Postponement

I know I promised a post last night, but I'm busy right now trying to meet a deadline on a personal project that will save me $40 if I meet it.  So, my Christmas summary post is on a back burner for a little bit longer.  There will be one, I promise.  Linda, I accidentally threw you off track.  I was only linking to the song and didn't pay attention to the pictures, so any pictures you saw may be irrelevant.

In other news, we have a dropout on a planned vacation.  If you or someone you know is single, male, and has money and time in January to ski/snowboard at Whistler, let me know.  We are taking applications if they are interested and his character can be vouched for.  Send me an e-mail or call me or facebook me or something.  If you don't have any of that contact info, ask one of your friends that told you about this blog and they probably have it.  It would probably be best if the person isn't a beginner that would be on the bunny hill, but any skill level above that should be fine.  I guess we could work with someone who is married, but a discussion may be required on sleeping arrangements as all the other people going are not married.  And now I am back to my project....

All I Want For Christmas...

I just returned from my Christmas vacation.  To give you a hint of where I went, this song would probably be the best song for describing it.  I'll try to do the complete summary post tomorrow.  I'm sure you guys can wait that long since you probably haven't been missing me much what with all your own Christmas plans going on.  Maybe I could even wait until after New Years.

Work tomorrow should be OK since I'll probably be there pretty much all by myself.  It's almost like taking a vacation at work!  I thought I had some other clever thoughts, but they escape me at the moment.  Later gators.

Wandom Wednesday

I'm liking the crisp air tonight, and you know it's starting to get cold when the snow finally squeaks and is fluffy instead of heavy and wet.  I thought the load at work would start to taper off this week, but so far it's been busy busy with a little extra busy thrown in for good measure.  I will have to extend my apologies in advance to T and M for the "carefree housekeeping" they will experience tomorrow evening.  Now I must quit procrastinating and go clean the bathrooms.  That's really my only gold standard for cleanliness.  As long as the bathroom is clean and you can see part of the kitchen counter, it's OK for the dust bunnies and cobwebs to hang around.

Old New Thing

I may have mentioned that I got a new bike in August, but I don't think I ever showed a picture of it, so while I'm in the "displaying new stuff mode", I'm posting one now as I promised the Big Cheese a while back that I would.  The new one is on the left.  I had my old one fixed up so that I have an extra for any guests that might happen to visit.

Give Me A Ring

I bit the bullet and finally did it.  I bought a new phone.  Actually, I didn't even do that.  I signed up for two years and the phone came with it "free" (even though we all know it's not really free).  When I went into the store I kind of had my heart set on getting the Motorola Droid2 because it's buying American (at least the profits come back here even if the phones aren't made here), it has a touch screen, but it also has a sliding screen with a tactile keyboard for us old fashioned people.  I had decided to go with a smartphone for a few reasons:

1. I can use it as a replacement for my aging Palm Pilot, which still works, but I fear it could go on the fritz any time since it is eight years old.
2. Instead of buying a laptop to check my e-mail while traveling, etc., I can use this.
3. Alternative to a GPS when traveling where you can look up maps, nearby restaurants, etc.
4. Literally a dictionary and encyclopaedia at your fingertips at all times.
5. Has a built-in MP3 player.
6. Has a built-in camera for those times when I've forgotten my "good" camera.
7. Although I don't have a texting plan, on the rare times when I do text I can more easily do punctuation and spelling checks, which I used to get frustrated with on my old phone.
8. All the young, hip kids have them.

When I arrived, the yellow price tag store was "giving" away this other phone that didn't have a tactile keyboard but had pretty much everything else and was a bit thinner.  So, I went with the free one even though the Droid2 was only $100 and the DroidPro was $50 with the two year agreement.  The guy I carpool to SMM with got the biggest kick out of my frugality because he said I was willing to compromise my happiness for $50.  He might be right, but I got a different kind of happiness from saving $50.  Other people said you get used to the touch screen after a while, so I was willing to get with the times and give this new-fangled technology thing a go.  I even sprang for the unlimited data plan.  I think I still might be just tight enough that I squeak when I walk.

