Maybe I'll sleep better at night.

Like most people, I can appreciate a simple life. But, like most people, life doesn't seem that simple to me anymore. Responsibility has become a more important part of my life than I thought it would when I was younger. I'm still able to have fun with my friends. It just takes a bit of scheduling. I dream of a better world, or at least trying to make it better. When am I going to put that into my schedule? If I do anything in my life that takes the world into a new and better direction, maybe I'll sleep better at night.

Happy Birthday to me!

It's not my birthday. But, I did start getting presents.

Apparently, it only takes about two days for a relatively small package to arrive from South Korea/Corea, The Republic of Korea/Corea. It seems to go by more than one name.

Any way, my girlfriend decided she wanted to help me celebrate my birthday by sending me a gift (prepared with love, I might add).

She sent it through the mail on the 10th, expecting it would take at least five days to get here. At least that is what the person on staff told her. Surprise! Even though it was early, it turns out the timing worked out pretty well for us, because my Dad brought it home from the post office while I was talking with her. Because of this, we were able to enjoy the moment together, which made it that much better.

She had told me she had a surprise for me. I think I could get used to her surprises.

After debating for a little while whether or not I should open it before my birthday, I decided not to wait. I'm glad she could hear my enjoyment as I was opening it. It couldn't have gone better, without us actually being together in person. I really do miss her.

Now, for all the rest of you. Where are my presents?

I have neglected this blog. Oh well.

I have neglected this blog for quite some time now.

Oh, well. It's not as if anyone reads it any way.

I am without a job again. So, the search is on again. Maybe I'll go back to college first. That would be the smart move.

I will still need money, though.

It's another case of the chicken or the egg.

It makes me happy

I read that The Smashing Pumkins are in the process of creating new music for an upcoming album. Since the band broke up, and hasn't existed for a few years, it's big news (at least it is to their fans).

From what I read, it has been an ongoing rumor about the band since their self-destruction. But, now it has been confirmed, that they wil be a band again, on both Billy's and The Smashing Pumpkins web-site.

I just felt like spreading the news.

Later...

Day Three

The download continues. These ISO's are big, I tell you. There are also quite a few of them, since I decided to get both PPC and i386 versions of the linux installs.

They'll finish downloading from the torrent network, some day. Only then will I try installing at least one of them.

Then I'll stop being a nerd. I promise.

I don't know why I bother

For whatever reason, I started downloading ISO images of Linux/UNIX based installers for PPC based systems. It started out as plain curiousity. But the downloads are taking so long that I'm starting to regret it. Maybe I should try and learn something from that "Curiousity killed the cat" phrase that I've heard so often.

I just thought that maybe these installations might breath some new life into my old Macs. But, I don't need my old Macs. I just have them for sentimental reasons. Nerdy ones.

I can be such a geek. Oh well.

Big Bang Theory

We had some Spring showers today that included a thunder/lightening storm, and some hail was thrown into the mix. All the noise and flashes of light really freaked out my dog. She never did like thunder storms. You can't calm her down. You just have to hold her until it's over. I wouldn't call it a problem. I do feal sorry for her. Oh well. Such is a dog's life.

A Photo of Me

Once in a while, I'd been trying to think of what photo I want to use as my blogger photo. Well, this is it.

A few years ago, a friend of mine took a b&w photo of me from behind, and above while I was painting. Later on, when I would design pamphlets and brochures and things I decided to include a postage size version of this photo with my written credit on the back. I like it. Hope you do too.

Have fun...

Time to make a to-do-list

Move out of the house

Obtain Greek citizenship

Get a decent job

Finish my college studies

Clean my room/get rid of junk

Create a portfolio of my work

Create various resumes

Fix up my Parent's house

Stop being such a tool

Get some sleep 'cause it's late

Structured Procrastination by John Perry

Version of April 25, 1995

I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, an NSF proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things. This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time. All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.

Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact. The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done.

The most perfect situation for structured procrastination that I ever had was when my wife and I served as Resident Fellows in Soto House, a Stanford dormitory. In the evening, faced with papers to grade, lectures to prepare, committee work to be done, I would leave our cottage next to the dorm and go over to the lounge and play ping-pong with the residents, or talk over things with them in their rooms, or just sit there and read the paper. I got a reputation for being a terrific Resident Fellow, and one of the rare profs on campus who spent time with undergraduates and got to know them. What a set up: play ping pong as a way of not doing more important things, and get a reputation as Mr. Chips.

Procrastinators often follow exactly the wrong tack. They try to minimize their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. But this goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of motivation. The few tasks on his list will be by definition the most important, and the only way to avoid doing them will be to do nothing. This is a way to become a couch potato, not an effective human being.

At this point you may be asking, "How about the important tasks at the top of the list, that one never does?" Admittedly, there is a potential problem here.

