Let the hijinks begin!

So today my entire project team is going to some fancy grocery store that has a cooking school to participate in some sort of team-building Iron Chef style competition. Here is what I predict will happen-

The product group will continue adding features to their dishes, and will ultimately produce nothing (except for an impressive list of meal features).

The engineering team will produce a light board that indicates when their dish is done, but will burn their omelet (omlet filling are a v.2 feature) in while connecting sensors and LEDs to the pan.

The QA team will spend an hour producing a single, perfectly roasted and constantly reproducible, potato, destroying the kitchen in the process (oooo look! We found a bug!).

This could be scary. God willing, no one will burn the place down. Between my freakish ability to set fire to anything (M, sorry about your microwave the other day...) and the engineers penchant for connecting electrodes and LED's to everything, this could get scary. Don't even get me started on those product guys, they just egg us all on (Oh! Let's put another bank of lights there! Surely you can increase the output of this oven?)

Run away now if insecure boy-related ranting isn't your thing

Boy is all sick, but we haven't spent any time together in more than 2 weeks. We were supposed to go see HHGTTG with some of my friends on Friday. He totally forgot about this which pisses me off, I have very little to no free time to dick around with and advance planning is the only way I get to see anyone I don't actually work with. But whatever, he's sick, I can get that, but he won't make even half-assed plans for the weekend either. Now one of my friends wants to go to Napa on Saturday, and he's all, "gee, if it means you have to plan I guess you should go or whatever and I'm going to flying anyway maybe." My dad is supposed to come up the next weekend to help me pack and take a bunch of stuff away to store at my parents, and I have to start getting my stuff organized and packed, so I'm pretty much never going to see him again.

Unless it's at work.

The one thing I do not have time for is flaking out on plans, I don't have the luxury of available days to reschedule at the moment. For fuck sake, I got at home at 10 last night, and had to leave again at 7. I don't have free time to do laundry, never mind re-shuffle other plans. I get 2 days a week to have a social life outside work, do housework, and get ready to move. That's it. So I guess maybe that tells me something...either he's clueless about all of this or just not motivated enough to, I don't know, keep track of things? I've been shuffling things around so I can spend time with him when it suits him for the last 2 months. My schedule looks like tetris, it's not that easy to shuffle.

At the same time, he's sick and just got back from a long trip half way around the world, I should give him some slack and not assume that his apparent disinterest in me is anything more than being tired and sick. But I feel like he went out of his way to avoid dealing with me the week before he left, and this isn't helping with the resulting sense of insecurity and marginalization. If he doesn't want to see me anymore, just come out and say it and don't do this stupid passive-aggressive pushing me away but not letting go crap. If he thinks one of both of us are getting too attached given I'm moving to Virgina in 3 months, well, too late buck-o. I've pretty much decided to take what I can get while I can get it, enjoy what time I have left, and refuse to look back with any sort of regret. Why cant he be happy I want to spend that time with him? It's not going to make the inevitable hurt any less to be all weird and distant and cold while refusing to let me go.

Anyway, my weekend plans are now as follows:

Friday night - race back to city from work for HHGTTG thing
Saturday day and eavening - Napa with N.
Sunday day - Laundry, pack, sew 2 comissioned skirts I forgot about
Sunday night - get ready for ass-crack of dawn early Monday commute, more packing and sleep

Finally some pictures!

I had rather a dull weekend. The high lite of the whole thing was dressing up the penguins.



I am particularly fond of the utility belt. One of J's friends referred to the Red Hat wearing penguins as "ABOMINATION!!!" every time he walked past it. Ok, the guy hadn't slept in at least 36 hours, but I guess Red Hat is not his distribution of choice.

Here also I have pictures of the alpaca sweater I am knitting for myself and the alpaca it come from! I spun this yarn some time ago and have been agonizing about what to make out of it for ages. I finally settled on a pattern and got started, and so far am very happy with the results. It's going to be a fairly small, light thing, perfect for spring, and I have enough yarn left over to make another sweater! Hurray! I've already got the pattern picked out for Lacy sweater #2. It's a vintage design, and will be more tightly knit so I don't have to wear quite as much under it.

Computer buying advice...and how not to get it

So I thought that it might be smart to ask some of the engineers I have lunch with if getting a Thinkpad T42 for $1675 was a good deal (this is the system I can get through school, at what appears to be a good price). Ask any group of engineers for computer recommendations, and strangely, the number of system recommended will be an order of magnitude larger than the number of engineers asked. Several of the recommendations even involved the additional purchase of a desktop machine/server farm.

