said "I could run fast 10 years ago" is drastically higher than the number of times I've ran this year. And that's one of the reasons that I'm not fast now. I need to talk less and run more. And I'm starting to realize how many things in life are a journey, not a destination. It's not about "getting fit", it's about "being fit". You don't "get in shape" once and that's it. You change your lifestyle such so that with time you simply are fit as a result. Or more specifically with running. You don't "get fast", you begin a lifestyle of running such that the result is improved times and longer distances. But it is the lifestyle of running that is the important part, not any specific time.

This goal is all wrong. My other goals are smaller, measurable goals aimed at fostering a lifestyle change by encouraging myself to experiment with different crafting projects, to continue reading, to enjoy movies outside my normal sphere. I can be successful in them each month, and with time change my habits. This goal is too big and can only be tested once or twice a year. It is a nice goal to have in general, but only if I have smaller goals under it such as:

Average 3 runs per week every month - This encourages consistency in training by forcing a routing

Run one race per month, (or a solo time trial when there aren't any), and run it faster than the previous race of the same distance - This encourages consistency in training by setting more frequent goals.

I think I'll consider one of those as my goals for next year.

Write my own just-for-fun programming language and virtual machine: This goal is still on hold. Similar to my marathon goal, this one was more of an "all or nothing" goal. That was intentional because I wanted to have one large year-long goal to focus on. However, my attention shifted elsewhere and just hasn't moved back to this yet.

[hoovercj]

July 2017 Update

July was full of everything except working towards my goals...For example, one of my roommates from Iowa State visited Copenhagen and it was great to catch up with him! Silvia and I also went around the city and visited some areas we haven't been before, like The Cisterns. I even got her to FINALLY ride her bike. We went to IKEA to get food containers -- we had a bit of a moth problem and threw most of our food away so we had to go get something to keep new food safe. So far so god, no moths. But enough stalling, time to hold myeslf accountable...

Become somewhat conversational in Danish: There were no danish classes. I did a bit of practicing out in the world, but not as much as I should. I start classes again in August, though, so I hope to have a better report next month.

Read at least one book a month, even in months that I don’t travel: Nope :-(

Complete at least one sewing, crocheting, or knitting project per month: I made progress on my next project early on in the month and then nothing.

Watch a foreign language film each month: Once again, far too much netflix/HBO Nordic. I watched all the Degrassi that netflix had, watched the chronicles of shanarra, Game of Thrones, and a few episodes of Orange is the New Black and Westworld. I'm excited to finish those series next month, but hopefully I'll make time to watch something foreign too.

Complete a full marathon OR run a half-marathon under 1:40: I started the month training way too hard and then let a recovery week turn into a recovery month. Well, I have a race in 2 days so ready or not, I'll be running again soon!

Write my own just-for-fun programming language and virtual machine: Still on hold, but I did release a major update for VS Code Power Mode and we had a hackathon at work that I made another cool VS Code extension for. Maybe I'll get permission to share it, we'll see.

[hoovercj]

June 2017 Update

Unlike last month, I felt like this month lasted forever! Part of that was because I three separate sets of visitors (thank you!). But did I get more done? Let's see...

Become somewhat conversational in Danish: This was was a mixed bag. I was very much ready for a break in Danish classes and hardly did any of the homework or studying that I was supposed to do. I did spend a day chatting with Danes for International Knitting in Public Day, though, which was a blast. I don't have any classes in July, though, so hopefully when I start again in mid-August I'll be ready to give it the attention it deserves.

Read at least one book a month, even in months that I don’t travel: Not a full book, but I read a couple short stories out of a book called The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen. They were quite good and left me wanting more, but then I got busy and Silvia needed the book for her book club. We'll see how July goes, I guess.

Complete at least one sewing, crocheting, or knitting project per month: This is where I really excelled this month. I crocheted Silvia a hat and knit her a (too small...) phone case. I also made another sock creature for a friend's birthday and I started crocheting another project for Silvia. Hopefully I finish that in July and spend more time on some of the other goals.

Watch a foreign language film each month: I forgot about this one until it was too late...Instead I watched way too much English language Netflix (Suits, Brooklyn 99, The 100).

