One thing that I find fairly frustrating is having to do a task twice. It’s been happening a lot lately, since I’ve been distracted by stuff like relocating mom. It means that I’ve been missing small details, that force me to go back and do a job a second time, which makes me feel more pressed for time, which leads to more dropped details. Vicious cycle.
The most recent example is the trailer I used over the weekend. When I dropped it off yesterday, I forgot to remove the locks I’d put on it, so today I need to drive sixty miles to go get the locks. But when I said I’d do that, I’d forgotten one small detail — I took my truck into the shop for its (overdue) fifty-thousand-mile service yesterday afternoon, and it might not be done until noon today, which won’t leave time to get out and back before the landscaping people are going to show up to put together an estimate for the sidewalk I’d like to get put in this summer.
Normally I’m pretty good at keeping a handful of complex tasks organized, but during these past few months, it hasn’t been working as well. I’m not sure if it’s just that I’ve had enough things added that I’m over the limit on what I can keep straight or whether I’ve just become more addle-pated, but I suspect it’s a little of each.
I’m pretty sure the solution is as simple as finding some down-time when I can just relax and not worry about day-to-day problems. A vacation sounds like a great plan. The only problem is trying to figure out when and where and all those details and I just don’t think I can handle trying to plan a vacation when I’m feeling scattered like this. Did I mention something about a vicious cycle?
- Maybe I should try to spend a couple hours with Alton Brown this Friday? Looks like a couple hundred bucks and a trip to Georgia will do the trick. Oh wait, there’s already something planned for Saturday…
- Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) seems to have advanced their agenda beyond discouraging heavy drinking. They now seem to be against any drinking at all, at least when you might be driving. Because GM has been a big funder of MADD, bar and liquor store owners are MADD at GM and have launched a PR campaign to counter the excesses of the Mothers. [reed]
- Ken Rockwell says that Your Camera Does Not Matter, and you should buy what makes you comfortable. I guess I agree, but I also think that there are a lot of us who buy cooler cameras than we need who help make good equipment more available. If it weren’t for people fetishizing their gear, there wouldn’t be as much good gear available. Right? [kottke]
- The American Religion Data Archive has maps showing information about how many people are religious, what religions they are, etc., all broken down by county. Interesting data there, especially when you start correlating it with how the votes broke in the 2004 presidential election.
- Olia Lialina looks at the web of the 90s in A Vernacular web and talks about many of the “design elements” that have fallen out of use since then. [kottke]
- In Hump years? Sit years? Doc asks:
If this isn’t a leap year, what kind of year is it? Is there a name for leapless years?
Hmm. I do not know, but maybe some reader does. [doc]