no one's jamming their transmission

Auto show has come and gone. Of the stuff I tried, I still like the Genesis Coupe the best, but there are some annoyances. It looks like the sunroof is standard on the V6 and the spoiler is standard on the Track trim level that has all the go faster bits. The trunk also has kind of a small opening so I'll be giving up more practicality than I thought.

Things have been going pretty well at work. I have subtly caused a ton of trouble as my reports and data analysis get mailed around. I heard one thing I found is now a bonus goal for upper management to fix in 2009. I have been using unstructured time to develop new reports to cause further trouble. And here boss squared thought systems work was a dead end.

where you'll be i'll know

Boss squared wants to change my role at work. I like my role at work.

We also have some pilot builds of a new pacemaker at work and we can't get rid of the damned things. We have tried four times to ship them and failed. There is nothing wrong with the parts - it's all paperwork.

I am still playing Spore but I have pretty much played the crap out of it. I have been rereading some books but I only have relatively few books with me so I'm kind of sick of them. Prodrive is weeks away and there are no good Firebirds online.

it was over before it started

Had another near miss on a Firebird - found an '87 Firebird Formula on CL that had the right color, wheels, transmission, engine...unfortunately when I called to see the car later that day it was in the process of being sold.

Finished rereading the Caves of Steel quartet - don't know what to read next. Maybe Catch-22 again.

I took the day off of work tomorrow, but I don't know what to do. At least I won't be at work.

it's easier to be broken

I had a bit of a surprise at work today when I check my calendar and found I'd been signed up for a reliability statistics class. This was set up weeks ago but I will forget anything set up more than a week in advance. The instructor is a physics Ph.D. who retired and teaches physics, with this on the side.

He gave us homework.

I was amused and procrastinated so I could finish the last main objectives in Spore and do my laundry. So I waited to the last minute as usual. I finally got it done but it was a pain. This is why I LEFT school.

At least I have Monday off as a personal day. And the only person who knows (my boss) probably forgot.

is it better to be safe than sorry

The Malibu just had its first fill-up since getting the spark plugs changed, and it looks like that may have done a bit of good. It certainly wasn't any conscious effort to be more economical, because I got pulled over yesterday for speeding after I finally got off work - hosed again, the other quality person bailed around 4:30 without even asking if I could be the one who had to stay late.

nothing to do but believe

I have a song stuck in my head. Just five notes of it, but it's driving me crazy. It seems like it's from a soundtrack. I thought it was Auto Rock by Mogwai but it isn't.

I'm taking a pass again on the '86 Firebird due to the dodgy brakes - me having to deal with it is one thing, but I don't want to put my friend (who will have to drive it first) in a bad position. Also that one is red. I don't want red. I found an '83 Camaro Z/28 but it doesn't have t-tops.

Of the two trainings I was scheduled for this morning, I opted for the one offsite, which apparently caused a great deal of trouble at work as everyone had forgotten about the other training. Process guy postulated that I may have crashed my car and then helpfully pitched in by eating my lunch for me. I had no opportunity for that though - traffic was slow and spread out enough to prevent any exuberance.

words don't matter they don't suit my kind

Not much getting done at work this week, as I have more training. In fact this morning I have two overlapping trainings, so I have to pick one. I'm going to finish my implant training so I understand something about tachycardia. The other training is how to use the reporting software and I already had more experience than most of the others so I ended up skipping ahead and now I've already got a chapter further than the others, so I really don't think I need to be there this morning.

Saw a 2008 Challenger over the weekend!

Apparently the Brembo brakes on the Genesis Coupe will be so big they can only be fitted under 19" wheels. I'm not a fan of huge rims so I may stick with the 18" - the standard brakes shouldn't exactly be slackers. In addition the 19" wheels will only come with summer performance tires, so the Brembo car should stop better when it's dry but probably won't work as well in the wet.

I am still fighting with myself over the '86 Firebird, but I will force myself to go look at it and decide based on what's really there. Is it fear of commitment or brake failure?

homework

I have homework. I have to give a presentation tomorrow about MRB instead of being able to work in MRB and actually do something partially useful. They drag me into these meetings and then wonder why MRB doesn't get done. The presentation is for another of the endless string of Germans that seem to get shipped over here to learn how we are doing things, but I am still whipping some slides up. I hate homework.

I finished the story of GTA IV last week so I went around grabbing a bunch of relatively easy achievements. I started playing a little bit of the multiplayer mode and it is pretty fun. The maps are so huge that you can find yourself well out of the way of the action.

superleggera

I saw this Gallardo Superleggera this morning, and was fortunately stuck at the light long enough to pull out my cell phone and take this crappy picture. Getting the picture transferred was another matter, as Verizon forbids it...fortunately I finally had some luck with the hack software. Bite me, Verizon.