Complete a full marathon OR run a half-marathon under 1:40: As always, I didn't train as much as I should have, but I did have two races this month which went OK. I ran the Copenhagen Wo/Men's Race 5k in 24:23. (and then ran an even faster time the next week in training) and I ran the the BMW Strandparkløb 10k in 49:37 (though according to my watch, the course was long and my time was under 49:00). I ran the 10k at roughly the pace I need to run the half marathon in, though. So now I just need to improve my conditioning and endurance so I can take that pace all the way.

Write my own just-for-fun programming language and virtual machine: Still on hold, but I did several cool programming things this month for VS Code.

Power Mode

Theme Overrides in Settings

Find in Release Notes and other webviews

[hoovercj]

May 2017 Update

Each month feels shorter and shorter, but at the same time I feel like I got a lot done this month. Let’s take a look.

Become somewhat conversational in Danish: This last month I had several conversations in Danish out in public, so that was a plus! Also, I went to a German language night and half of the words I said were Danish instead of German. I guess that means I’m learning something?

Read at least one book a month, even in months that I don’t travel: A few years back I heard about a remarkable memoir by Jim Beaver, an actor that I loved on Supernatural. The title is “Life’s That Way” (320 pages) and as soon as read the back cover I knew I had to have it, so I splurged and bought an autographed hardcover copy. I was so impacted by the emotional journey that I had to stop before I finished the first part. Well, this month I dusted off the jacket and finished the book. The form is simple: a series of nightly emails that Jim sent to friends and family to after his wife was diagnosed with cancer. Simple the form may be, however, the content is anything but. Jim writes with an honesty and earnestness that is as refreshing as it is piercing. Those of us who haven’t lived through a pain like his will hope we never have to, but those who have will take comfort in knowing that there just might be others out there who can understand, even if most aren’t willing to be so open. I simply cannot recommend the book enough.

Complete at least one sewing, crocheting, or knitting project per month: I was a busy beaver this month. I’m relieved to have finished things from my to-do list and proud of myself for trying something new

 I did it! I finished the curtains! And they’ve already come in useful blocking the Danish sun so I can watch TV without glare :-)

I crocheted the two knit squares I had together to make a pillow case.

I learned to cross stitch! I spent roughly 50 hours making a “Mr. Meeseeks” cross stitch for a friend’s birthday. I’m really pleased with how it turned out and can’t wait to make more (smaller) cross stitch pieces.

Watch a foreign language film each month: I watched one! I actually did it this time! Silvia and I went to see “La Ardilla Roja” (The Red Squirrel), a super weird Spanish movie from the early 90′s.

Complete a full marathon OR run a half-marathon under 1:40: I took some time off after the half-marathon...which turned into taking a lot of time off. I ran a bit, but not as much as I’d like. I have two races in June, though, so next month will be better :-)

Write my own just-for-fun programming language and virtual machine: Still on hold.

[hoovercj]

April 2017 Update

To remind my friends and family, I started the year by setting half a dozen goals to help guide how I spend my time so I would engage in diverse activities that each bring different value.

Improve my Danish so I can participate more fully in the country that I'm living in.

Read more books to keep my imagination active and my vocabulary strong. "If you don't use it, you lose it", and there's a lot you don't use when you're living abroad.

Sew, crochet, knit, or otherwise craft something each month to create something physical. My career (and much of my life) is based on computer screens and a good portion of the rest is spent staring at the TV, so this lets me do something different.

Watch foreign language films or tv to keep me from only binging more American series and to take time to appreciate stories told from different cultural perspectives. Also, the foreign language forces me to really pay attention and be present.

Write a programming language compiler to spend time on computer sciency things outside of my usual area and expand my comfort zone. When I accepted my job at Microsoft I told them "any team but the compiler team" because I was afraid of it. Hopefully this will help.

I'll keep my April update short so I can jump into a quarter review.

Become somewhat conversational in Danish: More of the same.

Read at least one book a month, even in months that I don’t travel: I finally finished American Gods and re-started reading a book that I'd abandoned before. I won't say what it is now, but it's also an emotional title..

Complete at least one sewing, crocheting, or knitting project per month: Last month I hinted at a project for this month..and I did it! My first sock creature! And I finished knitting two colorful panels to make a pillow case, now I just have to figure out how to join them/attach a zipper. With an inner cloth liner? Suggestions welcome. I also got about halfway through a scarf. I'll post better pictures next month when I finish it. And maybe I'll finally finish the curtains, too...

