2013-12-29
2013-12-28
2013-12-27
Pens
 |
| Sample of my handwriting. |
I’ve
found myself falling back in love with felt tip pens. I’ve given up on
begging for roller ball kinds of pens. They used to buy them at work.
They worked, but the new powers that be insist that shit ballpoints are
good enough. That is fine for people with good vision, but my vision
sucks and I’m sure I’m not the only person who likes a nice bold line. I
put in a request for a pack of the pens above. I have no idea if I will
get them or not. I’m sure I’ll complain here either way.
This
pen was recommended to me in middle school. I think the one they used
was not by Sharpie, but it was very similar. I don’t know what happened
to felt tip pens. there must be some manufacturing requirement that
makes them more difficult or rare. Did the market just demand cheap shit
ballpoints that much?
I’ve
been hoarding the old pens at work for months. The pickens have gotten
more and more slim over the last several months. Our honeymoon is over
where office supplies are concerned. The lady from HR said If I needed
anything to give her a call, but I’m not pulling that except as an
absolute last resort. I have never
rarely been the kid to run to teacher when I don’t get my way. For
under $10 of equipment that will last me a year, I’m might pull out the
stop.
Kelly,
why are you not using your laptop? Because I don’t want to drag my
friggin high end 8kg development laptop all over the place. When they
get us light tablets or the next way of connecting to the cloud to do
our work, I’ll probably drop the nice bold felt tip pen on college ruled
paper. I do it sometimes. I need the exercise.
My
father makes pens. They are cool looking pens made from antlers and
bone and such. He made some from empty ammunition shells. They rock. He
uses roller balls for the pen part. If I could find a pen kit that used a
bolder line, I would use the pen he gave me more often. Sorry Dad.
I
write in all caps. I use half height caps for lowercase characters and
full size ones for capitals. I need to do this if I intend to ever read
it again. I found something that works for me. I’m going to stick with
it.
2013-12-26
2013-12-25
Christmas.
I should write something. Chrismas is important like that. Yhis was a good year. My dad and I spent some quality time in the back yard playing with a resipricle saw and a gril. I got a really cool flashlight. Saw some christmas lights.
Home now getting ready forbed. Work tomorrow. Hope it is a slow several days untill the 2nd. Just no place to go, nowhere I'd rather be than home.
Life has been good to me.
2013-12-24
2013-12-23
2013-12-22
2013-12-20
2013-12-19
2013-12-18
Contacts
My
right contact is doing that thing again this morning. Just as I got on
the bus I noticed the ilash was rubbing against my contact lens again.
It just causes the contact to move around. It is maddening. There really
is nothing I can do about it except wait for it to not do it any
longer. I put in some dops when I got to work, but no relief yet.
I
just ended up taking them out and wearing my glasses. I don’t have time
for the distraction this morning. I got things. ... After doing the
things and getting back in to a state of balance, I put the contacts
back in. The issue righted itself. Will keep this space posted.
by
the end of the day, more or less, the contacts have done it like 3 more
times, but I wasn’t under the gun. Thus, I was able to just ignore it
and get on with my day. That seems to be the best thing to do. If I’m
already under stress, thought, forget it. I’m losing my shit over the
contacts. Sounds about right.
Redheaded Stepchild
Someone
used the term Red Headed Stepchild in a meeting today. One of his
adopted kids is red headed. Cute as a button too. He didn’t realize it
is a derogatory term. There are all kinds of definitions on the
internet. The way I heard it is in the next paragraph.
When
the Nomen invaded England, there was a lot of rape involved. A
disproportionate number of the offspring were blond and redhead. Every
time the parents looked at that child it reminded them of the mother
getting raped and thus the prejudice against redheads was born.
No idea if this is accurate. Makes sense in a sick sort of way. I don’t remember where I heard it.
2013-12-17
Management
One
of the engineers came in my office today and wanted me to blog/vlog
about managers wanting everything. What he meant was managers saying all
the bugs had to be fixed and the ship day met. The engineers say it
ain’t going to happen. The managers want to throw more managers at the
problem.
It
is the manager’s job to to talk about what is going on, make charts,
make plans and make a mess. They are doing their job by dragging in
engineers and technicians in to meetings.
Manager: “Where are we on project xyz?”
Engineer: “We have 37 bugs, 5 critical.”
Manager: “We need them all fixed.”
Engineer: “If we focus on the 5 critical, we can just make it to release day.”
Manager” “We need all the bugs fixed.”
Engineer: “Many of the non critical bugs will take longer to diagnose and fix than most of the critical ones.”
Manager: “But we need all the bugs fixed.”
