The humidity around here drops like a rock when the cold weather comes in. It's easy to tell because all of a sudden the skin feels like parchment and the eyes feel like they're being rubbed with sandpaper and the throat is in constant need of liquid refreshment and the head pounds with sinus pressure and the cats give off sparks when they are stroked.
It's a dangerous time for electronics, too, as the sparks from the fingertips fly off like lightning to toast little circuits in the stereo and the tv and the computer; and turning a switch is a roll of the dice to see how many electrons want to join the human bus on a trip to Ground Central.
That could explain why the TV is being weird. Sometimes it auto-detects the composite signal coming in from the VCR, sometimes it doesn't. And it seems to depend on whether the audio channel of that video source is switched in by the receiver or not.
Another weird thing is that the receiver shuts off if the volume knob is spun rapidly to zero. Not sure if that's a feature or a bug. If it's a feature, it's undocumented.
Time to get out the ol' humidifier and turn this house into a subtropical wonderland.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
More Boring Work Stuff
It's ten thirty on a Tuesday night, and I'm at work again. Why? Because somebody (who shall remain nameless) decided to use his eyeball to block a soccer kick.
Said somebody is supposed to be doing what I'm doing right now - updating and testing this software that was scheduled for completion last week. I'm supposed to be technically leading the Systems Group, not putzing around with code til all hours of the night, trying to make it do things it really wasn't designed to do.
It wasn't supposed to be this difficult. And it wouldn't have been - for me - if [insert name here] hadn't been so aggressive on the field. Must've been trying to impress someone.
But this is debug code inserted into a special build of the operating system to diagnose a problem that occurs intermittently during all-night testing, which means even after all this work, this code will never (theoretically) see the light of day. It's throw-away code, destined for the dung-heap when all is said and done. Assuming it helps us pinpoint the source of the failure which is keeping us from completing our overall Qualification mission.
Not only is it debug code, it's kludged debug code. The developer hijacked an unused function and rewrote it to peek into the innards of the software and provide a gateway for the application to see what's going on deep down in the bowels of the computer. In effect, it's the patient with the scalpel.
Yikes! Reminds me of poor [insert name here]. So young, so talented, so suddenly bereft of sight. His doctor made him sit in a dark room for three days with the damaged eye all anesthetized; couldn't watch TV, couldn't work on the computer. About the only thing he could do, was to listen to the radio.
I'd feel much sorrier for him if I was at home with my feet propped up, reading a book and sipping a soda.
Said somebody is supposed to be doing what I'm doing right now - updating and testing this software that was scheduled for completion last week. I'm supposed to be technically leading the Systems Group, not putzing around with code til all hours of the night, trying to make it do things it really wasn't designed to do.
It wasn't supposed to be this difficult. And it wouldn't have been - for me - if [insert name here] hadn't been so aggressive on the field. Must've been trying to impress someone.
But this is debug code inserted into a special build of the operating system to diagnose a problem that occurs intermittently during all-night testing, which means even after all this work, this code will never (theoretically) see the light of day. It's throw-away code, destined for the dung-heap when all is said and done. Assuming it helps us pinpoint the source of the failure which is keeping us from completing our overall Qualification mission.
Not only is it debug code, it's kludged debug code. The developer hijacked an unused function and rewrote it to peek into the innards of the software and provide a gateway for the application to see what's going on deep down in the bowels of the computer. In effect, it's the patient with the scalpel.
Yikes! Reminds me of poor [insert name here]. So young, so talented, so suddenly bereft of sight. His doctor made him sit in a dark room for three days with the damaged eye all anesthetized; couldn't watch TV, couldn't work on the computer. About the only thing he could do, was to listen to the radio.
I'd feel much sorrier for him if I was at home with my feet propped up, reading a book and sipping a soda.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
48 Years and Counting
I get an electric kind of thrill when telling people about my parents' wedding day, because it is the kind of story that has inspired me and molded me to become the person I am.
It creates an image in my mind of the kind of people they are, defining their personalities in a way that brings me no small amount of pleasure. Like all images, it is of course tinted by my own viewpoint and muddled by separation of years and the confusion inherent in second-hand recitations of oft-heard histories, and my own understanding of the event is limited by how much information has actually been passed down.
