Me: "How big is the turkey?"
Dad: "22 pounds?"
Me: "22 pounds?!"
Dad: "I got the smallest one they had!"
Me: "Where'd you go? The mutant turkey store?"
Staci: "It's a teenage mutant ninja turkey!"
-----------------------
Mom: "Will you let the dog out?"
Me: "No, she doesn't want to go outside."
Mom: "She looks like she does."
Me: "It's 5 degrees outside. She only thinks she wants to go out."
-----------------------
During thanksgiving dinner:
Kelly: "You spit all the time."
Bryan: "I only spit if I'm outside."
Kelly: "You make that same snotty noise, though."
Bryan: "I don't spit, I just swallow."
(collective moan)
Dad: "Okay, we're not talking about this!"
-----------------------
Weston (1.5 years old) was covered in blue frosting from Mom's birthday cake:
"It's like he ate a Smurf!"
---------------------
Me: "What sound does a doggy make?"
Weston: "Meow"
----------------------
Me: "Do you think Kelly and Bryan will name their other children after towns in Southeast Idaho?"
Staci: "You mean like Preston?"
Me: "How about Malad?"
Staci: "Or Virginia if it's a girl."
Me: "Portage!"
----------------------
Staci: "I've never heard this song before."
Me: "It's got Kanye in it."
(pause)
Staci: "I was just trying to imagine a conversation between Jared Leto and Kanye."
Me: "I'll bet they didn't say much."
Staci imitating Kayne: "George Bush hates me."
2010-11-24
2010-11-23
Orrin Hatch is an idiot.
Orrin Hatch, Senator of Utah, is an idiot.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101118/10291211924/the-19-senators-who-voted-to-censor-the-internet.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101118/10291211924/the-19-senators-who-voted-to-censor-the-internet.shtml
2010-11-21
Button, Button, Who's Got the Button
Sometimes my job is absurd. I end up doing things that I shouldn't be doing. Take, for example, the process of picking out computers. As the software guy, I figure that my job is to tell the system engineers how fast a computer I need. It's their job to figure out how to mount in the rack, what kind of cables they need to plug it in, if it needs a UPS, and everything else. As far as I'm concerned, the computer could be banana shaped and use a platoon of gerbils for power. That's not good enough for the engineers, though. They seem to want my opinion on everything. Plugs in the front or in the back? How many connectors? Which company should we buy it from?
I DON'T CARE.
So, for 6 months, I wrote e-mails to that effect every time they asked me. I would repeat my performance specs and say, "that's all that matters to me." Well, six months later, and they still haven't picked the computer they're going to buy. Maddening, I tell you. In the end, I ended up calling a vendor I liked, asked for a demo machine, and after I saw what the manufacturer could do, I told the engineers exactly what I wanted.
What's even more maddening is that sometimes they don't ask for my input at all. The latest issue was the joystick. Our customers use a joystick to send commands to the software that I write. It's a pretty important piece of the system. A few months ago, I got an e-mail that they had picked the joystick. "Great!" I thought. Then I opened the pdf. It look like something you'd see at an arcade, and it only had 2 buttons.
We'd had the button discussion before. I told them we needed at least 8 buttons, and 10 or 12 would be better. So I call up Mr. Engineer:
"Why does this joystick only have two buttons?"
"Because that's as many as the vendor can put on it in our schedule."
"They don't make any other joysticks with more buttons?"
"They might, but they can get this one to us fast."
"But, we talked about this, we need 8 buttons!"
"Sometimes we have to make compromises."
"I AM compromising, I wanted 12 buttons. 8 buttons in the bare minimum."
"Okay, let me talk to them."
He calls back a few days later:
"I can get you four buttons easy."
"But I need eight."
"How about six? They said that with a little work they can do six."
"Then why didn't you just say six to begin with? Wait ... nevermind... I need EIGHT."
"The company is in Britain. They're worried about export problems if they make a new design for us. They said they can do six."
"Sounds like we need to find another vendor to me..."
