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Wednesday, May 5th, 2004
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11:37 am - Sick cats and people
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I think I mentioned this before. My cat throws up occasionally. I gather from some friends this is normal for cats.
However, one friend I talked to said that throwing up hairballs was normal, not throwing up pieces of food, which is what my cat does. Anyone care to confirm if this is true?
I haven't been feeling to great myself recently. Physically, that is. Nothing serious, I hope. Mentally I am ok.
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, March 26th, 2004
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10:43 am - A few numbers to ponder
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During the recent 9/11 attacks it is estimated that about 3,000 people died at the world trade center. That's a lot of people, but I just wanted to see how that compared to various other things.
( Various other things )
current mood: contemplative
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, March 24th, 2004
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1:12 pm - Framing the question (political)
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I've been reading a lot of (democratic) political sites recently, and more and more of them are accusing the media and the white house of manipulating the discussion by framing the question. ( non-partisan discussion ahoy )
current mood: busy
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, March 14th, 2004
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12:05 pm - A long lost friend returns
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Sorry I haven't been around for a while. Life has been pretty busy. ( more feeble excuses )
A friend recently used an lj cut in his journal (hi Peter). I'd seen that used a lot, and always wondered how it was done, but I'm not sure I had ever seen it referred to by name before, so I looked it up and figured out how it was done. You'll be seeing more of that from now on so I don't clutter up people's friends pages too much.
Yesterday I went to this same friends birthday party. It was fun. ( some details about the party and general notes on psychology )
I'm currently listening to Vienna Teng's "Warm Strangers" CD. It ROCKS. Very recommended listening. :)
A friend of mine recently lost his job. His wife is also leaving hiom, and he has three kids with her. This has kind of put me in a funk for the last month or so. I communicated with him a bit early on, but then (due to lack of things on the internet) kind of lost touch. He might prefer to remain anonymous, but if he reads this I wanted to let him know I've been thinking about him, and that I sympathize and wish him well. That's very rough.
Work has gotten interesting lately. ( work-related stuff )
Gwen is fine, currently sleeping peacefully. But there have been a few problems. ( bitey, bitey, bitey )
I've been working on fixing Peter's computer, but not having much luck. I've tried lots of stuff now, and am reluctantly starting to believe that my practical knowledge of computer hardware was not as good as I had thought. I'm sure I could figure it out if I had the free time, but alas, I don't. The computer will probably be sent to another friend to let him have a crack at it.
current mood: calm
current music: Harbor -- Vienna Teng
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(18 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, February 11th, 2004
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10:15 am - The joy of a live-in Masseuse
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While problems continue with my cat waking me up at night, she's still a great joy to me. Occasionally she will walk across parts of my body as I am sleeping. Perhaps this is for companionship, or in hopes of getting more food, or maybe just because I am a warm body. Sometimes she will knead the blankets with her little paws, or parts of me as she is walking across them. It didn't occur to me until today why this is. Clearly whoever her previous owner was trained her to give people masssages as they lay in bed. :)
Well, ok, maybe not. But with her being declawed it does feel a bit like she's trying to give me a massage.
current mood: amused
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, January 22nd, 2004
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12:16 pm - Of cats and computer games
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Yesterday I got a shipment of stuff in from petco.com. Some cat supplies and toys. The toys included twelve little furry mice (nto real) for Gwen to play with, a fishing-pole-like-thing for her to bat at the end of which could be held or attached to the wall, and a small piece of cat furniture with several platforms for her to climb on. Well, it should have included the last item, but didn't. The shipping bill said it was there, the invoice said it was there, it came from teh same location as the other stuff, I had ordered it, there was only one box, but when I opened the box, it wasn't there. I called Petco and they called Fedex to look into it, and will send me another if they can't track it down (supposedly). If I don't get it soon they are not seeing all of their money. That was the most expensive item in this shipment at about $36. Still, me and Gwen did have fun yesterday with the other cat toys.
Yesterday, when I came home, they had finally finished up with the street. No more jack-hammering right otuside my place. In an unrelated incident, though, I did find a pile of cat-barf on the carpet. This is the third time I found the stuff. It actually looks an awful lot like what I feed her, just slightly lighter in color, but since the food bowl is in the same place, and it isn't just a tiny amount like might be dragged by a claw or tail, I know that it is barf. The problem is she's done this three times in three weeks, am I doing something wrong? I used to feed her thrice a day, half a can each time, but not I only do it twice a day on the advice of friends. I refrigerate the remaining half a can after wrapping the top in cellophane to make sure it is still good, could that be the problem? Should I leave the half can out in the cupboard, though wrapped in cellophane? Is this a sign there is something seriously wrong with her (she seems fine, quite energetic).
