Category Archives: General

A Month!

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I don’t think I’ve ever gone this long without a post! I’m sure my mental space is in rough shape because of it too!

While my kids’ hockey seasons are well underway (started end of August and both play competitive), that is not really a difficult bit to get through. The real challenge is work.

New Project

I was approached in August to provide some experience to a key project that appeared to be struggling. My approach is always focused on getting the emotional state sorted out so that the material items can be tackled. The key players all need to simply vent their frustrations before logic can be applied. Complain first, get it out, then get to work. I basically went on a listening tour.

A few bits came from that exercise. First is that everyone wanted the idea to succeed – a key piece in buy-in. Second, there were some quite significant concerns on the ambition of the plan – sort of like trying to get people on the moon in 3 weeks. Third, the team leading the change did not have the benefit of experience to guide them, which meant they were building and learning at the same time. Overall, there was a sense of confusion / exhaustion, where they were all working super hard but not moving forward like they wanted to.

To be clear, I am no saviour, I have no super powers. I bring experience and a wide network of contacts. My arrival by it’s very nature brings disruption and change. And it’s not like we don’t have enough change all around us anyways, right?

Without getting into the details, the change has had mostly the intended results. Things are being delivered, people are focused, there’s a clear path to success. That’s the good. The less good is the human impact, where some relationships have come under significant strain, if not outright broken. Point one above was about everyone wanting this to work, and it really sucks when there are people issues along the way. There are always people issues, I get that part, but it still sucks. Doubly so as replacing each of them takes some time and the project can’t really afford any delays.

So guess which lucky person gets to pick up the pieces until the right folks are at the table? The great news about networks is that you can often find some friendlies to help you out. There’s a lot of that right now. Every day has a half dozen escalations that need to be managed, which means more people-ing.

All this together adds a level of exhaustion I have not felt in years. It has a ton of impacts outside of work. And clearly, none of this is sustainable.

The good news here is that there’s a large amount of support to make this sustainable, and the recommendations are for the most part, accepted and implemented in very short order. And there are a lot of changes.

Gaming

Most of this has been on pause, or rather extremely sporadic. There are a few though worth noting

Strange Antiquities: A neat puzzle game where inference is key. I like these games as a fun distraction, and it works well on the Steam Deck too. It should be played with a specific accessibility function enabled (auto-label things), and has some margin of replayability. Well worth the entry price.

Hades 2: A GotY candidate, and an improvement in nearly every single regard to the original. I had bought this in EA over a year ago, and many aspects have been improved, quite a few dramatically so. I think there’s more build diversity here as there are more levers and choices present, compared to the first one. Thing thing rocks on Steam Deck. It’s a very, very good ride. Still think Clair Obscur is the best game this year though!

Assassin’s Creed Shadows: I’ve played most of the mainline AC games, and did play Mirage. I also have a love of Ghost of Tsushima, and the larger structure of that game. AC Shadows is, well, it’s ok. Certainly NOT worth the AAA price though. The dual characters work for the narrative but not in the gameplay. Combat is too long, the world is empty, the stories are all fairly identical in execution of entering a base, stealing something or killing someone, and then leaving. The bandits in the wild all use the exact same layouts, which is ridiculous. This game could have been cut by 3/4 and been better for it. I entered the third zone (of 7 I think?) and quit; it was identical to the first and second zones. The bells and whistles (like seasons) are cool, but the core of it isn’t terribly good. Nearly every open world game I’ve played in recent years (including Mirage) has done this better. I feel bad for Ubisoft.

Factorio: The staple! I have opted for a new world with planetary mods. The first time I played Space Age, I applied vanilla design principles. That was a VERY cool experience of learning as I went. The second time was taking the lessons learned from the first playthrough and seeing what I could optimize – my playthrough was about half the duration as a result. This playthrough applies all the lessons learned for a super optimized starter planet (Nauvis) and from there explore some additional moded planets. Each of these is a small puzzle to solve that adds some later functionality. Cerys is first, which is a moon off Fulgora, doesn’t allow you to ship things down, leave, is a frozen ball that needs to be thawed, and has complex construction chains. Quite enjoyable, though I’ll admit the start-up portion is longer than I’d hope.

Next Update

Given the pace of work and lack of free time, curious as to when I can find time for the next post. Hopefully as I progress in my Factorio run. Fingers crossed!

Summer Vacation

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Back from a couple weeks away, mostly spent at the cottage. It’s usually the time where I take to reflect on the prior year, and then start thinking about the next one. In between pints of course.

