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Clarifications
Feb. 16th, 2017 12:12 amA truly Senior Day. Running late, I remembered to grab the DVD player & some discs to bring to work, and packed lunch but forgot to measure my Hgl, take my meds, shoot up, and left my reading glasses and insulin pen on the kitchen counter. The glasses were just an inconvenience, I have computer glasses at work and spare readers in the car.
Engineer had left some messages which made me rearrange the desktop so I could test something I didn't know the TV had, with too short a cable. And found a bug. He had me bring in the guys nextdoor for a second opinion, they agreed with me, and had me file a bug. Engineer had tried another bug at home and it worked, but that's on a different unit, so I made a video and sent it to him.
The DVD test failed, so I packed the machine up to try on my TV at home. Should have done that last night.
Lunch was crowded. Some Israeli jerk was sitting at the table I usually camp out on, talking on his cell phone. I was tempted to let him know I understand Hebrew, but decided not to. When he was done on the phone he left his mess there and moved to a couch on the other side of the room. When he was gone I pushed his mess aside and took my rightful place. Lunch was a small Banquet Asian BBQ rice thing and some mac & white cheese.
There was some eye candy. Not as good as yesterday, though.
Followed up with Boss, asked to meet to talk about the contract, but she wanted to do it over messenger. She's been working on it, and forwarded to me the message confirming that the process has been started to extend my contract by a year, now we wait to see what other hoops she needs to jump through. I called my rep, but got voicemail. She called back late afternoon and we talked. She squeed over the 1-year thing. I'm pretty jazzed about that too. I hate looking for work. The pay isn't fantastic, but it's fair, and it's more than Social Security after taxes. I've already started paying down my credit card.
Lots of not-busy time this afternoon, I explored YouTube and Netfix and some of the live TV channels. Took a break at 4:30, the break room was crowded, so I sat on the sofa by the classrooms.
Reading a book by Buzz Aldrin which is proving to be painful to read. Encounter with Tiber. It's his predictions of a successful space program, written in 1996, 10 years after Challenger, but 7 years before Columbia. It starts with Endeavor experiencing a total rocket failure, and the astronauts escape using a plan & hardware designed by Story Musgrave. The shuttle is totaled as it crashes into the sea. It talks about a successful retirement of Columbia, and the space program being given a big boost when France hires Rockwell to build a 6-person Apollo II craft by 2013. And by 2017 the US was building our own Apollo II craft.
All of this wrong predicting is wasted, the main story doesn't need the buildup, and now that part of the book is so dated and Just Plain Wrong™ that it hurts.**
After work, out at 5:30, drove straight home. Traffic was very light until the Intersection From Hell, but I got home by 6. Wanted to have the PC fired up, my state senator was having a web town hall meeting at 6:30.
Jerry Hill has a touch of a NYC accent, I chalk that up to his Italian heritage. The webcast was technically perfect, no glitches, solid bandwidth, good audio, attractive law office setting (shelves of a thousand law books), articulate co-host, and they used the pop-up tech to show the emailed questions from viewers with the viewer's first name and town writ large, but the "from" address was the admin who forwarded them to the host. Jerry answered all the questions, spent just enough time explaining his stand on things. One of this things is sponsoring a bill which would send notices to all the states encouraging them to get their electoral college numbers in line with the popular vote numbers. Another is to make it a crime to smoke or eat weed and drive, though he admits there is no objective evidence of what levels of THC in the blood cause impaired driving. He says undocumented persons get no public assistance, but I think he is very naive about how easy it is to forge documents. And he seems to have forgotten that in CA they can get driver's licenses.
They used the full hour, and it was good. I wrote him a note thanking him for the webcast, and to thank his techies who did a first class job.
Next on the list, I plugged the DVD into my TV and it worked fine. Something is definitely wrong with the test machine. I had emailed Boss today with a short list of thing to buy for me, and a region-free DVD player with component outputs was on the list.
Watched some Netflix, but kept having to abandon shows because they were shot in the dark. What is with that? Finally landed on The Fantastic Four which I thought I had seen before, but don't remember any of it. Watched about half before it was time to write this.
