Sunday, January 25, 2015

All work and no play is pretty much the same as all play


I’m doing some work this weekend, so I’m not doing a normal blog post.  Let me stress that this is not like a Lumbergh type situation.  In fact, this job has been quite courteous of my weekends, especially compared to $last_job.  So when something comes up and I know that people would be inconvenienced if I didn’t work on it over the wekend (which happens pretty rarely), I actually want to put in the extra work.  Plus I love what I do, so then is it really work?  As Confucius (supposedly) said:

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.


Of course, saying “I love what I do” is not the same thing as saying “I love my job,” but, as it happens, I do that as well.  I don’t know that I could describe it as a perfect job, but I also don’t know what any of my bosses could give me that they haven’t already, so perhaps that’s as close to perfection as makes no never mind.  In my blog post about what employees want, I said that the most important things are respect, trust, and freedom, and I have those in spades.  So it pleases me to do nice things for those I work for, and it’s fun, so sometime I do a little extra, if the mood strikes me.  Which, this weekend, it has.

So I’m going to go immerse myself in some Perl code and try to accomplish a few things to make my coworkers’ lives easier.  Perhaps next week I’ll be inspired to write a more complete post.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Heroscapers post #1


Remember how, just after Thanksgiving, I said I was going to post something on my Heroscape forum about the big game the boys I played?  Well, I never did.  But today I finally decided to put some time into that, and produced this post.  Check it out, if you’re so inclined.  It might not make a huge amount of sense to those not steeped in the game, but it might be mildly entertaining nonetheless.

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Perl blog post #38


I didn’t actually miss a post last week.  I just forgot to post a pointer here to my Other Blog.  So here’s a belated such pointer.

And, due to the magic of computers, it even looks like I posted it last week, when I really should have!  But I didn’t.  Because I’m lame.  Sorry.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

A Lament for a Lost Post


Well, I missed another blog post last week: only the seventh one since I started this blog almost five years ago.  So, more than one a year, but not so many as two per.  (The exact statistic is 7 out of 250 weeks, or 2.8%, for those with a more pedantic turn of mind.)  I suppose that’s not so bad.

The reason, such as it was, was simply the holidays ... last Sunday fell 3 days after Christmas, which of course is 3 days before New Year’s Eve.  There was still a lot going on, and I’m guessing I was playing Little Big Planet, in its latest incarnation with my boys.  That’s quite a common post-holiday pasttime currently.

I thought it might be interesting to go back and review those 7 occasions when I missed posts.  Here they are:

  • On 6/27/10, I was in the middle of a two-week vacation and apparently just spaced.
  • On 11/28/10, I was in the midst of moving into our new (current) house, and everything was in flux.  I can probably be forgiven for that one.
  • On 6/26/11, 6/2/13, and 6/22/14, I was traveling to or from a YAPC.  For some reason, I have a tendency to miss a week around my yearly Perl conferences.  Less excusable, but not entirely feeble, hopefully.
  • On 7/24/11, I missed a post for no reason that I can determine. 
  • And 12/28/14 was last week.

Of course, all this virtual hand-wringing over missed blog posts presumes that anyone cares, and, as I am constantly reminding you, you, dear reader, should not.  Because you should not even be reading this blog.  Nonetheless, I’ve tried to maintain a consistent schedule, and, when I miss a week, I upset that schedule.  And it tends to bother me.  Perhaps it might be appropriate at this juncture to ponder exactly what my goals are for the blog itself.

The blog was originally a suggestion from The Mother.  She pointed out that I was an aspiring writer who never wrote anything, as well as a technogeek, for whom theoretically at least the creation of a blog would be much easier than it would for most of the rest of the populace.  I had no excuse, she pointed out, for not creating a blog and writing a post a week.  I resisted this at first, of course, given my staunch opinion on blogs in general.  But eventually I gave in and agreed to make the commitment.

And the commitment, once given, should be honored.

Of course, there’s still no particular penalty for missing a week.  But, the thing is, now that I’ve gotten into a rhythm, it’s an excellent way to keep me on track producing work.  Without the commitment, I’d probably just spit out a few thousand words every 9 months or so, instead of a moderately steady 1500 words a week.  Oh, sure, even when I don’t skip a week, I often produce an anemic, underfed post (such as this one), which I mark as “interstitial,” and which doesn’t come close to the 1500-word mark.  But, even so, I’m still writing something ... and I find that’s often sufficient.

So I’ll apologize for another missed week, even as I tell you that you really shouldn’t care.  And I’ll tell you once again to tune in next week for another blog post that you really shouldn’t read.  Because it’s become something of a habit.  A good habit, I think.