Gwen has the funniest cry when she wants attention. It sounds less like a cat's miaow and more like a plaintive human cry.
Feeding time is another weirdness with Gwen. I'm not sure how other peopel do it, but as soon as I go to the kitchen she rushes over in aticipation of food, and as soon as I start to open the can she tris to get into it. If I leave her bowl on the ground, as I try to spoon a half a can into it she gets in the way to try to get at the food as fast as possible, and food gets all over the place. I've tried getting the food out on a fairly high counter (about 3 feet) but she has no problem jumping up there. A few times I have tried bait and switch by putting the bowl on the counter, waiting until she jumps onto it, then moving the bowl to another table, and if she jumps off the counter onto the table moving the whole thing back until I can get the food in the bowl without being interrupted. The problem here is that she will try to get at it anyway and it hurts her to jump down from the counter (up is no problem, but she makes a small pained sound when jumping down from a height). I have also scooped food out onto the bowl in midair, and can continue to do so, but it's kind fo a pain and prone to making me drop stuff, as I have to juggle can, spoon, and bowl at the same time while doing this. I'm laothe to try methods of training to prevent her from going up on the counter, as she really doesn't have many places to roam in my small condo and I generally don't have any problem with her going anywhere she wants to.
Gwen has a tendency to rush around playing much of the night, or quietly sleeping on my bed, but even though I don';t respond until about 8, she starts miaowing at me and begging for attention at around 6. I can;'t help waking up, and I have a tough time getting back to sleep.
I'm very happy I got her, but there are a few things I wish I could do something about.
On to computer games, I bought Deus Ex: Invisible war, Final Fantasy X-2, and Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the underdark all at around the same time. I finished Hordes of the underdark first, after finding that Invisible war wouldn't run on my old PC. I also finished up soem other older PC games I had, and then played FF X-2 for a while. Last week I got a new PC though. One that can play Invisible War. I finished that game last night. The game is a little short (much shorter then the original. It was fun, though. I found that one good strategy was to take the biomod which makes you invisible to machines and the biomod which makes you invisible to humans and whenever you are about to approach difficult combats avoid them entirely by just having whichever version(s) of invisibility on that you need. Both of these biomads cost energy, which is a problem. However if you max them out they don't cost all that much, and there are enough repairbots around that replenish your energy that you can just go invis, scout around, return, get topped up by the repairbot, and then go out again, repeatedly, until the level with the repairbot is finished. You also need to scrounge as many fuel cells (the only way to recover energy without a repairbot) as you can.
FFX-2 is decent, but also not as good as the original. The real time combat system is a pain.
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, January 21st, 2004
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10:22 am - Pipe dreams redux
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The good news is that my place wasn't flooded last night.
The bad news is that they had just started working again on the pipes in my street. Last night I, once again, thrilled to the sound of jack-hammering as well as pumping and other heavy equipment noises. It "only" lasted until about 2 AM this time. When I went out this morning there was a large area of ice right outside, but the road had been filled in again, and there was no sign of any more water leakage.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, January 20th, 2004
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11:50 am - A good night's sleep? A pipe dream.
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Last night I was up quite late because about 12' from my condo they were ripping up the street (as in RIGHT outside, just past my very narrow yard). They were jack-hammering away, having started before I got home. At about 11 PM I went out to find out what this was about, and apparently some water pipes had leaked and were flooding the houses across the street, so they were cutting up the road to get at them. They said they would probably be busy for another 2 hours. Unfortunately they were actually working there, very noisily, until well past 3 AM. It was impossible to get to sleep until they were done. I got up an hour later and got in later today as a result. As I was leaving my house I noticed the street where they had cut up the road was slowly flooding. The water was being carried away via drainage, but it seemed to be pumping out faster then it was draining, and this is right outside my condo. Lovely, so the way to fix the leak across the street is to create one right outside my condo. I Spoke to the one guy just sitting there in his truck who said they had to work on this later, as there was a much larger leak elsewhere that the crews were working on. This means (A) I may get home to find my condo flooded and (B) they may be jack-hammering away all night tonight as well in hopes of "fixing" this problem.
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, January 15th, 2004
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10:47 am - Wearily I wander
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Or something like that. Gwen kept me up most of last night with plaintive cries and walking across my bed.