No doubt I'm spreading all sorts of misrepresentations of the facts whenever I tell it, because my brain has never had the capability of retaining facts very well, only impressions.
But my impressions - my mental images of those two people who formed a union forty-eight years ago on the dry, dusty wasteland of West Texas - have remained throughout the years, not so much keyed on the moment-by-moment timeline of events as on the character of the two young people involved, their motivations and desires that shaped the future that has now become the past and present.
Oh, how I wish there were a motion-picture record of the entire episode - the courting, the building of the relationship, the assistance from friends and mentors who guided them along the way; even more so, a mental record of the thoughts and emotions that were going through their minds at the time, a self-described analysis of the decisions that were made at crucial points, the flow of things that brought them both to the point of saying, "Let's get married."
Sometimes I try to cast my mind back to my own courting days to remember what it was like to be the young bachelor at church looking over the beautiful young single ladies, debating their good points and not-so-goodpoints, wondering how on earth it would be possible to logically calculate the merits of one over the other, going out with this one or that one to find out what they were like, all the while wondering if I was in some way revealing too much about myself such that they might be too disgusted to tolerate my presence.
I wonder what it was like to be a young soldier out in the middle of nowhere, separated from family and friends, eagerly anticipating the gatherings at church or at people's homes to have the opportunity to spend an hour or two with one of those delightful young ladies...
And then to find one that one of them wanted to spend the rest of her life with me.
I admire them both for their ultimate practicality in handling the 'wedding' event. As mentioned, it has inspired me to have a great deal of respect for frugality and common sense, eschewing formality and ceremony. Whether that was truly their intent, or merely the proper way to handle things given the limitations of their current circumstances, doesn't really matter to me. What matters is that they didn't wait and drag the whole thing out just to have a fancy wedding. They had an opportunity and they took it as a matter of course. Simple, practical, efficient.
That's my parents.
It creates an image in my mind of the kind of people they are, defining their personalities in a way that brings me no small amount of pleasure. Like all images, it is of course tinted by my own viewpoint and muddled by separation of years and the confusion inherent in second-hand recitations of oft-heard histories, and my own understanding of the event is limited by how much information has actually been passed down.
No doubt I'm spreading all sorts of misrepresentations of the facts whenever I tell it, because my brain has never had the capability of retaining facts very well, only impressions.
But my impressions - my mental images of those two people who formed a union forty-eight years ago on the dry, dusty wasteland of West Texas - have remained throughout the years, not so much keyed on the moment-by-moment timeline of events as on the character of the two young people involved, their motivations and desires that shaped the future that has now become the past and present.
Oh, how I wish there were a motion-picture record of the entire episode - the courting, the building of the relationship, the assistance from friends and mentors who guided them along the way; even more so, a mental record of the thoughts and emotions that were going through their minds at the time, a self-described analysis of the decisions that were made at crucial points, the flow of things that brought them both to the point of saying, "Let's get married."
Sometimes I try to cast my mind back to my own courting days to remember what it was like to be the young bachelor at church looking over the beautiful young single ladies, debating their good points and not-so-goodpoints, wondering how on earth it would be possible to logically calculate the merits of one over the other, going out with this one or that one to find out what they were like, all the while wondering if I was in some way revealing too much about myself such that they might be too disgusted to tolerate my presence.
I wonder what it was like to be a young soldier out in the middle of nowhere, separated from family and friends, eagerly anticipating the gatherings at church or at people's homes to have the opportunity to spend an hour or two with one of those delightful young ladies...
And then to find one that one of them wanted to spend the rest of her life with me.
I admire them both for their ultimate practicality in handling the 'wedding' event. As mentioned, it has inspired me to have a great deal of respect for frugality and common sense, eschewing formality and ceremony. Whether that was truly their intent, or merely the proper way to handle things given the limitations of their current circumstances, doesn't really matter to me. What matters is that they didn't wait and drag the whole thing out just to have a fancy wedding. They had an opportunity and they took it as a matter of course. Simple, practical, efficient.
That's my parents.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)