More for my own reference, but thought I'd share...

Electoral map based on latest poll data
PBS electoral map which lets you play "what-if" games
Job growth vs. time by president

Non-scientific poll

Just trying to get an update on a vital issue in this election year:

For a second, I thought that Keenspot had taken to advertising pr0n in their banners. [I wouldn't advise clicking on that at work, btw.] Ends up that it's not pr0n, but I think it's a tad risque considering that kids might peruse Keenspot (and that appeared on It's Walky!, not something more adult-oriented).

Work update: lots of stuff has happened, partially a result of me getting the conference award and raising my visibility within Cadence. Maybe? I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, to sum up: I had wanted to transfer to another group (CAT) within Cadence after the acquisition because what they do meshes very well with my interests. Problem was that this is outside of the Neolinear CEO-cum-Cadence VP's (Tom's) fiefdom, and he's very leery of losing headcount. (Never mind that I would still be working in the Pittsburgh office, interacting with people from his groups, and essentially enabling free--at least, to him--resources from CAT to work on various integration problems. That would make too much sense, see...)

This was communicated to me (by my acrimonious manager, Rodney; the food chain is Tom > Glen > Rodney > me) as an ultimatum: "You will work on what we tell you to work on, or you can go find another job." Given this limited set of choices, I chose the latter.

Last week, Glen (who happened to be in San Jose at the same time as me) stepped in and started making some waves. He essentially pointed out to Tom that he's going to lose me either way; by allowing me to transfer to CAT, though, I can still do useful stuff for him.

Yesterday, the approval for the transfer was issued. Yay!

So, it looks like I'll be staying with Cadence after all. I'll be working for Iain, who is fairly laid back and will be pleased to have me on his team. He also has a very thick Scottish accent, so teleconferencing will be interesting. :-)

Anyway, today I'm off to Calif. again, but this time to San Diego for a wedding. I'll be back on Monday.

Holy crap.

My paper & presentation won an MVP award for my section at the ICU conference.

I got an iPod mini.

Still kind of surprised about the whole thing...

Is it a bad sign when you've signed so many NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) that you can't remember who you can tell what to and to what it applies?

NDAs are the civilian equivalent of classified information. For the most part, it's all public knowledge; you're just trying to keep others from finding it and tying it all together easily.

Why is the Fry's in Palo Alto look so crappy, both inside and out? It's like the ghetto Fry's. But how the hell can something be ghetto in Palo Alto? East Palo Alto, sure. Oakland, definitely. But Palo Alto? A few blocks from Stanford?

The expressway system here fascinates me. They're like quasi-freeways, usually divided, but with stop lights every few miles or so. I'm undecided on whether they're a good or bad thing -- I don't think I could make such a decision unless I commuted on them daily and/or lived near one.

I especially am intrigued as to how "Montague Expressway" got its name.

Conference started today (well, pre-conference seminars). Very enjoyable, despite having to haul my butt down to Santa Clara from SF at 7am. As usual, it was completely foggy in SF but bright and sunny in Silicon Valley. I'll have to do the same tomorrow, but in normal rush-hour traffic. Oy...

Spoke with someone from IBM's Essex Junction, VT site. Turns out she's actually the moderator for the session my paper is in. And she also oversees their chip design software kits, which we need a few bugs fixed in for our stuff. Heh; and my coworkers told me I'd never get IBM to fix these bugs! But, ah... IBM is a shell of its former self. So sad. Reminder to self: need to drive by the Cottle Rd site (where I interned years ago) so see how they've replaced the IBM logos with Hitachi.

As predicted, US Airways declared bankruptcy today, the second time in as many years. However, despite previous threats, they have agreed to keep flying and honor existing tickets. So I'm not as stranded here as I had thought. Drat-- er, I mean, phew. :-)

Hm... so the conference runs from 8am to 7pm tomorrow; I'm meeting with some folks for an interview/negotiations/dinner at 7:30pm. Ah, it'll be a long day. Better hit the sack.

Just had to remark on some observations at the Pittsburgh airport...

Lots of empty spaces in the AirMall, including (most annoyingly) the space that my bank, National City, used to occupy. Now I must shell out a zillion dollars in surcharges to use the PNC ATM. Grah.

It's almost dead here. There was *zero* line at the security checkpoint, on a Friday evening. While not usual in recent memory, this place used to be constantly packed when I first got to Pittsburgh.

A number of eateries are now sporting "Effective immediately, we will no longer accept US Airways vouchers." Ouch.

