I looked at my phone after the workout at Velocity, and saw a message from Andy:

Schedule shot. Mark forgot maps--10 minute delay. Shwu forgot shoes--1 hour.

So much for leaving by 7 and starting on the trail by 9. I hope we do better tomorrow.

Andy and I went over to Assguard tonight to meet with Mark, Doyle and Shwu and divvy up the communal camping items for this weekend's Trail of Tears hike. Andy offered to carpool together, and stopped by Krikitt Downs to pick me up. I'm not sure what prompted me, but I offered him the S4 car keys, and he gladly accepted.

On the drive over, I commented that I hadn't actually opened up the throttle to the car yet, though James had offered to help me out in that task if needed. I used the excuse about needing new tires, but the reality is I'm a bit nervous about it. The last time I opened up a car's throttle full tilt was in the S2000, and that escapade nearly ended disasterously as the backend broke and I ended up fishtailing the car down a major Sunnyvale road in the middle of the day: had any bicyclist been riding next to me that day, I probably would have killed him.

So, yeah, I was a little nervous about the thought of opening the throttle anywhere but under a safe, controlled environment where the worst I can do is hurt only myself.

After telling him this story, Andy mentioned he had another car other than the truck, a car he really liked, and another one his dad borrows. I laughed when he told me this. For the last four months I've been feeling awkward about the increase in our environmental footprint, what with our owning 3.5 cars between the two of us. Every time I'd see Andy and his one truck, which he uses rarely as he bikes a lot, I'd feel guilty about all of our cars. Turns out, Andy was in a similar situation, owning multiple cars, but with all of them at least used minimally.

The rest of the drive was spent alternating between laughing at stories of our idiotic driving as youngsters and complete embarrassment at being such idiots. Ah, youth: it's a good thing we grow out of it.

I wish I could remember what started an exchange between Mark and me at one point in the evening. He had casually offered something sexual in response to a question I asked, and I accepted. I figure, if I'm going to call a guy on something like that, Mark is the safest guy in the world to call. Part of his charm. Of course, I can't remember my initial comment/question, which would have made this part of the story actually funny.

I really hate when a simple task, something that I think should take an hour tops, not only takes me longer than that hour, but takes me longer than that hour because I want to do it correctly. Sometimes I wonder if my level of "Good enough" is too high. Eh, probably.

Today's example: yesterday a post came through on the Drupal support mailing list:

Does anybody know of an existing module which will extract tags from
the body of a post (i.e. a line like "Tags: tag1 tag2 tag3") and pass
them to the taxonomy system to tag that node?

I've had a skim through the Taxonomy related module list on drupal.org
and didn't spot anything...

Looking at this request, writing such a module should have taken an hour, maybe, right? Well, as I started working on the module, there were features I wanted, details that, well, would bug the crap out of me if they didn't work right. They were small things (is the trigger word "tags" or "tag" or "tagaroo", or is the tag line removed from the post after processing), but ones that, well, if someone gave me the module, I'd want.

So, in they went.

And my hour "give back to the community" turned into a retarded 4 hour project.

Four hours.

Four hours not spent on client work. Four hours not spent on my big projects. Four hours that I really could have used better elsewhere.

Gah.

I'm so annoyed at myself.

At least I managed two posts from it. :\

For a project I've been working on, the one I've been obsessing over actually for a little over a month, working on it during my "copious down time," I looked online for a particular tutorial with the Flickr API. I managed to do one search, and found a post from an author recommending his book.

Now, being on the austerity program, I've been resisting purchasing any books, much less nominally unneeded books (such as ones that duplicate content I can find on the Intarweb™). Just because I purchase the book, and have added it to my stack of unread books, doesn't mean that I've absorbed the knowledge or have become a better person. In reality, until I've read the book and actually learned from it, it's just an extra bit of clutter, an extra bit of paper weights, an extra bit of unread book pile building in my livingroom.

Having the book, on the other hand, could make the particular project I'm working on easier.

I tormented myself about the book, and eventually asked Doyle what he thought. Should I buy the book? He asked how many positive reviews the book received on Amazon. When I looked up the book, I found out it had two good reviews.

Now, normally, the price of the book is $30. On Amazon, you know, where they pay me in books, I also found out the price was only $6.

Six dollars.

Six.

Dollars.

"You know, if you spent the time you've wasted asking me if you should buy this book, and actually bought them book, then worked the remaining time, you would have earned enough for the book already," Doyle piped up.

With my free Amazon Prime shipping, I couldn't really argue against this wiley logic. Austerity program be damned, I bought the book.

And now the price is up to $20. $6 is fine. $20? No more damning the austerity program!

Last night, Brynne, Steffi and I met at the Foothill track to run in our own mini track workout. Our workout was short(ish):

1. 2 x 400 m at quick, but not painful pace (which meant 1:40 laps)
2. 4 x 200 m at accelerated pace (start striding, end sprinting)
3. 2 x 100 m at fastest pace possible
4. 5 x 5-10-5 shuttles, working on form, break down steps before turning
5. plyo mixup: stars, rockets, tucks followed by 5-10-15 or 10-20-30 shuttles
6. Abs

Having spent Tuesday morning in my pilates class, last night at the track was hard for me. This morning at Velocity Sports, however, wasn't so bad. I was actually able to sprint this morning, including pushing a weight sled. I had problems pulling the sled running backwards, but that happened at the end of the workout, in the last two minutes actually, so I was still pleased with the workout.

Usually soreness takes a couple days to settle into my muscles. With the continual workouts, I have constant soreness instead. When is my body going to adjust to these extra workouts? I'm ready already.