2004-01-12 - 10:17 a.m.

I haven't been writing. I've completely forgotten this diary existed. Maybe some day I'll figure out what it is about my brain that leads to this selective awareness of my surroundings.

One good thing about this past weekend is that I did computer contract work the whole time. I was sick on Saturday night, which put a dent into my efforts, but by Sunday evening I was done a big chunk of work. Now I have a less fun set of tasks: designing process flowcharts for things like user installation and registration ()(GRR.. damn monitor. banging isn't working :( ()() for a website. Up till now I haven't spent enough effort thinking of all the cases that could happen during the installation, and so the code I ended up creating is pretty shoddy. If everything works, it works fine, but in a lot of error cases you don't get an appropriate message or the program crashes altogether. That's totally unacceptable. Part of the reason was what I said, that I hadn't taken enough initiative in designing the process, however another big part was that I was just plain lazy. I probably could have put twice the hours into the project that I did.

So now I have a chance again, a chance to do a much better job. So far it looks like history will repeat itself and I'll do some more shoddy work. Over the past few days I've found myself in that familiar work-denying mode where my brain seems to try anything to avoid the task at hand. This is something that is very reminiscent of school, where I had an amazing capacity for distracting myself. This is another thing I hope I figure out someday, or at least figure out a way to combat. Because I eventually do want to accomplish some things in this lifetime.

There are some times I figure I'm destined to be a tramp, roving the countryside on a shoestring budget, avoiding any serious labour, totally contrary to my dreams and visions of making great leaps in computer software that will change the world and make using computers better for everyone.

For one, I think I have conflicting goals. (Gah, I can't believe I almost chose to erase that. How bad has it gotten when I'm starting to double-guess what I should write in my own diary for fear of what people might think when reading it, then confront me about? Things have gotten very strange and way outside of what I expected them to be)

Time for a shower. My big plan for the morning is to boil some potatoes so I can make yummy hashbrowns. I have a whole bag of potatoes and a whole bag of onions and I think I've used maybe 5 potatoes and 1 onion. Hopefully they aren't already gone bad. I should bring the bag of onions to Saara's today. K, better hurry if I want to get any work done at all today.

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