Speaking of farting around, diaries are a good (read: bad) way to blow some time...
One other part of GSD is keeping in touch with people, and not just by email.
Christmas was relatively subdued in terms of gifts, which is exactly what I hoped for. B got us a DVD player, altho it's kind of funny that it's playing on a 20 year-old TV. (THAT's standards for you...) She also got us nicely blown-up and framed photos from our trip to greece. Other stuff: some CDs, gift cert to local Mexican place, and a couple of books. (Plus a sweater which I'd never wear in my life -- that's getting returned post-haste.)
One of the books is the bio of Joe DiMaggio by Richard Ben Cramer -- I'm about 100 pages through it, or just after his rookie pro season. Cramer has a fine ability of putting you in a place even if he himself hasn't been there. (IIRC, he started out as a journalist, which helps explain it.) Excellent book so far.
Also got _A Beautiful Mind_ from B, although I think she had sneaky motivations because after she saw I started on the DiMaggio book she asked (politely) if she could read it.
ObHacking: I've found that one of the best types of music to code to is techno, I think because it's so repetitive and has little to no distracting words. It seems to be much easier to fall into a groove with it.
(Originally posted elsewhere)