In other news, due to stomach problems I am slowly adjusting to a "one good meal every two days" schedule. I can well afford to lose the weight, but this may not be the best way to do so.
On the positive side, despite physical issues, emotionally I am in decent shape. Far less depressed then in the bad pre-Gwen days.
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, January 9th, 2004
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12:33 pm - Ball of furry goodness.
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| Tuesday, January 6th, 2004
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4:10 pm - Stop biting, damnit
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Most of the time Gwen is happy and purring and content or sleepy. Sotimes she is very active and running around all over the place. However, every once in a while, for no reason I can fathom, she is in the mood to bite. When I'm not petting or scratching her this is not a problem, but when I am she will do her usually sniffing thing, and then suddenly bite. This happened several times, and up until last night she never broke the skin, so I stopped worrying about it. Last night though, she broke skin, and I wasn't sure how to deal with it. I decided to leave her alone for the rest of the night. The problem is that there are no signs she is agitated or excited (or hungry) before she bites. Her tale isn't wagging, she doesn't appear to be hungry, she isn't particularly active or anything. She isn't giving me annoyed looks. I didn't just startle her out of sleep. Just, no reason at all.
She bites pretty often, but last night was the first time I got relaxed enough to not mind, and so she broke the skin then.
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(14 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, January 2nd, 2004
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7:06 pm - More Gwen
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10:51 am - Cat pic
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| Tuesday, December 30th, 2003
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2:04 pm - The Christmas cat
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The Friday before last I got the following email from a friend:
"Hey {my name}! Are you still looking for a cat? Because we have one that we need
to move out. {friend's wife} got her at the animal shelter about a month ago, but
she's not getting along with {other cat's name}.
She's a white short-hair, very soft fur, declawed and neutered. I can tell
you more if you want. Let me know!"
Well, he was right. I had been thinking of getting a cat. Two cats, actually, so that each could keep the other company, as I'm gone about 11 hours out of the day to work. I also had planned to get a driver's license first as I worried about bringing the cats to the vet in an emergency.
However, I kind of liked the idea, and thought that maybe I could see and meet the cat to find out what she was like. As it turned out, I was going to take a week's vacation next week, and so was he, so that worked out reasonably well. As a side note, I had over 6 and a half weeks of vacation time saved up, and technically I was only supposed to have a maximum of 6 weeks so I was worried about using it or losing it at the end of the year. I also had a floating holiday which, if not taken, I would most certainly lose at the end of the year, so taking the week of vacation time around the Christmas holiday was almost a necessity. We had just finished coding and debugging a major new software release that Friday, and didn't have anything major due for a little while, so this was a good time to take it too.
So Monday I went over to the friend's house to meet the cat. At that time I was told she was more then just not getting along well. The female cat had been playing rather evil dominance games (as in biting to kill and permanently depriving of food) their poor elderly cat. At that time they didn't show me the nasty wound the elderly cat had suffered, but from what I saw later, well, it looked bad. For more on this story, go here. I was told this was very normal for cats. While there, I met her, and she seemed very friendly and affectionate. I even saw their baby (a 2 year old) playing with her fairly roughly and the cat seemed to take it in stride without doing anything nasty. It also seemed to get along with their other cat. Most importantly, she seemed to get along well with me, and vice versa. I was half expecting another {name of foul hellish beast masquerading as a cat of another friend}, and was pleased to see no sign of head-spinning, vomitings, speaking in reverberant deep voices, or spitting hellfire.
However, I wasn't sure I wanted to take it yet. I don't make these decisions on the spur of the moment. I consider a new pet to be a pretty big responsibility (not like marriage, but a lot more then, say, agreeing to join an RPG), so I told him I would think about it. The limit was that while they had the new cat their old cat was locked in the bathroom where the new cat couldn't get at him, and so they needed a decision fairly soon. They were planning on bringing her to the shelter on Saturday (a no-kill shelter, but still). They had gotten her from the shelter initially, where she was brought to after being found roaming the streets for at least five days. She was deaf and declawed, so letting her out deliberately would have been a rather cruel thing to do to her. However the shelter tried to find out if anyone had been searching for her and didn't get any response. She was toilet-trained, and showed a lot of other signs of domestication, so she had obviously lived with people for a decent amount of time. She is somewhere around 3 or 4 years old.
