Hardware Validation, Incremental Software, Knitting, and D&D
Oct 30, 2017 04:38
Got the hardware validation done. The only item giving me trouble is the Big System's tape drive, and the trouble is fairly minor (its sustained data transfer rate is two thirds what it should be, which is still enough for our purposes).
Made incremental progress on the Big Project's software. I'm at the point where I'm going to have to start one of the major tasks in it (taking apart a nontrivial vendor/open-source application and putting it back together under my own build environment). This will likely take a couple of weeks; we'll see.
Made incremental progress on playing vendor-tag for pieces of the Big System's scientific hardware. This should ramp up again next week (when the vendor making the next major piece gets back to us).
Started refilling the knitting queue, finally. Of three co-workers who got back to me, two want hats. The first (for a co-worker who's graduating soon) should be finished by the end of the week (when her defense happens).
Learned that a group of students has been running a D&D campaign literally one door down from me. I now have an invitation to join said campaign; this is something that I've really missed. They're new players, but seem to have a good handle on the basics. They're playing 5e, and initial impressions from the book and from chargen are that it's pretty much a simplified variant of 3e (in particular, pruning skills and assuming basic competency without explicitly listing them). The advantage/disadvantage dice mechanic looks interesting too.
Plan for the work week is coding and miscellaneous tasks (lecture slides and mechanical drawings). On Tuesday I'm taking half a day off to set up Nightmare Moon again and hand out candy. Thursday after work is D&D. Tentative plan for Saturday is boardgaming, though I have to confirm that with the rest of the group.