(no subject)
Um, I didn't mean to vanish of the face of the Internet for a fortnight... it just sort of happened! It hasn't been busy enough to serve as an excuse, and I haven't been lacking in inspiration for stuff to blog about... I just sort of run out of impetus every time I sit at the keyboard.
So this is sort of a catch-up post.
So what's happened between now and then?
Well - there's work, of course. The beat goes on there, as ever, though at a slightly increased tempo as we get towards the pointy end of our development schedule. And that was a very mixed metaphor, but it's nearly 2am, so it's going to have to do.
I've spent the last week or so working on a solo side project which suddenly got a major lift in priority. It's for a new version of a tool that I did the code for the earlier version of several years ago. The original version was released and supported by another part of the company, but that team has now been disbanded so it's back with me. Unfortunately the old version isn't quite compatible with the newer versions of our main product, but has been very widely distributed (several hundred customer sites, it appears), so lately I have been somewhat innundated with support calls as all those sites upgrade. Two weeks ago, one of the customer reps managed to get the issue escalated, so suddenly I have the go aead to fix all the outstanding issues and release a new version of the tool. Right away before any more customers complain, but Naturally without disrupting the schedule of my main development, which is OMGSoCritical as well. * Is dubious about management's grip on reality*.
Lacking the ability to schedule 200% of my time, my main development is now a week behind schedule and counting - luckily I have no immediate deadlines, so I should be able to hide that fact for another few weeks *g*.
On the plus side at work, a patent application with me listed as a co-inventor is being filed for the design of one of the subsystems I worked on as part of the last Project-O-Doom, which is kind of cool. I'm a little undecided as to the evilness of software patents in general, but can't deny the shinyness of something like this for possible future resumes. I also found out that we have a patent pending for the first project I worked on with this company (definitely not an inventor for that one, though) which is now being licensed back to Microsoft for Vista - that rather appeals to my inner geek as well :)
***
On the non-work side of things...
Three weekends ago, just after my last post, I checked out the closing-down sale at Fine Wools, and ran into Miss Maeve there, which was cool, as I hadn't seen her in an age. The good fabric was getting a bit thin on the ground, but I picked up some patterning fabric (at $1/m), lining for future use in mundane projects, a few metres of cotton linen with no set purpose just because I liked colour (a strong indigo), and enough charcoal wool to make a pair of trousers for work. The latter wasn't cheap at $20/m, but it was marked down from $50/m, so that's close enough to count !
Post fabric shopping I ventured into clothes shopping for very nearly the first time this year, and actually managed to find a pair of jeans that fit! This is a truly memorable thing for me, since I have the figure of someone who sits on her backside for a living, and thus do not normally have success in this field: trying on jeans usually leaves me very grumpy and refusing to go into any more shops which don't involve books.
Following all that shopping I went out on the town with one Miss Jane Doe of blogspot, which was heaps of fun - and all the rest of you that were invited are pikers! I got home at 5am, then pretty much slept all of sunday, since I am grown a bit feeble for dancing till dawn these days.
***
Two weeks ago was a flying trip to the snow with families from my Guide unit. I was all set to drive down Friday night after work, but the Parentals got all concerned about lack of sleep combined with long distances, and it ended up that Dad came along to share the driving.
Being so late in such a shockingly bad season I didn't expect much of the snow quality, and I was not disappointed in that expectation *g*. After the warm weather the previous week, Thredbo was done for, leaving Front valley at Perisher as the only liftered area in the country still running. Blue Cow apparently still had skiable snow in the snowmaking areas, but the lifts were on wind-hold: a tactic that I'm pretty certain was aimed at desperately trying to keep some cover skiable for the Queensland School holidays the following week.
Anyway, the massive amounts of snowmaking on Front Valley this season definitely paid off for PB, and it was still quite deep:
Away from the snowmaking areas though, the truth about the season's end was painfully obvious:
Although skiable, the snow was complete glop: not quite slush, but headed that direction fast. I think the technical classification is 'elephant snot' *g*. I didn't bother hiring skis, but instead used my Mum's old ones which are older than I am, hadn't been tuned in at least 5 years and are straight. The latter kept me occupied for most of the day trying to remember how to do a parallel christie rather than a carve turn, which is good, because otherwise Front Valley would get awfully boring in a hurry.
