Writing Wrongs

First day back to work since the 24th. Got there at 9:07 (left home at 9:00, took the freeway, which is not practical before 9, and may not be after this weekend). Not much to do, but luckily the guy with the next product's test matrix spreadsheet was in, and he emailed it to me, so I spent most of the day perusing it and comparing things to the specs. Not to bore you, but it's a complex product, and figuring out how to translate the specs into a test plan is going to be a long, challenging process. I'll do some more of that tomorrow.

Gave calendars to boss and the two cow-orkers who were there. Left one on each seat of those who are on vacation. I still have 3 left, so if you didn't get one and want one, send me a snailmail address. First come...

Nails were due for a fill, at 1:20 I phoned for a 2 o'clock appointment, was told there were no more openings, but come at 1:30. I rushed to get there, and the front of the house was empty. The staff was in the back having lunch and the owner was at the bank. I offered to come back at 2, but they said to wait a few minutes. Owner did my nails, and gave her 2 o'clock client to another staff member until she was done with me.

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I had been doing some research on sleep apnea and mattresses. This was precipitated a couple of weeks ago when I changed the sheets and saw that my 2-year-old discount mattress was starting to come apart on top in the area I use the most. When I went to flip it, there were two issues: 1) it has no handles and 2) the bottom is not like the top, it is not a sleeping surface it is a box spring contact surface.

All the info I have read on sleep apnea regarding beds had been useless and vague, saying that the mattress doesn't make a predictable difference, it's a personal issue. Everyone is different. But that can't be true, everyone's airway is basically the same, and there are only so many triggers for apnea.

European Sleep Works up in Berkeley has some solid info, they make a bed which they say helps, and an "oxygen pillow" which also helps. But they are hella expensive, too far to get to during work hours, and the only day I could get there would be Saturday. So I penciled in Saturday for a trip there, but meantime looked around other places I know about. Mattress Discounters is out, they sold me the piece of crap I have now. Sleep Train is out, they over-advertise and they have been constantly beating us up with ads begging for $$ for their foster children program. California has a pretty generous pay out to foster parents, so there's some special interest Sleep Train is scamming here. That pretty much left Mancini's Sleepworld as the last name brand local showroom.

I went to the Sunnyvale branch, big showroom, only one staffer. But Kevin knew his stuff, answered my questions, did not try to up-sell or hard sell me, and shared that he has severe sleep apnea, and the reason the sleep apnea sites were vague about mattresses is the real help is to have and adjustable frame which can elevate your head and feet a little bit. He made sure I thoroughly tested the five mattresses which would work with an adjustable frame and were designed for folks like us who get too warm on a standard mattress. And I played with the adjustable frame for a while on a nice mattress. And he found out that the best mattress in the place was due to be replaced by a 2014 model, and got me the floor model at a huge discount, and a new adjustable frame at half off. Checking online, those were good prices, made better by the free delivery/set-up and hauling away the old mattress & frame.

So that will be delivered Wednesday, they will call with a time window on Tuesday evening. Easy enough to work from home.

Home, Domino was perched on the arm of the sofa, not one of her frequent flyer spots. And got some stuff done:
- Moved the officecam to the other side of the room, where it can see me from the back, and Domino's favorite parking spot. This entailed installing a multi-plug outlet, moving the Midi keyboard out of the way, drilling holes and inserting plastic screw thingies, and losing my computer reading glasses.
- Watched the first half of the Sugar Bowl
- Hunted for my glasses. Finally found them on the floor of the office closet where they fell off while I was putting tools away
- Made a TV dinner
- Watched the second half of the Sugar Bowl, but missed an Oklahoma TD where the Tivo had rebooted when I turned off the circuit breaker to install the multi-plug outlet. And it did not add an hour as instructed, so I missed the last 4 minutes.
- Gave Domino her traditional half-can of Fancy Feast. Last night she left half of it over. If she does that again, we go to 1/4 can servings
- Updated my cats page on http://howeird.com/cats.html to reflect the singlehood of Domino and return of Kaan
- Updated my http://howeird.com/webcams.html page to reflect the change of Comcast IP address, and added camera. All cams have a guest login of "hacker" with no password.

