Working for the weekend

I had a crazy-busy week, and I suppose I should be out partying or at least in bed sleeping. Instead, I spent most of the afternoon editing a Department of National Defense paper, and I'll probably do the same thing tomorrow. Naturally, since they're hiring a freelancer to work on it, it's nothing exciting, never mind classified -- just their day-to-day. On the bright side, the government sure does pay better than the games industry. They can afford it, since they get a lot of it back as taxes. I don't know how I get into these things (actually, I do: I need to pay the bills).

All is not work, however. Bonnie made our Christmas fruitcakes today. For those not in the know, there's nasty fruitcake with the density of osmium and a crust of sugary gunk . . . and then there's proper fruitcake that's more fruit than cake, and that sits in a rum-soaked cloth for two months to improve. Ours is, fortunately, the second sort. Luckily for me, one must bake a small "sample" cake -- you know, to test the outcome -- and eating this took the edge of working whilst inhaling a delicious baking smell.

I also found a few hours to try out Civilization IV: Colonization. It's a fun trip down memory lane for those of us who played the original, but it has less replay value than Civilization IV. Right now, I'm finding it hard to get anywhere. I suspect that this has to do with having the game for only three days during a crazy-busy week.

More weekend work

Well, that's done . . . at least, the first pass is complete. My friends at DND will review it, and then I'll have maybe another day of work next weekend. After that, the freelance door is closed for a while. Having a full-time gig means never having to accept extra work. Still, it's kind of fun to mess with all the math and gunk that used to be my field of expertise. It helps to know that I can put it down for, like, a year.

And wait, the accomplishment doesn't end there! I'm slowing beating Vista with a stick to make it work like I want it to work. I managed to shut up the Windows Search process by telling it to index next to nothing (does anybody not know where everything is on their own freakin' PC?!). I killed off some worthless startup items and services. Mostly, things are quieter and faster as a result. I'm still wondering why I can't get the fragmentation below some lower bound, despite defragging lots.

Speaking of Vista, does anybody have a line on a simple sidebar gadget that plays Launchcast without dragging in every damned Yahoo service out there? I actually have a paid station I like, and it would be cool if I could dock it on my desktop somehow. Hell, an LJ friends page RSS feed would be cool, too, but I see that's been restricted to paid accounts.