Poll #1346740
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 2

You are most like...

Gotta love the Aqua Teen.

It's been a really long time since my last entry. I think I need to write more often -- I think it's good for me.

So, what's happened to me recently? Last Friday I went out to a great Indian food restaurant with my boss and a co-worker. We had a good time until I started feeling funny. First in my stomach, then my face started to feel hot. Turns out there were some sort of nuts in the food I was eating. This was not very good. I didn't think it would be a huge deal so I drove my boss and co-worker back to work and then left to go to the hospital. I figured I'd get there and they'd say, "Nah, you're okay."

On the way to the hospital I started feeling like my throat was narrowing. When I would swallow I could feel something in there... like something was stuck in there. That's when I knew I may be in a little more trouble than I thought. I finally made it to the hospital, politely pulled into the parking garage, found a parking spot, and then took the elevator to the emergency room. There I waited (and got yelled at by a receptionist for standing too close to the person in front of me in line) until I could be triaged. I told them I ate something I was allergic too and wasn't feeling so hot. About 2 minutes later a nurse came to get me.

My blood pressure was 147/57, which seemed really strange to me (usually it's 110/68 or so). Then they took me over and looked at my throat. Once they confirmed that I was having an allergic reaction things got a little more serious. They put an IV in my arm and administered some benadryl, a steroid, an anti-nausea drug and also some epinepherine. I was then chewed out for driving myself to the hospital rather than calling 911.

So... moral of the story... If you have food allergies and you think you ate something bad it's not an "inconvenience" to call 911. I guess I could have passed out from low blood pressure, or my airway could have closed on my way to the hospital. Either one would have meant I would be unconcious and unable to tell anyone what was wrong with me. Don't do that.

The IV benadryl hit me like a ton of bricks and I wasn't allowed to drive home. pkitten had to come pick me up and then we had to leave a car in the hospital parking garage overnight.

Since they gave me steroids to reduce the allergic reaction (or something) I need to slowly taper off them. Of course I forgot to take my dose yesterday and took it today instead. Now I'm somewhat jittery and all fucked up from that as well. I wish I had some benadryl to help me sleep, but I can't find any in the house. Need to buy some tomorrow.

Work is good. Life is good. I found out that Jack has been pooping in our basement. I left the door open in a (futile) attempt to keep the basement a few degrees warmer. He decided that it's much better to poop where he isn't rained on -- I don't blame him.

--- Geek ---
I've been thinking back to my days at school and also at IGT. I like graphics programming. I think I need to pick some of it back up. I've been trying to get some stuff working in DirectX but I find the setup semantics of DirectX to be total crap. OpenGL is just so much easier to initialize and work with. I believe this will be my graphics API of choice for now on.

Also, it appears that JOGL (Java Open GL) is somewhat more mature now than the last time I looked at it. This appeals to me. Writing portable applications in Java that can also utilize hardware accelerated graphics. I think there may be something to that.

OpenGL is also an okay choice for Windows Vista. In fullscreen mode the overhead is minimal and in windowed mode it isn't too bad (something like 10% performance hit). I wish this were better, but I understand the reasons behind it -- it's for that fancy Aero interface.

There's one more reason why OpenGL is a little better... the install basically comes with ATI or NVIDIA drivers. You have the driver for your card... you support OpenGL. Microsoft doesn't support OpenGL acceleration in their stock drivers, but most users don't use these drivers anyway. You link against a few standard libraries and let the OpenGL layer thunk it's way through to the driver. This is a good approach. It also avoids the COM crap that you need to put up with in DirectX (but most importantly the crappy way DirectX handles contexts and losing them, and all the other stuff you need to do that should just be automatic).

So... that's about it. Time to get some sleep and try to wake up earlier than usual. I'm trying to get to work around 8:30 or so. This will give me time to catch up on emails and focus my thoughts for the day's work. I will also be able to leave earlier and maybe have a chance of getting a work-out in.

Need to make it to the gym. I'm close to morbidly obese.

