Writing Wrongs

Feels like Friday.
Work included the distraction of a new build for the current product, and with it a test I could do easily to verify a bug was fixed. Continuing to research Teletext and wrote some more test case one-liners. Many of them I have no idea how to actually do the tests. Those require the box to get its input from a satellite feed, and we don't have any European feeds that I know of.

Lunch was Boston Market, the half rack of ribs was good, but twice as much as I should have eaten. Small, dry cornbread. Not very sweet sweet corn. Decent loaded mashed potato. The very large plastic glass they give for soft drinks is a keeper. Finished the second Giver book, Gathering Blue. It isn't a sequel to The Giver but is billed as a "companion book". Nope, I don't buy that either. Totally different characters and setting, and different magic. Started #3, which is a sequel to #2 right off the bat. I love her writing. YA book which doesn't make me feel overqualified.

Looked up the remodeling company which was suggested by a friend and advertises in the community magazine, but there are no Yelp reviews and BBB doesn't know about them. Not a good sign. The mfg rep said she would send references, and we got a new magazine today which I'll do some checking against.

Put the small Seahawks logo decal on the car, and the a little too large college sticker, which was falsely advertised as a window cling.

Home after work, did my best to avoid it, but eventually sat down with the music and the script and tried to learn the words to my songs. Not very successful. The phrasing and cadence of the song lyrics is counter-intuitive, and there is no place to catch my breath. Will need much help at the rehearsal Thursday with music director. The theater is occupied so we'll do it at his house, where we had the first read-through.

Tried playing the two versions of the songs I have from Amazon, but neither of them matches the script. One comes close but they chop out the intro to the Big Numbah. :-(

In other news, have been infuriated once again by Da Meedea warping a story for sensationalism. Arizona passed a bill, which the governor has not yet signed, which simply allows a business owner to refuse to serve anyone on grounds it would violate business owner's religious beliefs. But instead of reporting it that way, they are all calling it the "anti-gay" bill.

Yes, someone whose religion holds that homosexuality is wrong could refuse to serve gays. But it also allows a Jewish deli owner to refuse to serve men who are not wearing a head covering, or a halal store owner can legally turn away women customers whose arms are not covered. That would make it a "right to bare arms" issue. I'm sure that with enough research, a Navajo could come up with a reason to 86 someone on religious grounds. "You are trespassing on sacred ground, leave!"

I am all in favor of allowing a private business to choose its customers. Just as I have a choice in which businesses I patronize. It should work both ways.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Bingo at the community center. A tough choice because there's a NASA talk at Foothill too, but I probably could not get up there in time.
Put in some more script time
Change the sheets

Boring day at work. Spent most of it looking at the test cases I wrote the one-liners for, and deciding if they really needed step by step instructions.

Lunch was at Carl's Jr., because it is close and brainless and I was bored.

They finally opened the front entry again, which gave me a chance to look at the changes. I thought they were going to fancify the superstructure above the doors to match the building next door which the company is allegedly leasing. Same architecture, same landlord. But no, they didn't touch that. They removed a 3-foot-high wall about 10 feet in front of the door which surrounded a Japanese maple, and probably was supposed to have landscaped flowers planted around it, but never did. It was a hangout for the smokers, who have been using the back parking lot while construction was in progress. It looks like the formerly grass borders left and right of the doors has been dug up and new irrigation pipes installed. The bike rack and a few of those concrete trash containers have been moved aside, probably will be back in place Monday after the ugly grey flagstones are sand blasted this weekend. Anyhow, now the entry is flat and unobstructed, so the handicap pathway doesn't look ridiculous.

Automation Guy sent an invite to us all for his son's 5th birthday party, but it's on Janice's 70th, which has been on my calendar for weeks. And I have a rehearsal after.

Spent some time online researching the chunnel train, which can take me from London to Brussels in about 3 hours. It's too early to nail things down, but I would love to get there and to Ireland during my Worldcon trip. There's also a high speed train from Brussels to Amsterdam. Hmmm. I probably can't afford it, but maybe I'll take a longer vacation. Gotta put that in the back of my mind, many other things to apply brains to before then. I have all the important stuff done: con membership, airline reservation, hotel reservation for the con days.

Went to the Mathilda Starbucks, got a mocha but there was nowhere to sit inside. I tried sitting outside, but it's dark and loud from street noise and chilly. So I went to the cheap gas station and filled up, and then came home. The mocha is still in the car.

