Progress update: 19 July 2020

Sunday, 19 July 2020

Yikes, it has been roughly five years since my last post. Time for a recap: what has been my (offline) progress since my last post? This post will cover 2016 through the end of 2019. The first half of 2020 has turned us all upside down, so deserves a separate post.

Travel: in late summer 2016 my wife and I went to Germany for two weeks: Frankfurt and Berlin. I have been to Germany before, so I can’t check it off the Bucket List.

No trips out of state in 2017. My wife’s nephew visited from Korea, so we took him around the state. The nephew and I watched the August 21^st solar eclipse from the top of the SeaTac airport parking garage before he flew back to Korea.

At the end of 2018, my wife and I flew to Arizona for a week. We spent most of our time hiking Sedona, but we did make a day trip out to Flagstaff and Lowell Observatory. Again, having been to Arizona before (Grand Canyon in 1986), I can’t check off the Bucket List.

Last year, 2019, was a relatively well-travelled year. In August we hiked in Whistler, B.C. Our trip coincided with the Crankworx mountain bike festival. On Christmas Day we flew to Korea and spent the new year with my wife’s family. Again, having been to both places (British Columbia and Korea) before, no new Bucket goals to check off.

Language progress is mixed. My one modest success is developing the daily habit of at least two lessons on Duolingo. I have finished the German module, started the Korean module (more on Korean later), and started the Spanish module. I will go into greater detail in future posts my successes and “failures” with Duolingo and other language apps.

Programming has been hit and miss. I took an intro to programming (non-credit) course in early 2016, where I was introduced to C#, followed by two short courses in Python programming. Despite my best intentions, I have spent almost no time reinforcing my Python skills since the classes, and have forgotten most of what I learned.

I’ve been slightly more successful in my artistic endeavors. But even here have been ups and downs. I wrote the screenplay for a Pixar-esque animated short and started building a couple of models in Blender. I bought a sketchbook to storyboard the film. After a couple of storyboards, I discovered I had no idea how to create a character. So I took a break from Blender to relearn how to draw. In the spring of 2016, I enrolled in a beginning drawing course at Bellevue College. Having binge-watched drawing videos on YouTube, I’m not sure I learned much in the course (I even offered a few tips), but the three hours a week of forced practice was useful. Perhaps my biggest success was the accumulation of a 461-day sketching streak over much of 2018 into 2019, which included the completion of two sketchbooks. Unfortunately, since the streak snapped, I’ve done hardly any drawing since.

Athletics have also been slow progress. In the summer of 2018, I bought my first road bike: a red Specialized Diverge on clearance discount. (All my cycling previously has been on a mountain bike with road tires.) I got four rides on that bike before the forest fire smoke made outdoor exercise hazardous.

There’s a brief recap covering the hiatus in blog posts. To paraphrase Mark Crilley: “More to come, real soon.”

Progress update 24 July 2015

Once again, too long since last post. Several times I had set a goal to write at least two blog posts per month, or about 25 per year. (Weekly posts seemed a little too ambitious. Or are they?)

Some achievements, minor though they may be:

In January, I ran a 5k, the Inclement Sprint 5k at Green Lake. Today, I registered for another 5k in Woodinville, scheduled for August 15th.

Last fall, my wife joined a gym, with a pool. I piggybacked on her membership (yes, I’m paying my share), and have been able to log a little time in the pool.

I’ve done a few bicycle commutes to work, including Cascade Bicycle Club’s Bike to Work Day on Friday, May 15th. This, again, puts me a little closer to my bicycle mileage goal; though I’m still far short of the 2000 miles I’ll need to ride this year to put me on pace to achieve the goal.

In pursuit of my Blender certification goal, I have begun two endeavors. I have begun work on a short (5-minute?) animated movie. (When I have something to show off, I’ll create a YouTube channel and post some clips.) And I have begun writing a Blender guide, Pocket Blender, inspired by and patterned after Cheryl Shrock’s AutoCAD Pocket Reference.

And I finally, tonight, uploaded my first Gray’s Anatomy drawing to my Pangdori Studio blog.

Perhaps the biggest milestone so far: on Tuesday evening my wife and I returned from a week in Florida. She had to go for a business conference in Orlando. I tagged along. Although Orlando is the theme park capital of the country (Disney World, SeaWorld, Universal Studios), neither of us were interested in theme parks. I had three different objectives. The day after I arrived, I scurried out to Kennedy Space Center, just in time to watch an Atlas 5 loft a GPS satellite into orbit. First time I’ve ever seen a real rocket launch. Second objective: splash my feet in the Atlantic Ocean. This, wife and I did at Cocoa Beach. Third objective: get my feet wet in the Gulf of Mexico. Holmes Beach, just south of Tampa, is where I achieved this objective.

Slowly, very slowly, I’m crawling my way through my Bucket List.

Progress update: August 27, 2014

Too long since last post. Though my progress has not been as swift as I hoped for, I have not been completely negligent in pursuing my goals. What have I done since last post back in (yikes!) February?

I have cleaned up most of the adjoining pages, mostly turning the lists into tables.

