Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Constructed languages are cool!

Official Lojban Home Page

Creepy Naked Guy: The Return

He's back! I saw the creepy naked guy again last night. He was wandering around on the lawn in front of my building. Once again, he was gone before the cops arrived.

I've talked to the people in the leasing office and they said that they had reports of a naked guy in the complex last summer. Needless to say, they weren't pleased to learn that he has returned. It's something of a relief to learn that this is more of a local nut than someone who is just targeting me. They said they hadn't had any reports of him knocking on doors before, but it is possible that no one else had been awake to hear him if he did.

Anyway, I'm definitely going to stay alert (as if I could do otherwise with this creepiness going on), but for now this guy seems more pathetic than scary. (Especially when contemplated in the light of day.) Apparently, in one of the sightings last summer he was riding a bicycle around the tennis courts. I would think a man would be living somewhat dangerously to ride a bike naked!

The leasing office is going to see if they can get APD to up their patrols in the area or something, so we'll see what happens.
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Monday, June 28, 2004

Rain!

It's pouring rain outside! What is up with that? it has been raining for at least half an hour, possibly more. The temperature has dropped to the low 60s, wind is over 20 mph (gusting nearly to 40 mph), and we have already gotten over a half inch of precipitation.

It's almost like a summer storm back home in the Midwest.

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Dark clouds, no rain

The sky is dark, wind is blowing, and I'm hearing pre-storm sounds, but there is no rain. I think the weather is just taunting us today.

Your Money Or Your Life

My parents gave me the book Your Money Or Your Life for my birthday. I've been reading it lately. I really like the idea of separating the idea of work from paid employment. Also, it is important to separate who you are from what you do.

With getting married soon, it is probably a very good idea for us both to be more fiscally aware before we merge finances. I know we both live within our means, but how much within our means? At what point could we become financially independent? I should start tracking this stuff. (Well, first I'm going to finish the book. Then, I'll go back and start working through the steps it contains.)

Monday, June 21, 2004

I need a cell phone

I used to have a cell phone, but they don't have my provider out here. I want to have one to be in contact when, say, I'm out walking the recreation trail across the street. (Oh, who am I kidding, I just want to be able to talk on the phone while I'm in the laundry room folding my clothes.)

It would be helpful to have a cell phone when I'm traveling. I've been looking at Verizon Wireless, since they got pretty good marks in Consumer Reports. I need to decide how many minutes I would need in a plan. I'll think about it later. Right now, I want to get something to eat!

Hi, Mom! (I've been spotted!)

Oh, my! My mother has found her way from my wedding planning blog over to my general blog. I guess it is a good thing I didn't have any sort of "My mom is insane!" rants posted. (Not that I ever would, mind you. *grin*) Welcome and enjoy, Mom.

My blog also has a poetic comment from a total stranger. Cool! I guess it has been up long enough to be noticed. I'll have to take a closer look at her blog sometime, too. I'll save that for at-home websurfing, though. It's too easy to be sucked into reading extensive webpages so I must avoid such activity at work.

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

An excellent diversion

Button Men Online Web Game

Buttonmen is a fun dice game created by CheapAss Games. This online version is really fun to play, especially since it can be hard to find opponents in real life. (It's also hard to get enough dice in real life, but that is another matter entirely.)

Yay!

My agents actually build new stuff now!

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

I'm tired of thinking

I would go look up reception information tonight, but I've done a lot of coding today. I'm going to go see a cheap movie instead.

Monday, June 14, 2004

I need to shift back to days!

My wake-sleep cycle has been shifted off by several hours lately. (Creepy naked guy in the middle of the night didn't help that any. I haven't seen him again, fortunately. I'm hoping it was a one-time drunken idiot sort of thing.) I'd much rather be working something normal like 8-5, or 9-6, instead of the 11-8 I've slipped into of late. (I work 9 hour days Monday-Thursday and get alternate Fridays off.) I think I'll have to force myself to just go to bed really early to reset my clock. (Staying up and wrapping around never works very well, but I often tried it in college.)

I think I'm going to go bonkers with the wedding planning soon. My fiance will be going to a class out of town for a couple of weeks soon, so it would be really good to have most things nailed down before he is gone. Bleh! I can't believe some people actually enjoy planning these things.

Thursday, June 10, 2004

Creepy naked guy

Last night around 12:30 some weird naked guy came knocking on my door. He asked if I wanted to go swimming, told me not to be scared (yeah, that always reassures people!), and said he had enjoyed watching me. That last bit is what freaked me out enough to call the police. Of course, he was gone by the time they arrived. I had my fiance come over and stay to make me feel safe enough to sleep.

