Oy, What a Week I Had Today!
Jul. 9th, 2010 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howeirdIt's been busy, which I suppose is a good thing. Too busy to write, which is not so good. To be honest, it has not been too busy to write, I just shifted my priorities a bit the past couple of days. Been ending the day watching episodes of Californication on Netflix.This will be long, so lots of cuts.
Wednesday was busy at work, as a device we had expected to pass our shortened test suite failed big-time, many bugs One of the things about finding a bug is one has to stop testing, try making the machine fail repeatably, sometimes gather log files, or take photos or a video of the symptoms, write up the bug in great detail, attach all the evidence, and then it goes up the chain to the lead engineer, who needs to try it on his machine, and then to the product manager, and then to the manufacturer. Any of those steps could bounce the bug back to me for more information, clarifications, or trying the same thing on a similar device from the same manufacturer - or our own reference application. Long story longer - bugs derail the whole test process. So instead of the short test suite we had to switch to the full test suite which usually takes 5 engineers 5 days, and we had 3 engineers and 2.5. days.
I ducked out for 90 minutes to go to the Postal Annex which has a notary, and was lucky enough to be the only one there for most of the time it took to make certified copies of half a dozen items, and get a couple more signed and stamped. Then across the street to Fedex to ship the lot to a clearinghouse in New Zealand where the folks had some stock from a company on the NZ stock exchange. One of Dad's diversification experiments, a company in a business area he had no other stocks in, and his only non-American stock exchange holding. He had some other foreign company stocks, but they are on NASDAQ or NYSE.
After work, a quick stop home and then hunted for the improv class location I had not been able to find last week. Found it by pulling into an unmarked driveway/parking area I had not tried last time. The reason I didn't find the place last week is they had the door propped open, the address number is on the door and could not be seen from the street. With the door open, the number faces the driveway . It was a small class, five plus the leader. Only one woman, the long-time theater friend who had posted about the class on FB. The venue is a day care center, very new carpet, lots of open space. There was way too much stretching for a mostly cerebral endeavor, followed by several mind-bending games which reminded me of some of the job interviews I've been to where the interviewer is an engineer who thinks that he'll learn something about your thought process by asking you to do inane Freshman engineering puzzles ("You have seven balls. You can only move one at a time, only in one direction. How do you get the yellow ball from the center position to one of the end positions in three moves?"). The games were only very tangentially related to what one would do on stage in an actual improv situation. Finally they got to some actual improvs, but this night was all about talking in gibberish, which got old for me quickly. There was some actual fun, and two of the men in the group are especially adept actors. We didn't finish till 11. Bottom line: Not enough fun or women to go back.
Yesterday was a rush at work to get Wed's tests done by noon. I also introduced myself to our newest product manager, who sits in the cubicle on the other side of mine, and is assigned to the manufacturer of this device. I showed her two bugs which she needed to make the "is it a bug or a feature?" decision on. We missed the noon deadline by a couple of hours. I ducked out for one more notarization, this one just needed to be dropped in the mail, which Postal Annex did for me. Back to work the next project is our latest reference application which turns my Ubuntu linux machine into a streaming movie player with all the user interface whizbangs of the hardware devices. It uses the same SDK we will be sending to the manufacturers. Got it to launch right away, but it still would not play any movies by the time I had to leave. Probably DRM related.To be continued this morning.
Ye Olde Towne Band practice last night was interesting. My horn's 2nd valve, which I had dropped last year and was allegedly repaired has started sticking again. I had bought a replacement baritone on eBay at the start of the month but it had not arrived yet. I haven't heard anything from the seller and was afraid I might have been ripped off. The cost of the replacement was comparable to what a valve job would have cost, and the horn on eBay is a classic model in better shape than the junker I have. Despite that, the baritone section was "on" last night, we sounded good enough to get a compliment from the conductor on one of the pieces. I make a lot of mistakes, but last night nothing glaring. Used the smaller mouthpiece I found in my trumpet case last week (I had used it at the 4th of July concert for the first time) and it made a difference - high notes were easier to hit, low notes harder.
Home, there was a big package in front of the door made from Home Depot boxes. Didn't know Home Dept even had boxes. I couldn't think who would be sending me something this big - about the size of a moving company's smaller wardrobe box.Looked on the label and lo and behold, it was the baritone from eBay. Had I known it was delivered, I'd have stopped home instead of being half an hour early for rehearsals. The box was filled with Styrofoam nuts, or whatever you call them, and it took a quarter of an hour to scoop enough of them to get the horn out. It was in a hard-sided case, which was one of the selling features. It came with an even smaller mouthpiece than the one I used at rehearsals, which I'll try out next week. Its valves work smoothly, the slides all slide, it's been de-dented but not re-plated and polished so it has a dull battleship gray look to it. My beater horn is brass colored, this one is silver. Also this one is an upright bell while the other is bell-front. They complement each other.
Stayed up till all hours printing out cost basis info from my Dad's brokerages online, very surprised that all the accounts are still accessible, I was told they were locked out as soon as I reported the passing of my parents. Not surprised that all the assets are still there, they all said it would take a week or more. Needed that for brother-in-law to do the final taxes.
