lifebsideben

Hey everybody, sorry for no posts lately. I’m not dead. Here’s the bullet-point version of what I’ve been up to the last 3 months, in chronological order:

• Visited Detroit with my 3 year old for my grandpa’s 90th birthday
• Changed jobs
• Moved from a rental townhouse to a rental house, 20 miles away
• Bought a new car
• My wife had a baby girl
• Got 100 boxes of junk from storage 2,000 miles away dropped off at my door
• Got Prince’s lawyers to threaten to sue me (and sic French criminal law on me, too)

So, my hands have been pretty full. I’ve got stuff to write about, just no time to do it in. Will try and post some pix or something soon, though…

Tags: family, Life

I took Caltrain to work this morning, something I haven’t done in over a year. I had forgotten how nice it is, how it gives me time to get into work-mode, ponder the day’s tasks, listen to music, do a little reading, etc. And, I need to walk around a bit, not just to and from the car, so I even get a (pretty minimal) amount of exercise, at least some exposure to outside air. It really makes a huge difference in my attitude, and preparedness. Driving is so focused, especially on the 101, where random stoppages and too-close motorcycle passes, and generally Dumb California Driving abounds. And although I’m not quite ready to start taking the train every day again due to bay-on-the-way issues, I’m definitely looking forward to resuming this habit when that’s resolved.

Tags: Caltrain, commuting, Life

The signal/noise ratio of IM conversations is usually pretty poor to start with, but I’m continually amazed by the initiations that I’m subjected to for these interchanges, anyhow. In the excerpts below, CTSRN stands for “Coworker That Shall Remain Nameless”.

CTSRN: hey ben - got a second?
Me: y
CTSRN: mind if i stop by?
Me: k
CTSRN: cool - thx - i’l;l be there in a sec

Now, understand that this person sits about 50 feet from me. Aargh. Just come on by dammit rather than interrupt me twice, to say you WILL come by. If I’m busy, you can probably tell just from looking in my cube. Sigh.

Then there’s another person who almost always starts IM conversations like this:

CTSRN: hey
Me: hi
CTSRN: can i ask u a question?
Me: shoot

The second part of my last response there was “me”, because at this point, the person has already basically asked me TWO questions. Just ask the question!!

One more, yet another person, with timestamps:

CTSRN (2:26:19 PM): hey ben
Me (2:26:21 PM): y
CTSRN (2:26:36 PM): i sent a note for the [project meeting] tomorrow, but can you still do today at 4pm?
Me (2:26:43 PM): y
CTSRN (2:26:50 PM): cool
CTSRN (2:26:59 PM): lemme sort it all out

So here there was an actual, valuable, business reason for the ping–could I still make a meeting (although, I rarely don’t attend meetings I agree to, anyhow). But it was ping-then 2s for me to reply. Then 15 (!) more seconds for the question, during which time, what, I am supposed to stare at the window awaiting the question? Then 7 more seconds for my reply, which seems reasonable to consider if I had a new conflict at that time slot or not. But then, 7 more seconds for the “cool” acknowledgement (when none was needed at all), and then dammit, 9 seconds later than that, a followup that was useless to me. A transaction that could have taken a total of 7 seconds of my attention took 40 seconds, 75%+ of which was me theoretically staring at my screen. In reality, I was doing other things simultaneously during that time, but it then involved at least 2 additional context switches for me than necessary. Sure, it’s not a lot in one instance, but it all adds up.

Alright, I feel better now. Oh and by the way, this is only a couple weeks after I sent out an “IM etiquette” email rant to several internal maillists about the way to properly use IM, and why. Maybe I should have sent it via IM instead.

Tags: bitching, Life, work

Pretty bad storm last night–wind, rain, hail, you name it. Around 7pm Val calls my cell and says “the power just went out!” Ironically enough, I was shortly on my way to Fry’s to buy, among other things, a UPS battery back-up for the new server in the basement (RAID box building updates to come later). So I picked up some Wendy’s on the way back, and we had a nice candlelit dinner, which was actually kind of fun, except that it was Wendy’s after all, and they as usual screwed up the order.

It’s always so cool to have a temporary power outage, with the emphasis on “temporary”. You can remember what it’s like to do simpler things, like read by candle/flashlight, or heaven forbid, TALK to another human at length with no distractions. This all happened right around the kid’s bedtime, so he didn’t get to experience much of it, but Val and I kind of had fun with it. Digging up batteries for the radio, chatting, wandering around the dark house like it was a mysterious new place. Playing tag with the flashlights. Burning ourselves lighting candles. Enjoying the eerie quiet of the neighborhood.

Still, it was weird too, because something kept saying in my mind “hey, go check e-mail” and “flip on the tv”. Apparently the use of electronics has taken root into the reptilian parts of my brain, as well. And even simpler things were raised in our consciousness… Val realized she didn’t know where the flashlights were, if we had a radio that could use batteries, if we had a gas or electric (electric) water heater, if we had a phone that didn’t require power (yes), etc. In George Carlin’s latest stand-up, Life is Worth Losing, he says the fastest way to destroy civilization would be to turn off all electricity, and that it’d take a lot less time to all go to hell than people think. I am certain he’s correct about this, even without the inmates being released from prison in his scenario. We just depend on the magic electron frow from the holes in the wall, altogether too much. Butwhatyagonnado? I need my MTV, or VH1 Soul as the case may be.

I was definitely relieved when power was restored around 3am. In other words, I think everything in the frige/freezer probably survived Hopefully the Tivo and Macs did as well, I didn’t have time to check everything over this morning. I’m pretty glad I shut down the RAID box in the basement the night prior! Now to configure Linux for the UPS I bought, and grab last night’s Apprentice 5 premiere off bittorrent!

Tags: burlingame, family, Life

A buncha folks are doing it, I guess i’m jump on the bandwagon; writing a post of specific 4-item lists about themselves. This seems about as self-referential and indulgent as blogging can get, so I feel confident I’m doing my part to destroy any wider benefits the medium might be capable of today. What will others think of me? Should I leave “Tron” off the movies list? Oh wait, no one reads this anyway, whew.

Four jobs I’ve had in my life:

1. Museum ticketing agent
2. House painter (well, more like assistant to house painters. I was the one who got to climb/fall of the ladders, which may explain a lot)
3. Engineering Director of a publicly-traded porn company
4. Yahoo! manager

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1. Goodfellas
2. Wargames
3. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
4. Tron

Four TV shows I love to watch:

1. The Simpsons
2. The Daily Show
3. Frontline
4. NOVA

Four places I’ve been on vacation:

1. Seattle
2. Paris
3. Copenhagen
4. Detroit, unfortunately

Four of my favorite dishes:

1. Filet mignon
2. Macaroni and cheese
3. Lasagna (which maybe should be considered a variant on mac & cheese?)
4. Hamachi sushi

Four websites I visit daily:

1. prince.org
2. Yahoo! News
3. Bloglines
4. my team’s Bugzilla queue

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. Rolling around on the carpet playing with my son
2. Drinking coffee at a cafe on Las Ramblas in Barcelona with my wife uhh… edit! -Ben
3. Scubadiving off Fiji. Not that I know how to scuba, but I think I’d really like it…
4. Sleeping

Four bloggers I am tagging to do this as well:

1. Jeff Boulter
2. Dave Viner
3. Ubaldo Huerta
4. Russel Beattie

FYI: some other posts like this I’ve read…

Tags: Life, movies, nostalgia, travel, TV, work