Done last week (20150329 Su - 0404Sa)

[mdlbear]

The perceptive reader will have noticed that as of April 1st I have stopped putting a space between the numerical date and the day of the week. This saves approximately 10ms/day, and may be the most productive thing I've done all week.

Or else not. I took Cygnus in for repairs, set up a desktop computer to replace it, got the remodeling contract signed, went to appointments with the dentist and the urologist, picked up Colleen's repaired sewing machine, built the jig for turning the maypole, fixed the Honda's bumper, paid some bills, and set up a laptop in the Rainbow Room for watching livestreams.

It is a measure of how much stuff I'm not getting done that this can still be considered lazy and unproductive. The main problem is taxes, but there are others.

0329 Su
  * up 7:15; W=209.6; Shower, laundry
  : Turns out that always showing scrollbars, rather than just while scrolling with the
    stupid Apple mouse, is something you have to configure in the preferences.  I'd ask
    what idiot thought that was a good idea, but this *is* Apple we're talking about.
    Apparently the idea that someone might want more than one keyboard or pointing device
    never occurred to them, either.
  : The MB in the white case won't boot from USB, and seems flaky in other ways.  :P
    Won't boot at all with the CD drive connected; it apparently wants a SATA hard drive.
  . track down house * sale and purchase info, real estate taxes
    I have been exceedingly careless and stupid about record-keeping.  In part this is
    because I never expected to have to sell the Starport, but mostly because I was
    careless and stupid.
  * Got Kat's form notarized at the UPS Store on 42nd.
  * panicked about the state of things on Cygnus (while looking for documents which mostly
    turned out to be in gmail rather than on disk) and did a bup backup of $HOME.
    The initial version was 12GB; final after reasonable excludes was 1.3, plus straight
    copies of Pictures and Downloads.  12G total.
  % 3:15ish another minor meltdown; brief.  Mostly I'm panicked about taxes, but there's
    a lot of other stuff that isn't getting done either.  ... and here I sit not doing it.
  * users/steve/Images still isn't deployable!
  * fill out paperwork for UNW visit Tuesday
  % 9:15 sleepy

0330 Mo
  * up 6:35; W=209.0; laundry
  * builders coming to sign contract.  Scared bear.
  & at work, got caught up in a programming challenge (from an interview question) and a
    documentation dive (Galois/Counter Mode) and didn't get a whole lot of real work done.

0331 Tu
  * up 6:45; W=210.0; laundry, dishes
  * 10am Steve - dentist (filling and crown)
  * noon.  Out in search of food, plus a dead-blow hammer at Home Depot.
    -> successfully banged the Honda's bumper back into place, though something is still
       scraping when I turn right.
  * 2:15 Steve Dr. Downey, UNW -> very short; no problems.  The nodule is still pea-sized.
  * 3:30ish take laptop in to Progressive Tech.  They'll get back to me.  Took the stupid
    Samsung monitor in, too.  They (sensibly) don't fix monitors.  It's probably junk.
  * Upgrade Trantor to Ubuntu 14.04.  Was already Debian/Ubuntu dual boot, so...
    -> broken, so erased and started over.  I'm guessing old video hardware.
    -> also broken -- nouveau suckage.  If I can get into a 2-d gnome session I'll
       probably be ok.
    -> now fully usable, though it doesn't have a full complement of packages yet.

0401We
  * up 06:35; W=208.6; laundry
  * Editing to.do on nova because it's seamless and I can.  I've gotten used to
    X-over-ssh in preference to NFS; there's a lot less to set up (except for gnome-panel,
    which I've also gotten used to), there are fewer dependencies, it boots faster, and it
    works the same on laptops and desktops.
  @ Why should atheists have to show respect for religion? f(Elizabeth Barrette)
  @ Stonekettle Station: Dear Christians: A Modest Proposal
  @ Leaving Facebook – It’s Complicated | Alan Ralph
  * humira

0402Th
  * up 5:45; W=208.4; laundry, dishes
  @ Tween + Home Depot (a customer service love story) | heidi floyd f(Ellen Eades)
  * Pay bills:  Seattle Public Utilities.  Monthly transfers to RE and savings
  * 15min:  start working on jig for turning the maypole.  End pieces marked.

