September 2005 Archives

Had a super busy day in the office today, so I sadly missed Talk Like A Pirate Day. I actually thought of it recently when I heard a commercial on BCN recently where the guy starts talking like a pirate.

I have a very love/hate relationship with days like today. I was a good kid and was in work by 9AM this morning. I knew I had a bunch of meetings, so I checked e-mail and some blogs (my aggregator is currently OVERLOADED). I then did some things I needed to do for one of the meetings. At 11AM, the meetings started. At 4:15, the meetings finally stopped. Four meetings with 3 sets of people, had to have one meeting twice.

I basically ate lunch (which had been sitting around for over an hour by the time I got to it) in 2 parts. The first being between meetings, the second being during a meeting with the phone on mute. By the time 4:15 rolled around, I finished a couple of things left over from the morning and headed home.

The reason for the love/hate relationship is I don't feel like I got anything done today. I didn't get any project work done which is much closer to the truth. I did have 3 calls with partners that went real well and hopefully will advance some upcoming stuff quickly. I also had a meeting with a potential client which I think went real well (at least the hour I was there seemed to :) So, I know I did things to move some stuff forward, but I have a couple of things lingering over my head (which have been lingering for a while), which I didn't get anything done on and REALLY need to. Just seemed like a very mixed up day.

Been a busy boy, but just wanted to mention Beagle 0.1.0 is out.

and then having to drive 3 hours the next day is that the high level of dehyrdration means you don't have to make a bathroom stop on the way home; :)

So, as amazing it is to me, I haven't smoked in 10 days. Very strange. Definitely having some issues at times, but most of the time I am ok. Having a very hard time keeping my thoughts straight. Since, I don't have those breaks from time to time, my mind tends to wander, worse than it did in the past. Hopefully, I will get over this soon. I've had mostly good days. Had a few "evil" days over the weekend that I really didn't want to deal with people and was almost at the "fuck it, I'm smoking" point.

I did have a few drinks here and there over the weekend, which was one of my biggest worries. I survived pretty nicely. And last night, I actually went out in Boston and survived as well. This is starting to look pretty good. I even had the patch off for about 3 hours this afternoon and wasn't completely dying.

So, hopefully, I can keep it going. I definitely still have cravings, but hopefully they will keep dying down.

GNOME 2.12 Desktop & Developer Platform has been released.

So, I've made it through 24 hours. This afternoon at work has been difficult because I usually break my tasks up with cigarettes and that hasn't really been available to me today.

What do people who don't smoke do when they need a little break at work?

Usually, if I'm stuck on something or between working on two different things, I got downstairs and have a smoke. What should I do now that I don't smoke?

So, I made it. Last night was a blast, great to see everyone. Lots of rock stars and lots of friends. All in all a great time.

One thing I've been saying for a very very long time is that I was going to quit smoking when I turned 30. So, I've been wearing a patch since about 2:30 or so this afternoon and so far am doing pretty well. I have definitely reached for a smoke a number of times, but so far, the patch seems to be killing the cravings pretty well.

Reading the information that came with the patch, they say it usually takes about 24-72 hours for the real bad cravings to start, so the next few days should be rather ugly.

I am heading to New York on Thursday afternoon to visit with the family and am I usually much better about the smoking when I am there anyways, so hopefully that will help.

Driving home from work on Wednesday, I was listening to WAAF, as I usually do (until I lose the signal) and Paul Marshall got to the Hairball portion of his show. Usually, he plays some sort of hair band from back in the day (Poison, Slaughter, Warrant, etc). On Wednesday, he started out the segment with, "It's time to geek out". I knew immediatetly I was about to hear some Dream Theater on the radio. He continued to say something like, these guys really aren't a hairband, but did well then and continue to do well today. He then made fun of geeks like me saying "Oh my God! He's playing Dream Theater on the radio". And then he played "Pull Me Under". Always good to hear a little DT on the radio, though it would be nice if they would play SOMETHING, ANYTHING besides Pull Me Under.