Last night was the Goodrich SRS Holiday Extravaganza… went with me, and we met up with and Michelle, as well as with many of my coworkers. To be honest, it was kinda bogus… It was like a wedding reception, complete with bad DJ. It also doesn’t help that the mean age of my company is probably 55-60… I did win a \$100 AmEx Gift Cheque in a drawing, so I clearly can’t complain about that… I just wish some of the other younger people (Garrett, Steve, the co-ops, etc) were there to even things out a bit…

We delivered a slow version of my project to the customer for a demo they are doing next week (the reason I was going to VA at one point, but I guess the customer changed their mind about having the vendors there). They actually seemed happy with it, at least, happy enough for the demo… But it’s going to take months for us to speed it up to proper levels, though, and so I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the end.

I have been assigned as “software lead” for my current project. Now I feel like the captain of a sinking ship. What really frustrates me is that I don’t view our problem as software problems, they are design problems (algorithms dreamed up by systems engineering, not software engineering)… I’m sure I could tighten things up and make them a few ms faster, but really the problem needs an order of magnitude or two, not a few ms here or there….

Bought a few CDs today… The new Deluxe Edition of “The Downward Spiral” and Kaada/Patton “Romances”… I also successfully sold the Boston Pops tickets I had bought for for Christmas… I screwed up and bought the tickets for the wrong day, and by the time I realized it it was too late, all the shows before she left had been sold out. So saves the day and dropped by this evening to take them off my hands… And here I was thinking I had crazy swerve coming up with an awesome xmas present…. :(

and Audra went to check out Ray but I just wasn’t feeling social tonight… I stayed home and watched VH-1 crap pop-almanac shows and ordered expensive take-out via DiningIn.

Finished Half-Life 2 tonight, it was quite a fun game… That game pretty much pre-empted any other game I was playing, so I will probably return to the PS2 games I was playing before that game came along.

Today was an awfully frustrating day at work… I got in, and as soon as I got into my cube the Imaging Science guy working on my project told me that he wanted me to merge in some performance improvements I wrote early last week… At the time we decided to hold off on any changes because we have a demo next week and didn’t want to introduce regressions. Well, I guess last night/this morning he decided that we really needed those speed improvements so he asked me to do some merging. I spent the first few hours of the day kicking it Vsplit style in Vim doing the merging by hand. Apparently my “team” decided without consulting me to change a bunch of shit for no reason, like removing braces around one-line condiitonals, and frustrating things like this. Refusing to let my beautiful code be gang-raped, I took the merge time to “fix things up again”. Surprisingly, other than two missing semicolons, the code worked! I had thought of a few more ways to improve speed, so I took this opportunity to implement them (which also terribly simplified a few parts of the code). We tested it, and it showed an order of magnitude improvement in most cases, and cut the time of one particularly intensive function in half. Pretty significant, but apparently not enough for him… He felt that the speed up wasn’t significant enough to risk regresssions in our shipping product, and he was looking for ANOTHER order of magnitude. So really, my work was rushed and mostly for naught.

So it’s ok to import drugs from Canada sometimes.

The Mark Hosler talk last night was great, he showed many short films that have been made for their old music, and gave a good (if abbreviated) history of Negativland. I’m really, really glad I went.

I decided last night to take today as a mental health day, so I called in sick. I am still going to the Mark Hosler talk tonight, though, so should drop a line if he needs more info.

I remembered one of the major things I was talking about during the missing PhonePost in my last day in Texas. Steve and I were driving to dinner, and we passed by this house with all kinds of holiday lights, etc. On the roof was spelled “Happy Birthday”, and I thought to myself “Who would go to all that trouble for someone’s birthday?” Then I realized they were wishing Happy Birthday to Jesus. I’m a heathen.

Saw Bill Maher last night with at the Orpheum. Was better than I expected, wasn’t much rehash from other times I’ve seen him on TV, and it was way better than the often over-cooked monologues he gives before “Real Time”. My seat had a spring that was sticking into my ass and tore a hole in them. I’m going to write a letter to the Orpheum. In other comic news, Corinna spotted this in the menu for the local chinese take-out place:

Tonight I am heading out with the SNFC to catch Sex is Comedy, and tomorrow I am see Mark Hosler from Negativland give a talk entitled “Adventures in Illegal Art” with Audra and , which should be very interesting.

