It Felt Like Friday All Day

Plus I did several Stupid Things™ which I knew better than to do.

Arrived in the office at about 8:30 for the 9 am team meeting which it turned out was not till 10 this week. We rotate every other week. It gave me time to note that the PC on my desk which IT claimed was now fully operational on the network was not. It worked for them upstairs, but not at my desk. It was clear they did not test it once they plugged it into the docking station. IT guy discovered the problem was my USB network adapter not getting the right info from the lab's router. It's sort of working now, with a work-around that goes away if I reboot the thing. But I know how to do the workaround, so it's only mildly annoying now.

Team meeting didn't have much since we are caught in between projects. Except for me, I have two projects. I tried to wrap up one this morning before the meeting, but the new build broke the feature I was testing, which needed three screen captures and a bug report, and an update to the test case FAILing it, and pointing to the bug report.

Lunch was at China Stix, which I thought had dim sum lunch, but I guess not today. Ordered their Wor Won Ton soup, which looks to have a beef stock base, and while it is loaded with good stuff, the BBQ pork was a bit dry. And they could have had more bok choy.

Boss approved my Thailand trip dates, it turns out he will be there at the same time. He built a house in Phichit which was finished about a year ago, and we will try to get me up there for a visit. There are several days of possible free time in the Friends of Thailand itinerary. The big gotcha is it will be the start of monsoon season, and Phichit is known as The Swamp. The province is noted for its crocodiles.

Started work on my second project, but the lab networking guy gave me the wrong answer to my question of how to run the tests. I'll have to talk to him tomorrow. Meanwhile I built a filter in wireshark to try to trap the network traffic I was looking for, but it doesn't make it to my side of the router.

Home, Domino mostly yelled at me. It didn't really need it, but I changed the litterbox anyway. Put on a con t-shirt and walked to BASFA. I am so glad I didn't bring a jar of pickles to auction, because there were way too many items, and it was a long meeting with a packed house. I may skip next week.

Back home, emailed my Thailand hotel reservation, went online to donate for the Princess event, and spent way too much time on the EVA Airlines site to pay way too much for a business class ticket. My flagrant flyer miles from two previous trips was not even close to being worth anything. I could have saved about $200 flying one of the Korean airlines, but those have a plane change in Seoul, which is 5 1/2 hours from BKK, Taiwan is "only" 3 1/2 hours. And the EVA SFO-TPE flight is a red eye, BKK arrival is around noon the next day while Korean ones leave San Fran mid-day or early afternoon and get to BKK at about midnight.

There was one glitch, EVA wanted my name as it appears on my passport, which includes my middle name. The name they have for me on their frequent flyer card is just first and last names. The web page yelled rude things at me because they didn't match, and there is no way to change it online, I have to call the SF office in the morning.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Call EVA
get some windshield washer fluid

Low Speed Hearing for High Speed Rail

After work I took CalTrain to Mountain View, and walked about a mile from the station to get to the Performing Arts Center where State Senator Simitian, eventually joined by three more, held a public hearing on High Speed Rail. For two hours we heard from the High-speed Rail Authority,  the HSR Peer Review Group and two reps from the Legislative Analyst's Office, the latter two seemed to have no idea what was going on.

The HSRA has dropped the idea of a true HSR project, and is planning a hybrid of low-speed rail on existing rights of way and a possible high speed stretch in the Central Valley where there would be no one to ride it. Plan A needs $80 billion. The HSRA has only managed to identify 1/10 of that. It is clear that this group cannot build anything resembling HSR in my lifetime, and the hearing turned me from a gung-ho supporter to a solid "no" vote. I think it may have been one of the clueless analysts who suggested CalTrans might be a better organization to mount this project, and I think they may be right.

I bailed at 9 pm, to give me plenty of time to walk to CalTrain and catch the 9:38. Which apparently is now the 9:48. So I didn't get to hear any of the public's comments.

I'm listening to it online now, 11:15. The Senator will be getting a letter from me thanking him for keeping the meeting civil, and staying until everyone who wanted to talk had a chance to do so.

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I wonder what it would cost to come up with an electrified interstate standard, and build cards which can ride on them.

Exciting Day At Work

Got to work way later than I wanted to - something to do with reading till 2:30 am. I talked to the IT guru, who gave me a totally unworkable plan for performing some tests. I asked around my team, and one of them reminded me of a handy program called tcpdump which would let me run the test in a simple, painless way.

And then I ran the first test a few times, I think it failed but I need to talk to the engineer who designed the feature for a reality check.

Meanwhile, a simple no-brainer, easy to fix bug I filed was rejected by a developer, who mistook a previous bug fix for being opposite of what I was requesting. He thinks he is going to re-write the specs to say that the BAD is really GOOD. I've replied to him twice, but will pass it on to my boss, who can override him in the bug fix meetings. It's an easy fix, and it's a big WTF that the developer broke it on purpose. The good news is the project is months away from completion, I have plenty of time to have my way.

Lunch was at Andy's BBQ. Should have gone yesterday when they had beef ribs. The baby back ribs are very good, but over-priced.