In the last 24 hours, we’ve had just about every possible weather event. Wind, rain, snow, sleet, slush, hail, sun, clouds, you name it. Welcome to March in Northern Idaho, the land of unpredictable environmental conditions. Just when I get all fired up about seeing the first brick of my raised garden beds start to emerge from the snow, I look out the window and there’s some semi-frozen precipitation swirling about that makes our yard look like a giant snow globe. Ten minutes later, it’s sunny again.
In more nerdy news, I spent much of today laying out a newsletter. It’s for a client that I’ve been working with since 1996, so we’ve both got the routine pretty well down. Since I get paid by the hour on this particular project, part of my routine is to open up my favorite tiny piece of shareware: Trax Time (available from http://www.spudcity.com).
If you track your time by the hour, this little program is great. I’ve been using it since about 1995 through a number of versions and not much has changed. It still works and it’s still easy. Trax Time gets my seal of approval because it’s small, really easy to use, and doesn’t make anything else crash.
Basically, the interface looks like a time clock. You create tasks and punch in and out of them. So today I made a task for my Spring 2003 newsletter project and punched in. I punched out for a doggie personal needs break and punched back in upon our return from the forest.
And of course, right now, I’m punched out of that project. If I wanted I could track how much time it takes to write my Not Necessarily Nerdy Musings just by creating a project for it and punching into it.
I’m not quite that uptight about tracking time personally, but if you’ve been wondering where your days are going, Trax Time is one way to find out 🙂