WEP '12, Day 73 - Time Management II, The Cycle of Sloth

Something I've noticed as I've carried out the time logs I mentioned last week is that my time expenditure seems to be cyclical.  And borderline obsessive, for that matter.  It's not the one and done time expenditures like the webcomics (10 minutes today) or a run through the blogosphere (23 minutes) that really consumes my time.  It's the things I do over and over that really wastes minutes.

For example, today my email inbox was unusually full, and I had to type out a couple of responses.   That took 34 minutes.  Then I browsed my selected forums over at Something Awful.  There wasn't much going on, so that was only 3 minutes.  I took care of some one-and-dones, including Dominions 3 and my webcomics and blogs run, then checked my email again.  There was something else there to take care of and that was another 16 minutes.  Then I hit Something Awful for another couple of minutes.  Then I browsed past the War of the Clans site and there was something going on there, and that was 26 minutes.  So then I looked at my email another time, and that was another 15 minutes.  At long last my inbox was empty again, there was no new posts at WotC or SA, and I finally was able to get down to the business of writing this post.

What's more, even as I write this, I have to force myself not to glance at my email...damn, there's another email there.  Going to have to ignore it for now.  I get a little twitchy, though.  I want to head over to SA to see if anything new's popped up, but dammit, I'm busy.

So what's there to do about all this?  We'll I've been trying the gradual weaning process.  I've declared more and more things to be spam.  I've reduced the number of SA forums I'm tracking from sixteen to five.  I'm playing fewer Dominions 3 games.  I'm also trying to get more sleep.  They say that you have more willpower available to spend if you're well rested.  That's why Interrogation 101 involves disrupting the target's sleep cycle.

But it's still a struggle.

One solution would be to try and go cold turkey.  Except that I need a lot of that stuff.  Email is how I coordinate much of my life, for example.  Facebook and Twitter are potential markets to sell to, as are the Something Awful forums, actually.  Maybe I'm just rationalizing...that's always a danger...but it seems I've cut down quite a bit already.

Maybe I just need to go to bed earlier?

WEP '12, Day 72 - Hanging Ten off Google Beach

So I was reading an article online, as I often do.  This particular one was about ways to increase your creativity, and one of the suggestions was not to get out of bed right away after you wake up, but rather, to lie there and contemplate before getting going.  The idea is that the urgency of leaping out of bed stifles creativity and replaces it with a more directed fight or flight state that may be good for getting you to work on time, but isn't as good at allowing you the luxury of thinking up new ideas.  Along a similar vein, the same article recommended taking baths rather than showers.

The stay in bed idea seemed like a low cost way to stimulate the creative mind, so I gave it a try this morning.  After I awoke, I lay in bed and tried to relax and let my mind enter a more creative state...

And woke up for a second time an hour and a half later, having fallen asleep again.

In its own way it was a valuable lesson, though.  The internet is an incredibly powerful tool.  You can find vast amounts of information on virtually any topic you can care to name.  Whole books, movies, and television shows are only a handful of clicks away.

The problem is that there's so damn much of it.

Take my Twitter feed.  I'm following some 220 different people, most of whom are entertainers of one stripe or another.  But there are also political ones, the Real Time World War II feed I blogged about, oh, and a few actual friends and family who also use Twitter.  But I almost never see that, anymore.  These days Twitter has become a way to get interesting links from different people, and almost never a source of actual communication.  Plus the volume of tweets makes it impractical bordering on impossible to keep up with anymore.  There's too damn much.

Facebook is much the same way these days.  Sure, of the 78 Facebook friends a much higher percentage are people I'd actually consider friends, but there's a lot of people I've never met on there too.  And again, there's too much of it.  I can't keep up with all the posts and game requests and what nots associated with Facebook anymore.

(On the other hand, the Google+ ghost town has the opposite problem.  No one's there.  I see posts there from four people on a regular basis.  Two of them I know, the other two are Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day.  No one else is home.)

So, you say, do the obvious.  Cut down on who you follow or friend, right?

Not so fast.  Because, as a writer myself who would like more people to read (and, eventually, pay for) my work, it behooves me to have as wide a net as possible.  Besides, that brings up a second problem with the 'net.  Quality control.  If I did want to trim the hedges of my social network, who would I choose?

Or, taking it to the broader question, how do you know what you find on the internet is worth your attention?

Not only is it possible to run into random advice that sounds good, as I did, but it's also possible to be completely unable to find the article for linking purposes only a few days later!  Even sites that get used every day like Wikipedia are considered so unreliable as to be ineligible for legitimate sourcing in any kind of respectable journal or magazine.  Yes, there's a huge amount of information out there, but how much of it is fact-checked or edited properly?

