out of context

02:37 pm - Sick day

I took a sick day today.

Got home yesterday and crashed.
Took my temperature: a low-grade fever.
Spent the evening hiding in darkness.
Finally got up at about noon.

Of course, after that I ended up working
about a half a day
anyway.

I feel a bit better, at least.

Current Mood: sick

01:50 pm - it's not my fault

I was one of the first people to get my hands on prototypes of the $NEW_CHIP from $VENDOR. We're using it as a platform for $CURRENT_PROJECT, and quite some time ago I wrote the various board-support modules to work on the $NEW_CHIP.

Last week, all the pieces were finally in place for me to actually move $CURRENT_PROJECT onto the $NEW_CHIP. It took me about a week to take the board-support modules I'd previously written, integrate them with the commercial operating system, and get the $CURRENT_PROJECT code running on the $NEW_CHIP prototype.

Yesterday we finally got the production version of $NEW_CHIP.

$CURRENT_PROJECT doesn't work in it.

But that's not the really scary part.

The $VENDOR sample code didn't, either.

What's up with that?

09:13 am - weeds

The big, mature silver maples on our property are great.

The little ones everywhere?
Not so much.

09:24 pm - traveller's lament

and I'm tired and I'm stupid and when I tried to take out the trash
it spilled all over the floor and the cats were fighting when I fed
them and it took me 3 tries to park the car in the garage and I couldn't
find it in the parking lot and and and...

Current Mood: tired

07:55 pm - Thorny

Our climbing rose kind of went nuts.
Not that I'm complaining or anything.



[edit: Yes, I know the lighting isn't any good.]

Current Mood: amused

08:04 am - Look out below

While I was brushing my teeth this morning,
I heard a crash outside the bathroom.
And some beeping.

I opened the door to look out.

There, on the floor, was the smoke alarm,
along with some plastic bits that fell out.

I blame the squirrel.

07:30 pm - Help! Help! Let me out!

Current Mood: amused

07:32 pm - pulse

Who needs a pulse per 16385/16384 second time source?

anyone?
anyone at all?

Current Mood: stupid

10:28 pm - Six things that are no longer not my problem

1. The rear hose spigot on our house leaks when it's turned on. I tried to fix it, but I was foiled by safety features. And of course Home Depot doesn't carry the repair kits. I don't know why I bother trying.

2. There's a squirrel living in our attic. We've been hearing it for a few days, and we saw it going in through one of the vents this afternoon. Terminix will supposedly take care of it, but they can't come out until Tuesday. Our attic is obnoxiously difficult to access, and I'm sure it's a mess now too.

3. The furnace has been misbehaving since January. The home warranty company sent out some guy who first told us that we were idiots (which didn't fix it), and then later came back to replace parts that should have fixed it, but didn't. So every time it starts up, it starts up, and starts up, and starts up, and starts up... Eventually it stays on, but it takes a while.

4. I periodically have to tear down the laundry sump and move the float switch around in the case so that it turns on and off at appropriate times. As a side effect, it occasionally dumps water all over our basement.

5. A shingle on our roof needs nailed down. And the previous owners kindly left us a ladder, that's roughly half as long as it needs to be to get at it.

and, last but not least,

6. The gutters. Eew.

Current Mood: annoyed

08:53 pm - What do I do? Who knows!

My days are spent lashing together random parts in increasingly improbable ways.



I wonder when my desk will become self-aware.

Current Mood: tired

09:44 pm - linguistic oddities

There are several people named John that my mother works with, and some more (just a few!) who she doesn't work with as well. Once in talking about one of the many Johns, initially said John, and, realizing that this needed further clarification, she went on to describe him as "John, who is a vegetarian at work."

Now, we all know that she meant "the John one at work who's a vegetarian," but as you can imagine, we all chose to misinterpret her. "He's only a vegetarian at work, huh? Not a very good one, I guess!" She seemed to think this was all horribly unfair. But hey, he could be a vegetarian just at work; who knows what he does at home. We all have to be precise about what we say, or who knows what kind of weird miscommunications can result. Right?

