I have a pair of Cairn Terriers that specialize in doing nothing useful at all, so today I entertained myself over lunch by applying dollops of organic peanut butter to the roof of their mouths.
Watching small dogs try to de-clag their corrugated palates may sound like an odd way to pass the time, on account of it being an odd way to pass the time. Still, the dogs seemed to enjoy it and it beat the pants off of watching people fit double glazing to the house behind mine, which is how I spent a sickening slice of yesterday afternoon.
One of the problems I'm having with being unconstructively occupied is that I rapidly get sick of whatever it is I'm doing to keep myself busy. I got bored of reading about Java so I started reading about C# instead. I started a project using Imagemagick to help colour-correct digital photos; when I started it was originally going to be in Java, but then I got distracted by reading the C++ interface docs, so I switched over to C++, shortly followed by C# when those evil people at Microsoft let me download the Express edition of Visual C# 2008 for free.
This rapid shifting of goals and activities is because I have absolute freedom of choice and no-one to talk to and spin ideas off. Without other people around to talk to about project issues and whatnot, I find myself endlessly browsing the documentation (or worse still, Wikipedia) and getting distracted by interesting links or sidebars which point me in the direction of some new shiny technology that I suddenly feel the need to learn all about. Today, I was all about the VHDL and if I had the budget for it, I'd be out there buying an FPGA devkit right now.
I need a job. I need people to talk to and help set goals and boundaries. I need someone to make the tea.