I thought about it for much of the following week. I also contacted the head concierge in my building. We do have a no pets policy there, but apparently lots of people in the building own indoor cats, even one of the building trustees, so it's ok as long as it's kept reasonably quiet. Note that this journal is, and shall remain, fairly anonymous. Dogs are pretty much out though. My head concierge also said she knew of a nearby vet, but hasn't been able to dig up the contact ingformation for me yet. Later in the week I also asked her about the superintendent who needs to be in and out of my condo whenever repairs need to be made (related to the building systems), or when air/heating filters need to be changed (twice a year). She said the superintendent wouldn't rat me out either, which pushed me a little further into going with the cat.
I spent a lot of time shopping for Christmas presents that week too for everyone, and sending out some much belated things I had promised people.
Oh, before I continue the story, I also saw Return of the King. I'm including my take on that below.
Friday morning I called my friend and agreed to take the cat, they (him, his wife, his baby) brought it over on Friday evening. They spent the evening at my place giving me lots of cat supplies (probably more then they could easily afford, I felt guilty taking all that stuff and offered to pay for it, but they refused), and describing how to care for the cat. Aside from a few goldfish when I was very young this is the only time I have ever owned a pet, or even had one in the same place as me. Neither my parents nor my sibling are into pets of any sort. Upon opening the cat cage the poor thing fled in terror under my bed against the far wall. That's about as far away from anyone as she could get. I tried coaxking her out of there and to explore my apartment, but no luck. At least, not while my friend and his family were there.
After they were gone I spent a lot of time scrunched underneath the bed trying to pet and scratch the new cat, and trying to coax her with food into coming out. No luck until I turned most of the lights off, and then, very tentatively she came out until I was able to get her on top of the bed and continued petting and scratching her there for a long time. She gradually calmed down a little and, very tentatively, when the lights were off, started to explore the place. During the night she was quite affectionate toward me, and led me around to various places in the apartment.
Sometimes, for no apparent reason, she needs to stay near me, and follows me wherever I go. Most iof the time though she will explore, or just sleep. Typically though, if she can't see me when she wakes up from sleep she lets out a plaintive little meow and goes looking for me. She's very friendly and affectionate. Not vicious at all (at least, not toward me or any of the visitors I have had in my place. She clearly does miss me when I am gone though, both for my food dispensing abilities and my company. I kind of miss her too. Although her food-dispensing abilities suck ;) Since my friend's baby had, dubbed the cat {former name of cat} and I wasn't thrilled with the name, which was kind of unofficial anyway, and since she's deaf, I decided to rename the cat too {current, vastly improved, name of cat}.
She also gets much more active when all the lights are out, which is a bit of a problem as I am a fairly light sleeper, especially with respect to noise, and have a hard time falling asleep again, but it's gradually working itself out.
Oh, I saw the wound in their other cat's hip on Saturday. Very nasty. I gather it had gotten a lot better since they first noticed it. Of course, my cat tells a different story. According to her this has all been an insidious plot on the part of their younger cat to simultanously get rid of their older cat while laying the blame at her feet so it could get rid of her. Of course, cats can't really talk, let's not be ridiculous. She didn't literally tell this to me, nooo, she wrote out the story with a pen and a piece of paper dragging the pen along with great difficulty in her mouth. Yes, I was as shocked and amazed as you are, but it's true! Unfortunately she had no evidence to back this up, and the new cat is always the one that gets blamed, but she passed the lie detector test with flying colors, and suggested that DNA tests of the old cat's wound would clearly show who was responsible. She has vowed to spend the rest of her life pursuing the real biter....ok, sorry, I just couldn't resist. {Friend's old cat's name} was in very serious condition, so I probably shouldn't make jokes about this, but now seems to be doing quite well and is going to make a full recovery despite his advanced age.
What follows is my review of the movie Return of the King, if you haven't seen it yet and don't want spoilers, don't read the review.
************************************** SPOILER ALERT ****************************************************
Unlike some Lord of the Rings afficionados I thought Return of the King was a wonderful movie. I didn't cry, but there were points at which I was very moved. Unfortunately I also thought it deviated most, of all three movies, from the original books, and not in a good way. As book adaptations go it was still probably more faithful then most adaptations of f/sf novels, but I didn't think it was all that faithful.
I was particularly annoyed with the fact that Sam, in the movie, was presented as the big hero while Frodo was basically an obstructionist hanger-on who ultimately made the wrong choice and got lucky. The book makes both Sam and Frodo out to be heroes, but Frodo is a greater one.