Work

I started a new role this year, leading a group that was pulled together during the pandemic. A ragtag group of bright folks, doing their best given the circumstances. It’s best framed as ”success begets success” and they reached a point where the larger group needed to mature or just burn out. The transition from ad-hoc to systematic is not an easy one, where you will lose flexibility in exchange for sanity. The first few months were rocky, and not everyone was on-board with having an actual plan that we would commit. A year out, some folk have moved to greener pastures and those that remain know what’s coming in the next few months, can manage to work on more files, require less hours, and have developed a network of contacts that will serve them for their entire careers. It’s hard to see the while the chaos of change is underway, but I am extremely happy with the results.

The next year will be about shoring up some resource challenges, and taking on yet another project that is rather wild in scope. Oh, and the unknown territory of a return to office, where the only value add is the social element (which has value). I’ve spent the last 10 years of my career showing that people are more productive when they don’t spend 2 hours a day commuting, and the pandemic proved it at a very large scale. I am not interested in regression… and given the extremely low unemployment rates, it is not a hiring incentive to give someone a desk.

Personal

Kids are a year older and 2 years wiser. School has suffered a lot (only hospitals fared worse) in that teachers and students were not able to fully adapt to a remote workspace. Teachers due to tools, and students due to engagement & environment. My eldest coped well enough, but my youngest took a big hit. We’re in catchup mode now, and that’s going exceedingly well.

Wife and I had a really good year. The pandemic allowed us to spend more time together, which was a positive compared to some of our friends. She gained a tremendous amount of confidence at work too, which resulted in some great mood improvements.

I coached and played hockey, first time in 2 years. Tremendous benefit to the social anxiety of a pandemic. One team had a full run through of COVID during the holidays, which was a kind reminder of the severity of it all. My physical health was running great until about March, time to get back on that.

Gaming

Not a terribly good year for gaming, which makes sense given the production timelines during a pandemic. FF14 launched an amazing expansion. I’ve come to terms with Blizzard simply being a skin worn by ActiVision. Lost Ark launched, and while it looks and plays like Diablo 4, the monetization and ilvl quit-wall had me move on. Elden Ring is a standout I suppose.

I actually ended up playing mostly older games throughout the year, or reminded why those were better. Metroid Dread is a great example. Both Blasphemous and Hollow Knight are simply better. I guess this makes sense, as it allowed me to clear out my Steam backlog and more or less zone-out.

I still don’t have a reason to get a PS5. Perhaps once God of War comes out I’d get it, and Horizon & Returnal. I’d honestly expect Sony to announce a way to get them on PC though.

Not a whole lot to look forward to coming down the pipe, which I guess means I’m not the target audience.

Upcoming

The next few weeks should be relatively quiet, allowing for some more mental respite in preparation for the typical September insanity. Let’s see how much R&R I can fit in during that time.

Familiar Fire

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A couple weeks ago I started a new job. Well, sort of new. It’s in a field I used to work, yet a different level of involvement. As much as there’s a natural sense of déjà vu when you pick up something after a couple years, there’s also the assumptions you have heading into it.

The good news is that there are still some familiar faces around, which really helps with any transition. I’ve always found the hardest part of change is people, so having established relationships before the move helps to a crazy degree. The second bit is that since I’ve maintained those relationships, I have some relative idea of the state of affairs within the group. There are (and will be) gaps in my understanding, yet both combined mean that I’ve been able to do in 2 weeks what normally would take 2 months.

The less good is the whole baggage still that comes with. I know this field, I know it really well. It was a launching pad for my career, the cause of a burnout, and some emotional scars that I don’t think will ever heal. That gives me a set of assumptions heading into this, and the danger that I fall into old bad habits. It’s an active task to repress those habits, which is terribly exhausting. It’s like giving a kid an ice cream cone and telling them not to eat it. Just drives you crazy.

While I do work in the IT industry, my general job description is more in like with enterprise architecture (EA). I am not aware of any school teaching this in a graduate sense, it’s more like a practice or approach to work. Most graduates I do hire come from some sort of engineering background, and then we train them in this model. EA being a work practice can be transplanted without too many hiccups, which certainly reflects my particular career path. It isn’t terribly useful in an operational sense (there’s ITSM for that), yet for planning and change… it really does an amazing job.

The ‘sales pitch’ for this job was just to address the vertical group, those that report directly to me. So setting up some strategic plans, addressing a couple wrinkles, and basically getting it on track for a modernization initiative underway. I am grossly simplifying, but the task itself was one I’ve done a few times, so it seemed like a nice temporary change of pace. I’ve had some side project ideas, and this seemed a good way to deliver those on top of smaller core obligations.

