I have officially lost my mind...

Or perhaps not. I sometimes do nothing because I have too many choices and I don't really have to do any of them. Then, I don't do anything, and feel guilty for being such a lazy slug (my wife denies that I am lazy, it is just I am learning to slow down a little)

Anyway, over the weekend, I put together a little bit of database work, and a little bit of code, and now I have myself a tool for making my decision for me! (just like a geek, use a computer to do everything!)

So, first thing I do in the morning is start up the program which presents things for me to do in a random order.

I have two lists, one for work, the other for play.

Amazingly, it is working. Yesterday I got stuff done on revamping our website, and also did some work on a hydroelectric project. (the hydro project is considered play Even my hobbies make money...)

I have another list of things with deadlines, I don't have any issue doing those, and I have a reminder system I wrote that does a very good job pestering myself, and those who work for us, about those.

Lol! do you watch Big Bang Theory? there was an episode where everything was deiced by dice just as one would in an RPG

I thought I was the only one that froze in placewalked around in circles looking at all the options when confronted with too many things to choose from. I keep telling my roommate that I need someone to give me a boot in the rear to start something, but she hasn't taken me up on the idea.

Hah, that sure would be a handy program! did you write it for Linux, Windows, or Mac?

The best I've come up with so far is having a dry erase board on my wall with a list of various things to be done. Every once in awhile I tell myself "Go pick one and do it".

It works great when there's less than 5 or so items. After that it's so hard to figure out which one to pick!

It is written in PHP with a mysql database.

For those who would like the code... ( I think I spent 30 minutes total on it)


include 'Connections/connection.php';
include ('lib/formHandler.php');
$query = "SELECT t.`Description`, t.`StartDate`, t.`Priority`, t.`IsEntertainment`, t.`IsPhysical` FROM todo t Where IsEntertainment = 0";
$hideArray = array();
$result = mysql_query($query, $conn) or die(mysql_error());
echo "<h2>Work</h2>";
echo "<table border='1'>";
$numFlds = showHeadersFromFields($result,$hideArray);
$totalRows = mysql_num_rows($result);
$arows = range(1,$totalRows);
shuffle($arows);
foreach ($arows as $offset) {
mysql_data_seek($result, $offset - 1);
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
showValuesFromRow($row,$numFlds,$hideArray);
}
echo "</table>";

$query = "SELECT t.`Description`, t.`StartDate`, t.`Priority`, t.`IsEntertainment`, t.`IsPhysical` FROM todo t Where IsEntertainment = -1";
$hideArray = array();
$result = mysql_query($query, $conn) or die(mysql_error());
echo "<br /><h2>Play</h2>";
echo "<table border='1'>";
$numFlds = showHeadersFromFields($result,$hideArray);
$totalRows = mysql_num_rows($result);
$arows = range(1,$totalRows);
shuffle($arows);
foreach ($arows as $offset) {
mysql_data_seek($result, $offset - 1);
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
showValuesFromRow($row,$numFlds,$hideArray);
}
echo "</table>";

The function, ShowValuesFromRow looks like this.

function showValuesFromRow($row, $numFields, $hideArray, $attrib = "")
{
$i = 0;
echo "<tr valign='top'>";
while ($i < $numFields) {
$showIt = true;
if (isset($hideArray)) {
if (in_array($i, $hideArray))
$showIt = false;
}
if ($showIt)
echo "<td{$attrib}>{$row[$i]}</td>";
$i++;
}
echo "</tr>";
}