Sigh.

So, my requirements are these:

1 - The system must not cost more than $1675
2 - If it does cost more, I must get a better deal that what the college has negotiated on the T42
3 - System must be capable of running Linux
4 - System must not require the purchase of other systems or data centers
5 - System must not be totally obsolete by the time I get it home
6 - System must be extensible to at least some degree
8 - Must be able to carry this to class (duh)

4-6 are mistakes I made with my sad iBook. I hugely underestimated my future computing needs, and ended up with a system that is now semi-functional, won't do half of what I want, and can no longer be upgraded since Apple doesn't bother to support older hardware and new peripherals and upgrades are almost never backwards compatible.

Anyway, I'm open to advice and suggestions, and also offers to purchase the recommended system. Strong opinions backed up with actual cash, those are the best kind!

I'm having a similar problem with the whole car-purchasing project. 5 people, n(5) different recommendations, none of which are really feasible as far as my bank account goes. I mean, if you really feel that strongly about my need to drive a Aston Martin or 5-series BMW, I'm more than happy to do so if you provide the vehicle.

What I know to be true

1 - The only stupid question is the one you asked me 5 times already today.

2 - Moving day at the office = zero productivity

3 - If people are going to work for you, it would be better if you had some input into the selection process (thus hopefully avoiding true things #1 and #4)

4 - Following directions can't possibly be *that* hard, can it?

5 - Nap time should not just be for kindergartners

It's just been that kind of week.

The massage on Tuesday was hugely helpful. I can move my neck again! Hurray! My back is still stiff and yucky feeling, but it's finally getting better and just sitting in my chair isn't such a drag. I need to get massages more frequently. What with the crazy schedule we are on, weird group tension and drama, and trying to train a guy who's conversation consists mainly of "yup, yup, ok!" these little chances to relax are a good thing.

The penguin knitting has turned out to be as addictive as I had feared. Oh well. At least it's fun, and somewhat productive. I have two finished, one of which I need to sew together, and another well on it's way. All in 2 days, of just knitting during my commute. Sad really. I'm planning little outfits for them already. Hopefully I can get a penguin sized geek utility belt figured out by Monday morning for M's penguin. He'd get a kick out of that.

My team is moving to new building tonight,. so our cube area is an a state of chaos and disarray. this should be a nice challenge for the mail people. I have a package on it's way to me as I type (at least I think it's on it's way, hard to tell sometimes with lousy order tracking systems). Will they be able to find me in my new location when it gets here? Stay tuned and find out!

Look at all the pretty documents!

I'm buried in documentation. Not completed documentation, but all of the documentation I have been not doing for the last few months in favor of actual work. Now that I have someone to help out with the testing, I can get some of the administrative stuff done, and my god am I ever behind! Oh well. I'll catch up, and it'll make the whole process of handing this off to someone much easier.

The saga of the penguin yarn turned out to have a very happy ending. As it turns out, the packages had in fact been delivered to the mail room (duh), and the goob who was supposed to have delivered it to me did in fact walk right past my desk no less than twice holding said package, and failing to identify my cube. Grrrr. I spotted the package on the mail cart yesterday, found the mail guy, and now I have my yarn! Hurray! The yellow isn't as bright as I had hoped, but it will do. Stupid mail room.

Anyhow, I decided to use cascade 220, because it comes in lots of colors, is not expensive, is the right gauge, and isn't icky acetate. Plus it has really good yardage, so I should be able to get quite a few penguins out of my one ball of each color. I already have the back and half a belly done for the first penguin! Yay! I have a feeling these might be as addictive to knit as the felted mice were. At least I know lots of Linux geeks who will give the penguins nice homes.

My back is even feeling better, thank god. Something popped and made an awful crunching sound this morning, and now everything feels much better. Not perfect, and still tense, but the stabby and shooting pains have stopped. Hurray! Hopefully the dull ache and residual tension will get worked out today at my massage appointment. Another week of awful back problems sounds pretty intolerable to me, and I really want to go dancing this weekend.

Dingos, wallabies and whores, oh my!

People need to stop telling me awful horror stories about what goes on in various parts of Australia. I really think J, my newest house mate, takes a perverse kind of pleasure in freaking out with tales of rabid dingos and whores absconding with innocent geek-boys. Oh well. How much trouble can M. really get into all by himself, surrounded by utility-belt wearing Linux geeks?