The kids on the trip didn't care, of course - it was only the first or second time on skis for all of them, lift tickets were cheap and the weather was great, so it made for a good day out.
By Sunday morning the weather had turned - gale force winds and rain, so we didn't bother to ski, but came home early instead. The girls' families came back via Questacon and other Canberra-based diversions, but Dad and I came straight home. Or at least tried to: the weather did not cooperate.
The winds had clearly been widespread: there were trees down alongside the highway all the way from Cooma to Sydney. We got to just past to the Picton turnoff just as the Wollondilly bushfires took serious hold (smoke averywhere), then traffic on the freeway stopped dead. I'm pretty sure that this was due to an accident rather than the fires (the freeway wasn't closed or anything), but it was clearly going nowhere in a hurry.
Since we were in Dad's big four-wheel drive, we backtracked a little way over the grass verge and took the Picton turnoff instead, detouring via Appin and Campbelltown. Partway between Wilton and Appin we had to stop again and pull a tree off the road: it wasn't blocking the whole thing, but you had to detour onto the wrng side of the road to get past it, and the emergency services were clearly busy elsewhere (they lost four houses at Picton that afternoon) so we figured it was community service for the day.
***
In a slightly less adventurous mode, last Saturday was my nephew's first birthday party. Being the first child in our family of his generation, he was thoroughly spoiled with gifts by all friends and relatives in attendance:
In true toddler fashion, though, he liked the cardboard boxes best:
Last Sunday, I spent working as a volunteer for races that marked the opening of Kogarah Bay Sailability (which is an organization that does dinghy sailing for disabled people). One of the guys I work with is a founding member of the club and had put out a call for volunteers, so I wandered along. The boats they use are really funky - completely non-capsizable, and able to be electronically controlled so thay can be sailed by someone who does not have use of their arms. They are really compact, but that doesn't matter much because regardless of level of disability the rules forbid sailors from moving out of their seats. I don't think I could sail one without a lot of practice: I'm used to being able to perch sideways on the gunwale of a dinghy!
Last Monday, being a local public holiday, I decreed myself a day off. The only constructive things I did all day were the laundry and the dishes and It Was Good. There needs to be more days off in my world.
And now I am all caught up, and normal posting should resume RSN.
So this is sort of a catch-up post.
So what's happened between now and then?
Well - there's work, of course. The beat goes on there, as ever, though at a slightly increased tempo as we get towards the pointy end of our development schedule. And that was a very mixed metaphor, but it's nearly 2am, so it's going to have to do.
I've spent the last week or so working on a solo side project which suddenly got a major lift in priority. It's for a new version of a tool that I did the code for the earlier version of several years ago. The original version was released and supported by another part of the company, but that team has now been disbanded so it's back with me. Unfortunately the old version isn't quite compatible with the newer versions of our main product, but has been very widely distributed (several hundred customer sites, it appears), so lately I have been somewhat innundated with support calls as all those sites upgrade. Two weeks ago, one of the customer reps managed to get the issue escalated, so suddenly I have the go aead to fix all the outstanding issues and release a new version of the tool. Right away before any more customers complain, but Naturally without disrupting the schedule of my main development, which is OMGSoCritical as well. * Is dubious about management's grip on reality*.
Lacking the ability to schedule 200% of my time, my main development is now a week behind schedule and counting - luckily I have no immediate deadlines, so I should be able to hide that fact for another few weeks *g*.
On the plus side at work, a patent application with me listed as a co-inventor is being filed for the design of one of the subsystems I worked on as part of the last Project-O-Doom, which is kind of cool. I'm a little undecided as to the evilness of software patents in general, but can't deny the shinyness of something like this for possible future resumes. I also found out that we have a patent pending for the first project I worked on with this company (definitely not an inventor for that one, though) which is now being licensed back to Microsoft for Vista - that rather appeals to my inner geek as well :)
***
On the non-work side of things...
Three weekends ago, just after my last post, I checked out the closing-down sale at Fine Wools, and ran into Miss Maeve there, which was cool, as I hadn't seen her in an age. The good fabric was getting a bit thin on the ground, but I picked up some patterning fabric (at $1/m), lining for future use in mundane projects, a few metres of cotton linen with no set purpose just because I liked colour (a strong indigo), and enough charcoal wool to make a pair of trousers for work. The latter wasn't cheap at $20/m, but it was marked down from $50/m, so that's close enough to count !
