Life Retooling Life in Perpetual Beta

About & Episode Alpha

Life Retooling is my experiment into podcasting.

The idea for the podcast is this:  There are stories of the big jumps people make in life - quitting their job to pursue their life dream, uprooting their family to start over in a new city, leaving everything they know to begin their life anew.  There aren't that many stories of what small things people do to improve their lives.

I have made some rather large jumps in my own life.  I left school early to start working full time.  I've moved my family from one coast to another, only to come back to the previous coast in a new city.  It's been exciting, but upon reflection, I haven't advanced my life much further than my first jump.  I am still a socially awkward tech support geek.

It's time for me to go to the next stage.  However, instead of taking another huge jump, and risk major family upheaval, I'm going to make small steps.

Life Retooling will initially be my retelling of what small tweaks or hacks I have made in my life to ultimately become who I want to be.

Who I am:

• Mid-30s Geek
• Father of a smart, quick, spirited son
• Husband to a beautiful and creative writer
• The only Geek in the house  (The cats might be as well, but they don't talk much)

Who do I want to be:

• Mid-20s Geek
• PHP web developing guru
• Able to carry on a conversation for more than 30 seconds
• 50lbs lighter

I'm going to split the podcasts into the following segments:

• Knowledge Base: Anything I have learned, news articles, code snippets, classes I have taken.
• GUI Updates: Fitness and health are covered in this segment.  My battle to get rid of the extra baggage that I have been carrying around since college.
• Environmental Variables: No system is an island.  There are outside influences that will help the well being of a system, as well as others that will threaten to destroy all you have achieved.
• Bug Reports: I've been told that feedback is the lifeblood of a podcaster, and any beta program will have bugs.  That is what this segment is for.
• System Downtime: All systems require a respite.  System Downtime is where I will talk about television, movies, books -- all the fun stuff that is used to fill the time when your system needs a reboot.

I hope that you will enjoy this podcast.  Please leave comments for me on the blog or email me at jim at liferetooling dot com. You can also call the voicemail line at (617) 517-4897.

I would also love to hear about any life retooling you have done.

Keep working toward the next beta release.

-Jim