For another day: check the links on the howeird.com links pages, and add stuff to http://howeird.com/grammar.html

Plans for tomorrow:
Work. Weekly report
???

Why am I still awake at 11:30 pm? I don't know. I had a dream last night that I had insomnia, and found myself awake at 4:30 am looking up Dodge Dart info on my cell phone. :-(

Never did get back to sleep, thanks, and this may seem ironic or something worse but it isn't meant to be anything except honest, to Kaan hogging 3/4 of the bed and then both cats deserting me.

My PC powers up automatically at 6:30 every morning. When I heard the tune which says Windows has started, I headed for the computer room. No, wait, I only thought about doing that, I actually waited until all the apartment lights automatically power on at 7 am. The tune, by the way, is the first few bars of Go The Distance from Hercules (a French Horn fanfare of great majesty and pomp). 

Went to KBB.com (Kelly Bluebook) and then Edmunds.com and punched in for info on the Dodge Dart. What got me to the Dart is I realized this search for The Best Nav System In Cars was being done backwards. My favorite map system is Garmin, so I searched for car companies partnered with Garmin. Chrysler showed up first, but they really still are your grandfather's car, so I looked at Dodge, and even the lowly Dart can be equipped with Garmin nav with voice recognition. Voice recog extends to all the controls in the in-dash unit, including the phone, radio, iPod, CD/DVD, air conditioning and midwifery.

I sent in a "give me a quote" request, and as has happened almost every time so far, the Internet Salescreature responded later that morning with "when can I call you?" as if I had not spent half an hour selecting what stuff I wanted in the car. I replied with what I wanted, and said I would drop by after work.

Skip to after work, walked into a dealership with all the staff sitting around a table chatting with each other, no customers in sight. This is the only dealership in Silicon Valley, they represent Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep and Ram. It's also the oldest building, which was once a fast food place. They found the internet guy for me, he only remembered I wanted a blue car. I had to tell him I wanted mostly to demo the voice/nav system. It took a while for him to find one, and when he did, it was broken (it kept showing "loading voice recognition....please wait"). Another 5 minutes and he found one which worked, sort of. It had the very pretty Garmin maps, and he wanted to punch everything into the touch screen, but I hit the voice switch and tried some commands. They display the 12 possible commands and syntax on the screen, so it should be easy.

It wasn't.

It rarely understood what I said. Even when I was saying line numbers as in "please choose the line number of the item you want". The biggest WTF was when I said "Tune 88.5 FM" and it gave me a list of the 5 nearest pizza places.

The car itself is a heavy beastie, even with a 6-speed automatic it only gets 19 MPG city. Horrible for a compact. It's just barely easy enough to get into and out of. Sight lines are okay. Rear camera has color-coded zone lines. It probably would be clearer if they took the protective plastic off the lens. Price tag with all the features I wanted was about the same as a hybrid. Stupid design - the odometer is analog, tiny, and off to the right behind the wheel.

During the demo the rep took a personal call, switched to a dialect of Spanish which I actually was able to understand some of. Not good form, dude. In San Jose you can't expect a customer, even a Gringo, to not know Spanish. He did have the sense to step outside before completing the drug deal.

Anyway, the Dart is a non-starter.

Back to my day. Got to work at about 9, played some more with the automation scripting language and discovered some stuff which did not work as advertised. And some that did. Corp sent us email pointing to the PTO entry screen, but it would not let me log in.

Lunch was at Sizzler. I love the wings they have at the salad bar. And the clam chowder.

Got email from Fremont Chevy's Internet guy, inviting me to take a test drive of the Cruze. I replied with "How about Sunday?" because there is no way to get to Fremont before they close at 8. I figure I can spend some time at Ardenwood Farm with my camera, and head up to Chevy after the farm closes at 4.

Which reminds me, I need to figure out a way to get my Giants' ticket from dave_gallaher, since I will be going to a friend's indie movie premiere instead of BASFA Monday night. The game is Friday night.

