Miscellania

Last couple of days have been maximally busy. I worked from home yesterday because I didn't want to drive in the heat, softie that I am, and, except for one break and lunch, was at the desk for about seven hours. I had the work laptop and the home desktop both on, one dialed into systems I was doing work on and one just going through emails, answering instant messages, and the like. It wore me out, but you know what? I liked it. I was doing things, getting stuff done, helping people, answering questions. Very good stuff.

Despite the baking fiasco, I do want to try again. I'm not a great baker, so I try to find One Good Recipe for whatever I bake and stick with it. I was astonished to find that the frosting for the disaster cake wasn't any good either -- mixed up okay, but had way too much sugar. So, I'm hunting through files to see what I can find. Used Google Desktop Search to find it, but I had to uninstall it again -- something about it messes up Outlook -- Outlook said it couldn't open the address book, so of course it couldn't create a new email. Thank you, Microsoft.

I am slowly, slowly coming around to the thought that Something Must Be Done about this desktop, which seems slower to me every day. I know that some of that is a function of my desire to get things done, but -- fifteen seconds to bring up Outlook? When nothing else is running? Seems a little extreme, to me. I can't believe there are no readily available pieces of diagnostic software for PC performance, a la Omegamon for MVS or RMF.

Finished one book tonight -- Critical Mass; very well written but not the casual linkage of events that I expected. This guy is apparently very well educated and so delves into lots of fascinating areas. At least, the ones that I understood were fascinating. I have a couple more that I am reading, and I'm going to try to finish at least one of them before ordering anything more from the lib.

I really like performance, and I've complained that I never get the chance to do it (assuming I can actually do it, which, after five years of doing this job, is questionable). Today, someone asked me to analyze the performance of a system and tell them why it runs so slowly at startup. Its not a difficult question, but it sent a chill down my spine, not the least because the next two weeks are going to be hectic, anyway, and thats about two hours of hunting and thinking. Time I can't really afford, and thinking -- well, I've sort of forgotten that, too. A lot easier to bitch than to do. But I will give it my best shot.

Still thinking about houses. Looked into local custom builders. My golly, where did all those decimal places in their house prices -- in their low end house prices -- come from?

Got to get some sleep.