Chris Schmidt's Journal

Had a somewhat shitty weekend. Most of it was work related; due to a deadline decided Friday, we had to change priorities to get a release out by the end of the day today. This wasn't a huge deal for me, since I finished most of my chunks a week or so ago... But integration time always finds new bugs, and this was no exception, so i was sort of "on call" all weekend. So not only do i not get credit for working all weekend, i had to work all weekend anyway. Ah, software development.

On the plus side, i made done for the family several times this weekend successfully, including breakfast in bed for Jess on mother's day. I also had my first breakfast bacon at home in a long time. And man oh man was it tasty. I actually got to a point when i couldn't eat any more bacon: i made about a half pound, and no one else wanted more than a piece or two, so I ate what I figure was probably about a third of a pound on my own.

Did some API development for openstreetmap yesterday afternoon, as well as watching an hour of Casino Royale, which Jess bought me as a gift, while the kids were off at a playdate. We traded an hour and a half of peace and quiet with a parent down the street, which worked out well.

Also worked a fair bit on the yard this weekend, though Jess did a lot more than I did, and the front is starting to look reasonable, though I need to get some of the remains out of the yard; still have a big pile of branches to dispose of at the moment.

I guess, looking back, the weekend was rather productive, but it still hasn't left me in a cheerful mood, so i don't know if that's a win or loss.

Ah well. Back to life.

Awesome things: cities of the underworld series on the history channel. Totally great episode this week on "secret soviet bases". Watched it last night with kristan, after watching the office.

Full hour season finale of the office next week! I'm excited about that.

Yes, i'm a tv whore these days. Monday is cities of the underworld, thursday is office, and saturday is doctor who (torrented an hour or so after the show ends).

Going out to San Francisco next weekend for wherecamp. May have mentioned this already, can't remember. That should be fun. Still trying to decide what I should do on Friday in San Francisco.

Took a nap in Aerin's sitting room yesterday while waiting to give her a ride over to school for a final presentation. It's nice to be away from the stressors of home sometimes, lets me relax a bit easier without having to think "Oh, I should be cleaning." and so on.

My headphones finally gave up the ghost yesterday at work. Need to see if i can find the other pair that had been floating around, but i haven't seen them in more than a week.

Also, having juicy secrets is hard. I don't have many of them, so this obvious fact has been somewhat unknown to me until relatively recently. I'm sure i've had this problem in the past, but I'm typically so open that secrets are not really part of my life. At least, not juicy ones ;)

Yet another drive time entry written from my phone.

Passed out early last night, around 8.30, i think. Woke up for a couple hours around 1, back to sleep around 3.30, but apparently turned my alarm off this morning at 6.30. Girls were both late to school, but thats life, really.

Huh. There's a tractor trailer student driver in harvard square. As much as i realize the need to practice in the confines of a city, that seems like asking for trouble.

Some people drink pepsi, some rel drink coke. The wacky morning dj says democracy's a joke.

Towing day for part of my drive back from school. I feel like it's got to be possible to design a street cleaning system that doesn't result in dozens of cars getting towed every day in Cambridge. Perhaps a community effort: stickers that say "call this number if you see my car about to be towed", for warning/communication to people who are about to be towed...

Anyway. Done driving now. Time to start my day.

The first music video i ever saw on pop up video was orgy's blue monday. I had no idea what the show was at the time, and i was confused on why the music video for this song -- not exactly a chipper sounding song by any stretch of the imagination -- had all these silly bubbles over the top of it.

Yeah, i'm not so bright.

I wonder if I should consider trying to expand my friends list. One thing I've found is that in general, a lot of the people that I interact with through LiveJournal are the people who I end up keeping in contact with. In the past couple years, though, I've essentially kept my friends list flat, in terms of number of friends, despite enjoying the company of many LiveJournal using friends in person.

An example in each case: Jana, aka volantwish, who 4-5 years ago, I never would have expected to meet in person. Despite only talking to her occasionally, we've kept in contact, and she spent most of the weekend at our place hanging out and working on homework. Were it not for friending her on Livejournal, that would likely never have happened.

On the other hand, there is lulabellefp, who I have met a couple times, but don't sde regularly, and (were it not for jess keeping in touch) would not ever hear anything about. And that would be sad, since the few times I've spent time with her, it has been enjoyable.