On top of that, the Swiss suppliers visiting at work brought Toblerones (probably from the airport), we had Olive Garden catered for lunch, and it was payday. I think I'm going to suffer for everything tomorrow.

you're breaking my flow

I hate April Fool's Day. Just because we've arrived at an arbitrary point in our orbital cycle people take this as license to be a jackass, exploit the trust of others, tell fantastic lies and extract amusement from the suffering of others. I can't trust a damned thing that happens today. Fortunately two guys at work got fired recently for screwing around so nobody was going to cross that line, but my webcomics thought they were being clever by rerouting their links to each other (apparently xkcd's idea), and everything in the car news I read has to be taken with a grain of salt. Which is unfortunate because I want to believe there is a 50/50 chance of a G8 GXP coupe getting built. Or that Audi has finally cracked the twin-turbo V10 for the R8.

the walls suffocate

I've overslept my alarm the past two days. Fortunately nobody at work notices if I am ten minutes late. However, the time has come to resolve this annoyance. The problem is not that I forgot to set my alarm clock forward, but that it has picked preciously this time to have the snooze malfunction. This may be due to a low battery, but since I can't be sure I need to set an emergency backup clock. The emergency backup clock is atomic, or rather 'atomic'. One would imagine using an 'atomic' clock would be simple:

Step 1 - IT SETS ITSELF.

Unfortunately the reality is more annoying. My 'atomic' clock had apparently most recently decided daylight savings does not exist, and since "it sets itself" I have no manual override to set it ahead one hour. Instead, I have to remove the batteries and put them back in to trigger the autoset. This autoset receives information via radio waves, and as I've covered in previous rants EM waves are unable to penetrate Lake Oswego. In the meantime it thinks it is midnight on January 1st. I have been successful in the past by putting it in the window, but tonight I have it fully outside and it receives absolutely nothing.

the runway lights are the deepest blue

Everybody at work is getting sick. There was something going around and then my boss brought something back from his trip to Oklahoma. I have managed to avoid it so far as I do a lot by email and I'm wearing a mask half the time anyway. It may have finally caught up to me though, as I have a bit of a sore throat. I don't want the Oklahoma Flu.

I recently bought Command & Conquer: The First Decade. I already own almost all of the compilation except for the expansion pack to Tiberian Sun, which I have just finished playing. I thought the compilation would just be 10 CDs, but they've actually packaged everything from the original to Zero Hour on one DVD, which is extremely convenient.

Buying that game was interesting. It cost $24.99, but the first time it came up on the debit card reader it said $24,990,000,000,000.00. I'm kicking myself that I didn't take a picture on my new cell phone. I told the cashier I wasn't feeling generous enough to pay off the national debt. The second attempt was $0.02, but I didn't get to keep that.

I've pretty much sorted out the artwork in my music collection, but I haven't really sorted the collection itself. I did just get the Ace Combat 6 soundtrack, which some blog had packaged with the Halo 3 soundtrack for some reason. As far as the new iPod goes, I got an acrylic case so the stupid edge that kind of annoys me is covered up altogether. The menus are still a bit laggy at times though.

two points never separate

I had a decent weekend. It was Superbowl Sunday, so I made an impromptu purchase of a USB TV tuner...then remembered I get almost no TV reception at my place...and then I got bored with the Superbowl after the kickoff and did more interesting things. Like fixing the toilet. I also started working on my taxes but this is the first time I've done them myself so I have no idea what I'm doing. I bought some DVDs as well, so I watched the first disc of Futurama.

More work tomorrow. I have to remember my iPod - I forgot it on Friday and if I don't have it I can't focus on computer work. Right now I've got five songs on loop I could listen to forever. I'm also going to bring in my Master's diploma that finally showed up so I can make a copy for my cube. I was maybe supposed to show up for work on Saturday, but that was a vague assertion by people who aren't my bosses and the MRB team made a pact to not go in. We couldn't have made a substantial dent in our work anyway.

so stuck inside

Work was more crazy today. They are getting ready to ship the first test batch of modules processed with the new computerized system, but several modules are locked up in my area of responsibility and I couldn't process them because the system is still broken, so not-my-bosses have been putting pressure on me to do whatever it takes to get the shipment ready.

My computer is finally holding up nicely so I worked out how to salvage data from my corrupted xD card. The pictures aren't great because the museum had terrible lighting but some of them came out pretty good, so I put them on facebook. Now I am going to go read The Selfish Gene in bed. At least I don't have to go to Canada at 4AM like PJ. Sucker.

broken already

I've used last.fm for barely a day and it's already screwing up. It apparently doesn't understand the concept of soundtracks, so it says things like Solaris is a Latvian band. I also can't wait to see the charts when it learns I will pick a song and listen to it twenty times in a row while doing computer work.

