Diary January 2001
- Wednesday 31
-
Got fed (rather a lot of) free pizza at lunch time because a
department I have no significant association with over
achieved last year. Can't complain. Trouble is, it meant
that all I felt like doing in the afternoon was curling up in
a big bloated ball and falling asleep, which made it kinda
hard to be very productive. One of our NT boxes stopped
talking to the DHCP server and lost all its networking. While
it had unsaved work and locked locks and things on a network
drive. Much stealing of other people's IP addresses ensued
until we found one of our own static ones that didn't ping.
The box still won't talk to the DHCP server even after a
couple of reboots, but now it doesn't care. It talks to
everybody else, as does the DHCP server. Very odd. Wrote
DONE on another big paper chart, 3 times, and still managed to
leave work at something approaching a reasonable time. *Bounce*.
- Tuesday 30
-
Wrote DONE in big red letters on one of the big paper charts from
yesterday. Very satisfying. Made the paper pile a little
larger. Considered moving next door to make more room.
- Monday 29
-
Covered an entire wall with big paper charts listing all the things we
need to do and what we know about them. This sort of
"planning" is a really good way of appearing to be busy
without actually doing anything. The figures we want are
still IBM confidential. They magic guy who knows everything
about everything still isn't in, but now we have an
appointment to see him on Wednesday. Found another guy who
expects to know some stuff about something sometime soon. Oh,
and a bird who probably knows everything about something but
is on holiday. People are a pain. Generated a gargantuan
mountain of paper to add to the already rather large mountain
of paper. Also did a faily significant amount of useful
work. Hmm. This diary entry looks very long considering its
lack of interesting content. Didn't leave work until gone 6pm.
- Sunday 28
-
Went round the San Jose Tech museum with david. It hwas a cool thing
outside the group entrance with lots of balls and cunning
wibbly bits that do cool stuff. Yes. Go see it. There
appeared tobe some random parade type thing going on in the
middle of San Jose for no apparent reason which was a little
bizarre. Spent ages driving around looking for good eating
places and ended up concluding that you have to know where
they are and eating at david's hotel.
- Saturday 27
-
Met up with David and went for a walk by the sea. Sunny and nice.
Had a long argument about whether or not the sun always goes
red at sunset, so sat on the beach until it was patently
obvious that the sun was going red. Came back through the
mountains. Had a rather delicious steak in the middle of San
Jose.
- Friday 26
-
Fairly uneventful day, all things considered. Ended up reinstalling
windows twice trying to install the nameless product from
yesterday. Got phoned up to be told that the IBM confidential
stuff from yesterday is still IBM confidential, but might not
be soon. FSVO soon. Ate rather more Penguin Mints that I
should have considering I was meant to be buying them for
somebody else. Broke sound on my laptop, but got some cool
feedback effects in the process. Finally got everything to
actually work at 4:32. Left before we had time to break
anything else. The caffiene-enhanced cheer got comments from
the next corridor. Oops.
- Thursday 25
-
Started raining again in the early afternoon. Spent most of the day
attemting to install a certain product that will remain
nameless. Got into all sorts of fun with the prerequisits
which were sort of installed but not actually there, leading
to hours of confusion. Had two meetings organized, one of
which eventually happened an hour late (and gained no
information but a few contacts), and one of which never
did happen. Another impromptu and extremely interesting
meeting just sortof happened, but the results of it are IBM
confidential until further notice which is a pain in the
arse. Discovered that the routing from the web server just up
the road back to here crosses the Atlantic 4 times for some
obscure reason - to get to the PC next door it goes the
obvious way. Investigated shopping not quite on the route
home again, and got Penguin Mints.
- Wednesday 24
-
Still raining in the morning, but cleared up in the afternoon. The
paper mountain is growing, and is now topped by a coffee cup
tower. Oh dear. MindTerm is still green. AIX box misbehaved
in an interesting an different way. It refused to read or
eject or do anything with its cdrom drive, even on insertion
of a pin (well, a straightened paperclip) in the emergency
eject hole. Power off and on fixed it. Very odd. /var
sudenly became mode 644 with odd effects. I think this box is
terminally braindead. Investigated shopping on the route
home, and spent a grand total of $0.00 on two
:CueCats.
- Tuesday 23
-
Started raining. Generated a significant amount of useful work, and
still found time to be bored. Made MindTerm display in
green. Not quite sure why. This project looks awful big for
the 3 and a half weeks there are left to do it...
- Monday 22
-
Finally got told what we are meant to be working on. Generated a
significant mountain of paper, and a little useful work.
- Sunday 21
-
Explored the mountainy things between here and the sea. Found a
fantastic little road that is a shortcut (in distance but not
in time) from here to some of the better beaches. Missed
having a vaguely decent car. Got woken up at 8:10am by a
parent phoning (from Texas). Was not impressed.
- Saturday 20
-
Slept lots, watched some TV but there was nothing worth watching on.
Went shopping, largely unsucessfully. Nobody seems to sell
penguin mints anywhere. 5pm on a Saturday is a really bad
time to try and do shopping in a large Wal-Mart. Oh well.
- Friday 19
-
Spend the day installing another AIX box, and concluded several things
about AIX, mostly connected to large numbers of goats. Really
quite a boring day.
- Thursday 18
-
Another letter from my ISP saying that since I only subscribed in
December, I am "fully entitled to apply for a pro-rata rebate"
so I did. You never know, I might even get some money back
one day. Ho hum.
