Too late, again

Two days behind now. I’ll update tomorrow.

Catching up–Tuesday

On Sunday, I had helped Janice with her backup out of space issue. What I saw on her 1TB backup drive was a pair of backup folders about 80GB each, which matched the dates of her last two backups, and a folder marked admin access only named JanicePC, which took up the rest of the drive. It would not let me open the folder to see what was inside, so I deleted it. That freed up all the space, and she was able top start another backup.

After that we went to Starbucks for a chat (we try to meet up once a week) and she said something about needing to do the backup because she had spent so much time getting her photos in order (she does a lot of traveling, the last was Africa, and has many priceless photos).

Monday night it struck me that she may have meant she had copied all her photos to the backup drive, and that was what was in the JanicePC folder, and I may have nuked all that. It would not be too late to have Geek Squad do a data recovery and get most if not all back.

She goes to bed early, so I didn’t want to phone her, but I could not get to sleep thinking I’d done this awful thing. At about 2:30 am I emailed her, and knew I would not hear back till 10 am or so. But it was a sleepless night.

She didn’t write back until afternoon, but what she said was all her photos were on the PC, and with the new ones added she needed to be able to run her usual backup.

Whew!

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So Tuesday I caffeinated a lot, took some Tylenol migraine tablets, and sleep walked through work. And there was a lot of work, but it was automaton stuff.

I would have liked to go home and sleep, but my dear Peace Corps friend Nancie was coming in from North Carolina to teach a Thai cooking class in Menlo Park, which I had signed up for months ago.

I left work at 4 to beat the traffic, got to Menlo in 45 minutes, and sleep walked around town till I landed at Starbucks and had some tea and a piece of banana bread.

Got to Draeger’s for the class at about 6, browsed until I saw other students in the classroom, and went in.

Nancie and two Draeger’s people were setting up, cutting up ingredients and such, so I got out my phone and took some photos, and next thing I knew Nancie was next to me giving me a Thai “wai” and a traditional greeting, and a big hug.

The class was her non-stop chatter about the dishes she was making, and her usual explanation of the ingredients, and where in Thailand the recipe was from, etc. She started with a pomelo salad, then did tom ka gai (one of my faves) and then pumpkin curried beef and finally coconut ice cream with caramelized pineapple topping. We got to sample everything.

After the class she asked me to hang around, and after she and the staff finished having a dinner of the leftovers, and she went downstairs to buy a couple of copies of her latest book, brought them upstairs, signed them and gave them to the staff. She had mailed me a signed copy last month.

After seeing that Peet’s and Starbucks were closed, we headed for Denny’s in Redwood City, since she was staying in Half Moon Bay, and we chatted for 2 hours over chocolate shakes. Lots of laughs and nostalgia.

Even though she was doing Thai for the class, the book she is touring is Southern Soups & Stews (now that she lives in Nor’Lina she has been writing books on southern cooking. This is her 3rd and there’s another on the way).

My favorite photo from the night:

I call it Still Life With Fish Sauce.

Sometime after 11 I saw her off with a big hug, and drove home.

Catching Up–Wednesday

I slept a lot better Tuesday night, but it was after midnight before I got home, so still not enough sleep.

Work involved some more automaton tests, finishing up what was left. There was a webinar by HR on the new performance evaluation system, which is way too complex, and has no provision for my job, where we don’t know what our goals are at the start of the year. And they change. For example, out of the 5 features I was supposed to write tests for as part of my goals, only one made it into the product. So by their system, I failed 4 goals.

Another web meeting, this one with the guy who writs the specifications doc, boss, boss’ boss, a few engineers and the product manager, going over one of the features I work on.

That ended just in time for my 1-on-1, boss said it was on his calendar for next week, but I don’t think so.  We did it anyway since it has been a month.

Home, watched some Tivo while dinnering. Then to bed.

Getting up to date

Which brings me to Thursday. Finally got almost enough sleep, there was only some spot checking to do at work, so I spent some time looking for flights on SW to warm places, but there was nothing affordable till after the holidays. If it keeps snowing in the Sierras I will probably take the train to Reno for NYE. It’s a beautiful ride when there is snow on the trees, and the river is flowing. And Reno is fun on NYE – almost the same feel as NOLA.

Thanksgiving got taken care of too, Logan, the friend whose wedding I went to, invited me to join his gathering. His wife’s first turkey day, maybe, since they don’t do it in South Africa. Yay!

Lunchtime was a trip to the nail parlor, followed by clam chowder and a grenadine ball at Prolific Oven (I took 3/4 of that GB home, it is so rich!). From there to the CU, hoping to change the PIN on my new ATM card, but as soon as I sat down 2nd in line for busy bankers, my calendar beeped, reminding me I had 15 minutes to get back to work for a web meeting on some more specifications, these for allowing the customer to slap a logo onto the video. Lots of interesting feedback from the engineer heading that project.

Also went onto my Flickr account and build a 2016 calendar album from my 2015 photos. It was not much of a year for pictures for me, but there were 32 to choose from. Including 2 possible covers.

Straight home, watched the Jets lose.

The Dell ultrabook was waiting by the front door, and I have been installing my stuff onto it. Windows 10 backup from the big laptop to the new one, which is a much better size for carrying around. But still solid, much better built than the Toshiba. The backup routine is weird, I will have to re-install most of the apps, but the preferences are there.

I also paid $99 to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro. Needed to video chat with an MSFT rep to find out how to do that. It was not intuitive.

While it was installing, Spook jumped up onto the recliner arm, and walked across my lap, put her paws on the tray and watched the spinning logo for a while, then jumped off. Earlier she had begged a potato chip from me. Just one, and would not take it till I put it on the floor. I installed a kitty pheromone atomizer in the bedroom, I suspect it’s having the desired effect. Fingers crossed.

Plans for tomorrow:

• Work


• Expecting a call from BestBuy telling me the time window for the freezer delivery


• Move the kitchen table & chairs & Venus fly trap out of the way for that


• Take the bag of oranges which were on the table and bring them to work


• Clear the table and chairs off the porch too