I'm not sure which is a creepier thought, that this nut might have been peeking past my bedroom blinds and watching me in some state of undress, or that he enjoyed watching me sit on the couch in my living room watching late-night television. Either thought is quite disturbing. I think I'll be keeping my blinds shut at night now.

I'm wondering where this guy came from. Does he live in my complex? Would I recognize him if I saw him in the mailroom? What would I do if I did?

*sigh* It's a strange world. I suppose that after enough time goes by, this will become one of those odd stories you tell at parties, but for now, I'm still a bit on edge.
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Wednesday, June 09, 2004

So dry...

I don't think to go get water when it isn't readily available.

I think I have a bit of a dehydration headache.

They must refill the water cooler! It's right by my office.

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

No water!

The watercooler in the hall has been completely empty since early yesterday afternoon. The next bottle delivery isn't until Thursday, I think. It's summer in the desert, people! We need more water! I'm just glad there is a drinking fountain down at the far end of the building so we don't get completely dried out.

Monday, June 07, 2004

Strange recipe

I was websurfing on Snopes and ran across a link for a turducken recipe. Apparently, it is a chicken inside of a duck inside of a turkey with different stuffings in between each layer. Seems like a lot of work for a dubious result.

Current Weather

If you are curious about what is going on outside where I am, one of the groups at Sandia National Labs has a current weather webpage that updates every minute.

My reach exceeds my grasp

I had such nice success at the end of last week that I tried to continue it this morning by adding a new clever trick to my code. Unfortunately, that broke the program in a mysterious way and I had to revert most of it back to the backup version. So much for being clever. Tomorrow, I'll come back and add the functionality with a more plodding, brute force technique. (I hate it when I have to resort to that.)

In other news, my fiance gave me the wonderful birthday present of a set of new bobbins for my spinning wheel! He used some nice, pretty wood for them. (Walnut, rosewood, and one other type that I can't remember.) Isn't he great? As soon as the finish is dry on them, I'm going to try them out spinning some more yarn for my mother's shawl.

Thursday, June 03, 2004

Back where I started again...

I've spent the past two days restructuring code and just now restored the original behaviour. At least I did find a couple of bugs in a code library.

I'm about to move some functionality into a new class. I'm hoping that it doesn't break it all over again.

Unlike when I was trying to get some toy project to work for a class in school, I actually care about doing this stuff right. (Well, I cared about it in school, too, but didn't have as much time to devote to it.) Once I finish getting this framework set up, we should see some impressive progress. Unfortunately, while I set up the framework, it doesn't look like much is happening. Oh well.

The wind is from the east today, so the humidity is all the way up to 20% or so. I never thought I'd be saying "up to" 20%. There are actually some clouds in the sky today. It was almost overcast this morning. I'm glad I flew back to my hometown for my sister's wedding last week. I was starting to miss rain.

It was a lovely wedding. I think they'll be very happy. Unfortunately for me, I no longer can use my sister's wedding to distract my mother from my own plans (or lack thereof). I have to get my act together!

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Afternoon slump

The sunlight through the window is making me sleepy.

Today I managed to locate a bug in someone else's code without making much progress on my own. I spent some time tidying up a couple of files while waiting for the bugfix.

Now it looks like the bug isn't completely gone. Maybe I should just go home. I stayed a bit late yesterday, so I could probably justify leaving work a little on the early side today, especially since I can't do much on that project until the problem is fixed. I know it is probably a problem with the bugfix, because I hadn't changed my part of the code there. Knowing it is "somebody else's problem" is occasionally good, as long as the "somebody else" does something about it in a timely fashion.

It's just one of those days.

I've been rearranging code today with nothing to show for it. *sigh*
Sometimes being a computer scientist can be rather frustrating.

My officemate is beating on some code with a metaphorical sledgehammer. I've
been there before.

Occasionally, I'd like to actually work with physical objects instead of
just manipulating a virtual world. I think that is part of the reason why I
enjoy knitting so much. There I actually can see what I have done, as
opposed to looking at an apparently unchanging computer.

Okay, grumbling break is over. Back to work!

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Mine! All Mine!

I paid off my car last month and just got the title in the mail today. No longer am I beholden to the Bank of America. The car is mine, free and clear.

If I were a pessimist, I would expect something to fall off the car tomorrow. :)