Perhaps it's time for me to change my behavior with regard to adding people to my friends list. I'm not even entirely sure why I haven't been, but I think it's resulting in fewer personal connections to the people that I enjoy interacting with than I should have.

Weather outside today! Incredible. I see clouds to the south and north, but here in cambridge, it's just awesome.

Interesting, a volleyball team is practicing in the outdoor park next to my walk home. I don't think i can remember seeing outdoor volleyball practice other than on the beach.

I love the town where i live. I really need to get out and take pictures at some point soon. Trees are blooming all throughout cambridgeport, and it's damn pretty.
Also, downloaded the new nin album from their website today: CC licensed, and released directly by the band/trent. I like it (though less than some of their older stuff), but i wonder where the money is in that... Radio stations? Touring? And don't most artists sell their souls to record companies early on? Why can nin release cc licensed music?

The houses in my neighborhood are so charmingly eclectic. One day, when i win the lottery, i want to own a big eclectic house in this area or another like it.

In the same vein as my 5 6 awesome things list: An additional awesome thing is:

Having finally cleaned up my mp3 collection so that I have nicely sorted music that is all on my local computer. It's so nice to have nice music to listen to.

Actually, even more awesome: having headphones to listen to music at work. Lets me ignore all the people who try to ask me questions all the time ;)

Via rho:

5 awesome things, in no particular order:

• Doctor Who. (And my source of it, bitt.tv, which usually has a torrent up within an hour of the show being over.) I totally love this show. I've recently rewatched all of Seasons 1 and 2, and I'm keeping up with Season 4. I simply love it. I love the Doctor's knowledge: I love his immediate understanding of most things alien. (In fact, my biggest problem with Torchwood is Jack's total lack of knowledge about alien artifacts: from the 'Risen Mitten' to the various monsters they defeat that he has no idea about.) I really just love Doctor Who.
• French Underwear. Jess (and, due to peer pressure, a number of her friends) have recently taken to shopping at Intimacy for underwear. Bad for the pocketbook, good for the self esteem -- Jess has been much happier with her self image, which has all sorts of positive side effects, and it's just damn pretty.
• Django. I love hacking on Django apps. It's just so satisfying. Easy to develop, quick return on investment, etc. My current Django project at work had kind of gotten me down, because it's not particularly Django friendly, but a few quick apps I've hacked out recently have really reminded me of all the parts I like.
• Daria. Been downloading seasons of that. Really like it.
• Warm days with drizzly rain. I love summertime, and one of the things that reminds me most of summer is warm drizzly days.
• Jess. She's lovely, and with the recent uptick in mood and health, it's been a couple of weeks that are quite wonderful.

Really, life in general is preetty okay at the moment. And I like that.

I need to write more, though I've been struggling to come up with what to write about: my day to day life is pretty static, with relatively few exceptions, so writing 'Same old, same old' seems dull.

But hey! An entry. hooray!

I like people. I might even be said, in general, to be a people person.

I also like Dr. Who. Though I have come to agree with pie_is_good that the Aliens of London and the sequel are among my most disliked episodes.

New OpenLayers Release, wheee. (6 months in the making.)

Jess is feeling better this morning, having had a root canal yesterday to fix a tooth that was in bad shape. No clue how we're going to cover the multiple thousand dollars of dental cost, but it is good to have her say that her mouth feels better than it has in weeks despite only having one of the two problem teeth taken care of. Such a shame that dental health coverage is in such a sad state: have heard stories of people having only the option of paying more for premiums than their annual maximum coverage. And i thought normal health insurance was bad!

Also, continuing to enjoy an upswing in Jess's overall mood, the duration of which is longer than any in my memory, the entire time we've been together. This is a major good thing, and i hope that it continues long term. It's an excellent example of an upward spiral: getting things taken care of results in more optimism, results in more ability to get things done, results in more optimism, etc. I have seen short bursts of this over the years, but never one so prolonged or effective in the entire time that Jess and i have been together.

Did a software release yesterday, (OpenLayers) have a couple ideas for other projects to ponder in my 'free time' in the short term. Also looking to probably cast about for some contract work related to my mapping work, if anyone is aware of anything i could help out with.

