The week of cold weather is wrapping up. It’s been alternately busy and lazy, including yesterday. I spent the morning working on four different things, and managed to finish them all by about 1pm. Then it was time to concentrate on one project that’s longer-term, and that occupied much of my afternoon.
I’m not sure which situation I like more. It’s nice to be able to focus on a single project and plug along on it, but if it’s not something that really draws my attention, it’s easy to get bored, even when it’s paying work. On the other hand, I get downright frantic sometimes when there are too many different things going on. I think that’s part of the reason I like working for myself, though. I get the opportunity to try both styles of working and can decide which is going to work better for me at any given time.
Today looks like another mix. I’ve got some administrative stuff I have to get done before the 15th, but I also have a lunch-meeting at a client’s office to learn about some code there that I haven’t really dug into before. So there will be some scrambling, followed by focusing in on a single problem, and then I’ll probably close out the day by tackling the small things left on my to-do list from the week. I’m hoping I can avoid spending my Saturday running errands for work like I did last weekend, so I’m going to make more of an effort to wrap everything up this afternoon and into the evening if need be.
As for the weekend itself, I’m trying to leave my plans open. My TiVo has a bunch of Battlestar Galactica episodes waiting for me, and there’s some work I’ve been planning to do around here, as well as on the Better Nerds site. Both need updates, and that’s perfect weekend stuff to do, and if I leave either one half-done, that’s okay, since I’m the only one likely to notice.
- ChiliCheese.org is dedicated to preserving the Chili Cheese Burrito on Taco Bell’s menu, since many stores seem to have dropped them. Then again, their database seems incomplete and confused, since stores they list as not having CCBs do. Heck, the Taco Bell nearest to me doesn't even seem to be listed, and they not only have the CCB, they'll still sell it to you if you ask for a Chilito.
- The Dunville Distillery has been closed for about 70 years. Recently, however, a case was discovered in storage. You can buy your own bottle of this piece of Irish distilling history for only £499 (plus shipping). classicwhiskey.com [noisy] has all the info.
- Feeling morbid? Go play with The Original Tombstone Generator and make a tombstone to cheer yourself up. [scripting]
- Cory has a story of How Dotster cost me days and days of downtime. I’ve been transferring all of the domains I manage away from dotster and register, mostly because I like that Bill can manage them, and if there’s a problem, I can email him, phone, or just walk over to the office while he fixes things. The biggest hassle is transferring domains away from the old registrars, especially for .orgs. Oh well. I think I’m down to just a couple left to transfer, and then I won’t have to worry about it anymore. Customer service that works is worth quite a bit to me. [boing boing]
- The Oracle of Baseball is like The Oracle of Kevin Bacon in that it will let you connect any two baseball players by the shortest possible list of teammates. Cool.
- Microsoft’s typography group has posted a paper on The Science of Word Recognition, which says basically that we recognize words to read a word at a time, but appear to actually read individual words letter at a time (once we’ve zeroed in on the word). Interesting look at how people turn dots on a screen (or paper) into words that flow into their brains. [colby cosh]
- A reader writes:
Funny thing is, I've read Mil's site, and he has a great relationship with his girlfriend. I should be so lucky.Dave, on occasion, makes comments about his various efforts to find someone to have a relationship with. We all wish him luck, of course, but I think we’re also worried that he’ll end up in a relationship like Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About.