I don’t mind Mondays

Okay, okay, I promised I would check in and stay accountable on Mondays, so here I am, accountable-ing. The above video is “Hans,” a track by David Ummmo, which used to be on the OmmWriter software, and which I find ambient and soothing in a totally unironic way. You might like it! I know between this and Rainy Mood, I can use all the help focusing that I can get.

This week, I:

• Applied for a few jobs, which is a small start, but hey, small starts are better than not starting at all. I still hate cover letters and LinkedIn, but I don’t think that’s anyone’s big, dark secret.
• Took advantage of Chicago being 40 whole degrees Fahrenheit yesterday and picked up Zombies, Run! again, for the first time since basically early December. I spent most of the (very slow, occasionally wheezing) run very proud of myself for not slipping on the sheets of ice all over the sidewalk nor drowning in the gigantic puddles at the corners of streets, which of course meant that one block from my apartment, I took a balletic spill with audible sound effects. I’m fine, if sore, but hey, once again, a hilarious start is better than no start at all.
• Began the Code Academy lessons. It is frustrating to put yourself through the “Basic HTML” bits when you learned some of this stuff in 1999, but then again, it’s also possible that 1) code has gotten a little better in the intervening 15 years (which it has!), and that 2) you can unlearn some bad habits that won’t help you down the line. I was quite pleased to see that Code Academy includes in-line CSS very early on, so — I’m encouraged for the stuff I don’t know, is what I’m saying.
  • I don’t know how social Code Academy really is or gets, but if you want to follow my progress or be coding friends or somesuch, I’m pyBlaster10597.
• Watched a lot of Leverage, which is a perfect show about running cons and found families. I love everybody, but I might love Hardison the most. The first season is available for free on Hulu, for those for whom Hulu is an option, IP-wise.
• Wrote some fiction. Doing it in 750-word chunks is really good for me, it turns out. That covers just about one scene, at least for a first draft, and if it needs to go beyond that, I’ve already got my momentum going.

We’ve been having a little weather in the Midwest this year so far, so I have not accomplished much on the photography front (though I have been rediscovering the glories of the slow cooker, as well as the possibility of chocolate stout and bacon brownies; cooking more has also been a goal!). Temperatures are looking a little less surface-of-Martian for the next week, so that should help.

One nice link-drop to end on: “STEM Needs a New Letter” and “Why Her Will Dominate UI Design Even More Than Minority Report“ are two articles about the same story, at heart. Good timing, journalism imps (or whoever it is that ensures synchronicity in the news world).