Monday, November 23, 2009

facebook - slowly

I logged into Facebook for the first time in more than a month. I approved some friend requests. I continued to ignore others. While I haven't outright rejected any requests, I have left many in a state of limbo while I try to decide if I a) was ever their friend and b) was enough of a friend to want to maintain some distant voyeuristic link with them. For people who want to keep tabs on me, that's what this blog is for (assuming people know of its existence which is largely unpublicized except for that one skywriting message). There is also a general correlation with me looking at Facebook and how often I check my gmail and how often I blog. Basically, I have now reached the point where I might go more than a week without checking gmail (and not on vacation), which in a previous existence may have seemed impossible, but such is my lifestyle now.

Friend approval is serious and I dislike that some people flippantly stack up friends like firewood (for those of you who actually know what that's like). I don't want to have 1000 friends. Frankly, the number of people who I consider myself 'close' to in any sense of the word is probably around a dozen. The number I can strike up a familial conversation with is much larger and encompasses the concept of people who could be 'friends' in Facebook, but it's not really the same thing either.

Perhaps what I am really saying is if I haven't approved your friend request, it's not personal, sort of, though I suppose it's not business either, so perhaps it is personal. Nonetheless, I assume you're not losing sleep over it which in turn is helping me not lose sleep over it either. Though frankly, I have more important things to not lose sleep over than Facebook friends.

because the speed of sound isn't enough

The real question is, why shouldn't a 1000 mph car exist? Thrust is equivalent to 180 F1 cars. Epic success, assuming it stays on the ground.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

conference

I spent about half of last week in Budapest. (Yes, with a semi-functional computer before it crapped out entirely when I got back to Szeged.) There was an SPE conference on Thursday and we made a good showing there with a couple presentations. It wasn't anything too fancy or high-level, just some stuff that feels somewhat routine to us, though admittedly it's a bit unconventional for most places.

Ideally, design and preparation are so strong and robust that good execution is almost an afterthought, but that's not even close to true. There's a huge gap between what's on paper and how execution in the field actually goes down and much of that owes to the vagaries of how the field simply is, a bit of lost in translation, and the desire for people in the field to take the path of least resistance which rarely equals to strictly proper way to setup and perform the job.

That is for another time and place. Budapest is where we are. Or at least, where we were. It was good. Had a couple good interesting meals with colleagues/managers. Evidently, some people never grow up.

fog

It's been quite foggy here since last week. When I was in Budapest on Thursday, it rolled in heavy enough to cancel some flights and cut visbility down to about 100m. Nice. Reminded me a bit of the Bay Area.

crushing, people say that right?

If you recall, I mentioned a song called Fireflies by Owl City a couple weeks back. Now, Marie Digby has done an acoustic cover of it.

I like Marie Digby. Good singer, songwriter, good look, seemingly normal (though she may possess an artsy liberal streak that I might not mesh with my center-right-ness in person), and she's one of my people. I may even be semi-obsessed with her, though I'm really too busy to have a proper obsession about anyone. Which is somewhat strange (the semi-obsession, the the lack of time thing) since I normally reserve unjustified attraction for redheads for which I admit I am a total sucker for. I don't know why, though I have some theories, but self-analysis only goes so far. And analysis from others is usually worthless.

semi-computerless

At work, I've been more or less without a fully functional computer for the last two weeks. Since getting dragged down by viruses and then limping about two weeks ago, the IT guys went with the nuclear option of re-imaging my computer a week ago. That basically consists of pulling the hard drive so they can copy the files to another hard drive, then reinstalling everything. But for IT, "everything" is only the base system. It meant another full day after I got it of reinstalling programs I use daily at work, redoing settings, etc. And then, the video card (maybe, but it still is not displaying properly when hooked to separate monitor) crapped out two days ago. Tragically, the weekend means the outsourced IT guys don't work and there's no explicit spare computer at the base so I'm stealing time on other peoples' laptops getting some limited form of work done. But now I have none of my old and even recent e-mails which I need to respond to and anything that didn't get pushed to the server is trapped in the machine.

Perhaps that is the single best advantage about the Macbook I have for personal use. Though Safari's desire to crash a couple times a week is a bit annoying, it's relative immunity to most viruses means less fussing about with regular scans.

out of season

Out of season blueberries are such a bitter disappointment.