The reality is that the strategic plans are foundational to the organization’s existence. As in, do hundreds of people have jobs in 3 years or not? Further, the breadth of the strategy impacts a half dozen other similar services which are all asking the same question. And the modernization initiative underway has some serious gaps – things I’ve still got scars from. This ‘simple’ pitch is in reality both an immediate crisis to manage, and an existential one that crosses multiple streams.

I am purposefully avoiding detail. For one, it likely wouldn’t interest most people. Two, the type of work I do necessitates a level of discretion. Certainly one of the perks of having a common name that I can run this blog as I do.

That said, the closest analogy is that I was pitched the idea of being a GM of a relatively stable sports team. The reality is that I’ll need to run a task under the league commish to see how the sport even exists down the road. And given my history in sports team management, folks are expecting that this is both an impossible task, and one that I can still accomplish.

So yeah, feeling good in my level of understanding, very anxious to the challenge and expectations, and further optimistic as to the people I get to work with to get this done.

Weekend Musings

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This was a long weekend, where Monday is a stat that recognizes the efforts labour have provided to society. That’s a whole tangent of a post, but specific to me, it’s the weekend where my family gets together for a fishing tourney.

This year it was a bit different due to COVID, and some logistics around that made the trip up take nearly 11 hours, and back down almost 7. Normally it’s less than 6. The weather was great. The fishing was atrocious, and I’m of the growing mindset we need to change location. The company was super, and really the largest highlight.

My wife and kids went to our cottage for some R&R. Our roof was redone with some contractor grade material. Ice shield applied at the low pitch and the crazy valley we have – tons of it. It looks great. I’m looking forward to the spring and the cottage looking like we left it in the fall. Now we haver some minor finishing details inside, the the vinyl to put up, and some gutters. This year’s cottage reno list includes:

  • 250ft weeping tile
  • new drainage
  • new supports and leveling
  • External and internal reframing
  • New short wall facing
  • Rebuilt custom windows
  • Rebuilt ceiling
  • New wiring
  • Extended door for shed
  • 3yrds of clean fill to level off the yard
  • New roof

I’m looking forward to not having anything to do. Greatly.

No work-related fires this weekend, but some additional setbacks when it comes to health of team members. I won’t go into any detail, but these past few months have been a continual “bad news extravaganza”. It’s depressing, and I’m having to come to terms with how it’s impacting my personal mental state.

Also coming to terms that the summer has come and gone. I need to get back into my workout routine to offset the beer I’ve had during that time. The labour over the summer offset some of it, but the effect it has on mind and body is sorely needed. I’m missing hockey to a crazy degree, so moving is key.

Not much in gaming news. Laptop is still in the shop. WoW apparently has a date for launch, and from the limited bits of info I’ve seen so far, it looks to be inline with BfA rather than Legion. Looking like it will be the first WoW expansion I don’t pick up in launch week. If I can get my laptop back soon, I’ll try and put some time into Divinity 2. I could use an RPG right now.

On the bright side, 3 episodes of The Boys are out now (I like that I can’t binge it). Should be fun to see where that’s gone this season. Hopefully it helps get me out of this funk.

Vacation’s Over

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Two weeks passed by in a flash.  One of the hottest flashes in a long while I may add.  Nearly every day was in the mid 30s (mid 90s for the imperials), with a few bit more in humidity.  The water was a full 5 degrees (10) warmer than it should be… to the point where it stopped being refreshing and you just felt more wet.  So bring out the parasol, put a chair in the sand, and take out a beer.

We have a cottage on the lake/river, so there’s always a breeze, a good spot to swim, and some decent fishing.  If I recall, we were 25 for the Canada Day festivities, over 4 days.  Lots of fun, but very busy.  Wife did a bang up job organizing a lot of that.  From that point on, it was relax mode with a few visitors here and there.  It’s just nice to get away from the city, the worries of work, and spent a huge chunk of time with the family.  Can never get more time, right?

Side note, I was linked to from the MOP’s Global Chat for my post on a Legion retrospective. Summer months are usually pretty slow, so that spike was interesting to see.

Related the BfA pre-patch it due on Tuesday, giving a month until the next expansion.  I am of the ever growing opinion that Legion will be looked back upon as WoW 2.0, mainly due to the lack of system changes found in BfA.  Instead, the expansion is adding to existing systems (races, PvP, modified artifacts, modified legendaries).  Legion was like a “best of” run, with all the major characters present, and the closure of a story arc that started in 2002.  Now we’ll move into the Void Lords domain…

Time to get back to it!

