Just Chillin': My aging laptop has started taking periodic mini-vacations throughout the day. It doesn't freeze solid; I've learned that if I wait a bit, three to five minutes, it pulls itself together and gets back to business. It's annoying as heck, a real roadblock to my productivity ... and also, on some level, probably good for me, a forced pause in my screen-staring, a reminder to blink, take a breath, walk around, read a book. It occurs to me that this is the kind of thing some clever life-coach type might package and sell, something that pauses your machine at set intervals to make you meditate or some such. It's not something I'd go for -- I'm so stuck on multitasking I'm writing this blog post on my phone while I wait the beach ball out -- but I can see a certain appeal.