Day of Fry

[howeird]

Back to the usual routine, slept till the lights came on, did my morning stuff, somehow didn't manage to get on the road till 8:45. AG called, he thinks he has an interview with Apple today, but he isn't sure because he thought he needed to study for it. WTF? And he sent email and voicemail to them asking to postpone it a week, but never heard back. Something fishy here.

Boss' boss had me make changes to the spreadsheet which I was going to do anyway. Just was waiting for him to say they made sense. I also shot him down on a Stupid Idea™ which would have made the thing impossible to read, which I have had a solution for since Day 2.

Found another bug in the pre-release app which Boss said was a bug in the hardware, so she had me file a bug which she assigned to the company which makes the hardware. I'm seeing almost the same bug on different hardware, so I'm not sure. But it's possible for both devices to have similar issues. Such is life in the world of digital signal processing.

Lunch was Lean Cuisine spaghetti & meatballs. Very small portion. Added some Tillamook cheddar. Pudding for dessert. Very little traffic today, no tour groups, no special events. Less pedestrian traffic than usual by the hole, too.

No break, I was busy filing that bug. Did not really need one, what with the aircon working and the bug was such that I needed to sit and watch for it to happen.

Updated one TV and ran the usual tests, and logged the results to the spreadsheet.

Car did not charge all the way last night, something burped on the charger. So after work I parked in the garage and plugged in. Upstairs the weather was great for sitting in the shade and people-watching. Interns have green badges. There was a lot of work for the security people, explaining to tourists that they can't ride the Google bikes, especially not without a helmet, and interns can't bring 16 of their closest friends inside for free dinner. But there was plenty of eye candy, and also plenty of Ingress action. I owned the dinosaur sculpture for a while. Maybe 10 minutes. Being at level 8 turns out to not be as big an advantage as I thought.

Finally went to the dessert line, put a couple of dark chocolate brownies into a coffee cup and added chocolate softserve, which was too soft to serve. But fine for what I was doing. Checked out the food trucks, one was Thai, khao mon gai, but the line was slow and long. The other was horrible faux Mexican. By then  my car was charged.

Home, it was about 7, traffic was light on the back roads and 101 was almost at the speed limit.

No mail, but in the park slot was my rent bill. Included was a letter from the manager saying that Sunnyvale has a program for people with mobility problems, the garbage collectors will wheel your bins out to the truck and back again. Just fill out a form with a doctor's note. Come to the office to get the form. Yeah, right.

Tried to print the rent check, but Checksoft's MICR font was messed up again.

Watered the gardens.

Fired up Dragon and dictated my first letter home from Thailand. It did pretty well, only took about 10 minutes to fix the typos (I need to look up the secret code for parens) and find a Baht symbol. Found something close enough.

Dinner was Boston Market beef & noodles with added Swiss and Parmesan. Ice cream for dessert. Crumbled halvah doesn't really work as a topping. Magic shell does.

Back to the PC, uninstalled Checksoft, wiped it from the registry, rebooted, re-installed and re-patched (2x) and it still didn't show the MICR line. Rebooted again and it worked.

I really need to find an alternative.


7 March 1975
Dear people,
In a couple of minutes I have to go get on the bus to get some more shots. We had our medical and general orientation this morning. After shots I’ll go see about buying a camera. Tokyo's duty-free shop’s ridiculous - $360 for a $365 camera. Price supports are now in effect there, I suppose.

The flight was loooong! And confusing. We left San Francisco at noon, got off the ground at 1 PM and flew through lunch and a movie (Young Frankenstein) and a snack – about 11 hours – to Tokyo. Then we received two hours’ free time to wait for the plane. Some people bought radios but those also were a rip-off. Hong Kong was after dinner (trout) and it took about 3 1/2 hours. The shops in the airport only sold El Cheapo cameras, so I still have my $400 intact. I'll try to cure that situation today.

Everyone else here is a teacher, and will be in a project to teach English. Four others will be in Bangkok teaching – the rest will be in small towns. We have a very close-knit group, very nice people, and pretty intelligent – all have at least a BA, a few Masters and one PhD.

We got to Bangkok at 2 AM or so, very tired. Got to a hotel together by bus (which was waiting for us) and then SLEPT till about nine or so. 9:30 we had orientation, lunch at noon courtesy of the PC -  HOT. The food is really good, but very spicy. Makes Greek food taste tame. It's very humid out here – must be about 70°, 85% humidity.

We're learning money – they gave us a ᴃ890 (about 25 ᴃ to the dollar) for the pre-– training time of a couple of weeks. It's ᴃ60 per day except the days when we are fed lunch for free – that it's ᴃ50 plus another ᴃ50 the days we spent in more expensive Bangkok. So today will have ᴃ110 to spend - lunch was free - they paid us ᴃ60 today anyhow. So at baht for per aerogramme, mail is EXPENSIVE. Even if it does come out to only five cents American. I'm learning very fast to think in Thai baht and put it in relation with my new income.

We met the staff who will be teaching us, plus the doctor, some of the Bangkok Peace Corps staff and some of the education ministry gals.

You can write to me either at the Bangkok address I gave mom over the phone, or at the address on the back of this letter. I’ll be at Nakhon Sawan (either one or two words as the mood strikes you) until April 4. Then I go to my post in Bangkok. The PC Bangkok address will always be good, and safe. But it could get slow.

If you need to send any checks (like from AAA) you can use the diplomatic pouch – I'll have to get info on how to use it.

Time to leave and get shot up. Take care.
Love,
Howard

HOWARD STATEMAN
US PEACE CORPS GROUP 51
NAKHON SAWAN BOYS SCHOOL
NAKHON SAWAN
THAILAND

Plans for tomorrow:
Photo shoot at 1 pm
Before and after TBD

Comments

[zyzyly.livejournal.com]

Congrats on level 8. Yeah, it gets you better bursters, but you realize most of your enemies are level 10 or better.