Rob's World

So.. I’ve been spending a fair mount of money on the Miata recently. I blame Ian.. I guess myself, but mostly Ian I’ve been into cars forever, but he has taken the next step and been taking his car to the track.. so while I own a Miata.. it was decided (by me) that it was FINALLY time that I get the miata out to a track day.
I became a member of the Audi Club, so I could get access to it’s Spring Driver education event at VIR.. which with it, has many rules (many, many rules).
First off, I had to buy and then install a 4 point roll bar (thanks here to Ian for spending most of a weekend with me getting it installed). Then it was purchasing and installing all new brakes (rotors/pads/stainless lines/high temp fluid) which, while I needed new brakes.. I don’t know that I needed track worthy equip that much.. but well, now I have it.
Then it was out to buy myself a Helmet (yes, white.. like the Stig.. though it has a clear visor) as well as 6 point harnesses to help keep me safe.
At the end of the day, it’s a fair amount of one time necessary purchases.. but damn it adds up to an astonishingly large sum..
I guess it’s just best to not think about it.

It’s finally started. I must be getting old.. I am finally getting a bit burned out on playing Ultimate. Granted, I am playing a TON, with 2 nights a week of Outdoor Pickup, one night a week of indoor, Winter league on Saturdays and 3 days a week of “off-season” lifting all taking time up. But I am starting to notice that I just don’t have as much fun. Some of it is standards.. I am trying to learn from some of the folks I played with at Nationals last year and realize that every time I step on the field, I should be working towards being better. That’s easy in the gym, knowing that while all I am currently doing is making myself sore for a few days after every session, the payoffs come tryout/tourney time will be well worth it (at the minimum in injury prevention). But on the field, it gets flat out tiring to try to hold yourself up to a high standard.. and then, (as it’s EARLY in the year) when you of course fail, it just makes it that much harder to consider what’s happening to be fun.
Obvious solution: start to play a bit less, focus on the gym work while cutting back a ton of the shear volume of disc being played. We’ll see if that helps at all.

I’m having one of those months thus far where I feel like there are a few dozen different things, all pulling me in different directions, and I can’t seem to nail down any of them.
Each thing on my to do list competes with something else, and instead of making traction on any of them, I get stressed and get no where on any of them. When push comes to shove.. I get items done JUST in time.. so it’s not like anything is impossible, but for some dumb reason, the stress of having so many things on my plate drives me batty.
Gotta fix that.

I’ll say it.. I am REALLY horrible at time management. I wish there were more hours in the day, and more days in the week so that I could get done even a subset of the items on my to-do list.. yet in the moment.. there are tons of minutes, and sometimes hours that could be spent accomplishing each item.
I tend to go gung-ho on something as it catches my interest, normally at the expense of anything else, yet I’ll frequently find that I don’t finish that before something else catches my eye. Next thing I know, 10 more items on the to-do list, and none are any where near complete.
Every so often, for work, I need to download a large number of files.. when I do.. I can watch as each file is actively downloading.. the computer/network is able to spread the load out so that each file is being worked at the same time.. and as the smaller files are finished, it frees up more and more cycles for the remaining files.
I want to be able to work like that. Don’t get me wrong, I can multi-task with the best of them.. but when it comes to completing something 100% and getting it fully off of my plate, that is where I struggle. Dozens of items are in semi-completed stages all over the place.. yet very few completed projects.
Maybe one of these days.. I’ll learn.

So, on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the most rabid fan imaginable and 1 being somehow who doesn’t know which two teams were in the super bowl.. I would peg myself at around a 6. I definitely care/want my team to win, but I don’t follow them religiously.. don’t need to see every single game and don’t know every player’s name on the roster. That said.. after all the food was put away and everyone had left, I felt sort of empty inside knowing that my team had lost. In continued into today, sort of a “meh” attitude to everything. But Why? I have a pretty awesome life. I have a great job with good pay/benefits, I have an amazing wife who loves me and who I love more each day, and a dog that is the epitome of faithful. My family is great, everyone is healthy, doing well (as am I) but still.. something as trivial as a sports team that I follow, losing a game.. and POOF.. melancholy sets in like a fog over everything.
Wish I understood why.