Took care of some finances. Paid off my Amazon/Chase Visa card, and will call them tomorrow to close the account. The application said 14% but the paperwork says 19.24%. And the credit limit they gave is laughable. Insulting, even.

Found my mortgage statement and found the line which showed how much I owe escrow for the insurance change. The refund check from the previous insurer will cover that, and I'll have enough left over to get a massage. Or buy a dozen boxes of Girl Scout cookies. I printed a check for the lender CU, slapped it into their envelope with a copy of the statement, and it is now return addressed and stamped and ready to mail.

I also chatted today with the MetLife folks, and they can give me the same auto policy as Allstate for a dollar more. I told them to set me up to switch in April. Worth it to be done with Junior. Long story, ( Read more... )And Allstate's ads have taken a turn for the evil - those "havoc" ads. MetLife has stuck with the positive ads. State Farm ads are stupid and misleading, Farmer's are annoyingly condescending and too high-budget. Flo gives me the creeps, and the reptile dysfunction company seriously needs to take 99% of the money they spend on ads and use it to lower their rates.

Started reading the second of the Giver books. Darn that lady can write!

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Play
Maybe I'll finish my taxes.
Maybe study lines/learn my songs




 

My 1-on-1 was moved from yesterday to today. Then my nails appointment was moved from today to tomorrow. And finally my trip to Ardenwood was moved to next Thanksgiving.

That latter bit goes like this: I recommended the butterflies walk to my boss, who lives maybe 10 minutes from there but has never heard of the place. I went online to find the hours, and instead found this:
( Read more... )

The irony here is that when there were a thousand, around Thanksgiving, I had time off and could have gone, but my notes said the last time I was there and saw a lot of monarchs was in January. :-(

Did some more work at work, and was assigned a bug which I had lobbied hard against. And the one guy who had the hardware was gone by the time it was assigned.

Another move: The demo which I was planning for Monday at 10 had to be moved to Tuesday at 11 because Monday is MLK day, another religious holiday for someone else's faith. IMHO, he is the most overrated figure in American history and deserves a holiday named after him about as much as Walt Disney. One thing which separates the two, of course, is Walt wasn't assassinated until this year, and only on cellulose.

The demo couldn't be scheduled for 10 because the guy I couldn't find today has the room reserved from 10-11.

Lunch was supposed to be at the bad Chinese fast food place next to Jamba and Starbucks which is eye candy central, but there was no parking, so I went to Boston Market instead. I liked the brisket, the mashed was okay but the creamed spinach had coagulated. Their soft drink glasses are hard plastic and huge.

Straight home, after doing some email I took the telescope and a tripod out onto the end of the driveway, but the moon had set. Venus and maybe one of the big planets was visible so I thought I would try those, but the outside light is on a motion sensor and kept going out, and I was having trouble fitting the quick-connect mount on the scope to the tripod, so I brought it inside. Seems to be the wrong size, so I put the one from the tripod onto the scope, and that seemed to work. But then I couldn't find an eyepiece which fit. Digging in some of the carrying case pouches I found one, but that's when the scope fell off the tripod. It didn't appear to be damaged, but the quick connect was way loose. Decided I need to do this in daylight, and maybe even read some instructions and/or go to the San Jose astronomy group and ask for help.

Watched some American Idol. The new judges are not as solid as the old ones. And they mostly agree with each other. And once again the show wastes way too much time on the truly horrible, and does not spend enough time on winners. They also would do well, I think, to run it like musicals auditions with an accompanist and contestants required to bring music in their key.

What else? Yesterday there was a note in my "tube" (under the mailbox, for the park's magazine and park business) saying my bigger garbage can will be delivered Monday and not Feb. 3 as originally told to me. I need to print out a note and tape it to the current can so the helpful person next door doesn't wheel it back onto the carport after the garbage is collected. I may need to do it in Tagalog.

Blood sugar has been closer to normal lately, for no apparent reason.

Been reading the Potlatch Book of Honor: The City and The City by China Miéville. Imagine a city where people have learned to not see inhabitants of a different culture, and to believe that those people actually inhabit an entirely different city, in the same space as yours. The concept is very intriguing to me, but we learn about this strange construct by way of a murder investigation. I'm not a fan of murder mysteries, and Miéville is not very good at writing them from what I have seen so far. The plot moves like mole-asses and I'm not getting any feeling for the characters. For the first chapter I thought the detective narrating the story was a woman, but then he starts referring to himself as male. I usually get this when the writer is a woman trying to write a man's character, but China is definitely not a woman:


It's going to take me a while to finish the book.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Nails

The loan people are being assholes. It is making me crazy. Crazier. Highest blood sugar reading I have ever had. Highest blood pressure reading too, I think. I need to unscrew my brain and set it aside to cool.

