Writing Wrongs

No humping was observed today. Pity.

Took out garbage to start my day. Work was slow, came to a total halt when two people whose accents were difficult to understand and who spoke way too quickly have us a 90-minute unstructured demo of an extremely complicated product which we have a piece of in our lab. As usual, someone turned off the lights and th glare from the projection blinded me. That combination puts me to sleep. My folks insisted on always having the lights on when we watched TV, and I still can't stand looking at a monitor or screen in the dark, except for movies. Go figure.

Lunchtime was taken up with a trip to U-Haul to get some dish and glass pack kits, and a couple of picture boxes. My only packing today was assembling a picture box and loading all my framed temple runnings, two lazy susans and a couple of framed posters. It still needs a lot of filler, probably will raid the t-shirt or cutoffs rack in the bedroom. I had bought 3 sets of picture corners, but they don't work for multiple pictures.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Automation guy is going to drive us to Redwood City so we can have lunch with his wife and she can do my nails. We have met a few times before.
Football
Packing

Spent a couple of hours after lunch thinking it was Wednesday, and was all ready for my 1-on-1 when my calendar did not pop up a reminder. The way Outlook displays calendar items in the mail view is it simply lists the upcoming ones on the right-hand column, not emphasizing what day the event is on. I had nothing on my calendar for today, so next up was the 1-on-1 tomorrow.

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Woke up at 7, was ready by 8, which is bizarre because the repair guy was due at 9. Well, not too bizarre because garbage needed to go to the dumpster first, and cat needed to be lulled into a false sense of security in the computer room so I could keep the door closed while repair guy was working.

He saw the washing machine problem right away, and tried massage therapy, and then some chiropractor moves on it, but the nasty noise was from something which did not respond. So he said he would be right back with a replacement machine. But first he fixed the strike plate on the front door, which took two more screws angled in. It really needs a new door jamb, but that's non-trivial.

He was back on less than 5 minutes, just enough time for me to shift a dozen or so things out of the path and vacuum,  removed the broken machine, put in the replacement, and tested it. After he left I took advantage of the recliner area being furniture-free and ran the carpet steamer over it. Then I put fluid in the tank and did it again. It worked so much better the second time.

The replacement washer is MUCH nicer than the original. Huge tub, easy to read labels on the dials, separate bleach funnel. When the machine broke, I took all the jeans out and wrung them out and put them in the dryer, planning on washing them later. Took all the t-shirts, towels and such and put them on top of the dryer. So the next move was to start a load of T-shirts, etc.

Put the furniture back in place, and drove to work. Got there around 10:30.

The morning was spent writing an automation script to test an intermittent bug, which I confirmed had been fixed. Then wrote a test case for that, and submitted the script to Automation. Major brownie points for verifying as fixed a critical bug, and automating a test case.

Lunch at the Prolific Oven in Rivermark. It was a gloriously sunny and warm day so I sat outside with a grand marnier ball, a chocolate dipped cream puff and a napoleon.  I figured that would be more than enough, BUT, the Grand Marnier ball was too heavy and thick and mostly inedible, the Napoleon was made with delicious custard in between three pieces of cardboard. The cream puff was the only thing completely edible.

Back to work, started marking time to the 1-on-1 but when I discovered it was still Tuesday I started writing an automation script for a test I had been avoiding, because it took too much prep time (like 3 days). It's really just an expansion of a test script I already wrote. Maybe I will get it done by Friday.

Automation Guy did have his 1-on-1 and knew the boss was going to ask him if he had written his Three Goals for 2013. A.G. had no clue even where to start. It is hard to set goals when your company is in the process of being sold and you really don't know what you will be doing 3 months from now, let alone 9. So I gave him three goals:
1. End World Hunger
2. Achieve World Peace
3. Continue to do automation

I figure those are as good as any, under the circumstances.

Home, played online, checked the email which said the headboard I ordered was shipped, but it had only had the paperwork sent to Fedex. That's something I need to be home to receive.

Rehearsals were kind of a joke. And kind of an eye opener. The joke part is most the cast (not me) took longer to drive to the place than the rehearsal lasted. And at least two of the people who were critical to the scene had conflicts. They really should have done this scene another time. We blocked it, ran through it about 7 times, and were sent home. Two of those times, the woman playing Jean read Fiona's part, while the woman playing Fiona sat it out.

Which was the eye opener. According to the cast lists, there are no understudies. We originally were supposed to do a morning performance the second week of the show for school kids, but that got canceled (the grant which required it was pulled). Sometimes people can't get out of their Day Jobbes and there will be stand-ins for that show.

But here's the deal: Both women are excellent actresses with gorgeous theater-quality soprano voices. Either of them could do this role. I was very surprised with the choice for Jean, because Jean doesn't sing at all during the show, and needs no acting skills to speak of - it appears the part was designed for some Broadway bimbo. So maybe the staff has decided to let her do one of the shows. Very very strange, because we're only giving 5 performances.

Home by 8:30, went online, petted the cats, took the load out of the washer and put it on top of the dryer and took the jeans out of the dryer and put them in the washer, and put the stuff on top of the dryer into the dryer.

