Just In Time?

 A friend of mine, Matt, has been a software developer for decades. We worked together as Developer Advodates at Rackspace. He's a Ruby expert, but has a lot of experience in other languages as well. If I owned a software company, I'd hire him.

He's out of work -- by no fault of his own -- and just cannot find a job. It's terrible. As he describes it, jobs as software developers are just not available.

I moved from pure software developer to Developer Advocate in 2013, then from advocate to developer marketing in 2018. I am so incredibly thankful that I made the move when I did.

I recall, in 2018, I was speaking to a user group when an attendee asked me "What do you see as the next big trend in software development?". This was when containers, Docker and Kubernetes were the things.

"Artificial intelligence" was my immediately reply. "I see no reason why we can't use software to write software."

Oh how correct I was.

Gym Time

 One of the best things about retirement is: More time in the gym. I don't feel rushed at all, so I can slow down, concentrate, take longer breaks between sets, and do more work.

Today I did a "pull" day, that included:

• Pull ups
• Back extensions
• Bent over dumbbell ros
• Reverse fly
• Dumbbell standing curls
• Leg curls
• Lat pulldowns
• Concentration curls
• Cardio: Rowing machine

I love that I no longer feel rushed to get home to work. I expect my health and fitness level to improve over the next, say, six months.

eBay Time

 I finally have the time to get rid of old tech stuff by selling it on eBay. I sold an old iPhone 8 and have two Samsung smart watches and an old but never used BLU phone currently listed.

I’ve made about $42 so far. I have more stuff to list.

I think I’ll buy bitcoin with the money just for giggles.

The Weekend Rush

 I still feel that “I need to get this stuff done during the weekend” rush that wells up on Saturday morning. Even though I have every day off work now, I still have 50 years of momentum pushing me toward the weekend rush.

It’s tough to overcome. One way I’m dealing with it is to make very many small items on my To-Do list, and then schedule one for each day. For example: I have six huge stepping blocks; they’re bricks with about six inches of concrete under them. I want to break them up into small pieces to discard them.To do that, I used a large sledge hammer and do the back-aching work of hitting a block over and over until it finally breaks.

It really wears me out.

So, instead of “Break up stepping blocks” being on my To-Do list, I have “Break up block #1, Break up block #2” etc. up to Break block #6.

So much to do. And I like it that way.

Groceries

 I had this idea that, once I retired, I've have time to shop for groceries with more intention. I'd visit the grocery outlet and Lidl and Aldi and save money.

But my dear bride had other plans. So, we drive 50 minutes (25 each way) once a week to shop at Wegmans and we do not save money.

Oh well. We are eating very well.

It gets easier

 One thing that jumps out after retiring: Life is much easier. Not just because you don’t work, but — related — because you have time to do things.

For example: We go for groceries (another blog post coming about that) on a weekday — Thursday will be our day. No crowds. 

Easy.

I have *no* reason to hurry at the gym. I can take my time, rest between sets, and really concentrate (“Be in the moment is the kids say”) and get a great workout without pressure.

Easy.

Preparing lunch for the week? I have tons of time.

Easy.

Working around the house. No hurries.

Easy.

With that, however, comes this: You literally have no excuses.

Remember that.

Motivation or the lack thereof

 One thing I notice about being retired: I don’t have deadlines. Well … not like I did before. No one asking me to create a learning path or some code by such-and-such date. No conferences for which I need to prepare. No customer visits to schedule. Just me and my day-to-day activities. The only deadlines are things like a dentist visit, the car in for an oil change, regular stuff like that.

Which is nice, but at the same time, there’s not “I need to get this done during the weekend when I have time” any more. So the things that I used to rush to get done are now being left “for later”.

The challenge is this: Get that fire of productivity burning inside me.

Retirement Cleanup

 Since retiring, I'm cleaning up my online space.

Unfollowed all techies on Twitter/X. Not because I don't like them, but I have zero interest in software development now. No language updates, no conferences ... nothing.

I'm unsubscribing from just about every email list now as well.

It's nice.

Retirement and boredom

When you work, you have *something* to do all day. Even if you take a break, it’s a break to do something, then it’s back to The Thing you were doing at work.

When you’re retired, you finish something and then … you have *nothing* to do until you begin your next something to do.

I can see how people get bored. That in-between time is really challenging.

Unless you have hobbies. Or like to read. Or something — anything — to occupy the down time. OR you are content to just DO NOTHING for a bit.

I’ll be fine, but I can see how some people struggle. Those are the people that *NEED* to be ALWAYS doing something.

I am not bored. I am fine. I'm just understanding how some people get bored.

Or, as the old saying goes: "The only people that get bored are boring people."

:)

The Bane of modern tech: The Subscription Model

"Only $7.99 a month for Netflix"

Yeah; in. 2019. Now it's -- what -- $28?

Netflix. Disney+. Paramount+. ESPN. YouTube TV. Pandora. Amazon Music. SiriusXM.

And on and on.

Even BMW now charges a subscription to use the heated seats in their new models! Incredible.

When does it end? It's out of hand and ridiculous. What next: Tipping added to the subscription?

Or, am I just the old man yelling at clouds?

An Artist I Am Not

On Monday, November 3, I took a drawing class with my dear bride. She is the artist; I'm more of a bits and bytes computer nerd.

Translation: I cannot draw or design to save my life.

The class was about shading.

Here, presented for the world (i.e. the two people that might see my blog) is my effort:

As Bob Seger said ...

 "...there I go, turn the page."

I have a Favorites bar on my browser (Microsoft Edge FTW!), as you do.

Tuesday, in a ceremony in my mind, I deleted the "Red Hat" folder.

It's official: I've hung up my red hat and am moving on.

P.S. Fifty days until Christmas!

Retirement and Business Ethics

 October 24 was my final day as a full-time employee. I'm now retired, gathering social security (that I paid in, thankyouverymuch) and benefiting from investments.

There are many aspects to retirement that are unexpected; I'll address them in upcoming posts. I'll start with Business Ethics 101.

One of the many small tasks that I now have time for is: Pruning my email by unsubscribing to mailing lists. I'm the kind of person who always clicks the "Subscribe me to your email list" box when signing up to get the sweet 10 percent discount (that I never use).

Had an interesting, and telling, thing happen today: I clicked the super-tiny-good-luck-finding-it unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email and opened the Unsubscribe page in my browser.

I was about to click the "OK" button when I noticed that the web page had two choices:

• Yes, I wish to unsubscribe
• No, I do not wish to unsubscribe

Here's the problem: The "No" option was the default selection. Had I not noticed, I would have continued to receive emails from this company.

Completely, utterly and 100 percent unethical.

Is this where we are as a society?