Gung Hay Chow Fat

Once again the book of face turned an early morning (as in out of the shower and dressed by 8 am) and made me not early for work. But I was in luck, someone other than the usual person bought the donuts this morning, and instead of not enough yukky Krispy Kremes we had more than enough real donuts. I scored a west coast glazed risen donut and later an east coast chocolate cake with chocolate icing and sprinkles.

I despise KK donuts. They are sugared air. The whipped cream filling tastes like the same stuff they inject into Twinkies®. The custard filling has no taste. A shame to buy them in the Bay Area, where we have the Cambodian Donut Conspiracy™ cranking out excellent donuts of all varieties. True story: one of the things which convinced Dad to choose to move us to Seattle instead of Buffalo was the maple bars.

So I shot up my usual insulin, and had a donut instead of the banana & egg I had in my cooler.

Not much work other than monitoring the streams on yesterday's build.

Lunch was epic. The entire team went for Chinese New Year lunch at an excellent and well-known to the Asian community restaurant in the big Chinese shopping center in Cupertino, which is going to be even more popular after Apple opens the spaceship across the street. Construction has gone far enough that you can see the shape, and the ugly green permanent fence.

Anyway, all 10 of us were there, it only took two cars (one guy has an SUV which seats 6). Four Chinese speakers, at least one is native Cantonese, which is what the restaurant speaks. One of the Caucasians is married to a Chinese speaker, and the Vietnamese guy takes his wife there a lot, but they order in English. Anyhow, there was a lot of food, some of it better left to my friends (tripe, chicken feet, meatballs made from unidentified meat). Someone also ordered the New Year special, lobster on a bed of noodles. Split 10 ways we didn't get much lobster, but it was excellent. Final bill was $180, including built-in tip, but two people used the collection to get change for $100, so after some spirited discussion, they decided to take the $20 and go next door to the market and buy a $2 scratcher ticket for each of us. The theory being New Years is lucky.


We eventually tripled the number of dishes seen here

I don't think any of us won anything big enough to share. I won another ticket and a balloon. I'll try to redeem that tomorrow.

Back to work, team lead found that there was a bunch of tests for us to run which had been left out because of a documentation error in the specs. We split it. Each test is really 12 tests, each one needs at least 5 minutes, but probably more because we need a spot in the program with enough talking heads to judge lip sync over a 5-minute period. The deal is to start the timer after establishing that the video and audio are in sync, then after 5 minutes check again. The video resolution for my first test is the same one ESPN uses, but after two passes they switched to a basketball game, so no lips to sync. The next feed I found was Forest Gump, which fits the bill technically, but I can't stand that movie, so I switched to Disney, one of those Bad Teen Actress shows, and that worked till it was time to go home. Good timing, because Finding Nemo was next, and that wouldn't work at all.

To be continued Monday.

I had finally remembered to bring my portfolio case to work, and I was shocked at how many mounted photos were in my drawer. The case is now heavy. I'll go through the collection Real Soon Now and pick out what I want to display at the Contact Conference, which maurinestarkey has graciously invited me to participate in again.

On the way home, gas gage said 34 miles left, so I put another 3 gallons in, because I'll be driving about 25 miles before trading in the car.

Home, Spook was very vocal. She barfed a little last night, and I found another present also from yesterday. Not sure what's up, whatever it is seems to be minor.

Delivered was a pair of cattalaya orchids, bare root. One had two blooms, the other had none. I'd ordered two with either blooms or buds, but the 2-bloom one is obviously worth more than I paid, so it evens out. And they are both healthy. It was 8 pm before I went out on the porch to see if there were any packages, so I had to look up Lowe's app to see if they were open, because I did not have enough orchid potting stuff even for the smaller plant. Yup, open till 10, so I drove down there and picked up a bag of the right stuff for cattalayas, and some mist food for the other two orchids, and a bag of river rocks to be drainage under the potting stuff, and plastic saucers to put the pots on (I already have pots) which get filled with water to add humidity.

Spook tried to help me pot the plants, but I kept shooing her off the table. I spooked her a lot by moving things around in the livingroom. A floor lamp went to the other side of a rack which has my sewing machine on the bottom shelf, and the rack was slid past where the lamp had been so it was next to the window sill. And a plant which is on a stand where the rack went is now centered between the two windows. And I rotated the huge-leaf plant away from the windows (it will eventually find its light again). Put the two cattalayas on the rack, watered them and the saucers. All of that made the cat unhappy and puzzled for maybe 15 minutes, then she got over it. Also had bought tiny saucers to put underneath the gnat eating plants, which I did, and when I raised one to put the saucer under it, a gnat fell off.

TV on, I watched PTI, which was staged with Alcatraz in the far background, and two mounted police in the near background who did nothing to discourage the idiots waving signs at the camera. Just holding a sign is fine, but waving it is needlessly distracting.