So I'm flying out to SFO today, and I'm supposed to return next Thursday. Given that my flights are on US Airways, I may very well be quasi-stranded out there if they file for bankruptcy this weekend and stop flying (as their management has been hinting). Doh!

They're just now saying that the recently revealed National Guard records on Bush might be forgeries.

That was my initial reaction upon seeing the documents (which was disappointing to me from a political standpoint, but I'm playing armchair forensic scientist here, not spin doctor). While they look fine for, say, anything produced in the 90's onward, the typesetting is all wrong for something supposedly written in the 70's. The key bit is that it uses a proportional-spaced font. This is impossible to produce on a 70's era typewriter or teletype.

Also, since when does a military squadron have a PO box?

Here are pictures of the document and what I think it should look like:

The joy I share with you today is http://hates-software.com/ .

Also, as a bit of a compromise (inspired, in part, by my manager's apology for his ranting outburst at me last week), I agreed to stay on at Cadence for a few extra weeks to help wrap up a project. In the meantime, however, I am permitted to search for new and better jobs.

I like to think of it as being paid to look for another job.

With thanks to ...

Sometimes, you just gotta wash your car.

Rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

I haven't updated recently because there hasn't been very much to say. Yeah, work still sucks. Whine whine whine. I'm sure you don't want to hear it, as I am sick of hearing myself thinking it. As for your next retort, yes, I am doing something about it, but I must be patient. At this point, I cannot afford to make hasty moves.

I was thinking about lightning today, as we've had a lot of storms recently. I came across the following map from NASA showing the frequency of lightning strikes worldwide. Sharing this because it's a well done map and the page itself is worth a good five-minute read.

Above: Data from space-based optical sensors reveal the uneven distribution of worldwide lightning strikes. Units: flashes/km²/yr. Image credit: NSSTC Lightning Team.

Good luck to all those starting school, either as students or teachers.

This is beyond insane.

Thursday is our normal group meeting, where we'll decide how to proceed on a certain task (I'll call it "Project X"; the technical details are long and mind-numbing, and I'll spare you -- this time).

The Product Engineer (PE) wants to get some customer input on this before we make our decision. So he's having a teleconference with said customer Wednesday night (said customer is in Japan; it'll be their Thursday morning).

The PE wants to get some slides to them before he has this meeting so the customer can mull the idea over. PE sends me e-mail at 6:30 (my time; PE is in Arizona) on Friday to have me send him slides that he can send to the customer. Of course, I've already left for the day and don't see it until Monday.

Monday morning. Fire (well, broken A/C) in the server room, authentication server is out of commission in the morning, taking down all of the workstations in the building. Only people with Cadence-issued laptops -- managers and above -- can check e-mail. In the afternoon, my manager (who was CC'ed on this e-mail) tells me about the need for slides.

Monday afternoon. Slides, random bugs that have suddently become urgent, etc., start sapping my time. PE starts pestering me (by phone, which I refuse to answer, and then by e-mail) about slides (which require me to take a zillion screen captures and edit them to show how I think it should look).

Tuesday morning. Finish slides, send them to PE (and my manager). PE promptly starts ignoring them.

Tuesday afternoon. My manager wants to have a meeting between me, him, and PE to discuss what I've proposed in the slides to make sure we understand the resources required. In addition, he wants to have a meeting before this before we call the PE. Meanwhile, PE continues to ignore slides. Work on critical bugs that I've been putting off for the slides, to the annoyance of the bug people.

For those keeping score:
Meeting: Thurday, decide to commit to project X
Pre-meeting: Wednesday night, get customer feedback for meeting.
Pre-pre-meeting: Wednesday afternoon, decide what we can present to customer.
Pre-pre-pre-meeting: Wednesday morning, decide what we can discuss with PE.

And you wonder why Cadence stock is at $12, off a high of $40?

From an IM chat:

kangadac: I had to pick Tamara up from the UPMC hospital where she was getting some diagnostic tests done.
kangadac: Next door, in the convocation center, a Hilary Duff concert was getting underway.
kangadac: I have never been so freaked by 8 year old girls before.
scaryr: heh heh heh...
kangadac: If I had leaned out my window and yelled "Hilary sucks!", I would not be typing this right now.
kangadac: Instead, my car would be dismantled and what remains of my body would be dragged through the streets of Oakland.

