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Got up for less than two minutes, and Coco starts to jet off to steal my spot on the couch… so I sit down before she can snatch it. When I suggested that she try “Sharing” the couch, you would think from the look on that dogs face, that I said a dirty word!

After enough effort at coercion and airing close at a drop to DEFCON 1, I got to do the driving to work today.

The trip was about 35-minutes each way, making it about three times longer then any other time I’ve been able to drive. There was only about 3 foul ups and an error, not bad for an inexperienced noob whose also been denied road time for at least a week and a half, if not longer o/.

First issue was about 30m down from where we live, mostly because of a certain someone opening her wide mouth and trying to tell me what to do ^_^. Once I reminded her, she finally took the order and let me be at peace.

Second was about half way there, when I cut one of the turns at to high a speed for my taste, but things were always under complete control. It still was faster then I had wanted to take the angle, so I personally consider it an error on my part. I have seen a heck of a lot of other drivers, taking that turn about twice as fast as that, but I prefer a wider margin just in case I’ve got to stop in a hurry (it’s usually a busy spot).

Third was running a red light in the middle of no where. I couldn’t see what colour the traffic light was coming around the bend, so I brought the speed down, and by the time I could see it was red, there wasn’t enough time to bring the car to a proper halt, so I just went on through as it was clear; it was just a speed control, not a junction point. Well, technically I could have stopped the car in time if it was absolutely needed, but my mother would’ve yelled at me more for the hammering on the breaks than for going through the light ^_^. I need to watch that corner: I take effort not to repeat my mistakes.

Forth was a minor synchronization issue going into the sub division. Kind of like being caught in the middle of ants-in-the pants drivers and me being doubly cautious of the traffic involved. I always count on every other driver to have no clue what so freaking ever what they are doing, so there was never any danger. Still, it was a bit of a hairy spot, more than I’m comfortable with, but the only way to get that area more smooth, is going to be more laps on through it.

The return trip on the other hand, was smooth as a babies bottom. I thanked ma for letting me drive, rather than telling me how to drive. Carrying on a conversation or something doesn’t even bother me, not in the least; but I prefer to exercise my right of being in the driver seat.  Simply put, it’s driving a car, not disarming a bomb… I might no what I’m doing ;).

I also noticed last time I was allowed to drive, that I have a tendency to not bleed off enough speed before the last drop on the way home. Today I was almost able to calculate it perfectly, but intend to kick myself into taking it slower in that area. I’d rather consciously decide to take it easy, rather than computate where the inverse will lead to.

My favourite part of the drive though, was being passed about four or five times: most of which occurred while I was going the speed limit, and right next to a big yellow sign that says, “NO PASSING”, some how, when I was just telling a German friend the other day, that Georgia drivers will pass you on a dime, it brought a titbit of a smile to my face :-D.

Generally I air on the side of caution, because while I know what I’m doing, I am not an experienced driver. I go aim to keep the car within speed limit, and bleed off enough speed that I’ll be able to bring the car to a safe halt in any tight spot that’s coming; and I can see about as far as the road permits. I don’t care if I could take things faster and sharper without compromising safety, because I know (from having done it) that I can do it if needed, but I’m not interesting in joining the rest of my family: in being lead footed.

After spending a spell of working dawn to dusk on one program, how do I spend my afternoon to relax? By learning programming language I haven’t inhaled yet!

The other night, I installed Mono on my laptop and desktop; the windows box already has express editions of Visual C# 2008 and 2010 setup. While it obviously tool a while to compile the full stack, it was still faster than most C++ applications I’ve grunted over build times about. The thing that really impressed me however, was how fast MonoDevelop compiled; while not a ‘huge’ program, it’s large enough that the compile time was impressive.

Compared to my experiences with javac over the years, mcs was blazingly fast. Four reasons that I tend to avoid Java development: the tools tend to be make me tap my foot in impatience at the wait times, most Java apps I’ve crossed paths with are not fun, OOP is pushed down the coders throat, and doing Swing layouts by hand is a royal pain.

I’m not a fan of C#, but I do consider the whole CLI/.NET stuff to be a very attractive platform. Perhaps sometime when I’ve got a couple hours to burn, I might pick up Gtk# and write a systray’let to check my mail box or something.

Feeling…

• overworked
• poked and prodded
• and old!

So far in the past week’ish, I’ve had two days work, two days deep-coding dawn to dusk, and two days spent with a nose like a cherry bomb :-(.

At least on the positive side, 3-4 days worth of work split between December 2009 and April 2010, my on-the-back-burner build tool has almost reached the level of utility of an early make tool. If conditionals were supported, it would be able to handle building Stargella as easily as Microsoft NMake and GNU Make can. The next steps for tmk will likely be implementing local variable bindings (think $< and friends), and a mechanism for including other files.

With this habit of getting up so insanely early, I also find it more difficult to stay up all night, unless my brain *is* focused intently on something. In which case I barely sleep at all lol. I also seem to be able to throw more hours of labour behind projects on my days off, when I get up earlier rather than later.

Now if I could do something about being pushed a few months behind schedule o/.

My way is to actively test and annoy, until she learns the meaning of the words “Shut your gob”  ^_^.

I’ve been treated like an animal often enough, that I’m not interested in being treated like a machine.

As today marks the first in six days off work, my plan is to spend it on rest and relaxation, assuming no one has any more nukes to juggle 8=). If anything explodes, people can push a fix it task out to my RTM, but I’m taking it easy for a while lol.

The most stressful thing I’m doing this week, is moving over more old entries from Live Journal!

Well, it seems that I am awake before the sun rises, yet again! Yesterday I woke up at just a bit past 0300, feeling like I had slept all morning long, actually had to triple check the alarm clock and look out the window, to make sure ma wasn’t playing a joke. This morning, it’s like having the brain switch on to far, in order to go back to sleep: been that way for a while, save nights where I’ve hardly slept at all.

From all the years I’ve spent working into the night, sometimes until after dawn: and usually having to be up for work. Last year, I reached the point where I rarely can sleep more then three or four hours at a time, like automatically waking up without any alarms chiming. Attempting to actually get into the habit of waking up ‘early’ having generally failed, as I like falling back asleep to much lol, that was never much of a problem. With a friends recent trip (which I’ll just say, involved dangerous ground), and the impact it had on my dreams, I think has helped to cement it into my mind: to wake up, and to stay up. Something I’ve been unable to hammer into it for years lol.

Traditionally, I’d sleep straight through like a log, if ever waking up: just long enough to stagger off to relive myself of a pint or so lol. Working habits becoming more eratic, caused me to drift more in the habit of waking up at least 2 or 3 times every night, at fairly regular intervals o/. For the past two and a half months or so, I’ve been waking up and generally, been reaching wide awake quite quickly.

While I reckon, not the way intended, I would say that’s still an objective complete: getting into the habit of waking up early. Last time I was successfully in this habit, was when I was working shifts of 0400-2000 on a regular basis; where there was no real choice in the matter. Honestly I prefer getting up early, over sleeping in until which ever comes first: work or lunch time.

Maybe I might even learn to eat breakfast like the rest of the world lol.

Lately things have just been insane, practically busy up to my eye balls. There’s always loads to get done, whether it’s pushed on my stack, or it’s something I would rather like to get done. The past week, I would say represents a new level of heavy multi-pronged focus on other matters, but that’s a truckload in of itself.

I wish someday, it would actually be possible to get some rest :-/ For some reason the concept of time to rest, brings forth a vision of a pine box… lol