And on and on. So, what did end up doing? I searched the web for another vendor. Turns out there's another one, NOT ACROSS THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, that was really eager for our business. They even flew out and had a whole bunch of demo units for us to look at. Sigh. Now I'm developing a rep for being a PITA. All in a days work.
I DON'T CARE.
So, for 6 months, I wrote e-mails to that effect every time they asked me. I would repeat my performance specs and say, "that's all that matters to me." Well, six months later, and they still haven't picked the computer they're going to buy. Maddening, I tell you. In the end, I ended up calling a vendor I liked, asked for a demo machine, and after I saw what the manufacturer could do, I told the engineers exactly what I wanted.
What's even more maddening is that sometimes they don't ask for my input at all. The latest issue was the joystick. Our customers use a joystick to send commands to the software that I write. It's a pretty important piece of the system. A few months ago, I got an e-mail that they had picked the joystick. "Great!" I thought. Then I opened the pdf. It look like something you'd see at an arcade, and it only had 2 buttons.
We'd had the button discussion before. I told them we needed at least 8 buttons, and 10 or 12 would be better. So I call up Mr. Engineer:
"Why does this joystick only have two buttons?"
"Because that's as many as the vendor can put on it in our schedule."
"They don't make any other joysticks with more buttons?"
"They might, but they can get this one to us fast."
"But, we talked about this, we need 8 buttons!"
"Sometimes we have to make compromises."
"I AM compromising, I wanted 12 buttons. 8 buttons in the bare minimum."
"Okay, let me talk to them."
He calls back a few days later:
"I can get you four buttons easy."
"But I need eight."
"How about six? They said that with a little work they can do six."
"Then why didn't you just say six to begin with? Wait ... nevermind... I need EIGHT."
"The company is in Britain. They're worried about export problems if they make a new design for us. They said they can do six."
"Sounds like we need to find another vendor to me..."
And on and on. So, what did end up doing? I searched the web for another vendor. Turns out there's another one, NOT ACROSS THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, that was really eager for our business. They even flew out and had a whole bunch of demo units for us to look at. Sigh. Now I'm developing a rep for being a PITA. All in a days work.
2010-10-11
Combat Landing
Like most people, I complain about my job. I complain about our customers, management, IT (especially IT), the general ratio of work to pay, and pretty much everything else that come to mind.
In reality though, my job is pretty damn cool. One of the cool things about it is that I get to work in, on, or near various airplanes from time to time. Sometimes, I even get to fly in them as we test our software, and that's always an adventure.
As routine as air travel has become, flying on these airplanes for work reminds me of how truly remarkable it is every time one one of these metal beasts lunges into the air at hundreds of miles an hour. On these work flights, my job is usually to sit and observe and not touch anything. I do get to wear a cool headset, though. One that blocks out the roar of the propellors but lets you listen in on the chatter between the pilots and the tower and crew on the plane. It sounds kind of like the trucker talk you'd hear on the Dukes of Hazzard, just a lot more sophisticated -- and, as a side note, they really do say, "Roger" and "Copy" quite a bit.
On this last flight, they had installed satellite internet on the plane and were testing it out. For some reason, they thought it was important to see how far they could bank the plane before they would lose the connection. I lost my connection with reality at about 50 degrees of bank. It didn't help when they swung it around to bank at 50 degrees the other way. The only thing keeping me from throwing up was my intense fear of throwing up.
The fear intensified when I heard the pilots talking about doing a "combat landing." In a typical landing, the plane slowly decends and makes a couple of nice gradual turns to line up with the runway. In a combat landing (well, this one at least) the plane flies over the tip of the runway at a ninety degree angle to the way it should land. To the untrained eye, this might look like the plane is trying to land on some random airport building. But, as the plane crosses the tip of the runway, they immediately throw it into a steep bank and make a tight 270 degree turn. At the end of the turn, the plane levels out, and it should be going a lot slower and be lined right up with with runway for a landing. Of course, I didn't know any of this before they did it. At the time, all I was aware of was being really low to the ground and the wing tip pointed straight down.