Watch a foreign language film each month: Unfortunately "The King's Speech" isn't foreign language, but it's the only foreign film I watched :-/ I did see Guardians of the Galaxy 2, though!

Complete a full marathon OR run a half-marathon under 1:40: The half marathon was challenging to say the least, but I did end up finishing in under 2 hours. I'll do my best for September, but I'm not sure 1:40 is particularly realistic.

Write my own just-for-fun programming language and virtual machine: No progress on this at the moment and I doubt I'll touch it this month either. It's only going to get harder, too, as Denmark gets sunnier...

So that was this April, but how is that in context? How did I do in the first quarter of 2017?:

Become somewhat conversational in Danish: I'm making progress in the class, but MAN is this language hard to understand. I can do OK with reading subtitles on English language shows, but it's still pretty hard to follow Danish language TV.

Read at least one book a month, even in months that I don’t travel: I've finished 5 books so far, so I'm averaging more than a book a month. More importantly, though, I'm getting a bit more diversity in genre and topic than I usually do and I hope to keep that up throughout the year.

The Daylight War, Peter V. Brett (817 pages)

The Skull Throne, Peter V. Brett (769 pages)

The Angel Wore Wings, Sandra Hill (387 pages)

Farenheit 451, Ray Bradburry (243 pages)

American Gods, Neil Gaiman (674 pages)

Complete at least one sewing, crocheting, or knitting project per month: I haven't done quite as much as I'd like in this department, but I have the supplies and the momentum to complete many more projects this year! I have the feeling that I'm just getting started.

One curtain (though I still need to add back tabs to it)

Miscellaneous clothes mending

Pillowcase panels

Sock creature

Half a scard

Watch a foreign language film each month: Wow, I'm batting about 50% on this one. I really need to double down and commit to this:

Flickering Lights

El Ministerio del Tiempo

Complete a full marathon OR run a half-marathon under 1:40: I've done a pretty good job of running consistently this year, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the year. I'm even starting to look at running clubs in the area.

Write my own just-for-fun programming language and virtual machine: I did some great reading in the area and started putting it in practice earlier in the year, but other projects and crafts started taking more of my time. We'll see if I get back to this later, but for now I consider this goal on hold. There's still plenty of time to pick it up again later this year, though :-)

[hoovercj]

March 2017 Update

Is March really longer than February? It felt shorter...but how did that translate to my goals? Let's find out.

Become somewhat conversational in Danish: I passed Module 2 and now have started module 3. So, things are continuing to progress!

Read at least one book a month, even in months that I don’t travel: I failed this one. Hard. I started reading American Gods (674 pages) by Neil Gaiman at the end of February but didn't finish in March. American Gods is an incredible novel that explores so many aspects of America and it resonated with me so much that I actually had to stop reading about halfway through because I found myself bawling in bed from a heavy mix of nostalgia, homesickness, and introspection. What do I want out of my life? What part of "America" is speaking to me from the book? Can I find that here, also? I've slowly started reading the book again, and when I finish I think my reaction deserves its own blog post.

Complete at least one sewing, crocheting, or knitting project per month: I figured out how to hang the curtains properly...but I still haven't sewn the second one. I DID knit an entire skein of yarn on my flights to/from London, though, so that will have to count as my win for March. I've already started on a project for April but you'll have to wait to read about that ;-)

Watch a foreign language film each month: I watched an episode of "El Ministerio del Tiempo". It's not a movie, per se, but the episodes are quite long, it is in Spanish, and it's such a good show. It's so good NBC stole the idea for Timeless (which is, of course, much worse). They are even being sued about it. The series follows a group of agents working for "The Ministry of Time" in Spain, a government organization that has access to doors to the past and ensures historical integrity by preventing people from going back in time to alter history. From Hitler to the inquisition. From Valazquez (Spanish painter) to Spanish royalty. I've learned a lot about the history and culture of Spain through the show and I can't wait to watch more. I also watched a few episodes of Danish "Paradise Hotel" reality show and a Swedish quiz show "Vem vet mest?" and was surprised by how much I could understand. So I think that makes up for missing a foreign film in January.

Complete a full marathon OR run a half-marathon under 1:40: I didn't run as much in March as I should have, but I DID run a 10k in pretty decent time (53:22). I won't hit my half-marathon goal in April, but if I keep training I might do it in September, or I might feel ambitious enough to run a full marathon. Time will tell.

