Well we all do it, and what defines waste is unique to us all. It seems TV would come to mind first, but not all TV is as useless as other TV.

I tend to watch some new shows on the 3 major networks and occasionally the Faux channel for some surrealism. I never watch reality shows, competitions (sports or talent), and certainly never anything on E! which does nothing but pursue actors and their exploits. It's good to be Brittany Spears? Wow you just shove an entire shoe store into your mouth.

I don't consider re-runs of CSI useless, but the fights and the frequency of the Star Wars movies makes Spike one of the more bs channels. The gear head shows are 30 minute long commercials. Gear heads in the early days used to make their own parts for customizing. Now customizing cards is simply limited by the size of one's checkbook, not the imagination. Who cares about that?

History and Discover have their places as well, but to a far less degree than imagines. I don't want anything to do with loud bikes, let alone criminals on loud bikes. And how many times can I watch the history of cheese? I mean really?

I'm trying to wean myself off my latest and most useless of endevors - You Tube. It has its purpose, but anything more than 10 minutes a week needs to be addressed.

How do I waste time?
Generally, just sitting in front of this computer. And I don't want to say that it is all a bad thing. I happen to believe that there is something good and therapeutic about sitting and doing nothing.
I used to listen to music long hours, but that was back in the day when I used, how can I say this, hmmm, listening enhancements. Yeh. that's the ticket. I used to spend looong hours sitting in a stupor listening to all kinds of music. The next thing I know its the '90s. And half gone.
I still pick up books, but I find I have less patience with fiction. I have had enough drama in my own life without reading about drama made up about other people. Unless it is Faulkner.
I liked to travel until I got mugged in Belo Horizonte.
I got into cooking for a period of time, but I started cooking things that were bad for me. Things like potatoes, cheese, beef, shrimp, etc. etc. So now I content myself with roughage.
I use to go for long road trips, but then gasoline went to US$4.80 and I stopped doing that.
I rode my bicycle for long distances and enjoyed that immensely, but then between the crazy drivers and the case of hemorrhoids I developed I found it best to give that up.
So now I sit here and read SPCR and plan computers that have way more capability than I need. Its ok, they don't get built anyway.

the same thing that wastes my time is an imprtant one, the computer. I am still enthused, as if to be 10 years younger and just hearing "the pc is the future of all entertainment". I you tube, only to find real characters are my favorites. market based stuff is like an abuse I am running from. So I guess I waste no time. If to mention addiction, again it is the computer..I guess it is alot of things.

I stay in alot lately, my neighborhood..it may drive me to move. So it is More time wasted on the pc...
I drive several miles to feel content to walk.

I don't waste my time because I am a time conscious type of a person.
If I have a free time, I just turn to my computer and do some research
or chat with friends. I do blogging and something that can entertain me.
Sometimes, I just listen to music or read books or novels.

Well since you've asked....

That's a very good question. I could mention how I've played through certain games over and over and over, but I think this is supposed to be about current stuff, so...

Lately I've been getting horribly sucked in to playing "XLogical". It's frustrating and annoying, but it's convenient, or at least at hand, and stupidly tempting to try to push through "just a bit further". Some of the levels are a huge pain in the ass in how you need to shift focus rapidly, or with how bod luck can screw you over. But there's a ton of levels to play. And on top of all the annoying things intrinsic to the game, the developers have this sort of "us against them" attitude towards the end user(hmmm, wonder why some levels are so frustrating?) and are hysterically paranoid about cheating, so they've decided to make passwords from one system not work on another, so if I wanted to continue playing this after switching to a new distro, I'd probably have to play the handful of frustrating levels, and the truckload of other ones, over again. Why the hell is that thing using passwords in the first place, what is this supposed to be, the 90's, I don't think even consoles use passwords anymore. They even made the font a little difficult to read.

Besides that, whenever I have something I could look through, read, view or listen to, I tend to always try to "save it, just in case", "use it up", or analyze whether I really need it instead of just deleting it or throwing it away. I'm trying to ditch that habbit, but that's not comming along very well, whenever I try hard to avoid one of those things, I tend to just lean towards another.

