Cranky-D

I was just looking through the old stuff posted here and, my word, most of my posts are in the “under the influence” category. It makes me look like I drink excessively on a daily basis. I don’t. First of all, I can’t do that any more, and second, I have work to do. I think the reason it looks like that is that I post a lot more often when I’m drinking. When I’m working, I’m too busy writing code, writing reports, or otherwise thinking about work to consider posting. I’ll try to change that. Perhaps my work and writing will improve if I mix them up a bit.

The current state is that I will be on this job for at least another 4 months, and if more funds become available, maybe longer. I have managed to make myself valuable enough. The laptop is working fine so far. However, I am currently in Southern California so I am having network difficulties. The DSL in my Dad’s house does not play nice, and I have never set up a stable hardware situation involving a network because the modem does not run ppp0e directly. I have managed to push through a plan to remedy that while I am here. A new modem will be purchased (by me), and it happens to have wireless capabilities as well as running ppp0e in hardware. Once that is working, I will no longer be stuck on their computer. Even better for them, I won’t be in their way when they want to use it.

My sister is leaving for Alaska, so it will be me and my dad for nine days. The big part of the reason I’m here at this time is because we don’t leave him alone any more. The last time we left him alone, someone backed into him while he was walking in the bank parking lot. He ended up in the emergency room, and my brother had to drive here from over 200 miles away. After that, I think the longest we’ve left him on his own is a few days, and even that was tense (for us, not for him). He can completely take care of himself under normal circumstances, but luck seems to go against him and us at the least-best time.

Protein Wisdom has undergone a complete site change, so none of the links I have here to posts there will work any more. Now I think I probably should have cross-posted everything, but at the time I was trying to create original content just for PW, and felt cross-posting went against our “gentlemen’s agreement.”

That about covers it for now, kids.

I just finished watching a Twilight Zone episode, “I Sing the Body Electric.” It’s the one where there is a widower who has three kids, two of whom assemble a robot grandmother to take care of them. A very well-written tear-jerker in the best sense of the word. Lots of sentiment, but nothing there that drags out any emotion that isn’t waiting to emerge.

I already recognize the second episode. It’s the one in which a guy takes command of a civilization of very small people and becomes their god. I haven’t seen that part yet, but I know it’s coming. He comes to a bad end, in case you forget or otherwise don’t know or remember.

When one has seen enough Twilight Zone episodes, one knows what is coming next.

Apparently, according to the robot chicken creators, if you don’t have a leftist viewpoint you’re an idiot.

While I’m not surprised, I am disappointed. Simplistic world views are idiotic.

Eh, whatever. Most of the time it’s funny. I rarely let he political viewpoints of entertainers effect my opinion of their output. Still, once someone admits to having a non-thinking world view it makes it easier for me to denounce all of their output.

Time to crash, I think. Whether I’ll freshen just one more time before is a matter for debate.

Just a quick take. Can someone explain to me why we cannot be armed with swords and knives any more, beyond a certain blade length? “Arms” used to mean, and meant when the Constitution was written, both guns and edged weapons.

I want to be able to carry a sword as well as a gun. I think having a sword hanging from your belt or strapped to your back would be a great deterrent. It would let everyone know you won’t be a pussy when someone tries to take your hard-earned money.

The only downside is irresponsible behavior, and people like that will carry weapons no matter what the law says you can do.

Just wanted to lay out an update on the new machine. As it turns out, it’s much easier to read the screen at full brightness than it is at whatever the default brightness is when the laptop is on battery power. As soon as I plugged it in, I was able to read the screen just fine. I tried again today when I was transferring some more files and everything was fine, even at more than sitting on the lap distance. So, I’m probably good for a few more years on this purchase before I won’t be able to read the screen when it sits on my lap.

Been watching robot chicken, which I admit didn’t appeal that much to me before because it was hard to find when it’s on. They are running a marathon, part of which is a solid half-hour (or twenty minutes in reality) of Star Wars parody officially approved by The Bearded One himself, George Lucas. He even leant his voice to one of the bits. That sort of mitigates what he has done to the franchise. And yet, it doesn’t.

Anyway, back to work. I have to crank out some output in the next few days since I have a phone meeting on Friday. I have already set up my laptop to run Matlab and I put all the relevant data on the drive. Though I ran the original experiments on a linux box, I expect that I can make the code run under Windoze.

