I'm not even going to mention Britney Spears and her whoring out to Pepsi, to which I am subjected to at the start of every movie I go to at the Silver City theatre. At least she looks the part of a Corporate Whore!

01/19/2002    -{ A Lot of Shit Has Happened In My Life, But The One Thing That Makes Me Want To Cry Is Thinking About The Avro Arrow }-

Stressful couple of days. Very. More deadlines (go figure) as usual. We thought we were ready, but on friday as it got closer and closer to 1pm when we were supposed to show our warez to the boss things started looking bleaker and bleaker. Don't get me wrong, the team had performed awsome in the last couple of weeks, creating a whole new build system, and re-writing some major software from scratch. Some details that were pretty major went untested until that day, with the assumption that they'd work and we could spend till 1 working on the little niggly bits. Turned out the niggly bits killed us before we got to them.

I worked without break from that morning till around 7 that night (no food, oh the humanity!) when we had more fixed, and things were getting closer to being done. More work friday night after a great meal and some mental downtime. The problem I have now is there is a bug in the Java code (ScoobyD please fix!) that prevents me from sending off data, which makes things very hard to test. Luckily I can build disks for the disk/cdrom version.

01/17/2002    -{ "So justify this strange obsession you have with KDM..." }-

This morning was the first morning in a while that I've really felt like death. I think I'm getting the cold/throat thing that people at the office were getting, which really isn't fair in my opinion, as I had a throat thing a couple of weeks ago. Course back then it wasn't making me feel so bad, it was just making me cough (strange but true).

Today wasn't a workout day though, so I got to sleep into the gloriously late hour of 7:00am! Tomorrow is bike nazi day and I guess that's going to really suck, but I'll have to see how I'm feeling. I have been going faithfully every week specifically because I know if I start not going and making excuses it'll get easier and easier to not go... but on the other hand, I don't think it's a good idea to work out (especially a "strenous cardio workout") when sick. Maybe I'm just a big wimp, who knows.

Deadline day tomorrow (again, when aren't there deadlines looming?), so lots to do!

01/16/2002    -{ You'll Never Get Away With This! }-

Had a decent squash game this morning. Unfortunately we're not at the stage where we can actually have a "real" game and have fun. We're beyond the point of walking to get the ball every time you hit it, but not quite good enough to compete. I had a good discussion with Del about Microserfs' style of writing, and I made the determination that reading Tolkien was the exact opposite of reading Microserfs. Tolkien is like sitting in a slave ship being beaten by many men with large spiked clubs. Microserfs on the other hand, is like lying on pillows, and being fed pizza by naked virgins. Neil Stephensen is somewhere in between the two... I guess like being fed pizza by men with spiked clubs. Or maybe being beaten by naked virgins or something.

I can tell it's going to be a long day....

01/13/2002    -{ "I want them to remain secret for as long as men are capable of evil." }-

The above is a quote from Neil Stephensen's novel Cryptonomicon, which I started reading again after some rave reviews from Silverstr and Foz. The quote is in reference to mail encrypted with such a high form of encryption that it would take centuries to break, and in response to the question of "how long do you want this to remain secret?"

Things My Cats Do

• Zoon, as soon as she hears my car alarm being armed, will sit in front of the front door waiting for me. As soon as the door is opened she races out into the hall and wanders up and down it, not running away from me (her persuer) but not letting herself be caught. When she reaches one end she'll head to the other. I figure she's taking me for a walk. This happens with people coming to the door in general though, but apparently she perks up when she hears the "Beep!" of my alarm.
• Corny steals my chair. More often than not he'll wait until I'm going toward the chair to sit down than just jump up as I leave it. Sometimes it's a race between us to see who can get there first. Of course who can resist such a cute cat stretching out on a computer chair, so I'm sure he's associated the petting he gets when he's in it as a good reason to steal it from me. That or maybe he likes his chairs pre-warmed.
• Every morning, generally around 5:20am, Zoon will maul me with love. She's not a great lap cat, and doesn't like forced affection (too much time is wasted when she could be racing around the house like a madman I guess), but in the mornings she'll come up to me and/or A and purr her little heart out while rubbing her face and wet nose onto my face, scritching herself on my goatee. Of course, who can resist love from a little grey kitten?
• Rex seems to have been trained out of the "lick, lick, lick, bite" thing he used to do. Now it's just "lick, lick, lick." Generally when I'm trying to get to sleep at night he'll arrive on my chest, standing so that he's on all fours as to make sure the maximum amount of weight is on each pointy little paw (with at least one directly on my bladder), and recieve his stroking. When that's been done he'll relieve the pain by lying down so that his face is in reach of mine, and intermixed with the petting and stroking he receives he will happily lick my nose. As this doesn't involve having his fangs up my nose I don't mind so much.
• Sometimes in the mornings Corny will decide that he really wants to go under the covers and will claw at them, or simply whine and look pitiful until someone lifts the covers up for him and lets him go under to lie there. He'll do this for a bit, then turn around, get in a more comfortable position, and snuggle more until either we stop petting him or he becomes bored.
• Something that A appears to have taught Zoon and Rex is "begging is fun!" So now whenever someone goes to the kitchen to open up the fridge the two of them are there, looking up (Zoon always sitting right between my legs) as if to say "fish! give us fish! you know you want to give us fish right?" If that fails Zoon will wander as far into the fridge (thankfully she hasn't started actually getting into the fridge, just walking towards the hinges) as she can until I tell her "no kittens in the fridge!"