Mizblog

I can’t tell if it’s still spreading or if it’s getting better. It might be doing both. Damned rash. I’m also not sure if it was from sunscreen or something else. I’d hate for it to turn out to be something gross like scabies. Unfortunately, my primary care physician is out of town all week so I can’t ask her.

On top of all that, work is kicking my brain into a wobbly jellified state. I’m about to just give in and code something stupid, just to code something!

I’m still trying to get back into the swing of things. It’s been difficult.

Yesterday I had to get up early and go downtown for a project update meeting. So much pain for such little benefit. It destroyed my concentration for the rest of the day. I kept flitting from one thing to another every 2 minutes. I couldn’t even watch TV!

I’ve been reading up on relativity, quantum mechanics, and consciousness. I’m convinced that these all tie together nicely somehow but I haven’t been able to understand the mechanics of it just yet. One problem is that I don’t know how to describe consciousness in terms of physics. There’s something there though, probably in the temporal perception bit, that I believe will turn out to be central to a deep understanding of the nature of consciousness. I’ll keep thinking about it.

Finally I got a real desk! Well, it’s a workstation desk and not a business desk, but that’s perfect for me.

http://img3.musiciansfriend.com/dbase/pics/products/54/546553.jpg

I had to remove the keyboard tray to make it comfortable, but it’s awesome! Both my monitors and both my speakers fit on the top shelf, both my computers fit in the right side rack space, and all my music rack gear fits in the bottom 1/3 of the left rack. I haven’t put anything on the middle shelves yet, but give me time.

The desk took almost 3 hours to build. Before that I spent an hour deconstructing my old setup, moving everything out of the room, and vacuuming where until today was behind the immovable kitchen table.

Once clean, I dragged the 185 pounds of new desk parts into the room, unpacked them, checked them against the parts manifest, and started assembling. I had heard that some of the quality control of these desks was a bit lacking so I was very careful to make sure everything was right before did anything that might cause damage.

Turns out everything was in order, and I got the desk assembled with a minimum of trouble. I spent the rest of the afternoon putting my computer systems on the desk and firing them up. Once they were hot I showered and had a short nap. My hands and back are exhausted and sore.

After the computers were up, I tore all my music rack gear out of the mobile rack and mounted it in the lower left rack. I’ve got a tiny 3′ power cable running from my amp to the back of the power sink, and it’s limiting where I can put the head. I should have splurged and got a longer cable. My speaker cables to the speakers are 20′ long and only need to be about 4′ and 8′ respectively. Maybe 5′ and 10′. Who cares? At least they reach!

Tomorrow’s going to be long and painful. I’d better get enough sleep tonight.

It always seems to happen. Once the massive pressure is lifted off my shoulders, I enter a phase of creative productivity. I also figured out how to solve a problem that stumped me for half of last week. Nice. :)

I’m also catching up on my sleep a bit. I don’t yet have a regular routine but at least I’m sleeping a lot. Note the correlation between sleep and productivity. Also note the negative correlation between stress and sleep. I need less stress. For a while it was so much that it was debilitating.

Much better now.

The weekend is half over. I’ve just posted a new software release. I feel much more relaxed now than I did before.

Sangeeta is stressing over her accounting though. I hope it’s not contagious. I think she wants to go to Thousand Oaks today to look at a new shopping center. That’ll be nice except for the drive. It’s a beautiful day.

I know it’s starting to sound like a broken record (remember those?) but I’m pretty stressed out. I’m preparing for a major business presentation of our software and it still looks ugly. I’ve got to get it looking presentable by tomorrow.

Stress!

Today I tried to convert a Sun workstation to act as a DHCP client and ended up corrupting the boot sector. I remember reading the instructions for doing this on the Sun website and thinking “this doesn’t seem too difficult…”.

Heh. Yeah.

So after that Sangeeta and I went to Melrose and looked at all the alternative clothing stores. Then we went to The Grove/Farmers Market and looked around there for a while. Forgot all about computers for a few hours.

I hate computers.

Today (Monday) started too fast and too furious for me! I woke up to the sound of my wife talking to my boss on the phone. It seems there’s some problem or something, I don’t know. I had to try to figure it out before I even really woke up.

Then my wife needed MS Word technical assistance so she could print an invoice. She’s going to rent some jewelry to a company that’s filming a Cingular commercial. She’s also stressed because she has a midterm tomorrow and her sister keeps coming over to check her e-mail and use up all our printer supplies. Not to mention she locked up Sangeeta’s cart yesterday using an old padlock that Sangeeta lost the key to! What a pair. Anyway, the stress is overflowing onto me at a bad time.

It’s too much for a Monday morning!

Update:

And now! NOW! Now I finally get a chance to take a shower, and as soon as I got my head all shampoo’d up the hot water turned off! Then the cold water slowed to a trickle! Gnnnnaaaarrrrgggghhhh!

Typical Monday, right?

I’m starting the burnout process. I’m just not interested in hurting myself in order to get work done. Guess it’s time to cash in that overtime I’ve been logging and take a day off.

It’s late. It’s Africa late. Tarzan couldn’t take this kind of late.

I can’t sleep so I’m testing and debugging my code. Refining the design. Feeling really bad inside, like I’m going to fall apart. I need sleep but can’t have it.

I hate this.