Tag work (34)
two work vignettes; or, debugging is fun!
Mood: tired
Posted on 2012-01-19 14:20:00
Tags: essay work programming
Words: 414
1. I had a bug filed to me about a hang happening. It started happening after some code I submitted in September that seemed pretty unrelated - I added a flag to let some calls be made in a certain way that _could_ cause a hang, but I only made one call behave that way, and I was pretty darn sure that wasn't happening in this particular example.
So I tried to debug what was happening with the hang, but I don't have a lot of experience figuring such things out, so I asked someone over to help. It took a few hours and we didn't learn too much except it did seem to be related to the flag I added.
After stepping away from the keyboard a bit, I did some thinking, and realized that the only thing that made any sense is that my flag must be set on the call that was happening right before the hang. I couldn't see how that would have happened, but I had an outlandish and unlikely theory.
The next day, I was eager to check it out, and lo and behold the flag was being set! When my breakpoint got hit, I was giddy with happiness because I had reasoned out the problem. Although my outlandish theory was totally wrong (the real culprit was a 64-bit int being silently coerced to a 32-bit int...grrr), I was happy I had deduced what must be happening.
Lesson: I'm often eager to jump in and start debugging, but thinking about the problem (i.e. playing "What Do We Know?") can be valuable too.
2. I was debugging a different problem, and I knew some part of a data structure was returning some sort of error code from a particular operation. Unfortunately, I was debugging a release build, and so I didn't have an easy way of figuring out which one since there was very little debug information about local variables, etc.
So, I dropped down to disassembly (which never lies!) and stepped through one statement at a time. When I found that a particular call returned an error, I would "Set Next Statement" to before the assembly was setting up the call and then step into it. It took a little while, but I was comforted that I was guaranteed to find which part of the structure was returning the error.
Anyway, it was neat because I felt like I was totally in control of the executing code. Fun times!
recruiting trip, excitement to come!
Mood: relaxed
Posted on 2011-09-25 21:12:00
Tags: travel work
Words: 274
I just got back from recruiting at Penn State, and boy are my arms tired! Wait...that's not right. Anyway, I'm exhausted, and hopefully recording my itinerary will make me think twice next time I volunteer for a trip:
Tuesday:
- 2 PM: leave for airport. Realize flight is delayed and am probably going to miss connection in DC. Hang out at Austin airport for a good while.
- 11:30 PM: arrive in DC. Get hotel and taxi vouchers from United. Take taxi to hotel. Order 5:45 wakeup call.
Wednesday:
- 5:45 AM: wake up, be unhappy, go to airport
- 9:30 AM: arrive in State College
- 11 AM-4 PM: career fair day #1 (interns). 5 hours standing and most of that talking.
- 6 PM: Eat dinner, look at giant stack of resumes, drink beer, chat about NI.
Thursday:
- 9 AM: Wake up with throat dry and feet sore. (but glad for the extra sleep)
- 11 AM-4 PM: career fair day #2 (full-time). 5 more hours of standing and talking.
- 4 PM-7 PM: finish info session presentation, look at some resumes, order pizza & drinks for info session.
- 7 PM-10 PM: hold highly engaging, but long, info session.
- 10 PM-12:30 AM: finish looking at resumes, call people to set up interviews.
Friday:
- 7 AM: wake up with worse throat and feet. Curse the early hour.
- 8:30 AM-5 PM: survive interviews somehow
- etc.: drink beer, finish paperwork, collapse.
--
On the whole, I still enjoyed myself, and enjoy finding good candidates to work at NI. But, man, it's really tiring.
--
In unrelated news, I think two exciting things will happen this week, but don't want to jinx them. So, watch this space!
pouring good news
Mood: happy
Posted on 2011-08-01 13:41:00
Tags: palmpre work
Words: 79
Last week was a shower of good news!
- I got promoted at work! Now I'm a Senior Software Engineer, which doesn't translate into anything different on a day-to-day basis. But I'm still excited :-)
- I am now officially a webOS Black Belt developer! Looks like I get some nice marketing material for my webOS apps, as well as a hefty discount on developer devices.
- (good news #3 is embargoed for now, but hopefully I'll get to talk about it soon...)
Why gays should come out at work
Mood: pensive
Posted on 2011-07-01 16:32:00
Tags: essay gay work
Words: 262
David sent me a link to Why gays should come out at work and I almost broke my neck from the vigorous agreeing that followed.