Out with the old, in with the new.  Good-bye Samsung and AT&T, Hello HTC and Verizon.

Deferred

In general I'm not a huge poetry fan.  My taste normally runs along the lines of Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, and Dr. Seuss.  I might be able to get into Robert Frost if I ever sat down and truly tried to read him, but I haven't so far.  There were a few other poems I was required to read in high school that occasionally come to mind and I usually appreciate the poems that Avis writes, but as I mentioned I'm not an avid fan.  I (almost) always dislike poetry that doesn't rhyme.

Sometimes at work "issues" come up in the products that we make that could barely be called issues or are considered minor.  Either the customer will never notice or we have reason to believe the things we have observed in our testing will never occur in real life.  Of course there are major issues that we do fix, but the really minor ones we enter into the "issue tracking" system and then defer them to a future quality update project or something like that.

In my opinion, the word defer is not one commonly used in general conversation unless you're deferring the answer of a question to someone else.  It just seems like a unique word, and it always reminds me of that one poem we read in high school that was written by a black writer during the civil rights struggle last century.  I mentioned this word association that always pops into my head to another guy at work, and we were joking about our issue tracking system causing riots because of the issues we have deferred.  Engineers are nerds.  Anyways, that's how this poem came to mind.

A Dream Deferred
by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Mexican Lion

This post is dedicated to my dedicated reader LinDee.  This one came to me through my e-mail inbox at work today.

This is the true story of a Garage owner in the Southwest (New Mexico).  He was sick and tired of thugs breaking into his garage shop to steal tools, etc. So he came up with this idea.  He put the word out that he had a new Mexican Lion that would attack anyone that would break in or climb his fence. Would-be thieves saw the "Lion" from a distance and fled the scene.

 
 The dog is probably trying to figure out why his head is so hot and his butt is so cold.
 

Good Stuff

The sunset, although awfully early, was absolutely beautiful today.  It looked like somewhere beyond the horizon was on fire.  Unfortunately, I was driving and didn't have my camera.  My zest for taking pictures is in a waning phase at the moment I've noticed.

Around the same time as the sunset I also saw four deer.  They were either unemployed or teenagers because they were just hanging out by the road.  They didn't make a single move as I drove by.

I'm almost mentally prepared to buy a new cell phone.  The 3 month percolation and contemplation period is done and I went into a store and played around with phones trying to decide which one I want.  I'm even contemplating getting a data plan - am I a big spender or what?  Well, not extremely big.  I would get the cheapest data plan.  Have a good night chickadees.

More Music

Tonight I went to a John Berry concert.  For those of you that weren't country music fans back in the 90's, he was one of the stars back then with a great singing voice.  The YouTube videos I've linked to don't do justice to the real sound quality of his voice, so I would recommend going to iTunes or Rhapsody or whatever your music location of choice is to listen to some of his music.

The first half of the concert he sang his hits and some songs off his latest album.  One of his songs that wasn't released as a single and is lesser known but, in my opinion, is one of his best ones, is called Forty Again.  For anybody who has good memories of their dad, I think everyone has felt the emotion the song expresses.  I have his "Faces" CD, and there's not a bad song on it.  Of course, I think that about all of his songs, so I might be biased.  One of his great high-energy songs that he played tonight was What's In It For Me.  The lady in the video singing the backup vocals and playing the tambourine is his wife - she was on the stage doing the same tonight.

The second half of the show was all Christmas songs.  One that I had never heard before that has potential is called "My Heart is Bethlehem."  The Christmas song that best displayed his soaring tenor tonight was "O Come Emmanuel."  But, YouTube wasn't very accommodating in this case, so here's the second best example.  I have to admit I was never much of a fan of the "Little Drummer Boy" song in the past, but John can make that song seem appealing too.  I had never realized before that the song is about a little boy not having any physical gifts to give to Jesus, so he gives what he can, which is a song on his drum.  Isn't it weird how lyrics of a song can just pass you by?