Time to get showered and shaved and drugged and off to work. The jewelers should have my repairs/appraisals ready this afternoon. No plans for tonight.
Wednesday was busy at work, as a device we had expected to pass our shortened test suite failed big-time, many bugs One of the things about finding a bug is one has to stop testing, try making the machine fail repeatably, sometimes gather log files, or take photos or a video of the symptoms, write up the bug in great detail, attach all the evidence, and then it goes up the chain to the lead engineer, who needs to try it on his machine, and then to the product manager, and then to the manufacturer. Any of those steps could bounce the bug back to me for more information, clarifications, or trying the same thing on a similar device from the same manufacturer - or our own reference application. Long story longer - bugs derail the whole test process. So instead of the short test suite we had to switch to the full test suite which usually takes 5 engineers 5 days, and we had 3 engineers and 2.5. days.
I ducked out for 90 minutes to go to the Postal Annex which has a notary, and was lucky enough to be the only one there for most of the time it took to make certified copies of half a dozen items, and get a couple more signed and stamped. Then across the street to Fedex to ship the lot to a clearinghouse in New Zealand where the folks had some stock from a company on the NZ stock exchange. One of Dad's diversification experiments, a company in a business area he had no other stocks in, and his only non-American stock exchange holding. He had some other foreign company stocks, but they are on NASDAQ or NYSE.
After work, a quick stop home and then hunted for the improv class location I had not been able to find last week. Found it by pulling into an unmarked driveway/parking area I had not tried last time. The reason I didn't find the place last week is they had the door propped open, the address number is on the door and could not be seen from the street. With the door open, the number faces the driveway . It was a small class, five plus the leader. Only one woman, the long-time theater friend who had posted about the class on FB. The venue is a day care center, very new carpet, lots of open space. There was way too much stretching for a mostly cerebral endeavor, followed by several mind-bending games which reminded me of some of the job interviews I've been to where the interviewer is an engineer who thinks that he'll learn something about your thought process by asking you to do inane Freshman engineering puzzles ("You have seven balls. You can only move one at a time, only in one direction. How do you get the yellow ball from the center position to one of the end positions in three moves?"). The games were only very tangentially related to what one would do on stage in an actual improv situation. Finally they got to some actual improvs, but this night was all about talking in gibberish, which got old for me quickly. There was some actual fun, and two of the men in the group are especially adept actors. We didn't finish till 11. Bottom line: Not enough fun or women to go back.
Yesterday was a rush at work to get Wed's tests done by noon. I also introduced myself to our newest product manager, who sits in the cubicle on the other side of mine, and is assigned to the manufacturer of this device. I showed her two bugs which she needed to make the "is it a bug or a feature?" decision on. We missed the noon deadline by a couple of hours. I ducked out for one more notarization, this one just needed to be dropped in the mail, which Postal Annex did for me. Back to work the next project is our latest reference application which turns my Ubuntu linux machine into a streaming movie player with all the user interface whizbangs of the hardware devices. It uses the same SDK we will be sending to the manufacturers. Got it to launch right away, but it still would not play any movies by the time I had to leave. Probably DRM related.To be continued this morning.
Ye Olde Towne Band practice last night was interesting. My horn's 2nd valve, which I had dropped last year and was allegedly repaired has started sticking again. I had bought a replacement baritone on eBay at the start of the month but it had not arrived yet. I haven't heard anything from the seller and was afraid I might have been ripped off. The cost of the replacement was comparable to what a valve job would have cost, and the horn on eBay is a classic model in better shape than the junker I have. Despite that, the baritone section was "on" last night, we sounded good enough to get a compliment from the conductor on one of the pieces. I make a lot of mistakes, but last night nothing glaring. Used the smaller mouthpiece I found in my trumpet case last week (I had used it at the 4th of July concert for the first time) and it made a difference - high notes were easier to hit, low notes harder.
Home, there was a big package in front of the door made from Home Depot boxes. Didn't know Home Dept even had boxes. I couldn't think who would be sending me something this big - about the size of a moving company's smaller wardrobe box.Looked on the label and lo and behold, it was the baritone from eBay. Had I known it was delivered, I'd have stopped home instead of being half an hour early for rehearsals. The box was filled with Styrofoam nuts, or whatever you call them, and it took a quarter of an hour to scoop enough of them to get the horn out. It was in a hard-sided case, which was one of the selling features. It came with an even smaller mouthpiece than the one I used at rehearsals, which I'll try out next week. Its valves work smoothly, the slides all slide, it's been de-dented but not re-plated and polished so it has a dull battleship gray look to it. My beater horn is brass colored, this one is silver. Also this one is an upright bell while the other is bell-front. They complement each other.
Stayed up till all hours printing out cost basis info from my Dad's brokerages online, very surprised that all the accounts are still accessible, I was told they were locked out as soon as I reported the passing of my parents. Not surprised that all the assets are still there, they all said it would take a week or more. Needed that for brother-in-law to do the final taxes.
Time to get showered and shaved and drugged and off to work. The jewelers should have my repairs/appraisals ready this afternoon. No plans for tonight.
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