When I started at NI in 2003, David in I weren't out in general, and so I was naturally closeted at work. This was isolating - people asked if I was single or not, and so I said I was single. And then when people asked what was I had been up to last weekend, I would have to leave out things or outright lie.
It probably doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was very uncomfortable at the time, and made me feel dishonest because, well, I was being dishonest!
Even after we did come out to friends and "the world", I felt like it was weird to come out to coworkers, like I'd be making too big a deal out of it. (and I was still fairly uncomfortable with it myself) So I continued to be closeted at work until I left the company in 2006.
Of course, the reason I left the company was that David got a job in Maryland. I wanted to be clear to my coworkers that that's why I was leaving, not because I was unhappy at NI or anything. So I ended up coming out at a group meeting and saying I was leaving. It was fairly terrifying at the time, although everyone was supportive.
Since then, I've been out at all of my jobs and everything's been fine. I even have a picture of David on my desk :-)
a sigh of relief
Mood: relieved
Posted on 2011-06-22 10:24:00
Tags: palmpre work
Words: 75
Yesterday two awesome things happened:
- a bunch of work stress magically disappeared
- I finished and submitted most of the webOS apps that will be ready at the TouchPad launch (July 1)
Both of these had been causing me a lot of stress, to the point of not sleeping well. So I'm really excited about putting these behind me.
(also, I submitted 4 apps last night, and when I woke up 3 were accepted already. Yay!)
links amid the downtime
Mood: calm
Posted on 2011-04-06 13:40:00
Tags: work links
Words: 193
LiveJournal has been under a DDOS attack/really flaky this week. I know because I keep getting emails LJ for WebOS users. Sorry, everyone!
- SpaceX announced the Falcon Heavy rocket, which is the world's most powerful (excluding the Saturn V), and launches will only cost ~$100 million. More stats in the press release. Hey, and they use LabVIEW!
- Should You Give Money to Homeless People? - from the article:
The short answer is no. The long answer is yes, but only if you work for an organization that can ensure the money is spent wisely.*- Perhaps the best Reddit question ever begins with
I like big butts and I cannot lie, but is there some evolutionary reason as to why?- A Murder Foretold - long New Yorker article about the "ultimate political conspiracy" in Guatemala. Reads like a Tom Clancy novel or something. (but with fewer submarines)
byte manipulation in Javascript = not fun
Mood: irritated
Posted on 2011-02-24 09:22:00
Tags: palmpre projects work programming
Words: 191
Google's two-factor authentication is a really good idea, so I'm trying to port the Google Authenticator to webOS. This involves calculating hash values, etc. in Javascript, which is a giant pain because Javascript knows nothing but signed 32-bit integers and 64-bit floating point datatypes. So every time I look at the sample Java code and it uses a byte[], that means I have to manually convert to the -128..127 range. And the sample code does some things like converting 4 bytes to an int, which is easy in Java but a pain in Javascript.
Anyway, finally I had the bright idea to actually compile the Java code so I could compare the results, because I generated at least twenty different codes trying various permutations of things, none of which were right.
Another thing I learned! If you return an error string from a constructor, this does essentially nothing. You still get a constructed object. So, if your library is doing this, there's a 99% chance that no one's going to notice without a lot of pain in suffering.
Adding to my troubles: I am involved in some heavy yak-shaving at work.
things that inspire emotions in me
Mood: okay
Posted on 2011-01-17 13:16:00
Tags: palm work links
Words: 264
(yes I am terrible at subjects)
First up, anger: Vaccines do not cause autism, and the original study (based on 12(!) children) done by Andrew Wakefield in 1998 appears to be fraudulent. No one's been able to reproduce the study, and Wakefield was paid by a law firm that intended to sue vaccine manufacturers. Meanwhile vaccination rates are down, and more kids are getting measles, seemingly because people like Jenny McCarthy keeps pushing the connection even though there is none. I hope Wakefield is prosecuted - he's already lost his medical license...
Surprised: The Austin MetroRail now runs during the day, starting tomorrow! I'm surprised because it sounded like this would be impossible because of contracts with freight rail companies that use the same track, but apparently they worked something out. It's still only on weekdays (and only every 45 mins-1 hour), but this seems like a big step forward.
Excited: HP/Palm is having a "special event" February 9 to announce presumably new hardware, and they invited developers for a small event after the official announcement. Sounds like a good time, but vacation/plane tickets/hotels are expensive. I will be eagerly following from here, though, and desperately hoping for a new Sprint device!
