If your place of work heavily relies on Outlook calendars and IM, consider the following:

• Set your IM status to away or busy when you don't want to be disturbed.  While a quick question from a colleague may be more appropriate over IM than him stopping by in person, fight your urge to be helpful all the time.  Most times the answer can wait.  How likely is the question you will be answering be more important than what you are working on if you have explicitly set your status away because you don't want to be disturbed?  If it were really a higher priority, the question wouldn't be asked over IM.
• Turn off Outlook sounds/notifications for when you receive new e-mail.  We love distractions and being up to date on communications, but reading and responding to e-mails more often than not throw us off our pace.  I've heard that it may take up to 15 minutes to be able to get back on track after being "randomized."  Which also gives support for the first point above.
• Block off "me"-time in your calendar and find a private area to work.  I had a manager who was always the go-to person for so many teams that I was always amazed at how he could still be so productive on his own projects.  Turned out that on occasion he would block out two-hour chunks on his calendar and go to the cafeteria or a conference room and work on his laptop there.  Sometimes that block of un-interrupted time is necessary and requires more steps to enforce.
• Work-life balance?  Block off (and mark private) times that you cannot stay late at work due to prior commitments.  If you know ahead of time that your kid's championship game is on a weeknight and your team has a tendency to schedule late meetings, put an out-of-office appointment on your calendar that also considers commute time and stick to your guns about it.  The whole point of having access to shared calendars is to know when people are available and give flexibility in scheduling.

Of course there's also making sure your office door (if you're lucky enough to have one) is closed.  That's a low-tech solution that works well, as people are less likely to poke their head in if they have to go through the formality of a knock.

And per proper etiquette, respect when a coworker has her IM status set to busy or her calendar says she's not supposed to be there.  I still hold a grudge against a former manager (not in my management chain) that didn't understand that the reason there was a calendar reminder popping up was because I had to leave right then and there to catch my bus so I could make it to a rehearsal.  While I know better today to ask "Can it wait for tomorrow?", I also expect professionals to also know when to ask "Is now a good time?"

Hope these tips for minimizing distraction and interruptions help!  They work wonders for me during crunch time!

Work days around holidays are always slow, so naturally when I was forwarded this last week I had to read on.  From Best of Craigslist: http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/672031640.html

Nemesis required. 6-month project with possibilty to extend

I've been trying to think of ways to spice up my life. I'm 35 years old, happily married with two kids and I have a good job in insurance. But somethings missing. I feel like I'm old before my time. I need to inject some excitement into my daily routine through my arm before its too late. I need a challenge, something to get the adrenaline pumping again. An addiction would be nice, but, in short, I need a nemesis. I'm willing to pay $350 up front for you services as an arch enemy over the next six months. Nothing crazy. Steal my parking space, knock my coffee over, trip me when Im running to catch the BART and occasionaly whisper in my ear, "Ahha, we meet again". That kind of thing. Just keep me on my toes. Complacency will be the death of me. You need to have an evil streak and be blessed with innate guile and cunning. You should also be adept at inconsicuous pursuit. Evil laugh preferred. Send me a photo and a brief explanation why you would be a good nemesis.

British accent preferred.

• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
• Compensation: $350 up front

The idea of a nemesis, particularly an arch-nemesis amuses me.   My first thought when reading the above ad is to convince the poster to give me the $350, and then piss him off by not doing anything.  I guess that qualifies as being an asshole more than being a nemesis though...

The ad did make me think though...

What are qualities you would seek in a nemesis?

Well, I immediately think of a girl I know whom I can't stand, and I have no good reason for disliking her.  Of course, that infuriates me even more because then I actually feel bad for not liking her.  So my arch nemesis would be a mix of her, and someone who is slightly better at everything I thought I was good at and have crossed a few more things off their life to-do list than me.  While he/she would end up being good motivation to improve myself, I would hate him/her for being what I thought were things that defined me, as well as being forced to have to interact with him/her in a gracious manner.