I survived though, breakfast and honor still intact. Commercial air travel doesn't seem all the bad, now that I think about it.
In reality though, my job is pretty damn cool. One of the cool things about it is that I get to work in, on, or near various airplanes from time to time. Sometimes, I even get to fly in them as we test our software, and that's always an adventure.
As routine as air travel has become, flying on these airplanes for work reminds me of how truly remarkable it is every time one one of these metal beasts lunges into the air at hundreds of miles an hour. On these work flights, my job is usually to sit and observe and not touch anything. I do get to wear a cool headset, though. One that blocks out the roar of the propellors but lets you listen in on the chatter between the pilots and the tower and crew on the plane. It sounds kind of like the trucker talk you'd hear on the Dukes of Hazzard, just a lot more sophisticated -- and, as a side note, they really do say, "Roger" and "Copy" quite a bit.
On this last flight, they had installed satellite internet on the plane and were testing it out. For some reason, they thought it was important to see how far they could bank the plane before they would lose the connection. I lost my connection with reality at about 50 degrees of bank. It didn't help when they swung it around to bank at 50 degrees the other way. The only thing keeping me from throwing up was my intense fear of throwing up.
The fear intensified when I heard the pilots talking about doing a "combat landing." In a typical landing, the plane slowly decends and makes a couple of nice gradual turns to line up with the runway. In a combat landing (well, this one at least) the plane flies over the tip of the runway at a ninety degree angle to the way it should land. To the untrained eye, this might look like the plane is trying to land on some random airport building. But, as the plane crosses the tip of the runway, they immediately throw it into a steep bank and make a tight 270 degree turn. At the end of the turn, the plane levels out, and it should be going a lot slower and be lined right up with with runway for a landing. Of course, I didn't know any of this before they did it. At the time, all I was aware of was being really low to the ground and the wing tip pointed straight down.
I survived though, breakfast and honor still intact. Commercial air travel doesn't seem all the bad, now that I think about it.
2010-07-31
Unmitigated Disaster...
This week has been just ridiculous. Simply absurd.
Last Sunday afternoon I left for Roswell, NM, yet again, because my customer "didn't have time" to install the latest version of our software. I was there for less than 24 hours. I landed at 8:00 pm Sunday and left on the last flight out at 3:45 pm Monday. I sat down at their computer at 7:00 am Monday, installed the latest version, and it worked without a hitch. I was so mad about being there that I couldn't even be excited that it worked. After all, I had spent days and days in our testing lab making sure it worked, but they couldn't even bother to install it to test it themselves.
When I got back, I had three days to write some code for a HD video capture card (it was supposed to be more, but I wasted all that time getting ready for and traveling to Roswell). In this case, the capture card came with a software development kit (SDK) from the manufacturer that we had to pay 5000 bucks to use. For 5000 bucks, I figured that it would probably be the easiest thing I'd ever done. Well, the SDK consisted of about 40 pages of documentation and about a dozen sample applications -- none of which came close to doing the very simple thing I needed. On top of that, the sample applications very devoid of any useful comments. The comments that were included said things like, "//bill was too lazy to fix this, so I'm going to hack around it too", and my personal favorite, "//NOTE: convert ignored for now do [sic] to excessive laziness."
It took 3 twelve hour days to get it figured out. Talk about cutting it to the wire. On Friday afternoon, the co-worker who needed the capture card stuff spent the afternoon in my office as we integrated his code with mine. He left at 6:00. I left at 10:00. Enough said about that.
And then, something not about work at all. This afternoon, I decided to fix my bathroom sink. About a year ago, the puller that raises and lowers the drain stopper stopped working. In my own extreme laziness, I just pulled out the stopper altogether and have been operating without it for about a year. Not a bad deal, really, except that I've dropped a lot of pills down that drain that I might have been able to rescue. I'm guessing the fish downstream of me are well medicated.
