The Dropbox folks twittered that they had an update that fixed a few nagging Mac OS X integration features, and all were welcome to try it out. So I got it. I'll have to hold off for this evening to upgrade my other two machines in my office, but that's OK - the communication part of the app is still working great.
One of those really nice apps that does something very well, and stays out of the way. Excellent.
Today was a mixed bag of goodies for me. The day started OK, a little slow getting going, but I had a decent run and the day was looking up. I was able to get some good work done, added a few things to the code, fixed a few bugs - a good day.
Then there was the commute home.
Yikes.
The Metra train left on time, and then less than half way through the ride the lights shut off, the A/C died, and we coasted for quite a while. After several minutes of coasting, we slowed to the point they decided to stop and restart the engine. Why they didn't do this while coasting, I have no idea, but they didn't.
After a restart, we got about 200 yds. down the track and the engine died again. This time, we didn't coast nearly as far. After a few more minutes they decided that this restart of the engine would be done without the lights and A/C - as that was causing the problem. So we starting moving in hot darkness.
About a mile from the Naperville train station we died again. We weren't going that fast, so the coasting was minimal, and this time we heard over the intercom: "Battery's dead". Yummy. We sat.
Finally, someone came over the intercom and said that the engine could not be restarted and we'd have to wait for the next train to come and push us the rest of the way to the train station. After about 15 mins of sitting in the hot, dark, train the next train arrived. They then manually connected the trains, and slowly we made our way to Naperville.
When we arrived they undershot the platform, so that folks with me in the last car on the train had to move up a car to exit the train. This placed us even further behind as we had to wait for the other car to empty before we could get out.
In the end, I arrived at my car about 50 mins late. Nearly an hour late. And today was one of Nina's softball games. I was already 25 mins late, and I hadn't even started the driving portion of my commute.
Since the effect of the train stoppage was to have three trains arrive at the same time at Naperville, the effect on the traffic was going to be especially hard. I did my best, and got in line. Nothing I could do about the delays I was going to experience now.
I finally got to the softball diamonds. I just didn't want to talk about it. No reason to, I'd only get mad about it. We watched a very uninspired game from the pitching staff of both teams. It was walk after walk after walk... the only saving grace was that Nina's Team walked fewer people and ended up with the win.
There are times when I can have a great day and the commute home can really put a damper on my evening. Today was one of those days. I really hate the commute.
My favorite Mac OS X editor - BBEdit, was updated today to 9.2. There are several things I asked for in this release:
to be fair, there are a ton of changes, and unfortunately, not all of them I'm really happy about. The biggie I noticed right off was the fact that the status bar is now below the horizontal scroll bar, and there seems to be no way to hide the horizontal scroll bar. I need to scroll horizontally, but not all that much. The old scheme was perfect, in my mind. Sad to see it's gone.
After looking at it for a little bit I decided that since I could not remove the horizontal scroll bar, I dropped the status bar. Not what I wanted, but it seems unavoidable.
UPDATE: Interestingly, the file position "appears" to the left of the horizontal scroll bar if you move the cursor. When you switch to another window, it disappears again. Interesting... this is the single most important part of the status bar, and since it's available as I'm moving in the file, I guess it's not really "missing". Great. Kind of wild, but neat.
Well, I heard it was coming, and it's certainly a nice looking device. The Kindle DX is the large-format version of the new Kindle - measuring a full 9.7 inches diagonally. It includes a native PDF reader, and the ability (like the iPod/iPhone) to sense the rotation of the device and automatically go into landscape mode. Other than that, it's the second-generation Kindle.
I'm happy that my Kindle is working so wonderfully, but in a way, that's bad news for me. For as long as it's working OK, I have no reason to get a new one. I think the new version of mine is what I'd get, but it's nice to think about the bigger version and reading books. That would have been incredible in school.
Still... I'm waiting to see if Apple brings out an iPod Touch that's in the same size screen, but color, and smaller overall, and then get that and retire my Kindle. That would be a nice upgrade.