Write my own just-for-fun programming language and virtual machine: I didn't do any more programming on this front, but I did do more reading about the virtual machine side. I now have a pretty good idea of how I can get started implementing it. Most of my time, however, was spent on VS Code related projects such as the one described in my last blog post, and submitting a bug fix and 2 features which you can read about in the official release notes.

As was the case with last month, some goals are easier to keep up with than others, but I feel I'm getting value out of all of them and I'm already happy with the progress I've made so far in April. I hope to have a fully positive report for next month.

[hoovercj]

API Playground: My extension factory

It was 11pm on a worknight and I really should have known better, but I thought "I'll answer just one or two VS Code questions on stackoverflow, it will only take a couple of minutes...". For my non-tech friends and family, stackoverflow is a site for asking and answering programming related questions. 90 minutes later I had answered 5 or 6 questions. One well researched and sourced answer, a couple "no, that's not possible", and then two "you can't do that out of the box, but you could write an extension to do that." So of course, I wrote the extensions. I even published one on the marketplace!

As I said, I should have known better. This isn't the first time I have written an extension to solve a stackoverflow question. Last October I did something similar when I saw a question about dimming lines in VS Code which led to me releasing VSCode Dimmer.

And just last week, when I was submitting a patch to the VSCode repository to fix a bug with the wrong icon being used, I had to create a small extension to visually verify that it was working.

Now, I didn't want to have a dozen github repos for small extensions, so I created a VS Code API Playground repo to hold all of my little experiments. This is now the home to small, self-contained, single-purpose extensions that I can use to demonstrate new APIs, repro bugs and verify fixes, answer stackoverflow questions, basically anything I can think of. In fact, I think looking through the code is the pefect next-step for a beginner after they read my woefully out-of-date VSCode Extension Tutorial. Well, I guess I need to update that, now.

Let me know what your favorite is, or what you'd like to see next!

[hoovercj]

February 2017 Update

Another month has come and gone, so it's time to check in on my goals. Let's dive right in...

Become somewhat conversational in Danish: I made it to 5 out of the 6 lessons of my first class, I just started a new class last week, and my next class is tomorrow. Unfortunately, I haven't had as much practice outside of class as I'd like. Maybe that should be a sub-goal for March?

Read at least one book a month, even in months that I don’t travel: After reading so many big, heavy fantasy novels I decided to switch things up. This month I finished two books and started a third:

The Angel Wore Wings, Sandra Hill (387 pages) - This book was god awful. I mean seriously, the worst. I started reading it when a friend posted the back cover and I couldn't believe something like it could exist. I've concluded that something like it SHOULDN'T exist.

Farenheit 451, Ray Bradburry (243 pages) - I've read many other classic dystopian novels but never got around to this one, and considering current events it seemed like a good pick. Despite the "too close to home" feeling of the novel, it was a breath of fresh air after the dumpster fire of a novel that I had just finished.

Complete at least one sewing, crocheting, or knitting project per month: I still haven't finished the second curtain, but I mend some things around the house that needed sewing, so that's my half-win for the month. The curtains are on hold until I figure out how to hang them properly. The hooks that I bought aren't cutting it. If I don't sew a curtain this month, I hope I at least make a sock creature.

Watch a foreign language film each month: I watched Flickering Lights (Blinkende Lygter), a fantastic Danish film from 2000. It was actually the first Danish film that I watched back in 2012 after first moving to Denmark, and it was great to see the film again and and actually understand some of it! I'm still down one after missing January, but I also FINALLY watched Being John being Malkovich this month and February is short, so maybe I'll catch up with two next month.

Complete a full marathon OR run a half-marathon under 1:40: Unfortunately I still haven’t done much running this year and I’m still signed up for a half-marathon in April. Even sooner, though, I have a 10k later in March! My old garmin watch died so I ordered a new one that I'll start using later this week. Luckily I'm only using these next few races for training, the real races will be later in the summer.

Write my own just-for-fun programming language and virtual machine: I read and skimmed a few more chapters of Modern Compiler Implementation in Java (The Tiger Book) and then recently started building a parser for my language. The working name is "Spinel", which is the name of a non-valuable mineral that was historically confused with ruby. Similarly, my language will superficially resemble the Ruby language but without any of the features that make Ruby desireable :-) Rather than start from scratch and be completely flustered, though, I am modifying an existing javascript parser called Esprima to parse my much much simpler language. I figured that this way I can get the structure and some edge cases that I wouldn't have come up with on my own (e.g. full unicode support), learn by reading a full production-ready parser, and still feel like I've put some work in as I heavily modify it to match my desired syntax. I look forward to sharing even more progress at the end of March.