Things are going well in the land of Microsoft. We closed on our house a few weeks ago (that was a relief!) and I've been slowly learning the Microsoft culture and the extensive amount of knowledge I need to make good decisions.

I like the group I'm in. Some people don't, they are worried about advancement opportunities, design opportunities, etc... Well, I've designed stuff. You sit in a room and argue about features, you have wonderful ideas and plans for a stable product. Upper management keeps pushing more features on you and disregard the features you care about (like security and stability -- note: I am *NOT* speaking about Microsoft here, I'm talking about my last employer).

In WinSE things are different. There are not large design meetings and endless feature creep. There is solid engineering to fix real problems that our customers are running into.

There are people in WinSE that I can only describe as debugging Gods. They know what they are doing, they understand the interactions that a large system like Windows produces. We fix things. We unblock customers. There is nothing more gratifying than helping someone. Using my talent to help people is what I have always wanted to do. That's the core purpose of WinSE. Make products more stable, more secure, more usable. When we get into arguments, they are not about whether a feature slips or not, the arguments are about the best way to produce a quality fix for a customer. It's about not breaking their current applications and at the same time fixing issues.

After a few months at Microsoft, I've come to realize that the people here REALLY care about the customers. It may not seem like it from certain people, but Microsoft is about helping people use computers to solve problems. It's about making people more productive. The entire company lives and breathes customer satisfaction.

Being a Software Engineer at Microsoft (and especially Windows Sustained Engineering) makes me feel good. This is not an "evil" company. Those folks that thinks so will never get it... until they work here. The reason Microsoft does well is that the employees care about our customers. "RTFM" is not a phrase passed on to customers.

Okay, so mostly this post was about my job, but it's important to me. In other news, pkitten is happy with our new house. Our dogs are loving the new yard -- Sophie has lost weight from all the running she does! The leaves are piling up on our lawn and I need to do something about that. Lastly, we are "official" now... we have Washington drivers licenses! Oh yeah... and it's been raining a little bit too... :)

Hobby-wise, I need to get pkitten's glass workshop going again. The house has a 50-amp service for a hot tub that isn't being used. I'm going to get an electrician out here to convert that service into a nice work area for her. She'll be able to run her oxygen concentrator, large ventilation fan, and kiln with power to spare. Boxes still need to be unpacked, and that will probably start being a major project. We need to get this stuff taken care of!

For me, once I get pkitten's workshop done I think I'm going to look at some geek projects to do. I have a few thoughts, using AVR Micro Controllers for something cool, working on a theme-able code editor with WPF technology, or doing some USB thumb drive bootable stuff. The bootable stuff could eventually work it's way into a little generic game system, possibly running on an x86 based nano-itx PC, and using AVR RF-transceiver modules as wireless controllers -- playing tetris, nibbles, and other basic games.

Who knows what the future will bring.

Yes, pkitten and I have finalized the move. We have a healthy mortgage on a house in Washington. We no longer own a house in Nevada. It's pretty much final.

All you that said it wouldn't happen... it did. We moved. We left. I got a new job somewhere else. There is life without IGT.

I really like MSFT. There's some things that are better than working at IGT and there are some things that are the same. I can't really say that there are things *worse* than IGT... so this is a good thing. The work hours are a bit more flexible (well... very much so).

I had heard that if I work at MSFT I'd have to work tons of hours and have no life. That's not the case (so far). I've even been told that working crazy hours is "not sustainable, and frowned upon." Make your own conclusions (I'm sure you will) but I think this demonstrates amazing understanding of software.

Coders can only do so much work in a week. There are only so many hours in a day and only so much code that can be produced. Seems like they get it.

You should "google" it. Or, since I'm now a Microsoft employee, I should say that you should go to www.live.com and search it. Search is important. Try live.com, see if you like the results... I actually like the interesting backgrounds they put on live.com. I'm just saying... try it for a few searches... if at the very least, you are giving google a run for their money... and competition is important in a free market. Okay... enough said.

