Thank god for off-shoring. Well, sorta. Nobody in the U.S. would bother with my shell problem. After a few hours, someone in India picked it up and randomly decided to fix it. Unfortunately, it still takes a day before it propagates to all the machines out there.

Now, if I could just get them to unclog our print queue... :-)


Stolen from :

We think we know each other through our blogs, when really there's little that we know about each other sometimes. I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know about you.

My shell -- the program which allows me to enter commands on the Unix systems here -- was set to /bin/tcsh when they converted us to the Cadence network. tcsh is a nice program, a vast improvement on csh. Unfortunately, it doesn't exist or is located elsewhere on most of the Cadence systems. Attempting to log in produces a "No shell!" message and (as a security precaution) I am automatically logged out.

I've filed a helpdesk ticket to have them change /bin/tcsh in my account to /bin/csh. I just got the estimated completion date: July 5th. Yes, five days to delete a single 't'.

Who knows how long this would have taken had I asked them to insert a character or, worse, a capital letter.

Parents came and went. Spent a lot of time working in the garden, which was good. Enjoyed their visit greatly. Introduced them to Loafers, which they loved. My mom took two loaves of the blueberry pineapple with her today.

Next weekend is Pip & Dan and company (Pip = Tamara's sister), and I think Anthony (= Tamara's brother). Then up to Michigan the following weekend, a weekend off, and then a wedding.

In the meantime, everything at work is borked. IT decided to do the transition over to Cadence's network a day early, prompting the NeoCell team to build their hotfix release early, which means that my fixes didn't get picked up and various people are going to be extremely angry. Gerf. [*]

In other news, my transfer to the CAT group is held up in politics. My fate will be decided in a battle of two VPs. Surprise, surprise.

[*] Wonderful word I learned from expressing a vulgar form of disdain in a polite manner (think "sh*t"). I fully intend to incorporate this into my everyday vocabulary.

Initial impressions of Gmail

And thanks to for the invite. :-)

Wow. It's fast. I'm used to web mail being quite sluggish -- click, wait. read, click, wait. It's somehow faster than both webmail and IMAP at work. This probably says more about our mail server than Gmail...

I like the conversation feature, but I'm waiting to bestow praise on it until I see how well it handles a large number of messages in between. Mozilla can also do a conversational (threaded) view, but it's annoying to do that to your inbox (with all the non-threaded messages). Also, I've only used it to email other Gmail users so far.

1 GB is certainly a lot of space, but it's not "endless." My mail spool easily goes over that when I'm collaborating on a paper -- sending bloated Word documents back and forth... ugh. Maybe Google will fix this by writing a Word replacement? :-)

Unless Google has patents for this stuff in the pipe -- which I wouldn't be surprised -- I expect Thunderbird and other mail programs to adopt some of these features.

Gmail is not quite a Notes or Outlook replacement, though. As much as I hated Notes, it had some nice features (sending calendar invites, etc.).

Hrm. Getting up early is overrated. Fortunately, the Brits have been up for 4+ hours already, so I can view their news sites.

I didn't feel so great last night, so I took a nap -- from 9:00 to 4:00. Oops.

Passport lost. Much overturning of items in both home and work offices. Much fretting. Much looking up on State Department web sites about how much and how long it would take to replace.

Passport found. It was in a laptop bag I never use anymore.

Ooh, another graduation to celebrate. Go congratulate ('s sister) on her graduation!

Talked with Iain yesterday, the guy in charge of the group (CAT) I want to transfer to. This might actually happen... ah, so good!

Everyone! Go congratulate on her graduation today!

Insomnia. Check.

I don't know if it's this whole work situation or what. My mind just won't stop tonight. Down in the family room now, typing this, then a few rounds of Text Twist. Hopefully that'll solve it.

Apparently, John Kerry likes to ride his bike in my neighborhood. A bit surprising, since Teresa Heinz Kerry's house is over in Fox Chapel, about 15 miles away.

I imagine that, if he is elected, we may have road closures at random times.

In addition to Washington being served ice cream in 1789, Walter Hunt selling the rights for the safety pin for $400 in 1825, and Charles Osborne starting an 11 month bout of hiccups in 1922, MyWay's This Day In History featurette also has the following amusing item:

1920   The U.S. Post Office Department ruled that children may not be sent by parcel post.

I finished the first stage of wiring in my house (involving all the rooms which had computers). My house is now fully networked in wired and wireless fashion. I also attached a Prismiq box to the TV. It's an interesting toy for playing videos, music, photos, getting the latest in select news, etc., but has some quirks.

Work is... not going well. It sounds like I'm not going to be able to transfer to the core architecture and technology (CAT) group; instead, I'm in charge of a project with no resources and impossible and inflexible deadlines, and will be the sister project of someone who loves bureaucracy and red tape. Ugh. I've expressed my serious concerns about this, to no avail. I've been given until Wednesday to accept or decline this project, with the latter likely meaning declining continued employment at Cadence.

In the meantime, I'll be calling the folks at CAT (in San Jose) to see where things stand, and seeing if Network Appliance down the street has anything interesting. At any rate, I'm not pleased with the way Cadence is treating us.

Relaxing weekend, though. I've been watching the squirrels and birds come by. Yesterday, I went to a coworker's house for a graduation party (his daughter graduated from high school). Spring is nice in Pennsylvania.

Happiness is having animal crackers.

Hm. My username appears to trigger a bug in that stalker meme (which also generates horrendous HTML):

dacut's LJ stalker is !

is stalking you because another friend of yours told them you liked them. They are also deluded!

Logged ~800 miles over the holiday weekend. Tam and I went down to Roanoke (actually, Radford) Va. for Tam's cousin's wedding. It's pretty there, nice, but definitely the South. Not the Deep South, mind, but I was y'all'ed more times than I can remember.