I have done various types of workouts for Ultimate.. stupidly, I only started getting really serious in the last few years about getting into truly good shape for playing.. (if only I had done this at age 20 instead of 30!) but this year.. in addition to a planned set of track workouts/speed workouts once the season gets closer I have started an actual “lifting” program. Now, while I have lifted in the past for Ultimate.. it isn’t the same as having a focused plan that someone put together with exact exercises/reps/schedule/etc.. So I am pretty curious to see if this plan gives me any measurable gains. The hardest part, though, is knowing that any major measurable gains likely won’t be felt/noticed until 8-12 weeks through as I work through getting my body used to the work load/build muscle/turn the muscle into explosiveness. I hate waiting.
(For anyone curious, the workouts are coming from theultimatethleteproject.com)

between posts that is! I also spent way too much time trying to figure out what I wanted as a home page for robluhrs.com.. I wanted something simple and cool that I could use to redirect to the various things I actually updated once in a while.. thinks like FaceBook, Twitter, SmugMug and the Pickup page that I host. Then I realized that this silly WordPress thing was designed to handle all of that for me.. I didn’t need to do any late-night coding.. or anything special, I just needed to set this page up correctly!
Of course.. with this decision, it means I need to post a fair bit more often here.. so I’ll endeavor to do that as much as possible. No promises as to content, though I expect it will include poor CapiTaliZatioN as I tend to randomly capitalize words when I am not writing for a formal work document. Spell check will handle it’s duties, but grammar is also guaranteed to be poor. The one thing I CAN promise is that the words will all be mine, the thoughts will be ones that rattle in my head until I spread them here and at the end of the day… reading the posts will sound a heck of a lot like listening to me. (i.e. long winded, kinda rambling, but still somewhat enlightening/enjoyable or at least interesting (I hope).
With that said.. here goes nothing!

I HATE doing documentation. Of Any sort. It can be simply writing up notes from a work call, it can be writing notes from a meeting (work or personal life) or it can be a full fledged report that I owe after working with a customer for a full week. Even though I know that the customer spent a ton of money to have me there for a week, and that they expect to receive a summary report of that time.. I HATE writing that summary report. No explicable reason, I just hate it. I’ll procrastinate for weeks, sometimes months on getting it done. It’s not that it’s hard, I just hate it with a passion that borders on insanity. If I spent 1/10th of the amount of effort writing it as I did hating it, I would be amazing at it and able to finish it within an hour.. but instead, it sits on my to-do list like a tumor, until finally, I have to do something about it or I can’t get anything else done.
Wish I understood why.

I was asked to assist on a con-call responding to a customer/partner concern. I said I would be happy to help, and was then placed in a con-call with all of the parties.
At this point, the person who asked me to participate proceeded to talk non-stop for the entire call.. I don’t believe he breathed, just talked non-stop. The one time he paused to let me speak, I said the first two words, and then he proceeded to talk over me immediately, and thereby not only spoke incorrectly a bunch of times, but wasted me time.
So.. a note to all.. If you want a resource, USE them as a resource, don’t waste their time!

Last Wed. went back to the 9:30 club to see Dumstaphunk, Fishbone and Slightly Stoopid.. I was mainly going for the two opening bands, and it turned out I was correct. Dumstaphunk was a great group of guys who obviously have played together for years.. they were super tight, with a GREAT bass player and keyboard player who kept the funk going for their whole set.
Fishbone was their regular selves.. Completely AWESOME! Tore the place up, and was a complete blast to watch.. kept us jumping the whole time, wish they had been the headliner band so they could have played for longer.
Slightly Stoopid I have never really listened to.. they were incredibly talented (the two lead guys switched guitar/bass with no noticeable difference in performance) BUT, their music wasn’t to my taste.. a bit too much frat boy spring break music I would call it.
Overall.. 2 months into 2011, 2 concerts.. time to find my next show!