Lack of proper planning

I’m writing this from my father in law’s mountain home, it’s almost eleven PM. I’m doing this out of sheer habit, trying to keep my writing streak going. I was just pulling up in bed with a Kindle book when a voice in my head said: BLOG POST. And so I am compelled to commit something to the ether.

This morning was rough, I was woken several times in the early morning by Younger as her and Missus played Musical Beds throughout the night. The kids were mostly well behaved while I worked, then I shuffled them outside for a few hours while we got ready for our trip. I drove straight through for almost three and a half hours, non stop, driving over a windy mountain highway in the dark rain while the girls snoozed soundly in car. We got here just before ten, and now the kids are too rested too sleep, poor Missus is in the bedroom next to me, telling them stories or otherwise trying to get them to fall back asleep.

We obviously miscalculated this trip. We initially planned to come up here for a canoe trip, but the weather report says that it’s going to thunderstorm all day. So I fear we’ve basically driven all the way here just to wind up watching TV all day tomorrow. We even forgot to bring our board game. We packed the car to the brim with suitcases, laptops, and bags of food and a cooler, which seems to be overkill for a simple two day trip. At least it’ll be a day off from work, and the kids can spend time with their grandfather.

Work was interesting. Almost eight years in and we’re still trying to figure out the basics of dispatching and managing our workflow. I’m putting the hammer down with one employee and created a Kanban board just to track their work. I was being super micro-managery today, calling him every two hours to check status. This is after years of giving up on him as unmanageable. I said “thanks for working with me through this, cause if this doesn’t work, then we aren’t going to work. You understand me?” They said yes, so I’m going to give it another week or two, or at least as long as it takes to find a replacement.

I also decided to start working through some AWS training with an eye toward a certification. I figure it will be helpful to me just to know more about how to manage my EC2 instances, and who knows what else it will lead to. I had a call with a young entrepreneur who was trying to create a startup around business process as a service, BPaaS, or as I call it, business process automation, and it went pretty well, so I figure having a handle on AWS will be an advantage. I’m not going to be able to settle between AWS and Azure right now, given so much of my world is in the Microsoft space. AWS has its advantages; it seems price is much cheaper for starters. Having another certification certainly won’t hurt though. On a slightly related note, this cloud native landscape chart is completely overwhelming.

I can feel the fatigue setting in, and should be turning in now. I’ve got a glass of IPA next to me that I’m going to finish while I read about stoicism or something, and spend tomorrow trying to find some tranquility in light of the situation with the weather.