Oh, and just now we launched this thing:

The Sunlight Foundation

And last week this one:

Moms Rising

One of the drawbacks of not having an office or consistant workspace is a lack of project organization. I don't have a lot of stuff (papers, materials, etc) to keep track of, but I do usually have four or five projects going on at once.

Anyone have tips? I feel like I need a whiteboard. My kingdom for a coffeeshop with really good internet, a printer, a fax, some private little booths for phone calls and a lot of whiteboard space. I'd pay a monthly membership fee for that.

One of the drawbacks of not having an office or consistant workspace is a lack of project organization. I don't have a lot of stuff (papers, materials, etc) to keep track of, but I do usually have four or five projects going on at once.

Anyone have tips? I feel like I need a whiteboard. My kingdom for a coffeeshop with really good internet, a printer, a fax, some private little booths for phone calls and a lot of whiteboard space. I'd pay a monthly membership fee for that.

So last night I worked until 3am. I didn't really get started until around 5 in the afternoon, so it's not like I was pulling a heroic 18-hour day. More like I overslept and had a lot of crap (bike repair, errands, etc) to deal with and so I made the executive decision to pull a swing shift.

It works for me, the late-night style. It's quiet. The only other people I have to interact with are fellow late-nite workers. I can focus more easily.

This can pretty quickly turn into a nocturnal workaholic lifestyle. Like a devoted lush might with booze -- close out a bar every night, crawl back in around 2pm -- I feel a pull to let the rhythms of labor determine my schedule. I can still do conference calls, meetings and all that jazz, because unlike an alkie I don't have a lengthy boot-up process. I can pretty much get up at any time, suck down a coffee and be lucid for at least 90 minutes before getting punchy if, say, I only got 45 minutes sleep or something.

Yet I really wonder about giving in to this lifestyle. Work is going to hit a peak this winter, which is a good time to hit a peak when you're working online and indoors; it's a shit time to leave the house, anyway. But I'm hesitant to give in. I know I have a less than completely healthy relationship with work, and I need to exercise my will here, lay down some more structure, routine.

Nothing new here, really. Focus, Koenig. Focus. That's my turn on Ali's rumble young man rumble.

So last night I worked until 3am. I didn't really get started until around 5 in the afternoon, so it's not like I was pulling a heroic 18-hour day. More like I overslept and had a lot of crap (bike repair, errands, etc) to deal with and so I made the executive decision to pull a swing shift.

It works for me, the late-night style. It's quiet. The only other people I have to interact with are fellow late-nite workers. I can focus more easily.

This can pretty quickly turn into a nocturnal workaholic lifestyle. Like a devoted lush might with booze -- close out a bar every night, crawl back in around 2pm -- I feel a pull to let the rhythms of labor determine my schedule. I can still do conference calls, meetings and all that jazz, because unlike an alkie I don't have a lengthy boot-up process. I can pretty much get up at any time, suck down a coffee and be lucid for at least 90 minutes before getting punchy if, say, I only got 45 minutes sleep or something.

Yet I really wonder about giving in to this lifestyle. Work is going to hit a peak this winter, which is a good time to hit a peak when you're working online and indoors; it's a shit time to leave the house, anyway. But I'm hesitant to give in. I know I have a less than completely healthy relationship with work, and I need to exercise my will here, lay down some more structure, routine.

Nothing new here, really. Focus, Koenig. Focus. That's my turn on Ali's rumble young man rumble.

I'm up early today. Just added some photos by Zya from Burning Man to flickr just for the hell of it. That hair is going to probably go away. We're on the move now.

On another note, I find from this bit in Fortune that this book is a favorite of Bill Gates. Quote:

Humanity is destined to find and consume more energy, and still more, forever.
...
Fuels recede, demand grows... but logic ascends, and with the rise of logic we attain the impossible—infinite energy, perpetual motion and the triumph of power.

Sounds like late-stage futurism (e.g. approaching facism) to me, except the authors are Regan appointees, not painters. Hmmm.... Also sounds like Bill Gates is still not very smart about the world in spite of making all that money. The rest of the Fortune bit is an interesting read, though. Lots of talk about big-league philanthropy.

Finally, a quick bummer: I caught a headline yesterday explaining that the FCC is using a 1994 law to compel universities, ISPs and other 'net access providers to make survalence of TCP/IP traffic easier, which they claim is needed to fight terrorism, though the DEA is also involved so I think they've got a number of applications in mind. Universities are objecting because they would be forced to shoulder the costs, estimated at over $7B, for the snooping system. They are not raising civil liberties concerns because regular court-orders would be required to use the surveillance system. This as a report of surveillance going on outside the legal channels comes from the FBI. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has background on the law.

So I'm sitting here outside the offices for GRASS commons because I didn't call before coming over and Lewis and Ethan are out, but there's wifi, so I think I'll kick it and do some work on the sidewalk.

Reminds me to hanging out behind a Comfort Inn in Utah.

Oh now to work.

So I'm sitting here outside the offices for GRASS commons because I didn't call before coming over and Lewis and Ethan are out, but there's wifi, so I think I'll kick it and do some work on the sidewalk.

Reminds me to hanging out behind a Comfort Inn in Utah.

Oh now to work.

My first working Sunday in quite a few months. It wasn't all that bad. The next two weeks are going to be a little like a time trial; what it's like to be back in the game full time.

In the mean time, China is cracking down on online news:

The rules are expected to make online news more reliable as many small and unauthorized cyber news publishers will be phased out.

It won't affect major Chinese Internet news portals like shanghaidaily.com and Sina.

"I read shanghaidaily.com and other news sites almost every day because I believe in them," said Shelia Chen, who has been online for seven years. She said she spends about two hours a day reading news on the Internet.

You read the whole thing, and you'd barely know it's propaganda. Why, we heard similar noises coming from the FEC earlier this year. Oh yes, the future is going to be exciting.

Egad! I've been out of the house three nights out of the past four, piggybacking off my sister's social network mostly, but also connecting up with some old friends I haven't seen in a long time who are still around. It feels good to get out and socialize, though running with people in their early 20s has left me more than a little winded on occasion. I find it challenging to stay out until 5am and get back up on my horse three and a half hours later, the old college ways. But I love challenges, so...

I also met the two minds behind Grass Commons; we're collaborating on Alonovo.com (which is going to be cool) and found out that we're improbably located in the same town. So I had lunch with Lewis and Ethan and we whooped it up about the revolution for a bit, then they helped me grok Ruby and Rails and invited me to stay for dinner at the CoOp where Lewis and his girlfriend Darcy (who I know from high school, natch) live.

I'm coming out of my cocoon to find Eugene isn't so bad. It's a beautiful time of year, and the city teems with young pretty people, many of them leading surprisingly fascinating lives. I'll be here for two more weeks to finish up some work before I pack up and head back east. Could be a fun couple of weeks.