Sometimes when I get an idea of something to write, I have to check to make sure I haven't written it up before. My memory is not that great so I do a search with BBEdit, looking for keywords. Never really bothered to learn to use regular expressions, which would really help in this case, since then I can do multi- word searches. Actually, I should use Sherlock since it does index my hard drive every Wednesday; I should make use of that effort...

There's this commercial for Telebank, which is some sort of virtual bank. They can give you all these deals and have one of the best interest rates because they don't have any physical banks. And for customer service you can call in to one of their many agents. Ok, so I'm thinking that they probably don't have their own teleagents. A lot of small companies outsource that to these big call centers. So you call in this random agent, who knows the company they're supposed to represent because of the number you dialed. More than that, the agent probably doesn't know anything and just reads it off the screen. So if you have some weird question they have to get a manager or call you back.

Regardless of that, the Telebank commercial intimated that they're teleagents are happy and friendly. Have you ever called a call center, or had one call you? Now, few of those people are openly hostile, as those types don't last long. But few are genuinely friendly. Most have that "this is my job I couldn't care less about you" sort of attitude. I don't blame them, it's a tough job. It just seems weird to me that a bank, where you're going to trust with your savings, you have to call to do anything. Ah well, times change...

By default, I've been growing a beard -- or as close an approximation as I can my face can manage -- for the past couple of week. Mostly I just got tired of shaving, which for me is not the most pleasant experience. So I'm just letting it grow to see how long it gets. I must say that I don't look that great with the beard I have, like some sort of punk Tong gangmember. Kind of older and seedier. I'll probably get tired of it in a few more days and shave it off to go back to my scruffy look...

So I'm supposed to show up for this meeting tomorrow morning at 10:30. Now, the last few days I've been working 14:30 to 23:30 and getting to sleep around 04:00 the next day. So there's no way that I'm going to be able to go to sleep early enough to wake up by 09:00 so I can get to work by 10:30. Solution is to go to work and sleep there a bit, a few hours so I'm not a zombie. Then probably sleep another hour or two before going back to work.

Meanwhile, I'm finally making some progress on my project. One of the problems with the way I work is that I have a fair design idea, not too detailed but I know where I'm heading. So I start coding and coding, and eventually realize that the current approach is unfeasable because it's too hard, or won't do all that I thought it would, or it's just too ugly, or whatever. I go back to the design and change a bit and start over. And I do this cycle a few times, each time getting so far, then backtracking and trying something else. There's a fair amount of code reuse, but also a lot of code that I just throw away. Probably more work than is optimal, but there are some really cool bits that I think of as I'm coding, so of course I have to implement it which requires recoding a bunch of stuff. Makes it hard to tell exactly how far along I am, but I think I have a reasonable shot at getting something working by Monday.

Time pressure is enough that I if there's any doubt about our weekend game I try to urge people to announce if they're not going to be there, so we can cancel the game if not enough people will show up. Usually we're not too sure about everyone so I still show up and then if there are not enough people we hang around waiting just in case for a couple of hours. And if we haven't started something by then, then we cancel the game. But I'd rather not waste the three hours, although most of the time I'm quite willing to hang out for a few hours.

Next step up on the time pressure scale is to cancel going to gaming. Usually I decide this on Monday or Tuesday once I'm given a deadline. Then after that television goes, and I start stockpiling taped programs. The worst, which hasn't happened, would be to just stay at work a few days, maybe going to a hotel than an hour to work.