Writing Wrongs

Taken through my windshield in the Costco parking lot.

After the driest January in history, tonight's rain was a bit of a surprise (the weather reports were for a 40% chance) but it was light enough to not be a problem driving home.

Today work was spent following up on yesterday's test. Boss had wanted step by step instructions for the customers by noon yesterday, but the steps I was given were so far from accurate that it wasn't until end of day I was able to show the program probably had something wrong with it.

The routine went like this:
1. Upload all the files for an update to the test machine
2. Run a program on the test machine to use those files to update the machine
Sounds easy, no? Well, the way our network is set up, it took 2 hours to do step 1, and it turns out that the files needed to be uploaded to a particular directory, and the program had to be run from not-that-directory-or-anything-close. And the update takes about half an hour.

I needed to run 4 tests to validate the customers' process.

The good news is all the Seattle TV stations were live streaming the Superbowl celebration parade on their web sites, and Channel 13 (Fox) was the only one with rights to broadcast the ceremony inside the football stadium, which also bled over into the next door baseball stadium. I found that out just in time to watch.

Initial estimates, which the idiot media kept reporting was 700,000 people. But that was at about noon, and by the time the parade made it to the stadium there were probably a million. It was incredible. Seattle only has 600,000 in the city limits, maybe two million in Greater. Channel 13 is actually in the next city south, Tacoma. Wait a minute, I just checked and they have moved to downtown Seattle. Probably eons ago. Nobody pays much attention to them except when Fox lands some coup like the superbowl. And I think they used to do Creature Features on Friday nights.

Anyhow, I'm guessing susandennis got quite a show from her condo overlooking the stadium parking lot.

Speaking of football, I finally got around to checking for actual video showing Navarro Bowman being pelted with food by Seattle fans as he was carted off the field after being injured during the final playoff game. What I saw was after his cart was well into the tunnel, a few pieces of popcorn fell from above onto the end of the cart. none of it hit him, and it didn't look intentional. In short, no food was thrown. What reminded me was this:


Marshawn Lynch started a thing where it's a compliment to throw Skittles at players. Here he returns the favor. He is now an official spokesman for Skittles. When I was lookng for a Seahawks venue to watch the Superbowl, the place I found posted a plea to leave the Skittles home - they are impossible to clean up, especially in the nooks and crannies. Notice it is not raining. Seattle got a break from that, but it was freezing. Snow flurries likely tomorrow.

Lunch was at "New Tandoori Cafe", a hole in the wall created from two holes in the wall. It is next to Thaibodia, which was my original destination until I remembered how bad they suck after 1 pm. Tandoori was just plain bozarre. Layed out like two separate spaces, one a diner and the other more like a coffee shop, you order at what would normally be a hostess desk, seat yourself, and wait. I had the lamb tikka marsala, which had an odd taste but not awful, and it cleared out my sinuses over the course of the meal. The naan was huge and excellent. There was sliced lettuce with onion slice which they called a salad (no dressing). Biryani rice was the usual Indian crap. Some day India will learn how to grow rice. Maybe. Maybe not because the population is used to eating pig food. There was no water served or available. They had coffee and a refrigerated case full of mango lhasi and soft drinks.

After work I was starting to set Mathilda Ave Starbucks in my autopilot, when I remembered I had a long Costco shopping list. So Costco it was. I managed to spend > $200 and not get ice cream (they don't have any I like) or snack sized ziplock bags (they have none at all). So on my way home I gritted my teeth and picked those up at Fresh & Easy. F&E is not easy at all, every checkout line is self checkout. :-(

Home, lugged all that stuff to the car in 4 trips. Nothing in the mailbox. On the stoop was the pair of walking shoes I'd ordered. I went a half size larger because the identical pair I have been using is doing rude things to my toenails.

Pulled up the Little Shop performance schedule and poked those days and tech week into my Google calendar.  I hope I survive. 4 shows a week, 4 weeks. I bet they would get just as many audience members if they only did 3 weeks. And/or cut out the Thursday shows.

The director added me to their "secret" Facebook page, and several cast members sent friend requests. The guy playing the voice of Audry II has as warped a sense of humor as I do. It looks like a fun cast. I've already (last night) fallen in love with the ASM. She's hot, and laughs at my jokes.

After dinner I watched Channel 13's stream of the parade, but it stopped as they got to the stadium. They were going to live stream the inside ceremonies at 11, but I forgot. It'll be online tomorrow I'm sure. I saw most of it live, but there are spot I wanted to rewind and turn on closed captions.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work. No idea what I'll be doing. I ought to re-format those instructions which are in 3 different fonts.
Starbucks after

The TV was supposed to be delivered between 9 am and 1 pm, so last night I took home a test Blu-ray player so I could work from home while I waited. Starting at about 8:30 I set it up and ran some tests on it. It took a while to get onto the company VPN with my netbook - I could have sworn I'd done that before, but if I had, I had not saved the bookmarks. Not a problem, got them off the big PC upstairs. Tested wireless first, but the unit did not have a menu item for it, so I ran 50' of Cat5 from the router upstairs to the player through an air duct out in the hallway. Did that last time I worked from home. It passed its tests, but there were some network disconnects, and it only played at half bandwidth. Looked good, though.

I ran out of tests which could be done at home, so I used it to watch The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I had read the book, and had been assured this would not spoil the movie for me. It mostly did not, but only because I have a crappy memory. They did a good job of staying true to the book, but there was some license taken with the love themes, and they left out a handful of scenes which I thought made the book better. I was disappointed with the smaller role given to the woman in charge of the main character's magazine. The bridge to the island was way too big & long compared to the way I had envisioned it (the book gave me the impression people on the island side of the bridge could see people on the mainland town side). And the old lady was taken almost completely out of the picture. It was well cast, the cinematography was better than average, audio mixing was done well. Personally I thought they showed more blood and gore than the story called for, which took it down a notch in my ratings. I rate it as worth matinee, but it is best to see it streamed or on DVD because there are spots where the subtitles go by too quickly and a REW button is a big help.

At 1:30 I wanted to call the freight company to find out what the trouble was (the web site said the truck left SF at 11:30, and it's less than an hour's drive to my place) but the last time I was on hold for 35 minutes, so forget that. The guy knocked on my door at 2 pm, he had no excuse for being late. I parked the box in the livingroom, and packed up and went to work, where I was half an hour late for our weekly team meeting, which meant missing a presentation from someone from another group I had wanted to hear. Harrumph.

My lead had me run some double-check tests, and the machine kept forgetting it had a network connection and locking up, so it was a while before I could run the rest of my tests, but I did get them done by 7.

Home, followed the plan, with some dusting added:

Unhooked the small (22") bedroom TV and parked it in a corner
dusted off the table it was on
Unhooked the (32" LCD) livingroom  TV and hooked it up in the bedroom.
dusted off the media rack it was on. Dusted off the TV too.
Unboxed the new 42" LED TV, installed the base, put it on the stand and saw the base was on backwards, fixed that and moved two speakers to accommodate the wider TV.
Unboxed the Blu-ray player
Hooked up the TV to all the peripherals
Took the programmable remotes from the livingroom and bedroom and re-programmed them
Tested everything except the Wii

All worthwhile. The new TV is brilliant with a vivid picture. I watched a streamed episode of Lie To Me, and scrolled through the TiVo HD stations. It handles high-motion beautifully. And having a 32-inch screen in the bedroom is a bonus.

After all that was done I made a microwave dinner, and watched some more TV.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work (a new DTV to test)
Home, maybe set up the Wii
I may park myself at the unpopular Starbucks until traffic lightens up.