Spring Slowdown - Sun, 3 May 2009

Every Spring, there seems to be a host of interruptions that slow the progress of Behold somewhat. April was no exception.

First there was the tragic end of my XP machine and the purchase and week-long setup of a new Vista machine, which I just love. Then there was income taxes to do.

Our newspaper stock market contest and The Financial Post contest took a few minutes each night to analyze, plus they are leading me to an actual stock market methodology I am implementing for myself that may actually produce good returns almost mechanically.

Spring comes with snow melt. Snow melt shows yard. Yard means yardwork, like the branches I have to get rid of, and the raking, and the backyard cleanup. Ugh. Winter’s better.

Spring also means Spring cleaning, and my daughters have pushed us to finally clean out the basement.

Family is the best thing in life. We get together with my wife’s family every Friday and with my family every Sunday. Mom passed away last year, but Dad’s getting along well. Family always takes precedence over everything else, and Spring seems to have the most school and family happenings.

My day job is at its annual busy time. Now as a manager, my job is not to do any work, but to coordinate, oversee, advise, teach, and administer. Deadlines are deadlines, and there is an art in getting others to do a quality job by giving them responsibility and accountability. And lunch hour squash three times a week is a relaxing necessity that I hope I can continue indefinitely.

Another project that I’ve deferred for years is to make my Jewish Heritage Centre’s website e-commerce-able, and to get their digitized material up there and available. I’ll continue working on that but Behold will have a higher priority.

And I’ll be giving a talk about Behold on May 20th to the East European Genealogical Society. Anyone in Winnipeg who wants to meet me should feel free to come.

I was up until 3 a.m. trying to get my old XP computer running again. I did and to my surprise, I was able to get it working again normally. Pheh! No way I’m going back. Tonight as I write this, I was wiping the XP and recovering the initial XP installation with the goal of donating it to my Heritage Centre. But no … five hours and all sorts of problems/glitches/troubles trying to do it.

At least it gave me time to write this post.