14 hour day

I had a lot to do today. Most of it got done.

Some will have to be tackled tomorrow.

What a crappy day.

Listen, you have to leave comments

I know there are two or three of you out there reading this blog, my only regular and reliable communication to the world outside Reston. I'm going to try and be better about emails and such, but for the time being, this is what I can manage to find time for.

The reason I know there are a handful of you out there is that you guys leave comments. If you're reading and not leaving comments, well . . . start.

Here's how:

To leave a comment and brighten my day, click on the link that says something to the effect of "0 comments" at the bottom of the post.

Then, you'll see a screen wherein you can put all manner of delightful words. The sublime and silly are accepted with equal joy.

If you're logged in as a googler, your comment will be posted under your name. Otherwise, choose a handle or post as anonymous.

So, what's on your minds?

Garmin update

The garmin returned to life once I plugged it in to my computer via the usb. It still can't find a satellite though, so it's graduated from "night-light" to "frustrating little map of a stretch of 495 where it died last night".

Improvement!

I'll take it back to Best Buy in the hopes that I got a singularly deffective unit. I've taken a lot of things back to Best Buy recently, hmmm.

I'm also going to unload my car and thereby undo the effects of the last month of unpacking, but that's another story.

I expect that, since I slept til 11:30 thanks to being up half the night driving, there will be breakfast. Kevin, you didn't take all your food out of the cabinets, so I'm eating your cereal.

My garmin is now a night-light

I'm so mad!

Fewer than 12 hours ago, I loved my new garmin nuvi. I'm new to D.C. and I don't have a great grasp of geography, so having a tiny box to tell me where to go is fantastic. It's like being in a relationship but without all that inconvenient sex. Plus, I can learn my way around without the usual adventures where you end up driving around West Baltimore with the doors locked, for instance.

Then, at 2:30 AM or so, on my drive back from NYC (where the Garmin gamely took me this morning) it stopped doing anything at all. I'd been getting goofy messages from it earlier. Like it told me that it was running low on battery and would be shutting down now, thanks very much - despite being all plugged into the cigarette lighter and whatnot. Still, I pulled over and unplugged it, plugged it back in again, and we chalked it up to miscommunication.

Then, just as I get to the tricky part of the trip home; the part near my new place; the part of the trip that is neither entrenched in long-term memory, nor a variation on "stay on I-95", the little bastard up and dies. It showed nothing on the screen and was basically a night-light as shown above.

I muddled my way out after getting off the highway to look for a gas-station, finding instead a spot that looked like a cross between a state park and a CIA emplacement. I tried to reboot the Garmin, by, you know turning it off and on again, but that didn't take because it wouldn't turn off! I've left it on the floor now in the hopes that it's battery will in fact die during what little's left of the night.

I'm home now, no thanks to the Garmin. I'm pissed off to have spent an extra half-hour dragging my sorry ass around the greater D.C. area when I should have been sleeping. I've learned two things: First, I should have 2-D maps in the car just in case. Second, GPS systems need to have better redundancy. Maybe not a lot of them are being used at 2:00 AM when it's hard to find someone to give you real directions, but the point is that sometimes they are. If your product does something potentially very important and its failure can strand a user, then it shouldn't fail.

Marmite - Now for . . . baking? Surely not!

Attribution: bunchofpants

This post will amuse only my English reader(s?) and those otherwise familiar with marmite (or marmoset as my friend Mike Elkins likes to call it).

I was in the grocery store today looking for sugar-free brownie mix (with no bloody luck, I'll add). Predictably, I was in the "Baking Needs" section of the supermarket. Less predictably, somewhat troublingly actually, I ran into Marmite there. It brought me up short, I'll tell you.

For those of you who don't know, Marmite is yeast extract British people spread on their children's bread to acclimate the wee darlings to a lifetime of eating horrible British food. It tastes rather like slightly bitter salt and you should probably never ever eat it unless you were raised on it. I love it!

I was excited to see some Marmite in my local grocery, since it's not always available and for God's sake, I live in the South now. I was horrified to see it in the "Baking" section though, because it goes about as well with cake as Marie Antoinette.

I worked out the odd logic when I noticed it was surrounded by Fleischmann's yeast, so I told a somewhat uninterested shop manager that he might have a miscategorization on his hands, a miscategorization that could lead to a violent revolution involving beheadings if anyone tried using Marmite as yeast for . . . well for anything.

As an interesting side note, Marmite and mashed banana on toast is lovely. Shut up, yes it is!

Also, take a look at Marmite's own site. This ad is pretty right on the money, although the amount she puts on her toast could probably kill a grown horse.

P.S. - while I was looking for an image of a marmoset, I found this adorable site. Look at it!

Seriously man, I'm working a lot

I'm not complaining, but I've already put in 12 and a half hours this week, 16 and a half if you count Sunday as the start of the week.

I'm not asking for pity or awe, so you know, don't gimme none. I'd like to make some observations though:

• When you spend a long time at work you start remembering the morning like it was yesterday. I had to think twice before walking home today because normally I bike but today I walked (thanks to that stinking fire alarm). However, I couldn't remember whether the fire alarm took place yesterday or today.
• You stop knowing what day it is. I'm familiar with this event from the other side. During the summer vacations I'd sometimes lose track of what day it was because, well, who cared.
  
• Work sucks most when you spend the first 8 hours of your day trying to clear your docket so you can get some work done in the latter 4.
• Work can be a gang of fun if you have 12 hours to dedicate to really working hard on an interesting project.
• It's important to make lists. I had the nagging feeling that I was running around in circles accomplishing nothing until I looked at yesterday's List Of Crap To Do and was able to cross off about 6 important tasks.

Have a good night all.

Fire alarm(s)

I'm at work earlier than I'd like to be. (I may be lazy, but I was also here for 4 hours yesterday on Sunday).

It's probably not a bad idea and I sort of wish I'd planned to be here at 7:30 on my own. However, what really impelled me out from between the covers this morning was a fire alarm. It's the second I've enjoyed since moving here 3 weeks ago.

The first one took me by surprise. It reminded me of work at CU. It's building-wide, the klaxons are loud as hell, doors close automatically, and I think lights flash. I scampered out my door, looked for neighbors doing the same, and followed them to safety. It turned out that some doofus backed into a sprinkler head in the parking basement and set off the alarm.

The one today I know less about except that it happened (thankfully) after I got out of the shower and was just thinking, "gosh, I'm up early, maybe I'll lie here for a moment and listen to NPR". Now I'm at work instead.

I talked with some neighbors standing like refugees in the rain outside and they tell me it happens rather a lot. When I worked at CU, we had a lot of fire drills. Many of them were popcorn related (don't ask), but many were also the indirect results of lab tests. We all grumbled about them, but you know, it seemed justifiable.

Now I'm in a residential building that seems to be matching pace with a business that occasionally test things by burning them.

On the plus side, Starbucks wasn't packed to the gills.

So, good morning! And remember, only you can prevent forest fires.