 

 

The Mystery Box

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I’ve talked about this in the past, what with JJ Abrams fascination with the concept.  There are a lot of parallels with the real world.  We are often more fascinated by the unknown than the mundane facts.

I mean everyone likes rainbows, but once you figure the science behind them… it ruins the mystery.  No pot of gold! Northern Lights, bird flight, magnetism, electric static, the sun…all of them have captivated imagination for years and cause amazement with children.  Adults who understand the mechanics move on.

That said, it’s important for there to be a explanation for that box.  Sure, there are a dozen reasons why the box exists, and in literature it’s often just a plot device (see MacGuffin). But it’s a delicate balance between being a plot device, or being the actual plot. When it’s the latter, then the actual box needs to have an explanation to justify the rest of the story.

Recent example is Avengers Infinity War.  The gems/gauntlet are a plot device, and they come with a very high level background.  Across all the films, only the Soul Stone gets something of merit here and in the final movie no less.  The Maltese Falcon, Raiders of he Lost Ark, Fifth Element – all examples of plot devices.

Lost originally had these as plot devices, little side conversations to the actual character growth.  Then after season 4 it went full-on mystery island mode and tried to explain the inner workings.  It did a really poor job of it, and the character development suffered for the new plot.

The flipside to this is someone who is more fascinated with the inner workings of the box that the people interacting with said box.  Zach Snyder is all about detailing that box in minute detail, ignoring the actual characters.  300, Man of Steel, Watchmen, BvS… they are all decompositions of story.  BvS could have been about random people, with the exact same plot, and it would have had the same impact; a dud.

Westworld is in the 2nd season now. I’ve watched 3 episodes.  I really enjoyed the first season as it followed a good balance between hide and reveal.  Season two is a bit too much in the hiding part right now.  Dolores “sees all paths” but the actions taken seem extreme and without reason.  It’s also very liberal with the action pieces and across 3 episodes there hasn’t been any character development to speak of.  Teddy might be a small exception here but what he does with the new information is meaningless.

It’s a hard balance to achieve in storytelling.  Very few ever reach it, or reach it on a consistent basis.  Even Steven King has a pile of weak stories, among his amazing ones.  Just enough mystery to keep people involved, not so much to make them question every motive, and some background thought as to how that mystery actually works.

Weatherman Woes

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This has got to be one of the most interesting jobs, right?  Whether you’re right or wrong, it doesn’t appear to matter much.  I’ve seen the same folks on TV/internets giving weather forecasts for years – and even saying what temperature it is currently can be a challenge.  This is more likely due to the large surface area they need to cover, but even so…For example, this weekend was supposed to be rain with a 90% chance from Friday through Sunday.  Most of the daylight hours.  It turned out we had 20 minutes on Friday, a storm overnight, then a sunny day Saturday, and overcast on Sunday.

What was supposed to be a weekend indoors at the cottage turned into a large labour effort in the yard instead.  Physical work always feels good, offsets the office hours nicely.

Friday Game

That said I did get a couple chances to play some Friday.  This is the solitaire/war – like card game for solo players.  I had mentioned that it was a hell of a challenge due to the RNG at the start.  That trends continues.

The game provides you with 4 phases – green, yellow, red, and pirates.  The first 3 phases are growth phases, where you are attempting to grow the power of your deck, by acquiring new cards and getting rid of bad ones.  Each of these phases moves forward once you complete the “challenge deck” – which shrinks in size over time.  The pirate phase is a set of bosses, where your deck is locked and you have to take on 2 large challenges.  The overall goal is to complete both of those challenges, with at your health points remaining.

Each card has a power level (ranges from -4 to +4) and has various skills attached (more health, card swaps, duplication, doubling of power).  The starting state is poor – you have many negative cards.  In order to grow the power of your deck, you need to beat various numerical challenges (e.g. get 2 points across 3 cards). Beating a challenge has you gain that challenge card.  Losing a challenge allows you to sacrifice life points and get rid of poor cards.  In the green phase, you want to do both, though losing is arguable more efficient in the long term.  At best, by the end of this round you have shrunk the challenge deck in half (from 30 to 15).   More likely, you’ve shrunk your hand deck from all negative point cards and acquired 5 challenge cards.