Stopped by Safeway on the way home from Dodge, lots of people from foreign lands with more children than they had hands to keep from wandering off. Nearly ran 3 of them over with my cart. Darwin would have approved.

Dinner was microwave frozen stuff, and sensor-reheated garlic/cheese bread. I am liking this replacement replacement microwave.

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Plans for tomorrow:
 
Get some sleep
Research which cars I could buy which the Kenwood will fit into. Corolla seems like a good bet.
Maybe take one more look at the Ford Focus/ C-Max?
Coffee in PA with Janice
Miss Saigon at PA Players

They let me out of the sleep clinic at about a quarter to 6 am, and it was VERY cold outside, 45 or so. That woke me up. Drove home, the apartment still smelled like chicken soup, so I took out a container and heated a bowl of it for breakfast. Yum! But first I took a shower to get the glops of gel out of my hair, chest and legs. Took my Hgl reading, it was 94 (I had not eaten much for dinner) and I also took my meds.

Was borderline thinking of going to work, but common sense set in, and I went to bed. Domino is completely freaking out. I tell her when I'm going to be gone overnight, but she never listens.

One nice thing about the new apt is the bedroom window is about half as wide as the one in the old apt, so the blackout curtains really do black out 99% of the light. And they are a lovely caramel colored silk.

It was superb to be on my new soft mattress with the fairly new queen sized faux down pillows and 400 count sheets and a lovely mid weight comforter. I slept till the lights went on at 7, along with KOMO. Listened to the Typical Seattle weather and traffic reports, turned off the radio & lights and slept till 9:30.

Was at work by 10:30, not much to do, still waiting for a new build.

Lunch was at Denny's I wanted to see the hobbit menu. I had the hobbit hole breakfast with an side of shire sausage.

Tasted far better than it looked. Those two things in the foreground are English muffins with sunny-side-up eggs cooked into them and topped with cheese. The hash browns are covered in cheddar and bacon. The sausage was pretty good, too.

Back to no-work, then straight home.

Looked at the Boskone art invite, and they will let me buy only one panel, which means 10 photos of the size I displayed at Chicon7. So I signed up for one panel, also bought a full membership (I won't be going, but they ought to require at least a supporting membership for mail-in artists, but they don't offer a supporting membership). I looked through my Worldcon pix, and picked out 6 which are fannish, added two from a previous show, and ordered several of the Endeavor piggyback event from Costco, of which I will pick two, or maybe three - and ditch an older NASA Ames photo from the older set, and have those mounted. Plenty of time, the con is in February. Boston is not a place I want to be in mid-winter.

Got the CD of my knee's X-ray and MRI images, but they are in a format which need to be viewed from a special piece of software, also on the CD. Not intuitive. At first I thought there was one image from each, but there's a "play" button, and maybe a dozen MRI shots from two orientations. They had to be print-screened and slapped into Paint to be useful.

It came with a 6-page write up which is much more detailed than what the doctor provided. I posted some of those on FB as works of modern art. I like this one the best:


My WWII veteran uncle in NYC emailed that he and my aunt were able to get to DC this weekend for a reunion of the Vietnam era version of his 39th combat infantry battalion, which had invited him. He is one of very few remaining WWII members, and they treated him like the hero he is. He was surprised and touched at the very warm reception, and he said my aunt got the same from the wives. I love how he describes the final day sitting in the hotel lobby chatting and answering questions like he was holding court. Every time Uncle opens his mouth he's holding court, I can visualize the scene clearly. :-)

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Treat myself to a birthday dinner. Lobster, probably.

 

Up way late (I have the lights set to all turn off at 1:30 am, and I was at the PC when that happened. I think I was in bed by 2:30) so I slept way in, 9:30 I was still asleep when the alarm went off. Watched some football on the bedroom TV, got up & drugged & dressed & played on the PC.

Lunch was franks & beans, a traditional football watching meal. Bought a pile of beef franks on my last Costco trip,  and after years of turkey franks these are too salty and harsh. I'll stick to using them in pasta and omelets.

Domino was way more attentive to my lunch than she needed to be, at one point jumping up on the arm of the recliner to get a better look.

