Work Matters
I’ve been reading a book on the early history of jazz. The book’s titled, appropriately enough, Early Jazz by Gunther Schuller. It’s a fascinating study of jazz from the turn of the century through the thirties, mostly because Schuller dissects jazz musically during this time. He’ll write paragraphs of intense explanation about a particular song’s swing. Great stuff. And it’s fun because it satsifies my curiosity. I’ve always wanted to know more […]
Tuesday, December 6, 2005
Man, long day. I was kept at work late again tonight, so that I ended up working a ten-hour day. Long days like that are why I gave up programming as a full-time job. Not that I wouldn’t consider a full-time programming job in the right environment—proper pair programming, pervasive unit testing, a “WOW!” goal. Until then? Nah, I’d rather go home at five. But it was a long […]
Friday, Saturday, Sunday
OK, yeah, haven’t updated this since Thursday. But! I spent Friday moving Syllable.org to a new server (which involved hand-tuning a lot of code that didn’t expect to suddenly be in a subdirectory), and Saturday I had an Otherspace meeting, then went straight from there to Guy’s Night Out. And I spent Sunday just relaxing, which I very much needed. The Otherspace meeting went exactly as I hoped it would: we divvied up […]
Requirements, and the impact thereof
Well, I’m beat. I’ve been suffering from weird sleep patterns for the last few days; I went to bed at 9:00 on Tuesday, then on Wednesday couldn’t go to sleep until 2 a.m. I came home from work early and slept the afternoon away, and now I feel exhausted. Weird, and a bit frustrating. I’ve also spent the past few days supporting Saalon as he attempts to assemble a video for a youth group he’s working […]
Writing Right
My apologies for the scattershot nature of this entry, and the lack of an update yesterday, and a late update today. I’ve been working ten- and twelve-hour days to support a computer that can only be used after business hours. This is my last day of it, though, except for one more day next week. And it’s affected my sleep patterns in very odd ways. I got home last night and went straight to bed. Tonight, though, […]
Monday, November 28, 2005
Ha! I never described how Thanksgiving went. In a word: Perfect. All the food was delicious, nobody stressed out, we all chatted pleasantly, we went on a brisk walk around the neighborhood, and we watched two Jackie Chan films (Dragon Lord and The Medallion). We ate succulent turkey, flavorful stuffing, plump sweet potatoes, corny corn muffinsh, and thick slices of apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Couldn’t […]
Gifts for Others and Myself
Spent the afternoon Christmas shopping, it being Black Friday and all. I surprised myself: I have presents (or know exactly what I’ll be ordering online) for everyone on my list. I usually suck at Christmas presents, but this year, for some reason, I’m on the ball, and early. Now if I can just get all these presents shipped in time, which is one disadvantage of having so many online friends. While I was […]
Dare You Explore Castle Doune?
Because I increasingly believe that knowledge workers can’t afford to let their skills atrophy, I’ve been learning the Python language lately. To learn it, I started a simple project: writing a text adventure (like Zork, only much less ambitious). I just finished it and uploaded it, so now you can explore Castle Doune yousrelf. (Castle Doune is the name of the first castle seen in the movie Monty Python […]
Wow! Work
I’ve been in a sysadmin mood lately. I want our server to be a model of efficiency and automation. I want us to be able to recover instantly in case of disaster. I want to describe our setup to other people and hear them reply, “Wow.” Partly, this is because I’ve been re-reading Tom Peters’ Brand You 50 at work, a few chapters at a time. Here’s one of his suggestions (paraphrased): List all your projects […]
Return
Sorry for the long down-time. Our server died almost exactly a week ago, and we’ve had some trouble with our provider in getting it back up and running. Suffice to say that we appear to be back to normal. It’s been a nice day, really, dependig on your definition of “nice.” It’s been cold and drizzly all day, but that’s felt cozy to me. Perhaps it’s because this feels […]