Intrigued: More details on Stuxnet, the virus that set back Iran's nuclear efforts by years have emerged. It's looking increasingly likely that either the US or Israel or both were involved.
Inquisitive: NI is hiring software engineers, so if you're interested in a job in Austin, drop me a line! (working here is generally awesome) Vaguely related: Advice to a college sophomore programmer.
Fine, I'm getting old
Mood: tired
Posted on 2010-06-02 09:38:00
Tags: work
Words: 65
This weekend I spent some time outside throwing (and hitting) a wiffle ball. My back was pretty sore yesterday and it took me a long time to figure out that was the cause!
I'm giving an presentation at work in a few weeks, which I like doing. Writing the slides, however, feels a lot like writing an essay, which I hate (and am terrible at).
craving HDL
Mood: excited
Posted on 2009-06-18 09:31:00
Tags: health work
Words: 91
I had a physical yesterday, and like last time my HDL is still low. (it's 28...somethings and normal is 40...somethings) The good news is that my triglycerides and LDL were normal this time. Oh, and I need to lose some weight, which I already knew.
I got my results on a nice little sheet with the normal values and what I could do (non-medicationwise) to improve the values. On literally every measure, the first two items were "Lose weight" and "Exercise more". Um, great.
Also, I moved at work today! Exciting.
post-birthday blues
Mood: stressed
Posted on 2009-04-21 13:01:00
Tags: health rant birthday work wedding politics
Words: 297
Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes! I had a nice dinner and post-dinner Rock Band session (we're Rock Immortals now!) and caught up a bit with my family. And we're making really good progress on wedding stuff, so that's gotten a lot less stressful. Also, now I'm 27, which is 33, and next year I'll be 28 which is a perfect number! (after that, it's all downhill, I'm sure)
That notwithstanding, things kinda suck right now. Let me run down why, because I'm sure you're all dying to know!
Torture - So when Ex-President Bush said "We don't torture", apparently what he meant was "We don't torture, except when we do". This is not terribly surprising, but it is a little depressing. (we waterboarded one guy 183 times in a month even after he had given up intelligence) I haven't had the heart to read the memos, but I applaud Obama for releasing them.
Work - The last week of work has been the worst week in at least a year. (I wish I had some sort of device where I recorded how work went that day, then I could track the data over time and say definitively how bad last week was!) This week is shaping up to be somewhat better, but it looks like I'm going to be generally stressed for at least another month and a half.
Teeth - As I mentioned, my filled tooth still hurts, and my mom and djedi convinced me to see the dentist again. And they took an X-ray and it looks like I need yet another root canal, to the tune of $1200 out of pocket. I'm going to get a second opinion, which means more work and stress and time away from work, which means more work stress. Argh.
benchmark analyzer!
Mood: proud
Posted on 2009-02-24 10:20:00
Tags: projects work
Words: 164
So I wrote this benchmark analyzer to analyze benchmarks that have many parameters and try to figure out what the important ones are. To that end, it creates a decision tree in R, and also generates lots of boxplots to visualize the different parameters. Here's a sample report (with boring data). It also (somewhat cleverly) saves the original .csv file with the web page it generates, so you can save the page and send it to a colleague who can play with the options and rerun the analysis.
It occurred to me as I was prettying this up that most benchmarks don't involve lots of parameters, and so the probability that anyone else is going to find this useful is pretty low. I'm OK with that because
- it's useful to me right this very moment for work stuff
- I had fun writing it and learned some more about R
- pretty graphs!
- it was good to work on something other than whereslunch.org for a while
psychology is weird
Mood: chipper
Posted on 2009-02-09 15:34:00
Tags: work
Words: 35
It's weird that I started the day in a meh mood, got very frustrated this morning, and now that the source of the frustration doesn't apply anymore I'm happy. Mood is not a conservative force!
(no subject)
Mood: okay
Posted on 2008-07-23 10:14:00
Tags: asmc work worldofwarcraft
Words: 195
Rehearsals are going pretty well, albeit a bit tiring. We're about to get into "oh crap the shows is really really soon and we all suck" mode (it's an annual occurrence), but once we buckle down I think all will be well.
After rehearsal last night, I arrived home to find a few "dude, did you steal all the stuff in the guild bank?" IMs. Not a good sign. Tried to log in to WoW and couldn't, so I reset the password online and discovered that I had, indeed, done so. The weird thing is that the thief took basically all 5000 of my gold, but didn't sell any of my soulbound gear, and cleared out most of my bank but not all of it. And didn't find the 8 Primal Mights and 450 gold on my auction house mule.
