Day 15: Weird accomplishments

After being home sick for a week, today was catch up day. I only had about 50 emails to work through, although I did need to action or think about almost all of them. This took the bulk of the day to work through. I also knocked off a handful of errands in my lunch hour and early afternoon. A busy day productively spent, although I don't know that I really achieved anything. Like I said, weird accomplishments.

Some shredding will be in order tonight, the perfect task for ad breaks.

Tonight I'm baking a cake. Ask me why tomorrow.

Day 13 & 14 - Success!

Success in the scheme of things at any rate. More work needs to be done, but after the lethargy and loss of momentum from the last week, I feel good that I've achieved something again.

Before

The messy and almost unusable desk in the study. The monitor on the left (which takes up a lot of space) is actually attached to the rarely used Mac G4 that sits just out of picture.

After

The Aftermath

A big ol' bag o' trash. It's mostly old print-outs, scraps of peripherals and empty boxes I should have flung out the door a long time ago.

Day 11 & 12: Big Fat Zero

It had to come, I guess. I got nothing done for Day 11. In fact, I got so little done that I'm not even blogging this until Day 12. The only thing of any note is that I finally installed GNUCash, an open source personal accounting software package. No, I didn't think that counted as much of an achievement either.

Time slipped away from me and I noticed that I had dropped back into my old time wasting habits. Day 12 isn't going much better, although I have got the car in for a service today, so that's something I guess.

Here's to hoping that the weekend ahead provides a little more joy.

Day 10: A new hope

This is the new shredder. I plan to give it a trial workout during the ads while watching House tonight.

Shredding something is better than doing nothing at all.

Day 9: More bleh

I am now officially under doctor's orders to do nothing for the rest of the week. This is a good thing, I guess, as it means I can rest and sleep and get healthy. It does make it difficult to stay productive when you have no energy and no pressure to keep moving.

I'm sure I'll survive.

I'm halfway through the CD sorting I was going to do yesterday but didn't (I went to bed early instead and slept solidly for nearly 10 hours - woo!). If it turns out I haven't seen the Gilmore Girls episode currently on the TV, I will do some more garden research.

Oh, and we now have a new shredder, bought while I spent 2.5 hours in the waiting room at the doctors. I love my wife.


Down with the sickness originally posted to Flickr by Mayr. Used under a Creative Commons BY 2.0 licence.

Day 8: Bleh

I've been sick all day. I've achieved exactly nothing. Bleh.

Maybe I'll reorganise some CDs later or something. Something's better than nothing I guess.

Day 6 & 7 - The Shredinator

Saturdays are generally a write-off. Helen teaches in the morning and I play football in the afternoon. This Saturday was even worse as we went to a wedding instead. The wedding was beautiful and the reception was a lot of fun, but as a consequence nothing got done around the home.

On Sunday I gathered together all my loose paperwork and sorted it. The bits I needed I put in my decrepit cardboard accordion file. Those bits I didn't need were also "filed" appropriately.

Unfortunately, I also broke the shredder. I'm on the hunt for a new one now.

I have also begun sorting through all my old magazines. I don't need them and I never go back and read them so why am I keeping them?

Day 5: Filemaster

Until a week ago, I hadn't filed a single thing since I started in this job over 6 months ago. This week I have become a filing demon. Actually, not so much a demon as a minor imp, but filing imp doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

I'm not finished my filing by a long shot, but I am getting into a healthy filing groove which in turn is helping me feel a lot better about my work. I have been able to maintain a clean desk all this time (I work under an official "clean desk policy" security regime) but my desk drawers were becoming very crowded indeed. My filing blitz is helping me clear out the deadwood, which in turn is helping to clear my mind.

Parliament sits again in a couple of weeks. I'm going to hit the ground running mentally recharged. All this filing has been dragging me, more than I thought possible.

Nothing else tonight. At least not yet, at any rate. The night is still young(ish).


filing cabinets originally posted to Flickr by redjar. Used under a Creative Commons By Attribution Share-alike licence.

Day 4: I'll keep this quick

I'm trying to keep my online time to the bare minimum tonight so I'm keeping this short and sweet.

