Setbacks, slowdowns

Took the car in for its 80Kmile intermediate service. Under $300. Except, of course, that it needed front brakes, front tires, wheel alignment, and a battery. Ouch! Well, I was told last time about the brakes and tires; I had the rear done at 70K. Should have remembered, not that it made any difference.

Spent too much of the workday working on some personal writing; it's taken up altogether too much of my time and attention the last couple of days. When I'd gotten it to what felt like a conclusion I felt drained and depressed for a while. On the other hand, I got some major insights out of it which I will share if I can ever get them sufficiently disentangled from the specific situation.

Fortunately I have the kind of job where I can sit at my desk ssh'ed in to home, put myself up for half a day's vacation, and still manage to finish up a technical report and get involved in what will probably turn out to be a patentable idea in the field of secure communication. So I ended the afternoon on a high note.

An hour's worth of together time in bed is always good [grin].

... and having concluded that nearly all of today's writing session amounted to personal therapy and possibly future reference material, I can happily get back to being a computer geek. Having a private, personal pseudo-blog hanging off one's home directory turns out to be remarkably useful, if only as a safe repository for the occasional rant, whinge, or self-indulgent personal essay.

It's easy, and I recommend it: make a locked (mode 700, for the Unix geeks. Make subdirectories called, e.g., 2008/06 or even 20078/06/19. Write. Occasionally copy drafts into LJ or your website, and move useless junk into the attic.