Writing Wrongs

Finished the program I have been working on for 2 weeks. We're required to run them three times and submit the logs to show they work. I ran mine once, it worked. 2nd time it said it crashed the system. Third time worked. 4th time crash.

Looking closer, the machine's main application burped for less than a second, as the machine was coming back up from a reboot command.

So here's what tears it: My program works, but since th machine burps while it is running, I not only cannot submit it as a working program, I had to file a bug report. Until the bug is captured and killed, I get no credit for all of this work, AND I can't use my test machine for the next two programs I want to work on.

Sigh.

So this afternoon I familiarized myself with spider solitaire and read every news item on CNN's home page, and those of the local NBC and ABC affiliates. And grimaced over the all-star game reports where Giants fans tried to find something good in a shutout.

Lunch was at Togo's, where I discovered their formerly meaty meatball sandwich has been replaced by marinara-covered sawdust lumps. :-(

Surgical strike shopping ought to have been one stop:
Medium size sponges for the bathtub and kitchen sink
Hummus for the falafel that's been in the fridge all week
Bananas
A new long-handled squeegee for the car
Original windex for the car
Paper towels for the car
Something not frozen for dessert
Peanut oil

Safeway and Rite Aid no longer sell anything but the smallest sponges and those HUGE car wash sponges. Neither sell squeegees. So I had to go to Pep Boys for those. And I thought I could pick up a replacement for the valet button which I broke while removing it from the asinine place Audio Designs put it. But no, they have all kinds of other switches but no plain push-button momentary ones. Fry's probably does.

Home, finished Ande's book about her parents. Too many cut and paste errors toward the end. One toward the beginning. Readable enough, I guess. I think she mostly wrote it as therapy for herself, and I don't see any sequels.

Wore my new right-sized Tevas today, they are vastly more comfortable than the size 12 pair.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
YOTB

I had a much more clever subject line in my head, but that was half an hour ago before Roxio crashed whenever I opened a Tivo file. Downloaded & installing the latest release now, very disappointed it is not maxed out for 64-bit. But not at all surprised it didn't work - I was in their tech support for 18 months, and not much had changed except Sonic made them an uglier logo.

Last night I slept all night, first time in ages. Woke up at 6:30, made a pit stop and then went back to bed for an hour. Got to the PO in plenty of time, huge slow line, not helped by the fact that all the clerks were not native English speakers, dealing mostly with people who were non-native speakers whose native tongue was not Chinese or Hindi. Mailed the previously returned calendar to Japan. Next stop, nails place. My fave was booked till 2 again, but she said it was okay with her for The Princess to do the honors again. Princess is not as skilled, and takes some shortcuts, and I can see the difference. But the whole purpose of this exercise is to armor-plate my very thin nails, and she gets that done. Went next door for a banana nut shake and an almond croissant. It's really marzipan-filled, but may as well call it by the easier to remember name.

Next stop, Best Buy to make an appointment to have the poorly installed in-dash GPS antenna placed up near the windshield where it belongs. New guy there, apparently the old guy was fired and new guy's day was all about warranty repairs to fix old guy's mistakes. He said if I could leave the car for 3 hours, he could work on it in between the others. It's noon, nice bright sunny day, so why not.  

Across the street is a Starbucks, Safeway, massage place with a $50/hr special, Rite-Aid, cold stone, sushi place, Marie Calendar's, an Indian sweets place and assorted other shops, so I shuffled over there. It's a long block to the crosswalk, and another to the shops, and I am horribly out of shape and sciatica set in as I was also regretting having that snack at the coffee shop. It was lunchtime, with several places to eat, and I was too full even for Starbucks. Safeway has a seating area for anyone to use, so I found a place in the shade, read some more OSC, played on the phone, and somehow survived one Safeway employee who decided to pick the most up-wind seat and smoke.

Eventually I wandered to Marie's and ordered lunch. Should have just had a pie, but I still had 2 hours to kill. Waiting for the food took 15 minutes of that. It was pretty good, and I finished it all.

Back to the Safeway seats, read some more and my phone rang, the car was ready. 2:30. It was a very long walk back, by now it's 75° and I'm pretty full and thinking if I can't handle two blocks of walking here, what am I going to do in Thailand in 2 months?

New guy showed me the work he had done, putting the GPS antenna up where it needed to be. He also pulled two sets of cables which I'm not using (amps, backup camera, etc) and told me the mount for the in-dash unit was not bolted in, it had been free to slide out. I let him blame it on the old guy, but it probably was done by the idiots who installed the new alarm system which had disconnected the main plug for the in-dash unit.

Drove home, sort of kicking myself for not having put the new map into the unit, it was still home on a table.

Got home around 3, took a nap. Woke up in an hour with Domino curled up behind me. Went back to sleep. Woke up sort of when the doorbell rang. Decided it was probably a package, but not worth getting dressed for. I did need to hydrate, eventually got dressed, opened the door, and a USPS delivery notice was there saying to pick it up at the office. Went to the office, and it was lemmozine's package of eBay magazines. Needed a signature, of course. Back to the apartment, checked the mailbox, there were the siphon parts I'd ordered. Installed the new straight tube to replace the old yellowing curving one, and that made an instant improvement.

It was starting to cool off, so I pulled the 28 pickle cukes out of the fridge & washed them. Got the cauldron out of the closet and the monster canning tub off the top shelf, turned on the vent fan and started filling things with lots of water.  

One batch of pickles done. I had enough mix for 1 more jar and enough cukes for 3 more. So I sliced up a bunch of chips & half-spears and am boiling one more jar as I type this. All the others I did all the way with grape leaves & garlic cloves, but this last jar is just the cukes and the mix. I may bring a jar from the first batch to BASFA to auction off.

Roxio install is done - it needed two passes. I'll finish this novel, reboot, and see it it works. If not, I'm going to raise hell with Tivo. They need to partner with a company whose software works.

Plans for tomorrow:
Enjoy the nice weather. Maybe finish the OSC book and move on to Slave Girl of Gor.
Go to the Sunnyvale Art Gallery open studio event and hopefully see my G&S friend Connie, who has some work on display.
Coffee with Janice
Test a batch of pickles