Done this week (20160327Su Easter Sunday - 0402Sa)

[mdlbear]

I seem to have mostly switched to xmonad as my window manager. This is a Good Thing -- I seem to be better able to concentrate with a less-cluttered screen. (On the other hand, I'm less productive while I'm still hacking on the configuration. That may be less of a good thing. There are, unfortunately, still a few things that don't work well in it.

Meanwhile, despite being fairly productive at work, I have gotten behind on a couple of longer-term things -- namely taxes, and a presentation that I'm supposed to be giving next Friday. (It's more fun to read Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!.)

It was quite warm several days this week. That is not expected to last, but it does indicate that Spring may be on its way. Not to be confused with the Spring Framework. Which I am not happy with.

I am also starting to do yard work again, after neglecting it for almost all of last year. (Partly because depression; not clear on the rest.)

Sigh. Too many things have fallen by the wayside. I, perhaps, am one of them.

Notes & links:

0327Su Easter Sunday
  * Up 0650; W=196.2; shower, dishes, ..., laundry
  : We're not cooking rabbit today, so that part of our Easter tradition appears to be
    gone.  And no egg decorating, candy, or baskets.  Colleen will probably want to watch
    Wicker Man, though. 
  @ The Long March of Bernie’s Army (this comment) 
  : 11:30ish Ticia is curled up and purring on my desk.  Perfect villain's cat.
  * 2ish TJ's, Petco, QFC.  Parked too close to a concrete post; had a hard time backing
    out (so I could re-park someplace with more side space).
    % not clear whether I demonstrated incompetence in getting into the situation, or
      skill in getting out.  Logically both, but it didn't help my self-confidence any.
  * Finished the first hour of a 5-hour course on operations for $WORK.  Started the
    second hour.  The platform (Cornerstone.  Based on Adobe software.  Bletch.) is highly
    annoying, and as far as I know there's no way to get a written transcript to review
    later.  I do *not* learn well from video.  :P
    later:  finished the second hour as well
  * Dinner with the Sanders staffers (Kyle and Steve) who've been crashing downstairs,
    plus a woman who's apparently a friend (if not more -- I didn't ask) of Kyle.
    Great conversation about activism.  G played "Steps of St. Paul" on youtube, and we
    finished the evening with "Bigger on the Inside".  Of course.
  @ List of Open Source Conference Management Systems
    The Top 12 Free and Open Source Event Management Software - Capterra Blog

0328Mo
  * Up 6:15; ; laundry, dishes
  * Spent all day at work wrestling with build dependencies.  Ultimately successful, but
    pretty much a waste of a day

0329Tu
  * up 5:45; W=197.6
  @ Xmonad/Using xmonad in Gnome - HaskellWiki set up xmonad as a gnome session.
  * Figured out, finally, why xmonad wasn't reading its configuration file:  it had been
    started by root at some early point in my experimentation; that meant that there were
    output files that it couldn't write to.
  @ Procedures In Experimental Physics : John Strong : Internet Archive
    Procedures in Experimental Physics: John: Illustrated By Hayward, Roger Strong:
    Amazon.com - I treasure the copy I inherited from my father.  It was one of my
    favorite books from his collection.
  @ The Vaccination Problem Is The Military Problem Is The Regulation Problem | Ferrett
    Steinmetz People forget how bad things were without them, and why.
  @ 5 Common Misconceptions People Have About Furries - High Level Games f()

0330We
  * up 5:50; W=198.8; laundry
  % left leg hurts -- must have been sleeping on it wrong.  Ouch!
  @ File:Xmbindings.png - HaskellWiki
    How to configure xmonad in Arch Linux ~ Linux and Life
    Good guided tour of the main features of the author's xmonad.hs
  % 7pm - leg *still* hurting.  Actually used the cane throughout the day.

0331Th
  * up 5:50ish; W=197.8
  * Safeco payment due NOW 1-800-332-3226 payment conf# 11605086
  % left my laptop at work for the second time this week.  What's with that?
  * using xmonad on Cygnus.  WIN.  When in tabs mode, the tab works as the window's
    titlebar, just as you'd expect.  Only things missing at this point are the gnome
    keyring, network manager, and the usual dock and status bar suspects (though those
    latter two are less important.)
  % Only one person in this household does laundry or dishes.  Two if you count G'.
  % I can see how xmonad would be hard on someone who uses drag-and-drop.  I don't.
  @ MediaGoblin free, decentralized media
    publishing platform.
    MediaGoblin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  : Hmm.  nova still thinks it's domain is thestarport.org. -> fixed
  * gnome-keyring isn't all that important, because we have ssh-agent running.
    Probably not in the parent process, though.  Not clear.  It'll work for now.

0401Fr
  * up 5:50ish; W=197; dish
  @ Learning to Code Yields Diminishing Returns | Douglas Rushkoff | LinkedIn
  & Fun at work:  Beer:30, and there was a discussion of filk (that had started before I
    got there).  Z. bought a copy of CC+S!  Fun.  And played it, which was even more fun.
  : Annnnnnnnnd just like flipping a switch, it's summer.  Or at least a warm spring.
  % Rapidly getting hooked on xmonad.  going to go for Tall with tabs in the master.
    There is occasional weirdness, but the uncluttered screens are enthralling.  It seems
    easier to concentrate.  Probably just placebo effect, but I'll take it.

0402Sa
  * Up 7:15; W=196.4
  % This morning it's the right QL that's hurting.
  : Temperature took a downturn overnight, and it looks like it'll be down all week.  This
    is not actually a bad thing.
  * Out for a st/roll with C to Petco and QFC.  Mostly catfood in packages that have two
    small portions.  ("Perfect Portions" in some cases.)  We'll see which of the various
    options Ticia prefers.
  & Hose management and garden watering.  Things are in rather poor shape, but I was able
    to cobble something together that worked.
  * More Haskell book.  Fun, and fascinating, but I need to get some work and taxes done.

Comments

[montemplar]

We had high winds hit the UK beginning of the week. No damage to the house, but one of the bushes in the garden broke due to its rigidity. It was a 4-person job to cut it up into manageable bits, and took best part of 3 hours even then, due to said rigidity plus interleaved branches plus big-ass thorns. :o Was knackered for most of the afternoon.

So many things I want to bone up on for my own productivity and to scratch my coding itch. Have started learning how to automate stuff on the Mac using AppleScript, but it's hard work for me because the AppleScript way of doing things feels like grappling with an old-school text adventure game. However, now there's Javascript for OS X Automation, which might be the better option for me (as I can actually grok Javascript.)

You know, I really need to start blogging properly again. That's another thing on my to-do list, by the way. (Currently trialling OmniFocus, because Evernote just isn't quite working for me as a GTD system.)

[tagryn]

I completely sympathize re: the yardwork, as I'd let the weeding and other tasks in our garden fall to the wayside last year, for similar reasons, and now I'm having to catch up as the daily number of spoons allows.

Putting the watering/soaker hose system on an automatic timer is the only way it gets done daily here, if it had to be on my daily task list there's too many days it just wouldn't get taken care of for the plants to survive, especially in summer.