Duly noted

Asstute readers of mine will duly note that the following sentences are comprised of technical jargon. And I most profoundly apologize for this intimate invasion into the deepest recesses of your brain tissue. Bear with me for two minutes as I explain the reasons immediately after.

In late January 2020, I started architecting a very important software data mapping tool and its associated components for a client. This client had a long-standing backlog of data integration issues with their clients that had come about from both being a small business that could not afford a dedicated software engineering team and by being stymied by thought processes revolving around an ancient company vision. So I decided that while I addressed immediate billable integration needs, I would do so in as generic a way as possible.. so that my efforts could be repeated and scaled out or up for subsequent integration needs for the client. I am 80% of the way there now.

My buddy the whiteboard. No, nothing proprietary is being shown here. I am too seasoned a pro to do that.

So why am I mentioning this? Because this has been a very, very absorbing project. So absorbing in fact that my previous day schedule of waking up at 5 AM and tucking kitty and myself in at 8 PM circa 2019.. has been convincingly replaced with an 8 AM to 12 AM schedule. Rather than listening to reason and stopping work exactly at 4 PM like I used to -- before Miss Univirus came to sing us all a lullaby -- I decided to give into logic and just plug at it until sleep beckons and/or kitty starts vigorously meowing wanting to play.

With not being able to drown my sorrows at the local watering hole every evening after work, I instead found myself stretching my neck at the computer on my home desk every evening as I delved deep into the innards of the .NET ecosystem in incisive attempts to solve the problems that arise every day in elegant yet optimized ways. Stackoverflow.com is my best buddy these days. I hope kitty did not hear that!! And my other buddy would be...

...a mini ham salad sandwich!

A mini ham salad sandwich!! Ok, I vary it with tuna or chicken salad. But a pound of any of these choices and a dozen sandwich rolls plus cut onions with brown mustard provide a week to 10 days of delectable little goody-gulping. Wash each down with a cuppa of black tea or chai with one sweetener and you have the makings of an in-home picnic. A pleasant break for the brain from the mental efforts imposed from architecting and writing software.

In other news, I finally have a decent workout system in place. Below is my current setup. A pair of adjustable dumbbells are on order. But everyone is facing delays and back-orders these days. Not to worry. Back to my teenage years growing up in India filled with body-weight push-ups, squats, etc. on the open terrace of an old house. More on my workouts in a future post. But, oh sunny days! I await thee so I can huff and puff on the balcony.

There's no setup, no.