Traveling In Seattle Part II

I left off my last post hoping for a good breakfast to start off the day. Then the time I marked on the door hanger breakfast order sheet came around, 5am. No Breakfast. A happy camper, I am not. Why? The kitchen does not open till 6am. A fact not noted anywhere on the order card, but buried deep in the hotel information manual. Why even bother putting an Other delivery option if the only times breakfast is available are the times slots listed? Don't get my hopes up for some eggs and bacon and dash them into the evil morning light.

So no breakfast for me. Though the hospital did have made-to-order sushi in the cafeteria for lunch. Custom, hand made as you order it, fresh sushi. Add that sushi with a plate of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and peas and you have yourself a nice modified version of surf and turf. But going from 6pm the day before to 1pm today without food made me not a graceful person in the morning. But I left that at the door when I got to the hospital and was all smiles and good times.

My shift was fun, but long. The ER is an interesting place to hang out in. At the end of the day, my feet hurt, I had some good food recommendations from the staff, and my hands were sanitized many times over.

The topper of the day was dinner, the icon. Such. a. good. meal. I had the salmon main dish and chicken fried calamari as an appetizer. When the wife comes up this weekend, I am taking her there. I will save some space for the ice cream sundae in a cookie bowl and I know my wife will be excited about the sweet corn and cilantro mashed potatoes. I didn't have em, but damn they sound good. I'll have to make some reservations for Saturday.

For now, bed time. Another early day, and probably another day of ER reg fun.

Traveling In Seattle Part 1

On my trip to Seattle, nothing really happened of note. It was a good flight, and the only bad thing was I failed to check the price for a bag of gummie bears before buying them. These are some expensive gummies. Worth the price? Probably not, but still tasty.

Now the hotel is another story. In general, I am not a fan of this place. There is a disconnection between the high class nature of the staff on the ground floor from the quality of the rooms.

Since I need to connect to work to check my email and also to talk to the wife, good, reliable Internet is a must. This place fails in that regard. It's slow slow slow. It says it's "High Speed," but I am curious if they think 25 mph is also "High Speed." That's strike one.

Strike two is the shower. I am not a morning person, so the 12 hour shifts are going to be hard for me. A hot shower does loads to get me started for the day. Here's where they fail again. Like their flexibility in the definition of "High Speed," they also have flexibility in the definition of "Hot Water." When cranked all the way to as hot as you can go, the shower only a temperature achieved by leaving a bowl of water out in the sun on a hot day. Far far from the hot, relaxing goodness I was expecting.

I am hoping the breakfast makes up for it. We shall find out soon.

Here's hoping for faster Internet and hotter showers when I get back.

Work and the Art of Uncertainty

Sitting here at work pounding away on reports and code, I am questioning my decision to come back. No, that's not the right wording. In one way I am thankful to be back as the job is a stable one and with the wife being out of work for the foreseeable future, we need the extra cash. In a financial sense, it was a good move.

On the angle of being interested/motivated in my work, that is where the problem lies. Every day is a struggle to get the work done. Gone is the flare and interest I had in computers and coding that I had back in my previous incarnation of employment here. I don't feel a need/urge to excel and better myself. I don't feel that I am in control of my day-to-day tasks. I don't feel that I'm doing that bang up of a job. No surprise if I am slipping, I don't feel a need or desire to work over 40-45 hours a week. The more I work, the more time work is robbing me from my wife and my pets. They are paying me well, but not enough for me to take that time away. Historically I have felt that my pay has been lower than what I was producing, this time around I am adjusting my work to be in-line with that pay expectation. They want more work, then I should get more pay.

Though pay aside, the work is just not interesting. Maybe when we get along on the transition things will pick up, but that is a long time down the road. I don't feel I want to be doing this for a long time. I'm feeling I am not in this for the long haul. So that brings into light my current puzzle I am working out, what do I want to do for the long term. I liked the flexibility and control I had in my previous job, but the pay was not at a level that I could sustain my family. I feel locked and out of choices really. I have to provide and opportunities that provide what we need limit me in what I can do.