Played online a bit. Reheated a turkey leg and some peas for dinner, banana in chocolate, malted milk and lactose-free whipped cream. Gave the cats their treats. Watched an episode of South Park which Tivo said was new, but wasn't. Watched most of an episode of Steve Harvey, skipping the part where some bogus plus-size lingerie designer had her wares modeled.

And here I am.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
1-on-1
???

Seth Grahame-Smith wrote this thing, apparently one in a series of opportunistic "famous folks from the past meet the undead" offerings.

His writing style is okay, as far as putting one word in front of another goes, but he turns what could have been an action-packed thriller into a moderate-paced narrative.  

The gist of it is someone has found a bundle of secret journals and letters by Lincoln, and gives them to a writer to make a novel from. That novel is the rest of the book. In which we learn how Honest Abe came to be a secret hunter of vampires, and how most of his family dies from vampirism. Seth re-invents vampires as super-human beings with super speed and strength. He gives them knife-like claws and psychic abilities. And the longer they exist, the less sensitive to sunlight they become, and most of the ones in the USA are able to co-exist with the living in daylight, with the help of sunglasses.

The author scrupulously follows real-life Lincoln's time line, but saves himself from having to write action scenes by skipping chunks of years with lame little notes about how Abe fought lots of vampires during those years, or retired from vampire hunting for those years.

Not a compelling book. Definitely not worth Kindle price. Pick it up at a used book store if you feel compelled to read it for yourself. I understand the movie hs gone way overboard on the blood and gore, so I'll be skipping that. 

Very quiet day. Woke up up at 8:30, got out of bed at 9:30. I love my internet wi-fi radio - listened to radio stations in Bangkok, Pataya and Prae. The ads  are still an even split between soft women's voices politely suggesting a product and loud men's voices shouting about everything from a boxing match to a motorcycle to hair goop.

Did not expect anything worthwhile on TV, so sat in the recliner and listened to KLIV's rebroadcast of the Commonwealth club's interview of the guy who wrote the Steve Jobs biography. He had also written best selling bios of Einstein and Ben Franklin. He said Jobs was like Franklin, a design expert with wide-ranging interests while Einstein was a quantum leap ahead on the genius scale.

Finished reading Ruth Rendell's The Face of Trespass, which was a difficult read, especially for Rendell. I don't recommend it. It's a writing experiment, mostly, where Rendell, a logical, concise writer attempts to be inside the head of someone who is scattered, and whose internal dialog is all over the place. The last three chapters were so telegraphed it sucked the mystery right out of it. Loose ends were taped into place rather than tied up.

Spent some of my reading time out on the patio in my Shark's jacket (it was about 50° out) and jumped each time the heater came on (it is a big heater/aircon unit on the patio).

Next up is Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man.

But first, the Packers are about to play Da Bears.

Sayonara.

Been feeling lonely today. and I doubt it is because I'm not working - work was sitting in a cubicle away from the rest of the team, and there was not a lot of social time. A bit bored too, despite doing a couple of Round Tuit projects.

Finally got the PAL DVD done, and it's being made into an ISO in the background. Also did the NTSC versions but the disc had errors, so I need to do it again. Third time - the stupid Corel DVD software keeps forgetting major things after saving the file, such as chapter captions which have been modified to not be truncated, the bit rate to record at, and it likes to put its default muzac loop in as background for the title pages even after that has been deleted and a clip from the DVD put in its place.  Checking all that is a PITA.

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Contact conference has moved to LA for this year, April Fools weekend, their listserv went live today, flooding my mailbox with inanities. I'm not going, so I unsubscribed.

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Went to my favorite late-hours Starbucks this evening, but it has moved a couple of notches lower on my list thanks to a remodeling job which looks teriffic, padded seats with lots of power outlets line the curved wall. But the seats are way too deep, and there's nothing to rest your back on.  The place was almost empty, minimal eye candy.

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I am reading (on Kindle) Patton Oswalt's latest book, the title is three check box items:

• Zombie
• Spaceship
• Wasteland

It was recommended at the last basfa meeting, with a note that "He's one of us". Which I already knew. I've seen his act from several angles, stand-up, MC and sitcom, and have never LOLed at anything he said. I was frankly surprised to find him literate. And guess what, he really isn't so much. The book is a collection of autobiographical snippets, and while it is not the Great American Novel, there are some interesting parts. I'm still pretty early in the book, there may be more. But the one thing he does is explain concisely some of the basics of D&D. I have never played the game, never have understood any role-playing game I have attended, but this one chapter explains it all so clearly that now I know I would not enjoy or be even remotely skilled at playing it. It also explained what made the last line in one of Mary Crowell's filk songs so funny (went over my head at Consonance and Conflikt when she performed it there). 

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No plans for tomorrow. Harp concert in Alameda Sunday.

Started the day as an impulse shopper. I had suggested a TV to a friend, she emailed that she'd ordered it. I decided I wanted one too, and also got a blu-ray player and 802.11 N wi-fi adapter.  The TV and player were basically half price, free shipping.

( Cut for boring )
There's more football to watch.