Ramblings of a Martian

Ok, been a while. What have you missed? Let's see.. Launch, Office, Party, Stargate, Gmail, News.

Ok.

So, the party was fun, if a bit more subdued than some. I was still sick enough that I didn't participate in any fruit-related activity. I went to bed much too late, around two.

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Got up at 7am sunday morning, went out and got breakfast then came back and packed. Fish picked shadowblue and I up around 830 to go get the van. From there to the republic, pack the van, then to chez lilsquishy to pick up her and xmurf and the food supplies. Then, hit the road. We were on the road south by 1020, only 20 minutes behind schedule. Stop to pick up corivax, get everybody settled, then crank up Moving Right Along. 17 hours or so later, we're parking at the Mojave airport - around 4ish, I think. Launch went off more or less on schedule, tho the rocket fired across the sun making it kinda hard to watch. Many many MANY MANY MANY other people have written - much more eloquently than I could hope to - about the launch, so go look elsewhere and be edified. After the launch, we hung around for a while, some of us stood in line for swag, then we got in the car and headed for Denny's (around 9am monday). After breakfast, back on the road. We stopped at xmurf's parents' place outside San Francisco, BART'd into downtown SF for a couple hours, went back to the house and slept. I went to bed about 12:30am tuesday, having been awake for 43.5 hours. 10 or so the next morning, we're up and having breakfast, courtesy of xmurf-mom, mmmm bacon and eggs, then on the road again. We stopped at the Olive Pit because we started seeing billboards promising a tasting bar. Plus, they have almonds. So, we stop there, and I buy way too many almonds as well as some other things, and discover that there are types of green olives that I /don't/ hate. I didn't buy any yet tho. Then we stopped outside Redding to hit Long John Silver's, which everybody else hated - vocally - but hey, I grew up with it and don't get to have it very often (damn how I wish they'd open a local franchise). Then home. Got me to nerdvana around 330am wednesday, I was in bed at 4.

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Wednesday, I wasn't going to go to work. But I got a call from grymor saying he needed files off my desktop, which hasn't been set up with its new IP address. Ok. Toss some clothes on, slip some shoes on, drive up to pacmed and park. shuttle down to US2. Huh. There's another desk in here. And there's a person sitting at it. WTF? Fix desktop. Say hi to boss. Say hi to Lydia. She informs me he's an intern. Ok, whatever. Go down to say hi to Brian, and he gives me some DVDs he'd picked up for me. Then home, to watch Stargate - among the DVDs were seasons 5 and 6, so I'm finally starting to watch all the way thru.

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xmurf gave me a gmail invite. I'm getting used to it, and I kinda like it. The lack of folders was initially annoying, but then I realized: Their inbox interface is EXACTLY what I was planning when I started writing my own mail client. I was going to have normal folders, including an 'inbox', and everything would be like normal mail readers... But there would also be a meta-inbox, for lack of a better term, which would give you a list of all unread mail, regardless of what folder it was in. Well, that's pretty much what gmail does, without the separation of storage. So, I'm quite liking it. At this point, I'm still using my midgard address as primary, but all mail going to it gets copied to my gmail box. I doubt I'll ever switch over to gmail entirely, and even if I do, I'll continue using the midgard address.

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Several things in the news lately that I think are cool or are pissing me off or are otherwise worthy of mention...

Woo, TRU is suing Amazon. That's not news, but it's sure making the stock price go up.
Woo, Amazon is counter-suing TRU. They suck!
Meh, Washington is making it so gift-certificates don't expire. Good for the consumer, bad for me and my former team 'cause /we/ get to change the damned GCs. While an Amazon.com spokeswoman said the company would adhere to the new WA law for WA residents, she declined to say why the Seattle-headquartered and Delaware-incorporated Amazon established an Idaho company two years ago called A2Z to handle its gift-card operations. Well, um, DUH. Perhaps it's because WE'RE NOT FUCKING STUPID. Not that I know anything about this, no no no.

The National Weather Service wants to make their data freely and easily available. And the commercial weather industry doesn't want them to. Nice guys, huh? Fucktards.

That's all I've got off the top of my head.

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Hey, anybody out there using CryptoHeaven?

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Happy now, maribou?

Concrete being poured for the hot tub slab.
An ear infection that became a whole-head infection and took me down for a couple days.
Office move that wasn't.
Team change.
Party.
Road trip.

Early this week, the concrete was finally poured for the new slab, onto which the hot tub and gazebo will go. I'll be posting pictures of the evolution of the structure later.

As they finished pouring the concrete, I realized I was SICK SICK SICK. I'd had something gumming up my eustachian tubes, making everything VERY LOUD, so I'd been taking lots of decongestants trying to clear them. Well, it worked, and whatever was gumming them up attacked the rest of my head. by that evening I wanted to die. Hurt everywhere, head mostly consisting of mucus, the works. Well, I'm better now.. throat's still a bit scratchy from all the coughing, but ok other than that.

I was supposed to move to my new office in the other building on wednesday. But the movers didn't move me. I've spent yesterday and today hanging out with my team on the 12th floor of pacmed. They're supposed to move me today.
I'm officially on my new team as of this weekend.

We've been preparing for the party this weekend. I couldn't help clean much, since I was sick. But the house is now clean. Two days before the party. Clearly, the fourth sign of the apocalypse.

And sunday, mere hours after the party, we hop in a van and drive 16 hours to mojave.

Then wednesday I start work on my new team.

Oy.