On the Wasting of Time
Sunday, January 11th, 2009I have to own up to something, re my flurry of interest in arguing with people who refuse to accept the same rules of logic that sane people do.
I look for things to distract me from doing the things I should be doing. The things I want to be doing. The things which would give me great satisfaction were I to actually do them.
I’ve had some time off work, during which I honestly had every intention of achieving great things. Did this happen? Of course not. I’ve wasted all my valuable time online, sleeping in, watching copious amounts of TV, staring at the sky, driving around, shopping etc. What is this incredible force which prevents me from opening my developer tools and getting to work on JujuEdit, Drivey, or any one of a bunch of worthwhile projects which languish for lack of attention?
It’s the procrastination monkey, and I can’t get him off my back. He’s always been there but lately he’s grown to gorilla proportions, crushing me and constantly pointing at new shiny things which might divert or dilute my attention still further. He beats his chest and howls with glee every time another birthday rolls around and I realize I haven’t done all the things I promised myself I would do.
Why did I buy a 1TB hard drive? Was it help with my work? Of course not. It was to store all the media I distract myself with. To expand the possibility that I might sit down and browse a collection of TV I’ve already seen when I could be adding new blending modes to JujuSketch, creating terrain for Drivey, or adding macro support to JujuEdit.
I hate this monkey, I’m going to try to kill him.
January 11th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Okay guys NO COMMENTS on non-programming stuff, including this!
January 11th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Ah, you’ve got one of those monkeys too! Someone should try getting it declared a noxious pest - not me though, I wouldn’t get around to it.
January 11th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
I find Ray’s stupidity quite addictive, possibly enhanced because he’s a Kiwi, or was one.
January 11th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
I must admit, when I learned that he was a fellow antipodean it did for some reason make me want to harass him more than I would have otherwise.
(sorry, other mark)
January 11th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Powerful monkey! He even got the other commenters to work against you!
January 12th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Do not try to kill the monkey, for he is a part of you. Instead, coax the monkey with a banana to join the infinite number of other monkeys with typewriters who are working on your software. Given eternity, they will help you finish your work.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:54 am
You can’t kill it. The monkey is the manifestation of your soul and therefore your true master … Mwaahaahaaa. Sorry couldn’t resist, but in all honesty we all have this monkey. Distraction must be a positive trait, surely?
January 13th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Don’t feel bad; you aren’t alone. Witness me being delightfully distracted by your shiny blog :)
January 14th, 2009 at 6:18 am
There’s an org of atheists translated to something like “free thinkers” where I am that (not sure how) figured out that (there’s some law maybe?) they could force the christian church to take resignations electronically. They’ve since put up a web site with simple resignation form, anti-religious cartoons (eg. about how it makes no sense to pay the church tax or soemthing) and managed to get some press with numbers like how many tens of thousands resigned from church each year through their web site.
The point is (as your post sort of reads like a response to my comment earlier), I’m not suggesting your current interest are of less importance than those of past, it’s just that if you’re done with eg.jujuedit then finding someone to maintain it or open sourcing it would be good to those still using it I suppose ;-)
January 14th, 2009 at 6:21 am
Actually I just checked their web site I don’t see the comics anymore. There’s some calculator on how much one can save by resigning the church. Given the population and their results I think they’ve been very succesful.
January 15th, 2009 at 3:54 am
Ah Yes, I too suffer the same monkey curse. Every time I have a holiday coming up, i fantasise about losing 10 kilos and becoming the superfit and supersmart bloke that i know i truly am only to be thwarted by the pull of the true joys of life; TV, Beer and Burgers. The best cure I’ve found is to book a holiday somewhere unseen where i have no choice but to be inspired once i land.
January 17th, 2009 at 5:44 am
Dammit, why am I reading your blog entry rather than working on my own projects?
January 19th, 2009 at 11:20 am
I am going to link these here because Ray would never allow the links on his blog, the original links for his quotes.
http://scienceline.org/2006/08/21/ask-snyder-bang/print/
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=364
January 19th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
BathTub, Re:Ray,
If nothing can come from nothing and there is not nothing, but something, then logically nothing does not exist.
Of course the closest thing to nothing we know of is the vacuum of deep space, but that’s not nothing, that’s space/time and there’s this thing called the Casimir effect were particles do emerge randomly out of the vacuum of space:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
January 21st, 2009 at 4:42 pm
And? The point simply was Ray refuses to link to the quotes in context and refuses to let others include urls in the comments.
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Sorry if that came off harsh, it wasn’t meant to be.
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Actually I don’t quite understand Norman’s point, but I think he was just adding his own link for similar reason to you.
January 26th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Intepid, I was going to post, chastising you for discussing your orders from the Secular Church of Atheism and revealing our plans for the future, but then I realized that that crowd would have taken it seriously :S
January 28th, 2009 at 12:16 am
I really loved what you recently wrote on Ray’s blog about his “good idea” that atheists boycott the blog…you are so smart! Now get back to work.
January 28th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Ray has dumped 2 comments so far pointing out his goof and cover up on the Monkey post.
January 28th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Actually I’m suspecting it’s Blogger’s comment system, since whether or not my comments get through seems to have little to do with the content, and sometimes I don’t see the “you’re comment has been received” message.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Oh no, it’s very specific here, any one where I mentioned how Ray screwed on the first post. Those ones are the ones that dissapear, another one just did, about 4 or 5 in total.
I am however interested if Intepid did remove his own post.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
I did remove my post because I had inadvertently copied Ray’s typos from the sidebar. I really don’t understand why Ray okays some posts and not others (when I first started commenting there it actually seemed like he would only let my comments through if I was openly mocking in tone)