Wet Blanket

Wet pillow case, actually. Did the laundry, left a pillow case in the washer, which I found after my stuff had dried. A few weeks ago I'd bought a new iron, cordless, but had not even opened the box yet. So I took it out and lo and behold instead of it being rechargeable, it was a modern version of the original irons which you heat on the stove. Except this one came with a nice little heating module. Push a button for there desired temp, wait for the red light to go solid, and pull the iron off the base and iron away. One zap lasts a long time - 5 minutes maybe. I was able to iron dry the pillowcase in about 10 minutes.

Engineering meeting was pretty good, again. A couple of key people missing, but still a goodly crowd. I saw one of my feature requests is going into the next product, that's kewl. They also made some tweaks on a couple of new features which showed they are very good hands with Occam's razor.

Got back to my desk to find that the bug I was so jazzed about finding yesterday was already tackled and fixed for the new product, and the engineering project manager is having the fix ported to the one I'm working on now, so the final release will ship with that fixed. It also got me a pat on the back from one of the other QA guys. This is a wonderful change from most places I've worked where QA reports bugs, engineering fights them all the way, or marketing decides it's not worth fixing. These guys want as bullet-proof a product as they can make, and don't take it personally when someone finds a bug. They also are good about quickly shooting down non-bugs and duplicates.

johnnyeponymous needs to go to Rite-Aid. In their seasonal department they are selling a thatch-roofed tiki bar for a mere $99.00. It's in-store only, they don't list it online.

Jack Off

When AT&T hooked up dial tone the other day, I took the wired phone I'd been using for testing in the kitchen up to the bedroom, and heard no dial tone at that jack. The kitchen jack has dual plugs, so I tried the expedient of plugging the one into the other, but that didn't help. So this morning I pulled off both faceplates and checked ( cut for TMboringI )

In other news Western Digital just shipped my replacement drive, exactly a month after I shipped them the bad one. This is not my idea of good customer service, considering for most people this would mean a completely down PC.

Ordered frames for the 20x30 posters Qoop is making me. Frames cost about 2/3 what the prints cost. And these are the cheapest frames. Ouch.

Off to work.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

...aka fear of Friday the 13th

This is the last Friday the 13th until next June, and the next one after that will be February, 2009 - a year which has thee of them.

Fidel Castro and Margaret Thatcher were both born on a Friday the 13th, as were Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Coincidence? I think not. :-)

Looking at the usual online sources, it seems the number 13 has a very brief history as being unlucky, references don't go back much more than 100 years. However, Friday as an unlucky day has been found in print as early as the 1500's, and might even be traced back to the earliest Bibles, being the day before God rested. He must have been pretty wiped out by that first Friday.

My work buddy Oleg says he thinks we get Friday the 13th from a historical event "The Night of the Long Knives", in the middle ages when the Church and its thugs arrested a bunch of Knights Templar, who were later executed. Lots of sources mention this as a possibility. But I doubt that this one minor political coup which was SOP for popes of that era, would have even registered with the masses, much less imprint itself into popular superstition. My vote is for turn of the (20th) century media hype, reinforced by Hollywood.

Cashectomy Creditectomy

Lunch time I went to the Toyota dealer to order a replacement for the front power door lock which over the past couple of years has gone from sometimes not locking to always popping back up after it almost locked. The alarm will still go off if someone opens the door, but considering how we've become conditioned to ignore car alarms (or just complain about them) and how I often keep valuable items in the car (Metro from 2 weeks ago, the used wiper blades I replaced last month, bungee cords and a rusty flashlight), it seemed a good idea to get this fixed. Mostly because I'll be driving to Seattle soon, and don't want to tempt those notorious Northwet hooligans.

Bottom line - it's a special order part, and cost $300 which I had to pay for them to order it. It should arrive tomorrow, so my Sunday repair appointment plans may be feasible after all. Glad I checked, otherwise I'd have wasted a trip.

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Had lunch at Thai Basil in Sunnyvale Town Center. I know some of my LJ readers are also fans of this place, be aware they just changed hours, and are closed Sundays, but their newly expanded Murphy Ave place is open then. My usual chat with the wait persons was much more interesting than usual - turns out three of them are from the town in which I did my second Peace Corps year, Haad Yai, and they even knew the place I'd worked including the 3-way intersection it's on. And we all snickered at the guy at the next table when he asked for chopsticks, as if he expected them to be on the table automatically. I should have told him the Thais only use those for Chinese food.

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Back at work, there was quite a crowd in the break room watching the ping pong match. It was pretty good - the CEO and the head of support vs. the woman in charge of sales ops and someone I think is an engineer, but may be a manager too. Ping pong is real popular here, we have two tables and usually there are two doubles games going at the same time.

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Found another bug this morning, I think. The reason I'm not sure is although any customer would call it a bug and report it to Tech Support, the veteran ace QA engineer in Belgium saw the saw the same results on the previous release, and marked the test as passing. I'll probably get some feedback from Engineering today or Monday.

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Picking up a prescription tonight after work, no other plans. I think I'll ask you to vote.

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What Should I Do Tonight?

[Poll #1021050]

My Congresscritter Continues To Do Her Job

My Congressional Rep is Anna Eshoo, who has consistently opposed the war in Iraq, supported education and is as close as she could be to taking the stands I would take if I was in Congress. It's frustrating that we don't have enough people like her in DC.

This is from her web page today:

Eshoo Votes Again to End the War in Iraq

Supports House Bill to Responsibly Redeploy U.S. Troops July 13, 2007 WASHINGTON, D.C. - Rep. Anna G. Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, released the following statement after voting for H.R. 2956, the Responsible Redeployment from Iraq Act, which the House passed by a vote of 223 to 201. The vote came on the same day as the release of the White House Interim Report on Iraq. The Report indicates that the Iraqi government has failed to meet key benchmarks endorsed by the President in January and that political reconciliation in Iraq is non-existent. "On Thursday, July 12th I voted once again to bring the war in Iraq to an end. The Responsible Redeployment from Iraq Act (H.R. 2956) requires the redeployment of U.S. troops in Iraq to begin within 120 days and to end no later than April 1, 2008. This proposal is consistent with the advice of our nation's top military and foreign policy experts and it ensures the safety of our troops who are still in harm's way. Very importantly, it reflects the will of over 70% of the American people who want a redeployment of our troops from Iraq. "I voted against going to war in 2002 and I've made every effort since then to bring about policy change in Iraq. Since the beginning of this year, I have voted for and the House has passed legislation to reject the President's proposal for a surge in Iraq, set a timeframe for withdrawing troops, and establish clear, binding benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet. "We need a bipartisan effort to end what I believe is the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of our country and bring our troops home. They are the ones who have suffered the brunt of funerals and injuries and their families have sacrificed mightily. "We need to create a way home for them, rebuild alliances in the region, and reestablish our nation's credibility."