New Year Catching Up
Oy. I s'pose it's been a while. But now I'm in the post-holiday getting back to normalness. After a month of running around to start off the year, I'm now setting back into a normal routine, and it is feeling like a new year. Figured I might as well update my journal a little.
What's happened recently...
I took three weeks off in December. Julie and I spent a weekish on a small roat trip; we drove to Pittsburgh to see friends and then to West Virginia to visit her family. While in WV, we manage to catch something from her family and bring it back to Illinois. Julie got it first, then I got it, and I was nice and sick in time for my return to work in the second week of January.
I spent that Monday and Tuesday working from home with a high fever. On Tuesday, my boss called me. "Want to go to the UK?" "Sure, when?" "This Friday." "Um, ok..." International travel while sick! Yay!
Turns out we didn't actually leave till Saturday. Flew to Heathrow, then went to Birmingham and spent several days at the Motorola facility there. Now that Mot owns 50% of UIQ we're going to be making more phones on it, and we were meeting with the core UIQ developers in Birmingham. I found out a good bit about the SDK and emulators for the Z8 and Z10, as well as their super-seekrit successor. Told you about it, kill you, etc etc.
Got back on Thursday, took Friday as a comp day, and now it is Monday and I'm actually back in the office for only the third day since late December.
What else?
I've been trying to learn Dvorak. I have the basic character set down, and now I'm just working on speed. It's annoyingly so, so I switch back and forth between that and QWERTY as my situation allows and patience demands. I'm slowly building speed. It's rewarding, if... occasionally frustrating.
I've become utterly hooked on X-Plane. The new version adds to the stellar flight model with some truly kick-ass eye candy. This screenshot is reduced from 1280x1024, as is this one. Even without the eyecandy, now that I have a proper stick and have taken some time to actually learn instrument navigation, it's very enjoyable.
I also put together a new PC, on which I am running MythTV. It's only been up a few days, but so far I'm loving it. Yay for throwing off the chains of TiVo! Or something.
I put on 20 pounds over the holidays. Bad, bad, bad me. :( Today I start on getting it off again! *pops speed pills* Heh.
And, er, um. Stuff. And things.
There might be some pictures of various things later.
...
Oh, on a sad note, today is the 22nd anniversary of the Challenger accident. Though I was as stunned as the rest of the country, I did not cry on 9/11. I did cry when Columbia went down. I was young at the time, but Challenger had the same effect on me, and engendered a strong respect for modern explorers in me early. Rest well, daring souls.
What's happened recently...
I took three weeks off in December. Julie and I spent a weekish on a small roat trip; we drove to Pittsburgh to see friends and then to West Virginia to visit her family. While in WV, we manage to catch something from her family and bring it back to Illinois. Julie got it first, then I got it, and I was nice and sick in time for my return to work in the second week of January.
I spent that Monday and Tuesday working from home with a high fever. On Tuesday, my boss called me. "Want to go to the UK?" "Sure, when?" "This Friday." "Um, ok..." International travel while sick! Yay!
Turns out we didn't actually leave till Saturday. Flew to Heathrow, then went to Birmingham and spent several days at the Motorola facility there. Now that Mot owns 50% of UIQ we're going to be making more phones on it, and we were meeting with the core UIQ developers in Birmingham. I found out a good bit about the SDK and emulators for the Z8 and Z10, as well as their super-seekrit successor. Told you about it, kill you, etc etc.
Got back on Thursday, took Friday as a comp day, and now it is Monday and I'm actually back in the office for only the third day since late December.
What else?
I've been trying to learn Dvorak. I have the basic character set down, and now I'm just working on speed. It's annoyingly so, so I switch back and forth between that and QWERTY as my situation allows and patience demands. I'm slowly building speed. It's rewarding, if... occasionally frustrating.
I've become utterly hooked on X-Plane. The new version adds to the stellar flight model with some truly kick-ass eye candy. This screenshot is reduced from 1280x1024, as is this one. Even without the eyecandy, now that I have a proper stick and have taken some time to actually learn instrument navigation, it's very enjoyable.
I also put together a new PC, on which I am running MythTV. It's only been up a few days, but so far I'm loving it. Yay for throwing off the chains of TiVo! Or something.
I put on 20 pounds over the holidays. Bad, bad, bad me. :( Today I start on getting it off again! *pops speed pills* Heh.
And, er, um. Stuff. And things.
There might be some pictures of various things later.
...
Oh, on a sad note, today is the 22nd anniversary of the Challenger accident. Though I was as stunned as the rest of the country, I did not cry on 9/11. I did cry when Columbia went down. I was young at the time, but Challenger had the same effect on me, and engendered a strong respect for modern explorers in me early. Rest well, daring souls.