Good Choices

I was planning to go play a couple of D&D games today as zeroes for Ides of March. I'd volunteered to judge at the convention next weekend, and playing the games as zeroes means I'd get a chance to play them before they premiered at the convention. And these modules would be popular, so they'd lots of prepared judges.

I woke up this morning and decided that that would be stupid. And it wasn't only because I'd stayed up 'til 2:30am last night.

So, instead, today I'll get done about five other things that I will need to do eventually anyway, helping clear the decks.

OK, step one, I took delivery on the materials I need to redo the powder room. Have I talked at all about the powder room yet? Well, at the moment it is stripped of everything down to the studs. More about that later.

I'll go finish Legends this morning and get it in the mail sometime this afternoon. About freaking time!

I should run a few tests at work, running things from home. That I'll start up later this afternoon or evening, and it can largely run on its own.

As for the D&D games, if they need me to judge them I'll just eat the module (run it without playing it). No big deal, a small sacrifice to regain a tad of sanity for the weekend.

As for what I was doing last night -- well, I'd volunteered to judge a zero of another module ("Delve the Wizard's Dungeon") for a group last night. That took until about 10:30, home by about 11:00. Then I watched some TV, played on the computer for a while, then took two phone calls. One was from Ellen, saying she'd probably be running a bit late getting home from work. Second was from Narf, who'd injured himself while moving and needed an over-the-phone assessment from Nurse Ellen. So, I just decided to stay up until Ellen got home to pass along that message and be sure she called Narf, who I knew was waiting for her. Anyway....

Well, I guess it's time to stop talking about doing things and acutally go do them!

Pick Three

Today's Dilbert is particularly apt (you may need to click on it to make it better viewable):





I felt productive much of last week. I got a major submission in that had been causing me all sorts of problem over the past few weeks. By Wednesday (2/15) I was certain that all tests had passed, I was passed that hurdle, and could polish a couple little things. On the weekend the kids were home, we all went out to dinner on Friday, played D&D (Eberron) on Saturday, and after Kalen, Kathy and Ryan returned to Normal and Ellen to work on Sunday Matt stayed around and we hung out for a while. All was good.

Monday morning (2/20) I got up early and got onto a conference call meeting at 7:00am -- things you put up with when part of the team is halfway around the world (India) -- but I can do that from home just as effectively as in my office. The meeting dragged on for quite a while, and I didn't actually got ready for work (shower, fresh clothes) until after the meeting. So, I didn't get into the office until 11:30.

At which point, there was already a considerable amount of fecal matter hitting the fan. As it turned out, there was a lot of testing on the previous week's load that didn't get started until late Friday (2/17), and enough various problems that were masking bits of my submission. So, the submission that I thought was all behind me reared its ugly head again. I looked at a problem they had, realized it was a degenerate case that I hadn't thought to test, but could put a quick fix in to deal with it.

Quick fixes so seldom work out that way. The fix led to another quick fix, and then that one led to ... nothing starting up as it should. By this time (a few cycles through) it was 7pm and we needed a go/no-go decision. I didn't know what was wrong, so we decided no-go and pulled my submission out once again. AAAAGGHH! This just put me in an overall foul mood that has carried over much of the week, and also meant that I had to put in some more time at work to find the problems, thus blocking other things I should be doing (for one, Legends still hasn't been mailed, if you're wondering Mike and Dwight).

Anyway, I've since figured out what the problem was on Monday night and got that patched, so I'm testing again. Part of the problem was that I couldn't actually test what was going wrong in the lab I have access to ... everything was fine there. So, I've had to get access to and learn a new lab environment. And now ... things seem to be working, but as soon as I say that I'm sure to find another problem.

OK, that's enough update for the moment, as my latest compilation is now finished. More later, tonight or tomorrow. Promise! (yeah you've heard that before)

Call from Myself

I got a call from myself yesterday. I was home, having left work early to go to a doctor's appointment (well, nurse practitioner). I had a lab session scheduled for the evening, so I just decided to run it from home.

About 4:45pm, I got a call from myself. Well, from my office phone, according to the caller ID. I figured someone came to my office, didn't find me but needed something as an emergency, and happened to note the "Home" listing on the speed dial button of my phone. Very odd, especially that someone would have something so urgent, but I've done stuff like that before.

When I picked up the phone, there was no one on the other end.

Then I figured out what happened.

OK, a bit more background, and you'll have it figured out before I actually say what happened. I've got a lot of toys and other stuff on the shelves around my office. Happy Meal toys, action figues, some plush toys. Most of them are comic related or animation. In particular, I have a set of Legion of Super-Heroes action figures on the shelf over the left side of my desk. All the Legion figures that DC Direct has released, plus the Silver-Age Superboy and Supergirl figures (plus Krypto and Streaky for good measure). The Supergirl figure is just a little wobbly, though -- her ankles move just a bit too easily. I'd taken care of that for a while by having Streaky leaning up against her shin. That stabilized her a bit, and that's what cats do anyway.

You've figured it out by now -- Supergirl got shaken a bit much and took a dive into the speed dial button on my phone. Sure enough, that's where I found her this morning.

So now, I've swapped Supergirl and Superboy in the display, so if she decided to fall over again, it'll be either just flat onto the shelf or away from the phone.

Starbucks Customer #788217742

Lately, I've been getting a rash of spam e-mails with a subject similar to the above. Either Starbucks or Walmart, and promising a gift card if I click a link. A link I'm, of course, not about to click to find out what nastiness may be attempted.

Still, whether it's a cumulative count or based on the amount of business I give them, #788217742 sounds about right.

I also got a batch of spam titled "Sam says banana" or the like, all of them with <someone> says <random word>. Weird how the spammers mutate, but they did get past my spam filter for a while until it learned the pattern.

And thus, I'm now bored with the spam titles on my e-mail, and so I'll stop that. At least until an interesting one comes along.