10 posts tagged “work”

A week or two ago I discovered a new podcast.  It is of people telling stories on stage.  Most are really good, and they're just normal stories not science or skepticism or extreme nerdism so everyone should be able to enjoy them.  It's call The Moth and it's in my widget way down in the right side bar somewhere.  Also, here.

Also, I thought of an invention today.  I'm sure someone has invented it before, but it should really be a common item.  The invention is a chair with a sensor that can tell if you are sitting in it.  The chair is linking wirelessly to the computer.  Using the data from the sensor, applications can determine your status as away or not.  When you get up and leave it will automatically change your status on e-mail, instant messaging... possibly even a land line phone at an office.  Seems simple enough.

Yesterday at work they bought us lunch and a cake, us being John (the other remaining intern) and I.  His last day is tomorrow, mine is Wednesday.  It was one of those giant chocolate Costco cakes.  It was good.  It was eaten entirely.  They also all signed a card for me and talked about how great my work is and how young we are.  :)

k, walk now.

I've figured out what the problem with the world is.  See... all the rich people and poor people are dramatically geographically separated.  So... like, we're rich, and China's poor, and we're on the opposite sides of the globe.  So... the Chinese make stuff, and we want to buy it, and we have to pay like 100x more for it because we have to ship it across the world.  But we're rich so we can afford it, so we don't really notice, but it's very inefficient.  Then, the poor people, they might be able to afford some of the stuff we do with our high wages... ya know, after scrimping and pooling their money, but it's that much harder because of shipping.

What we need to do is evenly distribute rich people and poor people.  So the chinese poor workers can make our stuff right next door, and we can get it way cheaper, and they can get iPods at a bit of a discount to their current price and climb the economic ladder faster.

Brilliant!  (nobody point out how it's dumb.  I'm aware.  It's funny.)

My presentation at work is now Friday, @ 1.  So, got a week left to wokr on the site pretty much.  John, the other intern who does the database, and has been doing a lot of the CSS, is not showing to work for M-W though, suposedly.  Surgery or something.  Bet it's not even life threatening.  Anyway, if he can take the week of the presentation off, maybe I can too.  :P

We're basically done.  There's stuff for me to do, though.  I'll see how much gets done, I guess.

Pat's been here.  He left for the Oregon Coast, though, so I have time to make a blog post.  It's been a pretty gay ol' time, though, only in the classic sense of the word.  D&D, Brawl, movies, WoW, all the good things in life.

Since my last post I've watched Shoot Em Up and Tropic Thunder.  The former is what would happen if a talented 12 year old kid wrote a script for an action movie, then grew up to be a director and made the script adult without taking any of the stuff from the action scenes out.  Totally ridiculous actionyness, totally ridiculous plot, totally ridiculous dialog, basically one of the best movies ever.  I wouldn't recommend it for people not in the male 16-30 demographic, though.  Tropic Thunder was very funny, kinda along the same vein as Shoot Em Up but more planned comedy and less pure ridiculous actionyness.  (fire alarms go off, apparently spontaneously)  They do swear a lot, but frankly, if you are so uptight you can't handle swearing, you probably should just give up on comedy and joy in general.

In other news, my roommates next year are new.  I originally was gonna have Donny and Yusuke, but then Donny chickened out and graduated, and then Yusuke's paperwork got all messed up, so who knows where he'll be, and now I got stranger asians (strasians) for roommates.  Maybe I'll get the single this time.  Poor Yusuke is stuck holding a bunch of my stuff and he doesn't even get to use it next year.  (fire alarms go off, apparently spontaeously)

Yeah, so the D&D referred to in the first paragraph is only the planning, character making, and general chatting phase of D&D.  No actual playing has taken place.  We, in this case, my friends from disparate places, are trying to get an online game going.  If I had all 6 of us in one town we'd probably get going in about 1 night, but online is slower.  Still, progress has been steady, and at this juncture I think we're all good to go.  We just need everyone to be around at a computer at the same time.  Unfortunately, Pat is gone so likely that won't happen for a bit.

I'm a halfling rogue.  Pretty classic.  I've done quite a bit of thinking about the character, though, so in my mind he's specific enough to not just be a stereotype.  Wrote up a couple pages of backstory.  I also created a wicked sweet spreadsheet with all the stats and stuff.  I'm pretty proud.  I keep adding stuff to it.  I can't help myself.

Work keeps happening.  I'm just been plugging away at the website.  We've got to present it in a couple weeks, I guess.  My partner intern, the guy doing the database, was the only one informed of this.  Nobody in charge really talks to me.  I kinda am an independant at this point.  Progress on the site is a little jumpy.  The whole thing was planned not at all because neither of us actually building the thing ever have all the information.  We keep getting it in trickles, so we keep having to improvise and slap new stuff on.  And at this stage, the site is sufficiently complex that changes almost always cause bugs somewhere.  I'm not stressed about the presentation, though.  I've definately done enough work to impress, and I'll probably have everything working smooth before the day in question.  I might even have time to try and make the site look pretty.  That is the one concern.  I have spent almost no time on CSS, and I am not skilled in that regard, so if the people judging me aren't impressed with features and functionality, and only want color schemes and rounded corners, I might be in trouble.  I'm pretty sure the engineering firm I'm working for will be ok with my approach, though.

