Ramblings and rumblings.
May 11, 2004
I meant to post an update yesterday afternoon when I got back from work, but instead I went down to the fitness room and went for a three and a half mile jog. Normally that would take me close to 40 minutes, but I’ve decided to speed up my jog speed to 7 MPH, which lets me do that distance in about 30 minutes, instead. Of course, yesterday being the second day I tried the faster jog my hip joints are a little twitchy today. It felt pretty good, though, being out of breath and working–but not struggling–to keep your blood oxygenated. And pushing your body past where you’re comfortable. I hate to use the old idiom, but no pain, no gain.
After my jog my big ol’ sister and I settled down and watched a few episodes of “Farscape”. We’ve been going through the series from the beginning since she’s never watched them in order, though she’s finding as we get further in that she’s seen parts of different episodes. My illustrious sister has a bad habit of channel surfing while and watching multiple things at once, so we’ll be going through an episode and saying “Oh! I remember this!” and then a couple of minutes later “Hmm, maybe I didn’t see this episiode.” She just doesn’t remember that she was surfing between “Farscape” and some other show(s) while watching. Personally, I think it’s better to devote your full attention to a show with the quality of “Farscape”. Every time I watch it, no matter how many times I’ve seen the episode in the past, I always marvel at how well-made the series was. Shame that the Sci-Fi channel decided to cancel it in a fit of what could only be idiocy. As a further example of how stupid they can be, they decided to move the show “Andromeda” over from the WB to Sci-Fi in an attempt to repopulate their channel with the bread-and-butter of science fiction, space shows, but they decided instead to cancel it after only two new episodes. How dumb is that?
Watching “Farscape” with my sister also gives me an opportunity to clear some memories from my system. In the past I’d watched “Farscape” with others and I’d pretty much stopped watching my DVDs because I’d been waiting to continue watching with them, even though I knew that it was pretty much impossible. One person in particular isn’t in my life anymore, and so this gives me an opportunity to take a step forward instead of standing around waiting.
Work is going quite well. Yesterday I got moved out of the support cubes and into a different room that I expect will be my permanent home here. The new tech that started yesterday is where I used to be sitting, so he’s getting experience being near the full-time support tech as well as the two programmers/techs. But now I’m in a separate room! I look out into the main office, but that’s through a piece of glass. Heck, I could even close the door if I wanted. I do like it, though, because I don’t feel as guilty of looking stuff up online when I’m not in a call. I never was entirely certain what I was supposed to be doing while I wasn’t on the phone so most of the time I just kept familiarizing myself with the software I support. And there’s a lot of it, so I was usually pretty busy. But when I got bored of that or it was slow, I wanted to surf over to CNN was carrying for top stories. And it’s been pretty slow so far, so I’ve had some time.
Thankfully, they let me set up my computer pretty much without restriction. I’d been using the email client built into our database software for the last week until my boss pretty much told me NOT to se it because it’s such a horrible email client. I had already installed a mail checker software that solved my checking my personal email problem (since I could check both my work and personal accounts at the same time), so I immediately went and download my favorite free email client and installed it on my computer for use as my primary mail app. My personal email account is set up in such a way that like webmail systems like Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and even Google’s new entry GMail, I can access my email from any web-enabled computer, but I can also use a standard email program to send email and have it show up in my Sent mail folder on their server. So I can send email messages from work, but they’re not stored on my work PC. Good deal, eh?
Next Monday is my first payday, too. The first paycheck is in the form of an actual check, but I’ve set up direct deposit to be used for all of the paydays after the first one. Much handier, saves the company some money, too. I’m curious to see what the exact amount will be since I’ve only been estimating thus far what I can expect to receive, but at least it will be constant from month to month since I’m salaried and not paid hourly.
So what am I doing now that I’m not in the support cube? Well, I’m still taking calls for now, though I have to really listen carefully to hear the phone ring. The new guy is still getting the hang of things and the programmer trainees are working on other stuff, so they’re only supposed to pick up when the main tech and I are not available But at least there are five techs in the office right now. Which reminds me…where the heck is the new guy going to go once he gets moved in here with me? But anyway, my job aside from additional tech stuff is QA, so my boss and the techs have been sending me possible bug reports to check out and attempt to duplicate. I’ve done one so far and requested more information about another, but between calls and projects, I’m pretty much on my own. It’s a lot of fun, though. Well, at least it is so far.