So, for whatever reason, I picked this afternoon to fix the stopper-puller-thingy. I remove all the junk from underneath the sink. I fiddle with the stopper mechanism for about 30 minutes, and then it's off to Lowe's. I find the part I need. I buy said part and return home. At home, said part does not work with my old drain stopper. "Universal" my eye. Shoot. I go to Dick's Hardware (yes, it's really called that), and find another stopper. I buy said stopper. This one works. Whew.
I am reassembling the sink drain, specifically the p-trap, when one of the pipes breaks. This isn't cheap plastic crap people, it's chrome plated galvanized drain pipe, and it cracks and splits apart as I am tightening the connectors. Sigh. As sewer gases waft out the open drain pipe, I realize that I have to go to Lowe's again. In contrast to the stopper, which you can live without, the sink is basically unusable if the drain isn't hooked up, and I'm going to need to buy a new p-trap.
Fortunately, the new p-trap installed without incident. I'm still not sure it was worth it, though. Why is it a universal law of home repair that every task will require at least 3 trips to the hardware store? Well, I hope the world sleeps better knowing that I now have a functioning drain stopper puller thingy.
Last Sunday afternoon I left for Roswell, NM, yet again, because my customer "didn't have time" to install the latest version of our software. I was there for less than 24 hours. I landed at 8:00 pm Sunday and left on the last flight out at 3:45 pm Monday. I sat down at their computer at 7:00 am Monday, installed the latest version, and it worked without a hitch. I was so mad about being there that I couldn't even be excited that it worked. After all, I had spent days and days in our testing lab making sure it worked, but they couldn't even bother to install it to test it themselves.
When I got back, I had three days to write some code for a HD video capture card (it was supposed to be more, but I wasted all that time getting ready for and traveling to Roswell). In this case, the capture card came with a software development kit (SDK) from the manufacturer that we had to pay 5000 bucks to use. For 5000 bucks, I figured that it would probably be the easiest thing I'd ever done. Well, the SDK consisted of about 40 pages of documentation and about a dozen sample applications -- none of which came close to doing the very simple thing I needed. On top of that, the sample applications very devoid of any useful comments. The comments that were included said things like, "//bill was too lazy to fix this, so I'm going to hack around it too", and my personal favorite, "//NOTE: convert ignored for now do [sic] to excessive laziness."
It took 3 twelve hour days to get it figured out. Talk about cutting it to the wire. On Friday afternoon, the co-worker who needed the capture card stuff spent the afternoon in my office as we integrated his code with mine. He left at 6:00. I left at 10:00. Enough said about that.
And then, something not about work at all. This afternoon, I decided to fix my bathroom sink. About a year ago, the puller that raises and lowers the drain stopper stopped working. In my own extreme laziness, I just pulled out the stopper altogether and have been operating without it for about a year. Not a bad deal, really, except that I've dropped a lot of pills down that drain that I might have been able to rescue. I'm guessing the fish downstream of me are well medicated.
So, for whatever reason, I picked this afternoon to fix the stopper-puller-thingy. I remove all the junk from underneath the sink. I fiddle with the stopper mechanism for about 30 minutes, and then it's off to Lowe's. I find the part I need. I buy said part and return home. At home, said part does not work with my old drain stopper. "Universal" my eye. Shoot. I go to Dick's Hardware (yes, it's really called that), and find another stopper. I buy said stopper. This one works. Whew.
I am reassembling the sink drain, specifically the p-trap, when one of the pipes breaks. This isn't cheap plastic crap people, it's chrome plated galvanized drain pipe, and it cracks and splits apart as I am tightening the connectors. Sigh. As sewer gases waft out the open drain pipe, I realize that I have to go to Lowe's again. In contrast to the stopper, which you can live without, the sink is basically unusable if the drain isn't hooked up, and I'm going to need to buy a new p-trap.
Fortunately, the new p-trap installed without incident. I'm still not sure it was worth it, though. Why is it a universal law of home repair that every task will require at least 3 trips to the hardware store? Well, I hope the world sleeps better knowing that I now have a functioning drain stopper puller thingy.
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