Stripped the bed and threw the bedding into the washer. Looked for a T-shirt to wear, which is when I stumbled upon all the Thai shirts I thought were lost in the mail. Before making the bed with another set of sheets, I pulled off the mattress pad, and yes, that's what was turning the comfortable mattress into something too firm. Also started a load in the dishwasher.

I popped my Brigadoon OBC CD into the PC and tried to learn to music I was sent for callbacks, but the tune is all over the place - it's a jig - and it starts way higher and I think in a different key than what comes before. Glad I was not interested in this part. I also went over the bit from the script they sent, for a different character. It's a lovely quirky part, but he doesn't sing. At. All. I don't enjoy playing a non-singing part in a musical. I think for this one I'd rather be in the ensemble.

So, 2 pm rolled around, time to start making my way to the car. I got to the rehearsal hall 5 minutes before my 2:25 scheduled call, but they were running late, and it was a good half hour before my turn. The posted schedule on the green room wall said I would read first, then there was another group reading another scene, and then I sing.

There were three of us going for the non-singing part, and I think I was 2nd best. They had us read against the two male leads (there were 3 sets of those also), and then the director told us he wanted the character to be more energetic & a bit quirky, so try it again y'all. I may have done best in the round, but #1 was good too, he just chose a different quirky.

After that I sat through 5x2 readings of the strangest scene in the play - the young stranger would rather sleep than be seduced by the town slut. Three of the women who were trying for that part would not get a "no" from me.

So, enter the accompanist, and it seems I am the only one called back for Sandy the candy man. I am totally lost trying to pull the first note out of thin air, and almost as lost following the tune. So the music director comes over to me and sings it with me a few times, gives some clues, and has me sing it  a couple of times by myself. I get the impression he really wants my voice in his chorus (which is what Sandy does after the first Big Number). We go way back, he was director of Pirates of Penzance when this group was strictly G&S, back in 2004. But as I said ensemble would suit me fine.

It was fun, especially since I didn't care if I got a major part.

Plugged Starbucks into the GPS and was reminded there was one less than a mile away I'd been meaning to try. It's in a shopping plaza which is half Costco and half Staples-plus-small stuff. It was not easy to get to, there is no street entrance on that side, you have to come from the other side and drive through Staples' parking lot. I stopped off at Staples first, and got a box of calendar mailer envelopes. Then saw that Starbucks was closed Sundays. :-(

So, went to the one which is on the way home, and sat on an uncomfortable stool of a couple of hours because that's how long it took on their overloaded wi-fi to install the company version of anti-virus and its 9 updates.

Next stop, Safeway, which had a special on chicken stock, which reminded me I have two pounds of gizzards in the freezer, taking up needed space, waiting to made into soup. Also got the bullion cubes for work and the Klondike bars which were on my list, and some Stoufer's lasagna for dinner. And some other frozen meals.

On my way home, saw the produce place where I usually buy pickling cukes, and realized I had no veggies for the soup. So I got parsnip, carrots, celery, onion and garlic.

Home, turned on the football game, hauled out the crock pot, pre-heated the oven for the lasagna, put grocs away. Pulled out the Cuisinart and sliced up the veggies, then pulled up a stool and peeled 2 heads of garlic while the gizzards defrosted in the microwave.

Finally got to the recliner in time for the miserably rainy 4th quarter.

Had half the "feeds 6" lasagna, again with Domino's eyeballs on it. After I was done I gave her the plate to lick, but she wasn't interested.

Stirred the crock pot to get the meat distributed and the slices unstuck from each other.

Also, mounted my NOLA art on the livingroom walls.

And here I am now. Whew.


Plans for tomorrow:
9 am team meeting
get my nails done
MNF
Unload the dryer & dishwasher

ADD strikes again. Reading my email there was a reminder to bring my theater resume to auditions Sunday, which meant adding the last two shows I was in, tweaking the photo and printing it. Done. Strange but true, the last show I did for this theater group is not listed on their history archive.

Work was busy, more automation stuff, two bugs to revisit, a new employee to send some internal software to, and some heavy duty packet chasing.

