Thursday, October 20, 2011

War Update, Plus Work Productivity Note

After the last three public executions, the mice decided to lie low for a while.  We didn't hear a peep from them until last night, when a scout foolishly ventured into the garage while we were paper mâché-ing jack-o-lanterns for Webelos.  He was quickly apprehended and incarcerated, then met a swift end at dawn at the hands of our chickens.

On a different note, my productivity at work has soared since I blocked a few websites in my /etc/hosts file.  I realized I had gotten in the habit of working, then every time I hit a complicated spot, I'd almost instinctively switch to a browser to read a quick Slashdot article or CNN report.  The waste of time was adding up quickly, so I decided to block a handful of sites for myself at work.

127.0.0.1 ksl.com
127.0.0.1 cnn.com
127.0.0.1 slashdot.org
127.0.0.1 failblog.org
127.0.0.1 espn.com

It's worked surprisingly well over the past couple weeks.  Even though I could unblock them in a few seconds, the very fact that I'd have to jump through a hoop reminds me that I'm supposed to be focusing on work.

2 comments:

AC said...

Just hope you don't fail the mice's test, they might come for your brain!

You know, it's a relief to see I'm not the only one that gets on distracted tangents of browsing. I had one of my friends block reddit.com which did wonders for my productivity.

Then out of curiosity I decided to see if I could bypass the block, as I didn't know how it was actually blocked in the first place.

I SSH-d into my home server and tunneled browser traffic through it, but oddly enough it remained blocked. I tried going to the actual IP address, and even changing my DNS provider, all to no avail.

He had blocked it the hosts file. It's a pretty effective way to block something.

K La said...

YOU AN DO THAT?! I was just thinking how awesome it would be if certain sites (like failblog, giggle giggle)were blocked. Do it on my computer!