Engineer:
“You know how it goes. One gets fixed three more pop up. There will
always be something else to do on a complex project like this. It will
never be perfect.”
Manager: “We don’t want perfection, we need 0 bugs in the end product.”
At
this point, the engineer begins to wonder if the manager is asking to
be lied to. That cannot be right. That would not be right and it is
clearly against policy. I do not claim to understand what the manager is
thinking.
Remember
just being in the meeting is fulfilling the manager’s job requirements.
The engineer is being pulled off their job by being in this meeting.
That is how they feel about it anyway.
Engineer: “If we know about a bug, you need to know about it.”
Manager: “Absolutely.”
Engineer:
“When I say there are going to be bugs we cannot fix by this release
deadline, I do not mean the system won’t work. The non critical bugs can
be dealt with by support and workarounds.”
Manager: “I understand, but we are supposed to do releases with zero bugs.”
Engineer: “Just so long as there are no delays on our deadlines.”
Manager:
“Right. Now you get it. ... Do you need more people, more systems, more
pizza for the people staying late? What resource would make this
happen?””
Engineer: “The only resource that would make this happen is time.”
They stare at one another for a moment and an outside observer can read both minds involved. “Why don’t they get it?”
2013-12-15
2013-12-14
2013-12-13
2013-12-12
How to deal with me
This should be an ongoing series. My wife thinks I have lesser Asperger's. I wonder if I have five people in my head and we enjoy each other's company more than the mundanes outside.
I walk down Westheimer to get from my house to the bus stop and back most mornings. More often than not it is in the dark just due to the time of day required. I walk right along side the road. It is a dark area. I now use a bright flashlight more to be seen than to see with. I used to walk down the beltway for the same reason when working at my last job. I did not use a flashlight for most of that commute and most incidences happened then.
Please do not honk at legally blind people on the side of the road. It makes them nervous.
I have had multiple incidences of people pulling over and yelling at me, one of whom pulled a gun on me. One drove up on the sidewalk. It is a mess. All of these incidence started with someone honking their horn. If at any moment I hear a horn, my brain does two things. It calculates the location of the horn in 3D space as best it can and kicks in to threat mode. If the horn is nearby, I get a shot of adrenalin regardless of real threat.
Nothing like this has happened since I started using a nice bright flashlight while walking at night. None have happened in the daylight. Not yet anyway.
Still, please do not honk at me or any person who cannot see properly on the side of the road. The idea behind the honk is to get someone's attention so you can wave at them. I cannot see you. I have no idea who is honking at me. I have no idea if you are friend or foe.
Send me a text if you saw me on the side of the road and want to say hi. I will not get it until I stop to check my messages, but it is a nice gesture.
Do not stop and haller “wanna ride?” I will not recognize your voice with all the surrounding noise and you yelling, which is probably not your normal voice for me. I’ve gotten in the wrong car before so i am very nervous about taking people up on the ride anyway. Shawn did it right. He stopped and hallered “Hey Kelly! This is Shawn from work. Want a ride?” I took him up on it. He also pulled into a parking lot. Don’t stop on the street because you will get in an accident and I will feel like a jerk.
I have a hard time recognizing people by face, voice or name if I’m honest. I had a girlfriend for 6 weeks once before I could remember her name without stopping to think about it. You know when you pretend to remember someone you haven’t seen in 15 years? I do that with people I work with every day. If I seem standoffish, I may be in a bad mood or I may not recognize you.
I remember people by interaction “The person who helped me with xyz.” “The person who told the story xyz.” “Pepe.” (inside joke)
Don’t honk.
2013-12-11
Backukp
This is a long running problem in the industry as a whole.
I
removed the draft copies of all my blog entries that I kept for no good
reason in Google Docs today. I had not kept much in that long list of
documents that was not on the blog. Most of those links are broken by
now. Too many of the entries are just boring. I really need to figure
out how to do long term storage.
Any
media you use beyond a print out will not be viable in 10 years. CDs
and DVDs will be phased out soon. Hard drives fail just sitting on a
shelf. Thumb drives will not work in a couple years because the USB
standard is changing. Someone needs to do a better job of making it
work. Someone please come up with a standard that will at least stick
around for a long time. I’m looking at 100 years. It has got to be
doable.
A
new story comes out every couple months about a company or government
that lost a bunch of data due only to the fact that the media and
devices that read that media are out of date. They can’t move it
anywhere because the data is stuck on some media or data format that
cannot be read. It is an ongoing problem. There has got to be a
solution.
In
my case, I’m planning on making a print out and sticking it in some
kind of large Tupperware container. Sticking it in my attic and hoping
for the best. That is about all I can do.
