Month: March 2010
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
I have a huge amount of thinking-and-writing work that I need to do, which has a habit of not getting done in the office, where there’s an Outlook inbox and a door. I love the interaction I get with my colleagues, of course, but some days I need to shut myself away and concentrate on the big stuff that actually moves things forward, not just the little stuff that keeps things afloat.
So this morning I dropped The Boy off at daycare and headed to a nearby coffee shop, sat down and made an ambitious to-do list for the day, but felt pretty good about diving in.
Then I spent the next hour trying to connect to the @#$%! Internet.
I find it increasingly frustrating that my work needs to be tied to one network, on one machine. There are so many easy ways to put your data in the cloud and work on it from anywhere, on anything. It is literally easier for me to do about half of the things I do on a daily basis on my iPhone than on my computer, when you consider the need to turn it on, find a power source, wait for it to boot up and connect.
The upshot is that I’m back in the office “but dressed for being outside the office” with half the morning gone.
Bring on the cloud!
Took a little longer to get to class this morning
This design will never be finished
I’ve mentioned before that The Mrs thinks I should consider medication to deal with my Shiny Object Syndrome and my obsession with the tools and techniques of sharing my various types of information online. She might be right. Sometimes it feels a bit overwhelming, then sometimes I think, “Hey, this is my hobby.” Relentless tinkering with one’s blog isn’t any more or less obsessive than building a ship in a bottle, is it?
A few weeks ago I decided to buy the Thesis blog theme “apparently it’s actually a framework, but if you know what that means you probably already knew that”. I liked the customization, but it felt a little like overkill because I had every intention of going with a spare, clean, minimal theme like Jeff’s blog. All of the blog designs I’ve bookmarked in the last six months have been a lot like that.
This blog was, too. For about a day. Then I started messing with it. I’ve spent many a late-night hour in the past week, and all my non-dad-or-husband time this weekend, when I shot the photo for the header, designed the header, added the shiny metal background and figured out how to add the icons in the right column. If you had looked at the blog Friday and then again today, it would be a much different beast.
I’m pretty happy with it now and I don’t feel I’ve gone overboard on anything. But who knows. I still feel that instant pang of longing when I see a plain black-and-white theme with no adornment.
As I said in a comment on Jeff’s blog, It’s the same principle that makes me want to shave my head whenever I realize I need a haircut.