Once again, this was a month beset by distractions, problems, and drama. In project management terms, these are referred to as “blockers” and they are the bane of one’s existence. I wish I could say that this quarter that has just ended resulted in a whole slew of accomplishments, but it really hasn’t. In fact, given the limited amount of time left, I am going to go ahead and call a bunch of the list items failures, because, realistically I won’t get them done before September 26th.
I’m going to be calling them failures for the purposes of this list, but some of them will be migrated over to the next list of 101 Things in 1001 Days, which starts on October 1st.
Quarterly Metrics
Completed tasks this quarter: 4
In-progress tasks: 13
Failed tasks: 7
Completed in Q2
22. Contribute to an open source project. One of the biggest problems I had with getting this done was in actually finding something with open issues that were in my wheelhouse. So I did what any forward-thinking nerd would do — I wrote a script that would pull the first 1000 issues opened in the last hour on GitHub, allowing me to filter by language. A minor edit to allow filtering by label (“good first issue”) helped get me more tightly focused on the results. That helped me find stuff I could address pretty quickly, and I was able to bash this task out pretty quickly. My contributions are waiting review/merge, but I feel like I can call this complete.
24. Start a YouTube channel. Training for PBP 2027 has been a good impetus to start this, so I got BicycleGeek going on YouTube. It’s been a great education in video editing, speaking on-camera, and content planning.
32. Get my D&D campaign world finished; start running it. It’s done, as far as it needs to be, for the initiation of the campaign, and as it goes, I’ll be adding to the materials on an as-needed basis. The final goal for this is to combine everything into a unified sourcebook, which I’ll sell online.
76. Learn Blender. I also spent the time to blast through a Udemy course on this — I was able to take it fairly quickly as I’d been tinkering with Blender a lot about a decade ago while employed as a contractor at Stratasys.
In-Progress for Q2
15. Get (or build) nice touring frames for Didi and me. (1/2) Been looking around for a Surly Disc Trucker or similar.
17. Ride the DAMN. Training, but this is going to suuuuuck.
20. Build the Scoutreads site. Been blasting through this! By the end of August, I should have something really good. Right now, it’s very much a MVP (minimum viable product) situation, and I have a lot more to do between now and the end of the summer.
21. Get at least two certifications. (1/2). I finally, finally got finished dialing in my PCAP certification studies, but then the only spot I could get for a test was in July. Oy.
33. Submit a design to Lego Ideas. Updated Stud.io and got busy on my three ideas that I have. One of them should be worthy of submission.
37. Finish three Zelda games I haven’t completed. (1/3) Finally blasted through the end of Tears of the Kingdom, and then got busy on A Link to the Past.
46. Be able to do 6 pull-ups. I ordered a nice pull-up bar online, cleared the removal of the door to the walk-in closet with Didi (✅ approved!) and then hung it and got down to business.
66. Get my spare change bin (a 5-gallon spring water bottle) half-filled. This, as it turns out, is really hard. I mean, I rarely carry cash anymore, and as a result, having any change left over at the end of the day makes it near-impossible to get this done. I’m at a point of about one-third, but that won’t be enough. It’s inevitable that this will go down in history as a fail.
65. Have three months’ of expenses set aside in an “oh shit” savings account. We’re at about two months’ worth. Pretty awesome, but not quite there.
69. Pay off student loans. My first loan was paid off in April. The second has $676 remaining. This will be done in August. I cannot tell you how fucking excited I am about this.
77. Master Python. Wrapping this up.
83. Take a cooking class with Di. Still looking for a good place to take these.
96. Get Didi set up with a woodworking space. Mostly done. I feel like we’re at a good point to call it nearly complete, but now I need to get more feedback directly from her about what she needs.
Failed in Q2
48. Get Lasik. Yeah, I could probably find the time for this, but there’s no way I’ll have the money. That I need a bifocal job makes it more expensive, and it isn’t a perfect fix, either. Dumb.
50. TBD Family Trip. No budget or time for family trips in 2026. Just ain’t.
53. Japan. See above.
55. Zion National Park. See above.
57. Colorado snowboarding trip. I had planned on doing this in 2026, but the shitty snow, closures, crowds, and ridiculous prices forced me to skip this.
74. Start a second bachelor’s degree. Yeah, I’m on the verge of paying off my student loans from my original degree. I think I am going to hold off on this for awhile.
80. Sign up for martial arts classes. No time for this. Maybe someday.