The yellow phase is the same as green, except that you need more points for the same set of challenges.  The goal here is to win as much as possible and shrink that challenge deck as much as possible.  This is hard, since most cards are only 1 power point and you need an average of 1.5 to beat any given challenge.  Skills come into play now, where you swap/boost other cards.

The red phase is attrition.  Whatever challenges remain are nigh impossible to win unless you have the best cards.  The weakest challenge cards from Green are actually the hardest now.  What was a 1 card pull for 0 points, now requires 5.  There are no 5 point cards.

If by the grace of some deity you complete red, you move onto pirate mode.  These require you to draw 6-10 cards to meet specific skill point values.  One has a 10/40 cap, which means you need an average of 4 points per card.  The only way to do this is with specific skill cards – doublers and copy cards.  A near perfect deck.  The other pirates aren’t much better.  Either you attack points are worth less, or you need to fight all the remaining challenge cards, or a set of other handicaps.  So in truth, it isn’t about surviving the first 3 phases.  It’s entirely about preparing for this one.

Across a dozen games:

  • reached yellow majority of times
  • reached red half the time
  • reached pirates a quarter
  • defeated 1 pirate once
  • never defeated both pirates

That 1 pirate victory cost me every single card and life point.  And it was a softball card compared to some others.

There’s some strategic growth to be had, but it’s clear that only a single strategy will work and that the card-to-card tactics require more card counting for success.

Master of None

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Prefaced by the obligatory “jack of all trades”.

I am an information hound.  I live to learn new things.  Maybe not apply them so much, but at least have it in my back pocket.  I think it’s more to do with pride of having to ask for help.  Or maybe it’s the whole waiting for them to show up part.  In fact, it could simply be that most experts are anything but.

My wife and I did the majority of the renos within the house.  I have a more than solid understanding of framing, roofing, wiring, flooring, plumbing, and finishing.  I would prefer to avoid finishing work (except maybe painting) given that it takes me longer to set up/get warmed up than a real pro would take to do the entire job.  I recall a friend who split his house baseboard work into 2 zones.  Upstairs for 1 pro.  Downstairs for 6 guys.  The guy upstairs was done a long time before the downstairs folks.  Clear experience in working efficiently.

Plumbing is a bit different now.  Before, it was an upfront investment to get all the equipment to run pipe.  Copper lines of different sizes, PVC drains, cutters, connectors, valves…And that’s without counting the fact that the solders have to be rock solid or you’ll have a mess.  Nowdays, a child could lay out PEX pipe, without any tools but utility knife.  Sure, you need to know where to put valves, but it’s not rocket science.   (the main, in/out of hot water, exits to outdoor connections, before each end point.)

Flooring is easy until you reach a door or transition, then you need some magic hands.  Plus it kills the back without the proper tools on hand.

That leaves me now with electric work.  My dad’s an electrician, so that’s part of the history here.  But aside from the main panel, nearly all connections are extremely straightforward.  There are 3 wires, color coded, and it’s quite hard to mess up replacing something.  When you are installing something, then it gets a mess.  Want a 4 way switch?  Go get a book from the library.  Ceiling fan install?  Get half a case of beer.  When it comes to troubleshooting, then just retire because so much can go wrong.

Trailer Woes

I have a boat.  It has a trailer.  And I have a hitch.  The trailer lights flickered on an off for a while now, and no matter what the diagnostics said, no one was able to find the root cause.  I got fed up last night and started digging some more.

I checked the wire harness with a tester – everything was ok.  I checked the trailer, all the connections are on 3 wires – meaning the ground (essential for this to work) is in the wiring and not directly connected to the metal in the trailer.  Since it’s a boat trailer, and it goes in the water, this makes a lot of sense.

I went back to the wire harness and started tracing it back.  Ever try to remove the filler in the back end of a vehicle before?  It was 15 minutes of unclipping things to trace a 12 inch wire.  I finally lost the wire behind a panel and could not figure out where it went.  Out comes the screwdriver to take off the screw holding that panel.  Lo and behold, this screw was holding the ground and had come lose.  Tighten it up, put the connector on, and things are fine.

That went through 2 mechanics, 3 people who own hitches/trailers, and 2 years of wondering what the hell was going on.  For a single screw.

Moral

I guess the end result here is that as much as there are experts, it’s important for you to know what they are talking about and to challenge the assumptions/conclusions.  I didn’t do that for the trailer, due to lack of understanding of the mechanics.  I don’t need to know everything, but I need to know enough to have a conversation about it.  Otherwise I would have waited a few more years to get this fixed.