IRS is finally paid off from both 2005 and 2006, (thanks to 2007 return)which is probably my biggest mental relief in my life right now. Yes, i'm still broke, but I don't owe the government any more money, which is a pretty great feeling. Having uncle sam come after you is not a very happy feeling.

I really enjoy having the N95, especially with the latest firmware. Right now, making a gps recording, listening to mp3s through the jetta tape adapter, writing this entry and getting email updates from work. Can your phone do that? Didn't think so. :)

Okay, passing Harvard Square now, which means traffic will move at more than 2 car lengths per minute. Time to drive.

Tell me something joyful or different that you're doing today, or in the near future.

For example, today I'm going to be hanging out and doing a bug squash at work til late. I like things like this, despite it being work, because the people at work are some of the most interesting and entertaining technical people i've had the pleasure of meeting.

This weekend, I'm going to be buying more fish, I hope: more tetras, and a second dwarf frog to keep our current one company.

It's the little joys that make life special, and i want to know what everyone else is experiencing small joys over.

Is today some kind of national fishnet day or something? Seen 3 chicks wearing fishnets in a 10 minute drive.

Have copied mp3s to n95. Maybe not as fancy as an ipod, but has several hours of favorite mp3s. Quite nice for the driving of children to school.

Made it back to boston safely. I wonder why it is that they say airplanes taxi... Isn't that what the cab is for?

In Illinois. Tired. Got in Thursday. Snowed Friday morning; blizzard. Had Pie at Baker's Square.

Get back Monday night. Looking forward to being home, but enjoying family while we're here.

It's my biiiirthday
Happy Birthday to me!

I'm 24 now. I can officially do... absolutely nothing I couldn't do before :)

Presents!

Jess and her mom went out and got me presents from the Globe Corner Bookstore (my birthday is on Wednesday: I'll be 24). Specifically, I got:

• Mapping Boston, which is gigantic and heavy and beautiful.
• A Wonder Globe, which is small and spinny and will go on my desk at work</a>
• A National Geo map of Germany, for hanging on the walls at work

Then, nikolasko gave me a copy of Cartomancy that he picked up in Harvard Square today, which is also awesome.

I also spent a couple hours adding things to my sorely outdated Amazon Wishlist, which I've neglected for ages: bkdelong pointed out that the address on it was still *Manchester*, which was obviously wrong, so now I have an updated Amazon Wishlist for the next time someone asks me for gift ideas.

It's raining. I like the rain.

The whole time change thing has been really messing me up: I've been staying up an hour later than usual, because it gets dark later, so I don't realize how late it is.

I also like being awake before everyone else.

I hate that I have 100 more ideas than I will ever get a chance to do anything with.

I hate that I wake up at 5:30 in the morning with an idea for something I want to do, and by 6 I've had a totally different idea, and by the time I'm awake enough to do anything about any of them, other people are up and needing my attention.

Sigh.

Oh well. I'm watching Gone in 60 Seconds now. Which apparently everyone in the world thinks is a crappy movie, except me.

Apparently "signature" means "prefix of subject" in lj2me land. Ah well. Kinda nifty that it can include device type, in my opinion.

Hm, the text box for entry on this mobile client is kind of weird and small. Maybe it will work. Ah, it automatically gets bigger.

I've been wanting to post to lj during my walks to/from work, and posting by text message just isn't enough. Using j2me now.

Device: NokiaN95/20.0.015

I think I'm going to start waking up early in the morning (or rather, getting out of bed early), and spending a half hour jogging to wake up. I think physical activity helps put me in a more awake mood, and therefore a better mood.

(LiveJournal today turned off the ability to create a Basic Account, the limited-feature, no-ads account that anyone was, until today, able to sign up for. Brad Fitzpatrick commented, speaking as an Advisory Board member, on how he advised against this, but apparently his advice wasn't taken into account.)

A big part of my life has been related to LiveJournal: The people I know best now, spend the most of my time with, and consider my closest friends were met on this site. I met my wife as a result of LiveJournal, and almost every significant long-term friendship I hold at this point is at least tangentially related to LiveJournal.

I'm disappointed in LiveJournal's choice to remove the option to have a "Basic" account with no advertising.