Anyway, I filed a petition to get my crap back, which I think they usually do, and presumably they'll restore the guild bank as well. Yet another way WoW is better than the real world :-)
This week I've been superproductive at work...let's see if that continues today.
This article about purity balls is kinda creepy.
a short list of things that anger me
Mood: enraged
Posted on 2008-07-07 14:44:00
Tags: work programming
Words: 27
- Visual Basic 6
- bugs that don't happen when you set a breakpoint but do otherwise
- bugs that make you think you're losing your mind
- Visual Basic 6
ah, Heisenbugs
Mood: annoyed
Posted on 2008-07-02 09:40:00
Tags: work programming
Words: 68
Yesterday I was going to say that, when debugging a problem, I had caused another problem by popping up debugging MessageBoxes. (tip: VB6 does not like coercing non-string-like objects to strings implicitly) But after I fixed that, it turns out that popping up MessageBoxes actually seems to fix the real problem. Arrrrgh.
Happy 4th! Here are 21 hilariously hyperbolic pro-America songs. I recommend "America, Fuck Yeah" (number 21).
The good news
Mood: happy
Posted on 2008-05-29 13:07:00
Tags: work links
Words: 131
I'm feeling pumped! Got a debugger working that should help me out and one of my problems looks like the same as another problem someone else is looking at. Also, I think I finally got the right number for 3 card straight flushes of a specific suit!
Other things that make me happy:
- Making good progress in GTA IV. (incidentally, so far it's affected my brain less than Katamari Damacy...after playing that game for a while I kept looking for things to roll up!)
- Six Degrees of Wikipedia - very interesting. Billie Jean King is better connected than the United States!
- New York state will recognize gay marriages performed in other states!
- This clip from 30 Rock about the uncanny valley.
- This Starbucks commercial. Glen! Glen!Glen!Glen! (think "Eye of the Tiger", here)
this has been a long week
Mood: rejuvenated
Posted on 2008-04-18 10:59:00
Tags: work worldofwarcraft links
Words: 237
mostly because I've been horribly unproductive at work. Luckily, the Productivity Fairy has waved his magic wand and yesterday and today have been much better.
Rolled out the new version of the Frost mage DPS calculator (hopefully soon to be arcane and fire as well) - here's the old version for comparsion. I think it looks a lot nicer now.
This story about a non-doctor having a breakthrough in curing cancer makes him sound like a crank, until you get to the part where his method is being tested in hospitals now, including M. D. Anderson. The late Dr. Smalley (that felt weird to type) helped out by providing some nanoparticles.
I'm hesitant to link this story about elevators because it discusses a guy who was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. Make sure you're in a strong mental state before watching the sped up security camera footage of the ordeal. The piano music makes it even more tragic.
Last night's Zul'Aman run went well - we downed the Bear and Eagle bosses with 9 minutes (plenty of time!) before the sacrifice and killed Hex Lord Malacrass for the first time. Did a decent job on Zul'Jin - almost got through phase 3 before we called it a night. Unfortunately wowjutsu hasn't picked up our new loot yet because it's slow and unreliable. (I'll admit to being bitter I didn't think of the wowjutsu idea first...genius, I tell you!)
not as deep as it sounds
Mood: content
Posted on 2008-04-01 14:42:00
Tags: work
Words: 70
From one perspective, being notified of a problem as you get to work and later fixing that problem means you haven't made any progress - from your point of view things worked as well as they did before you came to work.
From another perspective, there was a horrendous bug that you didn't know about and now that it's gone peace can reign over the codebase. I find it very satisfying!
a day of unnecessary stress
Mood: busy
Posted on 2008-02-19 10:01:00
Tags: django work programming
Words: 282
First I was stressed about a recruiting meeting, which ended fine and without my being asked any questions. Then I was stressed about playing bridge with onefishclappin and the gang - it went fine, I had a lot of fun and I think I played at least well enough not to embarrass myself (or onefishclappin). Duplicate is a really nice format, and the bidding boxes are very elegant. 24 hands in 3 hours is a lot, though - my brain was fried by the end!
I was also stressed by a horrendously tricky bug at work, but that's worth stressing over, at least during work hours.
Carpet costs more than we thought it would (anyone surprised?) but it'll be fine. I just want to get the damn thing installed, really.