The Pixies were astounding last night…. I know they’ve been touring together for awhile now, but from the way they sounded last night you’d never guess they took a decade off. Mission of Burma opened, a band I’ve heard lots about but heard little of. They were pretty enjoyable, way more than the other opener, The Bennies. The lead singer was wheelchair-enabled, which evoked bad associations with South Park, but even after I got past that I couldn’t get into the music at all…. Way to whiny and emo for my tastes..

Might have to pop into work some this weekend… Feeling a bit better about this project, though.

I get to see the Pixies tonight. Suck it.

I had a second phonepost I left last night that Frank the Goat seems to have lost… I will try to remember what I said in that post tomorrow, when I am a little less frazzled. In the time being, it’s nice to be back in Boston. Here is a stupid internet meme that my sisters did, so I feel obligated to participate in.

• Using band names, spell out your name.

• S - Skinny Puppy

• E - Elvis Costello and the Attractions

• A - Aphex Twin

• N - Nine Inch Nails

• Have you ever had a song written about you? Yes, wrote a silly song for me at this year’s Halloween Party

• What song makes you cry? I’ve cried to Talking Heads’ “Heaven” a few times.

• What song makes you happy? Talking Heads’ “Don’t Worry About The Government”

• What do you like to listen to before bed? Aphex Twin’s “Selected Ambient Works Vol. II

• Appearance

• Height: 5'10”

• Hair color: Brown

• Skin color: Pink

• Eye color: Blue or Green depending on light, but my license says blue

• Piercings: None

• Tattoos: None

• Right Now

• What Color Pants are you Wearing? Blue Striped Jammies

• What Song are you Listening to or Watching? Nothing, but “Right Now” by Van Halen is stuck in my head for obvious reasons

• What Taste is in Your Mouth? Blood (from flossing my teeth for the first time in forever)

• What is the Weather Like? Cold and Rainy

• How Are You? Swell, now that I am not in Texass anymore

• Do you:

• Get Motion Sickness? Funny you ask, I got queasy on the last flight today… Probably because I chugged a margarita before getting on the plane. Normally I only get sick in cars with “floaty” suspensions or when reading.

• Have a Bad Habit? I am addicted to Coke Classic.

• Get Along With Your Parents? Absolutely

• Favorites

• TV Show? Good Eats, of course

• Magazine? Rolling Stone, I guess, I don’t read many magazines anymore

• Soda? Coke

• Thing to do on the Weekend? Lounge, and watch movies with the SNFC

• Have you

• Broken the Law? Every time I get in my car.

• Snuck out of the house? Don’t think so…

• Made a prank phone call? Absolutely

• Ever tipped over a porta pottie? Nope.

• Used your parents’ credit card? Nope

• Skipped School Before? A few times.

• Fell asleep in the shower/bath? No.

• Been in a school play? No.

• Let a friend cry on your shoulder? Yes.

• Ever had a major regret? Yes.

• Love

• Boyfriend? No.

• Girlfriend? Yes, the lovely and talented

• Children? Only a few bastards left behind in Rochester

• Had a hard time getting over someone? Yes.

• Your greatest regret? The hidden donkey.

• Random

• Do you have a job? Finally.

• Your cd player has in it right now? My car CD player has the new U2 cd in it, I believe.

• If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Gay question.

• What makes you happy? Airline on A&E

• Who makes you the happiest? Me.

• What’s the next cd you’re gonna get? Maybe the remastered Nine Inch Nails “The Downward Spiral (Special Edition)?

• Who do you consider good friends? Admiral Ackbar says this question is a traaaap. I have lots of good friends, but the ones who have been there the longest are , Johnny, and James.

• When/What was the last?

• Time you cried? I think I got a little misty at “Kinsey” during Lynn Redgrave’s scene

• You got a real letter? Probably when I was living in NJ.

• You got e-mail? I constantly get e-mail.

• TV Program you watched? Ken Jennings’ Streak-Ender on Jeopardy.

• Movie you saw at the theater? Kinsey

• Your thoughts on

• Abortion? I don’t have a vagina, so I don’t get to make vagina rules. And really, if I were able to make vagina rules, I wouldn’t waste my vagina rule on abortion. I would clearly make a rule having something to do with ready and open access to vaginas by me.

• Teenage smoking? Smoking is vile.

• Spice Girls? Sporty.

• Downloading music illegally? I don’t judge, but I think as much as the record labels blow, at least the artist gets SOMETHING by buying the songs. IMHO, the bigger the artist, the less I worry about people pirating their music. Small, no-name, indie bands? Do the right thing.