word for the day: slopsucker
From
the jargon file:
slopsucker: /slop´suhk·r/, n.
A lowest-priority task that waits around until everything else has "had its fill" of machine resources. Only when the machine would otherwise be idle is the task allowed to "suck up the slop". Also called a hungry puppy or bottom feeder.
I hate slopsucker days, because I'm terrble at them. A slopsucker day is when all your "real" work is either on hold, or you've completed it, or there's nothing really to take up large chunks of your time and/or brain. Usually, there's something on the horizon but you aren't sure when it will hit your "active" pile...but there's not enough time to think about a new thing to make, or work on one's book...because invariably as soon as you start something, a project will move into active mode (and usually it will have to have been done "yesterday", which is a whole other rant).
So, on slopsucker days you spend a lot of time twiddling your thumbs and checking mail every 3 minutes instead of every 7 minutes, hoping that maybe there's something substantial to do besides virus scan your computer, defrag it, remove spyware, read blogs...