Channel 2 news was live at the SF Superbowl village, which was so crowded the police stopped letting people enter. But they showed a few minutes of the spectacular fireworks, which started about 5 after 10.

Printed some blank checks, in case Ford needs $$ for DMV fees and such and won't take a debit or credit card. And in case I don't get the trade-in price they advertise (KBB).

Plans for tomorrow:
Get some cash from an ATM
Lease a new car
Notify the mobile home park of the new car, and also the insurance company
Maybe take a drive

Long long long long process should have taken half an hour

Despite last night's dinner deciding to make several false alarms about exiting my body, barely avoided disaster when I got up to head to the car dealer's. I thought I was going to be Just In Time, but was there 15 minutes early.

Very pleasant salesperson, same one as last week, we test drove the car, I decided to just do local streets after it was clear the thing had way more than enough acceleration from 0-40. Slightly wider U-turn radius than the Prius, but not by much. Handles fine, very quiet. Nav display is excellent but there was one FAIL, it would not show Thai fonts in the iPod readouts. I didn't check Chinese. Maybe tomorrow. Much clearer album cover display than the Prius.

After the test drive I expected it to take maybe 20 minutes for the buyer to price my trade in while salesperson did the lease paperwork, but they have the salesperson do both.  The trade-in which popped up was mid-range KBB, as advertised, but the sales manager came over later and said he was giving $400 less. I should have walked out right then and there, but decided to see how it played out.  The final lease numbers he came up with were less than what I was given last week, so I went ahead with the deal.

All the paperwork at the salesperson's desk took about an hour, which is way too long. Then there was a long wait (another 45 minutes?) for the finance person. There was a ton of paperwork, and though she cranked through it at a not-slow pace, I was in there for almost 2 hours.

Bottom line, in at 9:45 am, driving away at 2:30 pm.

Drove straight into parking lot traffic on Hwy 87 heading into SJ. WTF? No idea what that was all about, but I got off at the closest exit, stumbled onto Tulley Rd. and from there to 101. Even passing Levi's there was hardly any traffic. Normal for a Saturday afternoon.

All I'd eaten all day was a banana at 9 am, so I nuked a couple of corn dogs, and sat on the rocker on the front porch eating those and watching hummingbirds. It was lovely outside, mid 60s.

Liberated the charger from its insane  secret panel under the front seat and plugged in the car. My trip home was all on battery, and it had gone from full to 1/4. When you turn off the engine, it tells you how long to a full charge. 6.4 hours.

But that did not last long, because I had errands. Girl Scout cookies were on sale in front of Lowe's till 6, and it was after 5. I had used the last $20 bill at lunch yesterday, so first an ATM visit at B of A. Then 4 packs of Thin Mints ($20).  And home, and plugged in again.

Played with the power hatchback gate, which opens by kicking the air below the license plate. Another kick, or a button push hydraulics it down again.
My grocery bag divider has been sitting on the washing machine all week, it's now in the back. It fit fine with room to spare.

All the controls on the steering wheel are in places I'll have to get used to. They made some stupid choices about that, but there may be voice commands. I need to RTFM. The audio responds to voice, it found playlists I asked it for, and if I say a radio frequency, it will figure out if it is AM or FM and switch.

Delivered was a pair of animal print sheet sets for Spook. I put the leopard one on the futon, totally spaced because I'd wanted to try the tiger stripes first. Spook helped by jumping onto the futon after I put the fitted sheet on, as I was putting on the straight sheet. She ignored my lifting it up for her to get out, and exited the other way, to the window sill.

So now she can be camo cat in there. It's the same pattern as the livingroom sofa throw.

Went online to enter stuff in Quicken, and to update my auto insurance, but Met Life won't let you do that online, and they were closed, are not open Sundays, so I'll have to wait till Monday.

Watched an episode of Shark Tank, they did a veterans theme. I think the first section was a rerun.

Heated up some stuffed cabbage and mixed veggies for dinner, and watched Elementary as I ate. And they are doing it again - making a soap opera out of one of the recurring themes. It looks like they are using it as an excuse to give an actress a job. Or maybe Lucy Liu, who now directs some of the episodes, wanted more repeat women characters on the show. Prior to this season, she was the only one, all the others are men, and there's really no good reason for that. OTOH, they introduced a new woman character at the start of the show, and just as I was getting to love her, they blew her up. :-(

In other car news, I put all the Prius' glove compartment items in a shopping bag, and when I got home I went through them and pulled out maybe a dozen things which I wanted to keep in the C-Max. And found a lot of batteries (for a point and shoot camera I tossed years ago) four or five USB drives (from when that was how the Nav system was updated), at least 6 pairs of reading glasses, one pair of dark sunglasses, a couple of 12v-to-double-USB adapters (the C-Max has two USB slots built in).

Plans for tomorrow:
Cut back the roses
Maybe do some carport gardening
Drive to Ardenwood and maybe get some better butterfly photos in the afternoon
Home, watch the superbowl on Tivo. For a change will not FF past all the commercials.