I was also upset about the scene with the finding of the Palantir. I knew they were cutting out the scouring of the shire, and wasn't wild about that, but I didn't know they were cutting out ALL of Saruman's parts. In the book, IIRC, The Palantir is dropped when Grima Wormtongue and Saruman have an altercation in which Gandalf is involved. Pippin manages to sneak off and grab the Palantir for a quick peek while everyone is busy. I didn't dislike the way the movie handled it, but it was a major departure from the book.
In general they cut out entire scenes that could easily have been kept in if they didn't insist on having these interminably long battle scenes of which they could easily have cut 5 minutes here or a quarter hour there. I realize, however, that the modern movie-going audience probably wouldn't have been nearly as interested in those scenes as they would have been in those extra bits of battle, so I suppose, from a profit-making perspective, Peter jackson made the right choice.
Still, despite these criticisms, I thought it was a great movie. I loved the scene where Pippin and Eowyn slay the Witch-king of Angmar.
current mood: happy
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, December 17th, 2003
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7:39 pm - It's a horrible night for a party
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Holiday party at my building tonight. I went there to meet folks. After half an hour I couldn't stand it anymore and left. Nobody else's fault, just...
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, November 23rd, 2003
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10:12 pm - Sick
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FRiday I was feeling a little coldy. Slightly off. Saturday I was feeling sick, but not too bad. Sneezing a lot and maybe mild fever. Splitting headache at night.
Today, Sunday, I'm really feeling sick. Medium fever, hot chills, nausea, constantly running nose and repeated sneezing fits. I had to go in to work today, and was not happy about it, but did what I had to. Well, almost.
I should be getting ready for some training I need to give tomorrow. This can't be shifted. People from the German company arrive tomorrow and my piece of the training was scheduled first, and well in advance. People flew across an ocean for this. Unfortunately, I can't concentrate now, and tomorrow I will be feeling a lot worse.
I basically know the stuff I am supposed to be training them for, but not really well enough to rain people, and certainly not to do a good job at it when I'm feeling sick as a dog. I'll probably muddle through somehow, but tomorrow won't be pretty.
current mood: sick
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(10 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, November 17th, 2003
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10:24 am - Sand and Fog
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Last Friday I went to see an advance screening of a movie called "House of Sand and Fog". It's the first time I've ever been to an advance screening of anything. So I get to the theater right on time and we spend the next half hour waiting because the director and author of the book (in case you didn't know, there's a book by the same name, I haven't read it though) ar running late. Finally those two arrive, sit down, spend 30 seconds introducing themselves, and then they show the movie. Not sure why we had to wait half an hour extra for that, but...that's the movie theater's decision.
On to the movie. It's about a family of Iranian immigrants to the US. The father (played by Ben Kingsley) is struggling very hard to provide for his family. It's also about a girl (played by Jennifer Connelly, if you're a big fan you might want to see it despite what follows) who loses her house due to a bureaucratic screwup. Things rapidly go from bad to worse, but they might have been worked out if the cop that came to evict the girl from the house didn't fall for the girl and start to get violent and pull all kinds of sleazy and highly corrupt tricks on the Iranian family that bought the house to get them to leave. The cop, while presented in fully 3-dimensional fashion, is the closest to a villain of the piece, unless you count the system which made the mistakes with the house in the first place.
The movie slowly gets more and more depressing (and, let me tell you, it didn't start terribly happy to begin with) and about 2/3 of the way through things start moving faster. The ending is one long series of "just when you thought things couldn't get worse and more depressing, they do". This is not a happy movie. The movie is very good at presenting real-seeming people with realistic personalities doing, what seem to them at the time to be reasonable things given their extremely limited choices. However, much as I like that, the movie, the movie lacks a lot of things I enjoy in a film. First of all, I'm not into depressing stuff for the most part. Second, I like strong stories. This movie was not primarily about story, and the story was a little weak.
After the movie there was a question and answer session with the film's director and the author of the novel. It went on way too long, and was rather dull and repetitive, so I stayed for a little while and then left.
The tickets were a free promotional thing. I suppose this is another example of "you get what you pay for".
I also had two RPGs this weekend. Both my Saturday and Sunday groups met. The games were decent, but the GM of my Saturday game was still a little sick (that's been hanging on a long time). I hope he gets all better soon.
On a personal note: I don't know what it is, but ever since coming back from Germany I've been feeling really tired all the time. Initially I thought it was just jet lag, but I came back on the 8th, and this is kind of long for jet lag to last.
current mood: tired
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(10 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, November 11th, 2003
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1:34 pm - "He was such a nice, quiet man"
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For the most part, this trip to Germany was much better then previous ones. I had company (a colleague from work) the whole time I was there, and he got permission to rent a car, so we could go some places. We went out to restaurants instead of ordering room service and staying in the hotel the whole time, and our stuff was in a much better state. Also, we were able to consult with each other abotu software changes while there.