Turkey Twenty Ten

I remember again why I usually try not to read any books.  I was really tired on Friday night, partly because I worked a lot of hours this week and traveled, but mostly because books come very close to being a vice for me.  I just can't learn to put them down once I get started!  Who in their right mind stays up until 3:00 AM on a Monday night to finish a book when they know they have to work all week and get up at 6:40 the next morning?

That's not the point of this post though.  The point is to list my top ten from my Thanksgiving trip to North Dakota.  I went to my parents' house, and my dad's five sisters and their spouses (if they have one) were there.  It was just me and the gerries for a couple days.  One of my younger cousins came to visit one evening, and I went to visit a cousin one morning too.  Here's the top ten list (plus a few bonus ones) in no particular order:

1. If I want to know what I'm going to look like in 40 years, all I have to do is look at my dad's middle sister.
2. Lots of pills were broken out at every meal.  I thought about starting a pharmacy.
3. Comparing sleep machine masks - it's the new family pastime.
4. For lack of grandchildren hanging around, the dog(s) were doted upon.
5. My cousin's in-law who came for a brief visit told me I look like I'm 25.  My gray hairs must have been in hiding that day.
6. My uncle said I'm an engineer through and through - from A to Z.  I told him I resemble that remark.
7. FF told me that I look like a Joanna.  That was a new one.
8. I did a quick visit to see cousin Melanaway and her brood.  It's nice to catch up with someone who is both a relative and a friend from the college years.
9. It's sobering to see some of the people who were strong and vibrant when I was young start to become more frail.  As an older lady I went to BS with in Nevada used to say, "Growing old isn't for sissies."  It truly is an accomplishment to grow old gracefully.
10. They weren't shy about giving me some hints/suggestions on certain young men I should meet or get to know better.
11. I only ate dressing/stuffing one day - during Thanksgiving dinner.  That is pathetic and not up to my usual standards.  It it were a proper Thanksgiving weekend, I would have eaten leftover stuffing at least three times.  Put a check mark by eating leftover turkey at least three times though.
12. My only regret is that I didn't have enough time to spend as much time with everybody as I would have liked.
13. The good thing is most of them are able to keep a sense of humor about aging.  Besides, we're all getting older, right?
14. I can't forget to mention that I was privileged too see Muggles and BIL-Dan.

We're big into gambling.  Next up:  Bingo!

Life at Golden Acres.  The lady in the middle is myself in 40 years.

Yabbada yabbada yabbada that's all folks.  Hopefully this passes muster with all my dedicated readers.

Travel at Random

The Thanksgiving post isn't done yet, so here's some randomness:

• Traveled for work this week with three other guys five and a half hours one way to Heavensville.  On the way back we got into an hour-long discussion about religion, what does it mean to believe, etc.  You never know what will happen on a road trip.
• This week is the week of Asian food.  I've eaten at a Chinese buffet, had Thai food, and Mongolian BBQ.
• I now have faster internet for the same price I've been paying for slower internet.  Woo-hoo!
• My boss announced today that he is going back to doing hardware design in our company, so in the next month or two we will have a new manager.  We don't know who he or she is yet.  That's always interesting to see what a new manager's style will be.  One guy at work is trying to convince me to be the new manager.  I'll pass on that at the moment.
• I'm starting to be irritated by my intermittently working cell phone finally, so I think I might buy a new one and get a new plan sometime in the next two weeks.
• Three Poles arrived at work this week and will be here for two more weeks.  In the recent past I usually worked mostly with Brazilians and Indians.  However, now we have some Polish guys in the mix too, which is a nice change of pace.
• How do vegetarians not feel hungry all the time?  It seems like there wouldn't be enough protein in the diet to stave off the hunger pangs.

Toodloo....

Delays

Due to the high expectations that have been set for my Thanksgiving summary, that one will have to percolate a little before it's ready for public consumption.  In the mean time, here's a picture from the weekend before with me and my new niece.

Bowling for Thanksgiving

Things are looking up here.  The rest of the work week went OK.  I got my performance review and creating all those mandatory schedules done.  Today finished off nicely.  We had a bowling event in the afternoon for work, which was done by 3:30.  This gave me time to go to the library and to the YMCA for aerobics.  I even had time to call my internet and phone provider and change my service and rates to be mo' betta.  It's amazing all the things you can get done when you're not working during normal business hours.