THE GRASSHOPPER ESCAPEMENT

I did indeed search for this on live.com. I came across an article about a new clock which an artist included a demonic grasshopper. After researching this further, I found it quite interesting. Haven't you ever wanted to know how a pendulum clock works? I was always curious. You learn in physics 201 that a pendulum of a given length ALWAYS swings with a certain frequency. This is the mechanism of all those grandfather clocks. The one second pendulum is about 39.1 inches long. Which means that all one-second pendulums need to be this long, from axis to center of mass. This is why grandfather clocks have a nut on the bottom of the pendulum. If the clock is running fast, then you should twist the nut to move the weight DOWN, if the clock is running slow you should twist the nut to move the weight UP.

Interesting...

Now we can move on to "The Grasshopper Escapement." I actually can't really fathom how the thing works, but if you look at wikipedia you can clearly see an animated .GIF of it ticking away. Now, considering that the ticking mechanism is precise, then you start to think -- or maybe you don't... because you don't care... that there is THERMAL EXPANSION.

Okay, so... when the temperature changes, materials change size. If you are using a metal for your pendulum... as the temperature changes the metal cools. As the metal cools it get's shorter. Now, we all would love it if time moved faster (because of a shorter pendulum) when it was cold, but that just isn't the case. So, to compensate, the mind freaks came up with the Gridiron pendulum to adapt to changing lengths of materials due to temperature. Wow!

I find all this *very* intriguing. First, humans have solved a problem. They have noticed that TIME needs to be measured accurately. Time is very important. We take accurate time for granted in the modern world. Do you realize that 50 years ago it would be very difficult to have 2 people on opposite sides of the world push a button at the same time? Now we can do it down to the nanosecond. Time is so very important. Being able to measure time accurately is one of the most fundamental things we do. Time is one of those universal constants. Can you imagine life without standard time?

How do you measure speed? How do you measure age? How do you measure sound? Light? All these ideas revolve around time. If you are 10% off, does a violin still sound like a violin? Do you hear the same frequency? No. You don't. 500hz sounds like 550hz. If you are 10% off with light... you see a different color. Time is very much intrinsic to our perception of the world. And... we have developed these mechanical mechanisms in the 1700s (!!!) to record time accurately.

I find this amazing. I don't know exactly why... I just do. I think the idea of humans considering thermal expansion in pendulums to be quite brilliant. This is the power of the mind. To take two completely different concepts and link them together. Would you ever think that temperature were related to time? It was before they had the gridiron pendulum system. A hot day would seem even longer than usual. A cold day would go by faster. It took someone to realize that the timepiece was wrong. It was flawed.

What will we discover tomorrow? What will we discover 10 years from now? This is all very exciting to me.

What would you rather have? A Zombie Army or a Cannibal Army? Zombies typically only eat brains. Cannibals eat any human flesh.

Also, if you consider desperation... Zombies are UNDEAD... they can't die. They don't NEED to eat brains... they just want to. Now, if you are a cannibal, you are still alive. You have a REQUIREMENT to eat. I think a cannibal army would be much more motivated than a zombie army.

Plus, cannibals are still human. They are more reliable, if you give a cannibal an order, they are much more likely to follow it than a zombie. Zombies are mindless, moaning automatons. There is just NO original thought there.

If you promote a cannibal general, you know that the cannibal will act like a general. If you promote a zombie... you don't know what will happen. He may eat YOUR brains. That's just not the kind of subordinate you want. Unpredictable... completely unpredictable...

So, if you ask me, I'd want a cannibal army. But... what do you think?

Poll #1256339 Cannibal Army vs. Zombie Army
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 4

Cannibal Army or Zombie Army???

Straight-to-video Steven Segal movies are my crack. It's like COPS on a Sunday morning. Broken glass, shattered "bad guy dreams" and uncoordinated mahem!

I rank Steven Segal up there with Chuck Norris. I wonder who would win in a fight...