**I was thinking of 1984, which was way off base with the date and form Big Brother would take. But Orwell was using the date as a warning, not as a prediction. Some of what he predicted has happened, but to a lesser extent, and it happened in Great Britain where IRL it happened more in other countries. I think part of the art of science fiction is to know when to fudge.
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
???
Engineer had left some messages which made me rearrange the desktop so I could test something I didn't know the TV had, with too short a cable. And found a bug. He had me bring in the guys nextdoor for a second opinion, they agreed with me, and had me file a bug. Engineer had tried another bug at home and it worked, but that's on a different unit, so I made a video and sent it to him.
The DVD test failed, so I packed the machine up to try on my TV at home. Should have done that last night.
Lunch was crowded. Some Israeli jerk was sitting at the table I usually camp out on, talking on his cell phone. I was tempted to let him know I understand Hebrew, but decided not to. When he was done on the phone he left his mess there and moved to a couch on the other side of the room. When he was gone I pushed his mess aside and took my rightful place. Lunch was a small Banquet Asian BBQ rice thing and some mac & white cheese.
There was some eye candy. Not as good as yesterday, though.
Followed up with Boss, asked to meet to talk about the contract, but she wanted to do it over messenger. She's been working on it, and forwarded to me the message confirming that the process has been started to extend my contract by a year, now we wait to see what other hoops she needs to jump through. I called my rep, but got voicemail. She called back late afternoon and we talked. She squeed over the 1-year thing. I'm pretty jazzed about that too. I hate looking for work. The pay isn't fantastic, but it's fair, and it's more than Social Security after taxes. I've already started paying down my credit card.
Lots of not-busy time this afternoon, I explored YouTube and Netfix and some of the live TV channels. Took a break at 4:30, the break room was crowded, so I sat on the sofa by the classrooms.
Reading a book by Buzz Aldrin which is proving to be painful to read. Encounter with Tiber. It's his predictions of a successful space program, written in 1996, 10 years after Challenger, but 7 years before Columbia. It starts with Endeavor experiencing a total rocket failure, and the astronauts escape using a plan & hardware designed by Story Musgrave. The shuttle is totaled as it crashes into the sea. It talks about a successful retirement of Columbia, and the space program being given a big boost when France hires Rockwell to build a 6-person Apollo II craft by 2013. And by 2017 the US was building our own Apollo II craft.
All of this wrong predicting is wasted, the main story doesn't need the buildup, and now that part of the book is so dated and Just Plain Wrong™ that it hurts.**
After work, out at 5:30, drove straight home. Traffic was very light until the Intersection From Hell, but I got home by 6. Wanted to have the PC fired up, my state senator was having a web town hall meeting at 6:30.
Jerry Hill has a touch of a NYC accent, I chalk that up to his Italian heritage. The webcast was technically perfect, no glitches, solid bandwidth, good audio, attractive law office setting (shelves of a thousand law books), articulate co-host, and they used the pop-up tech to show the emailed questions from viewers with the viewer's first name and town writ large, but the "from" address was the admin who forwarded them to the host. Jerry answered all the questions, spent just enough time explaining his stand on things. One of this things is sponsoring a bill which would send notices to all the states encouraging them to get their electoral college numbers in line with the popular vote numbers. Another is to make it a crime to smoke or eat weed and drive, though he admits there is no objective evidence of what levels of THC in the blood cause impaired driving. He says undocumented persons get no public assistance, but I think he is very naive about how easy it is to forge documents. And he seems to have forgotten that in CA they can get driver's licenses.
They used the full hour, and it was good. I wrote him a note thanking him for the webcast, and to thank his techies who did a first class job.
Next on the list, I plugged the DVD into my TV and it worked fine. Something is definitely wrong with the test machine. I had emailed Boss today with a short list of thing to buy for me, and a region-free DVD player with component outputs was on the list.
Watched some Netflix, but kept having to abandon shows because they were shot in the dark. What is with that? Finally landed on The Fantastic Four which I thought I had seen before, but don't remember any of it. Watched about half before it was time to write this.
**I was thinking of 1984, which was way off base with the date and form Big Brother would take. But Orwell was using the date as a warning, not as a prediction. Some of what he predicted has happened, but to a lesser extent, and it happened in Great Britain where IRL it happened more in other countries. I think part of the art of science fiction is to know when to fudge.
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
???
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