I have one hour to work on important stuff right now, and here I am, looking at my Micro.blog timeline instead. 🤦‍♂️

It’s my third day of attending a virtual conference. I have seen too many presentations in a row, and consequently my mind is now a blur. My biggest takeaway is that presenters often lack focus, which causes them to run out of time before they get to the most critical points.

I am feeling much better about the slide deck I am creating for a data calls talk that I and my team will present this summer. I soaked up presentation after presentation for the past month, and put a lot of it into practice today without even having to think about it.

We had a one-second power outage in my neighborhood two nights in a row, after 11:00 PM. I can’t figure out why.

I have been attending a virtual conference most of the day today. Technically, today is the pre-conference training workshop/training day. So far, it is pretty good and I am learning something.

I’m spending this rainy morning listening to jazz and reading The New Yorker.

Today was a good day because I got to spend all morning outside with my kids, and because the family all shared a nice meal together in the evening.

I am on Zyrtec, so I don’t get many allergy symptoms anymore, but I think this is the longest and the worst allergy season in many years. I read somewhere, years ago, that climate change leads to increased pollen levels, and I believe it.

I have the day off to spend with the kids today. 😀

The washing machine is installed and running an empty load as a test. After that, it will be deluged with all the laundry that has piled up since our old machine broke. I feel sorry for it.

I am waiting for a new washing machine to be delivered to my house. Let’s just say that my family really needs it ASAP. 😂

I don’t drink that much coffee each day, but I missed my afternoon caffeine dose yesterday and felt completely awful until I had a coffee at dinner time. It was scary! Now I’m looking into strategies to reduce my dependence on caffeine.

I just learned that I get Friday off as a “bonus holiday” before Memorial Day. Now my schedule is in sync with the rest of my family’s, which is fantastic. I look forward to letting them know at dinner tonight. 😀

I actually achieved all my objectives at work this week. I am still floored by that! 😅

It is starting to get hot outside and it is not even June yet.

I am a little too excited to be getting Office 365 installed on my work laptop tomorrow. I have been on Office 2016 for so long it is absurd.

My daughter and I made some flower cookies to celebrate the lovely spring day.

I unblocked Reddit.com earlier this week because the domain keeps coming up in tech question-related search results. After only a few days, I’m back looking at mechanical keyboards and expensive headphones on Reddit like an addict. I just blocked the domain again.

I did really well at my presentation today. Practicing over and over definitely paid off. The talk I ended up with was almost completely different than the one I started with, even though my slideshow stayed the same.

I’m rehearsing for an online presentation to my entire company later this morning. I feel good about this one.

Laughably, for no good reason, seeing a bunch of bad takes on new Apple products last week sapped my will to share, well, anything on my blog for many days. 😅 I’m trying to get back to normal now.

I filed my taxes and now I can spend my after-work time on more productive things again.

I spent some time tonight working on my tax filing, and some time learning how to create and publish NuGet packages. I want to package up one of my .NET libraries soon. I think it will be a fun, short project—unlike filing my taxes!

I have been up way too late for the past three nights, because I am working on a website. I bet a lot of micro-bloggers can relate. 😀

We are getting ready to go to the zoo today. It will be our first post-pandemic outing as a family that isn’t to a local park. I’m looking forward to it, and think it will be safe for us because we will be outside pretty much the entire time.