Sitting in the doctor’s office the other morning, I realized I had an inability to do anything. Now, mind you, I think myself a capable person, but I had been put (or put myself, rather) in a position where I couldn’t do anything. Sure, I had my copy of the Times with me, which I had read for the past hour (train ride, plus some waiting room time), but ultimately I couldn’t do any work. The doctor was running late, I was sitting; twiddling.

I took an inventory: I had two client sites I could make some progress on, I had my portfolio I could keep developing, a bunch of articles to read (I’m a bit behind on A List Apart & 24Ways), a few e-mails to send, and then, of course, there was actual day job “work” that I could’ve done (some journal articles to read.)

I did have a few PDFs of some articles to read, and after skimming them, I was ready to work. But I couldn’t work: The client sites, while on development areas of the servers, were exactly that–on a server. No problem, I had Transmit and TextMate. An sFTP connection, a SSH tunnel for mySQL and I’d be fine. Nope. Problem. My doctor’s office had locked up their wireless network (which I guess I should be thankful for.) Suprisingly, though, no other wireless network in the building was available (again smart, but painful.)

One of my leading problems is that I have a MacBook and a Mac Mini at home that I use regularly. I don’t use one more than the other for working on any one task; the actual environment decides the computer. I will commonly sit on my bed, at the kitchen table or on the couch and work on the laptop. If I am trying to focus I may work on the mini on my desk. If I am traveling, then the MacBook becomes a one man show.

The problem is that I now have multiple avenues to conquer singular tasks.

What my first writings in this log are going to be about conquering the environmental constraints of working with multiple computers. My next post will be about the challenges I face while setting up developmental servers.