Leftovers*
*aka little thoughts that didn't quite merit their own full post
1. Replacing the Green Liquid
When I was fresh out of college and trying to adjust to the working world, I read about how one programmer and his friends rated the difficulty of coding tasks in terms of how much coffee or Mountain Dew they would need to drink to finish it. Coffee was "the black liquid", Mountain Dew was "the green liquid". As Mountain Dew contained more sugar and caffeine it was of course worth more than coffee. So a really tough task might require 3 of the green liquid, where an easy one might just be one of the black liquid.
Caffeine, sugar and coding tend to go hand in hand. In college, I certainly had my 3+ Mountain Dew nights while finishing off projects for class. Work did not feature the all nighters, but it was still tough to keep my energy level up without caffeine. Of course sleeping more helps, but sleep is always tough to find. After a little time outside of college I got a handle on the caffeine usage, but I still felt like my energy level went up and down too much during the day.
Finally, at the beginning of this year, I decided to try something different. I picked up a book about the Core Performance nutrition plan. The basic idea was more meals during the days, but smaller meals, with less sugar and fat. The idea behind the idea was that fluctuations in blood sugar levels cause you to feel tired, so if you keep your blood sugar pretty steady during the day (with the small, not super sugary meals) you won't have energy spikes up or down.
After about 4 months of trying to follow this plan, I am happy with the results. It really has leveled out most of my energy peaks and valleys at work; with more energy at work I've felt more motivated to work out more, which has also helped. I won't get any more infomercial here, but let's just say I'm thrilled to have replaced the green liquid.
2. Loving the Free Stuff
Everybody likes free stuff, so I'll be a little bit more specific. As I'm learning Python and now trying to figure out TurboGears, I am amazed at the amount of free resources out there. Beyond the language itself and tools, there are tutorials, message boards and screencasts around to help. It's not just the open source guys either; Microsoft has really gotten into the game with the Visual Studio Express editions and various Virtual PC images of newer products. At this point, if you have the time, you really only have yourself to blame if you can't find what you need to pick up a new language or tool.
3. My Real Life is Just Not an iLife
A good friend of mine recently checked out my blog and asked what was going on with my Macbook; had I switched to Apple and OS X? The short answer is no; I like the Macbook itself, but I run on Vista on it and barely touch my OS X install except to get driver updates from Boot Camp. The longer answer is that I don't have anything in particular against OS X, but nothing about it jumped out and grabbed me enough to make me want to switch.
From a tech perspective: I don't have security issues with Windows (I have not been infected with spyware or a virus in quite a while); I don't have too many stability issues either (my machine at work goes nuts on occasion, but I'm using Visual Studio all the time, so not many options there). DRM wise, what I want to play on my machine I can, I haven't felt restricted yet. Finally, Vista came with its own integrated search, so Spotlight no longer was of that much interest.
From an application perspective: My work is mostly in Visual Studio and with Microsoft languages, so that's a big vote in Windows favor. Outside of work, I haven't felt the need to even open iWeb, iPhoto (I like Picasa), iMovie or Garage band. Beyond that, the open source stuff I've been working on is available for Windows. So for me, OS X just did not fit better in my life than Windows.