Three years ago, I would have been furious. Now, as a permanent account holder, I'm for the most part not directly affected. (There are some exceptions: that hideous popup-in-window link shit I sometimes bump into when reading others journals bugs the crap out of me though.) In addition, although my life is still largely attached to LiveJournal, it's much less so: my relationships now take place much more in my local community.

I'm sure that people will continue to find new places to build relationships like the ones I built thorugh LiveJournal, but it's disappointing to see that what used to be a viable communication forum without commercialism now forces commercialism down all users throats: either ads or money. Nothing in life is free. Under that kind of situation, I think it may be harder, going forward, to establish meaningful relationships between users. Perhaps this is a bit overly dramatic, but reading about someone's heartbreak, in a friends only entry, and having some ad for who-knows-what staring me in the face, seems to get rid of some of the personal nature that has always made LiveJournal home for me.

I don't see any real reason for me to leave: at this point, I'm reasonably settled in life, and the relationships I'm likely to build going forward are far more likely to be professional ones built via services like LinkedIn than personal ones built via sites like LiveJournal. I would encourage younger users to go out and find someplace new to build their relationships going forward. This doesn't mean Facebook: Facebook has never been about building relationships. Maintaining them, possibly. Capitalizing based on them, absolutely, but not building them. A small, close-knit community is the ideal way to make friends: you can make that anywhere, but it's always easier to be close-knit without the threat of ever-increasing commercialism taking a role in your decision making process. It's just a shame that those communities can't really be built anymore on LiveJournal.

At one point, the LiveJournal social contract talked about never having ads on the website. Those days are long gone, and have been for a while. However, I'm surprised they went this far, and, as I said, somewhat disappointed. I am, however, thankful that LiveJournal has helped me build the relationships I have, and I look forward to continuing to maintain those relationships through LiveJournal (at least in part).

Life is generally good. Although my recent entry about life still applies, I'm slightly more upbeat about things.

Work has been better. I've been concentrating on the server side, where my skills are a better fit, and concentrating on building good APIs so that the specific UI matters less: hopefully this will allow us to build custom UIs against our current project more easily in the future, by not concentrating all our API design around a single client.

Going to Illinois next week to see family for Easter. Also, apparently I turn 24 a week from today. I just realized this.

Kristan's here. We're going to watch 24. Starting Season 5 now...

Had a fun party-thing last night. roy is in town, so first jennifer and david_grana came over, and took him, Jess, myself, and acerbic over to Soul Fire BBQ in Allston for dinner. I haven't had 'authentic' BBQ... well, ever as far as I know, so that was a new experience for me.

We dropped off Jen and Dave at their house on the way back, and came back to Allston St., where ursamajor and hyounpark came by. We put on Katamari, and pulled out alcohol, and essentially sat around for hours just hanging out... and for some of us, getting far too drunk. Me, for example, who is still leftover drunk from last night. (But drinking water!)

I haven't had an opportunity to spend a lot of time around friends for a while, so this was good.

Today, I really want to go get more fishies for our fish tank.

VoicePost 311K 1:46

(no transcription available)

We've had a fish tank for about 6 months. In that time, I'd tried to replace the charcoal insert for our existing filter several times. Each time, it seemed like the tank got slightly better for a while, but the overall visibility was low, water was very green, and the sides of the tank were getting scummy.

A couple weeks ago we bought a brand new filter,, with a very different filtration system. This weekend, I noticed that one of the fish was looking pretty ill: top fin was somewhat cut up looking, and he was moving very slowly. I took this as the motivator to get the new filter installed.

... Wow.

I had realized that things were bad, but not *how* bad: essentially, this was like moving from a swamp to a clear brook. The fish seem more active, and in general, the tank just *looks* healthier.

So hooray! Now I just need to make time to go get more fishies.

I'm back from my vaccation (duh), but my brain is still there, and I've been up all night, and all I really want to do is spend the next couple days curled up in a corner reading a book.

Catamaran sail to Rum Point on Friday was great, though Jess got a bit too much sun. Rode a waverunner for the first time ever: very cool. Came back and did an incredible night dive: got to see gigantic parrot fish, sleeping sea turtle, over a WWII era shipwreck (Wreck of the Oro Verde). Drank too much (good) wine on Friday night after diving at Casa Havana, a great dinner place here.

