Mattress Etiquette

I have a strange habit that many find odd: I enjoy sleeping on bare carpet. Something about how unconvetional it is, or maybe the firmness it offers. It could also be because when I lived in Africa, my bedding wasn't any better and my body acclimated to such conditions. In any case, it is not rare to find me happily passed out on my home office carpet. I often joke that if my wife were to send me to the dog house, she wouldn't have many options -- the couch is an upgrade from the carpet.

So for a long time I did not care about our bedding until she began complaining of back pain and uncomfortable sleep. The bedding we have is over 10 years old, from my late teens. Although I bought the mattress new back then, the rest of the bedding was concocted from throw-aways. About time we considered something more suitable for this stage of life.

Bedding is not cheap and the array of choices is dizzying! I honestly do not perceive the difference in sleep quality between a $900 and a $2500 mattress. Especially that it is recommended to change bedding every 5-7 years, you need not break the bank. So the first thing is deciding how much you want to spend. Other choices: spring vs. foam, adjustable or not, pillow-top or none, firm or plush, queen or king size, bedframe or platform, and whether you get the bed set or just the mattress. Most stores charge for delivery and a disposal fee if you want them to discard your old crap. You should ensure a manufacturer warranty of 7-10 years and a generous return policy if it so happens that your new mattress doesn't live up to expectations. I know the brand we got has a lot of negative reviews, so there might be occasion for return. We got both a bed set and frame for under $1000, delivered, from American Furniture Warehouse, which has a back-to-school sale this weekend. Other smaller stores had good choices too, but markedly more expensive than the package we got at American Furniture.

6-Week Programming Marathon

Now in the sixth month of development, I'd like to see my latest big project LeafCompass.com wrapped up the sooner the better. It is beginning to feel like I have been at it too long, that I need a fresh and new pursuit. My wild target to complete all contractual obligations by September 30 does not seem too far-fetched, but it will require a lot of effort, drive, and commitment. With those at hand, I am ready to enter what I call a "programming marathon" - where I pour everything I have into software development in order to churn out more features in the shortest possible time.

The next 6 weeks will not be fun - especially for my wife. Whenever I've had such marathons, she's observed that I get too consumed with the projects and leave nothing for her and the marriage (and rightly so). So I am treading carefully this time, both to make sure I am fully present at home and to lay a framework for how I will handle future marathons, if needed, without letting the marriage dynamic suffer. I'm all about experimentation to learn new ways of doing things.

So what actually happens during these marathons? Programming a ton. Little sleep. Junk food. All-nighters. No social life. No exercise. No TV shows. No drum practice. Background music all the time. Coffee. Heavily-chalked blackboard with visualizations of various ideas. Odd sleep hours. Any moment you don't have to be anywhere else, you spend working on the program. Non-stop. It's not fun, but I always get a ton of work done. This little habit saw me through college. I'm one of those guys that could do two all-nighters before the final exam and still pass the class having not attended most of it throughout the semester. In six weeks, we'll know whether I still got the mojo.

Summers Baby Shower

One of my wife's joys is hosting other people in our home. Because of that, we always try to have different people over about once a month for dinner, cooking experiment or games. But last weekend we had the awesome opportunity to host one of my sister's baby showers. Small and intimate, with good food, music, and people, it was a blessing to celebrate with them. They are expecting a girl come late October.

Might I say that this is the first baby shower I ever attended? I was quite apprehensive about the presence of men at such an event, given that it is predominantly a women's thing. But no harm done, there were a few of us and we all survived.

Breakfast and Devotionals

Avalon, Catalina Island, CA

On the third day of our marriage (during our honeymoon on Catalina Island, CA), we were listening to a reading of the Bible off the YouVersion Bible app on my phone when breakfast was delivered and setup in our room. While we ate, we listened some more and discussed the chapter. We liked how natural it felt doing devotionals during breakfast, that we decided to adopt the idea as our first family tradition going forward.

This special morning tradition also gives us an opportunity for face time each day, no matter how busy the rest of the day may go. We use the time to update each other on plans for the day, and hear news or whatever we may have learned recently worth sharing. Mostly though, we go through a devotional guide together and have prayers before we head out into the world. Whenever we can't make it some days, we still study the devotionals on our own. It is a right way to start the day -- with food and God.

Studying: WordPress

I've been waiting more than a year to begin upgrading my WordPress skills. At this point, I am interested in learning enough of this versatile platform to be able to develop themes, plugins, and sophisticated websites on WordPress.

I have three goals with this study, which I expect to last 1-2 months:

1. Be able to develop dynamic websites that use real-time and other sources of data from an Enterprise Service Bus. This is mostly for work, where we need a replacement for the wiki system. Content would be generated and posted from automation tools and other external processes.
2. Be able to develop entire websites in WordPress, coupled with a Java or Perl back-end or web services with SOAP. I would like to create technical publishing services this way.
3. Learn to design themes, develop plugins, and work comfortably with WordPress under-the-hood. Is programmatic full-access to a WordPress installation even possible? We'll find out.

This is the first of 3 books I will be reading, unless I find out soon enough that I cannot meet my goals using WordPress. I realized it is aged (published in 2010), but it is a good starting point. More technical discussions shall be posted at http://blog.strive-ltd.com/.