Segal has the reach -- he's a big ass mutha fucker. But Norris has the finesse. Segal has gained quite a bit of weight since his last movie that actually released to the silver screen, and I believe the amount of time outta the silver n' cellulose is about the same for Norris. The difference is that Norris works on the "Total Gym" and has stayed in shape.

I really think Norris would take Segal. I guess that's why Chuck Norris is the ultimate human being. He makes the rest of us look like drunken so-cal sorority girls on a 3 week binge trying to stand on the international space station. He's really that good.

I hope they never fight, if they did Norris would disembowel Segal with a single pinky-punch to the torso. It would be horrible to watch and there would be no more Straight-to-video Segal movies... this being a corny-action-movie tragedy of epic proportions.

Hopefully they never meet.

Oh yeah, Norris: Get you ass in GEAR and make some more movies! I can only watch "Walker, Texas Ranger" or "Delta Force" so many times. I need a new Chuck-fix.

PS Chuck: don't rip my head off for telling you what to do. It would be arrogant, presumptuous, and just downright DANGEROUS to tell you what to do. I'm just saying, as an adoring fan, we need more CHUCK.

Wow, it's been a while since I updated this thing.

Things are going very well. pkitten and I have been looking at houses, looking for a rent-to-own house so that we can move in somewhere while we are still trying to sell our house in Reno. There was some work to be done on the house in Reno, but I think it's going well. I'll give my Dad a call tomorrow and get all the details.

Right now it's raining something awful here. I like the sound and smell of the rain. The dogs are chillaxin' in the apartment and pkitten is watching "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." I'm going to have to take the garbage out tonight... I'll do that before I take the dogs for their last walk. It's going to be umbrella time.

I've been having a great time at work. It's a lot like being in college again. There's so much to learn and I'm liking it all. I still feel like a total "n00b" but things are starting to click for me. I really missed this feeling, but I didn't know how much until now.

I can't wait until we have a place to live that we can call home. There were two houses that looked really good. One was 430,000 and the other 499,000. The one for 430 is really close to Redmond town square and has a nice yard. It isn't completely fenced, but I think the dogs would get used to an Invisible Fence installation. The other one if REALLY close to Microsoft but has a smaller yard. The layout is really interesting though because it is a rambler that was added onto. There are two "wings" to the house. You can tell the addition wing because it has this HUGE bonus room, it must be 400 square feet!

Well, it's 9:50 and the garbage needs to be taken out... then the dogs walked.

Put some windex on it!

Living on Mercer Island has been okay. We (pkitten and I) like the town, we like the people, and we like the stores. The problem with the temporary corporate housing is the damn Comcast cable.

Both pkitten and myself cannot believe how crappy the quality is. Most of their digital channels exhibit the tell-tale low signal blocky-update, or just flat out display "digital signal quality low." I mean... we can't even WATCH some of these channels during the day... you just get "digital signal quality low" displayed on the screen. The only redeeming quality Comcast cable has is that they still provide the analog channels, which even though they are fuzzy, you can at least watch.

SHAME on them for advertising digital. SHAME on them for saying they are better than satellite. If I were paying for the service (rather than it being *graciously* offered to me by my new employer) I would sue them for false advertising. It's so ironic that we watch their "comcast is the REAL digital" commercials on analog because those are the only channels that actually come in.

...

Other than that, it's all good... except that sophie took a piss right on the bed. Not sure what the deal is with that.

Oh well... watching the Bob Saget Roast on Comedy Central now. At least that channel comes in...

It's been a good first week in Washington. Evette and I went exploring some more and found an IKEA. :) She also found a beauty salon in Bellevue that looks like it will be good. Our dogs are adjusting to the apartment life and have taken ownership of the apartment (I can tell because there are dog toys everywhere).

Work has been great! I've been learning a whole lot about how Microsoft is organized and what is expected of me. It's been taking a bit of time to get access to the source code that I need to work with so I've been reading the Windows NT Internals book that they gave me on my first day. I forgot how much I love learning about new things and thinking about new things. Operating systems are really interesting to me. It's pretty much the ultimate design project -- you need to work on something that is secure as possible, is as usable as possible, and is as flexible as possible. These are typically diverging requirements and it's neat to see how a design can bring them together.