I've been in extreme amounts of pain all weekend. I have no idea what I did to my back, but it got all awful and hurting last week, and totally unbearable over the weekend. I managed to take one of the boys from work furniture shopping (very successful, we got him a lovely sectional and an arm chair for his otherwise empty living room) on Saturday. I think I made it through the day by virtue of lunchtime margaritas and several gin and tonics, but Sunday was a total waste. I spent the day stuck on the sofa, watching awful TV and trying to find a comfortable position. At least I managed to get some knitting done and hem my pink bias dress, so it wasn't so unproductive as to be depressing.

Anyhow, work is interesting. I'm all hopped up on pain killers and fuzzy headed, trying to train some poor new guy, figure out what our Q2 goals need to be, and track down phantom documentation. We have the most bloated product team ever. It's absurd. I do not understand why it's so easy for us to get more useless product marketing people and so difficult to get engineers, but there it is. It's highly annoying.

The yarn for my wool penguins seems to have vanished into the black hole that is the US postal service or the mail room. USPS claims it was delivered. The mail room claims it's at the wrong post office. I am pretty sure it was in fact on one of the mail delivery carts that rolled by on Friday (only 1 day after being delivered!) and failed to be delivered to me because 1 - my cube is not well marked and 2 - the guy driving the cart is an idiot who didn't bother to ask anyone where cube number x is. But I'm bitter, and have no faith in the system. So there it is. I want my frellin' yarn!!

Actual knitting content!

My commute knitting progress got seriously derailed when I discovered that I could quite happily watch old episodes of Stargate on my laptop while riding to and from work. Well, in the last week I have run out of things to watch and keep forgetting to transfer new files over when I am at M's. So I'm back to knitting!

This week I made a very simple tunnel lace scarf out of some old stash yarn, and started on my lacy alpaca sweater (from the handspun stash). Yay for using up the stash! Moving my yarn and fiber stash to Virginia in it's current state is just a ridiculous proposition, so I am trying very hard to resist the urge to start projects that require new purchases. However, I have not a single scrap of yarn suitable for this project. Knitting wool penguins is about as geeky as it gets, but I think M will like one, Linux geek that he is. Or maybe a pair of them, with little outfits! He's going out of town (well, off the continent really) for 10 whole days, so hopefully by the time he gets back he'll have at least one cute little penguin in a dashing outfit waiting for him.

It's no worse that knitting an army of felted mice really...

I'm trying to decide what to make out of some really lovely black alpaca and white silk handspun that I did a long time ago. It's kind of lace weight, maybe closer to fingering, and the white silk makes the whole thing shimmer like moonlight. Clearly, this needs to be something elegant, but what? I was thinking some sort of shawl or wrap, I'm just having a terrible time finding a pattern like, or even settling on a shape. Everything I've found so far seems either too modern/trendy for my taste, or too old fashioned for the yarn. Gah. Hopefully I will come up with something soon. Some sort of shrug thing might work...

This is pretty much the one major drawback to using handspun yarns. Once I've spent what feels like an eternity spinning something (especially if it's fine or really wonderful fiber), I am terrified to make anything out of it that I might one day get sick of or makes me feel like I wasted the yarn on a less than perfect project. So I hem and haw about the project, and end up making nothing or ripping out 100 times. Which is just perfectly silly, and gets me nowhere, but there it is. Once I get going, all is well, but it takes ages and ages to get started on anything.

In non-knitting news, work is getting progressively more interesting. I am finally getting a second person to help me with this project, and people seem to have finally worked out that hiring in this group is actually an urgent need. We're moving to a new building next week, which should be nice, at least I'll have more room and my eventual team will fit someplace in the same area. My commute is slowly robbing me of my will to get up in the morning, but what can you do? I'm slowly adjusting to having actual sociable housemates, which is a mixed deal for me. After a long day at work and a crap MUNI experience to get home, the last thing I want is to be sociable, but it's probably good for me to not sit around and stew for the hour and a half I manage to remain awake.

Mass-transit rage

MUNI seems to be going out of it's way this week to make me really really glad I am moving in a couple of months. Since Friday, it has taken me well over an hour to get home. Mostly I've been giving up, and taking the first train I can get out of Civic Center to someplace civilized and getting dinner, in hopes that whatever asinine clog-forming event will have cleared up by the time I'm done. It's enough to make one hate humanity in general. Why is it that the more people that are stuck on the platform, the ruder people get? Especially old women with 3 remaining teeth. You'd think they were geriatric hockey players or something, the way they try to shove you in front on oncoming trains. I hate them all!!