Now I'm stressed about taking my MacBook in today to see if they can fix my "Control" and "v" keys. That would make me a happy person.
Django question: (sorry yerfdogyrag, meant to ask you last night but see earlier bit about brain-frying) On my main page, I want a drop-down box that selects which person to see gifts for, and then some way to do that. Two options I've come up with:
- Use a <form> with a <select>, and GET the results to a different page. The problem with this is that the URLs get kinda ugly, which I'm not thrilled with. Should I do a redirect to the nicer-looking URL?
- Do some javascript stuff in the <select> element that changes the target of a link to the nicer-looking URL. But, I'm currently using the newforms library to generate the form - is there a good way to insert javascript in the onChange handler?
*twitch*
Mood: nervous
Posted on 2008-02-06 13:49:00
Tags: health work
Words: 97
My right eye has been doing this weird twitching for the past 5 days or so. It doesn't happen all the time, and it doesn't hurt, but sometimes it'll just start twitching like the eyelid is stuck open or caught on something. And the eye does feel a little dry. Anyone have any clue whether this is serious or not? It's a little irritating, but I can live with it if it's not the sign of some larger problem (eye falling out, for example - that would be bad).
Work meeting #1 today, big work meeting #2 tomorrow.
MacBook Pro: October 17, 2007 - ?
Mood: anxious
Music: Radiohead - "Sulk"
Posted on 2008-01-31 07:59:00
Tags: work house worldofwarcraft mac computer politics links
Words: 366
While kicking butt in Arathi Basin last night, I knocked a big ol' glass of tea right onto my $3000 laptop. A good chunk of it went in the keyboard (which made the laptop turn off which is probably a good thing given the alternatives), so djedi hurriedly mopped as much as we could off, disconnected it and moved it to higher ground. (it's currently sitting upside-down on our dining room table in the hopes that it will drain or something) I didn't have the heart to try to turn it on this morning - guess I'll see about that tonight. I did buy the AppleCare for it, although I don't know if that covers spills or not.
The weird thing was that I wasn't super panicked or angry or whatever. I was upset at myself, but I know that I'm prone to clumsiness when I'm tired. (like when I burned my thumb on the oven last week!) And if the laptop is unrecoverable, well, that would suck, but I could get by for iPod syncing and WoW playing and whatnot. It would be nice if it worked though.
Ironically, I was just yesterday reading about jwz's backup strategy and thinking it sounded like a good idea. Not that I had anything particularly interesting on the laptop data-wise (I always back up my iTunes database), but still...
Other than that, work has been going really really well this week. My mom visits next Wednesday, Friday we close on our house (!), and that weekend djedi's parents are coming to hopefully buy carpet for us and stuff, which will be quite helpful.
I'm going to miss campaigning in Florida, specifically hearing about Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani saying that English should be the national language, and then advertising in Spanish. That's some good hypocrisy, there. Via dailykos, an article in Rolling Stone about how Republican's immigrant-bashing is not going to help them, especially in the Southwest.
Finally, on the way home I heard this kinda-brutal story on NPR about how Giuliani should have taken his advice from his leadership book, complete with excerpts from the audiobook itself. (it's the story on top, not the longer story on the bottom)
puzzle pictures
Mood: excited
Posted on 2008-01-23 14:55:00
Tags: phone pictures projects work
Words: 266
I took pictures of the latest puzzles we've completed, whereby "we" I mean "David, Miriam, and sometimes me". The last two were taken with my new phone, which is why the color is pretty messed up. (I tried to fix it in iPhoto but I may have just made things worse) So: having a camera with me at all times: pretty neat, but I'll stick to the real camera when it's available.
Speaking of the new phone, it's pretty neat! The screen is much nicer than my old one, and it's my first clamshell phone, which I think I like. It has pretty good web access, although my one big complaint is that it doesn't let apps access the network, which means that I have to use the kinda crappy web version of Google Maps instead of the super awesome one(*) that runs on the phone.
I got my car's oil changed today, which revealed that the rat that used to live(**) in our garage was gnawing on my air filter. Luckily it didn't gnaw all the way through; I don't know what implications that would have, but I can't imagine they're good.
Work is going really well today - between that and a new project at home(***), I am really peppy!
(*) - I've never seen or used said version so it may not be super awesome.
(**) - "used to" because we haven't seen any signs of it in a while, so it seems likely it's gone. We're moving out soon anyway. Whee!