Let me just say, there are probably few things as nerdy as 100 electrical engineers going bowling (get it?  bowling...turkey...Thanksgiving).  We don't do your garden variety bowling where you try to get the highest score.  No, to make it more interesting and work justified, we add some Six Sigma into the mix.  Instead of shooting for the highest, the goal is to have the smallest variation around your target score.  Before you start bowling, each person has to predict a target score and their range of scores.  Then you bowl three games, and during each game you try to get exactly that score.  Sandbagging is allowed and encouraged.  After the three games, numbers are crunched, and the team with the best Cpk gets the eagle trophy.  Yes, there are trophies and a plaque listing the previous years' winning teams.  There are even individual awards like "Most Predictable" and "Least Predictable".  I know, we're nerds, every one of us.  One of the guys brings his sound system and acts as a DJ/MC too.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!  The Lord and the weather willing, I'll see my parents for T-day.

Crankiness and Thankfulness

It wasn't that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  I got up on the same old side I always do.  I was actually in a good mood as I walked into work today because I had a good weekend, a decent amount of sleep last night, and the temperature was warm outside.  But for some reason after an hour or two at work I started to feel a case of the crankies moving in, and I'm not exactly sure why.  There were a few things to aggravate me at work today, but that's kind of like any day, and most of the time they don't bother me.    I tried not to let it overtake my day but was only partially successful.  I made the mistake of sending an e-mail to my manager while in this peeved state, which is always a bad idea.  Hopefully there isn't too much fallout tomorrow from that.  As a rule, any e-mail you write while in any kind of emotional state should always sit in your "draft" folder overnight before you send it.  Here's my cranky list.

1. Pointless mandates from management three levels above me.  Not only do I have to take a bunch of online lame training courses due by December 3rd, but he's also mandated a maintenance of redundant schedules for five different projects I'm working on with only a week to get them all up to date before he begins "audits".  Grrrrrrrr.
2. Because of the previously mentioned mandates, I will probably now spend another four hours per week updating schedules and getting less "real" work done.  *sigh*
3. Because of traveling for work, my only option to have my annual performance review with my manager is tomorrow morning, which only gives me about an hour to prepare for that tomorrow morning.
4. We lost all three games of volleyball tonight.
5. I missed my golden opportunity for one last 2010 kayak trip yesterday.  Tomorrow the cold winds of winter will have blown in.

That's enough sourness for the day.  Since this is the week of Thanksgiving, I'll try to improve my mood by listing a few things I'm thankful for.

1. Parents, family, and friends that love me.
2. Adults in my life who cared when I was a child and taught me how to read, sing, ice skate, think for myself, etc.
3. Health.
4. Freedom.
5. A good night's sleep with a fresh perspective in the morning.

OK peeps, I'm off to attempt to get the kayak stowed.

Deja Vu

I had a serious case of deja vu this weekend.  It all seemed a little familiar:  the drive, the radio station playing all Christmas music all the time already, hanging out with some other females near my age, and seeing my brother's family.  I went back and checked, and was almost a year to the day since I made a similar trip.  I could almost copy and paste the same bulleted list and be done with it.  A few of the differences were that I have three nieces now instead of two, and my parents were visiting my brother also.  Maybe I'll post a picture tomorrow, although I didn't take very many so it might be slim pickings there.

Raking Randomness

I think this is the first year that I've raked leaves in the pitch dark.  It wasn't totally pitch dark because I was wearing my head lamp, but I raked for at least an hour tonight after nightfall to finish the 2010 raking business.  The raking occurred after I lost three games of racquetball to some white-haired guy with a bum elbow.  The first half of the lawn that I raked on Saturday looks like it could use another raking, but I'm pretty sure it'll keep until spring.  People say I should make the raking more automated by using a mower, bagger, etc.  Even though it is somewhat of an inconvenience, the truth is, in some perverse way I enjoy it.  Usually it only takes 4 or 5 hours total (once a year), and I enjoy the chance to be outdoors and have time to think and mull over stuff and things.