Lunchtime I picked up the RMA car alarm remote, they sent a new-in-the-box one. Getting it out of the box took more time for the tech than pairing it to the car.

Next stop was only a few doors up the block, Mattress Discounters, which is practically across the street from its two biggest competitors. Tried three of the Sealy Posturepedics, found the one which felt like the one at the sleep clinic, and before I even asked, he dropped the price $150 for the queen mattress and box springs, and also gave me a deal on a new frame (just the basic one, but I think I've had the one I have been using for about 20 years). This replaces a 15-year-old mattress which was wonderful when I got it, but no longer.

It didn't really matter which of the 3 places I bought it, they all have a best price guarantee. Sleep Train's commercials annoy me, they are everywhere and everywhen. I hate it when they make the radio talent do the commercials, with their train whistle pipe. And the name - what on earth is the connection between sleeping and taking the train? Mancini's Sleep World also over-advertises, and they were out of stock on the one I wanted when I checked online.

I looked into Costco, but they charge extra for hauling away the old mattress, and for the model I wanted they charged extra for the box springs, and the frame is sold separately.

Anyway, the way MD does it, they call from their dispatch center the same evening to say what 2-hour window they will arrive, so all I knew was Saturday.

More work at work, then off to Palo Alto for Stanford Theater's showing of the original 1920's version of Phantom of the Opera, with Lon Chaney. Along the way Mattress Discounters called, my delivery will be somewhere between 9 am and 11 am. Excellent! I headed for my secret parking lot, all 5 floors were filled solid, and it was so much fun waiting for people to turn around their SUVs and Urban Attack Vehicles in the most awkward places. That ate about 15 minutes. I parked across the street at the CalTrain lot, which meant buying a $4 ticket 2 blocks away. When I got to the theater the line was half a block long, which is fine because it probably went around the block at the time I'd planned to be there. This theater I'm not a senior, but it's not very expensive.

I found a seat in the balcony, one with leg room - the second section from the bottom, with an aisle in front of me. Never again. The number of people walking in and out during the show was obscene.

This theater usually begins with an organ concert, so when the organist stopped playing after his signature opening number and turned around to chat, I was puzzled. He gave a complete history of not just the print we were going to see, but all the prints ever made (another of which will be shown over the weekend), and how he got his first shot at playing a theater organ at college by organizing a Halloween showing of this film. Then he turned around, the organ lowered into the pit, and I got un-puzzled when he started to play the accompaniment. Dennis James is his name, and he played straight through, no stops, no intermission, for about 90 minutes. The print was a hodgepodge of splices of various quality, apparently there is no existing original print intact, but it was pretty good. It would have been better with the first 40 minutes, where they establish the relationship between the mystery voice and the soprano. Anyhow, standing ovation, loud applause. Worth full price.

I am by now starving, and I have always wanted to try the Peninsula Creamery, which is open late and probably older than I am. There is no place to sit, because 1/4 of the place has been reserved for a middle school drama troupe, and it's a popular place without that. After about 5 minutes a spot opens up at the counter, I read the very large menu, decide what I want, and wait. After 10 minutes of none of the staff even looking at me, I am fed up with being ignored and having my back to all the Sweet Young Things in the main seating area, so I leave. By this time the reserved section has been filled to overflowing, so I don't feel guilty, they have plenty of other customers. Some other time, then.

I go across the street to a new place called Thaifoon, it looks like they are closing soon, I ask the waitress in Thai when they close, and she asks in English if I want to see the menu. I'm 90% sure she is Thai, so I just say "no" and walk on by. Every place I go to is either closing in half an hour, closed, or not real food. Finally I remember the Cheesecake Factory waaaaaaaaay down University, they are open till midnight or 1 on Fridays. Fast service, my only gripe is it is so dark in there I need to use my cell phone "flashlight" app to read the menu. I am across the room from the bar, and between me and the bar TVs is eye candy. Lots of it. Especially right in front of me is a strawberry blonde, green-eyed petite woman having drinks with a female friend. Lovely view.