0403Fr
  * up 6:15; W=209.4; laundry
  * Watching the Norwescon concerts on Fan Supported TV | Concert Window 
    -> looks like a great way to stream concerts.  They have an iOS app; unfortunately not
       Android, but I have a Mac laptop and an iSight, so...
    Now set up in the Rainbow Room with concert video on Silverlode, the Mac laptop, and
    with Starbright, the YD's old Acer, on the laptop table for ssh.
    -> had to grab my cube monitor, but it works well.  Sometimes I wonder whether I have
       too much gear, but then a situation like this comes up and it turns out I need it.
  * Curio really seems to like eating on Colleen's table.  Presently eating Meow Mix
    chicken, which he hasn't liked in a while.  I think he just likes company at mealtime.
  : livestream cut out at 10:30ish, before the last concert started.  :(

0404Sa
  * up 0535; W=210.4; Shower, laundry, ..., dishes
  : Purple, Colleen's old Dell mini, has HDMI.  (So does Starbright)  Hmm.  Unfortunately
    the TV has only one HDMI port, so a switch will be required if I want a permanent
    installation.  The advantage of Purple is that it's *small*.  And has bluetooth.
    -> unfortunately it can't seem to play audio over HDMI.  The Acer can, though.
  * Northgate to pick up Colleen's repaired sewing machine.  Got a service contract, which
    was pricier than I expected.  Still conflicted about that.
  * Lunch at Masala - not a whole lot of variety but tasty.  Got gin at Total Wine across
    the parking ot.
  : 15min surveyed G's desk.  Tight fit.
  * 5:40 turning jig completed.  Not exactly in jig time, but...  It turns.
  * buy:  Easter baskets, hooks.  Westwood Village RiteAid and QFC (where I found what
    appear to have been the last 5 dark chocolate bunnies in existence).
  : The Norwescon stream seems to be down again.  :P  The hazards of streaming via cell.
  * Using Blackroot.  Only 1GB of RAM, which is marginal, but it has a great keyboard and
    runs ssh to nova just fine.  And it has what may be the last remaining copy of my
    "work" ssh identity.  I can haz *good* keyboard!
  % 10:40 sleepy

Comments

You accomplished quite a lot

[dialecticdreamer]

The taxes are a Gordian knot. That won't go away easily.

Getting stuff done, /despite/ all of the looming pile of teetering crap which threatens to bury you in an unpleasant avalanche at any moment, /that's/ courage.

Picking up and doing what you can, even if it's just ONE THING, will keep one more thing off the pile.

Think about it this way-- you're /here/ to worry about it all, which is nothing to take for granted. (My suggestion: hug your loved ones and call it an opportunity to try again tomorrow, instead of letting your frustrations eat away time better spent.)

Re: You accomplished quite a lot

[mdlbear]

Thanks! The reason I started doing these "done" posts was, in fact, so that people could occasionally remind me of this fact, and so contradict the voices in my head.

Today has actually been quite productive, though as usual none of that helped with the taxes.

[lemon_badgeress]

I HAVE MY SCROLLBARS BACK. THANK YOU.

I haven't done my taxes either. They're not complicated like yours, but still. wtf self. I did /nothing/ this weekend.

[mdlbear]

Yay! Glad I could help.

Damned Scrollbars!

[montemplar]

That was the first thing I fixed after I got my iMac in 2012. I never really got the hang of the Magic Mouse - I'm a creature of habit, it seems. I now have a Wacom Bamboo tablet for art and most other tasks except for 3D apps and games, for which I keep a Microsoft optical mouse (with scroll-wheel button) plugged in and ready.

(Btw, just got round to creating a DW account so I can comment here. Still adjusting to life outside of Facebook's walled garden.)

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

The perceptive reader will have noticed that as of April 1st I have stopped putting a space between the numerical date and the day of the week. This saves approximately 10ms/day, and may be the most productive thing I've done all week.

I'm pretty sure that if I did it, I'd lose about 4min/day = 24,000ms/day, between trying to remember what my format is now and staring at the code to divide it mentally.

OTOH, I code a full date into four alphanumerics, today being todf.

("Wha'?")

t is the 20th letter of the alphabet.
o is the 15th letter of the alphabet.
d is the 4th letter of the alphabet.
f is the 6th letter of the alphabet.

After z come the digits 123456789; 0 comes before a. So I call it az10, pronounced "ay zee ten" (if(/UK/){s/ee/ed/};). (Damn, the font I'm seeing this in has "lowercase" digits, and zero looks almost exactly like oh!) When you've used up the alphanums for about the first third of a century, like 2000–2035, you add 12 to the months, so the last day of 2035 is t9l5, followed by t0ma. Repeat after 2071.

No, they don't sort alphabetically, but I can do it in my head with just a little effort, which is more than I can say for Julian day, either astronomer's (2457118) or programmer's (96), or Unix epoch (1428292800). And I like it. Which is what counts.

[mdlbear]

Yeah; I remember your mentioning that system earlier. Reminds me a little of the scheme a coworker and I came up with for coding locations, using base 60 with resolution of a tenth of an arc-second. (Except that we put the digits first, so it did sort.)

See https://www.google.com/patents/US8265652B2