However, there were still some horrible aspects to the whole trip. Probably the worst was Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
Let's turn back the clock a little. A few months ago I recall hearing that our customer expected OCR to be demonstrated during this big test. At the time I knew we had not tested it out at all (since I had done most of the tests, and the times we had run with the OCR engine turned on we had gotten no results from it whatsoever), and that, even if we had, tuning OCR was a nightmare for the one guy in our company who knew how to do it which, by the way, is not me. I have never tuned OCR to work in a new place, and I suspected I wasn't going to be able to get it to work now, especially with the environment the German company would be likely to give us. We hadn't actually promised it would work according to spec, but we did say we were prepared to demonstrate it for the test, and that implied it would be at least close to spec. Unfortunately, the guy who developed OCR, the only guy who has ever really tuned it, and the guy who was not going out to Germany for any of this, said that OCR was going to work fine. Since I am a lowly peon and he is a high muckity-muck they took his word for it and decided not to change the impression we had given. Far from it, in fact, during a video teleconference I somehow ended up not being invited to I found out later that they guaranteed OCR would be close to spec. Big secret at the time, but I found out during my trip to Germany.
So I go over to Germany, and most of the stuff is already set up from last time I was over there. Me and my colleague work on a few minor bug-fixes we find, but aside from that he has one major project to work on, and I have OCR to work on (and we both do various tests of the software). First off we need to get the cameras focused, good lighting, a reasonable background, and some licesne plates. Well, turns out my colleague forgot to bring the license plates with him he had promised to bring over so we wasted a day or two getting those shipped quickly. The lighting was these horrible fluorescents. The background was horribly cluttered, because there was way too much other stuff going on in the room the cameras were in, and whenever we tried to put stuff up between the cameras and the clutter other people quickly took it down again. However, by Wednesday we had started testing, and were seeing that, with these conditions, sure enough, we were getting nothing from OCR. LIke I had warned everyone would be the case. It was shortly after this we found out that the German company had guaranteed Logan there would be very good OCR, and Logan had said there had better be, because there was no point in even doing the test without it. If we couldn't get OCR working my company would probably get hit for 10's of thousands of dollars worth of fines by the German company, and on a personal level I was threatened with being forced to stay until I got OCR working. No hint that, perhaps, the guy who had guaranteed OCR would work over my objectsions and who was the only one who actually knew how it was all put together and how to tune it properly might be the one who should be sent to Germany instead.
So, I start contacting this guy who wrote the OCR software, and sending him pictures. He makes several suggestions (lighting poor, change the size of the license plate, need to get rid of the clutter in the background), and I work as hard as I can to get that accomplished. The German company remains obstreperous though. Finally I put it to them bluntly: "This setup will NOT work. OCR will not work unless we can make the changes I mentioned. If you do not follow my suggestions you will be responsible for OCR not working". At this point actions started happening. They moved out some servers, rotated and elevated the cameras (so we could look at a blank wall) put up nails to hang license plates on, and eventually put in some spotlights. I changed the image size carefully to exactly match this guy's suggestions (and let me tell you, what with not having a monitor attached to the computer and having to lean way over to reach the cameras and being forced to detach the cameras from their housing to focus them, this was not easy). Finally I thought we were getting decent pictures, and the damn thing was still returning nothing from OCR.
I contacted the software guy who is "irresponsible" for OCR again, and he said I should send him a file containing the images from our camera in this specialized format so he coudl run it through his little custom software we didn't have out here. It wasn't clear how to generate these files, but he said I should just be able to change a configuration setting in the software. I checked out the software, and it looked like he was right, so I did so, ran the software, and didn't generate the files he wanted. Unsure why I looked over the code carefully and foudn it had been hard-coded to nto write out these files unless there was more then 256 MB free on the disk (not my code, as a matter of fact, when I had designed a previous version of the code which my company hadn't liked, which was why they had this other guy rewrite it from scratch, I had made that number a settable parameter, but...). This would have been fine if we had 256 MB free, but we were running on little compact flash cards which had all of Windows NT installed on them, and only had about 110 MB of space free. The guy who designed the OCR stuff claimed he was at a dead-end unless I could get him those files generated though.
