Friday night update
First of all, since it's the 16th where she is, I want to get a jump on wishing the lovely and talented and eminently lickable poshcat a very happy birthday!
I took the train to work twice this week, and think I'll try to do so most of the time in the future. It takes longer and is more expensive than driving (at least at this point, though with gas at $2.65 a gallon and rising, that may not hold), but I get to read or work on my laptop or watch DVDs during the trip, as opposed to sitting in a car and cursing traffic, and I feel much more rested when I get home. It's much more environmentally friendly, too.
Today was the first day where I felt like I actually had a grip on what I need to do at work. Before this, I didn't even know enough about the software to be able to tell what I needed to write about. It's always this way at the start of a new job, but it's terribly frustrating, and in this case I'm dealing with a couple of enormous and very complicated applications. Now it's all starting to come together; I'm seeing the emails when developers commit code and understanding what impact the changes have on the documentation. I've still got a long way to go, but it's a start. I'm working with some very impressive people--many of them could kill me with their brains--and it's both stimulating and intimidating.
I had dinner last night with M. and wife at a French seafood place called Plouf in Belden Place, which is an alley in the financial district that has been closed to traffic and is lined with restaurants that have put tables out in the street up to the sidewalk. Their specialty is mussels, which they serve in a big cast iron crock for sharing and will prepare your choice of eight or nine ways, including Meunière, "Plouf" (white wine, sherry vinegar, and roasted garlic), and with coconut milk, lime, and red curry. We shared the mussels Plouf, and they were tender and briny and garlicky and delicious. I also had a salad of haricots verts, bleu cheese, walnuts, and endive, and a main course of prawns grilled on skewers with whole garlic cloves and cherry tomatoes, served with spinach, crispy shredded sweet potato and taro, and a sauce with what tasted like Moroccan spices (lots of cinnamon and clove on top of the saffron, cumin, and coriander). It was all utterly exquisite. It was nice, too, to eat in a broad cobbled alley full of tables, one restaurant's tables bumping up against the next, all tucked away between the tall buildings. I can't believe I'd never been there before.
I just bought the collected edition of Hitchhiker books, and am hoping to get through at least The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy before the movie comes out. I'm cautiously optimistic from the trailers, but then again, I haven't read the books since I was 13 or so.
Things I learned from the SciFi channel tonight:
I'm excited about sdwolfpup's Peacekeeper Wars chat tomorrow! Now that most of the people on my flist who have been working their way through the show are nearing the end (skylee, you're close, right?) I'm seriously considering doing a series of Farscape episode posts that talk about the episode in the context of the entire series. As fun as it is to see someone discover the show for the first time (says this veteran who has been into the show since October 2004!), I want to talk about the consequences and reverberations. In that spirit, I offer a poll:
Poll Farscape episode posts
I took the train to work twice this week, and think I'll try to do so most of the time in the future. It takes longer and is more expensive than driving (at least at this point, though with gas at $2.65 a gallon and rising, that may not hold), but I get to read or work on my laptop or watch DVDs during the trip, as opposed to sitting in a car and cursing traffic, and I feel much more rested when I get home. It's much more environmentally friendly, too.
Today was the first day where I felt like I actually had a grip on what I need to do at work. Before this, I didn't even know enough about the software to be able to tell what I needed to write about. It's always this way at the start of a new job, but it's terribly frustrating, and in this case I'm dealing with a couple of enormous and very complicated applications. Now it's all starting to come together; I'm seeing the emails when developers commit code and understanding what impact the changes have on the documentation. I've still got a long way to go, but it's a start. I'm working with some very impressive people--many of them could kill me with their brains--and it's both stimulating and intimidating.
I had dinner last night with M. and wife at a French seafood place called Plouf in Belden Place, which is an alley in the financial district that has been closed to traffic and is lined with restaurants that have put tables out in the street up to the sidewalk. Their specialty is mussels, which they serve in a big cast iron crock for sharing and will prepare your choice of eight or nine ways, including Meunière, "Plouf" (white wine, sherry vinegar, and roasted garlic), and with coconut milk, lime, and red curry. We shared the mussels Plouf, and they were tender and briny and garlicky and delicious. I also had a salad of haricots verts, bleu cheese, walnuts, and endive, and a main course of prawns grilled on skewers with whole garlic cloves and cherry tomatoes, served with spinach, crispy shredded sweet potato and taro, and a sauce with what tasted like Moroccan spices (lots of cinnamon and clove on top of the saffron, cumin, and coriander). It was all utterly exquisite. It was nice, too, to eat in a broad cobbled alley full of tables, one restaurant's tables bumping up against the next, all tucked away between the tall buildings. I can't believe I'd never been there before.
I just bought the collected edition of Hitchhiker books, and am hoping to get through at least The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy before the movie comes out. I'm cautiously optimistic from the trailers, but then again, I haven't read the books since I was 13 or so.
Things I learned from the SciFi channel tonight:
- Battlestar Galactica rocks. Oh, wait, I already knew that.
- Battlestar Galactica and SG-1 must use the same casting people, what with Gaeta appearing in the SG-1 season finale and Aaron Doral in the rerun that aired tonight.
- Before she was Sydney Bristow, Jennifer Garner was in a really bad earthquake movie. I thought I caught a glimpse of J. August Richards in the ads, but IMDB says no, although I swear it looks like him--maybe he had a nonspeaking part? As a Californian, I have a strict "no earthquake movies" policy--why watch it on TV when you could live it?--but I would probably watch it for J. August Richards. After all, I watched CSI: Miami for him, so a bad earthquake movie is small potatoes.
I'm excited about sdwolfpup's Peacekeeper Wars chat tomorrow! Now that most of the people on my flist who have been working their way through the show are nearing the end (skylee, you're close, right?) I'm seriously considering doing a series of Farscape episode posts that talk about the episode in the context of the entire series. As fun as it is to see someone discover the show for the first time (says this veteran who has been into the show since October 2004!), I want to talk about the consequences and reverberations. In that spirit, I offer a poll:
Poll Farscape episode posts