Big Dan's Corner

Just about everyone who has a computer, has a morning routine aka morning blitz; That is what sites they *must* check, what they do, etc. I run through a bunch of things just to check that my servers are still up and running and nothing major has happened or is going on the forums I own or have responsibility on.

My morning routine probably isn’t all that unique I wake up, turn on my computer, start the coffee, go brush my teeth & wash my face, go back to my computer and log in, turn on a music channel on the TV then I fire up Firefox.

My homepage is iGoogle which has a Gmail preview right in the middle, right away I look to make sure there aren’t any reported posts from the forums I run/moderate on then I look to make sure my cron scripts ran and sent me an email confirmation. I open my full Gmail in a new tab and browse over my inbox. From there I open my DJ forum and search for new posts, just look over the titles to see if anything looks suspicious. Then it’s off to new posts for Discuss NY, I browse stuff that looks interesting, maybe reply on a thread or two. From DNY, I go to Web Talk Forums which is my main hangout (that I don’t own), I also moderate there but it’s a fun place I try and post on at least 1 or 2 threads a day but sometimes I just ain’t got nuttin’ to say.

After I get done with DNY and WTF I go back to my new posts search for my board and open all posts in new tabs, I read over them, reply on some then mark the forums read.

From there it’s back to iGoogle where I open Google Reader in a new tab and look at my local headlines first, then what’s new on Woot and then browse over the rest of my feeds most of its fluff so I mark all of them read.

Then, I’m done for the morning. On a good morning with no issues to attend to, emails that need an immediate reply, or security patches to install, or posts on forums that need my attention I can be done in a half hour – forty five minutes. Other mornings it can take me a good hour or two to just trudge through it all some times more.

So what’s your morning routine? My reason for bringing this up is my new exercise routine, that I started last week but am going to stick to this week. My goal is to be up and out of the house for my morning walk as fast as possible however with my wake up blitz that can be a challenge some days. I think for tomorrow, I’m just going to wake up, browse my email then have breakfast and go for my walk, save the forum browsing for after I get back from my walk as long as there’s no reported posts/server crashes to attend to.

For those of you that have a morning exercise routine, how have you changed your morning blitz to accommodate it?