So, Pat will return in a week for a few days.  And then he's going back to Vegas.  I suppose that would be a really bad week to take off.   Stupid work.  It's conspiring against me.

Today was the site tour.  I got paid to go to work but to just sit on a bus and look at stuff.  Most of it was pretty lame but I got to see the chem lab where they test samples from the tanks.  It's all radioactive and such, so everything is done with the neato robotic hands.

Oh, and they also showed us the secret facility where they're making the doomsday bombs.

We got some thunder here tonight.  I got hit with a few drops on my walk home, but I guess it escalated.

I was at the bus stop 2 minutes early, but it went by already.  I didn't know it at the time, but I figured it out.  So I had to wait an extra 30 minutes... on top of the 30 minutes walking home I had to do due to the family going on vacation.  It's a sad story, I know.  Those 12 hours days can get you down.  I had some podcasts, though, so it wasn't a total loss.

Well, I finished my first complete week.  I mean, no free lunches or anything.  Luckily the people who need to be around for me to do parts of my work weren't there so I got to spend time starting a new project.  Anyway, next week, which is only 4 days, will be shortened by about a day and a half extra due to an internship party/lunch thing on Monday, and a site tour on Thursday.  That should make up for all the work I did this week.

Fridays are weird.  It's like the last day of school, but it happens every week.  /shrug  I dunno what's going on at the office at all.  Things are going on, though.

Yo.  Long time no blog.  Did you know I only have 5.5 hours of free time a day this summer?  Did you further know that my average daily podcast allotment is approximately 5.5 hours?  This is causing some problems.  I'm still reading all of the updates you guys make... like... all 4 or 5 of them.  :P

Mostly this post is to inform you, my loyal friends, that I have a cell phone now.  My dad gave me one and I pushed the buttons and stuff.  I haven't actually called anyone but I assume it works.  Anyway, you should all give me your numbers so I can be one of the "in" people now.  Or whatever.

I'm going to Seattle this weekend for to attend my grandma's memorial.  I will consequently not be around town this weekend to go to Kim's party, or buy Rock Band, both of which I might have done.  I will, however, please my mother and extended family, perhaps, and get further on my research into the function of D&D 4.0.

At work I finished the first assignment thing, at least for now.  My next assignment is different, and so far very vague, so I'm kinda back into that not doing real work part of work.  Maybe I'll catch up on some podcasts.

Dim demands job update but there isn't much to tell.  So far I've worked 4 days.  Day 1 was mostly getting the orientation treatment and taking all the tests so that you can work out at Hanford and getting a badge and whatnot.  Days 2 and 3 were spent in this meeting that most of my department was going to.  It was an exercise in using this software and this decision making process.  My boss guys were just watching, but there was a panel running through the exercise and stuff.  Day 4 my boss guys had big meetings and presentations to do so they didn't have time to do anything with me.  So, I've read a bunch of documents, I've gotten some software installed, I've sent in my timecard so I get paid, and that's about it.

Probably will get my D&D books on Monday.  Amazon says they sent them yesterday.  First they told me I wouldn't get them until July 14th, so I was concidering just buying them at a store or something, but then the changed their minds.  I wish I had them for the long weekend, like I probably should, but oh well.

I've got tons of podcasts to listen to.

Ok.  So I've not done much blogging lately.  Not really sure why, guess I've just been distracted with other stuff.  Quick run down of the goings ons.

1.  Years over.  I probably got a 4.0 this quarter, or something close to it.
2.  I'm back in Kennewick for the summer.  I have an internship starting Monday that's going to make my summer a lot like school, only worse, however.  I get paid, though.  About .48 cents per second, so I guess I gotta look at the bright side.
3.  My grandma died.

Guess that's the major events in my life.  Sharese is moving back to town on the 16th... which is exciting.  Potentially, anyway.  She might decide not to associate with me and mine, in which case it's pretty boring.  Linda, girl from middle school, joined the military and is going to basic in a few days apparently.  So... that's big for her.  *shrug*  Pat's missing, but he took some big actuary test on Tuesday.  Haven't heard anything since, so maybe it killed him.  Ody and Keston and Mike and all those kids graduated.  Ody has an internship job thing.  Donny walks today.  Or walked.  I dunno.

D&D starts Tuesday.  3.5 Eberron stuff.  Hopefully my 4.0 books get here soon and I can start working on running a 4.0 campaign. 

I got a summer internship.  I get to write javascript to make 3D models do cool things.  So... that's cool.

Also, the power went out on campus today.  At like 7:40.  I was in the lab working on the group project with most of the group and everything went lifeless.  A CS building with no power is a sad thing.  Some of us went for a walk after we realized the magic juice wasn't coming back right away.  It was pretty nuts.  Everyone was hanging outside cause the weather was nice.  Had to eat Taco Bell cause the cafeteria closed down.

Tomorrow I register for next quarter's classes, and I have to find out about getting credit for this internship, and I have to fill out the employment paperwork... and I have a group project midway done presentation... sigh.

I pre-ordered D&D 4.0.  It's released the day of my final final.  It's fate.  Now I have a job so it totally justifies the expense.