Thursday Is Fruit Day

One good news bad news thing about work is on Thursdays they bring in fresh fruit (lately bananas and apples) which is placed in the break rooms in the morning. I got to work at 9:30, there was no trace of the stuff. They don't buy nearly enough to meet the demand.

---

Spent most of the day running 2-hour tests, and I think most of them passed but I could not mark them as such because there is a series of bugs with the display which sometimes shows a program is recording when it isn't, or shows a program is not scheduled to record in the future when it is. Not a total waste of time, but close to it.

I left the cubicle a few times during the thumb-twiddling parts to hang out in my team's area and play movie title hangman, and eavesdrop on team members who were running real-time tests. And I also did some optical audio testing, and closed a few bugs.

Toward the end of the day the manager's manager came by the team area, and had another of a long series of management "whoops" moments. She forgot my exit interview is tomorrow, and she won't be in the office tomorrow. I can leave my badge in her desk drawer. I did get a chance to tell her how great the people have been. She already knows hjow sucky everything else is there.

---

I wrote to the Moto HR admin asking why I had not heard anything from her when I sent my acceptance letter a week ago. She wrote back that she did recceive it, and my start date will be Aug 22 unless the security clearance doesn't come back by then. Not as helpful as it should have been. 

---

Home, relaxed with Domino on head-butting me for petting - a new habit of hers. Picked up my baritone and headed off to Ye Olde Towne Band practice. We had three new pieces to try, the first was Louie, Louie I told my section about the unique place in Washington State history this song holds. The other pieces were a difficult circus march and a not particularly tuneful German waltz.

---

Home from band, watched the Seahawks beat the Chargers in fast forward (recorded on my home Tivo). It was a squeaker, went down to the last minute.

Got some more shirts from KingSizeDirect, they are excellent.

---

Plans for tomorrow:
Last day at contract job
Maybe have dinner in Alviso. Vahl's has a piano bar on Fridays, I think. No need to fight rush hour traffic.

On Getting Dolled Up

Over on renovationsf, there is a debate raging being politely engaged in about what one should wear to the Hugo Awards ceremony. The elephant in the room is that it is way easy for women to toss an evening gown into their carry-on than for a man to pack a three-piece suit. Or even a suit jacket. I'm posting this here because over there it's bound to draw major league shrapnel from the otherwise progressive women's rights-ist folk.

I don't know what I'll be wearing, or if I will even be going. I do know I will not be bringing a suit jacket to the con.

I am not invested at all in the Hugo awards, such things being 100% subjective with no qualifications to vote other than buying a membership in a WorldCon. This does not mean the nominees and winners do not deserve the prize, it just means that each year it's a crap shoot.

For example, if you walk into the Fanzine Lounge, you will see hundreds of issues of dozens of zines. There is no way, short of doctoral-level research, that anyone can read all the ones which come out each year, analyze them for quality, and rank them or their individual contents. And any twelve people who attempted it would come up with different rankings.

But enough of "do the math".

I was brought up in the suburbs of NYC, and whenever we went out to eat or to the movies, I was made to wear a suit and tie. All the men there were dressed similarly. Live theater might require adding a vest. Opera needed tux (women wore furs).

When we moved to Seattle, our first trip to a movie in a downtown theater we dressed like that. We were the only people in the theater who were. My sister and I were regulars at the Seattle Rep - students could snag last-minute seats for $2. There were some people wearing suits, but mostly not. From then on in, the only time we wore dressy clothes was to the opera.

I don't see the Hugos as equal to a night at the opera.

Last Day

Said goodbye to TiVo today. Sort of. My boss was out of the office, so was her boss. Everyone went home before I did, so I left the goodbye cards on their chairs. Left my badge somewhere amidst the clutter of boss' boss' desk.

Work was routine, except for some bugs which made it hard to tell whether some tests passed or not until a lot of fiddling had been done. Very time-consuming test suite, too. Wrote an exit letter, set it for delayed delivery for early Monday morning. If they have not nuked my email account by then it will go out, otherwise it won't. I don't really care.

---

The plan was to go to the Alviso marina park with my good camera and take some photos, then have dinner and piano bar at Vahl's nearby. Took the pix, but Vahl's was closed. There was a hand-written note on the door but I coudn't read it from the car.

Went to the Starbucks in McCarthy Ranch, thinking to write this there, but it was too noisy and crowded and they were playing some screechingly bad music. I packed up mid-latte and looked for a place to have dinner. Decided to try a Thai/Malaysian place called Red Kwali. Glacially slow help. The roti was not as good as I make at home. The mango curry fish was horrible. The fish part was some very thin fillet of something in way too much tempura batter soeaked in a sickly sweet mango sauce. The mang strips, cashws, tiny string beans and bell pepper slices were good, except for that sauce. Coconut ice cream did not need to be set on top of whipped cream.

Reasonable prices, if the food had been up to par.

---

Home, there was a new Tivo on the patio delivery rack. I'd ordered it when I knew I would be leaving - got the employee price for the box + lifetime subscription. Expensive still,  but it doubles the capacity of what I have now, and the subscription pays for itself in 2 years. I need to find out if I can simply take the cable card out of my current one and slap it into the new one.

Irony: I thought I had all the football pre-season games set to record, but missed the 9ers. Will grab it tomorrow.

---

Had a major talk with little sister about parental 2009 taxes. Will talk to the CPA Monday and straighten things out, I hope. May need to find a tax lawyer or an enrolled agent. This is a headache I did not need.

---

Plans for tomorrow:
Litterbox
Cardboard boxes --> dumpster
print up art show labels & final packing of photos.
Clocktower coffee break