- Wednesday 17
-
Running 45 minutes ahead of schedule after the first 45 minutes (that
should have been 90 minutes). This was down to 30 minutes by
lunch. By 4pm we had finished everything we were meant to be
doing today and tommorrow. Finished reading email and stuff
by 5pm, so went home.
HotMedia looks like
it might be seriously cool, spent a while playing with it.
- Tuesday 16
-
Still in the conference/meeting thing. I'm going to stop saying that
now 'cos it goes on for the rest of the week. Late finish
today. Did a study of the handling characteristics of wheely
chairs at lunchtime. They corner better when lower, but break
if the height is adjusted while cornering. Erm. That's about
it really. Wibble.
- Monday 15
-
Meeting all day, in which I learnt remarkably little, and kept wishing
I was outside enjoying the sun. Not entirely unproductive,
but close to it. Finished at 4:30, so spent about an hour
catching up on 400 mails that arrived over the w/e. My ISP,
RedHotAnt, has sent me a charming letter saying that they've
gone broke, and thank you very much for that money you gave
us, but we're not going to give you anything for it. So
there. Oh, and by the way, sorry. I am not in the slightest
bit impressed by this at all. You could even say I am quite
pissed off. In fact, *grrrrg* *bludgen* *bludgen* *bludgen*.
Yes. I don't imagine I'll do anything productive this
evening, unless sitting in front of a TV counts.
- Sunday 14
-
Got up mid afternoon, and went to San Fran. Less sunny and colder
than yesterday, but still quite nice. Got horribly lost in
San Fransico. There are some really nice bits, and some bits
that looked fairly unpleasant. Unfortunately, since I was
largely lost, I don't know which bits of it are nice and which
aren't. Golden Gate bridge is, well, a bridge. I think I may
have missed the point of it, 'cos I couldn't see any reason
why it is more of a tourist attraction than any other bridge.
Ho hum.
- Saturday 13
-
Sunny all day, but cold. Drive down route 1 from San Fran to *mumble*
where I got bored, turned round and drove back stopping at a
few random quaint lttle places and Monterey on the way. Very
spectacular scenery all the way. Burnt more than a tank of
gas (oops). Didn't get back until gone midnight.
- Friday 12
-
Didn't rain at all. In fact, got sunny by the middle of the
afternoon. Spent all day in a meeting, without learning a
huge amount, except some stuff about MPEG4 which looks
seriously cool.
- Thursday 11
-
Rained. All day. Varying degrees of heaviness, from pissing it down
to absolutely torrentially pissing it down. Oh, I've said
that before. Managed to car share successfully this time.
Got in at around 9ish, and was promptly dragged off to a two
day conference. Which is actually quite cool. Also meant I
could leave work at a more reasonable hour. Did some
shopping, and discovered that my bank lied to me. My cash
card does not work in ATMs.
- Wednesday 10
-
Rained. All day. Varying degrees of heaviness, from pissing it down
to absolutely torrentially pissing it down. Its like being in
England. Got into work at around 9ish. Spent the morning
trying to fix a screwy AIX box, largely unsuccessfully. Ended
up reinstalling it, which took the best part of the afternoon
as well. Eventually got it to pretty much work, and went back
to the hotel, without getting lost at not much gone 6.30.
Finally managed to convince myself that I do understand
American road signs. They tell you not where you are, not
where you are going, not even where you've been. They tell
you the name of the road you just didn't go along. Really
helpful, that.
- Tuesday 09
-
Was meant to be giving the japanese guy a ride to work. He didn't show,
so I was 5 minutes late for my 8:35 meeting. This didn't matter however,
as nobody else turned up until 9:05. Spent the rest of the morning
moving servres around so that we have sometihng to play with.
Got bitten by a particularly savage (and horribly broken)
RS/6000. Spent the afternoon installing and configuring said
servers, reading and writing email, updating this etc. Didn't
leave work until gone 7.00pm. Therefore did very little of
interest after work.
- Monday 08
-
Arrived at Almaden research lab at around 8:30 in pouring rain. Met the
administrator for the residency, and discovered that rather than the 6ish
people I was expecting to be on the residency, there were in fact only 2.
The other one is a Japanese guy with an unpronounceable name, and limited
English. Moved to IBM SVL (or STL, as it is aparently now called) which,
it turns out, is where I will be working. Met other people who have been
working on the project. Back at the hotel by about 4ish (including
getting lost again). Stopped raining by lunchtime and became warm and
sunny again.
- Sunday 07
-
First day in San Jose. Didn't get up until mid afternoon because there
didn't seem any point. Explored hotel complex and local shops. Whether
was warm (but not hot) and mostly sunny. Bought a 24 pack of pepsi and
drank half of it. Not that I was dehydrated or anything. Nonono.
San Jose is an absolutely wonderful place. The people are friendly, and
the atmostphere is so relaxed its untrue. Driving is as boring as fuck,
but at least places and ended up concluding that you have to know where
they are and eating at david's hotel.
- Saturday 27
-
Met up with David and went for a walk by the sea. Sunny and nice.
Had a long argument about whether or not the sun always goes
red at sunset, so sat on the beach until it was patently
obvious that the sun was going red. Came back through the
mountains. Had a rather delicious steak in the middle of San
Jose.
- Friday 26
-
Fairly uneventful day, all things co