I tend to get sucked into reading random stuff on wikipedia sometimes.

When I'm supposed to get ready to go somewhere, I tend to check boring little distractions, ie. stuff like email acounts and things that might update but hardly ever do, partially out of paranoia that I'm not forgetting anything.

I've strated playing battle for wesnoth. The first time I've played through, I lost a lot of loyal and high level units, so I started the first campaign again. but I've been continuing my first run through it, just to see what I can expect later on, to be able to prepare accordingly.

Lately I've also been playing Icewind dale a bit. I've already played through it, let's see... once with a normal party, once with a 4 character party, one time I tried soloing but feeling a need to hoard everything made that extra tedious, and besides, it was boring, so I stopped maybe halfway through the original areas. so a while back I've tried playing a game on hard setting, with the special option that prevents you from getting extra experience, and with a party with no warriors, at first I thought of playinng with an all spellcaster party instead, but decided that wouldn't be much of a challenge. So, recently, I've resumed that game a bit. On something like version 0.9.12 of wine, uggghhh, for some reason, it seems to actually run a bit smoother with a big clunky java app in the background. But I've stopped that pretty quick, well at least for now.

I take too long in the shower. Then I take long drying off.

I've set up a quinta boot spare system, well sort of, one niche function distro didn't work. I can't even use the thing it for now because it has a crappy thermaltorque volcano 9 on it and the temperatures cut way too close.

Let's see, besides that I struggle with a rather old PC with an outdated linux distro because I can't justify buying a new one, and i'm paranoid that my system could get hosed one way or another if I install a new distro on this one. And I can't bring myself to get an external hard drive or just an enclosure, because I have a few spare IDE drives lying around, and I've had a horrible experience trying to get an enclosure for those. I try to back up to DVD's, but I'm very finicky about doing so in a neat and organized way.

I avoid biting down on anything sugary, doing so maybe once or twice a week, because I don't want to wreck my teeth, and I can't go to the dentist So that means that usually I just eat fruit in a way that involves mashing it up and mixing it with stuff.

I daydream a lot. A LOT. Although this is only horribly wasteful because I haven't gotten into the habit of writing all the plots and worlds in my head down.

Sometimes I troll. But not much, and only in places where that is appropriate.

And sometimes I use message boards worse than this one. Sometimes I even use tech boards considerably worse than this one.

I think that sums it up pretty well.

I check 10 game related sites and 18 computer related sites daily.

I use google and youtube too much, in that I wander off hugely along the way. Especially youtube is bad, because I glance at every "related" video, and I usually find at least one of them interesting, so I end up with 12 tabs open because I haven't finished glancing at the other movies yet, which might also be interesting.

I start to reply too much to posts, sometimes takes a while to complete them, and then decide to delete the reply anyway (sometimes because it's too harsh, or because it's too off-topic).
Just now I'm reading a thread about how big the universe actually is, and I've got no idea how I got there.

I waste time by leaving it in the freezer for too long. The time is fresh when I put it in the freezer, but if it's there too long, it gets freezer burn and I have to throw it away. And that's how my time gets wasted.

reading and posting on forums...

Hey, you're just wasting your time here

Ditto.

Don't know who said it, but I think it's absolutely true that "time you've enjoyed wasting hasn't been wasted", which reminds me of being sent to tidy my room when I was little. I'd be found hours later sitting in the middle of the floor surrounded by books and comics, away in another world with the rest of the room untouched!

So yeah, I find it quite difficult truly to waste my own time. Sure, if I sit in front of the TV for hours on end I might start to feel guilty about all the other stuff I could/should be doing. If that guilt kills my enjoyment, then I'll eventually get up and do something more productive - damn you protestant work ethic!

I am a procrastinator, a perfectionist and easily distracted, so doubtless in the eyes of others (particularly the significant one) I waste a hell of a lot of time. I can turn the simplest task into a day-long saga involving every tool I own, a giant mess and several trips to the local "shed" (hardware store).