My
stuff is not even worth anything except my own sentiment. My grandkids
might stumble across it and give half a shit for three minutes. Most
likely, it will get tossed without even being glanced at by whomever
buys the house for the price of the land so they can put up a parking
lot.
Even
if I get the print out working, a daunting task, it will not include
any links or video media. That kind of stuff will simply be lost.
Really, the text is all I’m getting if I go after this method. I’ve been
blogging for 10 years. That is 10 years of complaining on the internet
just sitting there not getting read by anyone of interest to me. Maybe
someone learned something worthwhile out there. Maybe I helped someone
with something. What else can you hope for?
2013-12-10
Lunch Conversation
We
went to Blackeyed Pea. It costs too much and it took an age. It took
forever to get a table. Then to get our order, then to get the check.
They were busy, but I’m sure one table next to us had 3 sets of people
use it during our stay. We should only hit the place on off hours.
Gave us plenty of time to chat.
- Moves
- Movie critics
- Kermode
- Hoiytetoyty critics who only give high marks for foreign films in black and white.
- Ghost busters and memorizing the last 15 minutes of the show
- Books
- Some of the folks read up to high school and then quit because the books sucked
- I did not mention 50 Shades of Grey, too embarrassing to admit I’m reading it.
- Most classics suck
- Shakespeare would fail a Shakespeare class
- Libraries
- Dropping your kids off at the library.
- School libraries are hit or miss.
- Video games
- Something about gaming consoles
- Something about canceling ps4 order
- Made fun of the Wii’s name for a solid 10 minutes
- TV
- Dr Who
- The Arrow
- Someone shoot this guy.
- Quoting Milky Way commercials
- Chicken Fried everything!
2013-12-09
2013-12-08
2013-12-07
2013-12-06
2013-12-05
IT conversation
Them - I need a bunch of people to have access to these files.
Me - Great, who are they?
Them - I don’t know yet.
Me - Let me know when you do.
Them - I need it to happen right now.
Me - I can make the files available to everyone who has access to the system.
Them - No, that wouldn’t be secure.
Me - ... [no further argument offered]
Them - I’ll see what I can do.
Me - (not uttered aloud) I know what I can and can’t do in this situation.
I’ve
had this conversation with maybe 5 different people in my career.
Access vs security is literally an afterthought to people who have not
worked in the IT or development fields I think. Normal people just don’t
consider it until they are confronted with the dilemma above.
2013-12-04
Software Testers
People just don’t understand what software tests are supposed to do.
Management just wants the numbers to fall to zero. they don’t care that
this is not the purpose of testing. The purpose of testing is to expose
bugs and anomalies in the software. Passing is not the goal.
Developers want to solve new problems, not hear about old ones.
Investors want money.
Customers want it to work forever and include all the newest innovations and security fixes.
Testers prey for a zombie apocalypse to ease the pain of their daily existence.
Developers want to solve new problems, not hear about old ones.
Investors want money.
Customers want it to work forever and include all the newest innovations and security fixes.
Testers prey for a zombie apocalypse to ease the pain of their daily existence.
2013-12-03
Bad night
I woke up gagging on some vomit that had come up in my sleep. I suffer from acid reflux. This was one of the worse episodes I've ever had. The acid went down my wind pipe and made me choke.
The sounds that came from me reminded me of the gasping death scenes in movies. two dozen times I made that gasping noise followed by a gagging swallow. I swallowed a lot of air. That is a bad thing because I know what is coming next.
I stood in front of the sink because the toilet is just too low for me to use. I only had to wait for a minute. I then vomited in the sink. It was asnasty as any time I have ever done so. I had eaten chereos before going tobed. There are more annoying foods I could have eaten.
There is a dish brush near the sink that I keep there for just such emergencies. I used it and hot water to clean out the sink. also used the plunger to clear the drane. I looked in the mirror and decided the rest of the night would be better.
I took some stomach medicen and got some water from the kitchen. All was not so much well as done. At least I wasn't hung over or sick with the flue. I didn't have work the next day or later that day thank goodness.
My throat hurt for days. I probably sitll have some cheerios in my lungs.
The sounds that came from me reminded me of the gasping death scenes in movies. two dozen times I made that gasping noise followed by a gagging swallow. I swallowed a lot of air. That is a bad thing because I know what is coming next.
I stood in front of the sink because the toilet is just too low for me to use. I only had to wait for a minute. I then vomited in the sink. It was asnasty as any time I have ever done so. I had eaten chereos before going tobed. There are more annoying foods I could have eaten.
There is a dish brush near the sink that I keep there for just such emergencies. I used it and hot water to clean out the sink. also used the plunger to clear the drane. I looked in the mirror and decided the rest of the night would be better.