The trick is to pick the right sorts of projects for the top of the list. The ideal sorts of things have two characteristics, First, they seem to have clear deadlines (but really don't). Second, they seem awfully important (but really aren't). Luckily, life abounds with such tasks. In universities the vast majority of tasks fall into this category, and I'm sure the same is true for most other large institutions. Take for example the item right at the top of my list right now. This is finishing an essay for a volume in the philosophy of language. It was supposed to be done eleven months ago. I have accomplished an enormous number of important things as a way of not working on it. A couple of months ago, bothered by guilt, I wrote a letter to the editor saying how sorry I was to be so late and expressing my good intentions to get to work. Writing the letter was, of course, a way of not working on the article. It turned out that I really wasn't much further behind schedule than anyone else. And how important is this article anyway? Not so important that at some point something that seems more important won't come along. Then I'll get to work on it.

Another example is book order forms. I write this in June. In October, I will teach a class on Epistemology. The book order forms are already overdue at the book store. It is easy to take this as an important task with a pressing deadline (for you non-procrastinators, I will observe that deadlines really start to press a week or two after they pass.) I get almost daily reminders from the department secretary, students sometimes ask me what we will be reading, and the unfilled order form sits right in the middle of my desk, right under the wrapping from the sandwich I ate last Wednesday. This task is near the top of my list; it bothers me, and motivates me to do other useful but superficially less important things. But in fact, the book store is plenty busy with forms already filed by non-procrastinators. I can get mine in mid-Summer and things will be fine. I just need to order popular well-known books from efficient publishers. I will accept some other, apparently more important, task sometime between now and, say, August 1st. Then my psyche will feel comfortable about filling out the order forms as a way of not doing this new task.

The observant reader may feel at this point that structured procrastination requires a certain amount of self-deception, since one is in effect constantly perpetrating a pyramid scheme on oneself. Exactly. One needs to be able to recognize and commit oneself to tasks with inflated importance and unreal deadlines, while making oneself feel that they are important and urgent. This is not a problem, because virtually all procrastinators have excellent self-deceptive skills also. And what could be more noble than using one character flaw to offset the bad effects of another?

-----------------

Copyright 1995, John Perry

Here's a URL to where I found his essay: http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~john/procrastination.html

Procrastination game...

I should really finish that product branding/web-site project I started in early March.

Superdrived my Mac today

Well, I put a superdrive in my Mac for a total of just under forty dollars today. Let's hope I do something useful with it.

I want it all, and I want it now.

Save me from what I want

I made a rough logo design for that software project my friend is working on yesterday. I e-mailed him a GIF of what I had done so far, asking him to let me know what I should change.

The products name is going to be named "ajax charts", and I only remembered the "ajax" part of the name. That and the "j" of the font I chose looks kind of like a dropped "i". No big deal. I made the changes in a few minutes.

Then as I looked at it more the bitmap part of the logo started looking too blurry to me compared to its super clean vector graphics. That and the proportions looked a little off. Granted I didn't start with a full resolution image, because I had decided to wait on purchasing the image I wanted to manipulate until after my design was approved. But, now I have an excuse to try the 3D editing program on my Mac (blender 2.41).

The trouble with this approach is that blender has a pretty steep learning curve. I could probably create what I want in a few more days, but I already have one ready to go, and the sooner I get this done the better. Still, I want to learn how to use blender. I guess I'll do that on my own time. Oh well. Back to using Illustrator. :-p

Looks like I have a new project. A friend of mine is a software engineering student at UMass Boston, and he's designing some kind of system for database communications along with another student. It's supposed to liten the burden on server proccesses and network bandwidth. What they would like from me is a product trade-mark, and web-site design. There's no money in it, but it sounds fun, and shouldn't be too difficult. Wish me luck.

Boston Athenæum today

My parents took me with them to a Harvard-Radcliffe alumni gathering at the Boston Athenæum today. My God-father was there too.It wasn't bad. It Lasted a few ours. There was a small but interesting collection of art work to look at. Gilbert Stuart's Portraits of George and Martha Washington, etc.

The special exhibit is running from February 23 to May 13, 2006. Here's a link to it: Boston Athenæum.

I pretty much went because I knew my God-father would be there too. The portraits were a surprise for me.The Athenæum is actually a privately run library near the capital building. It's pretty nice inside. I took some photo's. Maybe I'll try and post some on this blog.

I've been staying up way too late, for the past couple days. I need to stop doing this to myself. It's becoming a problem, because I end up tired all day, which is making me antisocial.

My headset microphone came in the mail today. It was well worth the expense. The sound quality is very sharp (all digital), and it works with my Mac. Now I just need to find out which of my friends also talks through VOIP. That and I need to get a job. Soon.

I've been home for almost two days now and I still haven't called any of my friends up. I still feel too tired to talk to anyone right now. I should really take a nap now.