Work

Ways to improve your home office

/ hsoi

Web Worker Daily has 7 Simple Ways to Improve Your Home Office.

The suggestions are fairly simple: you spend a lot of time and energy in this place, so you might as well make it pleasant and comfortable. 

One advantage that we often have at home that officer workers may not have is natural lighting. If you’ve got windows, take advantage of them. They make a big difference in your mood. Of course, I do know some that prefer to work in the dim and dark, so I guess brick up your windows in that case. 😉  Either way, lighting makes a difference in your mood and productivity.

Another thing that helps me is being able to keep my office’s air comfortable. Now, I do have a lot of computers in here which generates a lot of heat. Consequently I have a portable A/C unit in my office because otherwise it’s a sweatshop, especially in the heat of the summer. But having your own A/C unit, fans, heaters, or whatever you need is useful so you can keep things where you like it. Wife likes it a bit warmer, loves to open up the windows (which often leads to higher humidity levels). I prefer it a bit cooler and drier. 

It’s your office and being your home office you’ve got free reign over it. Take advantage of that to make your best workspace.

of SQL and other programmer joys

/ hsoi

I know it’s been a light posting day. I’ve been buried in code.

I’m an application programmer. I tend to write most of my stuff in Objective-C and C++ (and Objective-C++ and sometimes straight C). Sometimes I do some work in Python. A few other bits of dabbling now and again.

I haven’t looked at serious database work in almost a decade.

But today I needed to consider using SQLite as a solution, so I had to pull out my SQL book and remind myself just how it all worked.

Of course by the end of the day I came to the conclusion that going straight to a relational database wasn’t going to be the best avenue to solve my problem. Instead, I think I’m going to use Core Data. I’ve used it numerous times in the past but didn’t feel it was the right fit for the work at hand (given Apple’s design intent/constraints on Core Data). But the more I thought through things, the more I think it’s going to be the way to go. At least, that’s my thinking right now. Could change tomorrow when I start prototyping.

Yeah, this probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to most of you. But I’ve been nose-down in that all day, thus minimal blogging.

The server is down

/ hsoi

So… the company email server goes down. No problem. These things happen.

The server comes back up. All the backlogged email comes gushing through.

What’s one of the first emails that we receive?

An email telling us that the email server is down.

*sigh*

Reminds me of The Website Is Down, sales guy vs. web dude. NFSW, but damn hilarious.