On the Night Shift

I’m not quite sure how it happened. Somehow I wound up on the night shift. I’m sitting here at 3:22 a.m. writing this. Over the last few days I’ve been staying up later and sleeping in.

Misty, the root of all evil.

I blame the cat for last night. She doesn’t want to play until I’m in bed. Then it’s super fun time. She keeps me awake by head-butting me for attention and attacking my feet. I have to wait for her to settle down before I can sleep. I could throw her off the bed, but I actually like the little feline. She’s been doing this for a while. It just seemed excessive last night.

Tonight learning how to use ImageMagick was the culprit. Earlier today I posted about how I automate resizing my screenshots. This got me thinking if I could do it better. I saw few examples online and dove in. I finally figured out what I needed after too many hours.1

Maybe the knowledge will come in handy one day. I have the I-learned-something-really-difficult sense of accomplishment right now. But I don’t know if it was worth time. If it turns out to be something I use, it might be.2

It’s not always computer related stuff. I can be the same with reading a book. If I get into the story I will read until the sun comes up.

Now it’s 4 a.m. and I really need some sleep. The city is installing new water meters today. That means the water will be going off in about six hours. I want to get out of the house while that’s going on. Maybe I can get a few winks in.


  1. On the plus side, it’s a real slick setup. The screenshots are resized with a nice border with my site address added.
  2. I converted the Hazel script into a free standing shell script. It’s how I added the bar to the bottom of the picture in this post. I had to spend a minute adjusting the shell script, which took most the time.