Tag robolab challenge (9)
willpower over moodpower
Mood: tired
Location: 11500 N Mo-Pac Expy, Austin, TX 78731
Posted on 2006-04-04 08:58:00
Tags: google maps weight robolab challenge
Words: 372
So I went to bed last night tired, cranky and irritable. And I woke up tired, cranky and irritable. And then at some point (maybe in the shower) I decided that was crap. So now I'm tired, but not as cranky or irritable :-)
Google Maps just updated their API to version 2 (here's an upgrade guide from version 1). I upgraded my google map to use the new API. The only visible difference is now you can zoom in two levels closer on the satellite or hybrid views (as close as you can in Google Earth), to really give you that "whoa, that's creepy!" feeling. The irritating news is that now map coordinates have to be given in a GLatLng structure, which constructor takes the latitude and longitude in the opposite order as before. So now I have to spend a while rewriting the dental site to flip all those arguments - ugh! Why didn't they get this right in the first place?
Last week I gained a fair bit of weight for two weeks. This week, apparently, I lost that weight and .8 pounds more to boot. I'm both happy and suspicious of the scale.
Tom DeLay's resigning! Wow. Given that a former aide of his pleaded guilty to corruption a few days ago and said he'd cooperate with prosecutors, I'm guessing he's going to be found guilty (eventually), or at least he thinks he's going to be found guilty. This is good news for Texas!
This Thursday and Friday (and Saturday morning) is NI's annual technical conference, NITech. Kyle and I are doing the robolab challenge again (see LJ entries from last year's). Things are going pretty well (and we're both busy, so not gonna work on it as much) - we got programs going Sunday afternoon and last night we put them together and did some trial runs which went, on the whole, pretty well. (unfortunately that meant I had to miss game night hosted at my place...) The competition is Friday evening at 6 PM at NI, and it should last around an hour, if anyone's interested in coming :-)
Work is stressful. I need to do a better job at not getting stressed at work. Any suggestions would be welcomed.
successish! done!
Mood: exhausted but happy
Posted on 2005-04-08 19:16:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 70
Robolab went well! We played two rounds, and your best score was counted. After the first round we had 262 points, which was first place! (and only 8 points lower than our best trial run). During the second round another team scored a very very good 335 points, which we knew we weren't gonna beat (and didn't), so we ended up in second. Happy it went well, happy it's over.
The hour is near...
Mood: anxious
Music: synthesized "Rocky"
Posted on 2005-04-08 14:40:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 71
robolab approaches! I'm down here doing some tweaking, then one more session, then the competition at 6. I'm trying not to be too stressed about it, but I've so tired (and work hasn't been going well) that everything is a huge freaking deal. I had better be over this soon, because it's really wearing on me.
Blah. Anyway, the robot just climbed the stairs well, so I'm happy for now! Onward...
today. Also, last night.
Mood: tired
Music: people conversing
Posted on 2005-04-07 22:51:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 243
First things first. West Wing was good!
So, good episode...really the last few episodes were good. I'm glad Santos won, and the addition of Baker was a nice surprise. As for the big surprise (Leo for VP), at first it made sense, but now...I dunno. I mean, he doesn't add anything electorally (chief of staff is not an impressive position, electorally), and his health problems would raise serious red flags for me. The real race should be interesting, especially since they're really setting both candidates up as "good guys".
Props for Jonathan - he noted at the beginning of the episode that of all the primary candidates, we've only seen Santos's wife.
So, still tired and stuff. Robolab went well tonight - there were some minor snags, but I think things will go well tomorrow. Today and tomorrow is a technical conference, so I was in sessions all day, which was kinda neat, but meant I was at work for 14 hours, and doing actual work for none of it. Which was weird!
Hmm. I'm out of things to say I guess. Hopefully things will go well tomorrow, and I will be able to relax some. Not that I should be stressed about this. But I have some new ideas to try at work, so hopefully that will help.
Happy Birthday, onefishclappin! Some people (including wildrice13 and onefishclappin) are over talking and stuff, but I need to go to bed - bright and early tomorrow! *sigh*
robolab randomness!
Mood: sleepy
Music: They Might Be Giants - "Particle Man"
Posted on 2005-04-06 13:15:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 271
So robolab stuff went pretty well last night - we did another task and then did a few runthroughs. Not that the runthroughs went particularly well (I'm the "commander", which means I decide which tasks to try again, skip, etc...and I was just too tired to do a good job. More practice, which will come Thursday, should help), but we're in pretty good shape. Go us! (we don't have a team name yet)
I'm tired still. I'm having two cokes a day just to stay afloat. Next week I am so catching up on sleep, come hell or high water!
Does anyone else start listening to music right before posting so they can have something to put there? Or am I like the lamest person in the world?
Google Maps now has satellite views of their maps, which is wicked cool. Although it seems to be not working for me at the moment.
There was an article on our internal web site titled "American Idol Debuts at NI". So I was interested, and clicked. The first few sentences were: "American Idol at NI? Well, no … but we are bringing something close." Does this seem like irresponsible journalism to anyone else? I know it's just an internal site, but you can't lie in your story title!
West Wing season finale tonight! The last few episodes have been very good, so I'm really looking forward to tonight's. Who's gonna die this time?
Hmm...still tired. And I get hungrier when I'm tired, so my weight watchers is totally totally shot for the last few weeks (and this one too). Maybe I'll grab some candy. Mmm...
weekend, stuff
Mood: confused (by work)
Posted on 2005-04-05 10:36:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 245
(I'm not very good at coming up with subjects...)
So the weekend was decent, I guess. Even just being 2 years removed from Rice drastically reduced the number of people I knew at Beer-Bike (and WRC didn't even sweep! :-( ) I took some pictures, which I'll put up sometime this week, hopefully. I did put up pictures from Easter - you can find them here.
