Something to Do and something to don't

[howeird]

At the team meeting, boss tried very hard to get someone, anyone, to comment on boss' boss' plans to cross train his two sets of QA engineers, but no one would bite. Several people chimed in about other things which took place at the meeting Friday. I knew if I started talking about it, the meeting would last another hour, and go nowhere. Boss' boss was at the team meeting, which he usually is. It's one thing I like about him - he comes to keep in touch, and only contrinutes when asked, or when there is something important he needs to share.

During the meeting my phone vibrated 3 times, it was my doctor's office, but it's the generic number so I didn't know which doctor. Then email saying there was a message from my doctor on the Kaiser site. It was both doctors. Main doctor asking me to keep taking the sleeping pills latest BP meds (I said no, I can do one at night and that's all) and one from diabetes doc asking for an update, and also asking if I would be willing to try a BP med I was on in 2009, which made me pee like a racehorse. I replied to him, and he called back and we had a good chat. Which reminds me I need to run the program which does my Hgl numbers and send him a list.

After the team meeting I thought I would have a boring day, so to make it less so I started looking at the corporate training offerings, most are videos of PPT slide shows with narration. I found three, two are 1-hour tutorials on aspects of video which probably have useful information to add to the mass of what I already know, and one is a 6-hour course on something a little off my beaten path but worth taking a look at - the networking standard which is coming up next year and will enable non-cable modems to almost compete with cable modems for continuous video delivery. Or something like that.

That brought me to lunchtime. I totally flaked on going to the PO because (a) there is no rush to mail the package and (b) it's Hell Day at the PO. Took my cooler to the break room and created a ham sandwich out of components I'd brought, expecting to make a picnic. Talk about lazy - too lazy to drive to the park.

Watched one of the tutorials. It was voice over a video of PPT slides projected on a screen, horrible video quality, which is ironic because the tutorial is by a guy who (as I later fond by online search) holds 4 patents and wrote what appears to be a doctoral dissertation on the math behind making network video clearer.

I give the course a C. The presenter is an expert, knows this stuff inside and out, but he didn't define some important math terms so he gets an A-. But the image slides, which were crucial to understanding the verbiage, were unreadable. The large print word slides were readable but fuzzy. So the videography gets a D-.

Just when I was about to tackle the next one, email arrived asking me if I had seen a certain bug which a customer had just reported, about a feature I am the expert for. Looked at the test case database and saw that the test which should have checked this was automated more than 2 years ago, and had been running with zero failures since then. Previous manual tests had revealed a couple of other bugs, but those were not closely related and had been fixed long ago.

I didn't have a machine to check with, so Automation Guy and I worked together. At first it looked to be working as specified, but then he stumbled on the bug. We checked it from a few different scenarios, and it was solidly a bug. The specs didn't really say what the behavior should be, but we decided it wasn't what we were seeing. So he wrote up a 1-liner confirming what the customer saw, I added a pair of step-by-steps and also wrote a new test case to cover the condition. It turns out that the automation script didn't make the final check which reveals the bug.

This is a show-stopper, so now we know there will be one more build.

Just in time, the Loan Arranger from my CU called, and we did the math around buying a "manufactured home". Turns out I can swing a 25% downpayment (which lemmozine pointed out on FB goes towards the care and feeding of the ducks), and the result on a standard 3br place would give me a mortgage payment half of my current rent. Taxes would up that some, but I'm already paying utilities/water/sewer/garbage, so yeah, I can afford this. He said it is best to get pre-qualified, so I'll make an appointment to do that.

By now it was almost time to go home so I updated my notebook and did so. Completely forgot that I was going to stop by Target and check out the Sodastream devices. I am down to one 1-liter seltzer siphon, having broken 5 in the past 2 years. That's more than the high end Sodastream costs.

Home, did not feel like going anywhere. Watched as much of the Raiders-Broncos game as it took to finish eating dinner, turned it off very disappointed in Oakland's offensive line and horrible tackling, and brainless penalties.

Took solace in emptying the dishwasher and getting caught up on FB. And then looked through Craig's list to see what prefab homes were available, and where, and for what price. There are some excellent choices out there, a couple of them in "communities" (aka mobile home parks) I have driven past many times. There are also a few in the swamps, or what used to be the swamps. on the other side of 237 from Alviso. Those are mostly 55+ which I am well qualified for, and not having screaming children living next door would be a plus.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Target
Peninsulaires (voice lessons, and a chance to say "no, I don't want to be in a chorus which sings screwy harmonies and emotes the song to death")

Comments

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

Ah - looking at mobile homes? Which is a misnomer because mostly they go nowhere. I have in the past owned one of these. Here are some things you ought to know going into it that I missed: 1. No windy areas. There's a phenomenon known as "roof rumble" that used to keep me awake all night on windy nights in Boulder. 2. Read all the park's covenants carefully before you buy. 3. Resale value works more like a car than a house. Buy a new one, change your mind, and a month later it's worth maybe half what you paid. Used makes more sense, with precautions, but often the park owners profit when the dealers sell new homes, so they scheme to get those that are 10 years older or more off the lot. Remember they are hot boxes, like cars in the sun with the windows shut, in the summer. Swamp coolers get everything damp and will only cut the temp about 10 degrees, so if it gets to 90-100, it will be fairly unbearable. A lot of people paint the roof twice a year, white for summer and black for winter. And be careful - these things are normally framed with 1x2s. Such was my experience, in 1980.

[howeird]

Thanks. Good advice. Last night I looked at some listings, and am finding that some of the space rent for the parks around here are obscenely high, enough to make buying a "manufactured home" as expensive as renting an apartment.

The weather here is very moderate, maybe a week in the 90's or above, and almost never below freezing, so the roof painting is probably not very common here. I'll have to check out the wind thing, though the weather patterns here being close to a lot of water is the winds are calm overnight and pick up in the late afternoon and early evening.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

Yep. Lot rents are insane. And the lot owners have a habit of raising them. Harder to get out of than an apartment if your job changes or your neighbors rock out at 3 am. Oh, and if the owners have a lot of older homes on the lot, there's potential for huge profit if they sell the lot and make everyone move off. I don't want to discourage you, but it's something I would never, ever do again.