Ducked out on diving Saturday morning. Slept in, rented a Jeep with Joe + Caitlin, went into Georgetown, then up to Boatswain's Beach + Turtle Farm. *Thousands* of sea turtles: really ridiculous. Great fun, great people.

MetaCarta farewell dinner: great food, good music (group was called "After Dark"), and then one short of bad tequila (Sosa) and two shots of good tequila (Patron Platinum) plus two strawberry daiquiris. (I was a bit tipsy by that point, in case one couldn't guess.)

While driving, did a fair amount of mapping: checking street names, logging GPS traces, etc. so I can enter it all into OSM.

Car taking us to the airport at 11:30; 1.5 hours left sitting in our gorgeous hotel on the Cayman Islands.

Tuesday Afternoon: Arrive. Figure out why ATM card isn't working. Get some cash. Swim in the ocean. Drink at the in-pool bar.
Tuesday Evening: Dinner with MetaCarta people. Moonlight swim with Jess.
Tuesday Night: Collapse. Exhausted.

Wednesday Morning: Hotel SCUBA refresher.
Wednesday Afternoon: Refresher dive
Wednesday Evening: MetaCarta Dinner at posh-est restaurant on the island, on a gorgeous deck, under the Lunar Eclipse. Had to sit away from Jess :( but talked to CEO's wife all night.

Thursday Morning: Boat trip across North Sound, Scuba at No-Name, Chinese Wall dive sites above the Cayman Trough (maximum depth 25,000 feet! Though ~6000 near us). Saw many lobster, barracuda, a few eels.
Thursday afternoon: Relax on the beach. Swim in the ocean, sit out in the sun, get a mild sunburn.
Thursday evening: Cocktail hour at CEO's (giant) suite, looking out over the beach from his 3rd floor deck at the sunset.
Thursday night: Collapse into bed, order room service.

Still coming:
Friday: Catamaran trip to stingray city and Rum Point.
Saturday: Diving one last time, probably spend the afternoon in Georgetown.
Sunday: fly back to the states. Home around 9.

Swam in ocean for first time in many years; forgot water is salty. Had some booze, hung out at pool car. Enjoying sitting out on 7 mile beach.

Landed in atlanta with practically no chance of making flight, but a last minute gate change got us to our flight. Now onboard cayman bound flight delta935.

I have a 5:45AM flight to Grand Cayman Island, where I will be until Sunday. I'll be scuba diving, and relaxing on the beach, and working on my OpenStreetMap map of Grand Cayman.

It's also going to be my first EeePC-only trip, but I think it's going to be okay.

Plane finally close to taking off (i hope), one hour, 45 minutes delayed. Looking forward to being home.

3.20. Flight at 4pm, "on time". 3.26. Flight at 4pm delayed to 5.40. The plane is getting here at 4.07. 1, why such a long wait? 2, why not tell us earlier?

Apparently i don't get in until 8. Bad memory on my part. Nik: i'll call you after i get to hotel, but i may just stay in after all. Leaving boston now...

I'm in DC on Wednesday morning for a meeting: Flying in tonight, arriving around 6, staying at the Holiday Inn in Reston. If there's anyone who I should be stopping over and having a beer with tonight, let me know: at the moment, my plan is just to wander around DC monuments for a couple hours tomorrow night, since I Haven't been able to find anyone I should be meeting. (I'm booked until my plane leaves on Wednesday; the trip is not about seeing DC, just a quick hop down for work.)

Went to sleep late, woke up early, enjoying a lazy morning in new york

I leave Cambridge this afternoon for NYC at 1pm. I'll be arriving later tonight, doing dinner with some people, and then probably hacking more. I'll be working (probably close to non-stop) until Friday afternoon, and then I'll be free from late Friday afternoon until Saturday around noontime, when I plan to leave. (Haven't decided exactly when yet, but I want to get back to Jess, who can't make it down.)

I'll be staying in lower Manhattan.

(I meant to post this this morning, but failed; I'm currently on a wifi-enabled bus heading towards NYC.)

My new laptop has an SD slot, and my phone has a micro-SD card with adapter. This means that I can copy music to my phone trivially. In the past, i had problems trying to mount my phone as a USB mass media, but that's also gone away: I think the problem was Shozu, which was installed on the memory card, and starts as a 'service', so I couldn't exit it, and the phone wouldn't unmount the memory card while it was running.