I'm excited about going to work tomorrow. I was trying to do the "get to work at 7:30 and leave at 4:30" kind of work schedule. That just didn't work. If I hit the freeway by 4:30 then I'll be driving for about 20 minutes longer than I need to be. Most of the programmers in my group seem to come to work around 9:30-10:00 and leave around 5:30 - 6:00. I tried leaving at 5:30 and was stuck in traffic until nearly 7:00. I think I'll leave around 6:30 -- then I'll get home around 7:00 anyway!!! So my hours for work are probably going to be drastically different now. Instead of 7:30-4:30, it's going to be 9:30 to 6:30. That's still a decent 8 hours.

The perks are Microsoft... yeah, what can I say... they rock. It's amazing that they seem to REALLY understand that employees make it happen. Other companies just seem to SAY that... but they don't follow up. Microsoft follows up. They get it.

I'm sure some friends may mention koolaid.... yeah yeah... I guess I've been drinking the koolaid here. It's hard not too though...

I'm starting to get really excited. It's been fun to learn things about my group, learn how I'll be helping a lot of people, and learn some technical stuff.

I love learning technical stuff, and there is a lot to learn!

It was my first day at Microsoft today. 8 hours of orientation. It was good though, learning about all the benefits and the "corporate culture." I think I'm really going to like it here.

Our housing is temporary. We will hopefully start our house search this week. First we need to find something we can lease. After that, we'll look at trying to find a more permanent place to live. The temporary apartment is good though. It's a single bedroom, but there is a lot of space inside. We will be able to store the temporary items that we wanted shipped here. We are living on Mercer Island right now.

The weather is... sunny and hot. I think we need a little less sun and a little more clouds. It will be nice to get out of this heat. The apartment has no air conditioning so we have to run a fan more of the night to get cool air in here. Yes... looking FORWARD to the rain right now!

Tomorrow I'll have the legal bits of orientation in the morning. After lunch I'll be shown my office and meet my coworkers.

I'm excited!

xhost created a wonderful picture of me and my boss.

My boss is Vader... obviously.

So much unknown is out there. What will life be like in 6 months? I used to know, now I have no idea. I don't know where we will be living. I don't know what I will be working on. I don't know how I will like it.

This interesting unknown. It's nice. It's... fascinating. I'm excited to see what is coming. There is no tired routine. It's new and wonderful.

I'll have to see what happens, but I'm sure I will be shocked. I'm sure it will be a new experience. I'm sure that it will not be the same as last year.

Time for sleep.

Oh my God I'm so super freakin' happy sweet!

I've been waiting for 2 weeks for my background check to be completed. It finally has and today I was told to go ahead and give notice to IGT that I'm leaving.

Start date at Microsoft is August 4th -- in Redmond.
Last day at IGT is August 1st -- in Reno.

That weekend is going to SUCK. But, that way I will have a lapse in medical insurance coverage on August 2-3.

Dang, I'm excited. This will be a new experience for me and Evette.

Evette should have TONS of artistic stuff to do in the Seattle area too. I'm hoping she will thrive there.

More later... I'm sure. The next few weeks are going to be stressful and I'll need to vent... while I get everything ready for the move.

Anybody wanna buy a house?!?!

[Edit: Made post public]

I'm hoping to hear back regarding the results of the background check soon. Then I'm hoping I'll be given a start date and the word to go ahead and give notice to my employer.

I'm getting just a little nervous... hoping that I can give notice soon. I really want to get things taken care of at work. I'm really excited about Microsoft and I want to get started.

That's all. Hopefully I can stop posting these entries as "Friend-only" once I give official notice...

[Edit: Made post public]

Change is in the air. I can smell it like the scent of fresh rain. I have landed myself a job at Microsoft.

If all goes well, the background check will be completed early this week and I will be able to turn in my notice to IGT. This is an exciting and scary step. The interview was wicked-hard. The people were wicked-smart. I'm looking forward to learning quite a bit working with them.