It's obvious that the goals related to activities I love doing (reading + programming) have been easier to keep up with, while things that are "work" (sewing and working out) are a bit harder. I'm not worried yet, but I'll reevaluate in March.

[hoovercj]

January 2017 Update

Two years ago I started keeping track of some metrics: books read, places visited. Last year I kept slightly more detailed notes. This year, instead of merely recording what I’ve done, I’ve set some goals for what I want to do. You can see all the details in my last blog post. So, how am I doing? Let’s take a look:

Become somewhat conversational in Danish: I've had three Danish lessons so far and I have a fourth tomorrow. I haven't quit yet :-)

Read at least one book a month, even in months that I don’t travel: So far so good, two books down!

The Daylight War, Peter V. Brett (817 pages)

The Skull Throne, Peter V. Brett (769 pages)

Complete at least one sewing, crocheting, or knitting project per month: I finished one curtain, I have to finish the second curtain in February.

Watch a foreign language film each month: I failed this one :-( but we are going to an event next week to watch a Danish film and I'll have plenty of time to catch a second one by the end of February to catch up

Complete a full marathon OR run a half-marathon under 1:40: I haven't done much running this year and I'm signed up for a half-marathon in April. I need to get moving if I want to survive it!

Write my own just-for-fun programming language and virtual machine: I have read the first two chapters of Modern Compiler Implementation in Java (The Tiger Book)

I'm mostly on track! Let's see if I can keep this up.

[hoovercj]

A look back at 2016

My Year in Review

Last year I did my first in-depth retrospective, looking at the projects, books, hobbies, and countries that made up my year.

2016 was a very different year. I spent a lot less time bouncing around and a lot more time settling in. I moved from Estonia to Germany for a few months as a base of travel before starting work. After visiting old friends in the UK and Ireland and going home to Iowa for my sister's wedding, Silvia and I took a car full of our belongings to begin the next chapter of our lives together in Copenhagen. It's hard to believe, but we've been living in Denmark and I've been working at Microsoft for almost 9 months now.

In the meantime, though, I've...

gone to see a broadway musical (Fiddler on the Roof), a Beer and Whiskey festival, a play (Frankenstein), an immersive "Hamlet" experience at the real Helsingor Castle where the play is based, and many more cultural events.

ran my first half-marathon

stopped using frozen pizzas as crusts for "homemade pizza" and started buying pre-made dough instead. Maybe next year I'll learn to make my own dough?

had friends visit me or Silvia in Copenhagen every month. We've entertained more than 10 people from 4 different countries! (or 5 countries if you count Martin visiting from Odense in Denmark)

gotten worse at flying. It has become debilitating if I'm not properly distracted. Definitely one of the low points of the year for me.

started crocheting, knitting. I found out that they help me control my anxiety while flying! Unfortunately I haven't made anything other than squares.

bought a sewing machine. I made some lovely pillow-cases and I have a few sewing projects lined up already for 2017. First on the list is curtians.

bought an xbox for Black Friday. Better late than never, right?

read 16 novels and novellas (down from 20 last year)

visited 9 countries (down from 11 last year),

continued working on programming projects from last year and started a couple new ones.

All-in-all, it was a pretty good year. I'd said countless times that I was getting tired of moving every six months and so it was with great relief that I got to spend much of 2016 settling down. I look forward to spending 2017 building on the foundation that I laid in 2016.

Now, the deep dive into what I've been up to:

Travel

I boarded 22 planes as part of 15 distinct legs of travel to 8 different countries and spent just over $2000, $1400 of which was for two round-trips (5 legs) to the US. Thanks, RyanAir, you the real MVP.

New Countries

Romania: I went to a traditional Romanian wedding that, along with the reception, lasted well over 12 hours. The final course of food (not even the cake!) was served at 3am! It was an incredible experience. Ireland: I basically spent the entire time daydrinking in bars while reading and listening to music. My own personal heaven. And so thankful for Guvanch for hosting me!