Work was a little crazy too.

After work I flipped a virtual coin and chose Costco over UPS. Costco was full of insane people, more than usual. It's not a race, little man from the subcontinent. It is not a family gathering, Spanish-speaking aisle-blockers. And alleged adults of all stripes, your grocery cart was not built to be pushed around by your younger family members, the ones who have no fine motor skills.

It's not prejudice, it's postjudice.

Lunchtime was a trip to Kaiser lab for a serum potassium blood draw. I got the trainee. It was her first day without direct supervision. She did well. Two areas for improvement: more confidence, and when you see that vein bump standing right there at the crook of the elbow shouting "bleed me!", you don't have to trace the vein from the wrist on up. #2 is a reflection of #1. She will be gangbusters in time.

Starbucks across the street, tried their Orange Valencia drink, with a chocolate croissant. "Would you like the croissant heated up?" "Not unless you want to see me wearing it".  Some eye candy, in between reading from the Kindle app on the Nexus. The Long Earth. It hovers between YA and adult sci-fi.

Lamb shank and creamed corn for dinner.

Costco check-out featured an athletic young woman who re-packed everyone's conveyor belt items with a combination of Pythagorean genius and Olympic passion. I told her she is awesome. It surprised her.

In other news, the tennis elbow is 90% not hurting. Irony - there is an annoying abrasion where the strap meets the bottom of the elbow curve.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
1-on-1
UPS

But it felt like a Wednesday anyway, despite the 4-day weekend. Fully recovered from my vacation, including entering all the credit card slips into Quicken.

Work was typical, I was 2/3 done with a script when I got stuck because Automation's documentation sucks. And Automation Guy took and early lunch and was in meetings after. Finally got him to take a look, and it was simple but completely non-intuitive. But it worked. Tomorrow I'll send it in for the programmers to finish up, which I can't do because it has to run on one of their machines using machine-specific proprietary license files.

Last night after I journaled the remembery said the Seagals 2003-4 calendar release party was last week, so I went to their site to see what the new calendar was like. Unfortunately it is the same blah FAIL as last year's. So I went instead with teams which understand that a cheerleader needs her own month, and if you have 40 cheerleaders like the Seahawks do, you have to show some tough lust and go with just as many photos as you have months on the calendar. Seagals are cramming three per page, which makes them too small and creates too busy a design.

So instead I went with:
Redskins (My only repeat - a 15-month calendar with brilliant photography and design)
Colts (just to try something different)
Buccaneers (possibly the most attractive cheerleaders)
Ravens (because they are almost Washington and have a similar design)
Saints (because NOLA women have a reputation to uphold. Maybe "uphold" is the wrong word.)

On the walls from last season are
Dallas (inconsistent)
Jets (boring photography. Photog thinks it's all about the location)
Dolphins (boring photography, and they slap two smaller images of the pinup girl on the lower right of the main image)
Redskins, as mentioned above

In the dumpster:
Seagals 2013.

Which reminds me, I need to take out the garbage soon.

Before lunch I looked up places which claimed to have the Nexus 7 32GB in stock, and GameStop came up a winner. So that's where I went at lunchtime, and my next stop was UPS to return the Kindle Fire. When I had picked it up, the UPS guy had wanted to know how I liked it (Amazon ships in a clearly labeled box) and was surprised I didn't. In that same strip mall is a classy looking place called Ocean Blue Sushi Club. This is a huge place, good for  three company team lunches at a time, but at 1:15 it was so empty that the hostess was not at the front door, and it took a good (or bad) 5 minutes for someone to take my order. The food was very good, not as expensive as it could have been.

After work, home, sat out on the patio with the Nexus plugged in (it had about half a charge), set it up, and it actually grabbed all my Android phone stuff from my Google account, including the wallpaper photo of Domino in the window and the locked device wallpaper of the park bench.

It seems lighter than the Fire, and it is more comfortable to hold in portrait mode. Very smooth Youtube playback on my 5GHz wireless connection, and Kindle app worked better on it than on the Fire. More accurate "last page read" and easier brightness adjustment.

