Stepping up to the Plate

Well CoMo is over, and I'm pretty disappointed with how far I got. I managed to hammer for the first half of the month and got all the way through the append.to screencasts. Looking back, that's a pretty big deal. I now have a decent understanding of how JavaScript works, at least at the building block level. Unfortunately, I have nothing to actually show for it. I guess that's what happens when life catches up with you and there are things like events, holidays, friends who need help etc. 


I was feeling pretty down about this when I got a chance to talk to a friend of mine who took the time to remind me that the fact that I was even trying to learn something was a big deal. Along that line I dug up this quote: 

“I am not judged by the number of times I fail but by the number of times I succeed, and the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail, and keep trying.” – Tom Hopkins.

And in reality, it's totally true and relevant. If I don't at least try to learn some new programming things, I will never, ever learn them. Even if I fail miserably at my goals, I will have made some amount of movement, which is a far sight better than just standing still. I may not be moving fast, heck I may not even be moving in the "right" direction but at least I am moving. 


Really, this whole, "Big Three" thing comes down to that. Moving. Trying to be a better me. Trying to kick more ass in life. 


So over all, CoMo, failure, but lessons learned and as we head in to December, I'll be able to apply these lessons to this months goal: fitness.


With the holiday coming on and some more intense work stuff I'm going to take this month as a focus on food and fitness month. I'll let coding settle for a bit and see if I can hit it with a vengeance in January. 


So some transparancy: 
Starting weight December 1st - 196lbs 
I'll get some metrics up on my lifts and my measurements over the next few days as well as some thoughts on what I'm eating and why. Till then, time to get moving!

Working Out The Kinks

This week I started a new habit of going to the gym. Fortunately for me, my cube mate decided to go along with me and we have added 3 days a week to hit the gym over lunch. It's a short walk from the office since we work at a University and have a great deal on membership at their huge athletic facility.

I've been playing around with the Paleo lifestyle for over a year now, but the thing I've never really added in is the moving part of it all. Getting out and lifting heavy things or sprinting or putting in some long, super slow distances (Heart Rate max 55% ish) So now I'm trying to work that in. I know, and have seen first hand, that 80% of the results for body recomposition (aka losing weight) will come from diet, but it will be nice to put the other 20% into action and hopefully help motivate me to really see my food as fuel for the fun I'm having in the gym and playing around.

So here's the rough plan:
Tuesday: Rebel Fitness Rookie Workout A
Wednesday: Sprint your heart out
Friday: Rebel Fitness Rookie Workout B

The other days, trying to walk, cycle, wrestle, move, play, do anything to enjoy being alive and being a physical creature.

If you're interested, the Rebel Fitness stuff comes from Nerdfitness.com a fantastic blog for nerdy folk who want to get or stay fit. http://nerdfitness.com/blog/rebel-fitness-guide/

Small kinks in the system: I'm so far out of shape and life has been so busy that adding in the gym had made me extra super tired, so I've been eating worse-ish, slipping up and getting too much sugar in with things trying to stay awake (which by the way, just doesn't work)  I've also fallen off the code wagon so I'm way behind in my Java lessons, though I've been able to put some of my new skills to the test at work which is awesome. This weekend is all booked up with prior commitments but next weekend with thanksgiving break I don't have any plans so hope to get in some good physical movement and good coding time. For now, we'll just keep on keepin' on.

Fitness Planning and Goals

So fitness month is here. And honestly I'm really feeling like this is good timing. With all the holiday crazyness and the more intense projects at work, my head is just not in the game for trying to learn things after hours if you will. However, taking the effort to stretch, walk or cook a good healthy meal seems totally satifying and worth it. Today I read back over some of my fitness goals as I plan out the month, here's a screen shot of my brainstorming in Evernote, one of my favorite planning tools, also super helpful for my scaterbrained nature.

I think this time around it was really important to start to have some actual long term goals, but also to think about what the steps to those start to look like. I'd like to become a super athlete, but there is a long hard journey from me to that, so what do my first steps really look like?

What are my goals specifically for this month?

Weigh 180lbs: 15lb loss, this is a big loss, however with my current weight and how much I have to lose, coupled with how much I've managed to lose in a short time in the past, I think it's doable!

Run a Mile: Last Wednesday at my first attempt I was already able to run 1/4th of a mile, and I really felt like I could keep at it, I just want to be carefully with the old injuries in both my knee and my back. This goal feels really, really doable.

I think in all reality these two goals are enough. It's going to be a stretch, but I know that the back end will be totally worth it, no pun intended.

So what am I doing to get there? I'm at the gym 3 days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday and I'm "playing" on the weekends, aka doing things that are physical but are not "exorcise" aka designed for a specifical measurable outcome. Here are my workouts for my gym days:

Tuesday -
Squats
Pushups
Lat Pull Down (pull up scaled)
Hip Raises
Plank
10 Minutes Cardio

Wednesday -
Rotate: Sprinting 6x50m with 6x50m warmup
            Tread Mill Running 5m Run, 2m Walk, increase run time each week.