I had the combo shrimp scampi/Steak Diane, neither of which were exactly what I think of when someone mentions those dishes, but they were both delicious. Had the caramel pecan turtle cheesecake for dessert which was excellent except for the stale swirl of chocolate fudge on top half the size of the piece of cake. Service was okay, but looking at how far she had to trot to get to her tables from the kitchen, I gave her a big tip.

Back to the car, the alleged jazz group which was at the plaza was breaking up for the night. When I passed by on the way to the theater it sounded like 11 people with musical instruments they had just seen for the first time today, each playing their own tune in their own key and without anything identifiable as rhythm. This is a major reason I don't like jazz. It gets sloppy. In fact, sloppy gets high marks most of the time. I enjoy playing jazz because I'm a sloppy player, but I don't enjoy listening to it. There are exceptions.

Home, give Domino her whipped cream and open up a new package of dry treats for her. She still yells at me. I shift a lot of boxes and some furniture into other rooms so there is a better path for the bed.

Way past time for bed. I set the alarm for 7 so I will have time to shower & shave before they are due. I can take a nap after they leave.

Plans for tomorrow:
Up early
Mattress
Nap
Maybe go to Convolutions for the afternoon & parties
Figure out what music I'll audition with. Practice it.
Fall back

Is what it felt like. Team meeting at work, boss is back from Thailand. Closed one feature request, tested a new feature which was buggy in the previous build, the thing which was wrong was fixed in the new build, but they broke something else (less severe). So one giant leap forward and a micro step back.

Lunchtime was Costco for gas, refill inkjet cartridges (or buy new ones) and p/up Worldcon prints. Got gas, but they don't refill the cartridges I need and don't sell them either. Picked up the prints, was suspicious when both auto-corrected and non were in the same envelope. Got them back to work and discovered they had made a booboo and forgot to turn off auto-correct on three prints, which made two of them useless and one not quite as good as I wanted. Instead of going back to hassle them I just ordered them from the other Costco, to be picked up after work. After 7 pm, actually. That meant no BASFA.

Had time to drive down to Great America and take a peek at the 49ers stadium construction in high gear. Four big orange cranes barely fit on the site. Lunch at Togo's nearby, then back to work.

Not much to do, so I read some specs.

Home, took a nap, picked up the three prints at Costco in MV, then drove to Aaron Brothers in Svale and had to explain all over again what I wanted because the fellow I talked to last time was not there. The nice woman understood just fine, came up with the same price. Something I forgot to ask last time was if they shipped, but they don't. Not a big deal, I need to send by UPS with pre-paid return, and I think I have a box from the last move. If not I'm sure UPS will help with that.

Home, dinner was corned beef and stuffing. Domino liked the corned beef till it dried out. Replacement soda siphon arrived, and is working just fine. Same brand as the last one. Email from Amazon said the other brand was out of stock, so got only one not two.

Watched some Olympics, but this FF for hours is getting old. And Tivo's list of what's in each program is not always correct. I think I'll switch to BBC online or Youtube to see what I want. So far none of the boxing matches have featured actual boxing. Have yet to see any women's gymnastics except floor routines. And very few US team sports. At Togo's they had the USA-Hungary women's water polo, but they apparently left the horses behind. The TV display was broken, so we only saw the USA score. :-(

No rehearsal tomorrow night. Not sure what I'll do.

No plans for tomorrow except work.

Started the morning on the phone to Tivo support, they worked around the hung machine by having me unplug the wi-fi adapter and plug it back in. When I left for work it said it was 78% done downloading.

All-hands meeting at 8 am, since it was being held at MMI HQ in Chicago. Former CEO spoke, I was not impressed. Google founder spoke, he did very well for someone who probably would prefer to be in his office, coding. New CEO spoke, I was very impressed. He knows how to do a presentation, Q&A showed he listens & remembers.

Checked my brokerage account, and yes, by golly, yesterday all my MMI stock was automagically cashed out at $40/share. Which is good because technically I didn't pay anything for them. But technically I  did. Here's what happened:

In 2007-9 I bought Moto stock on the employee purchase plan. It started at $10.50 but kept going down, probably was about $7 when I pulled the plug on a losing program. When Moto split into MMI and MMS, I got about 1 share of MMI for every 6 of Moto, and the full number of shares of MMS. Then MMS split 8 for 1 or something bad like that.

