Dates on the calendar are closer than they appear

Starting to get seriously worried about being unemployed in a few weeks. Had two solid leads fall through. Boss has been excluding me from product meetings which I really should be in.

No work again today. The soundbar release was not passed on to me. I tried to set up the Linux box to record audio, but the sound card in the machine is horrible.

Mobile streaming from the Pixel phone is a bust, I'll set my Verizon account back to 3GB of data. Made a note for 11/12 to do that.

Lunch was a rice bowl from the company fridge. Had to pull out huge chunks of cauliflower. One the size of a tree trunk. Tasteless, odorless, colorless alleged vegetable. But otherwise the food was good. Peach cobbler for dessert.

After work I drove toPiazza's Fine Foods, a very fine grocery store. Kind of like Whole Wallet, only locally owned. And a much better cheese and butcher section. I spent $140, bought all the items I can only get there, and paid the price. Frozen matzo balls, far far better than I could make, and way better than the bottled ones. Scharffenberger 82% chocolate, my favorite. Mangoes, huge onions, peaches, big bananas, goat milk soft cheeses, bagel balls stuffed with cream cheese and pre-cooked bacon.

Home, dragged in the groc, and my lunch cooler, and the monthly park magazine was in the slot. All the mail was election flyers, Geico ads and a marketing thing from HP for the person who moved out 5 years ago. I throw away the election ads unread.

Spook has been out in the livingroom a lot, curled up with her toys. Spot keeps chasing her. She pooped on a rug near the front door,
and peed on the carpet nearby. We really need to find a home for Spot. I can distract him temporarily with the feather wand, but only for a few minutes.

I hate to do it, but I'm thinking about setting up food & water and a litterbox for him in the guest room again, and shutting the door.

Watched Doctor Who. Did not like this one very much. The villain was an overblown caricature, meant to be Donald Trump, but disguised as the idiot who will run against him in 2020. That's two episodes in a row with an American theme, and they really have to bring it back to writing what they know. Also, it had a very heavy and overblown environmental scare theme based on 4 minutes of shoddy chemistry research. And Yaz' dad is unbelievable.

Also watched PTI. They are getting less tolerant of each other and a lot louder.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Home

Can't believe it's only Tuesday

Probably because it isn't.

I thought about dressing up for Halloween, I have enough costumes. But in my little lab nobody sees me. That was my excuse till I realized how many pee breaks I take, and that's a walk halfway across the building. There were a lot of costumes, some of them pretty racy. There seemed to be an informal trick or treat going on amongst the Google buildings nearby. Slender women in catsuits and other skin-tight clothes.

Ironically, tomorrow HR has declared an 11:11 am walk-out to support Google's way too little too late purging of sexual harassment. I will not be participating. It's a blatantly hypocritical PR move. And I have work to do. Finally.

Emailed the park asking them to check out the cracks in my driveway, and manager said to call him, so I did. He said the park only is responsible for the first 40' from the road, and the big crack is farther than that, and the small crack isn't a tripping hazard and they only formally inspect and repair driveways once a year anyway, and only fix the ones that are safety issues.

Tried again to lower my Comcast bill, but they want to charge me $15 for a DYI kit, which I'm pretty sure I don't need. Chat guy said I need the new Tivo card. I don't remember having to do that when I upgraded.

Boss alerted me there was finally a build for the soundbar which was supposed to Fix Everything™. She gave me 4 audio tests to start with which had been targeted by the genius Chinese engineers. All 4 failed. Chinese engineers poured into my lab with Tall Manager, wanting to hear the audio pops for themselves. They did. I told Boss I had played pop music to them. She chuckled.

I will be very happy to walk away from this marketing-driven QA process. I'm grateful that Boss and Boss² are pushing back against the junk makers, and are trying to get things fixed, but this part of Google is inept at the concept of Process.

Lunch was the Piazza's salmon salad. The salmon fillet with capers and pickle slices was wonderful, and there was a whole hard-boiled egg which should have been sliced, and some beans and three slices of a vegetable I did not recognize but enjoyed. The vinaigrette was pretty good, but the box was 3/4 spring salad, way too much to eat. It's on the way to compost land. Peach cobbler for dessert.

And ngaw for an afternoon snack.

Plugged the car in at 4:30, receptionist had done skeletal face make-up which looked fantastic, and had been a lot of work.

Streamed my ride home because I have the unlimited plan till mid-November, may as well use it. But my settings are all wrong, the finished video looks horrible.

Delivered was a pair of boxes, one for me and one for #73. I called OnTrac and told them to pick up the second box and deliver it to the right place. They were thrilled. Legally I think I could have kept it. But it was from some women's boutique. In the other box was a Bob Dylan CD with Make You Feel My Love, four wind-up mouse toys, and a USB-C wireless charging stand. Which was DOA. I have a working stand, but it has an older USB connector, I wanted C. Because I have a long C-to-C cable.

In the background I am copying my music to my phone. No idea why, I am rarely plugged in to music. I probably should be. Except I'll sing along, or cry. But I do have expensive BT headphones. Probably should use them more.

Today is Spook's birthday, so I gave her an extra handful of kibble and treats, and chased the bully away.

Watched PTI and Long Lost Lives. LLL was interesting. One woman didn't discover she was adopted till she was 37, the woman she thought was her biological mother was dying, and the paperwork said "no live births". The other was a young man who knew everything about his adoption except the last names and location of his parents. They had split up 20 years before but kept in touch, so he got to be re-united with both of them. Both his biological and adoptive dads are named Chuck. His biological mom & dad are both lookers, as is he.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
More audio testing
TGIT