But! This means that I have a music playery thing, which I haven't had since my ipod disappeared on the flight to FOSS4G. (I'm still really disappointed by that.)

So, They Might Be Giants it is on the walk to work this morning.

Voted this morning. Found out my address change info never went through, so I had to go back to Erie St. to vote, but that's cool. Done now. This post is Very Good, and I'm generally in agreement with almost all of it. I think this explains why if it comes down to a Clinton-McCain vote, I might well go McCain. (I voted Democratic this morning, though.)

Today's hackery: taking my Nokia N95 and using the built in accelerometer to build a little game where you roll a ball around on the screen.

The ball game was mostly done by Nokia in the default S60 Python distribution: I just added the acceleration stuff. Still, Julie likes it, so there's something to be said for it.



(Code available at http://crschmidt.net/symbian/.)

EeePC has really nice little speakers. It appears as if I'm going to have the office to myself for most of the day today, so I'm using it to play music from last.fm (which I've never used before). It's quite nice to have a little laptop with all the 'non-work' things on it, like IRC, friends page, music, so that it doesn't distract quite so much from working.

Another benefit of the eee that I hadn't considered explicitly early on is that it's *quiet*. When I turn my computer on first thing in the morning, I'm usually prepared to flinch at the noise it makes -- I didn't actually realize this until this morning, when I flinched, and the noise never came.

The Macbook doesn't mind making noise. The optical drive 'is there a disk in me?' check is the most annoying noise, the startup 'boing' a close second -- and neither easy to 'mute', as far as I'm aware. (The latter won't happen if the sound is off on the laptop when it gets shut down, but that doesn't really count in my mind.)

It was so nice to turn the computer on this morning and hear... nothing.

The product of alcohol combined with a cute little laptop:



(Drawn with 'kolourpaint' on the eee by Mako/Mika at Grendel's tonight.)

(I still love the eee.)

Went out to Johnny D's this morning for breakfast with mako/mika/jgay/others. Showed off the new toy (EeePC), and talked about OpenStreetMap a bit. Found that the most recent cool OSM demo (here) is not nearly as effective on the Eee as it is on a desktop ;) (Screen is too small, so you can't show the full image at the same time.) Still, an effective display.

Also talked about licensing restrictions on Geodata, differences between US + UK (in a phrase: Database Protection), some of the status of OSM, how 'free' the editors are, etc.

Also, got to listen to the jazzy dude playing pop hits in Jazzy form.

Overall, a nice start to my weekend.

it's chilly out this morning. i can tell because i'm walking outside as i type this.

okay, so perhas walking and typing isn't the smartest move... for me or the computer. do computers break down when they get too cold? i guess not having a hard drive can help with this a little, though there are still other moving parts to consider somewhere, i'm sure. fan? probably not in this weather, i suppose...

anyway, still infatuated with new toy. no shock there.

Got an EeePC. It's cute, it's small, and I like the heck out of it. The keyboard is big enough to type on (for my little fingers, at least), though I wouldn't want to actually work on it. It is super-light, and I really like that: I think having an ultraportable around is probably something I'm not going to be able to give up, following this.

I'm planning to stick to the default Xandros Linux install, and probably going to stick to 'easy mode' for the most part. Since I seldom actually use the desktop, it doesn't matter much to me, and the big button-style selection is cute and useful.

I'm sleepy, but don't really want to go to sleep. I feel like I should be doing cool things with my shiny new toy, but it's hard to remember that there's not that much 'new' about it: it's just a Debian-ish Linux machine, so there's nothing I can do now that I couldn't do before.

I did configure the desktop to have a Logjam icon for posting to LiveJournal; don't know if that will affect how often I use it, but it can't hurt.

I don't really have anything thought provoking or meaningful to say anymore. I'm not sure why this is -- or perhaps I never did, and I've only now realized the extent to which that was true. I just read Jess's entry, and I realized how much I liked it... and I wanted to sit down and write something similar, but realized that I don't really have anything similar to write about.

I don't have the eloquence for prose: even my technical documentation is significantly lacking in prose. My life has so many interesting things, but when I sit down to write about them, I just block on them, and then I eventually give up and move on.