I took some stomach medicen and got some water from the kitchen. All was not so much well as done. At least I wasn't hung over or sick with the flue. I didn't have work the next day or later that day thank goodness.
My throat hurt for days. I probably sitll have some cheerios in my lungs.
2013-12-02
Thanksgiving 2013
Went to the parent's place. Had a great meal and wonderful company.
Took Wednesday off and still ended up working half the day. This is a drag, but itis a good thing to be useful. I keep telling myself this anyway.
Watched more online video than a body has a right. It is bad because I could have gotten many other things done, but didn't. I got a couple videos shot, but nothing that anyone will want to watch if I"m honest. About normal.
Nearly went to TRF for the last day, but didn't. These things happen.
I am thankful for much including the list bellow
The money to pay the bills is really only important because of the family thing.
I do not take enough time to enjoy life. I don't take vacation because it is more of a pain in the ass than it is worth. I would rather send my family on a vacation nd keep working just because I'm an asshole whether I go or stay.
All in all, pretty darned good time this weekend.
Took Wednesday off and still ended up working half the day. This is a drag, but itis a good thing to be useful. I keep telling myself this anyway.
Watched more online video than a body has a right. It is bad because I could have gotten many other things done, but didn't. I got a couple videos shot, but nothing that anyone will want to watch if I"m honest. About normal.
Nearly went to TRF for the last day, but didn't. These things happen.
I am thankful for much including the list bellow
- Family
- The money to pay the bills
- Time to enjoy life
The money to pay the bills is really only important because of the family thing.
I do not take enough time to enjoy life. I don't take vacation because it is more of a pain in the ass than it is worth. I would rather send my family on a vacation nd keep working just because I'm an asshole whether I go or stay.
All in all, pretty darned good time this weekend.
2013-11-30
Videos today
Yesterday, I felt I wanted to shoot a video. I put up a video Thursday from Thanksgiving. That felt pretty good. It was a good video I thought as well. Very me. No real substance, just the family doing some family stuff and a puppy.
I haven't been putting up a lot of videos lately. Work has been nuts. I have dozens of excuses. Give me a couple pages and I'll chew your ear off with them. I am starting to feel the need to yap again. It has been a while if I'm honest.
Something that happened today that may have helped more than I thought it would was the VirtualBox software I use to edit my videos got a new update. For several weeks, the VirtualBox software would not let me read from shared folders. I use a Windows Laptop with an Ubuntu client. The editing software I use varies from Kdenlive to several other Linux based software packages back to Kdenlive.
Well, an update came though today for VirtualBox that fixed the read from shared folders issue. I had been using an SD card reader via USB to edit my videos and then publish them. This kind of worked, but it was more of a pain in the ass than it sounds. The world seems easier to video now that my video editor is working again.
Funny how the little things work to stop you from getting the bigger things done. I considerate the vlog to be a big thing because if I didn't, it would never get done. sometimes you have to make choices.
No idea how much things will slack off after work starts again next week. I have not taken much time over the holidays. Things are going to stay nuts at work for the foreseeable future. I want to make more and better videos. It is true. I feel a great satisfaction from them. It doesn't seem to matter that I get so few hits.
Wish me luck. Give me some encouragement. It can only help.
2013-11-29
Notes
We sat down today and tried to figure out how old our cat Merlin is. It was a bunch of back and forth. I suggested to Nat that she go look at my blog and search for Merlin. Well,she found him under new kitten. He came to us in 2006 around September. that would make him about 7. He acts like a kitten so he seems much younger.
I'm watching Battle Languages. It is terrible. It is a bunch of explosions. /that makes it worth sitting though I suppose.
The little episode with Merlin made me remember just why I started the blog. I wand to keep track of my life. So many things get lost especially between my ears. I need to just do some brain dumps on the blog ever y now and again about normal stuff going on. This will help me keep track as I get older and have an excuse to be as forgetful as I have been my whole life.
I'm watching Battle Languages. It is terrible. It is a bunch of explosions. /that makes it worth sitting though I suppose.
The little episode with Merlin made me remember just why I started the blog. I wand to keep track of my life. So many things get lost especially between my ears. I need to just do some brain dumps on the blog ever y now and again about normal stuff going on. This will help me keep track as I get older and have an excuse to be as forgetful as I have been my whole life.
HOW TO LAUNCH A DEHAVILLAND BEAVER AIRPLANE IN THE WATER with Jim the Pilot
That looks freaking dangerous with the engine idling.
HOW TO LAUNCH A DEHAVILLAND BEAVER AIRPLANE IN THE WATER with Jim the Pilot
That looks freaking dangerous with the engine idling.
2013-11-27
2013-11-25
2013-11-24
2013-11-22
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