Little known facts

Short political post. So many people crowing about all the performers not performing at the inauguration. And concern that those who do play won't get paid. BFD. Obama's performers paid to perform. "Many of the celebrities who donated big for Obama’s first inauguration, including Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, and Bill and Melinda Gates, held back this year. Other celebs, like actor B.D. Wong and Carter Beauford, the drummer from the Dave Matthews Band, donated generously."

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Weird night. I slept like a log. Apparently a rolling log. Spook never got on the bed, and all the bedding was twisted up. But I only got up twice, once was 15 minutes before the alarm. Spook meowed at me from the bedroom door.

Took the back way to work, turned out to be a mistake, it took me 10 minutes longer than slogging along the freeway. Trouble with the back way is it makes a big sideways jog at the south end of the airport, then jogs back again a few miles later. Irony is the jog is because the freeway is in the way, it runs along the border of the airport. So I arrived on time instead of 10 minutes early.

Work was interesting, Boss changed plans and had me do some semi-secretarial work, but that's why they pay me the small bucks. It was somewhat technical, having to do with a whole mess of version numbers on the device, which needed to be entered into a spreadsheet.

After that was done, I had lunch (turkey tetrazini from frozen). The break room was almost empty, a couple of techs were trying to fix the hot drinks machine but the younger one, who knew what he was doing, showed the older guy, who seemed to only be trained for routine repairs, that the display was not getting power because of a defective ribbon cable, and they didn't have a replacement on hand.

At one point a gaggle of chattering Googlers came in and made noises with the espresso machine. Some eye candy for either persuasion. Apparently on break from a seminar. No offices on the first floor, just lecture rooms.

Back to my hole, I was able to buttonhole one of the engineers from the company next door who is an expert on the test I was trying to run. Boss' suggestion. She said he is the manufacturer's rep responsible for running that test wherever they happen to make the product. Can't say more than that (NDA). He was stumped, and suggested filing a bug, Boss said she would show me how to do that tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, last night I finished a 99¢ book on Kindle (Doomsday Morning by C.L. Moore), and moved on to a free one (Alien Romance: Interview with an Alien by Robin Cavanaugh). Moore's book was okay, 3 stars out of 5, a legit mixture of semi-hard sci fi with a pretense of psychology. There are many unbelievable plot points, and some WTFs (why does the leading man, hiding from the bad guys in the dark, light up a cigarette?). Cavanaugh's is actually a short story masqueraded on Amazon as a book, with several short stories packed in after it. An ad hoc anthology. The title story plot is actually pretty good, but the misspellings (the main character's name is spelled wrong half the time), bad grammar, and horrible horrible euphemization of the sex scene make it 1.5 stars. But that's just the first story. There may be hope.

The drive home was horrible. It had been raining lightly all day, but started to pick up at 5:30. My usual right turn off the main street was backed up about a mile so I found a U-turn place and went to the next main street out. Only 4 cars ahead of me but it took 15 minutes to get back to the first main street. All told, it took an hour to go 8 miles.

Home, after pulling a porch rocking chair out of the rose garden, played online, fired up CBS All Access and watched the latest Elementary, which is getting soapy again. Dinner was a couple of Johnson Brats, a mess of mixed veggies, a pickle spear and some sauerkraut. Ice cream for dessert.

A couple of pauses to open the front door and watch/listen to the downpour. Spook wanted out real bad. She loves falling water.

Delivered was a pair of 2017 America The Beautiful quarters proof sets. When the US Mint first started the program, it was the 50 states, and they were released 5 per year in early summer. Now they are scraping along with national parks, but they have them out way early. I still have 2016 on my desk because I ordered way late (thanks Obama for 8 months of no job). They are:
Shawnee National Forest
Cumberland Gap National Historical Park
Harpers Ferry National Historical Park
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Fort Moultrie (Fort Sumter National Monument)

This year it's:
Effigy Mounds National Monument (look it up, it's bizarre)
Frederick Douglas National Historic Site
Ozark National Scenic Riverways
Ellis Island (Statue of Liberty National Monument)
George Rogers Clark National Historical Park

Also in the mailbox was a bill from Kaiser for my Medicare coverage, and I'm pissed off because I have auto-pay set up for that, but though the bill shows last month was magically paid somehow, it doesn't mention that I don't need to send them any $$.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work - start at the big building. Park in the garage. Learn how to file a bug.
2:30 staff meeting, I hope.
Maybe haul my linux server to the car and drive it to the hole. I think I need to re-authorize it. BIOS update may have killed that.