Random thoughts I've had over the past 5 minutes that weren't enough to fill a whole blog post on their own, but were too much to shove into a tweet:

I wish I didn't have to sleep. Things happen overnight that would be useful to be present for. My coworkers being awake and international Habari support, for two. Also, I'd be able to get all of those things done that I don't have an extra couple hours every day for. It would be useful not to sleep. Being sick has put me into the routine of sleeping more, which is good for sanity, but bad for productivity.

I have a new recruiter policy. If you call and offer an opportunity that doesn't meet the criteria that I've outlined clearly in my published resume, I simply tell you not to ever call me again. This is brought on by today's recruiter call from Sandeep in "Columbus OH" (according to the caller ID - yeah, right), confirming that I am in Chester Springs, and wondering if a daily commute to Erie would be acceptable to me. I informed Sandeep that Pennsylvania is roughly 300 miles across, and that Chester Springs is in the far Southeast corner, while Erie is in the far Northeast corner, and that yes, I was actually serious about not relocating, and no, teleportation technology that would allow me to perform that 375-mile daily commute had not yet been invented. When he said, "If I have any other opportunities I will let you know," I replied, "No, I don't accept calls from recruiters that don't know their own business." Hopefully, that ends that.

I've long been looking for a way to keep focused on tasks and moreover come up with a comprehensive time-management system that works for me. I discovered the Pomodoro Technique, which uses one of those tomato timers to get you to focus on an individual task for 25 minutes between 5 minute breaks. Seems like it could be effective and would like to try it, but one of the more effective bits of the technique is how it suggests to record interruptions. I think this part would do very well for me, allowing me to continue work, and evaluate later whether I really need to check Twitter again or get back to that person I should have emailed days ago. But I want a digital tool to do it, and the ones I've found (including this otherwise really good one, Pomodairo) are lacking in certain ways that seem obviously essential to me, particularly in their ability to collect and then organize interruptions. I might just go back to paper.

It's come up at least twice this week that I used to write desktop software, and should be able to produce small apps that I would like to use (like the Pomodoro app from above). I think it might be entertaining to get back into some minimal desktop development, maybe with some of the newer .net stuff that uses Expression for design.

I've been burning the candle at both ends quite a bit lately. Weekends of sleeping in aren't enough to cover it and I'm still not using any of the extra time to be more active. My normal level of mental agility is impaired and it's starting to show. And most disconcertingly, I can't get this stupid Mika song out of my head.

I'm not yet willing to commit to Ben Franklin's regimen, also known as The Old Man Schedule, partially because it doesn't quite suit my activity list, and partially because 5am??? All I'm willing to say at this point is that something must be done to improve the situation.

Clearly ts is a problem with time management. I must learn to be a master of time. It must be apparent to others that I encounter that I have a complete mastery of my schedule and am even able to adjust it nimbly. I will become a Time Lord.

Yeah, it's like that now.

All week I've had trouble getting to bed at a reasonable hour. I've been working on various things on the computer, whether for work or for Habari or whichever crazy project I happen to be dreaming up. Whatever it is, it's keeping me up way too late.

One thing I've noticed is that the late nights have a very disturbing benefit. As the hours wear on, I am able to get more focused. It's very strange. It's as if all of the distracting parts of my mind are shutting down because they're tired, and I'm able to focus the parts that are left singularly.

I've noticed a weird steady rate of actual things getting done way late at night. I'm considering whether the late hour (1am-2am) is enhancing my output because that's a "zone" in which I operate efficiently, or if it's simply because I'm so sleep deprived as to have the results I've described above. Maybe it's a combination of both.

I remember some summer days in high school writing some code all night. Being able to sit, concentrate and work on something that I enjoy was pretty exhilarating. I think it bothered my parents somewhat to find me still sitting at the computer when they were getting up in the morning for a weekend shift at work. Still, I think that those cycles of work were some of my most productive times.

Even when I was working at the print shop, I managed to come in and do layout on the coupon books overnight. This somehow always allowed me to keep the focus on the task through to the end, and I'd end up driving home at 5am or so.

