Oh, hey. I have Friday off. I completely forgot about that.

So tomorrow's my Friday. Cool.

Bleh. Now I remember why I don't log onto #avalon anymore.

@#)$(*@#$

Just did my taxes, which involved a major reorganisation of my desk and writing a check for almost $2,000 to the City of Arm Pit... er, Pittsburgh.

And now I can't find my securid token, so I can't log in to work.

Grr.

Back alley geekdom

This site just has danger written all over it. Very seedy manufacturing operation in China.

And, yet, I can't stop browsing through it.

In the same vein as polarbee...
http://www.satirewire.com/charts/butteredwhale.shtml

What the... ?

I swear it was in the 50's when I left this morning.

Now it's below freezing, and the snow is sticking to the ground. And it's supposed to get down to 14 tonight.

Why do I have this sudden urge to learn Latin?

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We have all day meetings on April 30 and May 1 at work.

They're bringing in someone to train us.

The topic is how to have effective meetings.

I only wish I were kidding.

Straw poll time.

The servers at work are pretty much dead and/or dying. I haven't been able to use my Unix box for more than an hour so far (I got in at 9 am, FWIW).

Should I go home and/or do other random fun-ish things, or should I be a good corporate drone and stare at my screen?

Released Melbourne 0.1 last night. That was good. They're building NeoCell 3.1 with it now.

Melbourne would rock your world, if only it weren't something as unsexy as an API for annotating constraints onto an analog circuit. ;-)

But it's released, and the NeoCell team can go find something else to bitch about now.

Today will be a flick day at work. Meaning I will shoot a few hoops, browse the web, perhaps do some wedding planning, and toy with a new project I have some interest in.

I am *this* close to going postal on the next person who walks into my office with a stupid request.

Another DDJ entry...

Ok, this one disturbed me. From Ed Nisley's Embedded Corner:

You wake in a cold, shaking sweat at a dark, early hour. Today is the final exam of a course that's required for graduation. You remember registering for the class and buying the books, but somehow you never attended the lectures or did the assignments. Suddenly, it's the end of the year and you won't graduate because you screwed up.

The fact that you've been out of school for, oh, a quarter-century or so has no effect on the intensity of The Dream. It's the same heart-stopping jolt every time.

Sound familiar? Every techie I've asked has experienced some version of The Dream. It rarely involves a major course, but the class is always required and inexplicably overlooked. Each person I asked seems relieved to discover that someone else has The Dream, too.

Liberal arts majors have nightmares, but generally not The Dream. There's something different about an engineering eduation or, perhaps, about the people who become engineers. They know, deep down inside, with absolute certainty, that failure is their fault, that the universe isn't forgiving, that it's their responsibility to Get Things Right.

Oof. I couldn't believe it when I read this. It feels like there's someone in my head, watching my thoughts-- I have that exact dream about 3-4 times per month. I'm never quite sure what course it is, but it's usually a Hum or some seminar course or E 10 (technical speaking), which I placed out of. It's never, oh, EE 14, EE 52, Ph 2, AMa 95, etc... those required, slap-you-upside-the-head, do-all-the-homework-and-study-your-butt-off-and-only-get-a-C courses.

Hm.

Ah, Mike Swaine

I always enjoy reading his columns; this month's "Swaine's Flames" hits the mark perfectly:

I met a girl who sang the blues
and I asked her for some HP news,
but she just smiled and gently coughed.

I went down to the gadget store
where I'd bought oscilloscopes before,
but the man there said they'd spun that business off.

And in the boardroom the children screamed,
directors cried, and Carly schemed,
but not a word would they say--
about the old HP Way.

And the two men I admired most,
their fabled legacy is toast,
their business on a downhill coast,
the day that HP died.