Month: September 2007

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Once again it’s been a while, time for a dump

I keep having the problem of thinking about something I want to post, then forgetting about the post and it just rattles around in the back of my head for a month. Here’s what I can remember:

1) So for those of you who were paying attention, I started working at Yahoo! again as an engineer in the Travel vertical. My first week went as expected — setting up my work environment. My second week I started learning the code base and had my first project handed to me. The third week my boss was out of town and I continued working on the project and reading documentation. Then on the first day of my fourth week, my boss pulls me aside and tells me that I’ve been reassigned to a new project. I mean, a completely separate company-wide thing that has nothing to do with Travel. So for the last few weeks I’ve seen more PowerPoint presentations than the previous ten years of my life combined, all getting me and the other engineers up to speed on this new project. Oh, and it’s in Java, a language I’ve never programmed in. So I’ve been reading up on that as well. Eventually the PowerPoint to coding ratio in my job will settle back down to sane levels, but it’s still pointed the wrong way.

2) I really want to keep liking Eureka. But the writers are making it extremely hard this season. The technobabble is becoming less tech and more babble, and they keep shoehorning every story into the exact same framework. Here’s the random inhabitant of the town who does something normal that you’d expect any small town to have (like a dry cleaner or a church organist). Something weird is happening in the town. Oh wow it turns out that this new character we were just introduced happens to be a PhD in the random branch of science that relates to the weirdness. Nobody can figure out what to do until the sheriff makes some observation that none of the room full of very smart people could realize. Then everyone rushes off and makes some flashy solution to the problem that ends up wrapping up very nicely and quickly just in time for the end of the episode. Oh, and about two minutes of the ongoing storyline stuck near the end.

3) And that reminds me. Shows like Eureka are filmed in HD. I mean, they’re aired with the black bars around them, but my stupid cable company (Comcast) has been stuck in 2003 and still only offers 6 HD channels total, 4 of which I could get by sticking up an antenna. They say it’s because of a limitation of the wiring in my area but GET ON IT. This is similar to the complaint I have about the DSL in my area, I still only qualify for the lowest possible speed because of my distance from the substation. I live in the heart of the silicon valley, stuff like this shouldn’t be an issue, we should be on the forefront of home entertainment bandwidth things, not living 10 years in the past.

4) The new season of Avatar evidently started and I forgot to set my DVR so I’m going to have to brave the interwebs for the first episode. Also, yay Heroes tonight! And I’m also going to try watching Journeyman. I’m a sucker for anything that resembles Quantum Leap.

5) The FFXI/WoW pendulum has swung back the other way, I’ve been getting back into FFXI. The hype for the new expansion (due in two months) is starting up, and it looks exciting (and I get to buy at least two copies of it, one for PC, one for XBOX360 and possibly a third for the other account). I bet a lot of it is disappointing because they’re still limited by the stupid PS2. Also, I just get my Tier 4 head from the prince in WoW (which just about finishes my tanking set).

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Dragon*con stuffs

So I suppose I should make a post about that whole five days I was in Georgia or something.

After a bit of confusions with my housemate, I got to the airport on Thursday without too much fuss. On the flight there, the Delta in-flight entertainment things in the seatbacks weren’t working, so no trivia or DirectTV for me. I made do with my laptop, game boy, even a (*gasp*) book. I landed just about as the other ShirtNinjas were eating a seafood dinner, and my dinner that evening would technically be the stupid little “crackers and spread” thing they gave me on the plane.

In the airport, it was amazingly evident there was a convention in town. You could pick out who was going from the crowd very easily (especially if they were already wearing their badges… perplexing). The first night was basically meeting up with Ardneth, getting my room key, and a bit of hanging out / scoping out possible hang out spots for the rest of the convention.

The rest of the convention followed a very predictable pattern, though we didn’t spend as much time sitting in the food court chatting as the last time I was there. I saw a few panels: the Venture Bros. panel was hilarious (Doc Hammer made everyone ask their questions in alphabetical order). Michael Winslow had a panel/presentation that seemed to be about 50% prepared and 50% improvised, and very impressive. The Mythbusters build team was suitably entertaining. The Brent Spiner/Robert Picardo/John DeLancie panel on the last day turned into a John DeLancie panel when the other two couldn’t show, but was still entertaining. I didn’t get a chance to see Peter David, but I’d seen him at Wondercon recently so it was no big loss.

Other highlights of the con were running into a sign on the sidewalk, buying PS238 from Aaron Williams and getting them signed. Ditto for Exploitation Now / Errant Story and Poe. The Steve Jackson Games (and other folks) booth where they’d call out “Exact Change!” in a triumphant voice every time someone paid with such. In a convention full of witty T-shirts, getting comments on the ones I wore (which I never saw anyone else wearing the ones I did. Luckily I brought more than I needed, or else I would have ended up wearing one that I saw a whole lot.) Seeing for the first time in probably 15 years. Meeting a few of the ShirtNinjas I hadn’t met yet (, , and others).

I would have liked to have taken pictures, but as my mobile post before said, the battery in my old Canon Elph no longer holds a charge. I think I’ve found one that’s suitable, I just have to figure if it’s worth it to spend the money on something I’d rarely use. I have the camera in my phone if I ever want to take a picture of something random that I run across, even if the quality is crappy.

I need to make a mental note that the flight I chose to go back home on was way too late, I was bored in the airport for too long, and that was even after taking my time on Monday. At least the flight back I got to play with the in-flight system (and lucky me once again I got one of the few empty middle seats on the plane next to me).

My internal clock is still all messed up. Even though I’m falling asleep at my usual west coast time, I’m waking up at the east coast time I was used to over the weekend. This lack of sleep is making me groggy and I’m getting headaches. I almost even fell asleep at work yesterday. I hope it all works out soon.