I know I’ve made this into more a link dump as late – but I try to add a little flavor to my collections, and perhaps it’s time to reveal what’s been taking up my time.

I recently returned from my brother’s wedding in Denver (Congratulations, bro!), was able to enjoy Wynkoop’s
, check out the Denver Zoo and Denver’s Museum of
Nature and Science,
hangout with the family (one of whom
it’s been nearly two years since I saw him last).
If I paid for flicker, and if I ever uploaded my pictures, I’d share them. Needless to stay,
my break from school was quite full. I listened to a friend’s suggestion and picked up a couple Nintendo DS’s for the trip – and we’re glad we did, especially when my wife and I watched our American Airlines flight get delayed. And delayed. And delayed. At least it was delayed later in Chicago, otherwise we would’ve ended up there for awhile.

School has began once again at Columbus State,
so I’m still paying for my “sins” of taking the interesting stuff early, so I must trudge through more math this quarter. At least I’m in my groove and busting through it quickly. The ball is rolling for my transfer – but I’ve decided to get my Associate’s Degree in Science before transferring.

Work’s been busy, but in terms of “code outside of work” I’ve been working on flexing my Adobe Flex, Actionscript and MooTools skills. I’ve got a good plan of attack on that front, which lead to a few side projects.

1. BestPract.us – a site dedicated to best practices. Why BestPract.us? Because everything else was taken. It’s built on DokuWiki! No databases. It’s totally open to be edited, and I haven’t settled on the format, the theme or anything.
2. MooForums – I’m *really* not happy with what’s been going on with MooTools. I plan on taking PhpBB and merging it with MooTools flavor and hopefully getting the MooTools community on board with it. Google Groups is not the home to a community – it’s too unorganized and closed off. It’s lost the family feeling it had (well, on the MooTools forums it was often like talking to your older brothers, sometimes you get help, sometimes you don’t).
3. MooTools Classes and Plug-ins – this ties into bestpract.us, as I plan on using it to hold my code and host it for general consumption. From my own findings, I can hopefully accurately document the best ways to write code (with everyone’s help).
4. TheFirmStance.com – when I get this fleshed out, I’ll get something there. For now, it’s a planned site ;

Now outside of work, I’ve been reading more – The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin – watching some Weeds, Venture Brothers, and Paul Giamatti’s AMAZING performance in John Adams.

I’m debating joining up in StartUp Weekend Columbus – the jury’s still out. It’s looking favorable.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to. How about you?

I signed up for email alerts for The Personal MBA. I did so because they present this list of 69 business books (called – surprise! – the Personal MBA reading list) – and a few of the books I happened to all ready be reading. The emails aren’t exactly gold-star material, but they essentially spark a conversation well enough to show the true quality in the content.

The Personal MBA is basically a reading list compilation of some excellent books on a wide range of topics. The benefit of the email list, is some of the tidbits – like a story of a certain student who dropped out of college (because he didn’t like that the college tried to tell him what he could study) and focused his studies on what he wanted – to one day be asked to be a professor on the topic. Check out more on Joseph Campbell, a professor on comparative mythology and religion.

The point is not that this series of book will make me some kind of genius – the point is that perhaps some of the information will stick, make me think, and make me a more informed individual. I may not be the next Trump – but I could be a better boss, a better leader, a better employee, or maybe even a better teacher.

It’s awesome when you’re given a task of writing something you’ve looked into and think not enough has been said on the topic.

As well, it’s awesome to expand another’s work to see if you can – even better when you walk away with a better understanding.

More on those things later – except for my own lack of time for writing. My wheels are always turning. Always. My mind doesn’t shut off, and I find myself multi-tasking in conversations, often to my detriment – I ask people to repeat themselves often to make sure what is going through my head matches what they are saying, as I hate making assumptions, but at the same time, I like to be able to predict what you’re about to say (which comes from impatience, I suppose, which I certainly need to keep in check!)

Here recently I’ve generated a growing list of topics I’d like to write about – here, on my other blogs, and privately, but of course – who has the time? I usually get frustrated at this, and at not taking advantage of the many book son technologies I have in my possession to further my skill set.In one instance, I get upset – I’m not as strong a developer I would like. I’m not as well-versed in certain areas as my co-workers are. In the same light, I feel I’m stronger in certain areas that they aren’t, which is not a commentary on their “lack of” skills, but more-so my own observation on how different personalities approach tasks and see solutions.

From this, I see I’m not being vocal enough. I’m seeing my ideas/thoughts coming to life in tandem, without bringing them up – but this is from a lack of confidence in myself, being surrounded by great minds! I need to speak up a bit sooner (which, I’ve caught myself doing, trying to steer a couple items towards its inevitable destination).

IN TERMS OF WRITING, blogging, etc. etc…

I’m exhausted. I work 40 hours a week or more depending on my workload. I’m in school after work – often until 9 p.m. this quarter. I’m a husband. I’m a father. I’m an avid reader, coder, theorist, philosopher, xbox media center fan, and a number of other titles, some more useful than others. My plate is very full. It’s times like this, when I get to sit down with the wife and son in bed, with my dog by my side, sipping a drink, that I take that moment to meditate and come to the conclusion that I get a lot done – a lot more than I think. I’ve read several books this year. I nearly got a 4.0 last quarter. This quarter I expect the same – which leads me to my next revelation.

Last night, I was pounding away at Calculus, when I hit a problem I couldn’t figure out. I stared at it, re-read the chapter multiple times, took breaks to read some other books, and came back – to the same, mind-numbing answer of “w-t-f-mate?”

Today, I go to work, I relax, I code on a few projects that I’ve had in mind. Expanding mootools effects n’ such (more later). I get a lot done. I see a couple of others projects expanding as I imagined they would. I have some interesting conversations, read some interesting articles – and I head to class this evening. I come home to my son asleep, and I give the Wife a back-rub and tuck her in, and now, I’m in silence.

So I pull out my calc book, look at the chapter, and the answer hits me in the head. So. Freaking. Clearly. Sometimes you just need to take a days break away from your problem, and suddenly so many other things become more clearly. I can’t gurantee I’ll write as often as I’d like, but I’m trying – and I’ve got loads to discuss. :)

My GPA is 3.796 – boo yeah. I busted my ass to get this far, and I think I succeeded largely in part to returning to a classroom vs. doing it all online.

In all honesty, I  loved doing classes online – it was easy, convenient, and when I was suffering from insomnia, I could read up on classes, do homework and submit it – everything was presented.

Once my son was born, priorities shifted. First child, loving wife, school – guess who lost on the new arrangement? That’s right – school faltered, it got difficult to keep up and stay on schedule. My “dedicated” time was getting split because I had new fatherly duties that overrode the school duties (and rightfully so!). So after talking about it with a few people, I came to the conclusion I needed to attend class on campus- at least for a quarter.

The result show – nearly a 4.0. I still had homework, but often I could accomplish a lot “in class.” This coming quarter, I’ve decided to take one class online – to see how well I can leverage it, as well as my start of a new organizational procedure (lists, Getting Things Done, you know…). After next quarter I may bump it to two classes online.

In the meantime, I’ve filled up my time with writing – announcing a couple new ventures here soon, as I also continue to try to grow and expand my writing (and weigh-in on where I should be posting items, integrating them with twitter and other types of items…)  Basically, I’ve got an increasingly growing list of side-projects while I work towards wrapping up a degree and trying to still be a great father, husband and worker.