What To Do...

We were at the trailer at Roseland Resort this past weekend. I did what I always do: ate, slept and made lists of things I should do in the next few months.

For the most part, I focused on my square dance calling career and my geek professional career. Both require a lot more detailed planning than anything else I have going on currently.

For square dancing, I compiled the following:

• Finish listening to recordings of last April's CALLERLAB convention (in progress).
  
• Write a stack of right-hand lady progression singing figures. I have a bunch of the regular corner lady progression figures memorized and can make up extras on the fly while calling, but doing RH progressions is a whole new mind warp. It's taking more effort than I had guessed.
  
• Compose and memorize equivalents for "square thru 4," a call which is regularly overused, especially in singing calls. I wrote 20 equivalents in an hour while we drove to the trailer for Mainstream thru Advanced programs; I need repetition to memorize them. Goal: Next dance I call, I won't use "square thru 4" the entire evening.
  
• Negotiate a date for our next calling workshop, probably a Saturday or Sunday in October. Emails have been sent... I await feedback.
  
• Obtain a new Internet domain name explicitly for my square dance calling. The obvious choices (callerbrian.com, bjsd.com, dancecd.com, dcdance.com, sdcaller.com, squaredancecaller.com and such) were all taken but callerjarvis.com, squaredancedc.com and sdcallerbrian.com were all available. Ultimately, I reserved the latter --sdcallerbrian.com-- and have configured DNS to point it to my existing web site www.office-assist.com.
  
• I need to assemble a list of keywords to use for a Google AdWords campaign (done), then run some tests (in progress) to direct marketing traffic to the DC Lambda Squares and my own website.
  
• I need to update my business card with my Twitter account, the new web domain name and a QR code on the back which decodes to the new domain name.
  

On the more geeky, professional side, I need to:

Update my LinkedIn profile and add some additional bodies from my current employer (done).

• Use my spare computers to create a home IPv6 test lab. We're not using it at my employer yet, but it's only a matter of time when I'll need to know a lot more about it: it would be best for all for me to get a head start.
  
• I will use the same test machines to create a Hadoop cluster. We are using Hadoop at work but it's configured & run from the California office; I need to know a lot more about how this beast works.
  
• I want to create an Amazon EC2 test cloud to learn more about how it works. At the moment, I'm torn between using a real Amazon cloud or just using Eucalyptus to create an Amazon clone on my own systems. I'll probably do both... I'm sure I'll learn plenty and it'll look good on a resume.
  
• Verizon's strike has ended so I hope to hear more about my rescheduled FiOS installation soon. I have no idea --and Verizon's telephone jockeys couldn't tell me-- if their systems are IPv6 ready or not but I've sent an email to a knowledgeable geek friend to see what he knows.
  
• I need to make some backups of some infrastructure equipment. While I have copies of our production systems, I don't have recent copies of the various laptops and toys I use to test & debug the production systems. The contents of these machines changes very rarely so once per calendar quarter is sufficient, and they're due now.
  
• I have a tonne of technical topics to read up on, but I'll about $8 each by purchasing the eBook version rather than the hard copy. Suddenly, I have a whole new reason to get a tablet, especially if I want to do the bulk of this reading while on vacation at the trailer after Labor Day. I'm going to first skulk around the local pawn shops to see what they have; if nothing turns up by the end of the month, I may actually go buy an Asus Iconia 500.
  
• If the latest rumors are accurate, the Motorola Droid Bionic smartphone should be released form Verizon Wireless' torture chamber on or around September 8. I probably won't be in line overnight to get one, but I'll probably swing by the nearest store that same day. With it, I can finally give up my broadband modem. I estimate I can reduce my monthly mobile bill by $60.
  

That, in a nutshell, is my plan for the next month. Let's see how well I stick to it.