Consolidation - Update 1

CGP Grey's put out a thorough and entertaining explanation of his approach to yearly themes: Your New Year's Resolution Has Already Failed. I'm particularly fond of the theme-bot heuristic.

The last couple of months haven't seen anything dramatic, but I do feel I've been successfully applying my theme of Consolidation.

  • I've redone my lifting regimen to focus on compound lifts and supersets as much as possible with the goal of doing more work in less time while squeezing at least a little cardio out of my efforts. I've also switched as many lifts as I can from seated or equipment stabilized versions to ones where I'm standing free to increase core engagement. Happy with the results so far.

  • Started calorie counting for the first time in many years to not merely provide focus for losing the next 10 lbs, but, more importantly, to give me a solid data point in further investigating my relationship with food. It's already helped pin down time components involved with stress and comforting eating. Not a solution, but definitely a start.

  • Pared the list of performance venues for this year and come up with a general plan for the fallow periods so we can focus on just enjoying ourselves.

  • Got all my tasks and projects collected into OmniFocused and sorted, and figured out a more efficient way to use it to keep me focused.

  • Started the re-write of our main program with a much better direction in regards to having it support my wife's workflow.

I still need to

  • Pare the list of home projects down to just what's needed.

  • Define a couple points of focus for the office staff.

I've got a couple of other things I need to need to do, but they require spending money, so I'm waiting for accounts receivable to get through the patient deductible reset before I'll be comfortable adding them to my schedule.

Strange Week

Started with finishing up the final module for our main program which parses the data the doctor and her staff gather over the course of a visit and creates a report the patient receives at checkout.

The intent of the report is two fold:

  1. Engage and inform the patient about the state of their health and how it's being managed.
  2. Preemptively handle questions and confusion which sometimes spring up after a visit.

Patients seldom take notes during their visits, and particularly if their health issues are complicated or being managed with multiple medications they may leave without a clear understanding of adjustments being made to their treatment. This can lead to the patient not following through on changes or the office having to field a number of follow up calls to clarify issues handled at the visit, but either forgotten or not understood. The report is hand crafted by hipster squirrels in the woods behind the office to try and head off these problems. We pay in single origin acorns.

Designing the module so it worked as closely as possible with the doctor's existing workflow, rather than interrupting her with additional bits of interface, was a challenge on the UI front, but I think I navigated it well enough. Most of the coding was pretty straight forward, though I did introduce a nasty bug at one point which made for a chaotic morning.

I have one more small but problematic feature to add involving medication samples given to a patient, but I'm pretty much at the point were I can begin the ground up rewrite of both main programs.

My intent is to take another workation soon to do the planning and initial layout stages of the rewrites. Some place with a nice view of the arriving spring and paths to hike off into when I need a break. I'm thinking probably Arkansas, but I haven't landed on anything specific yet.

The middle part of my week was spent prepping the 2019 report for Medicare's MIPS (Merit-based Incentive Payment System) program, part of its torturous Meaningful Use initiative. It's a mostly voluntary thing, I think, and ideally turns into a bit of coin, but it's painfully tedious and time consuming, and my least favorite of the things I hate to do every year.

But now it's Friday, and the Things Which Must Be Done are done, so I can recline with a coffee and my iPad, and plan for next week while I look forward to seeing Crazy Town tonight at Kilgore College.

Steep Roads Just Mean Better Cardio

It's easy to get caught in the trap of being discouraged by feeling so far from where I want to be, when, if I take a few minutes to look over my shoulder and note how far I've come, I discover so many reasons to be joyful and celebrate.

Still, there's plenty of road left to travel, and as it's an uphill climb, it requires sustained effort, not to mention losing focus could result in a tumble back to lower elevations.

MG: Abusing Chomsky

The human brain has evolved physical manifestations of language. Structures throughout itself which deal not simply with sound as an environmental phenomena, but with language as a means of both internal and external explication and communication.

Brains large and small, insectile and mammalian, have developed to deal with environmental stimuli like light, sound, and gravity, allowing them to successfully navigate and dominate their habitués evolving according to the presence and influence of these external forces on their environments; a whale’s experience of sound and gravity are very different from that of an owl, and their brains and bodies have physically responded over time in different ways to make the most of their particular experiences. The human brain, in turn, has responded to deal with the forces of a different layer of reality: narrative.

Enter the Quiditas, exerting a very specific pressure and influence, effecting the development of the human brain in order to be better perceived, interacted with, and used to improved the ability of humankind to survive and procreate.

Really, Really

Went to Centenary College Friday night to see the play Really, Really.

It fell into the category of shows we enjoy more after it’s over and we’re talking about it on the ride home, than during the time of its performance.

It was not, in my opinion, a well written play. It spent of lot of time doing things which failed to evolve the plot or characters and which were not entertaining, and could’ve been paired down to an hours run time with a good edit, likely increasing the impact.

As an example, there were three interludes where one of the characters gave speeches before an imaginary crowd. The actress did a good job with the scenes, but the speeches themselves, drawn out framing devices meant to clarify the shared motivation of the plays characters, were boring, lugubrious, and their point, incredibly blunt compared to the subtle underpinnings of the play, was already being made more organically through other scenes.

Similarly, much of the dialog, particularly between the male characters, well delivered as it was, tended to be rambling, inconsistent, and belabored plot and character points which had already been made. Worst of all, it wasn't entertaining.

Aaron Sorkin gets rightly called out for his long, preachy dialog, but I've generally found it to be highly entertaining, even when it isn’t successfully performing another narrative function.

To be clear, the performances were all at least well done, with Kallie Pierce, playing the lead character Leigh, doing an exceptional job. The scenery, lighting, and sound was also well done. The high quality of Centenary performances is why they stay on our calendar when other venues have fallen off. It was the play itself which failed to live up to its possibility.

Then my wife and I headed home and the play became much better.

The play ended with a rape scene, and because the actors were planning to come back on stage for a talk-back in 15 minutes, they didn’t do a curtain call. This meant there was almost no applause before we left. I would’ve been happy to join in a standing ovation for the performances during a curtain call, but clapping right after a rape scene created such cognitive dissonance in the crowd most of us just sat there for a minute or two at the end trying to figure out how we were supposed to feel.

The play began in the aftermath of a rape involving the same two characters, and was about the nature of victimhood, value, and what people will do in order to achieve happiness. These are the kinds of issues I can’t fully digest during the run time of a play, whether I’m enjoying it or not, which is why one of my favorite parts of seeing live performances is talking to my wife and mother about them as we drive home.

A number of performances we’ve seen have been greatly improved by the discussions we’ve had after them: The Crucible, Vinegar Tom, Fun Home. Sharing the feelings we’re leaving with and why, replaying particular scenes, filling in missed plot and character points for each other. Talking together in the immediate aftermath of a performance allows us to break the experience down and build it back up with a more powerful sense of context, meaning, and depth.

I didn't find Really, Really to be a well written or particularly entertaining play, but the performances were fantastic, the ideas we found tucked away in the piece were exceptional, and I'm very glad we went.