This morning I read that the Google Visualization team has put another version into Release Candidate mode where you can ask for version '1.1' and get access to now. They expect to make it 'production' this Sunday (May 10), and want to have people test it and give them feedback.
The changes are all under the covers and when I tried it I didn't see any difference, so I'm guessing that things are working, which is really nice. Gotta test these things as I'm going to be forced to use them in a few days.
Today has been an interesting counter-point to yesterday. Today, again, started too early, but when I got here, I was working to get a lot of things fixed and into the web app. It got interesting with a few deployment issues, so there was running around the trading floor - that's always fun, and then a long session getting things into the code. Lots of things done, and once again leaving it all on the keyboard.
Exhausting day.
Decent day.
I'm becoming more convinced that it's not what the day holds for you, but what you bring to the day that matters most. Sure, if you get into a horrible traffic accident today, I think you have a decent reason to say you had a bad day. But if, like me, you have all the basic components of happiness, it's what you bring to the party that matters.
This is nothing new to the vast majority of folks, but it's something I need to keep reminding myself, it seems. I seem to have a bit of a lossy memory for facts like this.
I can't complain, really. Face it... some days are easier than others. Some days it seems that you're tired as soon as you get up. You feel a little behind the curve even when you seem to be making progress. It's no fun, but there's nothing you can point your finger at to say this is the problem. Fix that, and the day will be a lot better.
Nope. Some days there's nothing to point to. It's not a fantastic day, and there's nothing to do but slug it out. You have to realize that there are going to be days like this and when they come, you have to hunker down and just ride out the storm.
Today was one of these days for me.
The weekend was decent... nice weather, but I spent a lot of time outside doing yard work, so I'm a little sore, have a few cuts on my hands and arms, and it's not like I got a ton of rest - I just worked outside. Not horrible, but not really like a little 2-day vacation.
Today started too early (it seemed), and it was just a day I'd have rather stayed in bed. Nothing I could point to, just work that needed to be done, and then slug out the day and commute until I could go to Nina's softball game.
I'm glad it's over.
Well, he's done a major update to DataGraph, the nice 2D plotting package (and framework) for the Mac. It's pretty darn nice, and the release notes in the download package indicate some of the major new features. There are more templates, lots of possibilities on the data views, and updates on all the usability stuff.
The framework is now quad-fat for 10.5 (PPC and Intel, 32 and 64 bit) and I got that update as well. I noticed that he had added a few more examples, which I'm excited to look at and see what he's done with the tools. In all, it's about perfect for what I need. I just wish he'd add in the 3D mapping to 2D - heat charts and contour plots. Those would make this perfect. It's still pretty darn nice.
I firmly believe that the best way to do anything is to give it everything you have. All of it. All the time. As they say, Leave it all on the track. Do that, and you'll never wonder if you could have done more. Never. That's a really nice feeling. The problem is that to do this is very tiring. Very.
I've been running full-tilt this week, and it's taking it's toll on me. I'm really tired. I was really tired this morning. But I kept at it. That is one of the really nice things I learned in grad school - you can keep going after you think you can't, you just have to know your own limits.
And today, I have to say, I wrote some great code for my web app because I was running towards a 'finish line' of the QA team getting ahold of it this afternoon. Well... they didn't end up starting to test the app, which in the end, was fine. I needed the entire day to finally fix up the last of the new features. Difficult. But worthwhile.
In a few hours, I'll be rested (a bit) and I'll be able to look back on today and realize that there's nothing I could have done to get more done today. I got an enormous amount done. Useful, nice things - all.
I just need a little rest.
And a nice weekend.
I got in on the LaunchBar 5 beta back at Beta 6, and I haven't been sad that I did. It's worked flawlessly, and I do love the addition of the clipboard history - that's a huge benefit to me and the way I work.
Now they have released LaunchBar 5 Release Candidate 1 and I had to get that, as well. The release notes say it mostly a few usability fixes and a couple of small bug fixes, but that's OK, it's getting close to done, and the polish is starting to be applied. In all my experience with Mac software, LaunchBar has been one of the best apps I've ever used. Amazing.