Back to work - for a bit

Up just before 7:30, the lights came on but I'd forgotten to turn my alarm back on. Very little online activity, so was at work half an hour early.

Which is good because when I rebooted my test machine, it nuked its database. That took some time to troubleshoot.

Team meeting was better attended than expected. One of the leads returned from vacation a week sooner than I thought he would, and only two of the team were taking the whole week off.

After my epic 4-day travel adventure, I decided to shorten the upcoming winter trip. Called Amtrak and got one of the last 2 seats for Saturday, but my hotel reservation is non-refundable, and not changeable, but for NYE weekend in Reno, it's a steal, considering most of the hotels are completely booked for NYE and charging >$200 for the next 2 nights. Ramada works out to only $86 a night, for the 2 nights.

Checked online, and it looks like the main party will be at the arch, which is pretty close to the Amtrak station. Fireworks at midnight. $40 for a party pass for Silver Legacy + El Dorado.

But I'm really making the trip for the winter wonderland views along the train tracks. Which is why I decided to come back early.

Maybe Friday I'll see The Movie.


It was cold out, 40's, and it had rained a trace yesterday and today. Lunchtime I spent researching Reno, changing reservations, being told by an inarticulate phone rep that my hotel reservation cancellation had a 100% penalty, and it couldn't be changed.

I had snacks. An apple (the new peeler works fine), payday bar, chocolate fudge cookies, walnuts, peanuts. At about 3 I did a chicken flavor cup o noodles.

Got some work done, closed a couple of bugs. Need help with one of the test cases, will ask again tomorrow.

Home, watched MNF on FF/play/FF with the center speaker at -12dB so that annoying Gruden fellow's squeaky voice didn't distract me too much from the game. I put it in play for each play, and FF1 for the crap between plays and FF2 for commercials. FF3 for the halftime merde. Paused before 3rd quarter and did a meme:

Which so far only a couple of people have "gotten"

Once again referee blunders changed the outcome of the game. :-(

Spook was very vocal tonight. Especially when I picked her pet monkey off the floor and put it on the top tier of the office cat tree. She doesn't think she can climb that high, so she nearly falls off trying to snag it with her claws.

Last night she curled up near me in bed and stuck around for 2 hours.  While I was gone she knocked over her food tower and her livingroom toy. I tossed the food, she obviously doesn't like it, and replaced it with Royal Canin.

Dinner was stuffed cabbage & creamed corn. I tried to maker a dessert out of the bag of crushed mini donuts and banana, plus coconut rum, crushed pistachios, chocolate syrup and sprinkles, but it was awful. Disposal time.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Veg

Toos Dae

Once again went all obsessive into the wee hours in bed watching videos on the tablet. Spook curled up just out of reach but only stayed a few minutes. Looks like she slept on the futon in the guest room.

Anyhow, woke up with the alarm, but turned it off and slept for another hour, because I had an excuse. Needed to drop off the rent check, and the office isn't open till 9.

Got to work about 9:45.

Spent a lot of time looking for WSS and Closed Captioning vids on our SDI source, but we don't have any. Asked Automation Guy to help me put some up, but he punted me to Ad Insertion Guy, who misunderstood and showed me how to record from an SDI source. I need to go from a file or a UDP feed to SDI. Asked Automation Guy again, and he punted me to IT Guy, who is taking the week off.

Which means tomorrow I will have to find something else to do. Like work on bugs.

Speaking of which, there was much email today showing engineers are working to fix a few bugs I filed.

Lunchtime, got a haircut. Great Clips changed their app to require a full registration, based on your email, with name, address, phone. Old app just needed your phone number. Walked in, all they needed was my phone number. So I'll nuke the app and just be a walk-in. Very cute young woman did the honors. Asian, but no accent.

There's nowhere in that shopping center worth eating at, so I went down the block to a Pho place. It was cold out, soup worked. Beef, though. Thai iced tea, which they put pearls into :-( because I misunderstood what she was asking.

Home, watched the Dr. Who Xmas Special, which was thankfully not at all Xmas themed. There was some snow, and someone wore red, but that was the extent of it. What I said on FB:
Two things stood out for me: The photography/lighting was superb, especially for the close-ups. And the writing: there was some actual humor, clever quips, and an often-coherent story line. I am not a Dr. Who fanatic, totally gave up on it for the duration of Matt Smith's sallow face turning my TV screen all boring, and I have maybe seen 25% of the original (pre-Wales) episodes, but as far as I can remember, I have never seen River Song before, so a lot of the impact was lost on me.
Alex Kingston has some serious acting chops, and even more serious over-acting chops.
Once again Peter Capaldi is fed massive chunks of scenery, which he chews and spits out. I like him better when he is quietly fierce, rather than when he's at 12dB.
River gets IMHO the best line in the episode:
"You don't expect a sunset to admire you back".
And also first runner up: "I'll kill the lights, you kill the patient."

Followed that with the Raiders-Chargers game, which was low-scoring so I mostly watched it in FF1. FF2 for commercials. FF3 for halftime boredom. They touched on the fact that Real Soon Now, both teams will be sharing a stadium near LA. Oakland missed the NFL deadline to justify their existence, and St. Louis (the other contender to move to LA) beat that deadline by 1 day.

It was Charles Woodson's last home game, and he helped win it. They gave him the mike after the win, and he did some cheerleading, and made a short/sweet farewell speech. Hugs from members of both teams.

Dinner was stuffed grape leaves, the other half of the creamed corn, and dessert was apple slices & honey.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
1-on-1 (if Boss doesn't leave early)
Pack
Set the alarm for 6 am Thursday (need to catch a 9 am train 45 minutes away)