Of Time Tracks, "Plass", "Hoffice", and "Evian Flu". My brother asked me recently what I've been doing (that I haven't tended to some of what should be high-priority items), and I realized that tho I'm very busy, I couldn't name much in the way of specific long-delayed projects that I know I have caught up on. After I hung up the phone, I remembered one such project that had slipped my mind: I decided on a webhost for four of my websites, reworked the HTML code to accommodate the change of location and add Java code for ads on about 110 webpages, learned an FTP program and how to use it to upload files to that webhost, and uploaded those 110 revised pages among four different domain names. You'd think I'd remember that, when someone asks me what I've been doing.
+
But I had completed that project more than a week before, and moved on. I'm not good about looking backward in my personal life. I always have so much still to do that I'm constantly looking to the next thing. Were it not for records, I'd have very little sense of what I've done, ever. I did a webpage survey a couple of months ago and found that I had a total of 165 pages online, but 19 were sidebars to a main page, drafts, or private pages for small groups. Still, that's 146 pages in 8 areas on AOL, GeoCities, and HostOnce. I wrote approximately 140 of them and formatted all of them in HTML, added crosslinks, and found or made illustrations. My Resurgence City website has about 225 of my fotos on its various pages, and I used special effects in my graphics program to create another 20 or so illustrations from several of my fotos. I have three blogs on Blogspot, this one, with 409 entries since April 15, 2004, and two others totaling another 37 entries in a shorter timespan. One, Newark USA, also shows a number of my fotos as illustrations. I have as well kept my Simpler Spelling Word of the Day website current, since June 1, 2004, entailing some 540 words offered and discussed. I have also compiled, thru my own efforts and suggestions from other spelling reformers, a future-words list for that project of over 1,927 individual words and a bunch of groups of words all of which have the same kind of change that could be made.
+
So I know I've been keeping busy, but with exactly what, when, I couldn't tell you five days later.
+
Once before, many years ago, I realized this was happening, so decided to find out what I do with my time. I used my computer to create a form to show the entire 24-hour day in quarter-hour increments, and then filled in with handwritten notations what it is I was doing all day long. That was helpful then, so I decided to do it again.
+
I've now kept track of my activities for about a week. I see odd patterns and no consistency. Sometimes I work ridiculous amounts of time on a range of computer and other activities. Other days I do little more than maintain myself, update the four or five files that change daily in the Simpler Spelling website, review and reply to email, and recover from the efforts of the day before. I see plainly that I have no diurnal routine nor regular sleep cycle, which can be physically and mentally wearing. I see that I can't always control things, nor focus on what I had intended to do because something else pops up. Worst, I see that I need to focus more on the priorities I set but then promptly ignore.
+
Keeping track of things this way is a very useful "exercise". For one thing, it shows me I am too sedentary and need to get more exercise, as by strenuous yardwork and cleaning. I see no point to calisthenics or other exercise for the sake of exercise, when there is so much real physical work to be done. Sweeping, mopping, and vacuuming are good exercise, if not a lot of fun. Playing pool in the basement while the washer and dryer run is not as strenuous but a lot more enjoyable, and if I do it enuf, the walking does add up, as do the stairs I climb and descend all day long. My house (three stories plus basement) is my StairMaster®. Good thing, too, since I couldn't afford a real StairMaster. Those things cost thousands of dollars!
+
In any case, in writing these Time Track notes, I get tired of writing out entire phrases, so use abbreviations, even when typing. Two that I have been using are "plass" for the large plastic glass(es) I usually drink from (plastic being safer when knocked over by my cats) and "hoffice" for my home office. I thought today to look for these words in dictionaries and on Google. Neither was in my two electronic dictionaries. But I did find "hoffice", in the sense of "home office", on the Internet.
+
In the Google search results, I saw "plass" in Norwegian text many times, so looked it up. It's a cognate for "place" or "plaza" in the sense of a street or public square.
+
On a different linguistic note, I have noticed that Lou Dobbs of Fox News Channel says "Evian Flu" (áe.vee.yon) rather than "avian flu" (áe.vee.yan, where A-alone represents schwa, the neutral, unstressed vowel of A in about, the second-E in telephone, and the U in circus). No, Mr. Dobbs. That flu is carried by birds. It is not (expensive French bottled-)waterborne.
+
(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,063.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:07 AM