I know to whom I will report. His name was in the offer letter. After googling him, I found quite a few accomplishments to his credit. He also interviewed me, and seemed angry. Luckily he seemed to warm up at the end of the interview.

The interview was 5 hours long. I had 5 separate highly intelligent software engineers ask me very tough questions. Each interview was about 50 minutes, then they would usher me back into a main waiting room and gossip about what I knew and didn't know. This way the next interviewer could refine their questions even more than the last. They were zeroing in on my skills and knowledge.

It appears that I will be working in the Windows Serviceability Team. They work on Service Packs for all operating systems currently supported. They make things work better, fix security holes, and generally do some pretty cool stuff.

The benefits are AWESOME. They will pay for all our relocation costs and even hand out some spending money to make sure we can hook up power/cable without issue. They have a "Relocation Specialist" that I will contact. Realtor fees on our current and new home will be paid by them.

I've been thinking about my resignation letter to IGT. It will be tough to write. IGT has been a love-hate relationship for me. I have loved the company, but sometimes loathed the work. I know there are negative issues to deal with at Microsoft -- or any company -- but I think my ethical issues will be less at Microsoft than at IGT.

Very excited. Now I need to wait for the background check to be done. I REALLY want to notify IGT as soon as possible. I want the various projects I'm working on now to succeed. This is important to me and I'd love to spend a lot of time with hand-offs, but at the same time I was told Microsoft is looking forward to having me work there ASAP as well.

--

I'm hanging out the airplane door. I've already paid my dues, spent my time studying, and now I'm ready to take the jump. It's exciting and I hope the parachute opens...

pkitten and I are in Yuma, Arizona for a family emergency. My grandmother is terminally ill and will pass on in a few days at the most. Hospice care is provided and she is comfortable.

I really think it's a blessing that she is comfortable. They have got her on some very good pain medication and she has actually been able to get some sleep. I think rest and visiting with family will help ease the journey.

It's tough, it's sad. It's a part of life that no one wants to think about. Make the best of what you have. Drink less, think more, forgive and forget, and have a good ride.

---

Some background on Yuma:

Their high school mascot are the "Criminals." No, I'm not joking. I have a picture to prove it.



It's right on the border of California/Arizona/Mexico. It's very hot.

... I am addicted to COPS!!!

I really wish I could kick this addiction, but I just love the forced dialogue, poorly constructed social commentary, the crazy criminals and, last but not least, the mustaches!

---

I feel my own mustache fighting for freedom. Free the mustaches! Respect my authoriton!

---

Why must cops always have mustaches? I know someone that is switching careers from software engineer to police officer. I must purchase him a mustache so he will have one until he can grow his own.

I also think I need a stab-vest.

I haven't posted in a little while and I'd like to stay current.

I'm doing some fun things at work. PCI Card BIOS Extension ROM stuff for authentication purposes. It's nice to think about all the ways I can make the boot process more secure. I also have the ability to enhance the update procedures for these products. I can allow the host Operating System to download it's own replacement, and then have the BIOS install the new OS from downloaded data. I can install directly from USB thumb drive, etc...

These things make me happy. I have also successfully talked to a proprietary PCI card (designed by IGT) using the BIOS extension code -- mapping PCI BARs to correct locations and then reading / writing data to specific registers on the card. It made me happy when I got that working. It feels good to learn how that stuff works, and see how design can move from BIOS to PCI FPGA code (I've never done FPGA code though, but I'd like to at some point) and then to conventional media like hard drives or USB thumb drives.

It's highly technical work and it's challenging to me. I like it.

I'm also trying to cook up some other good stuff all the time. OpenGL, HLSL, etc... These things interest me and I like working on them.

I think I've gotten to the point where if I wanted to make a hand-held device boot and do useful things I could. I've been thinking about messing around with some sort of nano-itx or pico-itx boards to see what I can do.

That pico-itx board really makes me want to think of some project to use it. It's just super neat!