Snip snip.

May 25, 2004

My hair feels so much better after a haircut. The woman who cut my hair apparently is a oft-requested stylist, what what I overheard at the place I went, and so whether or not I was lucky for that I guess doesn’t matter, but she did a good job. She didn’t even use the electric trimmer until the end when she was shaping the back up, and for the first time in a long time (though I don’t specifically remember any other incidents, but it can’t be in the last five years) I had a cut done entirely with scissors. It looks good, it feels good. It’s all good. My main complaints about my hair being that long were that it took a long time to dry, it was starting to curl up on the back of my neck, and the sides were looking really funky. Ah, but no more.

Today has been a pretty good day at work so far. I got a couple of projects to work on and now one has been put on hiatus while a bug I discovered is fixed, so I can now put my full effors to rearranging my office. Well, not really my office, but since I’m the only one who works in this room full time, I’m the only one in here 95% of the day, and I’m in charge of maintaining everything in the room, I’ll call it my office for the time being. When I got here a few weeks ago, they had five computers in here, which in itself wasn’t too bad but each computer had its own monitor and keyboard. It’s a fairly small room, so things were a bit cramped even with three desks as I tried to squeeze in with my computer and my stuff. Well today I set up a KVM switch that my boss brought from our other office, so up to four computers can be run from a single keyboard, monitor, and mouse. Tremendous space-saver. So I moved three monitors out of the room, my desk is now 100% mine and not stacked with other computers, and the room is much more organized. I’m going to keep working on things, though.

My biggest disappointment, though, is that one of the desks would have been my ideal desk were it not for space issues. There are two standard desks in the room plus an L-shaped desk that goes in a corner. It’s big, it’s wooden, it would be perfect. But it doesn’t fit in the corner where I want to sit, dammit. I’ll just ahve to make do with what I have. It’s not really a space thing, though of course more counter space is always a good thing, but it’s more of a status thing. Power. Space. They’re all related. Now if I could just get that desk into the empty room, I’d be a happy camper. I’m still not certain what’s going to happen to the empty room…but maybe I can finagle office space in there. I am the lead QA person, after all. Being the lead QA person is more than just a title, though: the project that got put on a temporary hiatus while a bug is fixed is my checking a CD-ROm before it goes off to duplication and making sure that everything is ship-shape. If I make a mistake about something, then about 30,000 cash registers or so will have a CD-ROM enclosed in the packaging with my mistake on it. Potential oops in the making. So I’m being careful.

After work, of course, is car shopping excursion #1. Today’s dealer is the one my Dad has always used to buy from, and I’ve been perusing their inventory for the last few days and seeing what they have in stock that’s interesting. In my price range that interest me include a 2002 Ford Escort SE, a 2001 Chevrolet Cavalier, a 2001 Ford Escort/ZX2, and a 1995 Volkswagen Jetta III GLS. All fal under $8000, all are automatic, all are small passenger cars. The blanket reviews seem to indicate that the Escort or the Cavalier would be best this dealer has to offer, but I still want to take a look at all of them. Red, Red, white, green are the colors. I think I’d probably be disowned if I ended up with a Chevy, though. My Dad’s owned a good number of Ford vehicles over the years, and my selection of a Chevy might earn me a scowl and a lecture. Maybe. I guess I’ll also look at their new cars since they’ll probably try and talk me into a new mdoel, anyway. If they can offer me a good deal, it just might be worth investigating. Ford offers a recent college graduate incentive program that knocks $400 off the price of the car, plus dealers are always doing on promotion or another. Maybe I could get a 0% interest deal…you never know. The other dealer I know I want to go to is in Hillsboro, but I’m not going to do that today. Maybe Thursday after work since tomorrow I want to go home and exercise. Not to mention that getting out to Hillsboro will be a pain after work any day because I’ll probably have to drive on Highway 26 to get there, and 26 isn’t known in the Portland area for its smooth, traffic-free ride. I guess I could always get there via surface streets, but I’ll still have to find it on a map, first. And Hillsboro is a mess of one-way streets, too. Fun fun fun. One of my driving lessons when I was learning to drive was out there, and I had to circle several times to follow the directions of the instructor. As I said, it’s a real mess out there.

That’s about all I have for now. Another 30 minutes on lunch, so I guess I’ll browse around for awhile before I start organizing cords and the like in here again. Wish me luck this afternoon.

Posted in Geekery, General