Gye Greene's Thoughts

Gye Greene's Thoughts (w/ apologies to The Smithereens and their similarly-titled album!)

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Vacation ambitions

In Australia a lot of office workers get the week between Christmas and New Year's off.  In addition to this, I took a few weeks off afterwards. 

As usual, I have a whole list of things -- about 85 -- that I'd like to get done during my vacation.  Clearly, I won't get all of them done -- so unlike my usual vacations where I don't make a list, or I only make a vague list, I've done a "brain dump" of various tasks that have been hanging around; I then put them into a spreadsheet (which I've added to as I think of new items), and classified them in terms of priority, whether it's for me or for the family/household, whether it's for fun or a duty/responsibility, whether doing the task frees up a bottleneck for other tasks, whether this task has any dependencies (i.e. I need to do something else on the list before I tackle this item), approximately how many days the item will take (ranging from "0.1" to "6 days"), and whether it needs pre-planning because it has many "stopping points" (e.g. need to let glue, or paint, dry overnight) and thus I can't crank it out on my final day of vacation.

I also noted which of these are best suited to a few weeks of vacation, rather than being a "weekend" project:  these would be things that require momentum, and/or where I tear something apart and it's totally in the way -- and then I put it back together the right way.

And then, as my vacation progresses, I can filter on un-completed tasks, as well as other characteristics (e.g. priority; how long they will take).

I've included some "easy wins" (e.g. "trim my beard!"), so that I can rack up accomplishments during my vacation:  inevitably I end up disappointed at the end of a vacation because I haven't accomplished all the things I wanted to -- so this is a way of recognizing all the things I did manage to do.


In no particular order...

  1. Mow yard (fairly completely)
  2. Clean up fallen shelves area
  3. Cut coardboard for Harry Belefonte LP
  4. Gmpa T audio
  5. Test and install UPS (power supply box)
  6. Tidy the music rack behind the door
  7. Test SM58 for resistance to wind
  8. Repair cables (mine; church’s)
  9. Test USB drawing pad
  10. Go through porch boxes
  11. Catch up on laundry
  12. Book electrician for solar panel
  13. B/U HD’s (incl. One at M&D’s)
  14. Other clothing repairs
  15. Clean out work bag
  16. Tidy neckties
  17. Clean off bench end of porch
  18. Visit D. Bretz
  19. Edit blue timestreams video (incl. Color correcting and audio track)
  20. Exercise
  21. Edit park bench hat-adjust video
  22. Finish adze knob
  23. Put chopping block on legs
  24. Make axe handle for re-rusted axe head
  25. De-rust misc. tools
  26. Bat signal
  27. Roald Dahl instrument
  28. De-rust small ball pien hammer
  29. Lathe the vampire stakes
  30. Lathe tool rack/box
  31. Repair wooden chair leg
  32. Repair wooden table leg
  33. Suitcase drum kit
  34. Adze handle for addt’l adze
  35. Finish drainfield box
  36. Write and record Max dancing song
  37. Healer woman song
  38. Build lathe shed
  39. Suggest getting windjammer/dead cat for SM57 (but first test SM58 wind resistance)
  40. Contact Rob on Gumtree for old PC parts (ask if he’d take CRT monitors) (also the giant tower)
  41. Clean out (and re-stock) back of car/car boot
  42. Sorry, buddy Timmy video
  43. PVC frame
  44. Repair M&D bench
  45. Bretz steps
  46. Finish prepping the wood in the water-filled wheelie bin (to make a chair)
  47. Uncover drainfield hatch near wattle roots
  48. Lay out boundary line
  49. Clear off kitchen table (and floor)
  50. Edit Max dancing video
  51. Healer woman video
  52. Lathe those angels
  53. Lay tiles around the garden edge
  54. Set up recording area
  55. Build lumber shed
  56. Repair fallen shelves
  57. Instructional video for PVC frame
  58. Ronin video
  59. Make chair from wood
  60. Test anti-feedback EQ
  61. Test Inkel mixer
  62. Drop off used books
  63. Give old computer stuff to the hobby guy
  64. Go through addt’l used books
  65. Log items
  66. Bottle recycling
  67. Repair soft toys
  68. Video chat w/ D #1
  69. Video chat w/ D #2
  70. Transplant plants to down lower
  71. Clean out misc. plant area
  72. Get BroDave firewood for black plastic sheet - DONE
  73. Hand-mow dog yard - DONE
  74. Finish cleaning out CB’s office (incl. Stationary cupboard)
  75. Clean out kitchen
  76. Learn my camera
  77. Trim beard - TONIGHT
  78. Repair/change brake light bulbs in white car
  79. Finish small two-peg coat peg
  80. Slab four pieces of wood from blue bucket
  81. Sharpen long ripsaw
  82. Sharpen regular ripsaw
  83. De-rust and repair mattock

A lot of these are 0.1-day or 0.2-day items -- i.e. it'll take me a half hour or an hour.  Others are modular, such as "Going through the boxes on the porch", where even if I don't finish the entire task, I'll still have made quantifiable progress.

Another consideration is that I need to decide whether to accomplish one or two of my larger-scale projects (which would take a week or a week and a half) -- or rather to stick to small and mid-sized tasks (i.e. 2-3 days max).  One consideration is that it's summer, here in Australia -- so the longer tasks tend to be labor-intensive yardwork (e.g. building a stand-alone shed for my extra wood) is better suited for a cooler season.


--GG

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1 Comments:

At December 30, 2020 2:23 AM, Anonymous Dave'ola said...

Don't forget about: item_84 "Write chore list", priority 1.0, who_for all, purpose all, bottleneck yes, dependencies buy_pencil, time 0.25, stopping_points 3.

Additional observations: Bat signal (cool!); Tidy neckties (*very* Gyegreene!); Lathe the vampire stakes (appears to neglect the dependencies, "Find Buffy" and "Eliminate the vampire under the bed"); missing secondary dependency "avoid sharp claws and ticklish whiskers when waking cat" for "Suggest getting [...] dead cat".

Bretz steps? A quick Google search shows that this could mean, 'to show-off' or 'to be beyond cool'. "Hey dude, check out my steps to my front porch, they are mega cool" (said in cool low DJ voice).

 

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