Anyhow, the cash out is good enough to buy 5 shares of Google on a good day. Which I don't plan on doing.

Lots of busy stuff at work, and a bug fix to verify, which was fun to work with. Took an old set of commercials and set them to play in a loop as if they were a cable program. Did the same with a couple of other video clips.

Lunchtime I went to the Safeway at Rivermark, needed a few minor items, also got some creamy goat cheese to put on the sourdough mini slices I had on the counter at home. Then to Yo Yo Sushi across the parking lot. This one is about the same as the other one I went to recently. Excellent sashimi.

1-on-1 with the boss, he missed the meeting, so he asked what I could tell him about it.

I'm between projects, so I volunteered for a boring one but it's one I can do. My main project was supposed to begin Monday but engineering is not ready.

Home, fired up the Tivo and it was back at square 1, and hung at the same place as last time, but with a different error message. Workaround B got me through - power off the adapter & the router, then router up and then adapter back in place. Then I called Comcast to pair the cable card. The tech had no idea what he was doing, but I did so it all worked out.

I managed to add my season passes, except for football season because Tivo had not loaded the full database yet. No rush. It hung on me while I was doing that, same as the box it was replacing, so I re-arranged some furniture to get the Tivo wi-fi adapter away from the big speaker and near the wall which the router is on the other side of.

Tivo was recording on both tuners, so I fired up the DVD player, launched Amazon Prime and watched an old Star Trek episode.

Dinner was celery stalks, ha gow and sui mai with double chocolate fudge brownie ice cream, and pistachios for dessert. No goat cheese because I'd forgotten the sourdough minis had gotten moldy so I threw them out 2 days ago.

I had planned to take a nap, but that only lasted half an hour.

The old Tivo and the ASUS Zan machine are boxed up and ready go to UPS

Plans for tomorrow:
work
UPS
YOTB rehearsal

The highlight of my day, and maybe week, was the visit from my little sister, who flew into SJC on her way to a gardening workshop tomorrow in Santa Cruz. She arrived at my work at noon, but everyone on my team had gone to lunch. I gave her a tour of my cubicle and the lab, showed her a couple of video magic tricks, then took her to my favorite little Thai place for lunch (she loved it) and then to my apartment where Domino got more than enough affection to last her.

And I gave her a small bag of goodies, which she got a kick out of. ( Read more... )

Back to work, where she had a chance to chat with my boss and the Israeli IT guy who sits in the next office, at the same time - open doors and we were right outside in the hallway. IT guy was thrilled when Sis said she had been to Israel a couple of times. She had some interesting answers to his questions about places there she had been. She wrapped up with a joke, which I think I may have told her:

( Read more... )

She is a very people person, and the fact that she is an engineer and understands what kind of work we do, she had some good conversations when I took her around to meet the team members. I had always thought of her as shy, but she talked a blue streak, and is very much a people person, it turns out. I'd never seen her interact with strangers before - she has a gift for it.

At about 3 I sent her on her way south, with a couple of hints to add to the directions she already had. She texted at about 5 that she got there okay. And emailed a photo later taken from the pier. Overcast, but not raining.

1-on-1 with the boss, he said he heard the team liked my sister, when can she start work? She probably would enjoy working there, but not living someplace so non-rural. Got some things to do from boss, which may help fill some of the time till my next formal assignment starts in May.

Was very tired, not enough sleep the last few nights (stayed up too late). Home, tried to crash but the first nap was only half an hour. Next nap took me to 9 pm.

Put a pizza in the oven while making an SD card with both the 2011 Garmin map and my personal points of interest on it. The map takes up 2GB, so I needed a 4GB card, which is SDHC. I'm not sure if the Kenwood can read that kind of card. Will see in the morning.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
3:30 - head for the Domain Hotel with my photos
Hang whichever ones they have space for, and attend the 6 pm reception.