I try to solve some of these things with new tools: changing my setup for typing, or note taking, getting new toys and technologies in an attempt to diversify the places and times when I actually sit down and write things, but although they sometimes change the way I work for a short while, they don't work for very long. I expect it will continue to be that way, despite my best efforts to change: the problem isn't technology, it's with my head, and no technology can change that.

I do write emails well. I enjoy writing a long response to a post asking about core principles of software I've written, or explaining why something is the way it is as the result of technical limitations. (In recent memory, I remember writing something that felt prose-ish in response to a "How does OpenLayers work? I thought AJAX was limited by the same origin policy?" type question.) But they're always technical: when it comes to my personal life, I can't pull anything like that together.

Distraction is part of it. I'm easily distracted. I haven't been while writing this one, and I think it shows: Instead, I've just been sitting in the living room, looking out the bay window in our dining room.It seems that if II look at the computer while I type, I find out that there are so many other things I feel like I need to be doing that I can't get any further. Yesterday, I was trying to blog a meeting announcement for OpenLayers 2.6 release discussion, and in the process, I paused to write an Agenda, then paused to rearrange the tickets to match the agenda, then went and changed the topic on the IRC channel, and in the process answered some questions on the IRC channel that I hadn't seen yet... the list goes on. It's so easy to be distracted by the little things related to what I'm thinking about that I never get anywhere.

I wonder if I changed away from a tabbed browser, if it would change. I think for a little while, it changed to be in evilwm... I really could hide *everything* but what I was working on. The problem is that this, like all technological solutions, was really only temporary: the problem is that I *still* end up letting myself get distracted while working.

If I didn't have such terribly slow handwriting, paper journaling might do it. However, I find writing down anything with a pen and paper to be so tedious (and somewhat painful after any length of time) that I don't think that's a solution either.

I think what it comes down to is the fact that I'm not really a particularly eloquent writer. My writing is best when it's directed, and technical: fiction of any sort, or even creative writing which isn't fiction, just doesn't work well. I'm not sure what to do about that, but I do wish I could change it. There's so much in my life that I wish that I could record, not the lease because my memory is so terrible that I probably won't remember it in another six months. When I sit down to write, I just always feel like it's a chore; I feel 'stuck', like I have to fight my own brain to do it.

I tried writing short anecdotes -- these are no better, because they don't make me happy. I want to tell the real story. "Julie came home the other day and told me all about black holes" just doesn't cut it. I have to explain why the *way* in which she explained it was unusual: the way she brought black holes up without any prompting, the way that she came up, out of the blue, gave a two paragraph description about how many there are, and what they would do if you got near to them, and that was it. But it's not something I could write at the time, and now I've forgotten half of it.

It's just so frustrating to have these things disappear -- probably forever. The little things are what make us human, and I can't write them down, and I won't be able to remember them. And it makes me sad.

T9 puts svn before sun on my phone. I think this is a sign i'm a geek.

So, earlier today the Jetta broke down. Jess took it to the shop and got a rental, blah blah blah.

Jana came over (yay jana) and chilled out for a while. I gave her a ride to sa meeting at 7:30, with a promise from her she would be back so I could sit over her shoulder and help her get started on her graphics project.

She did, and around midnight, when I was ready to take her home, I started looking for the key.

And looking for it.

And looking for it.

After spending 30 minutes and not finding it, I finally gave up, walked her back over to Harvard, and came back here.

And looked.

And Looked.

And finally found it...

... In Jess's tote bag, right where I'd gotten it from in the first place.

Yes, I spent 3 hours in the middle of the night slowly panicing over a lost rental car key -- to the point that I tried to call the shop to see if I could get a spare (no answer) -- only to find out that I'd already put the key away.

And now I'm tired, and cranky, and have gotten almost nothing of what I wanted to tonight done. There is one exception to this: we got SDLRoads movedd off sourceforge and onto Google Code -- which means it is in SVN now, and that we have a sane set of tools for managing the project.

Regardless of anything else that went wrong this evening, at least I was able to chat up some old friends and move a long-practically dead project out of death and into a spot where it's usable again.

Didn't get to sleep until 2:30ish. Quite exhausted. Don't want to interact with children in order to prepare them for school. "Tough Shit", I know, but that doesn't preclude me from whining.

