Brief updates
- 09:36 Just had to explain who Cthulhu is to a workmate. Must increase geekiness of workplace. (At NASA, yet.) #
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At my door there came a tapping
Happy Halloween – the one day of the year I’m expected to dress funny.
In honor of the season, here’s an audio recording of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven“, read by Starr, myself, and other LJ friends and associates of lemonlye. (5MB mp3 file). You can see the list of participants and the lines they read in this LJ post.
I wore my “Enterprise”-era Starfleet uniform to work today – it’s gone over pretty well. What’s everyone else wearing today or tonight?
Brief updates
- 10:30 Amused that Facebook thinks I may know random people that also work for NASA, somewhere. #
- 10:57 Lots of Wachovia phishing spam in the last 48 hours. No click from me, impaired-grammar scammer. #
- 11:44 I *heart* dailycostume.com for all the masquerades I don’t get to attend! #
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Surrounded by boxes
On Friday, one of my co-workers walked into the room looking for another of my co-workers. Seeing him at his desk, she said, “Hey Dave, it’s Joan. I have a question for you…”
I thought to myself, “Errr, Dave probably knows it’s you, seeing as you’re standing right here.” Of course, the next thought that flashed through my head: “Harriet Jones – Prime Minister.” “Yes, I know who you are.”
Bummed to have once again missed Rising Star. I had a nice streak of attendance, reaching past the first RS in 1992 to 1982’s RoVaCon 7. It sounds like the convention’s doing incredibly well these days, but I just can’t swing the travel (seven hours one way). Yes, I feel guilty about that. Hope everyone who went had a good time.
I myself am packing up for another move. This has a lot to do with the Stuff Reduction Plan – at least this time, there is noticeably less stuff to pack, and I’m Freecycling / eBaying / giving away even more stuff in the next week or two. Weirdness. Didn’t change living quarters for decades, and now I’m in my fourth move in 5 years.
Tunnel drive
In general, I like living in Hampton Roads, I honestly do. Last night did not provide a good example…
There are three bridges in my Metro area that can take me from work to home. Assuming no heavy traffic, the Monitor-Merrimac bridge-tunnel does so in about 40-45 minutes; the James River bridge adds about 20-25 minutes to that; and the Hampton Roads bridge-tunnel adds about 20 minutes to the MMBT. (I have a bad tendency to refer to them as the Mimbit, the Jerb, and the Herbit.)
Unless it’s 1am, though, there’s probably going to be an additional 10-30 minutes of heavy traffic on the Herbit, and the Mimbit is a crapshoot: sometimes I fly straight through, and sometimes I sit waiting an extra 15-20 minutes. We have handy electronic signs alerting us to congestion on the Mimbit and Herbit, but because of geography, by the time I see one, the Jerb is already out of the question.
Yesterday, the signs warned me that the Mimbit was blocked by an accident – based on reports I’ve heard, an idiot trying to cut off a fellow driver. I had a quick decision to make – wait in blocked traffic there, and hope the accident is cleared within an hour (it usually is) or join all the additional traffic to the Herbit, probably incurring a 90-minute delay. I joined the queue of blocked traffic.
I took 2 hours to reach the tunnel entrance for the Mimbit, only to find that the tunnel remained blocked and that traffic was being forcibly rerouted back to the other two bridges. I don’t know the Jerb route well enough to ensure I wouldn’t get lost, so I joined the crowded line for the Herbit. 90 minutes later, I was finally home. 3.5 hours to make a 45-minute commute. (Turns out that the Jerb was just as bad.)
Starr, aware of the situation thanks to cell phones, had pizza and chocolate waiting. I love this woman.
Need healz 4 Ares and Orion runs
Once again, here at Langley we have more work than we have people to perform it.
If you have at least a year of IT experience, and are interested in temporary work in Hampton, VA, you’re encouraged to drop me a note. We are slowly moving the whole base from their old subcontractor-owned Mac, Windows, and Linux machines to our own equipment, and we need people who work well with the public and can handle unexpected glitches in file transfer and account configuration.
General aerospace fanaticism not necessary, but makes the job cooler.
Brief updates
- 07:53 Just learned that Julia Child spied for the Allies in WW2. The world is a touch more awesome. #
- 10:47 Oh, look, another crash project. There went me getting tickets done today. #
- 20:00 Got minor ‘attaboy’ from boss this afternoon. On way out, felt much more willing to stay 15 mins. extra to break down monitor boxes. #
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The silhouette of a Martian machine
My “grown-up” moment for the week: not bidding on a Lego Mars Rover on eBay even though it came to $10 below retail. I just don’t need to be spending $85 on Lego right now. But I thought about it for a second.
Worked on a shell script today which will automate and streamline installation and troubleshooting of our backup services. I keep forgetting how much I love writing code, especially the bit where it executes and everything works properly and I feel like Dr. Frankenstein shouting “It’s alive!!” I caught the coding bug when the TRS-80s came out, and I’ve never gotten over it.
I headed in to work early today, to help install a glut of new monitors which arrived. Not my usual assignment, but I wanted to help out, and the monitors were the lightest of the equipment to be installed. On the other hand, that does mean a lot of crawling under desks, and even a 22-inch flatscreen isn’t that light after you’ve lifted the tenth one onto a desk. I’m a little tired.
Going to try to get in touch with Mom again tonight.
Veteran of the Psychic Desk
How insane have the last two days been? Well, I feel naked without my wristwatch, and I almost never go out in public without it. Sunday, I took it off and set it down for some reason – probably related to cleaning the apartment – and I don’t know where. But, since Sunday, I just plain haven’t had time to look for it. I keep looking at the pale band of skin on my wrist, and wishing I could scratch the mental itch of my watch’s absence, but it’ll have to wait!
On the other hand, my efforts from yesterday have not escaped notice. In the morning meeting, I heard phrases like, “Michael’s documentation sets a gold standard that we’d like to see our other documentation reflect.”
Now, focusing on one thing for that length of time is a real strain for me. I left work yesterday rather loopy, the last couple of pages do have some interesting typos, and my brain felt like I’d just tried out for preliminary Psionic Combat training. But the results seem to have been worth it!
