journal for 2004-01-27

doing nothing

	I should write about the situation at work and my personal projects'
	stagnation and my depression about my habits. I'll do that tomorrow. Now
	I'm going to bed.

That was me, writing on the 21st. I did not even get around to writing about the fact that I’m not doing any writing. I am now five days late. This is getting freaking ridiculous. I am not a useless person. I am capable of performing work that is not worthless. I just need to perform it!

I’m trying to figure out how to force myself to get things done. I am once again reminded of my fortune cookie. “Use recurring patterns to design your life.”

I’m also trying to use iCal to store at /least/ a To Do list… but I think something more custom would be better, especially if I could make it tie in with my todo’s in my individual projects. Of course, I must respect the rule: keep it simple, shithead.

I’m hoping that I can get myself organized enough that making progress is a simple fact of life rather than something I have to actively work at. I think that’s how I was able to do well at losing weight.

And speaking of that, my weight is really not getting any better lately. I’ve actually been backsliding a bit, although I’m making a real commitment to get it at least back down to 190 (or, better 189; those tens places are psychologically important). I’m going back, strictly, to power bars and water at work. No more pizza four days a week and no more liters of diet soda. Water is better, and tastes better, and is cheaper. And I can still go be social when I want to.

But, jeez, today I stayed in for lunch, and as always I was amazed at how much I can get done in an hour. I spent five mintues eating and then fifty-five working. Lunch is fine for an escape, but I don’t want to feel like I need to escape every day. It isn’t productive.

Work is doomy, lately. There are new rumors of layoffs, and I think everyone feels pretty certain about these. Often the rumors are dimissed by many, but not these. I’m not forming any expectations. I’m fairly confident in my future for the time being, so I’m not worried. It’ll be a surprise, when whatever happens happens, and I’ll try to view it as a wonderful little twist of fate. Blah.

On the upside, at work, I’ve been overhauling some bits of code to use CGI::Application and Template Toolkit. It’s freakin’ great. I was led to really look at TT through my experimentations with Bryar. I’ve gotten Bryar mostly acting like this journal, but I want to play more before I decide whether to move over. Anyway, it uses TT to render pages, and I wanted to muck about. Then I decided that TT was cool and I should use it at work. And then I figured that as long as I was rewriting some things, I should try using CGI::Applications, which I’d heard praised several times. So, I did.

At first, I was wondering what the real benefit would be. Then it became pretty clear that if nothing else, it would be much easier to deploy project updates by building it around CGI::Application. Of course, there are more benefits, but that one was enough for me.

Well, that’s enough of this for me. I’m going to go to bed. I am loath to weigh myself, but I shall! And then I’ll sleep.

Written on January 27, 2004