Thursday -
Deadlift
Press
Lunges
Dips
Bird Dog
10 Minutes Cardio

So that's the plan, this week will be week three of hitting the gym with the routine and I'm already seeing progress all over the board, which makes me really happy and encourages me to go back. There is no doubt about it, tracking things and having a plan make me way more likely to stick to this! Later this week I'll go over some of my resources and also talk about the diet I'm following and what's hard, what's easy.

The Big Three

It is no secret to those who know me that I have some pretty intense ADD, when it comes to every day things and when it comes to life in general. I'm a dreamer, more interested in the next crazy idea I can come up with than with doing anything about the last idea I had. Having gotten this far into life, without getting all to very far in life, I've finaly come to grips with the idea that this is a flawed stratgey for succes. You can't just keep chasing the next big thing without ever having reached the last big thing, you just end up no where. Mulling this over has given me a lot of sleepless nights, fuled a lot of headaches, and driven me to do some real soul searching without finding too many answers.

Then I stumbled on the idea of having a Big Three. I sat down and really dug deep to come up with the three most imediate things I wanted in my life. They didn't have to be life goals, like retiring to the Hawiian Islands, but they had to be more than something I could finish tommorow, or even next week. These three things would be my filters, my blinders to keep me focused and moving forward. Without this sort of focus, I am sure I will continue to flounder.

So for now, here are the Big Three. I intend to write more about each one in depth and what I am doing to move towards them. I'm also hopeful to "tag" my blog entries with a Big Three label as I post them so in the future I can see how much of what I'm doing to get where I want to be.

Number One: Health and Fitness, you only get one body, best make the best of it.
Number Two: Success and Skills, I have a great job but in todays market to stay in it I had better be the best I can be and continue to improve my professional/technical skills, and move forward into multiple streams of income and entrepreneurship.
Number Three: Help Others, there are tons of ways to help people and I really come alive knowing I'm doing something that I think is meaning full. I want to be able to take my health and success and impact and improve the lives of others.

Codeacadmey complete!

Well i'm a tad behind and not sure this week how i'll catch up since i'm headed out of the state to visit family for a four day weekend, but I guess i'll have to figure out how to get it done. By the schedule I think I need to finish all the appendTo learning screen casts by the end of this week. At least I usually get a lot done on planes, I wonder if I'll have wifi....

Here is the final screen shot from Codeacadmey, they added in the extra JQuery section tonight, just as I finished the "last peice" so I polished as many of those as they released off too. Looks like JQuery will be pretty fun when I get there.

Almost Done at Codeacademy

Well things are going slow, but steady, there is definate progress and I'm almost done with "assignment one" of work through the courses at Codeacademy. It has definatly proved to be a fun way to get some basics back down and has gotten me excited about moving on to some more serious scripting. I will be finishing up Codeacademy tomorrow morning and hope to move on to the first appendTo lesson tomorrow as well.

Here is a picture of how far I've gotten:

Update: Before heading to bed i got up to 51% on the final lesson set! Woot, now for some much needed sleep since understanding things is taking exponentially longer every few minutes....

CoMo First Steps

My personal CoMo is going fairly well. I'm cruising through day three and have already finished the intro to programming series at Codeacademy.com and am part way through the intro to JavaScript functions. Today I'll be spending some time further outlining the plan and a time table for the rest of the month. Yesterday I also picked up the "getting good at JavaScript" book from rockable press so I'll be ready to move on to that portion of the assignment when I get there. It's pretty fun to have a good set of goals and a timeline that puts some pressure one. I'm stoked to see where this month takes me.

CoMo

November is national novel writing month, which you can find out more about at nanowrimo.org. This year I have several friends who are participating in NaNoWriMo, some to write their first novel, some to compete and maybe "win" again. Origionaly I was going to join them. I have a story idea that has been perkalating for some time now and would like to challenge myself to get it down on paper. However after some life occurances and some soul searching, I decided that while writing a novel would be fun and challenging, it didn't match up with my "Big Three" right now. So... I've decided to do my own CoMo, or Code Month. In pursuit of excelling at my job and finally learning to program I'll be spending November learning to program. My goal will be to make it through two diffrent programs by the end of the month, which I think will put me very close to the same time expendeture as the novel would require.

Program One: The Best Way to Learn Javascript from Tutsplus I love the Tuts plus stuff and have always learned a lot from their articles! For this pursuit I'll be hitting up Assignments 0-4 before moving on to.... 

Program Two: Head First PHP from O'Reilly I've started into this book a few times before and always try to get a head of myself building something not in the book, then I get confused and frustrated. This time I'll be working through the book and trying to really grasp what they are teaching since they have such a unique and awesome way of presenting programming. So that's the plan, one month, two programs, l33t skillz!