This week seems like it's taking forever to pass by, but it also feels like it just started.  Now I must go to bed so I can get up early for work in order to make sure I have all my documentation completed for the project review that will happen on two or three of my projects tomorrow.  Take care now, buh bye then.

P.S.  I have a new niece this week.  I'm sure she's very sweet, and I hope to verify that in person soon.

Accomplishments

It only took ten weeks, but I finally won one racquetball game in the B+ league at the Y.  My opponent did have one of those heavy duty knee braces, but he's only in his 40's or 50's, so it does feel like somewhat of an accomplishment.

Plus, lodging and lift tickets for an upcoming snowboarding/ski trip are booked.  Woohoo!  I need to book transportation, and then I'm good to go.  Well, almost.  I need to go to the store and buy my 2010-2011 top-of-the-line snow bunny outfit and then I'll be totally ready to go.  Maybe I need to get my board waxed too.

Volleyball tonight.....that was some kind of an accomplishment, but not necessarily a good one.  Latron gatrons.

Home Made

Do I have a great sister or what?  Last week she sent me home made granola bars, and this week she sent fresh venison jerkey.  This reminds me that I never sent my home made gifts as promised.  Can I push that deadline out from a one-year deadline to a two-year one?

So.....hopefully the weather is good enough to rake leaves so I can check that task off the list.  Thoughts of snow have set in, so snowboarding scoping has begun.  And I really must get on the ball about getting that new phone.  If only I knew what I want.

Milestones

Today is a big day.  Not only is it Veterans Day (thanks to all the veterans for their sacrifices), but it is also the 99th anniversary of the company I work for being in business.  That's another way of saying it's the start of our 100th year in business.  To commemorate it, our CEO rang the closing bell at the NYSE while employees watched the live feed of it over the internet as they ate cookies and drank sparkling grape juice.  It was kind of cheesy, but when you think about it, it's also a very significant accomplishment.  That means the 100th year anniversary will be 11/11/11.  Cool, huh?

A while back I read an article on Yahoo! about how to tell if you're being too picky when dating.  I thought of it again today, so I dug it up.  I found it to be kind of interesting with the most relevant excerpt given below.  Overall, it seems to be a fairly good philosophy even though I've never really tried to implement it, so I can't speak from experience.

So if you’re in need of some too-picky therapy, think of it this way: you’re not lowering your standards; you’re expanding them. Here’s how:

1. Edit your checklist. You are allowed only three essential requirements and none of them can be physical attributes. For example: “Kind to others, intellectually curious, likes animals” — or if you’re not into pets, “wants children” (as far as you can tell on date #1).
2. Go on a second date. Anyone who passes your three-point checklist gets to date #2. Anyone.
3. Broaden your “type” but trust your gut. If after two dates you honestly can’t see it — e.g., you struggle for conversation, you clash on a moral principle — you may let it go without guilt. After all, you’ve got to make time for all the new possibilities you’ve now opened up for yourself.

Changin'

New things when I arrived at work yesterday:
1.  Some of the hallways have a new mint green color on the walls.  I like mint green, but it feels a little too much like a hospital or something.  Supposedly that color is supposed to be soothing.  A long, narrow hallway with 10 or 12 foot walls painted mint green all the way up with the door jambs still a medium blueish-gray color makes be kinda dizzy/sick when I walk down it.
2.  3 cube mates:  2 down, 1 to go.  As I mentioned a few months ago, one of my peers became my project leader.  When he got that job, he moved from our cube quad to the next quad over.  That left 3 of us.  Last week while I was gone one of my other cube mates was walked out the door when he took a job with a competitor.  I knew he was a bit disgruntled and was looking at different jobs internal to the company, but he was also a big talker sometimes, so I wasn't sure if he would ever do anything.  Apparently he did.  It sounded like he was going on to bigger and better things, so that's good for him.  Without him, the cube is really quiet and is starting to feel deserted.  Now we're down two engineers in our group with no reduction in the work load, so that's not so good.

Something still the same:
1.  The occasional strong tar smell that came in while they worked on the roof yesterday.

That's all I have for today.  Later.