My tweets

• Tue, 12:04: Off to the office de la postale to ship an RMA. It has "fragile" stamped all over it. They will still ask me if it is fragile.
• Tue, 14:57: Woman at the next table says her friend has ass burgers. She has not said if friend got these at in-and-out or McDonald's.
• Tue, 15:02: Olives have No trans-fats, no cholesterol. #olivefacts
• Tue, 17:14: Ripping filk CDs. Made by Magic, Kathy Mar - Zander Nyrond.
• Tue, 18:28: Lots of neat stuff on the Puzzlebox CD, but nothing I would sing along with in the car.
• Tue, 18:45: Check out "Celebrate the Final Space Shuttle Launch @ NASA Ames Research Center" http://t.co/3UGPHqd via @eventbrite
• Tue, 18:55: One more CD then dinner.
• Tue, 21:04: Home made Tamarind orange prawns on thai rice noodles FTW.
• Tue, 21:06: LJ is down again. :-(
• Wed, 09:43: Of all the Round Table gourmet pizzas, only King Arthur's Supreme ® and Guinevere’s Garden Delight ® feature olives. #OliveFacts #Westercon

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Full Day

Job hunt this morning had three or four positions to look at, two to apply for.

Headed over to the computer history museum at 11:30 with the plan being to get lunch at the cafe and take it upstairs to the lecture hall, which is set for a brown bag lecture. Said hi to johnnyeponymous who was at the front desk, ordered a corned beef+Havarti dill sandwich and a cup of corn chowder. Huge crowd lined up after I ordered, and it took 20 minutes to get my meal. I later found out I was entitled to a discount because I'm a museum member, but by then it was too late.

The lecture was not nearly as fascinating as the lecturer, an 84-year-old former IBM executive who led the move to magnetic stripes on credit cards. It was amazing that someone that age could stand and lecture for half an hour concisely and coherently. I would have liked to hear more about his life - they touched on it a little during the second part, the sit-down interview with the CHM CEO, but it was just a teaser. He chucked his US job to transfer to Tokyo, where his children were raised. He'd served in WWII and in Korea. He sounded like a person who would be fun to know.

OTOH the corned beef was tasteless. It was like someone had sliced it and run it through the dishwasher. The sandwich was huge, and the bread and lettuce were great but I didn't even finish half. The soup was okay but not as good as my own or Coco's'.

After the lecture I went to the Babbage engine demo, and was majorly impressed with the machine and the presenters. The printer built into the device was designed in 1834, but looks almost identical to the mechanical printers which were in Sears cash registers in 1980. Talk about ahead of its time. After the official demo the woman who did most of the presenting chatted with me and showed me all kinds of details which the demo was too short to go into.

And then I toured the main exhibit. Amazing. The last 20 times I had been at CHM the only displays they had up and running was one on computer chess and a room which was just a catchall of early computers and calculators. The new exhibit is real museum grade stuff covering lots of areas, with much text and items in display cases. I had to kind of rush through because I had to Be Somewhere soon, but I'm a member and can go back any time.

The Somewhere was TiVo, in Alviso, which is a very short drive from CHM. Got there 15 minutes early as instructed, but there was only a quick signature needed on an NDA, and then a 20-minute wait for my first interviewer. Each of the 3 interviewers was late, which made the tag team thing awkward. All nice people, none of them got into anything technical, they were all about QA processes and software and methodology, and at a 20,000-foot view level. I did not get to see the work area, but I did learn that Tivo makes more products than the DVRs we see in the US. It took them more than a month to bring me in, for a 3-month gig, so I'm not holding my breath. But it might be fun, and definitely would be interesting if I got it.

Have not heard from Harmonic, I expected something by yesterday. They also move slowly, and moreso because that's a perm position.

Got hungry on the way home, stopped at a donut shop across from Great America which I used to go to when I worked at UB Networks. In the same strip mall was a Togo's so I got tonight's dinner and tomorrow's lunch there. That'll make up for the over-priced bland CHM fare. Also peeked in at the Amarin Thai (their smallest branch) and almost went in to flirt, but it was too early for dinner and I had Togos in hand, so I resisted.

Home, watched a few episodes of Bait Car. NOLA and Atlanta episodes are as funny for the inept police work as they are for the stoopid criminals.( Read more... )

Plans for tomorrow:

Nothing on the calendar until Oliver callbacks at 7.
Maybe a Wal*Mart run to see if they have the right net laundry bags
Maybe Chinese grocery to replace my broken 10" bamboo steamer
Maybe a massage
Maybe far away
Maybe real nearby
She may be pouring his coffee
He may be straightening his tie

It's Late, But Not Too Late to Rant

One of Facebook's "features" is the ability to create, and make viral, petitions about the hot topic of your choice.

I have a minor objection to that, because Internet petitions don't do any good. They carry no weight with anyone or any organization which counts.

But my main rant is that too many of the petitions I have seen are based on things misinterpreted, misquoted or taken out of context, and are usually reporting the grievance 4th-hand. The person creating the petition never read the source material on which it is based.

Whenever I see a petition which looks like something I might want to support, I will follow the trail down to the source material and  read it all for myself. It's called due diligence. It's called basic research. It's something anyone with a high school education ought to do by instinct. Nine times out of ten, the source material does not justify the petition. If the misquote is flagrant enough, I'll post a comment to the petition's page with the correct quote. If the source material does justify the rant, I'll send email to the appropriate congresscritter, publisher, or whatever. I won't sign or "like" the petition because that's as useless as spitting into the wind.