Couch Calling

I find myself sitting back on the couch in the living room while typing away on my laptop and watching TV. For some odd reason I feel so exhausted. Just sitting at my desk in my uncomfortable chair was really distracting me from the work I needed to do since I barely had the energy to maintain my posture. I only have one more thing to do today to finish my list!

I did a lot today, including a bunch of things not on my list. I picked up the living room this morning after Mike left, put all the dishes in the sink in the dishwasher, took out the trash, got the mail, called my mom, picked up my room, swept the kitchen, vacuumed the dining area, vacuumed my room, rinsed out some cans, crushed 2 bags full of cans, and of course rated the days before I implemented the productivity stars. Speaking of which, my rating for today:

January 17


As soon as I'm done with this blog entry, I'm going to go make some revisions on one of my client's websites, continue watching TV, and go to bed.

I'm probably going to bed early tonight too!

Catching Up with January

Here are my reviews for the days before I implemented the star system (for rating my productivity for each day.

January 12


January 11


January 10


January 9


January 8


January 7


January 6


January 5


January 4


January 3


January 2


January 1

Income ho!

First off, I have to say the invoice I just sent out is worth a hefty 10 pts. I'm not going to disclose how much it was for (because my finances are a bit of a personal matter...) but I do have to say it took me a lot of time and effort to get that thing ready to send out. Also, a good chunk of that money will be re-invested in my business... so hooray for me! I'd also like to give myself a measely 1 point for the invoice template I created (that basically encourages customers to pay earlier). I would have given myself more, but the sheer amount of time I took to make it pretty kind of defeated the purpose since it delayed me sending out that large invoice.

I had a friend over today, so I didn't really get much done. I did have a fun day, though... and I finally saw Wall-E! Cutest movie ever. I also got a Hollywood video card today to add to my repertoire of useless membership cards in my wallet. I ate LOTS today (thanks to my friend Mike) and thankfully that's a good thing since I've been skipping out on meals lately.

So onto my productivity rating for today (more like yesterday at this point).

January 16

I wasn't too productive today since I had Mike over, but we all can't be working all the time!

I'm going to head off and get some much-needed sleep now!

Extra, extra!

Bloody hell... what a night. I've been working for almost 12 hours straight on the same mundane task. If it wasn't one thing, it was another, basically. I made an intricate e-mail template only to discover that HTML e-mail wasn't exactly supported. Then I made a few divs to insert in a .pdf attached to the e-mail, only to discover that dompdf doesn't support the CSS float or position properties. THEN I spend hours tweaking the thing to work within the limitations that I had with both CSS and X/HTML with very little documentation...

I know you probably didn't understand a lick of that, but trust me it was a huge relief to rant about that.

I had a long list of things to do today, but I only managed to get a few things done due to how friggin' long that whole deal took me. I have to admit, the day started off slow (I got back in touch with an old friend and we talked for hours) but once I got to work... it just never seemed to end.

I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow too, so I'm going to have to wake up early. I'm going to cut this post short, post my productivity stars, and get my ass to bed! Ciao!

January 15th


Even though I didn't get a lot done on my list, the challenges I faced today (and muddled through) earn me that extra star.

No Shelving Til' Spring

I know I said yesterday (erm, the day before) I was going to get up in the morning and put the second coat on my shelves. Not a lot of thought went into it, so it didn't take too long to poke a bunch of holes in the plan. The thought started running through my head that the paint may just freeze since the high temperature for Wednesday wasn't going to reach far above freezing. This just goes to show how last minute plans end up.

Today I was however able to do the dishes. It may seem like a small task... but since I haven't exactly been feeling well the past few days and my roommate forgets to rinse off her dishes, both sinks were full. One with horribly stinky, grimy, and caked-on dishes, the other with empty aluminum cans that I needed to rinse out and dry for recycling. The dishwasher was also full (and clean). So I took care of all that much to my roommate's delight.

I was going to hard boil some eggs today, but since I've never done this before, I didn't know I should leave the eggs in the fridge for about a week until I do it.

I also checked on a client's site to see if it propogated, only to discover that it needs some SERIOUS updates. Then I went ahead and nearly completed the template for the e-mail that gets sent out with every invoice. That will definitely be done tomorrow (along with implementation and sending out that overdue bill).

That pretty much covers my list of things that were to be done today... just goes to show what goes through my head and what actually gets done.

OH! And I updated my instant message client, Pidgin. Since I liked LeechBlock so much, I wanted to tackle my next time-waster: instant messages. I was hoping in a newer version of Pidgin they would offer some more features in the area of away messages to make it so I won't constantly be peeking at incoming IMs when I'm working, and it seems they've added a new option to "mute" IMs (disable sounds and hide new windows) while your status is set to away. Hopefully this too will allow me to become more productive.

But right now, I'm feeling really really sleepy, so I'm going to write my to-do list for tomorrow on my desk calendar and head to bed... but not before giving today my productivity rating:

January 14th


I give today (well technically yesterday) a 3/5. I was fairly productive, but didn't exactly get done what I had planned.

Night night.

Leechblock: My Online Babysitter

Last night I added a new tool to my repertoire to prevent me from wasting time on certain websites during the day when I should be working. It's called LeechBlock and it's a Firefox extension that prevents you from visiting websites you've specified during different times of day (or more than x minutes out of the hour).

Although there are safeguards you can enable to prevent yourself from circumventing LeechBlock through its options, I choose not to make it too difficult for myself to go to those websites should I find myself hell-bent on visiting them. I use it as more of a reminder to myself that I should be working and not Plurking. To become too reliant on something like this (by disabling the ability to turn off LeechBlock) would prevent you from having any sort of self-control when it comes to your internet browsing. Besides, you never know when you'll have work-related things to do on social networking sites.