I drew another bone from Gray’s Anatomy. If I count the sketch from college, I have completed two illustrations. Future task: scan and post the drawings on my Pangdori Studio blog.

In June my wife and I took a one-week vacation to Banff National Park in Alberta. This fleshes out the Canada travel goal slightly, though I can’t really say that I saw much of Alberta outside of Banff park.

I have sporadically resumed bicycling, mostly trips to work and back. This brings me a couple dozen miles closer to my bicycling goal.

Last Sunday (August 24th), my wife and I hiked to Lake Serene. Though I posted a trip report on WTA, I have not yet created a link on the 100 Hikes page to complete the task.

I have restarted studies in mathematics: I have completed reading, notes, and exercises in the first three chapters of Algebra the Easy Way, by Douglas Downing. I am almost finished with Chapter 4. Future task: create a page to track progress toward BS in Mathematics. My wife frequently asks me when I’m going to register for math classes at the local community college. I reply that I want to prep for the placement exam so I don’t have to repeat too many of the classes that I took more than a decade ago.

Tonight I gave a speech to my Toastmasters club, completing two Competent Communicator manuals within twelve months. That’s twenty speeches in one year. Future task: create a speeches page to log progress toward my 1000 speeches goal.

Gee, while compiling this post, I have accomplished more than I originally thought. Henceforth, I will attempt regular posts, hopefully at least one per week.

One more bucket

...and a few pages.

New (or old) goal added to bucket list: achieve financial independence. In other words, acquire enough net worth that the income from my assets (interest, dividends, rents, royalties, etc.) are enough to pay my living expenses. I will no longer need the income from a job to pay my bills. I will work because I want to, not because I have to.

Look to the right and you'll see some new pages. The top page, The List, is a recap of my goals. The goals list from the first post will soon become buried at the bottom of the posts. The List will keep the goals at top, where they belong.

The other pages are itemized breakdowns of each of my goals. Most of them are just lists for now. Eventually I want to turn them into tables. Word is not very good at creating tables (or I haven't learned how to use Word), especially long tables. And attempting to transfer a blog post written in Word into the blog editing page introduces a lot of formatting garbage. So I bought a book (yes, another book) to teach myself HTML and CSS. Then I'll be able to turn the lists into clean, well-formatted, useful tables.

More pages to come. Updates and progress (and setback?) reports to follow.

My Bucket List

Inspired by John Goddard’s "Life List" and the Jack Nicholson/Morgan Freeman movie Bucket List, I decided to compile my own bucket list.

I first heard about John Goddard from a motivational tape set my parents gave me when I was a kid (Unlocking Your Potential, by Bob Moawad). Years passed and I forgot Goddard’s name, but I remembered his list and his achievements. The earliest list I remember writing was shortly after graduating college, scribbling it on a sheet of paper, just like Goddard did more than fifty years earlier. That list only had about 30 goals on it, a far cry from Goddard’s 127. A few years later, in 1998, I wrote another goals list, this one on computer, breaking the long-term goals into yearly, five-year, ten-, twenty-, and thirty-year goals. In 2003 I started a task list on a spreadsheet -- an itemized breakdown of goals I wanted to accomplish, mostly a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of books I wanted to study. In 2009, after reading (part of) John Maxwell’s Put Your Dream to the Test, I wrote a short essay to one of his exercises “What would I do if I had no limitations?” My answer fell into three general areas: to explore, to learn, to build. (I posted that essay on my Facebook page.)

In late 2012, after watching the DVD Bucket List with my wife, I wrote a first draft of my bucket list. That draft was a mental compilation, synthesis, and weeding of my previous lists. I modified it slightly over the next 15 months before deciding to go public and turn it into a blog.

Here it is.

To explore:

Visit all 50 US states

Visit all 13 Canadian provinces and territories

Visit 50 countries (and set foot on all seven continents)

Hike The Mountaineers’ 100 Classic Hikes in Washington

Sketch the Lunar 100

Sketch all 109 Messier objects

To learn:

Earn Bachelor of Science in Mathematics

Fluency in German

Fluency in Spanish

Fluency in Korean (wife’s native language)

Read Goethe’s Faust (in German)

Read German Bible

Read English Bible (NIV) – completed

Read Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Macropaedia

Read complete works of Shakespeare

Earn Distinguished Toastmaster

Earn A+ certification

Earn AutoCAD Professional certification

Earn Blender certification

Learn Python programming language

Learn C/C++/C# programming languages

Earn pilot’s license

Earn amateur radio license

Pencil drawings of all 780 illustrations in Gray’s Anatomy

To build:

Write The Drive science fiction novel

Write sequels to The Drive (possible title: Singularity series)

Design and build dream home

Dismantle and rebuild automobile engine

Build fuel cell

Build radio telescope

Numbers:

20 pull ups

100 push ups

200 crunches

Bicycle 24,000 miles (cumulative)

Run marathon

Complete Ironman triathlon

Publish one million words (yes, blog posts count toward total)

Deliver 1000 speeches

Draw 1000 species

Draw 1000 portraits

Prepare 1000 recipes

Miscellaneous:

Marry – achieved

Celebrate birthday on Moon

See return of Halley’s Comet (February 2061)