feels (almost) like spring
Sat Feb 20 11:53:09 EST 2016
I got a cool glimpse of the almost-setting moon as I left work this morning, about 05:00.
The last couple of days I have been working extremely late, and the rest of the weekend may be the same. (I may hit my 2-week's 80 hours this weekend - without counting the holiday I didn't take Monday.) Thursday night I came home at the normal time and worked past 06:00. Last night I stayed at the office until almost 05:00. I noticed that it was going to be getting warmer after 23:00 last night, heading for today's forecast of 66°F/19°C.
Traffic was, of course, very light. Even the Roosevelt Bridge was calm and sane, instead of its usual rush of heavy traffic ignoring the speed limit. Bikes use the sidewalk, but it's a narrow sidewalk, and 2 bikes can barely pass each other. (Not too bad in the winter, but it will be interesting to see what it's like when there's more bikes and nicer weather.)
I came past the Bikeometer. The count was 4, and I made 5. I've never seen it that low, even when the weather was bad. Then I realized it must reset at midnight, and I've never been there that early.
I overtook a woman jogging on the trail alongside I-66 (at 05:30?), and passed another woman walking 2 largish dogs along Lee Highway.
I get more done working at the office than at home, so I will probably go back in after I have some breakfast. We're deploying a bunch of new servers this weekend. When this was scheduled they were servers for the disaster-recovery site. But we had major problems with the data-storage systems 3(?) weeks ago, and the stand-by servers became production. So this work is more critical than it would have been. My servers are all new, adding redundancy rather than replacing existing servers, so it's not crippling if there's problems with them.
Saturday 17:00
I saw a few women out jogging/running on my ride to work. Then I got to the Custis Trail, and it was busy - cyclists and runners. It's the spring-ish weather - 66°F/19°. The Bikeometer that I left at 5 this morning was over 500, and cyclists formed queues waiting for the traffic lights at both ends of that block in Rosslyn. Continuing on, it was crowded around Roosevelt Island, with congestion in the parking lot. It's one of those typical little parks along the river, accessible by car only from a "parkway" in one direction. I think most of these parks didn't have any foot/bike access until the trail-building notion took hold. (Of course, you wouldn't want to share these parks with people who couldn't afford cars.) Some of these parks still don't have any other access, and you would have to walk or bike along a parkway to get to them. And next thing you know those trails are important car-free commuting routes. Just as rivers are natural arteries, trails along the river are also travel arteries.
I've been here almost 3 hours, and spent no time yet on what I'd planned to work on. Someone needed help with something else, and it took a very long time. (And I still don't know why it took so long. But it did. But that was easier to do here than at home, too.) I'm the only one of the core group working now, but most of the others got back to things earlier this morning than I did. I got home around 06:00, had some "dinner", took a shower, and slept for about 4 hours. Everyone else also took a break, but they were already at home. And had probably had dinner before things got started. (They certainly had iceboxes and pantries at hand.)
Just noticed a jar of this in the break-room cabinets:Skippy Natural Peanut Butter Spread
Ingredients: Roasted Peanuts, Sugar, Palm Oil, Salt.
Palm oil may be a natural ingredient, but I don't know why it belongs in peanut butter. Peanuts already have a lot of oil; they need more? Sugar seems to be borderline natural to me, since you don't really encounter in "nature" what they're adding to this spread. And again, why does peanut butter need it? And with my hypertensive family medical history, I don't need anyone adding salt to my food either. Peanut butter is one of the few things in life where I've achieved purity. It costs more, so all that stuff the others add must be cheaper than peanuts. (Funny, when "peanuts" means cheap.... (And salt used to be so valuable that it's the root of "salary".))
Another wonderful Microsoft design?
I've got a spreadsheet, with a cell containing a dead URL. I want to edit it. But every time I select the cell, Excel tries to open the bad link, and goes into limbo, and finally times out. How can I delete garbage that immediately freezes the application?
(Finally got what I wanted by moving to the cell with the arrow keys, not selecting it with the mouse.) This lines up with another frequent MS gripe, wanting to select/copy a file's name, and not its contents. Linux seems to figure out which makes sense in the paste context; MS always seems to think I want the whole file, and never the name.
Saturday 23:36
There's not enough music in my life. I'm listening to "Judy Carmichael's Jazz Inspired". Her guest this episode is Rene Fleming, whom you (well, I) don't associate with jazz. She's singing genres you wouldn't expect, and sometimes in vocal ranges you wouldn't expect.http://wamu.org/programs/jazz_inspired
I'd thought I'd be on my way home by now, but I'm still here. Aiming to leave at the end of the show.
