On one hand it sounds great but on the other actually pretty gross.

Originally I thought the day is meant to prepare and share food with others – something I could see as a very worthwhile endeavor back in the days when there was a lot of poverty around while the country was established. Doing something for others which they might be thankful for. Doing something for others – cooking and sharing some great food - to also say “thank you”.

Oh, I finally realized how wrong I was.

I’m all in for traditions. You would not have thought so, correct? But yes, I am for the traditions which brings people together, I like gathering of Christmas (but not the shopping frenzy nor the fact that Xmas songs and decorations are being hammered onto and into you already by the end of October). Thus I also like the family gathering on Thanksgiving. Usually I could do with less food, but that is another story and has rather todo with poor personal control than the fact of the gathering.

Thanksgiving though is an odd one for me. It’s this “let’s all hail together and be happy together because it’s this day”. Huge aversion to something the like. Now be happy and say thanks. BE THANKFUL ON COMMAND. Ugh. It’s the same as LOVE SOMEBODY ON COMMAND because it’s February 14th. A day created and gotten on the gravy train by Hallmark.

Of course I’m thankful for a lot of things. But I do not feel compelled to go around and announce it to everyone what a good person I am that I’m such a grateful person! Too close to be nothing more than a lip service and we have enough of that when it comes to various religions and politics.

Thus, for all it’s worth, I will keep enjoying the gathering aspect of it and the food itself, while glossing over the points which remain alien and fake to me after all these years.

That’s right, midnight tonight, the new owners of EIAS take over the software [... snip ...]. It has been great working with you through the years.

Just like April tosses with the weather, being mid projects is a blessing and a curse.

On one hand it allows me to indulge into improving my own skills and my sites, but on the other hand it invites introversion and worries about future income and the stability of it.

The most annoying about this situation is that instead of getting a great head start with upgrading my sites – which invokes reach of future potential clients – it all crashes down to a slimy drag, every inch of the way a fight for it, leaving me constantly with this feeling of not having achieved enough progress.

The best I can do in such a situation is to work on playfulness and to not take it all so serious. Often easier said than done! One important step of this is to set limits: work only this specific amount of hours on development and then do something distinctively different. Because no matter how hard I try or want it, I am not able to finish it all off in one or two days and no amount of frustration about this fact will change it nor make the design any better, while on top of it, working too man hours a day on it introverts me and make me feel even more inadequate.

Oh, did I mention? My new site design is coming along really nicely.

Procrastination is one barrier to achieving all the things you want or should do. Being badly organized another. Of course, there is also planning more than ever could be done. But usually it is possible to do much more than you think you can, ergo, if you’re not getting all done of what you want, it probably boils down to mismanagement or some sort of dispersement.

Thus I am working currently to deliberately tighten and streamline my workflows, such as having only 1 piece of software which fulfills several requirements for my daily usage or to cutout distracting actions (of which Twitter in the morning is a biggie!).

Another aspect in this digital age are notes. Long time ago it was many separate text files and PDF’s, then came DevonTHINK which was great [but over the years never evolved into a "comfortable" piece of software, always awkward even though a powerhouse with plenty beta versions expiration dates barking at you when you're in the middle of a cycle and a once great database style sheets now gone]. The first time that it began being fun to collect data was with Yojimbo. It had its limitations and thus I moved on to Journler. Very strong in many aspects and great smart folders and import features to track all the different items. Began building up not only my code tutorials section but everything from how-to do a specific thing with Flash to anything home related. But it will no longer be developed. What a blow. Going back to Yojimbo? No, it’s data is locked in, only single text file export possible, and not worth at this point to pay for an upgrade, not versatile enough. DevonThink will remain my tool for backing up my email database, but currently I am no longer inclined to pay for upgrades. One item less. Slimming down! And once again I am at the point of finding “the right one”.

So far I have not found anything that fits the bill. I need it to be versatile to hold any type of data, easily collected and organized, with smart folders and tags but it also should display code correctly.

The best kid in town to pick up the game at this point is Evernote. It sync’s across computers including the iPhone, it has tagging support and great search options (can search text in images!), can save pages or parts of pages out of Safari. These things make it choice number 1 for all the dailies.

As great Evernote is, it does not handle the aspect of coding snippets. Currently I’m using Schnippselchen, a German little freebee which is great but has it’s handicap of not being able to share it’s database across computers nor does it allow to search across the different groups within itself. Next to that it does not support all the languages I need. I was really hoping for ONE piece of software to combine these needs, because writing down the info of a tutorial will include also code and I am tired to having to look in 2 different locations to track down something which could be in either location. Currently my wish remains wishful thinking – unfortunately.

For the coding repository? TextMate seems overkill even though it has great bundles and features. For me though the decision appears to come down to Coda, my beloved coding application and Espresso the lightweight powerhouse. I’m still debating with myself.

Tomorrow we are leaving for Dallas – the 5th wedding this year we are attending to – we are the photographers of the event. This time we will be staying in the beautiful Wildwood Inn where also the ceremony and reception are held.

After that there is no excuse to not finish setting up our official WEDDINGS site.