Another weekend, another blog

[n5iln]

Saturday has arrived once again, and as usual it finds me in front of the keyboard. So what's been going on in the world of the Alan?

1. Adventures in cooking: Last week's recipe was for kielbasa and orzo. Quick, easy, tasty, filling. A keeper. I'd never worked with orzo before, and the amount of liquid called for in the recipe made me wonder if I was making soup, but it absorbed much more than I thought it would, and what didn't absorb reduced down in the normal cooking process. Next time, I'll bump up the seasoning just a bit.
2. Quest for employment: Not much change, except when I applied for a local driving job, they immediately sent me out for a drug test (which is a Federal requirement) and obtained the necessary contact information for employment verification. All I'm waiting on right now is for the employment-verification process to complete, then they'll call me in for a road test (also a Federal requirement). It may be seasonal, but it's income...something desperately needed. Meanwhile, I'm still on hold for the CalFire position for which I applied back in January -- and had an interview for in September. As my hunny phrased it, they're moving at the speed of government. I'm also still sending out résumé after résume and application after application, with precious little response on either. I can't stop, though. Certain materialistic needs are looming large and fast.
3. Home life: Also not much change, but I'm not sure if that's good or bad. Are my hunny and I just that comfortable with each other, or are we stagnating? Neither of us have been very willing to talk about it, because of the job issue (see above) and the resultant economic pinch it puts us in. It was pointed out to me a while back that more relationships in the United States come to an unpleasant end because of monetary issues than due to infidelity. The latter isn't, and never will be, part of the equation, so that means the former is the focus. I'm fairly certain that once #2 gets corrected, this will correct itself as well.
4. Writing: As a means of stepping away from the job search from time to time, I've been focusing on completion of the software manual I've been writing, since the software is coming up on a significant update release. I still have four pages to rewrite, but right now the draft is out in front of a couple of cold-readers, so I'll wait for their feedback before tucking into the final polishing tasks.
5. Learning new stuff: My interest has been piqued by a couple of items that dovetail quite nicely into things I've done before, or have at least caught my attention before. First, there's computer programming, in the form of a previously-unlearned language: Ada. Yep, that beast. Once considered mandatory for all programming in mission-critical Department of Defense applications (a mandate that has since been dropped), now most often seen as the language of choice for safety-sensitive applications such as aircraft electronic flight displays, and coming up on a major revision to its capabilities. This will be a long-term endeavor, simply because of the new syntax I have to learn, and the lack of readily-available (read: free) information on how to get it to talk to some of the low-level hardware I'd like to get it working with. Why would I be worried about hardware? Because of my second new interest: radio-controlled flying using onboard video for a first-person view. Some of the projects I've already seen in YouTube videos, as well as in the forums at RCGroups and FPVLab impress me greatly. The fact that some of the hardware that produces flight information for overlay on the video return feed is open-source, such as Arduino-based computers-on-a-board, impresses me even more. But it's a situation where, first and foremost, one must speak the language. The de facto programming language right now is C/C++, but to me that's just wishing for trouble, because of inherent type-safety issues and the headaches of pointer mathematics...both of which are nonexistent in Ada, because Ada doesn't allow mathematical operations on pointers, and is inherently type-safe. (Too much geekspeak? Sorry about that.) There's a means of incorporating C/C++ routines into Ada procedures, but that's a great deal more study, which means even further down the road. And it comes back to #2 again...textbooks aren't cheap, and neither are programming classes. And that doesn't even touch on the price of models, the radio equipment, the camera and related electronics. I need to hit the MegaMillions, that's all there is to it.

I've blathered on long enough for one entry. There may be more later, but right now, there's a couple of sammiches and a cup of tea calling for me. I'd be a fool to ignore them.

Catch y'all later. Behave, be good, or take pictures!

*poof*