Two Days for the Price of One
Aug. 10th, 2011 11:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howeirdTuesday was another day in the paradise known as Alviso. They were supposed to put new carpet on the back stairs Monday, but someone did not get the memo. This is the stairway I use to get to my cube, and it is horribly depressing - I don't think they have cleaned it since the building was built 10 years ago. Some of the plastic edge strips have come off completely, two repaired with gaffer's tape at least five years ago. Not very facile facilities sent email today that they would do the work Friday. Big whoop.
I brought a DAC to work, but did not bring an optical audio cable to go with it. Of course nobody at work had one - I have learned to never expect routine equipment to be available without a lengthy ordering process. You would think this was some mega-company, not a peewee outfit of <900. My tech lead was okay with waiting till I could bring one from home the next day.
Was assigned a new suite of tests, the kind which takes hours of thumb twiddling to do. Got maybe half a dozen done Tuesday.
After work I did remember to go to City Lights, and saw a reader's theater version of a locally-written new play called Pastoral Paranoia. It's a story about the dumb younger brother who grows up to be a drug lord in his parents' farmhouse. Parents are still there, Dad is seriously senile, Mom is a total twit, thinks the boys are still children and that soaps are real life. Drug king has his two very large cousins as henchmen. The plot thickens when his older sister shows up, fleeing her scumbag husband. And then again when his big brother the jock-turned-MBA brings home his very pregnant ditzy new very young not-white wife, expecting to live there. Big sister and big brother definitely have the hots for each other. One big dysfunctional family reunited.
The cast was well suited to their roles, except maybe the ditzy pregnant wife, but I'm not sure if it was because she didn't fit the part or the part was not fleshed out enough to get a handle on. Ruth E. Stein, whom I admired as the mother in Nine, which is also playing at City Lights, was amazing, and could not be more different from her other Mom role. After the show, the playwright and director joined the cast onstage for an audience participation discussion session. I hope they take this to a staged reading - I don't think it is ready for a full production yet, it needs a run with costumes and action to really get a feel.
Stayed up too late again, mostly trying to get the renovationsf pocket guide to load on my android phone. They need more server resources. So far I have found at least 5 things of interest in every time slot, and I'm only up to noon on Thursday.
Today I brought the optical cable and started the day using it to test. Found one surprise, which became a bug. And then I was asked to put together a test matrix for testing optical audio because we don't have one.
Spent most of the day fighting with the latest update - the machine kept timing out. My lead had forgotten to give me the changes to the update script.
Tried to do the first of the time-sucking tests, but instead found a bug which prevented finishing. Got out of there at 6, knowing it will be there in the morning.
While I was in the thumb-twiddling part, I did some research which had been in the back of my mind. Whatever happened to Dave, the attorney in Omak who had been in the Peace Corps in Thailand, and when he heard I was about to go do that, invited me to his home for dinner and a slide show of his Thailand PC days. At the time he was married to a French woman with the delicious name of Mignon. My research popped up a few things, the best was his retirement party last January. After being public defender for the Colville indian tribe (a big chunk of Omak is on the reservation) he became superior court judge, and stayed in that post for 32 years. I knew years ago he had got that job, but figured he was too good to settle for being a rural county justice. Also found out he and Mignon had a daughter who recently graduated from that ivy legue school in RI. And that he is now married to someone named Vicky, and Mignon teaches art in and around Omak. He was in Thai PC group 21, I was in group 51.
I wanted to make going-away cards for the team (all 8 of them) and since I won't have time tomorrow what with YOTB rehearsals, I did those tonight. Making greeting cards is always a challenge for me. I am a spacial moron. You know that SAT test section where they fold a piece of paper, poke a hole in it, and ask where the holes will be when they unfold the paper? It's multiple choice. I got fewer right than if I had just chosen answers at random.
But after a lot of fiddling, I got all eight cards and envelopes printed, folded and stuffed. Even m ore amazing is I did not waste any card stock or envelopes. Yay me.
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
YOTB
I brought a DAC to work, but did not bring an optical audio cable to go with it. Of course nobody at work had one - I have learned to never expect routine equipment to be available without a lengthy ordering process. You would think this was some mega-company, not a peewee outfit of <900. My tech lead was okay with waiting till I could bring one from home the next day.
Was assigned a new suite of tests, the kind which takes hours of thumb twiddling to do. Got maybe half a dozen done Tuesday.
After work I did remember to go to City Lights, and saw a reader's theater version of a locally-written new play called Pastoral Paranoia. It's a story about the dumb younger brother who grows up to be a drug lord in his parents' farmhouse. Parents are still there, Dad is seriously senile, Mom is a total twit, thinks the boys are still children and that soaps are real life. Drug king has his two very large cousins as henchmen. The plot thickens when his older sister shows up, fleeing her scumbag husband. And then again when his big brother the jock-turned-MBA brings home his very pregnant ditzy new very young not-white wife, expecting to live there. Big sister and big brother definitely have the hots for each other. One big dysfunctional family reunited.
The cast was well suited to their roles, except maybe the ditzy pregnant wife, but I'm not sure if it was because she didn't fit the part or the part was not fleshed out enough to get a handle on. Ruth E. Stein, whom I admired as the mother in Nine, which is also playing at City Lights, was amazing, and could not be more different from her other Mom role. After the show, the playwright and director joined the cast onstage for an audience participation discussion session. I hope they take this to a staged reading - I don't think it is ready for a full production yet, it needs a run with costumes and action to really get a feel.
Stayed up too late again, mostly trying to get the renovationsf pocket guide to load on my android phone. They need more server resources. So far I have found at least 5 things of interest in every time slot, and I'm only up to noon on Thursday.
Today I brought the optical cable and started the day using it to test. Found one surprise, which became a bug. And then I was asked to put together a test matrix for testing optical audio because we don't have one.
Spent most of the day fighting with the latest update - the machine kept timing out. My lead had forgotten to give me the changes to the update script.
Tried to do the first of the time-sucking tests, but instead found a bug which prevented finishing. Got out of there at 6, knowing it will be there in the morning.
While I was in the thumb-twiddling part, I did some research which had been in the back of my mind. Whatever happened to Dave, the attorney in Omak who had been in the Peace Corps in Thailand, and when he heard I was about to go do that, invited me to his home for dinner and a slide show of his Thailand PC days. At the time he was married to a French woman with the delicious name of Mignon. My research popped up a few things, the best was his retirement party last January. After being public defender for the Colville indian tribe (a big chunk of Omak is on the reservation) he became superior court judge, and stayed in that post for 32 years. I knew years ago he had got that job, but figured he was too good to settle for being a rural county justice. Also found out he and Mignon had a daughter who recently graduated from that ivy legue school in RI. And that he is now married to someone named Vicky, and Mignon teaches art in and around Omak. He was in Thai PC group 21, I was in group 51.
I wanted to make going-away cards for the team (all 8 of them) and since I won't have time tomorrow what with YOTB rehearsals, I did those tonight. Making greeting cards is always a challenge for me. I am a spacial moron. You know that SAT test section where they fold a piece of paper, poke a hole in it, and ask where the holes will be when they unfold the paper? It's multiple choice. I got fewer right than if I had just chosen answers at random.
But after a lot of fiddling, I got all eight cards and envelopes printed, folded and stuffed. Even m ore amazing is I did not waste any card stock or envelopes. Yay me.
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
YOTB
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