Yay, earplugs!

I bought some earplugs to block out the engine noise on my flights last week. They're doing a nice job with the Evil Wind, as well. Take that, forces of nature! I can't hear you!

Clapotis is finished

This morning I unraveled the last of the dropped stitches and wove in the ends on my Clapotis, so now it just needs to be blocked a bit. I didn't actually have is done in time for the wedding, but the weather was warm enough that I didn't really need it anyway. It provided a project to keep me occupied on the plane and in the hotel room, so it served a good purpose. I may actually even wear it some this summer.
Categories: knitting, Clapotis

Geek codes

Similar to the good, old geek code, we have the blogger code.
Here is mine: B5 d- t- k s u-- f- i o++ l c (decode it here)

Even better, there is a knitter's geek code. There are some tools online, including this decoder.

-----BEGIN KNITTER'S GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version:1.1
KECLR++ Exp+ SPM+++ Steel+ Wood Bam(-) Pl(-) Cas? AddiT>++ Den? Boye(+) Syn- Nov-- Cot Wool++ Lux Hemp? Stash++>- Scale+ Fin Ent FI+ Int Tex+ Lace++ Felt Flat-- Circ++ DPN+ ML+ Swatch- KIP++ Blog+ SNB- EZ++ FO+++ WIP Gauge@ L+ F++ S++ DK W+ B- Wv+>++ Sp+
------END KNITTER'S GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Giving in to the Clapotis

I started a Clapotis today. Unlike most of the pictures out there, I am not using a colorful yarn. I'm making it from a cone of some off-white slubby rayon yarn that has been in my stash for ages. I'm going to a wedding this weekend and realized I might need a little something for my arms, but my dressy lace shawl is too small and lightweight, and my other wool shawls are both too warm and too casual. This pattern is so mindless that I can just churn it out while reading code and papers. I'm purling the stitches to be dropped, so I don't need to use any stitch markers. We'll see if I can get it done before the rehearsal dinner on Thursday.
Categories: knitting, Clapotis

Susan Across the Ocean

I started this post about two weeks ago (shortly after the evening described), but was interrupted and forgot about the draft in progress until now. I suppose that's one way to have a blog topic handy.

A couple of weeks ago at the linguistics happy hour (Yes, a computer scientist and her physicist husband hang out with linguists. These things happen.), a conversation about music veered off into the land of "what might have been". One of the guys brought up a song he liked, called Susan Across the Ocean, about a man thinking back to a love of his youth and wondering, although he was happy with his life and his wife, what would have happened if he had made a different choice. The question is: do you have a "Susan Across the Ocean"? The results were rather mixed amoung the group.

The original fellow told a tale of the short relationship he had one summer when he was younger and living on a friend's couch. It had ended when one of them moved away, before either of them could discover what a jerk the other one was. (He's a bit cynical.)

A well-travelled student had left many "Susans" all over the world, or perhaps he is their "Susan", since he was the one who ended up leaving to return to the States.

Others denied having a "Susan" in their pasts, either from lack of relationships or because of a solid break in the relationship.

I initially didn't think I had a "Susan", since for the most part, I have had some contact after the end of the relationship, giving me some idea of what might have been had we continued. However, upon further consideration, I do have several points in my life where I could have taken a different path (not all involving a romantic relationship). I am happy with my life, but sometimes wonder what my life would be like if I had made different choices. My imagination is good enough that I can imagine a valid path from my other options (at least for a while. I can't predict my future in this timeline, much less a whole multiverse of them.)

What would my life be like if I...

• ...had been bolder?
• ...applied to a different set of schools?
• ...didn't put off deciding for so long?
• ...didn't oversleep that day?
• ...went out that time I stayed home?
• ...stayed home that time I went out?

When my mind wanders, I sometimes ponder an alternate history of my life, often finding a way to end up at about the same place by a different path.
Categories: relationships, memories, music

I'm going mad!

The wind is howling outside my office window. When it comes from a certain direction, it generates some sort of high-pitched whine on this side of the building. At times like this, I can start to understand how settlers on the plains could be driven insane by the wind. Earlier this afternoon, before the wind escalated, there was some sort of construction work going on nearby, so I've been unsuccessfully attempting to block out noise with music all day.

