Company Parties and Recruiting

This evening my company had a party. The idea was by having a good party with our building mates and prospective hires that we would build a reputation as being a fun place to work. And we are a pretty fun place to work.
Today's party was the first time that I actually hung out with everybody. Usually I'll hang around for 10 minutes or so and cal it good and go back to work. I decided today that I deserved to actually party with everybody else. Why is it that the engineers are usually still slaving away while everybody else is partaking in the fun activities that we have? I'm guessing it's a combination of the stereotypical lack of social skills thing and the sheer volume of work that there is. It was hard to not work while being at work and knowing how much there is to get done before the demo. And I'm leaving in a couple work days for a week.
After the company party I headed to the the orbit room to meet up with an old friend who moved away to Ann Arbor. She was briefly in town for a wedding. I'm glad I got to see her because besides being a really amazingly cool person, she always reminds me that I can be a better person in so many ways. I'm in no way stuck here, I choose every minute to be the person I am, right here and right now. In her past she really worked on herself and her issues as as project, and she came out of that a much happier, better adjusted and motivated person. She moved away to go to grad school and pursue a dream that I think all of her work made her realize that she deserved to have. And not later, but now.
She's one of my amazing and inspiring friends. My hat is off to her.

New Toys and One Hand Tied Behind My Back

That's my cat. Isn't she cute?
This picture was taken with the camera found in my new laptop.
I recently got a pretty nice MacBook Pro from work. It's a really nice computer. I decided on a mac because I really wanted to try one and I wasn't that committed to the development tools I use currently. I thought it would be cool to make a mac my primary platform and see what all the fuss was about.
Well, so far, I think the fuss is over nothing. Right now I prefer my pc. There's several reasons for this. The first is that I know all the shortcuts and tricks for getting done what I'm doing at any time on my pc. This is something I expect will fade into the distance as I get 'seasoned' with the mac. The second is that the interface is really slow on the mac. I think they do that on purpose. I know it's not the hardware, because this computer has 4 gigs of ram. Yes, it's crazy, true, and blew my knee high socks off when I figured it out. I guess ram just ain't as expensive as it used to be. Well, that's about it for now. It'll be pretty interesting to see what I say in several months when I'm finally used to this os. I have to say that I really like the fact that this is unix. I like that alot.
The picture above was taken with the camera in my laptop. How weird is that?

Burning man is 7 days away exactly. Right now next week, we should be driving away towards Black Rock City, or at least finishing up packing, I hope.

Four Post Cage

After work on Friday I met my honey pot at the ramp with another friend and had a drink.
Afterwards I spent the rest of my evening hanging around the house. I can't even think of what I did exactly.
Saturday we went out to breakfast and then ran some Burning Man errands. We only have this next weekend to prepare. Tick tock.
Later on we went to our friends going away BBQ at her parents house. I'm pretty sure that they purchased the house brand new and it was very large. They mentioned how the birds were less frequently around there as the developments were being built further down the canyon. My honey pot mentioned how it was so similar to Southern California. There was a hill brown with dryness and the sun was hot and bright.
Today we had a burning man meeting and organized ourselves. I really like that our camp this year doesn't include any new burners, and that there aren't any crazy projects. I say this because it means our camp is so simple. Everybody knows what needs to be done to get there easily and be well prepared, and there aren't any crazy projects consuming tons of time.
After the meeting we went juggling, and I passed with a group of 7 people together! I didn't last very long, but it was pretty fun. I burned out playing pretty quickly because the throws I was receiving were so much harder to catch than the great ones my honey pot throws. I think when I get more comfortable with clubs, I'll try passing with the group again.
Afterwards, yar came over and we hung out. We played some games and brainstormed bm projects. There's a lot of creativity flowing right now. Tis the season.
I'm having a hard time imagining getting done the amount of work that needs to happen in this next week. It's downright scary. It'll be really good to have this vacation after this coming week and a couple days. Our project demos on the 30th. Yikes!

Sleepy, Sleepy and Worky, Worky

I'm so tired right now. This past week I've been having that heavy eye lid thing where I feel like I'm about to just drop into a deep slumber right were I am. It's pretty intense. Work is really busy and I'm working a lot harder lately to make our deadlines.

In fact, I'm just going to go sleep instead of writing this.

Kitty Food and Natural Gas Cars

I just got my new car!
It's so exciting, I can't even describe it.

A friend of mine bought it brand new two years ago, and she's leasing it to me for the next year while they live in another country. The car is a 2005 Honda Civic that runs on natural gas. It can go about 200 miles on a full tank. Besides not using gas, I can also drive over the Bay Bridge without paying the $4 toll, and I can even drive in the car pool lane without having anybody else in the car. As somebody who commutes across that bridge everyday, and usually sits in the backed up traffic, this is pretty special. I'm really glad that I have the opportunity to check out this natural gas car. Maybe I'll go ahead and buy one myself in a year.

The other exciting thing about this car is that it's so new and nice inside. Ooooh La La. I've been driving beaters, or at least old cars, my entire life. For example, take my current car. It's a 1986 VW Jetta Diesel that has over 250,000 miles on it. Yes, that's a quarter of a million miles. Since I've moved to this area I've had 5 windows and 4 stereos stolen. Currently, I just have a hole where the stereo should be, and a bunch of wires hanging out.

