Woops!

Welcome to My Laboratory

The main reason I was never good at hacking (in the sense of manipulating systems) is that I have no sense of constraints, particularly when it comes to resources. I play fairly well within confined systems (and I freely admit to an overly nerdy fondness for developing systems) and even fairly well in open space, but when I'm in a space that doesn't come with reminders and error messages, I hit walls pretty fast.

The problem usually comes in resource allocation. For example; on Monday, I got my power cut off because the account was a staggering number of days better measured in months in arrears. The key problem is that paper doesn't flow in my office/living-room - it makes it as far as that black paper-holder you see there, and nothing ever gets done with it. This lead to bills going unpaid, which has lead to some costly mistakes, and thanks to that, my second (and very enjoyable) job is actually a matter of subsistence as opposed to the disposable income it was supposed to be, since paying the last several months of power bill and doing a sweep of my other bills to scope out what else is owing has left me pretty much having gone through the fall term's RESP funding. At least it was there, I suppose, or I'd be feeling a cascade of service outages as internet, telephone, and so forth slowly joined up in falling behind.

Now, I've been cleaning a lot lately, because I'm still between room-mates and generating a surprising amount of mess considering how little time I have to be at home (and this between-roommates thing isn't doing my cash flow any favours either!) ... when I have time, that is. Last week I worked what was essentially a full 40 hours, which is doable, I suppose, but only when you're organized enough to do it, and/or have some sort of division of labour set up at home.

Worse than being bad with money, see, is being bad with time. You can always make more money, but He who gives out the time allowance is a pretty strict disciplinarian.

When I was a kid, I had an obsession with the old Palm Pilots. I've owned two of them, actually, over the years, and while I liked them, I never had a use for them. Same with day-timers. I've never been that guy who was so busy he needed a way to keep track of his schedule minute-by-minute and make at-a-glance additions and subtractions in order to -

Wait. I'm that guy now!

Multi-task, multi-pace has become the name of the game, and it was enough to bring me out of what was a pretty nasty downward spiral, I must say. So if my backpack has to be a few pounds lighter (or my phone's memory a few megabytes smaller) in order for me to keep track of what I'm doing, I guess that's the price I'll have to pay.

At the moment it's late, and I'll be going to bed soon, but the task at the top of the queue for tomorrow is going to be finding a better way to manage my time. I think this posting thing might dwindle a bit. I have big hopes for a video project that isn't eating too much time, and also serves as a decent excuse to play some games while I'm at it. A downtime thing, I suppose.

And I should probably block in a defined time for chores every day. That'd be good too.

I am, as Ever,
-Z