February Review

A review ahead of schedule, can't remember when that happened last. I'll be happy to see the start of a new month - coronavirus updates every day, losing money on the share market every day, injuries still haven't cleared up, old car broke down, frustrating project at work. Most of that great news and more will be covered in this review, but looking at the list, nearly all of that will also continue into March at least - won't be having a fresh start then...

I managed a relatively successful month of running despite my hamstring injury still hanging around. I think after the next race this weekend I need to try another break or only running slowly since it's been over three months now.

Three new parkruns at Berwick Waters, Grand Ridge and Warringal Parklands. The Grand Ridge Rail Trail was the best course and also the hardest, a close second was Berwick Waters only because it was an incredibly humid day. To finish off the month I also reached my 200th event. I still have one spot left on my parkrun bingo challenge, another two times I finished on 59 seconds instead of 58 thanks to some idiot getting in the way at the finish line as I was slowing down to cross the line.

Grand Ridge Rail Trail.

One race for the month at Warburton for the 10km. It's quite a challenging course with a few hills, one large one in particular, but I finished with a better time than last year and didn't feel as bad as usual at the finish. The official time was under 38 minutes but the course seems to measure quite a long way under 10 kilometres every year.

Warburton - starting on long wet grass isn't ideal.

I've managed to work up to 20 kilometres on weekend long runs, but don't want to commit to any longer events up to half marathon distance until I can get my leg fixed and back into proper training.

No biking.

The less said about shares the better. I sold a couple of under-performing investments a few weeks ago but still have a lot of junk to dispose of. The latest reporting period didn't produce many winners, every company seems to have missed targets and blamed bushfires and the virus, in addition to the entire market dropping more than 10% in a week.

The superbowl was held in early February, I think it's the only game I watched in full for the season. I would have preferred San Francisco to win although didn't really like either team. Next we have NBL finals coming up, hopefully Sydney Kings can make it.

The to do list is pretty weak this month:

• 2020 goals
• I wrote the rough outline, just haven't posted them
• Blog photos
• About 80% migrated, then no more broken images
• Car problems
• An unexpected task, should be resolving it soon one way or another

At work I'm still doing a lot of less technical design work, which isn't as bad as I would have guessed, it's just incredibly frustrating due to poor planning, lack of information and lack of co-operation.

That's it for this month, hopefully the next one is a bit better.

• Books
• None
• Movies
• None - I think I watched a couple but forgot to take note
• Music
• The New Pornographers
• Another great session from the band including Neko Case
• I didn't know some of the new songs but there wasn't that many played
• Never been to Melbourne Recital Centre before - not a bad venue
• 9 out of 10
• TV
• I think I finished more shows too but forgot to take note - and regulars like Criminal Minds
• Jack Ryan season 2
• The story was a bit scattered, not as good as the first season
• 6 out of 10
• Video Games
• Xbox One
• Forza Horizon 3
• One more event to do and will be finished at last

January Review

One month down already. In order we had: extreme heat, bush fires, smoke, rain carrying dust, a bit of everything. Maybe we'll be back to normal next time.

I haven't made much progress with running due to more setbacks in the upper leg region - glute, hamstring or both. Basically I've been taking the weekdays off to be good enough for a parkrun and other weekend running, on repeat each week. Traveled to Newborough and Churchill for the new years day double, finding out again it's really hard to try and run two times under 20 minutes with an hour break in between. There was a lot of cancellations due to air quality for a couple of weeks afterwards, the worst was the first weekend of January, I was at Darebin and it was really noticeable at the city end of the course.

Newborough parkrun.

Other highlights included running a 18:20 at Birdsland, my best time for the year so far, a week of volunteering, and getting the second last spot in my parkrun bingo list - finishing times ending with each of 0-59 seconds.

I also was fortunate enough to run well in the Rosebud Australia Day Fun Run, I wasn't sure about both fitness over 10 kilometres and the risk of hamstring injury getting worse, but I got through with a good time of about 38 minutes, and only a little more sore than usual. It's a bit hard to say for sure since each event distance is not exactly 10 kilometres, but it's probably my 3rd or 4th best time ever.

That's enough running, and no biking again this month !

Haven't been saving a lot of money for shares investments lately, I tried to apply for $5000 of Afterpay shares as an existing shareholder, but it was oversubscribed so I only got like $1000 and eventually refunded the rest. Also in the process of selling a few more terrible performing shares for even more losses.

The Australian Open tennis is just about to finish, it's a week later than usual now. I only made a few bets this year since the promotion for hitting aces was reduced to only a few games each day. Still I've made about $65 so far by turning some of the bonus bets into winning bets, with a few remaining. The NFL playoffs are also finished besides the Super Bowl, not many teams I like this year after New England and Seattle both lost, I've still only been watching the 10 minute games highlights during the playoff rounds.

Making a good start to the year with the to do list, makes sense with a bit of time off work.

• 2019 review is done, but not the 2020 goals - not expecting much
• Blog photos have been about 50% migrated off the old host, wrote a script to make it quicker
• Running plans
• Got a couple of months of parkrun planned out for new events and new event numbers
• Got a very rough plan of other races for the year, depends on injury and holiday opportunities
• Windows 10 upgrade finally done !
• Much easier than I expected, had planned for worse case scenario of a fresh install
• Probably 2 hours for the upgrade and 1-2 hours to customise
• Installed some new tools related to work like Docker Desktop and WSL

Had a boring month at work. I'm not a huge fan of design and documentation, but the lack of information has made it much slower and difficult than it should be.

That's it for this month.

• Books
• None
• Movies
• Countdown
• Like a really bad version of Final Destination
• 1 out of 10
• Knives Out
• Surprisingly better than expected, and improved towards the end
• 8 out of 10
• Music
• Got a ticket for The New Pornographers in February
• TV
• Barry
• Feels a bit like a copy of Dexter, but otherwise very good
• Has two actresses from The Good Place also
• 7 out of 10
• Fear The Walking Dead season 5
• Really enjoyed it until the final few episodes
• 7 out of 10
• Mr Mercedes season 3
• The second book, made more sense as the third TV series
• A bit unrelated to the other two books, so not as good
• 6 out of 10
• The Walking Dead season 10 - first half
• They just spend too much time with each rival community
• 5 out of 10
• Utopia season 4
• Another great season
• 9 out of 10
• Video Games
• Xbox One
• Forza Horizon 3
• Dragging towards the end, hopefully finished soon
• It would be interesting to see if I rate the same game different each month
• 5 out of 10