First thing in the morning...

My morning office

I have a pretty good set-up. I get out the door by seven, and to the office around eight. It's a murderous commute, one that seriously eats into my writing time because no decent King County Metro route will handle the multiple demands of my commute in a timely fashion.

If I'm early, and I frequently am, I wait for the office manager to unlock the door by sitting out on the pier that juts into Lake Washington and hacking. There's an open WiFi there and usually I'm the only person on the whole subnet, so bandwidth isn't bad. My laptop with a three-hour battery, good weather, an amazing view, good bandwidth, and a cup of coffee aren't bad ways to start the morning. Sometimes I have to share my "office" with an elderly English gentleman who does his Tai Chi.

When the office opens, I get the bigger monitor and the hardline, and work solidly for six hours. I eat lunch at my desk-- I know, that's a big no-no, but it's not a full eight hours, and there are compensations. My office companions are some of the most awesome people I've worked with. (Truth, though: I could say that about Spry and Isilon, both of which I was in at the "Twelve people or less" stage. I could not say that about F5, where I was employee #86. By that time, bureaucratic sclerosis had already started.)

About 2:30pm, I head out to Kouryou-chan's school, where I pick her up and head home, then plug back in and work for another hour and a half to two hours, depending upon how much time I spent at the office.

About 5:30pm, I'm usually done for the day. Sometimes, depending upon the mood and evening arrangements, I'll cook or someone else will.

It's not the world's greatest arrangement; I spend upwards of two hours commuting every day, time that is utterly and completely wasted no matter how you slice it. But it has its compensations.

In case anyone is curious, I use Project Hamster for my time-tracking needs.

Another addiction I must kick this time.

Killer 'graf:

Compared to animals eating only rat chow, rats on a diet rich in high-fructose corn syrup showed characteristic signs of a dangerous condition known in humans as the metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, significant increases in circulating triglycerides and augmented fat deposition, especially visceral fat around the belly. Male rats in particular ballooned in size: Animals with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained 48 percent more weight than those eating a normal diet. ... Male rats given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup in addition to a standard diet of rat chow gained much more weight than male rats that received water sweetened with table sugar, or sucrose, in conjunction with the standard diet. The concentration of sugar in the sucrose solution was the same as is found in some commercial soft drinks, while the high-fructose corn syrup solution was half as concentrated as most sodas.

[Emphasis mine]

Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain.

Unneeded Tech: Gimp palette to LessCss color variables.

I recently had to convert a few GIMP palettes into color schemes for a website, and since I’m very fond of LessCSS, I decided to create LessCSS variables and use that as a plug-in to my CSS.   The trick was converting on the fly; GIMP palettes store their variables in decimal, and I like my variable names lower-case for neatness.  Nobody but me needs this, but here it is in all of its glory:

perl -ne '($a,$b,$c,$d) = m/^\s*(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\w.*)$/; $d=~s/ /-/g; print sprintf("@%s: #%x%x%x;\n", lc($d), $a, $b, $c);' < palette.gpl > colors.less

This entry was automatically cross-posted from Elf's technical journal, ElfSternberg.com

Do Not Want.

On the drive home, the local NPR affiliate was running the usual slew of Public Service Announcements. The host for the hour then talked about an upcoming free health clinic for older men, and as he spoke he added, "And there will be free screaming colonoscopies."

It wasn't until I'd realized he'd said "screening colonoscopies" that my nethers unclenched.