This about sums up my opinion of mass transit in this part of world:



In somewhat less annoying news, I finally cast on my lacy alpaca sweater! Hurray! I am using the cardigan view of this pattern, with my usual few modifications. The yarn is a lovely natural color of alpaca that I spun. This was the alpaca my dad got my for Christmas a couple of years ago that I took so long to spin up. I have about an inch of the back done, just enough to see how the lace pattern shows up in the yarn, and it's going to be yummy! Lite weight and warm, with a wonderful soft sheen to it. It defiantly does the fiber justice. The yarn is lovely to knit, just as the fiber was lovely to spin. Once I have a bit more done, I'll post pictures. Hopefully I will be able to go visit the alpaca the fiber came from once I finish the sweater!

Finally, she sews!

So aside from the usual back-achy tired and annoying bug reports with less than no useful information, today is going ok and I am remarkably un-cranky. Hurray! Probably this is because I finally found my bottle of Aleve and sent off my OES resignation letter. All the nasty ick phone calls got taken care of, and I am done! Thank god! I have a few emails to send out yet, but that will take all of 15 minutes and isn't nearly as unpleasant as the phone calls.

Anyhow, the weekend was rather nice in a lazy kind of way. Friday I went to see Sin City with some old friends I haven't seen in ages. I'm not sure what this says about me, but I really enjoyed the movie. Sure, it was bloody and gross, but I didn't find it gratuitous in any way, and actually thought most of it was pretty funny. I guess the whole comic-book feel of the thing helped. Go see it, but not if you have a weak stomach or get grossed out easily.

Saturday I was supposed to go furniture shopping with one of the guys from work, but we were both feeling too lazy, so I ended up staying home and sewing all day. I did take a walk with J, the newest house mate, but it was mostly a hang out and rest kind of day. Which was good, I stayed up far too late Friday night. The only problem with the whole thing was that I was board to tears by about 6, and too tired to do anything effective about it, so A and I watched Le Divorce and ate brie and pate until we passed out on the couch.

Sunday was a bit better, as far as falling asleep goes. M decided to take me out for dinner at someplace he described as "reasonably classy," which threw A. and I into a dress-selecting frenzy. I have exactly 2 half-way decent looking dresses. My closet is in a sad state as far as "reasonably classy" cloths go, plus we weren't altogether sure what that meant exactly, especially coming from an engineer. It was decided that I would have to go shopping. So Sunday morning I hit the mall. 4 hours latter, I emerged with a really pretty vintage looking lingerie dress and a new watch. I really love this dress. It was in the juniors department at Macy's, and so isn't the most well made thing in the world, but it's pretty and flirty and has lace, and looks sexy, but elegant. J. helped me accessorize, and I was off to Palo Alto for a lovely French dinner. Yum! It was a very nice evening, and the dress seems to have been a success. Hurray!

And finally, fiber content! Saturday, I sewed. I worked on the cheongsam I abandoned some time ago, and managed to get the dress body pieces flat-lined. This was a huge achievement, given that I was using china silk, the most annoying fabric known to man. I really don't need to line this dress, but the fabric I am using is vintage, and want to protect it however I can. Plus it will be easier to sew the bias bindings down on the inside with a lining. That didn't take too long, but I was so pissed off at the silk that I decided to do something else for a little while, and made a bias-cut slip dress from Vogue with a really neat asymmetrical hem which they seem to have discontinued. Anyway, it went together really quickly and looks lovely, but doing all the hand rolled hems all over kind of sucks. I did the hand rolling at the neck, and need to hem it tonight, now that it's had a couple of days to hang out.

Since I was taking the train down to Palo Alto, I decided I needed a new brainless knitting project, and cast on a simple tunnel lace scarf. Brainless knitting is a wonderful thing. I find it much easier to relax while watching a movie if I have something in my hands. It slows my brain down, I can relax, and thinking about things one step at a time gets much easier. Why I sometimes lose sight of that I will never understand. Fiber is my therapy. Knitting it portable therapy. Spinning is even better therapy but harder to do on buses and trains.