This all makes me think that if we're going to reform the educational system in this country, and God knows we really should, then maybe we need to be teaching our young people less about what to know and more about how to find what you need to know.  Data mining over rote memorization, in other words.  Because it sure seems to me that the former is more useful than the latter where anyone can get a bullet point summary of the Hundred Years War in moments from their phone.

With so much information out there, victory goes to he (or she) who can find it.

WEP '12, Day 70 - Offline

Great things, bundles.  You get your phone, cable TV, and internet all from one provider with a discount to all three services.  What could possibly go wrong?  I mean, unless they all go down at once or something, but what are the chances of that?

Today?  Those chances are 100%.  I'm typing this at a local library.  It's like old home week.  I feel like it should be 1999 or something.  Anyone want to watch The Matrix?

I'm reminded of that big blackout we had last year.  You don't really notice how much you rely on things, especially the 'net, until they're gone.  I mean, look at the things I was going to do today.  Blog?  Nope.  Write fiction?  I've got it stored as a Google Doc, and that needs me to be online to access.  How about playtest that game I'm in the beta for?  Oh, wait, that needs Steam to use.  Can't Steam without the 'net.  Watch TV?  No, cable's down and I can't get to Hulu or Netflix.  Bulls game?  That's on TV, which is down.  Play Old Republic with the guild?  You must be joking.

At least there's still lights, heat, and water.  And since I'm in a library I can borrow a book and maybe a DVD or two and still have something to do tonight.  And with luck WOW (the cable company, not the game) will get their shit together and get everything back online sooner rather than later. 

How is it that we live in an age of such wonders, and yet can find it all so frustrating?

WEP '12, Day 68 - Time Management I

Over the last couple of days I've been trying out a technique that I once read about where you log every minute of your day to see how you're spending your time.  I'll not bore you with the full minute by minute breakdown...it's my life and even I'm not that interested in it.  I will share certain trends that I discovered, though.  Granted, with only two days worth of data, we're in small sample size territory here, but putting out the preliminary results gives us a baseline, right?

And hey, if it lets me knock out one more of my blog deficit with a quick and cheap post, so much the better, eh?

One thing that was mildly surprising was how little time I spend on email.  "Email addiction" was one of those terms that I've started hearing a lot lately, but it doesn't seem to be a big deal in my world.  I spent all of 21 minutes reading email throughout the day on Thursday, and 18 minutes reading it yesterday.

Likewise, I wasn't spending all that much time on Dominions 3, a turn based fantasy game that I've been playing for the last year and a half.  Even with three games going on, I only spent 18 minutes total on it over both days.  Granted, that's in part because I've made a conscious effort to reduce the number of Dominions 3 games I'm in...I once was in over a dozen simultaneously.  Further, all three are in the early stages where there isn't much to do yet.  Even so, I'd have thought that Dominions would be taking up more of my time.

What is eating my hours, however, is webcomics.  I spent 93 minutes reading webcomics on Thursday, and another 53 minutes on Friday.  I'd like to think that those numbers are atypical, in that I spent a lot of time on Thursday on a new comic that I was reading from scratch and a bunch of time on Friday re-reading some Order of the Stick.  Still, it's a trend I'll be keeping my eye on.

Another big time burner is the War of the Clans Play-by-Email game I've gotten into.  Between corresponding with other players on Thursday and actually completing my turn on Friday, I spent a good 144 minutes, or nearly two and a half hours, over both days!  By comparison, Words With Friends only took up 27 minutes over both days that I logged.

These trends are interesting, but what was even more so was the effect that observational bias had on my actions.  The fact that I knew that I was logging the time I was spending made me more aware of it.  It helped me be more productive, as I rarely found myself glossing over and losing myself in any one thing for too long.  I have to imagine it's helped my ability to get my blog posts in.  And, once I'm caught up with the blog, it should also help me get my fiction writing back on track.

So I'll keep posting occasional Time Management updates to highlight new trends and to help keep myself accountable for my time, if only to myself.

WEP '12, Day 62 - Catching Up

So, you may have noticed that I'm running a little behind.  I've got excuses, of course.  Everyone does.  They are, if you're interested, that I was working on my Clarion entry, then I was doing prep work for my new A Song of Ice and Fire campaign, and then that I was beta testing a PC game.  And they're all true.  I really was doing all those things.

But the truth of the matter is that I fell behind on my blogging because there were moments when I could have been blogging and instead I decided do my Words with Friends or surf the 'net a little longer or even just go to bed a little earlier.