(***) - which I will post of the results of hopefully tomorrow. Thanks to destroyerj for the idea...
role reversal, music recommendations
Mood: calm
Music: Carly Comando - "Everyday"
Posted on 2008-01-17 10:18:00
Tags: getflix music projects work
Words: 485
This week I've been in the odd position of being really excited about work and not so excited about non-work projects. Work has been going really well - a lot of the setup for my big project is done so I'm getting into the fun part. The non-work project of pulling down Netflix ratings and analyzing them is pretty similar to what I've done in the past, but has enough different parts that just aren't interesting to leave me totally unenthusiastic about working on it. But I've already done enough that I feel like I should finish. I'll put it on hiatus for a while.
We've been catching up on Simpsons episodes from the last few months with people, and as a result I've seen "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind" twice in the last week or so. It's a pretty good episode, but the part that struck me both times was the montage-like scene where it shows lots of pictures of Homer throughout his life to some hauntingly beautiful piano music. Anyway, djedi found the song, which is called "Everyday" by Carly Comando and I bought it last night - yay for Amazon MP3! The scene itself is based on Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years which is pretty creepy in itself, although the music really amplifies that. Good stuff all around, and I feel bad I missed this all the way back in 2006.
Yesterday at lunch I was really happy because of a problem I had just solved, so I went out to Pars Deli, a greek place at 183 and Burnet. Unfortunately, the parking spots are deceptively thin, and so as I was pulling in I heard a noise and realized I hit the car parked next to me. After I parked and got out, the car looked like a mess, but I could brush off most of it. (dust from my bumper or something?) There was still a scratch that was very narrow but kind of long, and I wasn't quite sure what to do, and I was mad for having done it, so I just walked away to the deli. It didn't take long for my conscience to get the better of me and realize that that was a pretty stupid/selfish/horrible thing to do, so after I ordered I went back out there and left a short note with some paper I found in the car. Not my finest hour - "doing the right thing...eventually" isn't exactly high praise.
I have a few Best Buy gift cards and kinda prompted by that I'm looking for some new music. Definitely getting the new Radiohead album, other options include "Year Zero" by Nine Inch Nails, "Distortion" by The Magnetic Fields, maybe something by LCD Soundsystem ("Sound of Silver"?), maybe something by Arcade Fire. I am open to suggestions! (surprisingly hip suggestions stolen from the AV Club's best of 2007)
big day
Mood: nervous
Posted on 2008-01-09 09:18:00
Tags: rant work mortgage house
Words: 89
Big work meeting today after lunch.
We met with our mortgage guy yesterday and everything seems to be in order, so bully for that. After work we're gonna view the house again and then, in all likelihood, make an offer, which is exciting! This just in: the house was not used previously to manufacture methamphetamines (yes, this question is on the seller's disclosure).
Also, $32 per month is a ridiculous sum of money to pay to a homeowner's association, for use of a pool that we'll probably never use.
-1 for working on New Year's Eve
Mood: contemplative
Posted on 2007-12-31 13:06:00
Tags: elevator work
Words: 77
The worst part is that I'm actually getting work done. I plan to party even harder for the holiday in exchange for this. The second worst part is that there was a great elevator timing I could have taken on the way up (1->3->5->8) but I couldn't get my cell phone out of my pocket in time. Still taking data, though.
Managed to reschedule my meeting so as to not conflict with the wedding. Hooray for that!
The next two weeks
Mood: stressed
Posted on 2007-12-30 10:00:00
Tags: phone work mortgage house
Words: 230
Here's what has to happen in the next two weeks:
- New year's party (fun!)
- Shuffling money around in anticipation of making a down payment
- Picking a mortgage broker/company and finishing that paperwork
- Next weekend: Drive to Houston for djedi's brother's bachelor party.
- Next weekend: Probably with djedi's parents, looking at the house we're interested in again (and talking to neighbors about mosquitos?), as well as looking at a house we probably aren't interested in
- Figuring out whether a drainage ditch behind a house is bad or not
- Maaaaaybe, if all our ducks are lined up, making an offer on said drainage ditch house
- Holding the big proposal meeting for my big big feature at work (probably the most important meeting in my professional career thus far), attended by my former boss, boss, and boss's boss (and other people) which I stupidly scheduled for the day before...
- djedi's brother's wedding in Houston, for which I will have to drive down right after said meeting unless I can reschedule, which is unlikely given the number of people attending
After all that I'm gonna get me a new phone, the idea of which will hopefully get me through all of the above. I'm thinking either a Nokia 6133 or a Nokia 6263.