(Update: I was listening to some Half-Life music and the Last.fm application told me that I was 'incorrect' in tagging it as Half-Life and I should 'do last.fm and myself a favor' and change the tag to whatever composer I've never heard of who wrote it. So I went on the wiki and told last.fm to bite me.)

I have a mere four days of work between now and Christmas break, but it's going to be hectic. The new networked manufacturing system is entering its validation phase which means I get to help test it on top of doing whatever it takes to make sure the line keeps running. I'm also apparently the only one who knows most of the new process to release material for shipment.

and i need you to recover

My neighbors have started some kind of passive-aggressive battle amongst themselves over phone books. For some reason we get at least three different types of phone books and the last two put a big stack in the front lobby instead of distributing them properly. So someone left a note saying they shouldn't put garbage there, and then someone else wrote an annoyed note about how these are new phone books, and I haven't really been paying attention except when I got home from work today someone had left three phone books at my door, including the annoyed note. I don't know why these people think I am involved in their petty battle, as I don't care about them in general, but I might just throw all the phone books down the garbage chute if people can't resolve their phone book issues.

I finally finished Mass Effect after three weeks. All 1000 points. I think I'm taking a break from serious gaming now - although screwing around in TF2 is not out of the question.

I made some fudge for tomorrow's Christmas potluck lunch at work. Of course I couldn't do it without incident. Peanut butter fudge is the Alfa Romeo of food.

it might change my memory

More new people at work. One started today who is in process/manufacturing and apparently he's into car stuff too, which I found out after lamenting that my Camaro will be difficult to get up and down the narrow back roads near Oswego Lake as it will be almost a foot wider than the Malibu.

MasterCard is running some contest where one prize is dual cars - one for you, one to give to someone else. The cool thing is it isn't prepicked, it's your choice, up to $70,000. That's an interesting problem. Obviously that isn't going to get you a Ferrari F430 or a DB9, at a price tag of around $170,000. The Camaro, besides not existing yet, is aiming more for the Mustang price range, so you wouldn't be taking full advantage of the win. What would be the best pick for 70 grand? Corvette?

I got Mass Effect this weekend. It's pretty cool. I haven't really played any RPGs other than Final Fantasy so it was interesting getting something different. Apparently it's the first part of a future trilogy - can you say timesink?

I had high hopes to get things in order today, and while I didn't get far for the most part I did mail my brother's birthday present. I also mailed back the mistaken Amazon.com package. It feels good to get that damned thing out of my life.

I finally got my webcomic shirt today some ten weeks after originally ordering it. They claimed they mailed it out over two weeks ago but it's clearly postmarked Wednesday. They just couldn't help being incompetent to the bitter end. And of course it's now too cold to show off my F15 shirt.

think of all the things we learned

Work is pushing hard to get this week's shipment out because of Thanksgiving, so they ran production all weekend. I wouldn't care except they wanted to have enough lead time for reworks so I had to come in on Saturday and Sunday for a few hours and process them. It wasn't a big deal but I am not exactly used to having to schedule around things on weekends.

When I wasn't at work this weekend I was trying out the last piece of Orange Box, Team Fortress 2. It was fun for a while but I think I've already hit the point where I've had enough.

I was almost set to go ahead and build a new computer but then it turns out Intel is launching a quad 45nm 2.5GHz processor in January, so I guess I'll put it off some more. That's unfortunate because my computer has really had about enough. I saw the new SimCity came out and even though it's probably been ruined I wanted to give it a shot, but my computer couldn't possibly handle it.

black and white picture of her on my wall

I have one achievement left in Beautiful Katamari (not counting the downloadable content that isn't available yet) which requires me to play 200 levels on normal. I've already cleared them all and gotten 100% collection so I didn't really have any reason to keep playing, but I started again anyway. I started playing the same level over and over and kept getting a little better each time, and as a result I also starting climbing the leaderboards. I finally got to 8th place out of about 3400. I'm pretty happy about cracking the top ten, even if it's just for one level.

I was hoping to get actual work done at work this week with my bosses out - hence no crazy meeting days - but for some reason a lot of component issues have been cropping up and as Component Quality Engineer I have to take part in them. The new manufacturing system is also taking up more time as it creeps closer to going live. So I've been quite busy just trying to hold down the status quo.

shallow water channel and tide

I called the university today to figure out why I haven't gotten my Master's diploma yet, and it turns out my advisor never submitted grades for the summer credits of my internship. He fixed that right away after I informed him, but that means I'm back to waiting.

Work has been pretty crazy lately, at least six meetings a day, so I can't get any actual work done anymore.

In other lame news the post office has apparently reneged on their agreement to deliver something I mailed, and my attempt to buy a t-shirt from a webcomic is caught in limbo with nobody on their end acknowledging my emails but happy to take my money.