what's up with me

[da]

In the last week, I wrote three posts but didn't like how they came together, so I gave up and saved them as Private. I'm not feeling particularly anti-communicative; but non-technical things seem tougher to write about. Possibly that's because I'm switching off between programming and writing my talk for the University IT conference in 11 days.

I woke this morning with a sore throat, the second in a row, and I'm hoping it will be OK tomorrow, because I obviously don't want the cold du jour.

As I was waking up, I was obsessing about change.gov, whether I should bother sending feedback concerning justice concerns, suggestions on engaging citizen activism, or what. And what would transparency in government look like in practice, if the next US gov't goes anywhere with that promise. And probably I should just let it go. Hm.

I took the morning off work and slept, came in at lunch-time, and got a fair bit done by the afternoon. My to-do list for tomorrow feels like a bit much if I'm fighting a cold; I expect I'm not going to get to see Faust at the movies (aw). But there's a house-warming in the evening (yay!) And much tea in my future.

Busy week around here. d's been running ragged; he's at the U tomorrow for much of the day. I think they owe him a vacation.

Comments

[kraig.livejournal.com]

They owe him one hell of a lot more than a vacation, but I guess that would do.

I actually find that the more writing I do, the more I want to do. Perhaps that will serve me well shortly.

I need to finish writing my talk too. I got it half done, now I've had some ideas courtesy of my co-talker that will necessitate rewriting half of that. Not as stressy as papers for courses, but man.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

ya... at least, a vacation's what he's said he needs (and has to wait for).

I actually find that the more writing I do, the more I want to do. Perhaps that will serve me well shortly.

Oh man, sometimes it's like a floodgate; ya start writing something and it goes in a million directions. So far this morning I've been brainstorming to-do items to get my brain cleared out; I'm up to 50 new ones and haven't run out yet.

Hopefully I'll get to writing my talk this morning. It was a kick in the pants to see how many had signed up for mah slot (eek! warm bodies!)

...Also, the auto-podcast of the talk; I had an eevil thought this morning, to turn the podcast plus slides into a screencast to offer up to the devs of the software I'm blathering about; they need intro materials, badly.

Which requires giving a coherent talk. Heh. No pressure, there.

[metalana.livejournal.com]

And why not send ideas to change.gov?

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

I think most people have posts that did not quite work out or didn't flesh out well. At least, I hope they do. I have some dating back four years, and have barely been here that long.

Typing in partials is probably a better system. I just scrawl notes on a scrap of paper, which often make little sense months later.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

dan taught me about saving the partial post. I sure don't trust the LJ autosave for much; I've lost a few that way.

Yeah, it's amusing to notice how old my unwritten posts are. I was going to make a poll on "what do you think about when you're not doing anything at all?" I think that's about four years old too. :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

I would not trust the autosave either. Tried the Yahoo notepad for a while, until it truncated my entries -- yikes. A simple text file on a flash drive worked okay, but again only when at a computer.

One holiday weekend when bored I simply posted a bunch of one-liner stubs and let people vote on what I would talk about. It was kind of fun. Once. It was a ton of work, but cleared out a few of those partials.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Brilliant!

D'oh:

+1 = 24 pending...

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

...I tried google docs, for a while; it didn't eat my entries, and it actually did have a "publish to blog" feature (I think? am I making that up? *shrug*) but I was no more likely to complete it there, than if I wrote it directly in LJ.

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

My problem with Yahoo notepad was an issue of mistaken trust. For years it said "limit 5000 characters", but never enforced it, allowing me to type as much as I wanted. (possibly because I was using Opera and they were enforcing the limit client-side and failing). Then one day I made an edit, saved, and.. it truncated an enormous file.

The only advantages of using scraps of paper are that I can jot notes down anywhere, they are always visible on my desk, and once the pile gets large enough it irritates me into completing some (or crossing them out if I already did) or into consolidating the lists.

Interesting. I'm only writing down brief segments designed to spark my memory, rather than entire paragraphs. Most of my posts are composed mentally when in the shower, walking, or riding the bus, those being great times to think. If the subject matter remains in my mind to be jotted down, the post is already halfway there. If I take too long to post it and forget what made it interesting, it just gets crossed out. I had never thought of it being a sort of survival of the fittest culling, but it seems to be.