I've done twice as much filing today as I did yesterday. The more I do, the easier it gets. It helps that we're a bit light on for work (although as usual, something comes in late in the day so I can't get away early) so I can spend some time on this. I also updated a couple of documents for clearance once Parliament sits again in a few weeks time. Finally, my little mapping project is now in maintenance mode ie I only need to update it when new information comes to hand. Yay! Friday is a traditionally slow time so with a bit of luck, I could knock over the bulk of the rest and still knock off a wee bit early.

I won't be achieving anything else today, unless cuddle time counts as an achievement. In fact, I've now decided it does.

Day 3. Urgh.

This is proving to be as difficult as I thought it would be, which is a bit pathetic when you think about it. Surely it shouldn't be too difficult to achieve one thing a day.

The interesting thing is that the more I think "What am I going to get done today?", the more I notice things that really need to be done, and done much sooner rather than the later that I have become accustomed to.

Today I sorted out the electronic archival/filing system once and for all and was able to clear one entire file document backlog. It might not seem like much, but proper record keeping is an important thing.

I've spent most of these evening battling with technical difficulties while conversing with Ebay Live Help through their web-based chat. That took hours (their server kept bumping me) which meant that I didn't achieve much of anything else. Urgh.

I have got to get more organised or this is going to be an embarrassing 30 days.

Small steps

I guess (and hope) that by cranking out some of the smaller things, the bigger things will start to fall in to place. Day 2 has not exactly been an inspirational success.

I managed to push through a document for clearance a day ahead of schedule.

I sorted and collated a batch of emails ready for electronic filing and archival. It fell over at the last hurdle as I'm incorrectly assigned in the system so I can't actually file them until records management fix it. Of course, I couldn't get the right people on the phone at all today. *sigh*

On the other hand, I started a new project using "My Maps" on Google Maps, although I am not in a position to give any further details on that one.

At home I started filling out a few bank forms but I don't think I have all the information I need at hand. I thought I might get this one finished tonight but now I don't think so.

The garden planning continues. Slowly.

Like I said, small steps. Very small steps.

Drifting

Lately I've been drifting a little, both at work and at home. I've been keeping things ticking over, but I don't think I have been moving forward. There have been periods where days go by and I don't feel like I have achieved anything at all. Not one thing. New month, new financial year, and a time to try something a little bit different.

I hope to try and achieve at least one thing every day and if possible, two things - one at home and one at work. I'm going to try and move it forward for 30 days and see what happens.

Anyway...

Daily Achievement

Work
I've started getting my filing at work in order. Since I started working here in November, I haven't done any proper filing. I feel bad about this because I started my career in the public service in a records management position. Today I worked out how to order new files (I've been doing some filing on existing files). It's a small step but it's one I've been avoiding for a while.

Home
I worked out how to use Secondbrain. It might look suspiciously like futzing instead of doing work, but I plan to use Secondbrain to organise my research for planning our garden, which has lain fallow for long enough. We've talked about planning and actually planting a garden for almost 2 years. It's time some planning actually got underway.

batting about the driftwood originally posted to Flickr by striatic. Used under a Creative Commons By Attribution - Share Alike 2.0 licence.

Edit 3/7/07 8:15am to correctly attribute Flickr photo.

Timekeeper

For the first time in over a year, I have started wearing a watch again.

I got tired of using my mobile phone as a surrogate watch, which isn't a useful solution in situations where my phone is switched off (which happens more often than I first thought it would).

I own three watches and up until yesterday morning, all three of them needed new batteries. Now only two need new batteries (they also need new watchbands, but one step at a time). I didn't have to spend any time at all deciding which watch I was going to resurrect first. The watch above was given to me on my 21st birthday by a group of my university friends so it has great sentimental value to me.

After all this time, wearing a watch feels weird. I'm still not used to the extra weight on my wrist or the scraping noise it makes when it hits the desk while I'm typing. I have lost a bit of weight since I last wore it so it is still a bit loose on my arm. I am sure I will adapt.

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.

Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

Herbert Simon, Recipient of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics
and the A.M. Turing Award, the “Nobel Prize of Computer Science”

Life how it used to be lived. The return of Main St?

I used to love the idea of urban sprawl with everyone having their own slice of land. These days, I wish there was more urban infill. I feel like so much community is missing in my personal interactions and I wish I could create opportunity for me.