Things to do before I move:

1 - Find an apartment
2 - Hire movers
3 - Switch banks
4 - Research banks
5 - Start DSL at new house
6 - Climb Mount Tam with M.
7 - Drink Rubicon
8 - Spa day with C.
9 - Visit the light house at Point Reyes
10 - Get a good legal looking suit
11 - Get new glasses
12 - Learn to drive a stick

The list will surely grow...

It's so...green?

A satellite photo of where I will be in 4 months and where I live now.

Eep. This will be differant.

Differant is good, right?

Interesting developments

-I got an offer for a full tuition scholarship from the New England School of Law. I have declined it. Am I insane? Maybe. US News ranks it as 4th tier. Free and 4th tier, and competing with Harvard students for jobs sounds like something that isn't worth loan avoidance in my world. Not when I have top-tier school as an option. But it is really gratifying to see that award letter sitting on the bed. I am wanted. Someone believes in my potential as a lawyer. And that goes a long way.

-C. and I have worked out a plan to extricate myself from OES. Thank god. This means I will be free to enjoy the time I have left in the Bay Area with my friends. I feel a little bad about this, but there are so many things I actually want to do and see before I go, spending an absurd amount of time and energy on something that has become a chore (and a miserable one at that) just doesn't seem worth it anymore.

-Time lines are shaping up on my project at work. I just might see the end of this thing after all, if all goes well. That would be a nice note to leave on actually. I'll either be here to get this baby out the door, or I'll be watching it happen a few weeks into my law school career. I'd much rather do it myself and get the satisfaction of getting it out myself.

-I might actually have time to sew this weekend. Who would have thought? I want to finish the 1901 corset. If I can do that I will feel like I have accomplished something. It should be easy to do. All I need to do is put in the rest of the eyelets, take it in at the sides, and make the bindings and boning channels. Not too bad.

Zoom zoom!

I'm feeling vaguely schizophrenic today, alternating between stressed out of my mind and super relaxed and excited. Very strange.

I had a great weekend actually. Saturday was fairly mellow, my project team at work got together and we had a BBQ at one of the guys houses to celebrate meeting a major milestone. I ended up falling asleep on the floor while playing some railroad tycoon based board game from the 80's, but it was a fun afternoon/evening. Sunday I got some errands done and got all the rest of the icky red dye out of my hair, M. came over, and I took him to El Mansour for dinner (where I even got M to attempt to belly dance, much to the delight of all present) before we headed up to Willows for a track day on Monday.

The track was fun! I thought I was going to fly right out of a few of the cars I rode in, but woo! Who knew I liked going too fast in little sports cars? I was also amazed to find out how much work it is to stay in your seat while riding in a car going that fast around corners. I found myself very sore last night on the way home. Nothing a couple of Advil couldn't solve, but I apparently have a bruise on my shoulder blade and I sort of feel like I do after a day of really hard hiking or skiing. It's a nice feeling actually, exhausted but relaxed and invigorated. I wanna go again!

For some reason though I keep finding myself teetering on the edge of panic. It's the stupidest thing in the world. Sunday I forgot about daylight savings (which is the work of the devil, clearly) and ended up being an hour late for an appointment I thought I was early for. Oh well. It set the whole morning back a bit, but it wasn't that bad. Then I lost my watch, and ended up tearing around the house for 2 hours looking for it, without any luck. Somewhere in the course of late Sunday night or early Monday morning, it was decided that we would not be going back through SF, so I ended up in the south bay this morning without anything to wear to work this morning, without my cell phone charger, without my watch, and without my book or laptop for the ride home tonight. I also failed to leave the rent check at home Sunday (due to the whole watch freak-out), so I'm kind of stressing about that, but oh well. Why all of this is serving to overwhelm me this morning is anyone's guess. I can't even remember how to use vim at the moment. Which is sad. It's an awful application but surely, remembering the basic edit commands isn't too much to ask?

In other news, Loki (A's cat) caught a mouse or small rat on Saturday. That was thrilling. I ended up standing on top of the kitchen chair doing chick-with-mouse freak-out dance, then running to the living room and jumping on top of the couch. It was very sad, but would probably have been entertaining for the casual observer. I hate mice. Especially when half-dead and danging out of the cats mouth. But I suppose it's better there than pooping all over the counters.

Anyway...I'm looking forward to some quality knitting and spinning time this week. I need to try to unwind and relax as much as I can in the next few months. Work is going to remain insane, so whatever I can do to make the rest of life relaxing and enjoyable while I can is a good thing.