Post fabric shopping I ventured into clothes shopping for very nearly the first time this year, and actually managed to find a pair of jeans that fit! This is a truly memorable thing for me, since I have the figure of someone who sits on her backside for a living, and thus do not normally have success in this field: trying on jeans usually leaves me very grumpy and refusing to go into any more shops which don't involve books.
Following all that shopping I went out on the town with one Miss Jane Doe of blogspot, which was heaps of fun - and all the rest of you that were invited are pikers! I got home at 5am, then pretty much slept all of sunday, since I am grown a bit feeble for dancing till dawn these days.
***
Two weeks ago was a flying trip to the snow with families from my Guide unit. I was all set to drive down Friday night after work, but the Parentals got all concerned about lack of sleep combined with long distances, and it ended up that Dad came along to share the driving.
Being so late in such a shockingly bad season I didn't expect much of the snow quality, and I was not disappointed in that expectation *g*. After the warm weather the previous week, Thredbo was done for, leaving Front valley at Perisher as the only liftered area in the country still running. Blue Cow apparently still had skiable snow in the snowmaking areas, but the lifts were on wind-hold: a tactic that I'm pretty certain was aimed at desperately trying to keep some cover skiable for the Queensland School holidays the following week.
Anyway, the massive amounts of snowmaking on Front Valley this season definitely paid off for PB, and it was still quite deep:
Away from the snowmaking areas though, the truth about the season's end was painfully obvious:
Although skiable, the snow was complete glop: not quite slush, but headed that direction fast. I think the technical classification is 'elephant snot' *g*. I didn't bother hiring skis, but instead used my Mum's old ones which are older than I am, hadn't been tuned in at least 5 years and are straight. The latter kept me occupied for most of the day trying to remember how to do a parallel christie rather than a carve turn, which is good, because otherwise Front Valley would get awfully boring in a hurry.
The kids on the trip didn't care, of course - it was only the first or second time on skis for all of them, lift tickets were cheap and the weather was great, so it made for a good day out.
By Sunday morning the weather had turned - gale force winds and rain, so we didn't bother to ski, but came home early instead. The girls' families came back via Questacon and other Canberra-based diversions, but Dad and I came straight home. Or at least tried to: the weather did not cooperate.
The winds had clearly been widespread: there were trees down alongside the highway all the way from Cooma to Sydney. We got to just past to the Picton turnoff just as the Wollondilly bushfires took serious hold (smoke averywhere), then traffic on the freeway stopped dead. I'm pretty sure that this was due to an accident rather than the fires (the freeway wasn't closed or anything), but it was clearly going nowhere in a hurry.
Since we were in Dad's big four-wheel drive, we backtracked a little way over the grass verge and took the Picton turnoff instead, detouring via Appin and Campbelltown. Partway between Wilton and Appin we had to stop again and pull a tree off the road: it wasn't blocking the whole thing, but you had to detour onto the wrng side of the road to get past it, and the emergency services were clearly busy elsewhere (they lost four houses at Picton that afternoon) so we figured it was community service for the day.
***
In a slightly less adventurous mode, last Saturday was my nephew's first birthday party. Being the first child in our family of his generation, he was thoroughly spoiled with gifts by all friends and relatives in attendance:
In true toddler fashion, though, he liked the cardboard boxes best:
Last Sunday, I spent working as a volunteer for races that marked the opening of Kogarah Bay Sailability (which is an organization that does dinghy sailing for disabled people). One of the guys I work with is a founding member of the club and had put out a call for volunteers, so I wandered along. The boats they use are really funky - completely non-capsizable, and able to be electronically controlled so thay can be sailed by someone who does not have use of their arms. They are really compact, but that doesn't matter much because regardless of level of disability the rules forbid sailors from moving out of their seats. I don't think I could sail one without a lot of practice: I'm used to being able to perch sideways on the gunwale of a dinghy!
Last Monday, being a local public holiday, I decreed myself a day off. The only constructive things I did all day were the laundry and the dishes and It Was Good. There needs to be more days off in my world.
And now I am all caught up, and normal posting should resume RSN.