Category: Journal

My poor tree

The tree in front of my house (a [Norway Maple](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway_Maple), I discovered today) is not a happy tree.

It had tar spots on the leaves last year, worse than the year before. Some of the bark started falling off over the winter. I noticed a woodpecker having at it in the early spring (I have pictures I should post…). Yesterday evening I noticed a whole bunch of little black caterpillars going at the wood beneath some of bark splitting wounds (again, pictures… I need to bring in a card reader). All in all, I’m pretty concerned for the health of my tree.

Norway maples aren’t native and are considered invasive further south. But it’s nice and shades the yard and front window in the summer and gives me privacy. So it’d be a shame to lose it.

It’s a foot from the road, though, so I suspected it might be a [city tree](http://www.waterloo.ca/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=363). So I called up the city this morning and they’re going to have someone come look at it. I guess we’ll see what happens from there.

At-Work Productivity: IM

I’ve been reading [Lifehacker](http://www.lifehacker/) for a while now, and, up till now, have been bombarded with productivity tips and tricks that have been more or less useless since I haven’t been working on anything I’ve been the slightest bit interested in.

That’s changed, though. I’m now working on stuff I’ve been itching to work on for about two years. So all the stuff I’ve been digesting about how to be an awesome software developer starts to have relevance. But it also means I have an awful lot of bad habits to break.

The first bad habit is probably instant messenger. [Lifehacker has some IM tips](http://lifehacker.com/software/interruption-management/im-survival-tips–productivity-and-instant-messenger-255402.php) that I’m going to try to follow.

I hope people don’t take it personally if I ignore them on IM. I’m going to start making use of status messages and invisibility. My default mode is still going to be online, but if I’m working on stuff, my status will say that. I turn notifications off and I’m going to ignore whatever comes in until the next break time.

I like IM a lot. We use it as a communication tool in the office. You can get quick feedback from people without having to compose emails, but it’s still relatively asynchronous–you don’t have to connect and stay connected with people like on the phone.

IM is good. I don’t want to get rid of it. But it can be a real distraction. Not that I can’t use a distraction sometimes, but I do kinda need to get work done. So I’ve got to be a bit smarter about how I use it.

Macra!

[![Macra!](http://flyingsquirrel.ca/junk/macra.jpg)](http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/photonovels/macra/)

(Wow, what a jumbled mess of an episode. But I admit it had its moments. Russel T Davies is like that…)

Flash!

I didn’t think you could get them anymore. When I was hunting around for heatwraps, I stumbled upon what I thought was an extinct species: low-capacity flash memory cards. And they’re cheap!

I found 64MB compact flash cards at Pharma Plus for $7.50. Perfect for the Quickpad. They’ve got bigger sizes too, but you’re probably better off going someplace like Canada Computers for those.

They’ve got smaller xD (only Type M at the Shoppers I checked) and SD cards too, of course. Those might be useful for something.

I’d have never thought to look in drug stores. But it makes sense. My dad’s pharmacy always did photo processing and stuff. So it makes sense.

I just picked up my old 2 megapixel camera from home, and I’m using the 8MB card from that, but I think I might pick up one of the 64MB cards, just ‘cuz it might come in handy. I mean… $7.50! Sure the price per MB sucks compared to [the 4GB+ cards you can get these days](http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=013334&cid=990.437), but I don’t need that space.