New Cities

New York, USA: FINALLY! I went in the off-season, but I was surprised by how underwhelming the city was. I was expecting it to be so chaotic and overwhelming that the reality was a comfortable and pleasant surprise. Mälmo, Sweden: Mälmo is a cute little town. We didn't spend much time there, but maybe that was enough.

Revisited

Estonia: I started the year living there. I was very sad to say goodbye to the small town of Tartu where I'd built a small community of board gamers, where the Indian restaurant lady knew my order, and where I lived literally right above some of the best fast-food chicken strips I've ever eaten. Germany: I lived there again. I definitely miss speaking German and watching Die Pfefferkörner on TV Spain: Somehow Zaragoza, Spain is the home to the best Indian restaurant outside of India. I'm sure of it. Scotland: A long, long overdue reunion with Christina. Denmark: We live in Copenhagen now which means I can go to the street trampolines whenever I want!

Netflix:

I'm a bit disappointed that I fell behind on some shows that I used to follow religiously. I am way behind on Supernatural and Teen Wolf, and I haven't caught up on Black Mirror yet. I DID watch some shows, though...

Orange is the New Black - Silvia got me to watch the most recent season and it was incredible!

Stranger Things - Best original series of 2016? Maybe...

Suits (seasons 3 and 4) - I'd stopped watching after Season 2 for some reason, finally caught up with what is available on Danish netflix

Firefly - I got Silvia to watch it! She doesn't love it...but she watched it. That's enough.

Jessica Jones - I needed more David Tenant in my life and this delivered.

FINALLY finished Friends (Seasons 7, 8, 9, 10)

Bones (Seasons 7, 8, 9) - I'm not sure why, but one day I decided to randomly start watching season 7 of Bones and I just kept going. I haven't seen seasons 1-6.

Programming Projects

Visual Studio Code Extensions: At the start of the year I had just published 3 extensions with 600 downloads. I now have 6 published extensions for Visual Studio Code with almost 22,000 downloads. In addition to maintaining my haskell extensions, I created an extension to "dim" VS Code and I created an IDE-like experience for the Octo language (more below).

Chip8/Octo: To keep my typescript sharp I wrote an emulator/interpreter for a 70's era programming language called Chip8. Of course, then I wanted to write my own game for the Chip8 and stumbled across Octo, a language that compiles (translates) to Chip8. The development environment wasn't the best, though, so I made a VS Code extension that has the most important features from it. Using the extension I made, I made a version of flappy bird to play on the emulator I made. It felt great!

Hue Lights: I experiemented with various means of controlling my Philips Hue lights. I made a dashboard that let me turn them on/off and set the colors individually and as groups and I wrote some scripts to set the colors based on the Bing image of the day or the time of the day. At the end of the day (literally), though, I just turn them off using the official app on my phone. Maybe next year...

Reading:

I spent just over a hundred euros on books and read most of them. ~5250 pages later, I've read...

two more Terry Pratchett books (and abandoned a third):

Jingo

Feet of Clay

The Colour of Magic (abandoned)

several more Brandon Sanderson books:

The Bands of Mourning

Mistborn Secret HIstory (novella)

Steelheart

Mitosis (novella)

Firefight

Calamity

the first two books of the "Demon Cycle" series by Peter V. Brett

The Warded Man

The Desert Spear

a classic YA novel

The Giver, Lois Lowry

a light YA novel

Paper Towns, John Green

a classic Sci-Fi novel

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

short stories by George R. R. Martin while waiting on "Winds of Winter"

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, George R. R. Martin

a Dragonlance novel to remind me of my childhood

The Soulforge, Margaret Weis

and a humorous guide to my new home

Xenophobes Guide to Denmark

Checkout my 2016 goodreads shelf for more info.

A look ahead...

And a brief look ahead at what I hope to accomplish in 2017

Become somewhat conversational in Danish. I'm starting Danish lessons in January, so if I stick to it then it should be possible.

Read at least one book a month, even in months that I don't travel! (7 of the books I read in 2016 were read while traveling for Thanksgiving/Christmas.

Complete at least one sewing, crocheting, or knitting project per month. I have curtains on the list for January, and I've bought a book and gathered supplies for making Stupid Sock Creatures to get me through the next few months.

Watch a foreign language film each month.

Complete a full marathon OR run a half-marathon under 1:40.

Write my own just-for-fun programming language and virtual machine.

Happy New Year and have a great 2017!