The Time Sink

Well, after spending something like sixteen hours in the gardens over the weekend and pretty much overdoing it on the arms, legs, back and hands, I still managed to get out of bed this morning and make it to work <g>. ...and the trench shot I'm putting up Tuesday on the photoblog is a thing of the past: it's now covered with several feet of dirt.

...which means that one more day of hooking up electrical fish conduit and buttoning up and back filling will put me in the position of being able to pick up some pier blocks and seeing where I'd like the verticals to go. Maybe I'll go fire up that rendering program I'm trying to learn and see if I can get a decent perspective drawing going...

It was History Day after hours at work; one of the guys is working on a history of EMS and asked if he could pick my brain for a bit. Yeah, I have a story or two. I've also been around since the inception of the the current EMS program's root system in 1975 (and in the emergency services for six years or so prior to that). So, yeah, I have a story of two about the evolution of what has become one of the premier EMS systems in the country.

...but it was our clinical specialist who asked an interesting question as we both passed by her office on the way out, "Who has the information we need to compile a comprehensive history of EMS in this county?" ...and how do we preserve it.

There's a three day weekend coming up, and one with no rain in store. ...and while one of my priorities is going to be working on getting the garage back in shape enough to get Shelley's van back inside, I'm thinking I can maybe at least start thinking about thinking about the next stage on the patio and on the peripheral areas. I'll have the boys available; that means some heavy lifting can be done (moving rocks and replanting them), and Brad likes to plant bulbs.

Uh-oh... Rain? Maybe. They were taking Saturday as a 'chance', but now they're saying Friday morning and Sunday. No problem; I have enough inside and outside work to keep me busy no matter what.

Made it! ...and spent the evening working with Bluetooth here on the Ubuntu AMD 64 box seeing if I could get it to talk to the cell phone... So far they're doing the Junior High Dance: they're in the same room, but just staring at each other and unsure of who is supposed to ask whom.

....and after a night's rest, I'm up earlier than I'd be on a work day! What's up with that? No matter, it's a three-day weekend and a chance to get several projects advanced.

...and project management is being tested in one of the mind map programs. I've been playing with various GTD (Getting Things Done) methodologies, but something about my base personality setup makes integrating one into a decent level of funcionality something of an uphill battle. I miss the old 'sticky note' program from the DOS days (no, the current ones don't have what I seem to need visually, although Tomboy works almost as well as OneNote for lists).

The Wiki structure touted right now may be nice for searching and achiving, but I need something more to allow me to 'just toss' reminders and thoughts together. ThinkingRock is great for sitting down and 'just thinking' and then developing an action plan, but it's not good for showing interelationships (or I haven't found that part yet). The current candidate is Freemind; I'm still getting to know the interface, but it lets me toss a lot of stuff up on the screen in 'meta-outliner' form and then play with the relationships. ...and it looks like I may be able to link to external programs and call webish stuff with a link. More geekery is indicated....

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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"

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