Watt's Up Musings of an original geek

I’ve been on vacation the past week and it was nice. I’ve done some programming work at home when and if I wanted to. Then other times I’ve taken it easy, or seen a movie, or did house work, or put up Christmas lights outside.

It’s been fun, and now I’m looking forward to going back, because I know it’ll be only 2 1/2 weeks before I’m off again.

I give thanks for many things… my family – my sweet wife, talented children and loving relatives – they are my ground and my infinity; my friends and acquaintances – both new and old, some MIA, and some not yet met – they share with me their own traveled roads; my job and company – providing income, inspiration and mental challenges to me these many years – it is a “national treasure”; my health – with it’s ups and downs over the past two years, but overall it’s been an up – my face might not work just right, but what’s behind it still seems to; my hobbies – running which keeps me physically challenged, and makes me feel alive; my country – for the freedoms it allows me and the diversity of people and ideas which keeps things unique, interesting and never dull – a wonderfully delicious stew. For all these things and more, I give thanks.

I’m on vacation this week. Yet I still woke early, and went running. Then I made meatloaf – something I haven’t made in a while. I especially like it cold with ketchup. It seems like I’m on a cooking binge. So this afternoon I made two apple pies. Yet I’ve been doing some work at home. Just chillin’.

Well Katie arrived home from her college yesterday. We’re dealing with her return as best we can. However, we had to curtail some of our feedoms since she’s arrived. After running class I would wash my clothes as soon as I got back and go up statirs in the buff, but that’s got to stop. Also prior to her return it’s been especially quiet, but now things will again start – the chaos that follows her like a cloud will return. Picture Charles Schultz Peanuts cartoon and his character “PigPen” with the dust cloud following him everywhere. Oh well, we’ll deal with it for a few weeks knowing that this too will end when she returns to school in January. Maybe she’ll get a job that works her hard, real hard, and she’ll be gone all the time or trying to catch up on her sleep. Kinda like a zombie that no longer lives in this world but a nether world. Here’s to dreaming. P.S. She is watching me write this so I’m trying to make this blog posting really wierd to get a rise in her.

Woohoo, the Amazing Race has begun again on TV. Ahhh, now something to look forward to each week. At work things are moving along – the bored and misued job continues, but I’m unable to find anything on the subject, so little progress is being made. Even the project manager has been assigned one of the modules and she can’t find anything for her module so she’s gotten very frustrated. I sympathized with her and we commiserated today on the phone. Yet, I have another job that I’m planning, so I’m trying to figure out what to do without actually doing it, which is hard for me. I’m a do-it kinda guy. Anyway the person who I’m doing it for is happy, so that’s good. Tomorrow, I have one more thing to plan and estimate and then I will present it in the afternoon.

Today IBM announced the World Community Grid (see www.worldcommunitygrid.org). It was in the local newpaper (see the article IBM, United Devices team on new research grid). At work several member of my department were extensively involved (although I was not). It’s nice that my kind of work is in the popular press. We even had a news reporter (R.J. DeSilva) from the local NBC affiliate (www.kxan.com) came and visit today. John, our manager, was interviewed in our lab. It’s supposed to be on the 10 o’clock news tonight. Neat!

Sheesh, I got another training module to do today. I had to mention that I had completed the previous one. This one’s on Energy/Utilities, and like the last I also have very little interest in this job – so I continue to be bored and misused. Oh well, I was told to do it. If this continues for much longer, I’m thinking of doing another job. At least I’ve got more vacation coming at Thanksgiving and Christmas. So instead of starting on this job today, I worked on decoding the internal network protocol for IBM’s LoadLeveler. It was like breaking a code, and time flew by – unlike when I’m doing these training modules.

Well on this past Friday at work I finally finished that job that I felt was a total waste of my time. It was an education module, a presentation, consisting of 42 pages with detailed speaker notes including segues. IMHO, I didn’t have the necessary expertise to do it, but I was told to do it anyways. My feeling is that it is total junk – content free. Nevertheless, it is supposed to be a 40-60 minute module. Just reading the speaker notes to myself took about 50 minutes. So there is more than enough material time-wise. Supposedly I won’t have to record it. They’ll get some else to do that. I am so glad it was done. Yippee! Now I’m not going to shout my completion from the roof tops because they might assign another module to me, which is not something I want to do. Ugh!

Well I’ve been asked by my spouse to prepare to sell a bunch of stuff on e-Bay. We’re in what I call “purge mode”. So, I’ve made a little photo studio and I’m taking pictures with the digital camera for the ads. She hasn’t told me everything that is going to get sold, that is, we haven’t written a list yet, but I can get prepared. I look forward to doing this work because this weekend is a bit slow and it’ll keep me busy. Also she said she would handle the mailing which I consider the biggest pain of doing this. In any case, It’s been a long long time since I’ve done any e-Bay stuff, so I’ve got to re-familiarize myself with it: userid, password, listings, PayPal, etc. Luckily I’ve kept all the old HTML listing I had used in the past, so I’m planning on just updating them. But before I do any more of this, we’re off to do some errands – see ya later…

One of my co-workers, Annette, came by to show me school photos of her two beautiful girls. As a response I opened up a browser and showed her mine. How did I do that? I went to their weblogs and showed her their pictures. Well almost all of them. My dear middle son, Matthew, just restarted his weblog (that’s great) and although he’s got a slick digital camera he’s still not got any pictures (hint, hint). Maybe he doesn’t know how to do it, but I’d be glad to show him if he asks.

Ol’ hazel eyes lookin’ at cha. [Matthew here’s a sample picture so you can get the HTML that’s needed to display an image. Oh, one more thing, you need a website where you can upload and store your images]