It's basically the computer part of the Android phone, minus the phone functions and fees. After it finishes charging I need to see ho to turn off the keyboard click. The voice recognition so far has been flawless. But give it time,,,

Marie Calendar's roast chicken frozen dinner & the last of the chocolate chunk ice cream. While watching the Tivo replay of the Seahawks-Denver game, in which the theory is completely demolished which says the team which controls the ball for the most minutes wins. Denver has a superb team, but Seattle was far more opportunistic. And they have more attractive uniforms. And the best helmet logo in the NFL. One nice touch is a walk-on from the University of Washington was one of the stars of the game. Great to see a hometown boy show up the draftees.

Have also been looking online for a used 3-valve Baritone horn/euphonium. Starving Musician's prices are too high, so I may sell them the 4-valve one I have now. Lots of promising junkers on eBay where the shipping fee may be higher than the high bid. Fine, if the horn plays.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Manicure
YOTB rehearsal (last one before Sunday's concert)

Up way too late, photo shoot at 9:30 am in Mountain View. Texted I'd be late, but I wasn't. Organizer was. :-(

Model was a super-skinny, multiple-tattooed young woman who posed well but had to keep being reminded to keep her eyes open, and not look so grim. The best shot I got was of one of the female photographers. LOLz. Somehow I managed to take 200+ pictures, but will have to go through them to see if any are more than mediocre. One of her tattoos was very interesting, it was a minimalist drawing on the back of her arm which looked like Marilyn Monroe. Very clever. All her tattoos were clean and very legible, including the entire Serenity Prayer which took up all the space between just below her bust to her hips.

We went till a little after noon, several locations around Shoreline Park. I missed the best one (by the Bay) when  I had to take a restroom break. Tummy was bothering me ever since I woke up.

I would really have liked to have lunch at the Lakeshore Café, but I was very very tired. Home, took a nap, woke up with Domino laying on my upper right chest. Didn't even feel her. She bolted as soon as I woke up, as usual.

Still running a little late, wanted to get to Starbucks by 4 for the 5 pm date with Janice, but it was 4:30 at least, and did not finish the writing I was doing. Good chat with J. She liked the Starwars/Starbucks T-shirt I brought back for her from Thailand. August is not a good month for her, and this year is no different. She's holding up okay, but 'nuff said.

Home again, it was a bit of a challenge because there was an event at Shoreline Amphitheater, some country western young people's crush, and nobody was obeying the traffic lights or the "keep intersections clear" or "don't walk". They needed traffic police, but did not have any. I ought to send a nastygram. When there is an event at the city-owned venue, they need city traffic cops at the freeway exits and big intersections. Lately they have left that to the event organizers, who have not been doing enough.

I had not eated all day, except for the frap and banana nut bread at *$s, so boiled up some corn cobettes and put a cookie sheet full of wings and drumettes into the oven. Took twice as long as the package said. :-(

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Got email from Anything Goes, I have no rehearsals until move-in. That sucks. Move-in is the 25th, the first acting rehearsal is the 27th.

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Been watching the Olympics closing ceremonies. While the jerks on NBC are saying the athletes are coming in as "one world" not as one country, I am seeing athletes coming in as a national group, many of them waving their country flagettes vigorously, especially the Koreans who looks way stupid, no matter how well they did in the games. So many Bad Costumes™. I want to find the costumers and ask what drugs they are on, and tell them to flush them down. No theme, a mish-mash of music, a closing ceremony done by committee with an unlimited budget. I sure hope all those people on stage in the bad costumes are being paid well. They are working very hard.

The head of John Lennon was macabre. Whose bright idea was it to make it lying down like a sarcophagus? And Batman & Robin escaping an exploding yellow taxi-like cartoon car? Sheesh.

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I did manage to get something useful done online at Starbucks. I looked up the Yelp reviews for movers, and it reaffirmed I chose the wrong company last time. Blame dyslexia. As with last time, the best reviews were for a company named Advanced Moving Company. I had chosen Advantage Moving and Storage. Not as big a mistake as it might have been, they basically slowed down and left the job incomplete when it was clear they would be over the guaranteed estimated time. They broke a lamp and left the pieces scattered on a bedroom floor, too. So tomorrow I'll phone Advanced and schedule a visit.