In other news, I have an idea for what could be a really interesting paper, but I would need an AMD Opteron system with at least 8 GB of memory. For the less geeky amongst you, this equates to "really dang expensive." And not bloody likely.

On the Cadence intraweb main site, there's a column named "Executive Corner" with supposedly witty articles from Cadence execs, along with a picture that changes every time you load the page. It's about the most dominant thing on the page, which kind of affirms the executive personality cult that pervades this company.

I've decided that you, my dear readers, have been deprived of a great opportunity to join this cult. Therefore, I present to you:

The Cadence Executive Personality Cult!

Paper status: done and submitted.

Woohoo!

Um, hm. Now I just need to do all the stuff I originally had a week to do before tomorrow's group meeting. Doh!

IT 01506958 Ticket Submitted re: Problem FAC Plumbing

Hrm. I only wish we were kidding about this.

Paper at four pages, and I'm not even a third done. Uh oh. I may have to use my superpowers to shrink some figures to subatomic sizes.

Stupid Mathematica Tricks

Finally. What I've been struggling with for weeks. Now I just have to finish the paper... due Thursday.



Ever wanted a USB drive that floats in your bathtub?

My cubicle is now devoid of almost all personal effects and property (mostly books in the latter regard).

No, I haven't quit Cadence yet. However, cleaning out my desk and cube was strangely cathartic. It's like the breaking of a bond, a personal attachment, to something that has been dragging me down for the last three months. It also sends a message: I'm annoyed as hell and I won't take it anymore.

Yes, though, I have made up my mind to leave Cadence on the first seaworthy ship out of here. I have one very interesting lead, TJWCBDY (The Job Which Cannot Be Discussed Yet -- I've verbally agreed to keep this confidential for now, and NDAs will be signed soon), which will hopefully pan out.

The other nice thing about having an empty cube is that Cadence has a policy where, if you resign your job to work for a competitor, your badge is taken and you are escorted from the building *immediately*. Security will box up your personal effects and allow you to pick them up at a later date. Of course, I don't know how this applies to the former Neolinear office -- we don't have badges or security (yet). But I'm not taking any chances.

I considered making this friends-only, but upon reflection... you know, it really doesn't matter. Anyone with half a brain here knows I'm not happy. If the sterile cube doesn't reinforce this message, nothing will.

Sometimes 'E' does mean "Empty"

Just got back from a visit to my extended family's cabins up in Three Rivers, MI (just south of Kalamazoo for the geomichigraphically inclined). Got to see my cousin Jane, in town from Monterey, CA, right now; she says she'll return to Chicago in a year -- heh, we'll see if that actually happens.

My body is still recovering from the beating administered by my uncle Jim. I did a double session of tubing while he was driving the boat, see. He has a favorite spot on the lake which we've named Dead Man's Curve; sure enough, I fell off once on that. He also has a number of tricks he pulls; I was on the receiving end of both "The Slack" and "The Drunken Uncle." Much fun, much mosquito bites, much food, much muscle soreness, and again much fun.

On the way back, though, I ran into some trouble. My car (2000 Honda CR-V) has a 15.3 gallon tank and gets an EPA rated highway mileage of 25 mpg; I regularly see 27 mpg on long trips. For those keeping score, this is a range of 380-415 miles; mentally, I make this 350 to give myself a nice margin of error. I always set my trip odometer to zero after topping off my tank so I know where I'm at.

Normally (city driving), my "low fuel" idiot light starts flickering around 290 miles and stays solid around 310. Today, it came on at 305, right as I crossed from Ohio into Pennsylvania, but it stayed solid. Hmm, that's unusual, I thought. I was going to get gas after I exited the turnpike in ~30 miles, but figured I should stop at the next service plaza just to be safe.

I never made it.

A couple minutes after it came on, my car started sputtering while going up a hill. Uhoh. I pulled off to the side, collected my thoughts, and decided (on my very loving and patient wife's suggestion) to go as slowly as possible in the highest gear. This worked for a few more minutes. Then, on the last hill about a mile from the service plaza, it died. (45 minutes, five road flares, and a call to the Turnpike folks + AAA later, I was back on my way, thankfully.)

It lasted only 324 miles and got an astonisingly low 21 mpg. Grrrr. Obviously, time for a serious tune-up.

I need to add that, upon the engine dying and while waiting for the AAA truck to come, Tamara calmly pulled out a book and assured me that everything would be ok. Ah, I love my wife.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned this scheme (which makes me livid): Bush campaign asks Southern Baptists to provide church rosters.