The WVa/Va line on I-77 is inside a tunnel. They do have a small, almost unnoticeable marker in the tunnel (presumably to prevent accidents from people trying to read a large "Welcome to [W]Va!" sign). I thought that was rather curious. (It's our own redneck version of the Chunnel!)

As backwards as WVa is, at least their turnpike system is on EZPass. Ohio chose a completely incompatible system (ReadyToll), usable only on the Ohio Turnpike. Sheesh.

In other news, Cadence has decided to reneg on its agreements to the former Neolinear employees with regard to our stock options. We were supposed to receive a payment for our stock options on Friday's paycheck. For most people, this is $1000-$2000 (before taxes).

Nobody received this payment.

Queries to the Mergers & Acquisitions people were forwarded to someone in Legal, who basically said too bad, we'll pay them when we feel like paying them (verbatim: "the payment schedule for all former Neolinear optionees is in the process of being completed and signed off by the various departments involved"). It sounds like we will have to sue to get these payments.

Heh... I'm bad, sometimes.

Kevin,

I am happy to report that your father is alive and well.  In fact, he is located
in Marin County, California (US), where he is creating bad prequels to the
original Star Wars trilogy.

Sorry, can't help your sister.  Try the U.S. Department of State.

Regards,
Rocky.

kevin_lucas1@jumpy.it wrote:

> Dear,
>
> I have a proposal to make, that might be of interest to you. I am in possession
> of a large sum of money in(US$38,000,000.00) Thirty Eight Million USDollars).
>
>
> The money was inherited from my late father Chief George LUCAS who was the
> Chairman of the Sierra Leone Gold Mining Corporation during the Sierra Leonian
> War when Major Johnny Paul Koromah was the country's president.
>
> The money is of no criminal origin as it was largely realized from black
> market sale of alluvial gold dust during the war.The money has been lodged
> with a BANK here in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). I now want to
> move this money abroad and invest it in profitable ventures, as the time
> is now ripe for such move.
> WHAT I ASK YOU TO DO:
>
> 1.Firstly to assist me to transfer this money into your account to any stable
> country abroad.
>
> 2. To assist me invest the money in profitable ventures in your country
> or any other suitable country where you have good connections.
> 3. To help re-locate me and my small sister to the suggested country.
> 4. To manage the money in a profitable manner preferably a joint venture
> deal with your company.
>
> For your assistance you will get 20% of the total amount.Upon your request,I
> will give you further details of the plans and tell you more about my self
> but you must treat as highly confidential for my security.
>
> Sincere regards,
>
> KEVIN LUCAS.

Ho boy. Remember the quality training I had a couple days ago?

Well, I brought some of my concerns to the instructor (specifically, how our goals encourage us to ship whatever we have by a certain date rather than shipping quality software). At the time, he admitted that this was a problem they are trying to address throughout my division but it would require a change in culture, so don't expect anything soon.

Apparently, he didn't just let this lie. He passed these concerns on to higher-ups; since he's a VP, this allegedly made its way up to an EVP's and/or CTO's offices, which is now asking for answers from the CIC general manager and the old Neolinear CEO (who's now a Cadence VP).

Heh. Lovely hornet's nest I've stirred. Actually, I'm enjoying it; finally, someone is listening.

(Acronyms: VP = vice president; EVP = executive vice president; CTO = chief technical officer; CIC = custom integrated circuits, my division within Cadence; CEO = chief executive officer)

Sign spotted on a local Mexican restaurant (Mad Mex for any Pgh folk):

"Teqla maks u a grat spelr."

I now have a certificate -- printed on plain 8.5"x11" paper -- which states: "This certifies that David Cuthbert has successfully completed Quality Awareness at Cadence on Tuesday, May 25, 2004."

This basically meant that I listened to three hours worth of Powerpoint slides motivating the need to write quality software. No specifics, mind you -- just that Quality is Good.

How incredibly... cheesy. At least they used the color laser to print the certificate.


I'm presenting an award at a local high school this evening (for Caltech). I actually enjoy doing this particular school (Mt. Lebanon HS). The administrators there invest a lot of effort getting their kids into top-notch schools, the guidance counselors not only know them by name but their individual strengths and weaknesses, etc. By comparison, I loathe having to do the Pittsburgh schools; it's clear that they don't have a clue as to who I am, what Caltech is, or even who their own students are.

As you can probably guess, the former is a rich suburban district, whereas the latter is in the city proper. Ironically, the pay for administrators tends to be better in the city (though the teachers are not as well paid; correlation?). The difference in attitudes is drastic.

As I mentioned to ...

Cool conversation-piece computer case, or freaky and perverted obsession? You decide!

Hm, productive-ish weekend.

I finally got the conduit in place and started pulling CAT-5 cables so that the house will be properly wired for networking (instead of running ethernet underneath doorjams and the like). I also put up the rack in the basement; this is going to serve as my media hub. Drilling into cinder block is not fun, even with the proper tools.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'm happy with the way the basement looks; the cables are too droopy. I think I'm going to need to get some cable trays (which are not cheap... ).

Also got a bird feeder and rigged up a system that will -- hopefully -- keep the squirrels at bay. I have been feeding them corn, though, much to Tamara's shagrin.

Discovered that my attic ventilation fan had completely died; it was about 110° up there, which explains why the upstairs rooms were so much warmer. I stuck a spare (industrial strength!) fan up there for now, which seems to have helped immensely.

I'm about to give up on using Linux as a desktop. X Windows is too sluggish and unreliable. The same programs (Firefox, Thunderbird) are much zippier on Windows and don't crash my desktop. I'll need to get an X emulator in place to let me run Cadence, etc., though. (And, yeah, I've tried cygwin's X server... didn't like it.)