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Plans:
Tonight: Go through the photo shoot pix, fix what ought to be fixed. Upload some to Flickr and the meetup site.
Tomorrow:
Work
Pick up bike from repair shop
BASFA
Look for slides from '89 and '75-6 of my work sites
Study my lines

Was up at 6:30, this time the alarm did go off at 7. Domino was in and out of the bedroom all night, up on the bed some of the time, curled up on the carpet other times. And she's back to squawking at me a lot. Since I was up early, I started looking through Thailand photos for ones to use in the Worldcon show. Getting that show together is tomorrow's main project.

Got to work, boss had sent email he would be in late, but ended up working from home. I can imagine how much email he had to catch up on. He was in Thailand a week longer than me.

We got a new build which supposedly has a feature I'm supposed to test, but I couldn't see it. Probably because the machine I have doesn't have the right board. I'll have to see about getting that fixed Monday. In the meantime me and automation guy both saw a minor cosmetic bug which is laughably trivial. We alerted engineering but it's not something which merits a bug report. Yet. I managed to crash the machine with ad hoc testing, once.

For lunch the gang went to our new favorite Japanese place, great bento boxes. But they never listen to me when I tell them to go after 1 pm. We waited about 20 minutes for a table. By the time we left, the place was half empty.

Back to work, there was nothing pressing to do, so I filled out an application for a Keypoint credit union account, but they lied - it could not all be done online, so I went to the branch down the block from work and finished it. They needed to scan my ID, and have me sign some forms in person. I could have mailed in copies, but that seemed silly.

Next step is to close my Patelco CU account, since I haven't really used it. I have not been impressed with their operation, and I just don't happen to like the name of the company.

After I get the ATM card from Keypoint I'll close the Tech CU account. I was going to wait until they stopped being a CU in September, but they messed up while I was in Thailand, so I am out of there ASAP.

Back to work, was planning on going to Costco which is close by, but was feeling lagged, so I went home a little early, took a nap, and then went to Costco. Where I saw this:



They had whole lambs in the next bin, also halal. Maybe the next time I get married...

I managed to keep mostly to my shopping list, except they were out of bananas. I heard one of the customers being told by one of the produce guys that there had been a run on bananas today. They had a good price on organic blueberries, but the green fuzzy stuff told me don't do it. Got mixed nuts, pistachios, a huge slab of cream cheese, a pound of lox, a dozen sesame bagels and a package of chicken wings.  Plus Lactaid milk, a big bag of limes and two loaves of multi-grain bread.  

From there to Safeway, which always has a better deal on light whipped cream (Domino's treat). They also had nice looking bananas and a 2-fer sale on celery. I bought a few apples, too pricey to buy more. Also passed on the baseball-hard nectarines. Got some ammonia (there's a carpet stain from spilling red punch) and windex for the car. And Marie Calendar turkey pot pies. Tartar sauce to replace the one turning green in the fridge.  And orange Crystal Lite, though they only had it in to-go size. So instead of 2 tubes making a gallon, it took 8. Needed small ice cream, and they had Haagen Dazs bars on sale (dark chocolate/chocolate) and Klondike bars. Did not find big packs of Breathsavers at either place. Must stop in at Rite-Aid or CVS.

Home, put stuff away, did not have room for the huge slab of cream cheese, so I cut it into 6 chunks (the package is designed for that) and put three into ziploc containers and into the freezer, then popped the dough blade into the Cuisinart, threw in half a pound of lox and three chunks of cream cheese and made salmon schmear, which is now in ziploc containers in the fridge. That was messy.

Dinner tonight was pistachios and blue Gatorade, while watching some of the Olympics opening ceremonies. Muted the sound soon, because the announcer wouldn't shut up, and it seemed in horrible taste to be playing "staying alive" right after the guy who wrote it died. And some of the words suck as Olympic inspiration. The Gambia and Malaysia had cool costumes, most everyone else's sucked. The USA's looked like campfire girls. For anyone who thinks Iraq is back on its feet, they only had 8 athletes. Iran sent 53. Afghanistan sent six.

Right around Jamaica I got totally bored, and deleted the recording. I've got Tivo set to record all the sessions with swimming and boxing, which should give me lots more events, since they are bundled. Not that I will have much time to watch, what with rehearsals and all.

1:20 am. Doesn't fell like it, thanks to a nap and Ibuprofen.

Plans for tomorrow:
Sleep in
Look at a lot of photos. Pick 20, use Photoshop to sign them, upload them to Costco and have them printed. Fill out the Worldcon paperwork (bid sheets, etc.) and email that.
I thought about going to the Garlic Festival, but it's a long, hot drive.
Maybe go to Shoreline Park.