I'm declaring it's OK for myself to get very little else done as long as the bullet points above are hit.
houses houses houses...I made you out of clay...
Mood: creative
Posted on 2007-12-21 10:22:00
Tags: math elevator work house poll
Words: 408
We went house-hunting again yesterday. The first house we looked at is now our current favorite (which is good, as we heard our previous favorite is already under contract. Stop buying houses, people!), with a nice big kitchen (with an island!) that opens up to a living room which is a little on the small side but could probably fit the TV and computers. Master bedroom is plenty big and the bathrooms are nice. Plus it was built in the 90s and is reasonably priced!
Downsides:
- a bit far from freeways, although the neighborhood it's in is nice (it's off of Duval)
- there's a deck in the backyard which would be nice were it not so rundown, presumably by the current owners' (don't yell at me, there's more than one owner so I'm assuming they both own the dogs) dogs.
- living room is a little small
We have another good possibility that we'll see after the holidays, hopefully.
Now for the important stuff: at work my building has 8 floors and elevators. I work on the 8th floor, so I get plenty of time in said elevators. (fun thing to do: walk in a circle as the elevator is moving and realize that you're tracing out a helix!) Often I have to wait for other people to get off on their stupid less important floors before I get to the top, so I was wondering: let's say it's a given that we have to make two floor stops from 1 to 8. Is it better to have the stops be consecutive or spread out? For the sake of concreteness, let's say one way we stop at floors 2 and 3, and the other way we stop at floors 3 and 6.
I have an idea but I'll cut it:
Anyway, I was going to start taking measurements when I get my new phone, but it looks like the RAZR V3 doesn't have a stopwatch. (can anyone confirm?) That makes me sad. I'll come up with something, though!
getflix revamped again!
Mood: okay
Posted on 2007-12-19 10:23:00
Tags: getflix projects work
Words: 85
So I spent some time updating this script to pull your Netflix ratings and after redesigning the database tables a bit (which was fun since it isn't something I usually do) I think it's about done. Now I need to add in some analysis or something :-)
We had our release party for the new NI smart camera (get yours today!) yesterday at 300, a bowling place that feels clubby. (there were music videos playing on screens in front of lanes and such) It was fun.
things are already better!
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2007-10-30 12:52:00
Tags: work
Words: 80
I had a little trouble getting to sleep last night but I'm thinking that's because I unwittingly had a cup of caffeinated tea like 5 minutes before bed. (unwittingly referring to "caffeinated" here) Anyway I'm making some progress today which is better than yesterday, and I just feel more like I can do it. Plus I've been listening to good music, and I went to Tacodeli for lunch which I really missed. And they have Maine Root Beer on tap!
atypical weekend
Mood: pleased
Posted on 2007-07-23 09:26:00
Tags: pictures work
Words: 292
I had a really nice weekend. Saturday we had a DC-touristy day as we crossed off a few spots on the "places to see" list (pictures from the weekend). First up was the Kwik-E-Mart where we procured a Squishee and a sprinkled donut (both eaten quickly) and a Buzz Cola and box of Krusty O's (still at home). Even the employees were dressed up in Apu-like clothes (lime green!), although I felt a little weird about taking their picture. The place was pretty busy.
Library of Congress was up next - we took a tour led by a very knowledgeable woman with a delightful British accent. It's a beautiful building with lots and lots of authors and leading scientists, etc. of the day on the walls and such. After that was the National Botanic Garden which had a lot of neat-looking flowers and plants and such. Then we went to an art gallery which was sufficiently underwhelming that I don't remember its name.
We were pretty tired by this point so we went to Dupont Circle and had dinner at a trendy-looking place. Top Gun was playing on a big TV (although no sound), oddly enough.
Sunday we stayed at home, played a little WoW but mostly relaxed and read. I bought Man in the Middle by John Amaechi (the first NBA player to come out, albeit after his career was over), which was pretty interesting, and we both managed to get through it yesterday. We're saving the new Harry Potter for the big trip in September but I've mostly forgotten what happened in book 6 so we're listening to that again, which makes car trips more fun :-)
I just got a time off award at work (24 hours!), so yay for that!
projects and work and stuff!