Currently I have the following settings enabled:

• For the following sites
  • www.plurk.com
  • www.myspace.com
  • www.facebook.com
• Block between 3PM and 10PM AND
• If visited for more than 30 minutes out of the hour
• For Monday through Friday

So basically I can't visit my favorite social networking sites (not that I even visit MySpace anymore) during the weekdays between 3PM and 10PM. If I do visit them during the weekdays outside of those times, it has to be less than 30 minutes out of the hour.

Well I better get back to work, or else I may have to add Blogger to that list!

The Shelving Saga

I know I said I was going to try and get some things done tonight not too long ago in a previous post, but I'm thinking it may be more prudent to get my butt to bed (since all that food made me sleepy) and wake up early to put that final coat on my shelves. It's been over a month (or even two) that I've been trying to get this done, and from the looks of it the temperature is just going to continue going down this week.

Also, I've been thinking about it for quite some time now, but a star system for rating the productivity of each day would be very helpful in tracking my... well... productivity! For example, if tomorrow is a very productive day I might give it 4 out of 5 or 5 out of 5 stars. I'll have to go back on the past 13 days and rate them, but it should be easy considering I've written a blog for every day detailing what I've done.

So I'll go ahead and give a rating for yesterday:

January 13th


I made the star images myself for my old blog TinkerBot, so be sure to ask me before you use them, 'kay?

Well I guess I'm heading off to bed for realsies this time! Night.

Food is good, food is great!

I finally have food in the apartment. I was so proud of myself in the store-- instead of succumbing to my every desire and buying all the junk food in existence, I restricted myself and bought appetizing alternatives. I know the word 'restrict' sounds so harsh, but I realize how much my poor eating habits are contributing to my feeling like crap every day. So while it may make me feel good to eat a candy bar for a minute or two, it will contribute to me feeling ill the rest of the day for lacking in the nutrients my body needs.

This morning was miserable, though. All I had left to eat were two pieces of bread. I could barely accomplish anything because I felt so badly. Not only was I hungry, but my blood sugar was low and I had a pounding headache. I can't even say if it was worse than last night, when I wasn't even able to post because of issues that honestly, I'd really rather not talk about.

Maybe I can accomplish some things tonight before I go to bed now that I feel so much better.

Oh, and by the way you'll notice I posted another section in the sidebar full of tools I use in conjunction with the blog for future reference.

So yes, anyways, I'll post tomorrow (erm... later today) xD

Nutrition

Last night when I was illin', I joined this site called SparkPeople. I wanted some place where I could get advice and encouragement for my eating and exercise habits, and I have to say I love it so far. It's a free site where you can set nutritional, exercise, and weight loss goals that offers meal plans, exercise videos, and lots of other great free resources. So far I've been using their nutritional planner to keep track of my daily nutritional intake, and I've discovered I consume far too few calories a day. Also, the calories I do take in are mostly empty and of no real nutritional value.

I've determined these are my nutritional/exercise goals for the coming months:

• Eat more, but make healthier choices. In other words: more calories, but far fewer empty ones.
  
• Stick to whole grains! They're better for my hypoglycemia.
• Shop more often so that you can carry all your groceries and walk to and from the store instead of bumming a ride.
• Get a Playstation so I can get back to playing DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) and have fun with my cardio workouts.
• Try to get in those 8 glasses of water a day. It's so hard, but it's important to try my best.
• Hopefully get some normal bowel movements in there.

I'm going out tomorrow to buy food. It'll be one big shop before I start going out for my smaller trips.

Hooray for Food Poisoning!

Well, not exactly. I've had food poisoning before and this was nothing compared to it, but I do know that I got majorly sick last night from something I ate or drank. I had a teeny tiny bit of Sake, some Hershey's Kisses, Mini-Reese's, sausage, and some iced tea. Strange combination, I know... but I'm thinking it was the sausage.

And I have to admit, I barely got anything done yesterday. I also couldn't paint my shelves today since I slept in late as a result of being sick. Well, I pretty much just allowed myself to sleep in since I felt it was best. Had I not been sick I would have set my alarm for 11 or so.

Today I absolutely must get my BambooInvoice billing system back up. If I can do that today, I'll be pretty happy.

Oh, and my mom deposited some money into my bank account for food this morning. I feel kind of bad, especially since I didn't ask her (until later this afternoon). I already owe her some money from October. I'm owed a bunch of money from a bunch of people, but my bank account is nearly at zero. I can't STAND owing people money... I was pretty much happy with starving myself up until today to spare asking my mom for food money. She told me I didn't owe it back to her because it was her Valentine's gift to me. It makes me feel especially uncomfortable since her and I have a rocky relationship and somehow she thinks by giving me money it will make everything all better. But financial support and emotional support are two entirely different things.

I Don't Want to Stand Up.

My head has been pounding since I woke up this morning... erm... afternoon. I'm going to take some ibuprofen and hopefully by the time I wake up tomorrow morning it will be gone. If not, well... I won't be a happy camper.

Just as I expected, I wasn't entirely too productive today. I swept my bathroom and the kitchen, and I attempted to do dishes, only to find that the dishwasher needs to be fixed again. Luckily I did manage to do some business-like things today, though. I added 4 things to my DeviantART, which I've apparently gotten a few comments on asking me to do some design work. Normally I wouldn't give myself points for adding to my DA, but since it seems to be drawing in some customers I think I deserve 4 points; one for each deviation. Apparently I also have someone on Plurk asking me to do some graphic design work as well.

Well, I'm going to head off to bed. I'm going to save putting that second coat of paint on my shelves for Monday since waking up early tomorrow might just make my headache worse. Not to mention the paint fumes and the fact that I'm severely allergic to latex >.<