I did play with evilwm some more -- specifically, compiling it and setting it up in X on the mac. Unfortunately, the combination of three button emulation with modifier keys to drag things around and resize them does not work so well. I'm not actually sure of the issue, but I did hack the code to report mouse events, and found that that evilwm is never getting the 'middle click' event when it can be interpreted as a paste event. (So for xclock, it is getting through, but for xedit, where it can be interpreted as a paste, it's not.)

This could well be some kind of X configuration thing, or something else: Certainly OS X does not create the cleanest X config in the world. But I also don't have a lot of goal of futzing with X.

Oh, and booting to Ubuntu on the Macbook failed -- never even got past the loading, the progress meter just froze. I let it sit for 20 minutes, then gave up. I'm hopeful that I can eventually get most of what I need out of OS X -- possibly I'll still need to upgrade to Leopard to get some of it, since in Leopard, X is X.org instead of X.

Went roller skating with the girls. Alicia did great, Julie was... not so great. She loved walking around in skates on the carpet, of course, but the second I took her into an area of actual skating, she was terrified.

Unfortunately, the only carpeted area at Roller World is in the seating and connections to the actual rink, so anywhere she could be, she was in the way -- and since she was unable to move without pushing herself along the wall, she was constantly bumping into people by not looking where she was going.

Eventually, I convinced her that she should go with me on the little rink that they had for people learning to skate. (Probably 10ft x 50ft, with ~5-10 kids on it with an adult each.) She wasn't really convinced, but I wanted her to try out actually rolling. She did fine, with nary a slip, and then went back to rolling on the carpet.

Now, those of you who have met me know that I like to move. I can't leave Julie alone for more than 2 minutes at a time without her talking to everyone around her, so this essentially led to me feeling uncomfortable leaving her behind and skating for myself. After another 30 minutes of this, I convinced her to take another trip round the little rink.

She was doing fine again, but threw a tantrum halfway around, screaming bloody murder. By this time, I'm tired of sitting around and letting her have her way, so I take her back, sit her down, take off her skates, and tell her that we're sitting there until Alicia is done.

After fuming for about 10 minutes, I realize how stupid this is: the fact that the kid is scared of roller skating is not really her fault, especially since she was willing to give it a try, and was still scared (regardless of how irrational it was). I put her shoes back on, returned her skates, and had her sit, while I went out and skated. I still spent a lot of time sitting next to her as she interacted with various people around her, but I got in 20-30 minutes of skating off and on, and was pretty happy.

At the end, Julie sat next to a goth guy (died black hair, fingernail polish and the like) who took the worn wheels off his skates and put new ones on. She had fun stacking the wheels in all kinds of different orders, and arranging them by color (old were black, new were purple) and the kid (and his girlfriend) seemed reasonably happy to have her playing with the wheels, so I got a solid ten minutes of skating in.

Ali had a ton of fun, Julie did okay other than the actual skating part. I probably will take Ali again, and leave Julie behind.

We stopped at Friendly's for dinner. I had Mozeralla Sticks -- they were as good as ever. The girls got ice cream, and I had their cookies and cream: I had convinced myself the 'cookies' must be Oreos, but when it got there, they were clearly not Oreos. (I should have known better, since there was no Oreo brand stamped on it.) I must sound like a snob, but in my ice cream, it's oreos or nothing -- I can eat generic chocolate oreo like things anywhere but in ice cream.

Ali actually broke her little dish of ice cream eating it -- the waitress was amazed and took it around to show everyone. I tipped reasonably well, and as we were walking out, the waitress practically gushed a thank you at me. (Seriously, when an extra $2.50 can make the difference between someone being happy and ecstatic, why the hell would I not just toss it in?)

The snack bar at the roller rink had a $10 minimum (and of course, I had no cash). I almost never care about this, but I forced myself to buy pretzels to try and meet it when we stopped to get drinks while skating, and my tongue is now singed by stupid pretzel salt. :/ I think that minimums are illegal on Visa -- I'm almost frustrated enough by it to call someone and complain (which I've never done before). I can't really decide if I should.

(Goldenrod, our ice cream place in NH, is the same way, but Jess always gets Ice Cream while I get a meal, so we never fall under it.)