Speaking of Fark.com, Saturday night my sister and I went to a Fark party at the McMenamins Kennedy School. Around the world, people who read Fark get together once in awhile and have a few beers and talk, really having nothing in common except a zany website we all read. There was a Fark party here in Portland last year with the founder of Fark, but I was still in Wisconsin and I missed it. I didn’t even find out about this one until Saturday morning, so it was pretty short notice, but Heather and I decided we could make an appearance. Someone posted a comment that they were going to be leaving from the Goose Hollow area, so we took MAX to the Goose Hollow stop and hitched a ride with him. The party itself was a lot of fun. Only seven people showed up due to the short notice, but we had a lot of fun nonetheless. We had some of McMenamins’ fabulous fries, some of their beer, and talked and laughed until close to midnight. It was a lot of fun. But honestly, I was a bit disappointed that more people didn’t show up, and so I sent an email to the guy who gave us a ride and who had been in touch with the organizer about maybe organizing ANOTHER Fark party, but giving people more notice. I reread the comments thread on Fark the day after, and a lot of people said they couldn’t make it and wished they’d had more notice.
Oh yeah, and a lot of people bitched about the venue, too. All of us who made it laughed about those people who didn’t like McMenamins (and really, how can you live in this city and not like McMenamins?!?) and didn’t come, and giving plenty of advance notice about another Portland Fark party will let people have a little more say about where they want it.
So what else is new? I see that Beloit is having graduation this weekend, and so pretty much the last of my close friends will be leaving the school. I wish I could make it back there to see my friends like Leslie and Ali off, but alas, it’s just not meant to be. My job is one problem, but finances are the real one. If I’d started this job even a few weeks ago, I could have afforded to go and take one day off (the Monday after graduation). It’s OK. I’ll give them a call and see how they’re doing this week. Memorial Day is coming up, too, and I’m not certain what I want to do. I know I want to do something. I originally thought I’d have plans with someone to go camping or something of the like, but that’s not going to happen so it looks like I’m on my own. I do get the day off, and so I have a beautiful three day weekend to spend however I choose. I was thinking about going down to Crater Lake and camping for a couple of nights, but the campgrounds don’t open until next month at the earliest and the two lodges are far too expesive for me to be there by myself. My second choice is out to Bend so do some hiking, maybe even climb one of the Three Sisters like I mentioned last year that I wanted to do. I don’t need any climbing equipment to do so, and I think I’m in pretty good shape. Good enough to get to 9000 feet? We’ll see about that. Can’t hurt to try, though. Well, it might hurt, but who knows until I actually try?
One of the guys I met at the Fark party has climbed Mt. Hood several times, and he actually suggested I start with Hood, but I think I’d prefer to work my way up to it, no pun intended. Start with an easy one. Plus, climbing the Three Sisters (or one of them, at least) just sounds like fun. I didn’t climb one mountain, I climbed three. That will be fun to say some day. If I were going down to Crater Lake I could climb Mt. Scott since it’s only 8,300 feet and doesn’t require equipment (gotta love mountains with a trail to the top), but again, Crater Lake is unavailable to stay up over Memorial Day weekend unless I wanted to stay in Klamath Falls and drive 40 miles each way. Doesn’t sound like too much fun.
That’s about all I have to think of for now. My right hip joint hurts a bit from my three and a half mile almost-run yesterday after work, but since this is a rest day I won’t have to work it too much. And I should point out especially for Barbara that no, I’m not leaving my face free of facial hair. Like I predicted, it took only three weeks for my goatee to fully regrow, and so I look as I did before I shaved it off in a fit of…well, I still don’t know why I did, so I can’t really explain it. I know I haven’t updated my webcam in awhile (the picture is from November), but I keep fiddling with my computers and thus I have to re-setup my webcam sofware again. I just keep putting it off.
…like my pictures. Maybe I’ll get to that one of these days. I have pictures from the Fark party, too, so I’ll have to get those up, as well, and even share them with the world at large at Fark.com. Oh, and you’ll also notice that my blog has a new title. In my attempt to regain the number one search slot for “andrew self” in Google, I decided to reword my blog title. The first part is Latin, meaning “above all”. I liked the ring to it. Have a good day, all.
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