Superkul is a Canadian architectural firm that turned a run down residence and returned it to its original shopfront/residence glory and added a third floor into the bargain. There are some great pictures of the setup on Treehugger.

Bring it on, I say. Main Streets rock.

The hammock district.

Even though Canberra is now firmly in the grasp of Winter's icy tendrils, every now and then Mother Nature throws up a gorgeous day like today. No breeze, moderate temperature (max 14C) and barely a cloud in the sky.

It shouldn't take a genius to work out why I decided to read the paper and take a brief nap in the hammock this morning. I fed the boy lunch to give my wife a chance to do the same. Her nap was, shall we say, not so brief. I had to wake her an hour later! Still, it has done her a world of good and we're both much better for our hammock adventures today.

If only all Canberra winter days looked as gorgeous as this one!

One of these ones is not like the others

I spotted this ad in this morning's Canberra Times newspaper. I just had to laugh..

It's a bit difficult to read but it says:

• In store signing with Australian adult movie stars
  
• Pole dancing and lingerie shows
  
• Penthouse and Hustler showbags worth $120 for only $25
  
• 24 booth adult movie arcade
  
• Sausage sizzle
  

Brrrr!

I thought it was cold this morning when Elijah woke up at 5am and wouldn't settle so we brought him back to our bed. He then woke me up 10 minutes later playing "The Nose Game" [1] before he settled back to sleep.

I thought it was cold when I dragged myself out of bed at 5:45am to start getting ready for work. I have to get up this early a couple of times a week to get the early bus so I can leave work early. It was cold. My shower was extra hot to compensate and I stepped out of the shower a satisfying shade of lobster read.

I thought it was cold when, while walking at a vigorous pace to the bus stop at 6:55am, I spied this poor frosted flowering plant in someone's front yard.

I thought it was cold when I walked past the York Park Conservation Site between the bus stop and work and it was sheathed with fog and looking rather spooky (it's normally a dry, empty looking patch of endangered native grassland)

I knew it was cold when I got in to work to check the Bureau of Meteorology site for the temperature to find out it was -5 C (about 23F).

Winter is well and truly here, and this is just the start of it.

[1] "The Nose Game" was started by me, and Elijah loves it. I poke him on the nose and say "Beep" or make another appropriate fun noise. Elijah worked this out pretty quickly, and started poking our noses as well. Of course, we would "Beep!", much to his delight. Unfortunately, he does this a lot, in any situation. He sometimes would also grab my hand and drag it to his nose, whereupon I was expected to "Beep!" or suffer the consequences. "The Nose Game" is cute at 4:30pm when playing with blocks in the lounge room. At 5 in the morning with freezing fingers? Not so much...

Power toolage

I don't often get a chance to crack out the ol' power drill and do something constructive. The last time I did this was when I put up the guitar hoooks a couple of months back.

At the moment we've been keeping the boy's toys and associated stuff in his portacot which lives in the lounge room. The downside is that it means he can't actually use his portacot, and every now and then he seems to like pretending he's been imprisoned (that and he likes to peek over the top and giggle at us - entertainment is sooo cheap at this age). We bought some stackable wooden boxes to solve this problem, with the added bonus that we can now quickly pull down the portacot and put it away when we are not using it.

The boxes came in a heavy box and were flat pack. I was worried they would be held together with nails (hammering is not my strong point - to much hand-eye co-ordination involved) but thankfully, it was a screw-based construction.

There were three boxes in all. The first one looked like this after I ripped it out of the box and laid it out, ready to go:

It turned out to be surprisingly easy to put together, and I was once again reunited with the joy that is power tools.

The final, very handy and useful product below:

It was a good day for power tools, actually. One of the presents we gave Elijah for his birthday in April was a wooden trolley with wooden blocks. Unfortunately, the guide holes for the screws in the side of the trolley bore no relation to where the screws would actually need to go if the handle was to be attached. After an extended period of forgetfulness, I finally got around to drilling some new guide holes and attaching the handle, giving Elijah a "brand new toy" to play with.

And we join together today ...

One of my friends recently announced his engagement, which is good and exciting news which makes both me and my wife quite happy to hear.

If you're reading this, Dave, I reckon you need a pair of these for the wedding...

8 prong connector originally uploaded to Flickr by janabrevick.