Mood: upbeat
Music: Tori Amos - "Hotel"
Posted on 2005-11-18 13:15:00
Tags: todolist work yahoomap taxcenter
Words: 315
Ugh...so I get in this cycle where I think about things to post about, then I get busy and don't have time to, and then when I do have time to post I feel like I have so much to write about that it's overwhelming. So I don't post. Well, the cycle (this current one, anyway) ends here! Here's my decidedly incomplete post:
haha, I can't think of anything to say.
I've improved my todo list some - now you can have categories and whatnot. Still planning on tweaking it some more (so you can delete and reorder categories), and adding some sort of reminder feature (like a tickler file from "Getting Things Done").
Also, I did up a yahoo map much like my google map. It mostly works, although I want to make the markers load faster and make it zoom in when you double click. The map is based on the Beta Yahoo Maps, which uses Flash. I think I still like Google Maps a little better, but Yahoo has some nice features, as well as geocoding (turning an address into a latitude and longitude) built into the API, which I might play around with at some point.
Work is going well today. Yesterday things were going poorly, but I finally tracked down a mysterious bug yesterday evening (after spending two days finding it...) that greatly improved my life.
This weekend djedi and I are going to see Harry Potter at the Alamo Drafthouse, which I am excited about (the reviews are pretty good).
Last week we went to orientation for the tax center we're going to volunteer with again this year. It was OK (most of the stuff we already knew) but it was nice to get back in that frame of mind. Still need to go through training and get certified by the IRS. Can't wait to get the new Publication 17!
over!
Mood: content
Music: 50 Cent vs. Michael Jackson - "In Da Starlight"
Posted on 2005-08-08 11:36:00
Tags: asmc charlottesweb work
Words: 455
Wow...so, crazy weekend.
Friday night was gala night, which was very well attended. The show went pretty well, then I went out and hung out with my family - it was nice to see them again, although I'm going to see them next week on vacation as well :-) Then I was cashier for silent auction people, and then my family and djedi and I headed over to Kerbey Lane Cafe which was good (although the service was quite slow). After that, bed, then we met my family for brunch the next morning at Whole Foods and went back to the theater for two more shows. By this point I was really getting tired - my part is pretty high-energy (stumbling all over stage and whatnot), so it takes a lot out of me. Anyway, after that we went to church and came home and had wildrice13 over for dinner.
Unfortunately, I had some work stuff I was pretty worried about so I went in to work to try to fix stuff while djedi and wildrice13 played some FFX-2. I ended up spending longer than I meant to at work (3.5 hours) but I eventually got in a groove (involving listening to my current music over and over again) and fixed both of my major issues, which I was quite pumped about! Came home, and FFX-2 was passed (including the special 100% cutscene) not too long afterwards. Congrats!
Sunday I slept in a little bit, which was really nice, then back to theater for two more shows, striking the set, and the cast party. We didn't stay too long because we were tired, then we headed up to destroyerj's for a monitor-viewing and games, including a rousing game of Simpsons Clue (Smithers did it!), Snipe Hunt, and a few rounds of Bop It!
So, today is my day between shows, and Charlotte's Web rehearsal starts tomorrow. I need to work more on memorizing my lines. Busy week between gamenight, two rehearsals, and djedi's birthday (happy birthday!). I think I'm done with djedi's code for now - it seems to work and the major source of confusion we had was cleared up...
So I wear a nightguard now when I sleep so I won't grind my teeth (which I apparently do like nobody's business...). The last time I had a nightguard it was for orthodontics work I had, and it hurt every morning when I woke up (presumably because my teeth were trying to shift back or whatever), so I was pleasantly surprised to find that this one doesn't hurt much at all, and it only makes it a little harder to get to sleep (which hasn't been much of an issue so far given how exhausted I've been!). Yay!
gaaaah!
Mood: annoyed
Music: Metallica - "Outlaw Tom"
Posted on 2005-06-30 13:17:00
Tags: google maps work
Words: 145
Grr! Work is annoying me. I just spent like half an hour setting something up, and I finally got to try it, and it didn't work. So I'm letting off some steam by posting!
Google released an API for Google Maps, which is neat. I'm playing around with it some - made my own map for experimentation. Fun! (I'm open to suggestions for other markers...)
AMD is suing Intel for abusing their monopoly position. The CEO of AMD took out a full-page ad in the Statesman explaining and urging people to read their full complaint, which I did yesterday. Fascinating reading! If it's true, then they have very legitimate grievances.
Yesterday Canada approved gay marriage, and Spain did the same today. Woohoo!
I can't believe July 4 is coming up so soon. I get Monday and Tuesday off, which totally rocks. Planning on a fun weekend!
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