So what did I do? First thought was to change that hard-coded value , recompile, install the new software, and run it. Unfortunately I was unable to compile this stuff. I had been given a loaner laptop the day before leaving, and I didn't have it set up right. I had only compiled this portion of the code twice before, and only on my regular PC at work. I tried like hell to get it to compile, but after several hours of fruitless effort I had another idea. The guy that had originally written this software (not the OCR, the rest of it) might be in the office, and maybe he could change the setting and recompile and send me the result. I called him up, and after some trials managed to reach him. He agreed to try it (although, he didn't have his machine set up to be able to do it, so he would have to work on my machine, and there were more difficulties there) and, after some troubles, managed to recompile and send me a new version of the dll. I installed this, ran the software, and finally managed to generate the files the OCR guy needed.
Of course, these were big files. By this time it was getting late on Friday and I had to get up at 4 AM the next day to make my flight out of here if, in fact, I was going to be allowed to leave. It was also my birthday, and I was really pissed. The files were too big to send via the international dial-up connection, so I had to find someone in the German company who had access to a fast internet connection and was working late. Fortunately, before I burst a blood vessel or murdered someone, I managed to find someone who could zip up the files and send them off.
Of course, that was just the first step, just to see what was wrong. This wasn't going to fix the problem in and of itself.
After sending them off I called the OCR guy who was looking at them already and he said that running the files through his little application OCR was returning the correct license plate. Only one character was a slight mismatch. Now, you have to understand that in attempts to get stuff working he had already sent me variosu versions of configuration files, and the fact that the images worked well with his OCR engine indicated that I had gotten the lane tuned properly. About the only reason at this point why I shouldn't see anything in OCR and he would is because he was running under an older version of the software. I knew I had the most recent one, having made sure to grab it just before I left. However, he only had the regular libraries, the ones that needed to get compiled (with a bunch of other stuff) into the dll before I could use it. Unfortunately, neither he not I could compile these libraries from where we were.
So I asked him to send the libraries to the other guy who had written the rest of the software and, using my computer, could compile the libraries and other stuff into a new dll. Then that other software guy would send it to me, and I would try it out. It took a long time to get everything straightened out, btu finally, at about 7:45 PM (German time) I managed to retest with the old versions of the OCR libraries and, miracle of miracles, the Rube-Goldberg device actually worked. In fact, it workedf nearly perfectly, as test on several license plates showed. At that point I had tuned the camera we were using for the entry lane, but I still had to tune the exit lane properly. This didn't take as much time as I had feared, but more then I had hoped. By about 8:30 I was able to start testing the "exit" lane.
Fortunately both lanes were performing very well at that point, and after about half an hour of various tests we were finally able to get out of there. I had a late dinner with my colleague and stumbled into my hotel room around 10:45. Sent off a few emails thanking people for the help and letting them know the OCR worked, and then packed up. By the time I went to bed it was about 1 AM. The next day, a long flight, and then a full day here, was very exhausting after only 3 hours of sleep (I can't sleep on planes), but I was very glad I was leaving them in a good state for the test.
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| Wednesday, October 29th, 2003
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4:30 pm - More travel
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So I'm heading back to Germany next week. I leave on the 2nd and come back on the 8th. If things work out I won't even need to miss either of my RPGs. Which reminds me, I managed to avoid missing my monthly RPG on the last trip by virtue of being pulled out one week early. As you can see, this trip to Germany is for slightly less then a week, and doesn't ruin my weekends completely. I should also have a cowowrker from my firm going with me this time. Since I originally signed up for two weeks worth of travel when I was shanghaied recruited onto this project, and since one more week only fills up that time I don't really mind that much. On the whole, this outcome isn't bad at all. I hope to bring back more good chocolate this time. That's if things go well. The German firm wanted both me and my supervisor to be there two weeks before the test, but when told this would mean no bug-fixes of additional features as there would be no time for development they reluctantly agreed we would be more useful coming over 1 week before the test.
My supervisor's mother just had a stroke. I feel bad for the guy. Not only does it affect him, but his kids were very close to their grandmother too. His mother is recovering now, and it looks ok, but it's too early to say for sure. This also could affect me to a certain extent, as he might have to leave Germany early (or not go) so I would have to stay longer and have no company. It's selfish of me to mention this, but...there it is. I do sympathize with the guy.
I've been learning a bit about Java, actually managing to change a fair amount of code here. I've been working frantically to do several bug-fixes and monor feature additions to the code. It's hectic, but at least I'm learning something useful, and it's good to feel useful.
