Two Days Worth

Tuesday was one of those way too late nights because I did something fun after work. And today too.

So yesterday, work was pretty much same ol same ol, but that's more interesting than it has been because there is finally actual work to be done. Lunchtime was spent at Bed Bath and Beyond's Santa Clara store which moved into a space about 1/3 too small, and it is a mess trying to find something in there. The staff was very helpful, though, and confirmed for me that the reason I didn't find any plain vanilla scissors is they don't carry any. Just kitchen scissors. Like for cutting up your goat. And the reason I couldn't find a wall-mount bathroom cup dispenser is they don't carry that either. But I did buy a squeegee for my shower, and a fabric foldable hat for my trip. Good for photography - most other hats get in the way when I take a vertical. And also picked up a 3-for-$10 set of small LED battery-powered lights.

That took way too long. Their web site said it was the closest to work, but I'm pretty sure the one in Mountain View is closer.

Made reservations for parking at the airport. I'll be coming home close to midnight, there won't be any viable public transport ways to get home.

After work I went home, had a snack, then drove to a guitar studio in Los Altos for the second monthly songwriters' meetup. Fewer people, many last-minute cancellations, but the moderator was there, looking elegant and sexy. We went in a circle this time, I was 2nd to last, and it was tempting to ask to jump in early because there was a lot of ose, and I had something funny and trivial to play for them. But I didn't rock the boat. One woman left halfway through, I think she got bored with all the synthesized instrumentals. IMHO songwriters is not the same as soundtrack writers or modern symphony writers. But they all were treated equally. We had about 10 pieces played, and only one of the I thought was a loser, and that was an over-produced boring thing called "Solstice" in which the only words are "here comes the sun". Repeated ad infinitum, echoed and multi-tracked.

When my turn came, they were ready. I had the host point his browser to howeird.com/grossest.html and play the first item on the list "Sincerely". It had been a while since I had heard it all the way through, and it was a lot more content than I remembered. People were LOLing. It was definitely a hit. The last piece was by a couple who folksing professionally, and they decided to follow with something along the same lines about growing up in the Age Of AIDS, which was very amusing and poignant and the chorus ended with "because I can't put a condom on my heart". Lovely.

Next meeting is the first Tuesday of September, I plan to be there.
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Humpday was kind of boring at work, partly because the bug tacking site was down all day. Lots of people playing pool in the break room. I was able to help with some old automation work.

Lunch was at Thaibodia. As usual the staff was disorganized and not there when you needed them. The food was okay, but I'm not sure the Penang curry was not really some other curry.

Set my AT&T phone account for international roaming, messaging and a little bit of data, just in case. I also tried the non-AT&T SIM in there and yes, the phone is unlocked. Couldn't tell at home because there's no T-Mobile signal there. Also found out that I can't forward the number online, have to use the phone. So that will be a last-day thing. And I checked the UK phone's voicemail, it works.

Got email that a jewelry commission I'd almost given up on was done, and we arranged to meet in Fremont at 7:30 so I could pay for it and take it home. A present for someone I will be seeing later in the month. It took an hour to get there, traffic was insane, and so was my GPS which kept routing me away from reported traffic jams to alternate routes which were under construction. At one point it had me do a 3-mile loop, getting back onto 880 the same place it had me exit. Stoopid.

The piece is beautiful on the front, but unfinished on the back. Doesn't matter, the back isn't meant to be seen.

At her request, when I got home I set up to photograph it. My lightweight tripod turns out to be broken, the lock to keep the camera level doesn't. I thought I had another, but that turned out to be a monopod. My heavy duty telescope tripod worked fine, I just needed to do pile some boxes to get the piece right under the lens. After about half an hour, I switched to my old school macro lens, and those photos turned out the best. Almost all of the ones I shot did a good job of showing off the star in the sapphire.

So here it is, a am.  Those are uploaded privately to her on Flickr. I've had ravioli and scalloped potatoes for dinner.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Take a nap

NoNo Nailnette

My nails have been breaking right and left, which means it is time for a new nail parlor. Also time because the one I went to the last 2 times had nothing available at 7 pm when I called at 11 am.

Work was kind of slow, the bug database was offline. The sysadmin emailed that they would put in a redirect to a banner which said they were down, but that never happened. I worked on some automation stuff and did some housekeeping on the lab fixit database - stuff which the IT guys had fixed months ago they never closed.

Watch a lot of ping pong and pool.

Forgot there was a 49ers game on, against Baltimore. Went home to play the recording on Tivo, but Tivo got the wrong channel and gave me the totally not interesting to me New York game. Recorded the last almost half of the 9ers game, watched it and FFed through commercials. San Francisco was clicking on zero cylinders. Very tough to watch, even for an exhibition game.

Refilled the hummingbird feeder, but not the seed feeder. The birds have plenty of seeds to scrounge between the hedges and the house.

Took the iPod out of the car so I could fix the latest project. I had a set of 10 CDs "Faves" which were my modern version of a mix tape set. No, Guardians of the Galaxy was not my inspiration. OCD was. Disc 6 was damaged beyond repair, I may have a backup somewhere, but am not sure. But the main thing to fix is there were songs which didn't make it to the iPod, and the discs were out of order. But most important, iTunes did the crappy import thing of misreading the CD Text, and combining the artist's name with the title, and leaving the Artist Name the same as the album name. So I went through 9x20 titles and cut and pasted the artist names to where they belonged, added "disk x of y" to all of them and changed 1 to 01 and so on so 10 didn't come right after 1.

That's done, now I'm ripping some filk CDs and will make the start of a disk 11. Vixy & Tony: Thirteen, because I have to have Emerald Green among my faves, Heather Dale's Fairytale since the title song speaks to me, but not nearly as much as Fille Du Roy. That one usually makes my eyes leak. I think I may already have Frank Hayes' Never Set The Cat On Fire on there, but need to pluck the title song, Little Fuzzy Animals and When I Was A Boy and maybe also S-100. And to round out the list, Brooke vs John Steel Cage Match which I feel embarassed about because when I first started following Brook here on LJ, I not only stuck my foot in my mouth with my comments, but kept both feet there so firmly I had to stop following her for about a year. Which is a shame because she is one of the most ANIMATED journalers. And I missed, probably, a lot of information about her transition from Lunderville to Abbey which could have kept more feet out of mouth. And I suspect my favorite song on the CD would be a trigger for her, imagining what a blow John's horrible death was. It even made the News news down here. But what do I know? Bottom line is she is way brilliant and someone I'd much rather think well of me.

Okay, so those are ripped, time to add to the Faves playlist.

And after that I'm going to bed because I'm seriously sleep deprived from many late nights in a row.
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
???