Sad loop

I don't know exactly what causes it, but sometimes I get into a "sad loop". I feel a bit sad, so I surf the 'net, I don't find anything really interesting, so I feel sad, so I decide to surf the 'net, ... Which all makes me feel that I'm wasting time, which makes me feel sad, etc etc etc.

It's hard to drag myself out of these moods. I see a pile of dishes which would be a better use of my time than the 'net. I just have such a hard time moving my ass to start doing them. At some point I have to explain that I didn't get anything done, which also contributes to the sad. Drrrr...

Looking at pictures of when we were doing something fun helps. I'm reminded how awesome we are as a family.

"Look at the source of the awesome, holding the camera."

Car, drive thyself

Self driving cars can't come fast enough. I read somewhere that people were saying that it would have as big a societal change as the internet has. I totally believe that, as a lower bound of change.

This weekend we drove to Pickering and back in about 22 hours, with little to no sleep. I blame the child that decided to prevent us from sleeping starting at 12:30 am and us finally giving up at 4 am and just deciding to come home. Even with a nap today after we got home, I'm so tired. We tried to be as safe as possible driving home, but really it's not a good idea to drive at any time when tired.

How would we have traveled if no one had to be awake and alert? We might only travel at night. You climb into your car bed and fall asleep. In the morning you're somewhere else and you can get refreshed. We would no longer waste a day for "travel".

We've been on night trains and we've taken a sleeper bus before. It's never good sleep, but it's something. Maybe it's just bad sleep with a human driver and it would be smoother with an automated. I don't know. I'm going to be surprised later if any of this makes sense. As I said, I'm tired.

TL;DR: self drive cars, good. No sleep, bad.

88 miles per hour

With my buddy being on leave, it's back to just me on our "team" at work. It's kind of a support role, it's kind of a tools role, with some R&D and library and common components too. Jack of all trades and all that. My problem is that for some tasks I require a certain amount of thought, of focus. I can't context shift from one task to another to get things done. I need time to do it. You might even say I need to get up to speed on each issue before working my magic.

88 mph, time, speed, magic. Yes, I'm making a weak reference to a modified DeLorean. Until they reached that speed, the machine didn't do what they tasked it with. It just wasted gas.

That's the way that I feel about work a lot of the time now. I don't have enough time to get up to speed on whatever I'm trying to work on before being interrupted and losing track. Many days I swear I can count between 15 and 90 seconds between one person leaving my cube until the next one shows up. That leaves me getting very little of my stuff done and a whole lot of frustration. Now, if I had a uniform ability to focus during my entire time at work that wouldn't matter, but I don't work this way. I have peak focus times. Prime time. And that's when I seem to get the most visitors.

I used to work around this by wandering in at 10 and leaving between 6 and 8 pm. I would say that I got all my work done after 4. Yes, even on the days I left at 6, I'd have a solid 2 hours of work. Now-a-days, I don't think that I even get that.

What makes this better? Going home to my girls. Work washes out of my mind, as it should.

The best parts of my day

Diaper up!

It's funny how annoying a habit can be, yet how endearing at the same time. Alice likes to get out as many diapers she can carry and bring them into the living room. She's literally come in with an huge arm load, drops the diapers, and then go back for more. Then she lays out each one of her stuffed toys on a diaper, one toy per diaper, diaper tabs to the feet until our living room looks like a toys r us war zone.

There is something surprisingly maternal about how she takes care of her toys. I find it very cute how she's doing it. You know, until I have to tidy of the mess or try to change her and there are no diapers in the change table. Ah well. I'm sure that without this post I would have forgotten about this in 10 years.

Proper toy / diaper placement is important. Note: toys not usually placed so closely together, was done for staging.

Bike: fix or replace?

I've been using my current bike for 6 years now. If you take my earlier estimate, that would put the amount of km's on my bike in the ballpark of 14 000 km. Some parts of the bike have certainly been showing their age. I recently took the bike in to be fixed because I had a flat at work. Then they discovered that I had also busted my rear axle. Again. They said the inside of the wheel was pretty torn up so they recommend I replace the wheel too. So I got that fixed. But then about a month later my tire had a bulge on the side which was rubbing. The tire looked a bit rough and cracked. So I got that replaced too. This time the guy also recommend that I replace the super stretched chain and front and rear gears. I decided to delay that fix.

At what point does it make more sense to just replace the whole bike? Does that ever make sense for a bike with easily changeable parts?

So far what I can remember changing on my bike includes

• rear tire, twice
• rear tube, at least twice
• breaks, at least twice
• seat
• rear wheel
• shifter cable or 2
• probably some break cables

I also need to change the handle grips soon I think. They are worn through in places and when it's hot I get rubber bits on my hands. For good or bad, it being "hot" probably won't happen again for 6 months.

*sigh*

Ah well. As they say, know thyself. And I know that I'm not gentle on things. If I get a more expensive bike I probably won't keep it in any better repair than my current one. It's probably better to just continuing repair / replace things as needed. I figure that if I keep it under 100 $ / month (!), it will still be cheaper than the bus. And I'll be happier which I figure is worth at least 3 $ / month. So ya.

Aside, searching for info it looks like I started to bike to work 8 years ago. Good to know.