Little Victories

It's always surprised me how much a little turn of productivity, or lack thereof, can have on my overall mood. For instance, on Wednesday, I took about two hours to do fifteen minutes of work, wasted time reading nytimes.com in the office, and simultaneously broke a component I was working on and put a gash in my thumb. I then went home, started drinking, and cursed at my spreadsheets into the evening.

In contrast, I spent this morning putting together solutions for grading exams in the class I'm TAing. Then, all the pieces came together on project that I've been working on, and as of that evening, it was up and running.



In case you're wondering, it's a temperature and humidity-controlled enclosure that we use in our lab for materials testing. Yes, it's a Coke fridge--that plus ABS plumbing pipe, lights, a muffin fan, a fishtank heater, and a $150 controller get you an environmental testing chamber. It has been on the back burner of my project list for close to a year; it's a little surprising how much of a relief it is to be done with it.

Now, well, back to the semester--lots of grading, and the term project is due in three weeks--time to get my ass in gear.

Oh yeah... first, time to start drinking. It is Friday after all.