Friday, March 28, 2008

Watch Out! Unicorns abound!...


"The unicorn is the only fabulous beast that does not seem to have been conceived out of human fears. In even the earliest references he is fierce yet good, selfless yet solitary, but always mysteriously beautiful. He could be captured only by unfair means, and his single horn was said to neutralize poison."


What does this have to do with accountability, you say? I'm not sure yet...Give me until the end of the post and I'll come up with something. I surely couldn't pass up using this sparkleiscious graphic.



As for productivity over the last 2 weeks...

I recovered from two months of painting for the first week
I was sick for the second week
I got a bunch of small things done, but not much progress on the macro-goals
Grade: C+


Things for next time (2 weeks this time, dammit!)

Post my to do list...I'm doing that now
Develop specific curriculum and materials for spanish test
research spanish test requirements

Contact deck painting client
Research and act on photography income/display
Create new '100 things I like...'list
Try to fill out days with specific events
back to the gym
plan trips

begin planning/implementation on evil present blog and car painting blog
help parents plan/schedule home restoration project
fix car...again
finish mustang!!!
photo/document/internetize/sell mustang
review other online pursuit ideas

The unicorn is there to inspire and symbolize our not-so-selfless, but valiant efforts to 'neutralize the poison' in our lives...or maybe we're just horny.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Stephen - Period 3

And a month later...

I met my work goals for the 2 week period from last meeting.. however, thats not that impressive since we took a month between meets this time.

Beta-9 is out and 1/3 of the Big-Three done. The remaining Big 2 are really umbrella issues that contain a dozen or more things each. Ouch.

Things that I still suck at: Good customer conversations.

My goal notes:

1) For the next two weeks, focus exclusively on bug fixing and re-enabling things that had to be disabled for B -9. Two weeks of solid effort should resolve the vast majority of bugs that need fixing before release.

a) Make a priority list of bugs, and solve them in-order.

b) ONE thing at a time only. Do NOT have the dozen-in-flight modifications that were plaguing B-9.

2) Reply to a couple of the backlogged emails every time I check work email.

3) Try putting my coffee maker in/next to my room, with auto-brew for the morning. Knowing there's coffee brewed and ready will greatly help me get up at the same regular time each morning. Funny how excited this idea makes me. I still like the idea of the caffeine watch though, guys.

Accountability, What's That?

Before I post my goal list, a few thoughts.

So as I mentioned at the meeting last night, we all suck since we missed an entire 2 weeks for no real reason. I guess it sort of brings up an important point: that alot of the time, our 2 week progress indicators will just be "Same ol, Same ol". It's hard to be dedicated when you don't have anything happening.

Three solutions are possible then. 1) Actually make Interesting Shit happen every period (perhaps impossible), or 2) Broaden our meeting scope to accommodate more (identifiable, actionable) goals, or 3) Move to a monthly format to allow for more things to happen. (reasonable for some times, but at other times is too few).

Anyways. Just wanted to throw out some ideas to help keep us regular. Because, you know, that's important. Otherwise, we just become metaphorically full of crap.