So, to try and get back on track, I'm going to lay out my next few posts.  The order may change, probably will in fact, but here's what I've got on tap:

Old Republic Log  XXV - Coverage of Monday night's Guild Run through Maelstrom Prison.

Ocean's Twelve Retrospective - I saw this over the weekend.

Ashes of Empire Journal - Where-in I'll talk about the Song of Ice and Fire game I just started.

Amazing Race 20 Analysis, Episode 3 - More Race chatter.

Beta Test Preview - I need to check if I've done an NDA for the game I'm testing.  I don't think I did, and assuming I'm right, I'll talk about my feelings for the game.  EDIT: Nope, NDA is there and pretty solid.  I won't be talking about it after all.  Guess I'll have to come up with something else.

Down the line, I'll also have more Old Republic Journals, Race Analysis, Ocean's Thirteen and maybe even the Sinatra Ocean's Eleven retros, plus whatever else comes to mind.  I'll probably be behind for a while, but at least we're moving forward again, and that's something.

And, with this post, I'm only five days behind!

WEP '12, Day 49 - Elvis, Bogey, Marilyn, and Dean

I've got this print near my desk:

It's one of several parodies of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks painting, seen here:

The thing that gets me isn't that it's a parody.  After all, this painting is easy to parody.  Characters ranging from the Peanuts gang to Santa Claus and his reindeer have been in that diner.

No, what's always made me wonder is why are those for actors are always portrayed together?  I've seen those four put together in art all over the place.  Granted its usually in casual restaurants that like to hag kitsch on the walls, but still.  It's always those four.  Never with any other American icons.  Do a quick Google Image Search for "dean bogey elvis marilyn" and see how many pictures you get of them dancing, eating, or playing pool.  

It's not like they were really contemporaries, though.  Dean and Bogart were both dead before either Monroe's or Elvis' careers really took off.  None of them even performed with each other, as far as my research can tell.  Granted, said research was limited to perusals of Google, IMDB, and Wikipedia, but even so you'd think there'd have been one film at least.

And yet, there they are, locked together as a group from here into eternity.  

About the only thing I can figure is that they were all very popular in their eras, and yet, so were a lot of people.  So were Sinatra, and Wayne, and Stewart, and Brando.  So were Grable, and Mansfield, and Taylor, for that matter.

So why Bogie, Elvis, Marilyn, and Dean?

WEP '12, Day 47 - Twain on the Internet

I've recently subscribed via RSS to Letters of Note,  a website that republishes famous and interesting letters from over the years.  Today's was by Mark Twain, where he discussed his view on why print interviews are inherently worthless.  It's a short read, so you should probably just go have a look for yourself here.

Got it read?  Great.  Let's carry on.

The funny thing about this letter is that I can recall expressing many of the same feelings about the internet.  I can even remember the situation.  I was driving Ryan to the airport in '98 or '99 or so, and we were discussing the existence of smileys.  My point was that appending an appropriate smiley was simply an attempt to add, however primitively, some vestige of emotional content to what would otherwise be unexpressed.

It turns out that Mark Twain said it better one hundred and ten years earlier.

Though the recent proliferation of audio and video communication mitigates matters somewhat, the fact is that for the most part the internet is a written medium.  Be it Facebook Wall, Tweets, forum posts, articles, or blogs, most of the information we get from people online is still text.  And, as Twain said, whil text is awesome at expressing raw data, it falls down hard in conveying emotions in all bu the broadest of strokes.

So the next time you're about to blow your stack over an insulting forum reply or think someone's an idiot or evil because of something that's being quoted to you over the 'net, try to recall what old Sam Clemens warned you about a hundred and twenty five years ago.

WEP '12, Day 21 - Food, Wine, and Conversation...but Mostly Food

We take a break from the gamer memoirs to talk about the dinner I attended tonight.  We were celebrating my brother's wife's birthday at Roy's in Chicago.  Now I don't go to restaurants like Roy's very often, so I've decided to discuss the food of the place while the memory is still fresh.

Roy's is "Hawaiian Fusion."  Fusion cooking involves blending cooking styles from differing sources.  "Hawaiian Fusion" is mildly ironic since Hawaiian food is already a mix of styles from all over the world, but in fact references the idea of mixing traditional Hawaiian flavors with European style sauces and presentation.

I went with a three course Prix Fixe to try and keep costs down, and the first course was a Duck Confit & Mushroom Flatbread.  Given the expense of the meal, I'd sworn to myself to try at least a little of everything I'd ordered and was pleased to discover that I liked the dish pretty well, even though I normally dislike mushrooms.  The balsamic nitsume was a sweet and slightly tangy sauce that brought the dish together.