With the books I've been reading lately on problem solving and how the mind works, it's not surprising that this is the case. The creative half of my brain seems to kick in when my rational mind gets tired, at least enough to have some high-quality left-to-right-brain interaction. If I was going to force it, I think the trick would be keeping that balance level, either by measured/managed caffeine intake, or periodic invigorating success, or short mental breaks.

On the other hand, I don't have summers off any more, and waking up the next day keeps getting harder. Waiting for the weekend to "catch up" on sleep (you never really do, do you?) just eats what could otherwise be a full-day productive weekend. So there's got to be a better bedtime solution for me.

Maybe I need a "go to sleep" alarm in addition to a "get out of bed" alarm. I wonder what would happen to my productivity by exiting flow due to such an alarm. I fear it's not good, which is why I've not tried.

"Ah, Owen, you don't work hard enough," I keep hearing you all say. "You're such the slacker! Why don't you do something useful instead of writing all of that blog software?"

Well, between work and Habari, I do like to hang out with the family, and when I'm not doing that (usually after everyone had gone to bed, and long after I should have gone to bed myself) I'm frequently working on stupid little side projects that aren't of any consequence to anyone. My most recent such "mini" pet project is Pastoid.

Pastoid is a weird little thing that I started out of frustration at the lack of fusion between various pastebin services that are available and the tinyurl services that are abundant these days. I use the word "fusion" because I like it better than "mashup", which sounds more like something my kids do with potatoes, and not some whiz-bang web 2.0 technology. Also, it's one of the best lines of my favorite Invader Zim episode. Besides that, I'll tell you what it does.

Basically, it lets you paste either some code or a URL into it, and then it spits out a URL that points to it. So if you give it code, Pastoid gives you a link to that pasted code. If you give it a URL, Pastoid gives you a link that redirects to the URL you pasted. There are some hidden features that might be of interest.

First, if you give it a long URL to make short, Pastoid will give you a short URL with a plus (+) on the end. If you use this URL, you will be redirect directly to the pasted URL. If you remove the plus, then you will go to a page on Pastoid that shows the destination URL and a thumbnail. This saves you the embarrassment of opening up some link for suckers or something potentially NSFW at W.

Another cool thing that I have planned for Pastoid is the ability to paste multiple things on a single Pastoid URL. So you could paste a URL and some code, and some more code, etc. All referenced from a single Pastoid URL. That seems useful if you've got some sample code that has HTML and PHP and Javascript that all goes together. This feature is planned, but you can see the underpinnings of it if you paste both a URL and some code into the two default boxes on the Pastoid home page.

One thing I wanted to do was make Pastoid a bit less cluttered-feeling than the other paste services. Pastie is pretty good in this respect, but I think the PHP world needs to show those Ruby guys that we can still hack, you know? Plus, "pastoid" is seven characters, just like "tinyurl". I thought that was pretty neat.

Did you check out the live syntax-highlighting in the code box? Yeah, that's pretty cool. I combined a couple of very cool open source libraries to get that working. Pretty slick. Still needs refined a bit, but it's pretty slick.

Yes, I'm pronouncing this thing "paste-oid", like "factoid" but with "paste". And "oid". Whatever.

Anyway, I've got a whole mess of new features to add. Actually, I wrote 2+ pages of notes of what I want Pastoid to do, and I think I've only barely scratched the surface of those original notes. I'm going to try very hard to fit all of these features into something that stays usable, and also try to get sleep now and then. Which I'm not doing right now. Gee, how unusual.

We played a little D&D over the weekend. It was fun. I wish we could play a little more often, but I'm glad I at least get out this much.

The past couple of days have brought to light a need to get the heck out of this house on a more regular basis. Perhaps I should join some kind of club or something. Bowling or something. Full-contact frisbee.

The monthly meetings I sometimes attend in the city are fun, and I enjoy all of the people there, but it's a bit of a distance to do social things. It would be nice if a similar thing existed out here in the 'burbs.

I've embarked on a new routine with the treadmill that's been collecting dust in our bedroom. I've got a schedule mapped out for what I want to accomplish there, hopefully it'll help with the insomnia.

We'll see how that goes. What I'd really like to do is to rebuild my day from the ground up and fit all of these things into it that would make my day feel fulfilling in a way my current day does not. Oh, and also sleep would be nice.