Weekend update

Filed under: Life Updates
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A few things I did this weekend:

  • Washed, dried, folded, and put away four loads of laundry, plus the pile of mostly unfolded clean laundry that I'd been shifting back and forth between my chair and my bed.
  • Got groceries, though I once again delayed this 'til Sunday night so Piazza's was all out of fresh bagels by the time I got there.
  • Did my SH reading for the week.
  • Rejected at least 47 stories.
  • Had a couple of nice phone conversations with people I haven't talked much with in too long.
  • Wrote half a dozen journal entries in my head that never made it to the keyboard.
  • Did some editing, though not enough.
  • Spent some time thinking/brainstorming about ways to automate various SH processes.
  • Finally learned how to do cookies and sessions in PHP, intending to enhance a database GUI. Then learned that some of that tutorial is based on an older version of PHP, so read the official PHP session-handling documentation. Then realized that in fact the GUI in question is in JavaScript. Then learned how to do cookies in JS, and thought about how/whether to combine PHP session use with JS cookie use.
  • Ordered underwear online. Free shipping! O brave new world, that has such Internet commerce in't!
  • Ordered stamps online. Had to pay for shipping. But only $1.
  • Finished re-reading A Wizard of Earthsea (which I hadn't read since I was a kid; I got halfway through The Other Wind recently before realizing that I was going to enjoy it a lot more if the other Earthsea books were fresher in my mind). Started The Tombs of Atuan. Really liked the brief prologue of the latter book.
  • Tried to address a weird power-management problem my MacBook is having. Concluded, based on various forum postings, that it's probably a problem with my battery, and that Apple will probably replace the battery if I show up at a store with sufficient documentation of attempts to fix the problem in other ways. Looked for, but once again failed to find, my other battery. Hey, if anyone I visited a couple months ago has found a mysterious black rectangular batterylike device, maybe 9" long, let me know, 'kay?
  • Failed to do a bunch of things I'd intended/hoped to do, such as finishing my 2006 taxes, dealing with dishes (though I did fix my dishwasher a couple weeks ago and have run a couple loads of dishes since then, but they've piled up again, which is weird considering how rarely I eat at home these days), mailing various things to various people, responding to various emails, finishing the last steps in dealing with my father's books, etc.

While I'm here, I may as well describe what the past couple weeks have been mostly like:

  1. Wake up groggy, after too little (and too interrupted) sleep. Often due to unexpected noise somewhere nearby, such as raindrops hitting something just outside my bedroom that bears a remarkable resemblance to loud hammering, or due to temperature issues.
  2. Stumble to computer. Sit in front of computer and do email and magazine stuff for a couple hours.
  3. (Optional, on weekdays when not working at home.) Bike to work.
  4. Sit in front of computer and do work stuff for 8-10 hours.
  5. (If necessary.) Bike home.
  6. Sit in front of computer and do email and magazine stuff until I get too sleepy to keep my eyes open.
  7. Stumble to bed.
  8. Sleep poorly and intermittently.
  9. Repeat.

In theory, a couple of my top-priority urgent rush projects at work will be done soon; there are several other projects lined up behind those, but they aren't quite so urgent. And with luck, magazine submission volume will slow down soon. So I'm hoping that sometime in the next couple weeks I'll have time for doing things other than sitting in front of the computer and sleeping badly. But we'll see.

2 Responses to “Weekend update”

  1. Wayman

    Apple will replace batteries under AppleCare? Is this for some behavior other than “my pants caught fire” (er, Jed, is *that* why you needed the new underwear?…)? My two experiences with low-performance PowerBook batteries were that AppleCare said “oh, we don’t support batteries–we expect them to die, and you just have to replace them. Sucks to be you if you only got a year out of yours”.

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  2. SjG

    I too re-read Wizard of Earthsea a few years ago. It was, not surprisingly, considerably different than I had remembered. I still enjoyed Wizard of Earthsea and Tombs of Atuan. In fact, I think that Tombs was even better than I remembered it. I was still disappointed by The Farthest Shore. I wanted more re-incorporation — the story arc was didn’t come back to anything familiar (i.e., it seemed too much like real life, and not enough like a story). Even as a kid, I wanted Ged to meet up with Jasper or something. Without knowing it, I wanted more Campbell, less Jung.

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