We don't have a car either, which makes such trips even more time consuming. Even if we did have a car I'd end up tinkering with it instead of going where I was supposed to! I already spend much more time than I should fettling my pride and joy...



EDIT: Wasting time at work is a whole other matter. I have been known to spend days on end writing and perfecting programs to simulate swarms of flies or snowflakes, especially when a big project deadline was looming. It's almost as if I needed to create the pressure of running it down to the wire in order to get the best out of myself work-wise. (I am of course referring to a job I held a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. In my current job I would never dream of wasting time in such a cavalier fashion.)

A bit paranoid...?
Not too many people here from Scotland, chances are slim one of them is your boss

Hm... after a few years of work, everyone knows of some ways to appear busy when you aren't - either by observation or by practice.

blackworx...

but that's a nice bike you've got there. titanium frame?

I waste my time with my ride, it's a 1970's Prince, Brigade 27"x1.25" rims...just put new tires on, that took a couple hours...even punched myself in the face doing it...that was embarrassing. but yeah...i fell off twice last year, and the cotter pin for the left petal got screwed up beyond recognition...replaced that with one i got from a bike at the local dump. the rims were just trued, because of the fall so yeah, my bike just needs a new axle for the rear wheel and it's finished...i also need to re-grease parts because i got caught in a storm a couple days ago, but it's all good...rockin on a 10 speed blowing past people on higher speed bikes...even my girlfriend thinks i'm crazy when i'd rather bike up the hill to her house instead of walk it.

I also coincidently play with my computer day in and day out....among the various parts for it.

I also do photography, i just did the CHDK hack on my Powershot SD1100IS, so I've got some hella good shots coming out.

i'll post a pic of it tomorrow in the daylight

aristide1,

since when did your post count surpass mine? Grr...

Sounds like you miss Bluefront.

-

I read most of the time, but I have a definite tendency for blogger addiction.

True, but then I *did* make that last post from work. On my, er, lunch break.

@bonestonne

Titanium? I wish! Good on you for keeping a 70's chariot on the road. Prince isn't a brand I've heard of over here, will check out Sheldon Brown. Just about all my bike's bearings are sealed cartridges - a bit soulless but I sure as hell don't miss freezing my hands off pulling them apart and regreasing them in the middle of winter! [/wuss]

You're hardly around anymore. It's not my fault.


Now you're just being nasty.


Have you been hiding elsewhere

@blackworx

ha, i don't ride in winter, i flip it tire side up and leave it in the garage and wait for it to unfreeze before hitting the roads again. best i can say is i know the rims are made in france. but prince as been out of business for years as far as i know...was out riding yesterday and i was neck and neck with someone more than twice my age on a bike similar to yours...10 speed hasn't died yet. (but i did feel like i was going to die riding up a hill on the 10 speed while talking to the guy i was riding with for a while).

BTT: i also fix my stuff in my spare time. >.<

3 words: Call of Duty

Yeah im a gamer, so i'd say a lot of my "wasted" time is spent gaming..but I wouldn;t consider it wasted because its something that calms me down believe it or not. Gaming is a nice way to forget about the pressures of life.


other than that I don't waste too much time. Either at work/school or at the gym.

or reading these forums!!!

Driving, 3 hours on the road daily round trip. But I've got audiobooks, so that helps.

I putz around at work in between and tweak folding computers in my offices. That'll take some time.

Oh, and Call of Duty 4. At work. On my folding boxen, from time to time.

I suppose I waste 4 or 5 hours a night sleeping, too.

You play CoD4 at work... You're even worse than blackworx

What's there to write?

If that is poop then
{
land
leave eggs
go find something humans eat
land there, wipe feet
}
else
{
keep flying
}

I spend a lot of time drinking and chasing loose women, the rest I just waste.

If a woman is loose then why is she running

Lol.

I might do a bluebottle one next that has rotten carcases as well as poop. you know, flesh it out a bit.

Ahem. I'll, er, get me coat.

I waste time by going to work and doing nothing of particular importance while ignoring everything else that needs doing.

i agree with the above post