More random rants later, meeting time.

Sickness sucks...

It sucks being sick. It's nowhere near fun to have a migraine, fever, huge congestion, and general feelings of crappiness. But what really takes the cake for me, and makes no sense, is that what is most annoying right now is that my eyes hurt. If I move my eyes in any direction, they don't hurt. If I try to move my eyes to look far to the left, right, up, down, any direction, and it hurts like hell. It feels like I pulled my eye muscles somehow. It sucks.

Engineer's Guide to Cats

This is too funny to pass up for all cat lovers out there:

I've got an odd urge

to run down the cube halls of my office shouting the rocky theme while doing the victory pose with my arms raised up in the air.

Oddly enough, thinking of this causes me to grin like a mad man and increases the urge to do it.

Maybe it's just cause it's a slow day and nice outside and I would like to be home with the mutts.

Prices Going Up

Along with gas prices going up, looks like my health care costs are going up again by a loving 17%. Since our health programs don't have a employee/spouse plan, I have to go for the family plan at more than 6 times the cost of the personal plan. Now with the family price increase (I think the employee only price might have actually dropped nope, they did go up but by 8%), I am getting boned even more on that benefit. It's a good plan, but the folks who are just employee and spouse get the short end of the stick. If they did have a employee/spouse program at about 2.5 times the personal plan cost, it could save us almost $2k a year.

At least with rising gas prices, there are things I can do to offset that by driving conservatively or getting a more efficient vehicle if prices get out there. There's balls I can do about this price increase which just bugs me even more.

3 Years Today!

Today marks our 3 year anniversary! While our marriage has been anything from normal from how we met and married to the current health challenges we face today, it's been a fun ride. Here's to many more and good health to follow!

Need to Recharge

The high point of my week so far is that I was able to figure out a somewhat creative way to take a recursive part of a program and make it non recursive netting some nice performance gains. Kinda sad and geeky highlight of the week. I spent a few hours today working it out and am really happy I got it working. My worry is it might get shot down in later reviews of the program. Here's to hoping it gets through.

Since that rather pathetic event was the highlight of my week, you can guess it is not a banner week for me. The thing is though, nothing major has gone wrong this week. There has been a bit of stress from a deadline at work, but nothing unmanageable. I am finding myself being snappy, quick to be annoyed or angry at people, and completely physically and emotionally drained. I need a break, a really really long one. That unfortunately is not coming any time soon. Seattle is coming at the end of the month, but that's still a few weeks away. Plus it will have some long onsite time before I get to break for the weekend.

I've got to do something to get out of this funk.

Keyword Roundup

Looking at my logs, I've got some interesting search terms coming to this blog. Here's a selection some of the more frequent/interesting ones.

1. Spam Burrito


2. buzz lightyear halloween live


3. don't break it down for me (oddly going to my Pizza Tipping post)


4. pizza delivery sucks


5. adopt a husky


6. burrito windows service


7. various searches for pizza tipping amounts


8. paroxetine fucks you up


9. why loveline podcast 10 minutes

April Fool's Day 2008

For a listing of a ton of April Fool's Day jokes in the Internet, check out http://aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com/

Here's some great, geeky examples via Think Geek: http://www.thinkgeek.com/edm/20080401.shtml

Sometimes the Internet Boggles me

I am a big fan of April fools day on the Internet. There are some great gags out there. One that really puzzles me is the idea of rick-rolling someone.

For those not in the know, and I don't blame you if you are not, rick-rolling someone is posting a link that leads to a video of "Never Going to Give You Up" by Rick Astley. The link is posted as being relevant to what ever the page/forum is about. Personally I think it's kinda funny. It's the randomness amuses me. :) It's kind of like yelling "I like puppies" in the middle of a conversation about nuclear physics.

Where it came from and why it's so wide spread is beyond me.

To get rick rolled, go visit YouTube today, April 1st, and watch any of the featured videos.

Find more rick-rolling know-how via Wikipedia.