We were driving to dinner tonight to celebrate and I was playing this great cd. I noticed that the music moved from one side of the car to the other, and I mentioned it to my honey pot. He made some comment about stereo music. I was listening to stereo music in my car with quality speakers!! How exciting! Yes, I've never had a car with stereo, or at least speakers good enough that you would notice such a thing. I'm so looking forward to rocking out with loud music in this car, my car for now. I'm going to sing at the top of my lungs.

The other exciting and mystifying thing that happened is that Stella seems to love her new food. She's a rather finicky cat, and we recently ran out of her cat food. The one she's been eating for 6 1/2 years. It's good food, made well, with good ingredients. That normally isn't such an issue because I would normally go out and get more. Not this time. The company discontinued making it. I immediately started envisioning my cat, near death, all waif like, refusing to eat because of her missing favorite cat food. Stella needed food, so I bought a random bag of other good food and worried about the future. But when I opened the bag, she seemed excited by it. So I put a scoop in her bowl next to what was left of her old food and went to work. When I got home, she had picked out the new food and left the old food cold and alone in the bowl. Stella seems to love the new food even better than the old! I'm so glad that this was a smooth transition. It could have been really difficult.

In other news, my honey pot and I leave in 14 days for Burning Man! I can't believe how little we've prepared so far. I have done nothing except realize last Sunday that I hadn't even thought about it. Usually by now my honey pot would be so into his projects that I wouldn't have seen him for 4 weeks already. But this is our year of no projects. I like it better this way. We'll be out there a little under 6 days. I was describing it to a co-worker and I felt myself begin to get really excited. It's been slow coming because of the large project we're in the midst of at work right now. I almost feel like I shouldn't be going because it'll be in the absolute worst time for this project. But I can't move this event. If I was going on a vacation that I could change the dates of, I probably would. But I can't. So it is what it is and I'm going.

Blogger is Having Issues

What is up with the missing images on the left? Notice the question marks. Somebody (I'm going to blame the intern here) probably erased an image off a server somewhere. And now, our little expanding rows show questions marks instead of side ways triangles. The nerve..

Beaches, Sun and Sand

This weekend was really fun. It started on Thursday when a friend of ours showed up at games night. He's here visiting for a couple days from New Zealand. Him and his wife are the ones that I'm going be visiting and traveling with in October.

At the end of games he suggested that we all get together on Friday at our place. So we had a bunch of the gamers and jugglers over on Friday night (Yar was there too). The gathering lasted until a little before 3 am and it was fun. I won this new version of Settlers of Cataan called Cities and Knights. (I love this game, so much more than the unexpanded Settlers game which isn't very dynamic. If you place wrong at the start of the game it's almost impossible to win.)

On Saturday, I went into the city with a friend and her two little girls and had brunch at this great restaurant that's owned by her husband. (I can't tell you how exciting it is to watch a friend of mine have success in a business venture like this. It's so impressive!) I always enjoy spending time with her (and him too), though I have to admit that sometimes hanging out with two one year olds can be a little much. (Which is more evidence to me that I shouldn't have kids now.) I'm always excited to see them and watch them grow. I have some other friends that I need to start hanging out with more, because I don't get to see them enough.

After brunch I met some folks in the park, including my honey pot. There was sun, juggling and reading. I'm getting to a point where I can actually juggle and pass clubs. This weekend I did four passes, which is pretty darn good. I'd be so much better if I practiced every week, but I haven't been.

Following the park I walked up Telegraph Ave and ended up in one of my favorite Indian restaurants for dinner. I pulled out my book and had a lovely time reading and people watching. I was really tired when I got home an I took a several hour nap. Delicious. Then I called my sis and caught up a bit.

Today we got up and tried a new (to us) breakfast spot in Piedmont. It was pretty good, and the best part is that it wasn't even half full at any point when we were there. It's the new secret breakfast spot. Yeah! And we could walk there next time because it's not that far away.

After breakfast we headed to our friend's gathering on the beach south of Pacifica. We hung out and played frisbee, drank beer, and were amazed at how cold the ocean was. As Sarah said "it's cold enough to give you an ice cream headache on your feet." Yes, that's California ocean water. Well, northern california ocean water. While I was there I had the unique opportunity to pop a squat near what I noticed later to be a decaying seal carcass. Lucky me, I didn't even smell it. It wasn't until I brought some other carcass curious folks there that I caught a wiff of it at it's strongest. Wowzers. It was a nice day hanging out and some interesting adventures.

Our friends who had the gathering (because he's having is bday today) just got married about a month ago. And they just bought a house in Potrero Hill. They're planning on gutting the entire thing themselves. I think they're crazy, but I'm happy to help. My honey pot and I put in an offer on a place like that in San Francisco. That house needed to be torn down to it's frame and reworked from there up. I have to say that I'm so glad we didn't get that house. I'm not sure we would have made it through that process. And I'm a little scared for the amount of work that sits in front of our friends now.

And the last thing I did was cold chill at home before I had to go to bed and start the week over again. It's really important to me to have this 'down' time before my week starts. Some people recharge by hanging out with others, while I recharge by being alone. I'm more relaxed and content when I have my laundry done and some lunch set up before I go to bed. And this event packed weekend I even got that! Sweet!