When I was visiting my father I discovered I still had some money in a bank over there (The Netherlands). I was surprised, btu pleased, to receive an almost 360 Euro ($420) unexpected windfall.
Filling out the expense forms to get reimbursed for the last trip was a nightmare. I had to calculate and fill out all the different types of expenses for each day, and figuring them out was very convoluted as I had to add up the individual expenses, often apply taxes to the ones that weren't tips, figure out exchange rates, and then fill each such value into a different Excel cell. I dealt with three different exchange rates (dollars to Euros for Euros I bought at the bank, dollars to Euros for stuff I paid for by credit card, and dollars to pounds for something I bought via credit card during my 5 hour stopover at Heathrow). The only good way to calculate exchange rate turned out to be to look at the bill in Euros (or pounds) and then find the appropriate transaction online to figure out the amount of dollars and calculate based on that. I also had to sort through my huge pile of receipts and figure out which ones were for personal stuff, which were for business stuff, and which category each receipt belonged too. I also had to talk to about four different people separately about how to fill out the damn forms and get things signed and delivered. Getting that taken care of took most of a day at work.
It's nearly halloween, and I have celebrations at my company and my home for trick-or-treaters. This time, however, they took my suggestion at my condo building, and supplied pictures of pumpkins to hang up on our doors to indicate we want to participate. Always good when someone takes your suggestion, even if I didn't think of it myself (work has been doing this since I joined).
Same rules apply as last time regarding the trip. Internet access (except for occasional emails) will be virtually non-existent. However, work has agreed to supply me with a much nicer laptop (2.4 Ghz, with a 15.4" screen). They promised, again, to give me a working DVD drive to play movies on. We'll see if it works out this time, but even if not, I don't think I'll be lugging my personal laptop along again. Just to much weight (about 15 pounds), and my suitcase will be heavy enough without it. Work is asking me to haul license plates to Germany. Because of this, and the fact they want to make as sure as possible my suitcase doesn't get lost in transit, they asked me to fly the same airline on all legs of the journey. Because I had only abotu a week's notice for my travel dates and I will be gone for six days (less then a week, airlines prefer people to fly to Europe for more then a week) my tickets ended up being over $2800. Pretty pricy. And I have to go through Milan, Italy. I don't mind the price so much as work, and then the German company, will eventually be paying for it, but it's a bit silly to have to go from Boston to Italy and then to Germany. Look at a map to see what I mean.
I've been feeling a bit discombobulated because of all the work and travel, but, on the whole, not too bad. I hope my supervisor's mother is ok, for both our sakes.
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| Saturday, October 18th, 2003
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12:05 pm - Well that was...unfortunate
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I got back on Tuesday. Why did I get back so early? The trip was supposed to go as follows:
1) Leave here Saturday, arrive Sunday, get over jet lag Sunday.
2) Spend next week installing software, configuring software, doing dry run-through of test, setup of hardware.
3) Next week (with other people from my company) conduct test with prime and customer.
4) Saturday after our part of the test is over I go visit my father, fly back on Monday, take Tuesday off to get over jet lag, and return to normal work on Wednesday.
The way the trip actually went:
1) Same as above.
2) Same as above until late Wednesday, when I found out the prime had not cleared the testing schedule with the customer yet. It turns out the cutsomer had major problems with it and told the prime to go back to the drawing board. Test delayed until November 10th.
3) I spent the rest of the week traying to convince my company to get me back as I couldn't accomplish much over in Germany. They refused to do so until given the ok from the German prime. With much effort I finally managed to convince the German prime it was in their best interests to do so. During this time I got most of what I had planned to accomplish for the week before testing done, but since the software woruld change, machines might change, database will change, and the test will change before we conduct the actual test it will all probably have to be redone.
4) I finally managed to convince my dickless managers over here to pull me out. This was very late Friday afternoon. I quickly made plans to travel via rail to my dad in Amsterdam on Saturday.
5) Tried changing airplane reservations for the trip back to one week earlier, but was unable to get flights on monday, had to switch to Tuesday.
6) Spent time with my dad, and a little time forced to spend with my emotionally blackmailing sister.
7) Flew back on Tuesday.
Most of the trip was a clusterfuck from beginning to end. I'm glad to be back. Unfortunately it looks like I will be forced to go out for another 2 or 3 week tri pthere (depending on whether or not they want me to be there for two weeks' prep or if only 1 week is sufficient, and whether or not I have to be there for actual testing), starting around 10/26.
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