But in a discussion on dialects of American English I found the following little tidbit:

Pennsylvania German-English (12)
This was strongly influenced by Pennsylvania Dutch, a dialect of German spoken by people in this area (in this context, "Dutch" is actually a mispronunciation of the German word, "Deutsch," which means "German"). Its grammar allows sentences like "Smear your sister with jam on a slice of bread" and "Throw your father out the window his hat." They call doughnuts fasnacht, and they also invented dunking - from the German "dunken" (to dip).

Current Mood: amused

02:46 pm - anime easterly

Looks like my house is substituting for voidland on Wednesday.

If you are coming but don't know where to go, drop me an email (doomsey@livejournal.com will work.)

Current Mood: lazy

03:01 pm - fubar

So, I'm hooking up a widget to gizmo, and it fails in a way that I've seen before.

And I think, this is exactly what happened when many moons ago, I had a board that was incorrectly laid out, and the foo pin of the widget was attached to the bar pin of the gizmo, instead of the foobar pin. If I frobbed the controls in a certain way, everything worked great. So I did, and everyone was happy, and no one even knew the hardware was broken.

And, indeed, this is exactly what happened today.

I see it, and I think, the foo pin of the widget is attached to the bar pin of the gizmo! And I frob the controls and everything is happy and it works, and I send email to my boss, wondering why it seems that the foobar pin was actually labelled bar.

But there was a slight difference. The reason that the foo pin of the widget was attached to the bar pin of the gizmo was because, when I read the manual, it said that the bar pin was here and the foobar pin was there, and they were both next to each other. And I looked at an angle and saw the wrong label, and hooked the widget up to the wrong pin.

And my boss sends email to the makers of the gizmo saying the manual is wrong.

The end.

Current Mood: groggy

08:36 am - More migraines

I've had migraines almost continuously for some time now, and they seem to be getting worse. I'm going to visit our doctor this afternoon. I probably should have gone on Monday; oh well.

"I'm planning on being sick this afternoon" is kind of a strange thing to say to your boss.

For that matter, I probably should have just stayed home this morning---but I felt more or less OK until I got here.

Current Mood: headachy

11:36 pm - synchronicity

As is usual for Wednesday night,
tonight I met voidness for dinner and anime.

Only today we had sushi.

06:06 pm - shoulda stayed in bed

Not only did I have to get up at 4AM today,
but I got overcharged by the hotel,
and one of the drives in the dy failed.

fortunately, having learned my lesson the last time,
the drive was mirrored and the other one was fine.

[edit: Now nekosensei got herself rear-ended, too. just what I needed, not enough sleep again!]

Current Mood: annoyed (and tired)

10:21 pm - Travel as usual

1. The hotel I was supposed to be at has no hot water, so they sent me to another hotel on the other side of the expressway. It's more expensive and not as nice.

2. There's more travel to various glorious destinations in my future. It's a job, and it's good for my career. And bad for my blood pressure.

3. People outside are honking. A lot.

In other words, travel as usual.

Tomorrow, leave at 6AM and get home... sometime!

Current Mood: tired

09:23 am - What time is it, anyway?

Mortgage processor: "I have you scheduled to close at 4:30."
HUD-1 Form: "Settlement time: 2:30 pm"
Title company representative: "I have you down for 4 o'clock."

At least everyone agreed I should be there today!

Current Mood: confused

08:56 pm - lunar eclipse

There was a decent picture buried in the hundred or so I took.

Now, if only I had some sort of insane telescope lens :)



nikon d70, nikkor 18-200 vr @ 200mm f/5.6, 1/3 s, iso 1600, cropped, vr enabled on a lousy tripod

01:26 pm - dramatic

I've had it with the drama in my life.
Stop being dramatic, people!

*sigh*

Current Mood: worried