Thoughts?

Dear Facebook,

I realize that you are an enabler, a connector, one who brings people back together after losing touch on the journey of life. You untangle the mess that is the intertubes, and as part of your mission, will suggest to me people that I might know. Likewise, you will suggest me to these people, hoping that a moment of recognition, of "Aha!", will inspire a click to digitally renew our friendship. I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for the trip back down memory lane your helpfulness has inspired in the past few weeks.

Specifically:

• Thank you for popping up the same people over and over. Like a police line-up and interrogation, I'm starting to think that perhaps I do know Bobby Joe.
• Thank you for adding the ignore X button finally. I really enjoyed having my ex's face pop up on my main page every other time I logged in. I'm sure you know how much I welcomed the warm fuzzy memories that his image surely conjured.
• Thank you for confirming that as amusing as it is to learn where most people have ended up, very little of it is surprising.
• Thank you for reconnecting me with people from the past: ex-boyfriends from 10 years past, childhood friends, siblings of childhood friends who may or may not be sluts, people from my high school I can't remember, etc....
• Thank you for being psychic.  When I got to digitally reconnect with the only ex whose sexuality I might question, you sent me a notification saying that he has updated his profile answering that very question. (Guess my gay-dar is way off)
• Thank you for the laughs.  The sophomore guy that I almost asked to senior prom because my date had to cancel last minute and all the upperclassmen guys were taken?  Thanks to Facebook I've learned that he isn't that much younger than me, is still single, and has a 1 year old little boy he's utterly devoted to.  And still in middle of nowhere of my podunk state.  Actually, a disturbing number of people fall in that category... The friend of mine who, when dating a 34-year old during our sophomore year, informed me that the age of consent in said podunk state is 14 years old?  Married to a man that looks older than our fathers.

Hooray for public high schools!

Very truly yours,
- Hungrier Than Thou

P.S.  Thank you for letting us specify privacy settings.  I do hope that not too many people catch on to them though... I mean, if I lost the ability to stalk people so easily, then Scramble would be the only thing that keeps me logging onto Facebook!

... and the time, though talent being more important... I'd aspire to be able to arrange music for instruments I could play or get to play together.  Of course, if I had the talent and the time, I'd also be able to play more instruments.

Anyway, I stumbled upon this site which has excerpts that I've been listening to this afternoon: http://www.monalisasound.com/ProductsWorking.html - Apparently arrangements by/for the Hampton Rock String Quartet.  Make sure you listen to a non-midi preview of their arrangements (denoted by the play button as "hsq" and not "synth").  Fun fun.  Too bad I don't have the $30 a pop to get the music for each song, but nice to know these exist.

The day started with me having a conversation with a friend about how they celebrated a co-worker's "eleventh" birthday, his co-worker saying he'd be 12 except that there was no February 29th in 2000.

For someone born on February 29th, he knows surprisingly little about leap years.  But the statement did make me double-check the code I was writing at work for a calendar control.

For those of you who are wondering, the way to determine a leap year is as follows:
- Is the year is divisible by 400? Then it's a leap year.
- Is the year divisible by 100 (but not 400)?  It's not a leap year.
- Is the year divisible by 4 (but not 100)?  It's a leap year.

Or simply stated:
bool IsLeapYear(int year)
{
   return ((year % 4 == 0) && ((year % 100 != 0) || (year % 400 == 0)));
}

(Yes, I first wrote more verbose code of nested IF statements, then reworked it to take in order of logical expressions to reduce it to one line)

On a side note:
I didn't realize there were also Leap Year traditions.  For instance, "in the English speaking world, it is a tradition that women may propose marriage only on leap years." "The first documentation of this practice dates back to 1288, when Scotland passed a law that allowed women to propose marriage to the man of their choice in that year. They also made it law that any man who declined a proposal in a leap year must pay a fine. The fine could range from a kiss to payment for a silk dress or a pair of gloves." - [about.com].  Does that mean it's time to go get me some silk dresses?