My supervisor/former advisor said he would help with an outline for the Friday phone meeting, but I think I’ve dragged my feet too much in the interim so I will probably be on my own. I’ve spent more time getting ready to leave on Wednesday than I have doing work that needs to be done. If you know me, you know that there is plenty of crap that needs to be burned to disk floating around. That takes time. My friend here has already volunteered to ride herd on my operation when I’m gone. That helps.

It will be nice to go back to San Diego. I don’t think I call it home any more. My home is where I am now. I prefer the laws I live with here to those in California. Still, my father is there, and I like to see him as often as possible. My plan is to return two more times this year, and now that I have the laptop computer I can get all the work done I could do at home. In fact, I have fewer distractions in San Diego than I have here.

Work is where you find it. I have a promise that I will get two month’s warning of impending loss of job, which I think is very fair. I haven’t reciprocated on that, but I plan to. However, when I gave out my quote on this project, I said I would work “cheap” only until December. I’m a bit at a loss on what to do about that, since I have the feeling that I won’t get more money until I demand it, but then again, the money may not be there to pay me.

However, I’m feeling confident. Apparently, I’m doing a pretty good job, and I’ve generated some buzz about my abilities. That kind of thing surprises me (thank you auto spell check for finding the missing “r”) because I’m very down on my abilities. I saw Jim Cramer on Conan about a week ago and I couldn’t believe how down on himself he was. He reminded me of me. I can be both very down on my abilities and be overconfident at the same time. I blame it on being a Gemini, others might point to some kind of disorder. I can think that I’m great one moment and that I suck the next.

Otherwise, I’m normal. Okay, that’s a lie. I’m slightly out of my mind, but I’m okay with it.

This has gone on too long. I think I’ll freshen up my lowball and probably finish it off and crash. I’ve seen the Star Wars parody going on three times now, and while it’s still funny, it’s not growing on me. Time to reset and get ready for tomorrow.

Hey kids! To all my remaining readers who at this point number in the ones, welcome.

I recently made the decision to purchase a laptop computer because I want to do some traveling and I also need to be able to do work at the same time. So I bought my computer for the year, a core duo 17in beast with all the bells and whistles. Not the absolute best Dell had to offer, but close. I bought it on ebay and I have the feeling that any money I saved will be eaten up by the service contract I plan to buy (the video card on this thing is the best Dell offers for the product line and costs an arm and a leg used).

It’s weird how fast it lost its luster. It arrived yesterday and today it’s just an appliance. One thing I noted is that at less than full brightness. I have a hard time reading the 17in widescreen 1920xwhater display. I discovered a week ago that I can no longer read at close range. My eyes have finally failed me. If necessary, I’ll buy some 1.5 power reading glasses.

I won’t reset my monitor resolution on my non=mobile hardware because I like being able to read the screen when my contacts are out (like they are now). Still, when the surgery has more proof that it works, I might have my left eye done. That’s the one that is so bad I cannot read the screen unless I’m inches away from it.

Seriously, legally blind in my left eye without correction. The right eye, I can read without correction and usually do before bed. Still, it’s probably 20-60 these days. If I’m lucky.

I bought a bottle of Black Bush for my birthday (which was last Saturday), and it cost me $29. I finished off a bottle of Tillamore Dew which costs $21 a little while ago, so I’m into the remaining Black Bush. Whatever. Just an FYI to my reader(s).

I’m winding down and out on my post-doc contract which is great with me. One cannot make a career of writing Matlab code and reports about the results from the Matlab code. I have a plan to steer myself to productive coding within a few years and I hope it works. The best result would be to do what I’m doing now (consulting work related to coding) and get more money doing it. The worst result is that I continue to work cheap and cut myself loose once I realize the money isn’t there.

I’m getting too old to continue to fuck around with some of this crap. Seriously. I wish I could, but one must be realistic about one’s future. My ideal job would be being a consultant like I am now. The hard part is getting the clients I need.

Anyway, the hardware for this year is a core duo laptop. 2 Ghz, 2 GB of memory, 7900 GS graphics card (the best of the line until you go crazyy). I never thought I’d buy a laptop, but here I am.

It won’t fit in my backpack. I must buy a new transport system this weekend, because I leave for the west coast this wednesday.

Whether I will get any work done during that time is a mystery for all of us.