With all due respect, have you ever considered putting the keyboard away for a weekend and picking up a fine bottle of scotch whisky and a frisky woman? I appreciate everything you do here but I think taking a couple of days off would do you a world of good, LOL.
Taking a couple days off sounds good, but I always have about
17 39 86 irons in the fire, around here. Any time I try to break away, I always have some epiphany about a problem, or a concern about something that drags me back in here.
Plus, a little-known fact about myself is that I have ADD. And, amazingly enough, sitting down and working on Web sites helps me with the associated symptoms. One thing I absolutely require, since I refuse to take any medication to treat the ADD, is structure. I imagine most of you have seen this joke about Age-Activated Attention Deficit Disorder, but to those of us who do have ADD, it is not a joke. It is just another day.
I have recently been diagnosed with Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder (AAADD). This is how it goes ...
I decide to wash the car, start toward the garage and notice the mail on the table.
OK, I'm going to wash the car...
BUT FIRST I'm going to go through the mail. Lay car keys down on desk. After discarding the junk mail, I notice the trash can is full. OK, I'll just put the bills on my desk....
BUT FIRST I'll take the trash out, but since I'm going to be near the mailbox, I'll address a few bills.... Yes, Now where is the checkbook? Oops... there's only one check left. Where did I put the extra checks? Oh, there's my empty plastic cup from last night on my desk. I'm going to look for those checks...
BUT FIRST I need to put the cup back in the kitchen. I head for the kitchen, look out the window, notice the flowers need a drink of water, I put the cup on the counter and there's my extra pair of glasses on the kitchen counter. What are they doing here? I'll just put them away...
BUT FIRST need to water those plants. I head for the door and... Aaaagh! Someone left the TV remote in the wrong spot. Okay, I'll put the remote away and water the plants...
BUT FIRST I need to find those checks.
END OF DAY: car not washed, bills still unpaid, cup still on the counter, checkbook still has only one check left, lost my car keys, and, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I'm baffled because... I KNOW I WAS BUSY ALL DAY! I realize this condition is serious...
I'd get help...
BUT FIRST...
I think I'll check my e-mail!
As I said, to me this really is not a joke, this is just how I live my life. Unless I manage to very carefully structure every activity of every day. I often joke that I cannot have OCD, since those letters are not in alphabetic order, but the truth of the matter is being OCD is part of what keeps me sane and able to move forward each day. When I put groceries away, I have to be very careful to turn labels out where they can be read, otherwise, I get distracted in looking for what I want. Which means I can open a cabinet to get a bottle of olive oil and realize I have just opened a can of vegetable soup.
And (with the exceptions that somehow manage to confound all of us), working with computers is excellent for me, because computer code keeps me thinking in a linear fashion. Until I see that squirrel on the neighbor's roof.
Even when code is poorly written and refuses to work, it forces me to think in a linear manner, to diagnose the problem.
It would likely scare most people, but when I am sitting at a computer, I will regularly have 6 - 10 tabs open in Mozilla Firefox, 4 - 5 tabs open in Chromium, an instance of Filezilla open, an instance of PuTTY open, at least one text editor open, at last one programming IDE open, an e-mail client monitoring 13 e-mail accounts open, and a media player playing some classic rock blaring. With at least one cat draped over the desk and half of the keyboard.
And all that doesn't mention that whilst sitting here, my left elbow is mere inches away from a second computer keyboard. And if I turn 180°, there is a third computer keyboard sitting there. This instance of Firefox currently has a tab open here, a tab open on the XenForo company forums, a tab open on the LiteSpeed company forums, a tab open on the hosting company's forums, a tab open on a page explaining Apache's suEXEC support, a tab open on a MySQL Options Files tutorial. I am logged into this forum, the XF forums and the host's forums, where I am actively taking part in discussions, as well as exchanging Personal Conversation messages with the host's Director of Managed Services. I am currently logged into one of my servers via SSH, where I am editing a database configuration, I am coding a new, custom page for this site in Geany, I am replying to an e-mail to a pal in England, I have a screenshot editor open, I have a copy of Filezilla open, because I am about to upgrade these forums, and I have Rare Earth's In Concert album playing in VLC.
See, I can handle all of that, but about an hour ago, I realized I was standing in the bathroom, when I had actually headed to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. When I still had the condo, the pantry was located right next to the refrigerator. It was nothing for me to discover warm jugs of milk sitting in the pantry, or cans of soup sitting in the refrigerator.
If I had a nickel for every time I've been distracted, I sure wish I had some ice cream...
And all of that will likely explain why I live alone, particularly without any frisky women. I like being around other people, but I find I am better off if I do not get too involved with them, because, oh, look, that squirrel is back.