The main course was a grilled pork chop with fennel sauerkraut and mustard spatzle.  While the pork chop was excellent, with a smoky flavor and an excellent mustard seed demi-glace, the side dishes didn't do much for me, so I focused mainly on the pork.  That worked pretty well.

The dessert was a chocolate souffle with a marvelous hot chocolate sauce inside and a spoonful of vanilla ice cream on the side and a line of that raspberry sauce that most high end restaurants are serving with choclate desserts.  It's not a bad sauce, but there wasn't enough for the whole dessert, and it was soon lost in the mass of chocolate and vanilla.   I didn't mind, though, since the chocolate and ice cream worked perfectly without the sauce.

All in all it was an awesome, if expensive, meal.  I'm told that that the fish and shellfish were equally good, particularly the Butterfish.  If you're looking for great seafood and good everything else, Roy's is a pretty good choice.

Write Everyday Project #25, What Dreams May Come

Is there anything more disruptive to your morning than waking up in the middle of a dream?  Okay, yes, getting interrupted by an alien invasion probably would be worse, but we're talking about relatively everyday occurances here.  Sunday morning I woke up in the middle of a truly odd Doctor Who related dream, featuring the tenth and eighth doctors, which was pretty odd since I haven't seen anything but eleventh Doctor shows all this year.  I rarely remember my dreams except when I'm interrupted, and even then the details remain fuzzy.

What gets me about it is how badly it throws me off.  It takes minutes before I'm able to even get out of bed, and hours before I'm feeling fully up to snuff.  Even after food and a shower, I'm still vaguely woozy.  Breaking up that REM is a bad idea!

I do have a recurring dream, of a sort though, that I call the Unfinished Game.  I often wake up feeling like I'm missing a part of a game I'm supposed to be playing.  Sometimes I even make it to my PC before I remember that no, I'm not missing anything.  The odd thing is, that within the dream the rules seem consistent, and when I awake I feel like I should be submitting a turn or preforming some other action, but there is, of course, no real game to play.

It can be a little disconcerting, to tell you the truth.

Still, I sometimes wish that I could remember dreams without having it ruin my morning.  It'd be nice to know what my subconscious is up to in there.

Write Everyday Project #19, Memory of Snowflakes

Alas, that this entry isn't about remembering a specific snowflake or snowfall.  Nor is it a poem, since a poet I am not.  No, this is a complaint that sometimes my memory seems to made out of snowflakes, ones that melt as fast as I touch them.

This was brought on by something that happened a few minutes ago, where between my deciding to open up a new tab to search for something and my actually doing so, I forgot what I wanted to search about.  I actually did recall a minute or so later, I wanted to Google the new report on the value (or perhaps lack thereof) of multi-vitamins, but it was pretty disturbing to bring up a search box and not recall what I wanted to type in it.  That seems to be happening more and more lately.

There are mnemonic tricks to help remember things, of course.  "Thirty days has September, April, June, and November.  All the rest have thirty one, except February which is all fucked up."  That's how I remember it, anyway.  And since it works, I see no reason to go back and learn the correct version.  I've also found that repeating something out loud at least three times in rapid succession can help keep things straight, to say nothing of simply constantly repeating what you need to recall until you don't need it any more.

Nevertheless, I find myself relying more and more on my phone's calendar and address book functions.  I only know two phone numbers, my own and my parents' (and that last has been the same for 36 years), and I'm fuzzy on my own since I've only had it a few months.  I also use my email as a memory bank, keeping things I want to remember to do in my inbox, while cleaning out the rest.  There's a message from the Pritzker Military Library about a program they'll be webcasting on Thrusday that I want to remember to watch, that I've left in my inbox, for instance.

I do have to wonder if this is an age thing or simply a complexity of modern life thing or possibly a "get more sleep you goon thing".  Or possibly all of the above and other stuff besides.  Whatever the cause, it remains an uncomfortable thought that my mind may not be as reliable as once it was.

Now, where'd I put my phone?

Write Everyday Project #11, Autumn Doldrums

In many ways this is usually a nice time of year around Chicagoland.  The heat of summer has gone, but there's no snow yet.  The best description for the weather is "crisp."  Normally, I prefer this weather to any other.

Except this time, I seem to have gotten sick.

Nothing major, mind you, just a little ache in the back of my throat and my feet are literally (rather than metaphorically) cold.  I'm not even congested, which I usually am when I catch something.  No phlegm either, which is a nice bonus.  Still, what I do have is enough to put me off my mood. Whether it's this or the usual Planning Fallacy, it sure is taking me a lot longer to get things done than I expect.

Bah!  (Humbug reserved for Christmas.)