"There is the lulling of anxiety through repeated success, or the loss of respect (or fear) for past experience."

Sitting at O'Hare, waiting for my plane to board, I read these words in an article describing the calendaric coincidence of the triple space tragedies of Apollo, Challenger and Columbia of January 27, January 28 and Feb 3 of different years.

Seems a common theme throughout pretty much the evolution of man. Things are hard, difficult, new. They're done a few times. They get easier, and easier. Soon, there's no challenge in them, and they become rote, not scary, boring.

Let down your guard. Don't be surprised what happens.

Sitting in the workshop, I can't help but think, good lord, this is a complete flip from the way the people "in power" want things to run. managers and supervisors and the like from ten years ago would have freaked out at the thoughts of an XP (agile) approach can't figure out why things don't work at the end, well, did you ask the customer what they wanted in the first place?

The arrogance of power or the foolishness of user groups who will tell you what you want to hear, not what they really feel. The madness of crowds, and the force of a single personality in that group will skew your results each time.

Today had a rough start. Having gone to bed with a migraine, and attempting to sleep with two v, two Tylenol, and two Advil, as well as one snuggly dog, I woke up with a headache, but not a head-crushing one of the middle of the night. Dad and I dashed off to catch Jessia for lunch, Dad driving not only because his driving meant extra time I could spend with him, but also protection only to discover about ten minutes after seeing her that I was having another migraine, and I needed to leave.

Jessica offered me some of her migraine medicine, but I would have to get it from her house. At this point, I was willing to drive to Montana to be rid of this cursed thing, ten minutes farther along the road from my dad's house was no big deal.

We arrived at Jess' house and used the key code she had given us. We entered the garage, walked up to the back door, and turned the handle.

Well, turned our hands around the handle. The door from the garage was locked.

Thump. Thump. Thump. My head was still pounding. I looked around, and spied the cat door next to the people door. I looked up.

Dad looked at me.

"You're not."

I looked at him. At the cat door. At him. Back at the cat door, and replied, "Sure am," turning to hand him my coat.

Nominally smaller than my dog door, my hips barely fit through the door (at a diagonal!) as I squirmed into Jessica's house, and wandered over to her kitchen counter for the bag of chemical goodness.

Ah, yes, better living through modern chemistry.

While having lunch with Jessica and Dad: mensturation 1, migraine 2.

I haven't been reading very much lately.

Okay, not quite true. I haven't been reading very many technical books lately. I've been reading a lot of magazines, mostly to catch up with my two foot stack of unread magazines. Now that I'm mostly caught up with them (I have two non-programming, non-bead magazines to read to be caught up, which in my book is "mostly caught up").

The problem I have is, however, that I'm currently unable to read a technical book without wanting to take notes. "Oh," I think when I read these books, "I want to remember this, must write it down." Then I go off to find a pencil or computer, and invariably either decide the effort is too great, or become distracted with some other task, and don't return to the technical book I was reading. Taking notes helps me remember what I'm learning. It allows me to play with the knowledge, turn it over, pound on it, take it apart and see how it works. It's how I learn.

Recognizing the great, grand folly of not keeping up with technical fads and the language of the year or the acronym of the hour, I've decided that I will read at least two technical books a month, striving for four if possible. Recognizing also that this has to fit into the hour a day of exercise, personal blog a day, professional blog a day, letter to my children every two weeks, the magazine a day, the two dog walks a day, two home-cooked meals a day, and one good cuddle a day from the hubby schedule, too, I'll need to be agressive with my tasks.

No, I don't over schedule my life. Why do you ask?

The first book up is Bulletproof Web Designs by Dan Cederholm. Mike raved about it so much I bought my own copy. He wanted to buy a copy for our design partners (who we contract out for website designs), too. If he likes it this much, I should read it.

So, I did. And wrote up my notes.