On top of the noise, I have a bit of a headache from caffeine withdrawal (no doubt aggravated by the Evil Wind), so today has been disappointingly unproductive. I was getting an unexpected error with code that was working yesterday, and in the process of moving the working copies to the side to check out a fresh copy from the repository, I deleted the new files that had yet to be added to the project. I was thinking "mv" but typed "rm". D'oh! The new classes didn't have any real content yet, mostly some copy-paste find-replace boilerplate stuff, so I should be able to regenerate them quickly, once I can think straight again. Perhaps the wind will be blowing on the other side of the building on Monday. Perhaps I should invest in a pair of earplugs.

Anyway, it's definitely time for me to wrap things up and go home. We have some Chicken Kiev to assemble.
Categories: work

Why are you standing outside my office door?

I just had to close my office door because there are at least four people standing around talking in the hallway. I'm not sure why they have congregated there. My office is in the middle of a long hallway, so there isn't really any landmark to attract them. This isn't the first time it has happened. It creeps me out a little, making me feel like I'm on display. I'm glad I have a real office with a door for times like these.
Categories: work

My tongue is blue

I swiped a Jolly Rancher from the bowl on the secretary's desk on my way back from the watercooler and am now stained with the shame of my sugar habit. It's the mark of sugarcane!

Happy Pi Day!

It's Pi Day once again. Let's all have some pie. Mmmm... π...

D'oh! for_each != transform

The bug I mentioned last week was a really stupid case of calling the wrong function to manipulate a container. The really stupid part of it was that I was previously calling the correct thing, but then changed it when I was moving some code around. Why I chose to explicitly retype the code, introducing an error, rather than just cutting and pasting, I do not know. My brain was pretty well gone at the time I did that. At least it didn't take me too terribly long to find the problem today.
Categories: work, programming

Pictures mean so much

My mother just emailed me some recent pictures of my niece. She's so lovely I could almost cry. I love living here in the Southwest, but I really do wish that it were easier to visit my family. I've updated my desktop wallpaper on my work computer, so now I have a four-month-old toothlessly grinning at me when I minimize my windows. That will have to do for now.

Winter and wind

It seemed that spring was arriving with all the wind we've had lately, but this morning we woke up to find snow all over the yard. The wind is still here, too, so it is hard to tell if the snow is still falling or if I'm just seeing flakes being blown off the roof. We went to the library yesterday, so I'm thinking that today would be a good day to curl up on the couch with a book.

My Brain is Drained

I did a major change to one of my classes today. I finally got the compiler to accept it without barfing giant template system error messages all over the place about an hour ago, but now it is crashing. At least it is hitting one of my idiot checks and spitting out an error before segfaulting. I'm tired, hungry, and in no shape to track down a runtime error. As much as I dislike turning my back on broken code, I'm going home now. I'll deal with this later, after food and sleep. The only question is, is this important enough for me to come in on my Friday off?
Categories: work, programming

We are sinking!

My husband showed me this video the other day, so I'm sharing it with all of you. I'm also trying out Google Video's ability to embed a movie in my site.

So many mutants!

Have you seen the trailer for the upcoming X-Men movie? How are they going to fit all of that into one movie? So many mutants, so much angst, so many things going "boom!" Whee!

Annoying allergies

Up until now, I've not had a noticeable allergic reaction to any substance, but this year the junipers have overwhelmed me. Apparently it is a particularly bad year, affecting even those of us who usually don't have bothersome allergies. As I tried to fall asleep last night, my eyes were so dry that it felt like I had little wads of cotton shoved under my eyelids. That may also explain the mild headache I had the previous afternoon. If my reaction was that bad, I shudder to think of what it is like for my husband. Of course, he's always doped up on Allegra or something similar, so perhaps the drugs buffered the full impact of the junipers.

Fortunately, I felt just fine after a nice steamy shower this morning, so I guess I managed to wash off the irritating juniper pollen. Spending most of the day indoors at work probably helps, too. Yesterday, I took a couple of long walks around the neighborhood, exposing myself to whatever Nature wanted to throw at me.