Tomorrow's forecast is 1/4"-1/2" (0.6-1.3cm) of rain between 10:00-19:00. I guess I'll work from home. ☹
Sunday 02:00
The bike's blinkers were noticeably (to me, anyway) slower when I got home. That corresponds with dropping voltage, so it's time to change the batteries. I think they've done 18 commutes. That's not quite a month (although it probably is, if you figure missing a few days of biking for rain/snow/etc.), but it certainly beats the 4 nights I was getting out of the old batteries I was using. (That's old as in "aged", not "previous".) Changing the batteries requires a screwdriver and is rather tedious, so going multiple weeks makes a real difference.
Sunday 15:45
That down jacket that blocks moisture/holds sweat too well to be great for cycling is sometimes very nice to wear inside the house. It's chilly in the basement, and there have been some long days/nights on the computer for work. It was warmer outside than inside yesterday afternoon.
Sunday 21:47
"Oven Baked" Doritos suck. They're nowhere near as good as standard Doritos. This was a single serving (3/4 oz/ 21.2g) package. I had no desire to eat any more. I can easily eat much larger bags of normal Doritos. Maybe these were old. The date on the package is Jul 15, but there's no year. (Why do people think dates on food do not need the year? Some people are hoarders. (Or pathologically frugal.) "Guaranteed fresh until printed date." If there's no year, it's not a date. DATES NEED YEARS.) I don't know whether these are 7 months past sell-by or have 5 months left. But I don't think they would have been any more compelling a year ago. Baked Doritos don't make the cut.
If you, like most people, need to watch what you eat, don't give these another look.
Sunday 22:51
I guess I'm getting overtime this week. I'm at 80 hours now, on Sunday. Anything through next Saturday is overtime. I would love to just have the week off, but I'm sure I'm not the only person who's been putting in long hours. We can't all take days off at the same time. ☹
Monday 14:41
I'm working a short day today, and I have the rest of the week off. ☺
I don't know what I'm going to do. Sleep. I should go to NC, but then there's the whole fight for the DSL, and the phone wasn't working at all either last trip. (Maybe I should borrow a cell phone.... Get to know the neighbors better?)
Monday 22:00
I finally found my little flex-tripod. I'm sure I saw it right after I ordered the new camera, and it must have been someplace I thought sensible, or I would have moved it. But I couldn't find it anywhere after the camera arrived. I found it today, packed with my digital audio recorder. The recorder has the camera-standard tripod mount, which makes tripods useful as microphone stands. And packed with the recorder, the tripod would go to Pennsic, so that was a reasonable place. (Or so I thought, several weeks ago.)
A tripod is nearly essential for taking pictures with a remote control, since you won't be there to hold/aim the camera.
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/799434.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]
I got a cool glimpse of the almost-setting moon as I left work this morning, about 05:00.
The last couple of days I have been working extremely late, and the rest of the weekend may be the same. (I may hit my 2-week's 80 hours this weekend - without counting the holiday I didn't take Monday.) Thursday night I came home at the normal time and worked past 06:00. Last night I stayed at the office until almost 05:00. I noticed that it was going to be getting warmer after 23:00 last night, heading for today's forecast of 66°F/19°C.
Traffic was, of course, very light. Even the Roosevelt Bridge was calm and sane, instead of its usual rush of heavy traffic ignoring the speed limit. Bikes use the sidewalk, but it's a narrow sidewalk, and 2 bikes can barely pass each other. (Not too bad in the winter, but it will be interesting to see what it's like when there's more bikes and nicer weather.)
I came past the Bikeometer. The count was 4, and I made 5. I've never seen it that low, even when the weather was bad. Then I realized it must reset at midnight, and I've never been there that early.
I overtook a woman jogging on the trail alongside I-66 (at 05:30?), and passed another woman walking 2 largish dogs along Lee Highway.
I get more done working at the office than at home, so I will probably go back in after I have some breakfast. We're deploying a bunch of new servers this weekend. When this was scheduled they were servers for the disaster-recovery site. But we had major problems with the data-storage systems 3(?) weeks ago, and the stand-by servers became production. So this work is more critical than it would have been. My servers are all new, adding redundancy rather than replacing existing servers, so it's not crippling if there's problems with them.
Saturday 17:00
I saw a few women out jogging/running on my ride to work. Then I got to the Custis Trail, and it was busy - cyclists and runners. It's the spring-ish weather - 66°F/19°. The Bikeometer that I left at 5 this morning was over 500, and cyclists formed queues waiting for the traffic lights at both ends of that block in Rosslyn. Continuing on, it was crowded around Roosevelt Island, with congestion in the parking lot. It's one of those typical little parks along the river, accessible by car only from a "parkway" in one direction. I think most of these parks didn't have any foot/bike access until the trail-building notion took hold. (Of course, you wouldn't want to share these parks with people who couldn't afford cars.) Some of these parks still don't have any other access, and you would have to walk or bike along a parkway to get to them. And next thing you know those trails are important car-free commuting routes. Just as rivers are natural arteries, trails along the river are also travel arteries.
