Author: cdwan

Dammit, they nailed me.

shamefully accurate quiz

What a waste of a day.

Woke up late and tired, probably because I was in Boston until late last night. Well worth it, catching up with an old friend, but still. We met up because he’s attending the “SD (Software Development) Best Practices” conference. Apparently the sessions are good, but from what I saw of the show floor, this field is dominated by BS and marketing. I was a little bit shocked that the state of the art in supporting software development appears to be:

* CVS or SVN, on steroids, for document control.
* Automated GUI testing (through VNC or something similar)
* High powered versions of grep, which will find open source licenses and make sure they comply with your corporate policy on such things
* Other crap that I couldn’t understand what it was.

Now, keep in mind, I’ve got a recent graduate degree from a pretty good school, in the field in question. I’m also some kind of high powered consultant in IT. If there’s value to this crap, I should probably be aware of it. My BS filter was going off frantically at these marketing speak posters claiming “Reduce your development cycle while optimizing ROI through Best Practices innovations in Business driven software design!” I’m all like, what? It translates as something like “Your business makes more money if you write the software you actually need, on the first try.”

Spent the morning trying to get a leash on our support ticket queue, which has been uncomfortably backed up for about a week now. Went to noon karate and got started on the “bo” staff. Woot, says I. Staff is cool.

Then came the soul-killing part. I went to the DMV to pick up redmed‘s custom plates. Went in, stood in line (took my book with me), got the form, and was stopped cold when the lady said ‘now you’ll need to have redmed sign this and get it notarized. If you come back today or tomorrow, you can come to the front of the line NEXT!.” I was all like “say what?”

So I hustled over to the hostpital (location of both redmed and a notary), got the document signed, and hauled ten kinds of ass back to the DMV, only to arrive at about 3:17pm. They close their doors to new admissions at 3:15. I gave the cop at the door my winningest smile and said, “the lady gave me this paper, and said I could come back in today.” He said “closed.” I used my Jedi powers on him, and said “so there’s nothing you can do,” and let it trail off, but didn’t do the ‘I’m leaving’ body language. Most people are totally unwilling to be the bad guy. After about 25 seconds of eye contact, he said “allright, go in.” I have no shame. If I had cleavage, I’d use it.

Anyway, I showed the nice lady my notarized form, and she hands me number “B04”. I look at the board and it says “50”. At that point I realize that I’ve left my book in the car.

The DMV spent the next 45 minutes sucking and gnawing at my soul, but I left with the plates.

Went to Whole Foods, got some groceries, and that was my day.

For decades, scientists and sea explorers have mounted costly expeditions to hunt down and photograph the giant squid, a legendary monster with eyes the size of dinner plates and a nightmarish tangle of tentacles lined with long rows of sucker pads.

Nature is so cool.

My beloved laptop is at the shop. Fortunately, it’s the competent shop and not the godforsaken Apple retail outlet…but it still makes me feel sad and alone. My sweet little laptop. I spend more time with it than with, well, with any other piece of matter that I didn’t grow … outside of my two pieces of jewlery.

Anyway, working on the emergency loaner 12″ powerbook that we at the company have for times exactly like these. I did the minimum info transfer required for functionality, assuming that I’ll be back to my real environment in a couple of days anyway, and transferring 18GB of user environment (mostly iPhoto and iTunes, thanks for asking) was just a pain. Yes, I’ve got a complete image in case The Worst happens.

So, since we can’t seem to have internet access at our Boston office, and I’m meeting my friend at the Expo Center this evening, I’m chillin’ near Harvard Square. I like Harvard. It’s (as quipped in Prozac Nation): So … Harvard!

So, I’m going to town today at least in part to get my laptop fixed. I’m worried about the possibility of little mac-minis, see …

But seriously folks (is this thing on?) I’m taking it to Tech Superpowers. The Geek my ride project gives me hope that they’re both competent and cool.

Calm afternoon. Wandered into town and finally through a cute little bookstore (Myopic Books) I’ve been eyeing for over a year now. Got lost in someone else’s way of organizing their mind. The science biographies next to the works of the scientists themselves. The fantasy separate from the sci-fi. The religious texts mixed in with anthropology. It was positively voyeuristic. I picked up the fifth volume of Dave Sim’s Cerebus series (Jaka’s Story) and wandered over to Starbucks to sit for an hour and let my mind drift still further from reality.

Drifting back, I stopped off at Whole Foods and got the other half of the ingredients for a bowl of gazpacho. Cucumber and a couple of extra tomatoes to flesh out the increasingly lean pickings from the garden.

This morning, redmed‘s parents were here, having driven up from PA for dinner and breakfast. After they departed, I installed two more rolls of insulation in the attic, bringing the weekend total to four. The sides of the attic are nearly done (maybe three rafter spaces to go). The center will entail ripping up the plywood that lets me walk around with relative ease up there, insulating, and then possibly nailing it back down. While that will be less relaxing than just rolling the pink junk out, it still sounds downright pleasant when compared to the dark and terrifying hole into the crawl space above our bedroom. I’m sure that’s the space that really needs to be re-insulated, but I just have no desire whatsoever to climb through that hole into the windowless darkness.

Also picked up a couple of gallons of apple cider, sterilized a carboy, and tossed them in there with some ale yeast. With any luck, we’ll have cider jack in a couple of weeks. Also with luck, I’ll be able to sample it and adjust the recipe for a second batch this year before the end of apple-pickin’ season. Additional sugar, malto-dextrose, cinnamon, and cloves come to mind as possible additions.

This has probably been obvious to a lot of people for a long time. It only just became clear to me. If there’s already a name for this line of thought, I would love to know it:

my political ramblings for the day