 

Prepping for Summer

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Winter was a long slog this year, and had me put off a lot of work that would have normally been completed by this point.  We’re mid-May and it feels like everything is a month late.  I was only able to take out my backyard rink last weekend, as I had snow up until then.

Cottage Work

We went up for the weekend to finally open it up.  Ice had melted in nearly all the spots, though still some areas frozen underneath the cottage.  Put the dock in, cleared out the shed, laid out the outside.  All great.

Water pump worked pretty quick, then filled the hot water tank.  Which caused the sink line to explode.  When we bought the place, the previous owners had retrofitted the main lines to PEX (the plastic lines) which are much better in the cold weather than copper.  They kept the main attachments as copper lines, since they were soldered to the taps.  Finally busted.  A trip to the local hardware store, 20 minutes before closing, got me what I needed.  Of course, the actual PEX lines were short, with no shut off valves… so some 10 creative minutes later, we had hot water.

Now I need to re-examine all the lines.  And it further motivates me to think about the next step of cottage building.

Outdoor Work

My yard is a mess.  The neighbor had an outdoor pool, a yard of sand, and 2 dead trees.  The pool came out, the trees were cut to stumps, and the sand blew all over.  Every year there’s a field of yellow on that side of the fence, and it slowly makes its way across to our side.  Weed management is like half the yard.

So I’m going to take a different approach and choke out the weeds with stronger grass.  Fertilizer, watering, overseeding…I’ll give it 2 years to see what comes.

Plumbing

A theme it seems.  In the winter my washbasin taps were leaking, and my shut off valve for outside was the same.  The washer gaskets were too old I guess.  The basin taps were easy enough, but the shut off was in a closed area making access quite tough.  A surprising amount of water in a shut off line, truth be told.  Thankfully the swap took all of 2 minutes.

Aquarium

And more water woes.  I have 10 gallon aquarium for some guppies.  Looks like a seal busted overnight since the tank was empty this morning.  Was able to save 5 of the fish, which means it happened near 6am.  Lucked out in that all the water was absorbed by a nearby carpet.  Cleanup was pretty quick, but it does mean that I have to get some acetone and silicone to make the repair.

The Weekend

It’s May24 this weekend.  Fishing season opens, though the water is still ice cold.  We’ll be heading to the cottage for some (hopeful) sun.  That means getting the boat from storage, spring cleaning, battery charging, pole posting, and general maintenance for the next few nights.

Interestingly, my wife is a Royal watcher and wants to stay in town to see the wedding on Saturday morning.  Ehh…I really like waking up with a cup of coffee and staring out at the water.  We’ll see how it turns out.

Would be nice to just be able to fully relax without a pile of work to do.

Wishes and Dreams

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A bit off topic this one.

Maybe it’s mid-life, maybe it’s just that I’m able to look forward a bit more.  I’ve been considering the difference between wishes and dreams, at least in terms of what’s next for me and my family.

Wishes are the types of things that are out of the ordinary, or require a substantial amount of luck to achieve.  Nobody dreams of wining the lottery, they just wish that they did.  The types of things that you do need a genie to grant.  They are not in your control.

Dreams are long term goals that require effort to achieve.  A dream job.  A dream car.  All things that are usually long term, and/or require a lot of work.  They are often times largely within your control.

A simple example is that you dream of having a retirement of relative ease.  You’d stash away parts of your pay for a long time, sound investments, and get a decent return at the end.  Not worry about bills and have some flexibility to do various things.  Alternatively, you could wish for a jet-setting retirement after winning the lottery by playing every week.

Fun stats:  Powerball in the US is around 1:300,000,000 odds of wining.  6/49 in Canada is about 1:13,000,000.  Getting hit by lightning, twice, is 1:9,000,000.

I’m already living part of the dream though.  I have a really great job/career.  Great family/kids.  Financial stability.  Pretty much every plan I put into play when I was finishing high school has worked out.  A immense amount of work & effort to get there, but I got there.

Now it’s about enjoying what I have, and planning for the next part.  And truthfully, there are 3 major things left on this.  A specific type of cottage, a set of trips to specific locations, and a good education for my kids.  The last 2 are long term and already have some pieces in play.  The former… that’s been on my mind for 20 years.

Enough that I have it etched into my mind.  I know the layout, the size, the items within, the fixtures, the sunrise… it’s quite ridiculous in fact.  For the next couple years, I’ll be building a book of ideas.  Pictures, articles, plans, estimates – enough to transfer the picture in my mind’s eye to reality.

I think I’ll use this blog, and a new page to keep track of some of them too.  I love new projects.