I've been here almost 3 hours, and spent no time yet on what I'd planned to work on. Someone needed help with something else, and it took a very long time. (And I still don't know why it took so long. But it did. But that was easier to do here than at home, too.) I'm the only one of the core group working now, but most of the others got back to things earlier this morning than I did. I got home around 06:00, had some "dinner", took a shower, and slept for about 4 hours. Everyone else also took a break, but they were already at home. And had probably had dinner before things got started. (They certainly had iceboxes and pantries at hand.)
Just noticed a jar of this in the break-room cabinets:Skippy Natural Peanut Butter Spread
Ingredients: Roasted Peanuts, Sugar, Palm Oil, Salt.
Palm oil may be a natural ingredient, but I don't know why it belongs in peanut butter. Peanuts already have a lot of oil; they need more? Sugar seems to be borderline natural to me, since you don't really encounter in "nature" what they're adding to this spread. And again, why does peanut butter need it? And with my hypertensive family medical history, I don't need anyone adding salt to my food either. Peanut butter is one of the few things in life where I've achieved purity. It costs more, so all that stuff the others add must be cheaper than peanuts. (Funny, when "peanuts" means cheap.... (And salt used to be so valuable that it's the root of "salary".))
Another wonderful Microsoft design?
I've got a spreadsheet, with a cell containing a dead URL. I want to edit it. But every time I select the cell, Excel tries to open the bad link, and goes into limbo, and finally times out. How can I delete garbage that immediately freezes the application?
(Finally got what I wanted by moving to the cell with the arrow keys, not selecting it with the mouse.) This lines up with another frequent MS gripe, wanting to select/copy a file's name, and not its contents. Linux seems to figure out which makes sense in the paste context; MS always seems to think I want the whole file, and never the name.
Saturday 23:36
There's not enough music in my life. I'm listening to "Judy Carmichael's Jazz Inspired". Her guest this episode is Rene Fleming, whom you (well, I) don't associate with jazz. She's singing genres you wouldn't expect, and sometimes in vocal ranges you wouldn't expect.http://wamu.org/programs/jazz_inspired
I'd thought I'd be on my way home by now, but I'm still here. Aiming to leave at the end of the show.
Tomorrow's forecast is 1/4"-1/2" (0.6-1.3cm) of rain between 10:00-19:00. I guess I'll work from home. ☹
Sunday 02:00
The bike's blinkers were noticeably (to me, anyway) slower when I got home. That corresponds with dropping voltage, so it's time to change the batteries. I think they've done 18 commutes. That's not quite a month (although it probably is, if you figure missing a few days of biking for rain/snow/etc.), but it certainly beats the 4 nights I was getting out of the old batteries I was using. (That's old as in "aged", not "previous".) Changing the batteries requires a screwdriver and is rather tedious, so going multiple weeks makes a real difference.
Sunday 15:45
That down jacket that blocks moisture/holds sweat too well to be great for cycling is sometimes very nice to wear inside the house. It's chilly in the basement, and there have been some long days/nights on the computer for work. It was warmer outside than inside yesterday afternoon.
Sunday 21:47
"Oven Baked" Doritos suck. They're nowhere near as good as standard Doritos. This was a single serving (3/4 oz/ 21.2g) package. I had no desire to eat any more. I can easily eat much larger bags of normal Doritos. Maybe these were old. The date on the package is Jul 15, but there's no year. (Why do people think dates on food do not need the year? Some people are hoarders. (Or pathologically frugal.) "Guaranteed fresh until printed date." If there's no year, it's not a date. DATES NEED YEARS.) I don't know whether these are 7 months past sell-by or have 5 months left. But I don't think they would have been any more compelling a year ago. Baked Doritos don't make the cut.
If you, like most people, need to watch what you eat, don't give these another look.
Sunday 22:51
I guess I'm getting overtime this week. I'm at 80 hours now, on Sunday. Anything through next Saturday is overtime. I would love to just have the week off, but I'm sure I'm not the only person who's been putting in long hours. We can't all take days off at the same time. ☹
Monday 14:41
I'm working a short day today, and I have the rest of the week off. ☺
I don't know what I'm going to do. Sleep. I should go to NC, but then there's the whole fight for the DSL, and the phone wasn't working at all either last trip. (Maybe I should borrow a cell phone.... Get to know the neighbors better?)
Monday 22:00
I finally found my little flex-tripod. I'm sure I saw it right after I ordered the new camera, and it must have been someplace I thought sensible, or I would have moved it. But I couldn't find it anywhere after the camera arrived. I found it today, packed with my digital audio recorder. The recorder has the camera-standard tripod mount, which makes tripods useful as microphone stands. And packed with the recorder, the tripod would go to Pennsic, so that was a reasonable place. (Or so I thought, several weeks ago.)
A tripod is nearly essential for taking pictures with a remote control, since you won't be there to hold/aim the camera.
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/799434.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]