Things I should be working on vs. things I've actually been working on this morning:
Should be working on:
1. Finishing accepted journal article with looming deadline (eek!).
2. Finding a new home for the unreviewed journal article.
3. Tracking down weird bug in my research software that my research students found last week.
4. Sketching out research idea that came as a result of a meeting with a research student yesterday.
5. Developing a research/sanity plan for the summer.
Actually been working on:
1. Answering a flood of emails, all important.
2. Dealing with logistics around an upcoming campus event.
3. Putting out metaphorical fires of varying sizes.
4. Trying to retrieve a file from my CVS repository, where the version in the repository was out of date with the version on my laptop. This should not have taken over an hour. But it did.
5. Reading blogs (which, in my defense, I started doing because I finally gave up and re-checked out the entire branch from CVS, which took forever, and anyway I was Fed Up at that point and not exactly in the working frame of mind).
6. Thinking about what to make for lunch.
7. Cursing the fact that I squandered my "work morning", and that I have to spend the afternoon doing things Not Research Related.*
Ah, the glamorous life of the mind.....
* although I may be able to sneak in at least 20 minutes of writing, if I hide plan appropriately.
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Time for subversion? :-)
Yeah, I need to make the switch at some point.....
I think it was ubiquitous yesterday-- something in the air... I tried to work from home on my thesis and a paper draft (which is usually very productive) and ended up cleaning up the house, making muffins from scratch, and making a nice hot lunch... I guess I did a little thesis formatting, but that doesn't get words on the page...
Subversion is so "last year." All the cool kids are using some DVCS, like mercurial or bazaar.
In all seriousness, though, if you have control of the infrastructure that will host the repo, (and the time to invest in switching your VCS at all) you may want to look into them if you're planning to make any type of VCS switch at this point of the game.
While these DVCSs can act pretty much like a centralized one (such as CVS or Subversion), they can also do a lot more, which you can learn to take advantage of down the road.
Googling for "Subversion vs ____" will probably get you more information than you really want to read, but it's out there and it may help you to make an informed decision.
re: distributed version control, I've been hearing good things about git. I've been installing these things and then only half-heartedly trying to use them.
My problem is getting into the new workflow. In the moment, when you're not used to it and you're in a hurry, it still seems faster to just make another folder. But, ugh, the fallout later is a disaster. Not worth it. Must get better about this.
Anyway Jane, it sounds like you had a decent day compared to, um, my whole week. I have been Fed Up all day, every day. And now I guess I am going home to stew in my fury since there is nothing I can do about any of it.
Trying to console myself with the idea of doing personal errands, etc. next week without any guilt, since I know my hands will be tied at work for at least that long. Feels like a booby prize though. I'd much rather have progress than "ooh, time to do chores", despite knowing it's also a valuable commodity.
Hmmm, DVCS....I'll have to check that out. thanks for the suggestions, everyone!
Friday was not much better in terms of productivity. I'm retroactively declaring this past week the Week of the Stupid Crises.
Yum, lunch.
:-).