"Sin City"...yikes. It was a pretty good movie, despite all the violence and gore (and those don't usually bother me too much, but it definitely bothered me this time...not for the faint of heart or stomach). I like Alexis Bledel :-) Actually, I found out she's from Houston (thanks to IMDB). Neat!
Despite not getting enough sleep over the weekend, I felt better than I did during the week, and now I'm feeling blah again, which leads me to believe that stress is really the problem. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot I can do about it. Although things are going a little better at work, so hopefully that'll help some.
This week is robolab competition week, so I'm busy monday, tuesday, thursday nights working on it (and friday is the competition!) Things went OK last night - we're trying to be careful to make sure things work, as opposed to trying every single task and having none of them work (like what happened last year). Tonight I think we're gonna do calibration and some test runs on the real board. Wish us luck!
wow, I really can't think of one! oh well...
Mood: optimistic
Music: Evita - "Requiem for Evita"
Posted on 2005-04-01 09:24:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 242
So I managed to get to bed at a semi-reasonable time last night, and I feel pretty good so far today. Driving to Houston should be fun. Unfortunately, we can't listen to wildrice13's iPod Mini because my Prius doesn't have a tape player! Oh well...
Gmail announced (and I don't think it's an April Fools thing...) that they're raising their storage from 1Gb to 2GB, which might seal the deal for me. I love Gmail. Also, they have a cute April Fools thing where they're raising your available storage continuously. Check it out!
Robolab went well last night - accomplished two more tasks. And I'm gonna be the "commander", deciding what tasks to tackle and what to give up on during th ecompetition. So I need to memorize the point values and time it takes to do them :-)
Work's going decently, although still a long way to go. Although our stock is not so happy today. Sorry!
Evita is good music. Never seen the musical (although I did like the Simpsons version!), but David liked it, and we should see it together at some point.
Wildflowers along the highways and on campus really cheer me up, more than they should, I think. They're just so colorful and full of life. Anyway, it's nice pick-me-up to see them every morning :-)
Hopefully this weekend will be fun. And I'll get some good pictures.
I'm like totally out of thoughts. So, have a good weekend, all!
busy busy busy!
Mood: worn-down
Music: "Rocky" music (hummed to self)
Posted on 2005-03-30 08:58:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 444
(and yes, the subject is a slight reference to Vonnegut. Good, weird stuff that I haven't read in a while...)
I'm busy. Pretty darn busy. And that's starting to stress me out at times. Here's a list of things I'm currently doing:
- I'm involved in a long project at work that is not going particularly well. Some days I don't make progress, and some days I do, but the ratio of progress I make to progress that needs to get done is like one percent or something.
- I'm working on ROBOLAB stuff. Last night we met for the first time (well, the first time I was there) and had a good time. Kyle & David worked out a system to put balls in the basket. Jonathan built a super-sturdy wall, and I programmed the "Rocky" music (*hums "Rocky" music because it's darn catchy!). (although Jonathan and I did do some other stuff!) It's going pretty well, and I'm meeting with people again tomorrow. The competition is a week from Friday, and here is a list of the tasks.
- I'm working on the TiVo HME challenge. I'm getting close to done with my application, which lets you view galleries on your TiVo (for example, my gallery!)
- For a short while, I was working on a style to submit to the LiveJournal style competition - luckily I realized there was no way I was gonna get it done in time.
Adaptability: People strong in the Adaptability theme prefer to "go with the flow." They tend to be "now" people who take things as they come and discover the future one day at a time.
which is a reasonable description of me. So, I don't mind as much when I have many tasks to do at work, or when things keep coming up. However, this is the only project I'm working on, which doesn't give me much chance to adapt, as it were. And I can't switch between things that are keeping me busy, because they're either work tasks or home tasks.
What I need to do better is not let it get me down when work doesn't go well. This is surprisingly hard to do, as I'm pretty invested in my job and believe in the product (and the project I'm working on), but there are more ways of being successful in life than just job-related stuff.
Hmm. I came in this morning really wanting to post, and I think I got all my thoughts out there. This weekend is Beer-Bike - Will Rice Will Sweep!
Easter weekend
Mood: determined
Music: Vertical Horizon - "We Are"
Posted on 2005-03-28 09:37:00
Tags: robolab challenge
Words: 284
So the weekend was pretty good - for details, I'll refer you to djedi. I took some pictures of people, and lots of the nephews hunting for Easter eggs that I'll hopefully find time to put up this week. A few random thoughts about the weekend:
- I played tennis and then basketball (around the world, 21, and then 2 on 2) on Saturday. That's the most exercise I've gotten in a while, and I was really sore Saturday and Sunday (mostly better today, though).
- If you're driving around here, check out the wildflowers! I saw a bunch on the way down and back, but they're along MoPac and I-35 as well. Good stuff - makes me feel like spring is here, even though it can still be kinda cold.
- *counts to self* 11 people is a lot to have in a house for a weekend - I still get overwhelmed at times. There's always something going on, people trying to get a game of something together, or watch a movie, or go out and grab something. I'm more used to it than I was at first, but it's like crazy different from my family in that aspect.
- My sister Carrie got confirmed this weekend - congratulations!
Busy week ahead of me - game night tonight, normal volunteer stuff on Wednesday, and I said I'd work on robolab stuff (we have an internal competition coming up two weeks from last friday, and I perhaps foolishly signed up to be in a group. It's a lot of fun, but finding the time to work on it is difficult...) tuesday and thursday nights. And friday we leave for beer-bike. So, yikes!
Hopefully I'll make some progress at work today. That would rock!
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