SLUG
Just as my formal involvement in SLUG is about to end (a new committee is being elected Friday night, and I’m not standing), I find that I’m putting a lot of time and thought into it again. But… I’m still not standing. I figure that being able to choose my level of involvement will stop me periodically burning out and getting resentful.
Also, I can then focus on helping get hacksig off the ground. I’ve gotten just about everything I need from SLUG in terms of using Linux. I’m not personally interested in advocacy, except possibly in the legal arena. Clearly, a programming group is the next step.
Linux
I’m well past where I ever expected to get with Linux: I’m a competent single machine or home network, small-size, non-critical sysadmin. Finding that out was nearly as big a surprise as finding out that I was confident programming.
But I don’t want to go any further with it. I try not to make decisions like this: I am generally uncomfortable with saying I want no more knowledge. But honestly, I know what I want to know. Need only, not desire, will push me further.
Twisted
Twisted is a whole other kettle of fish. I find that I need to find a four or five hour solid block of time to get writing done, and I only have that time on weekends. But weekends also have the unfortunate side-effect of containing family birthdays, moving days and house cleaning.
To be fair, I’ve spent the last few weeks working (finally! finally!) on the re-write of my website that has been on the drawing board for well over two years. It is somewhere between three and six hours from deployment. During that time, I’ve spent zero hours writing documentation.
I feel silly in many ways putting so much effort into a website. It’s certainly not something that people seem to admire. I’m putting a negative spin on everyone’s reactions there though. Most people I know are programmers, and a large number of them simply don’t like writing, or don’t like it enough to want to build a house for their writing. I do like it, and building a CMS is a natural consequence. Or so I will maintain from here on in.
Aside from this, while my wrist pain has improved with a better arrangement at work, I do need to be careful about typing when I’m not being paid for it. I need some HTML macros for my editor (stat) because the < and > signs seem to bring on weakness and discomfort quickly.
Travel plans
I’m planning to zip around the world, or parts thereof, starting in September or so. I’d better hurry up, I’m not even at the budgeting stage.
Life plans
It is suddenly horribly clear that I need to decide whether to do a PhD and where to do this hypothetical degree in a hurry. I need to have a supervisor and some kind of topic before I leave Australia in September if I’m to do it here, and I need to think about funding, GREs, applications, interviews, visas and spiv if I want to do it in the UK or US. (If I do it in the US, I also need to think bout all that time.) And if I don’t do it, I should think about what the hell else to do. I envy spiv his attachment to programming as a vocation, I myself am simply part of the indecisive masses.