January 30, 2004

Almost There!

Michael at NI called yesterday to let me know that they have tentative approval on a job offer! Woo-hoo! They have to get it signed by the board, and the board meets Monday. So I'll know what the offer is by Tuesday.

I'm a bit nervous that they might give me a lame offer. We'll be putting me into a non-engineer-titled job to start with (specialist or something, I dunno) which is bound to pay less. The understanding is that we will work together to get me a degree pronto, whereupon I get a promotion and better pay.

So I just hope they offer me enough to pay my bills and get caught up in my debts. Otherwise I'll have a heck of a dilema on my hands.

Every once in a while, I get the urge to track down old friends. Not long ago the name Shannon Bunyard popped into my head, so I Googled her and found a reference! Keen! We hung out a long time ago, about the time I was breaking up with my first wife. That was a rough time, and she was a good friend then, so it's good to be back in contact.

There are other people I try to find from time to time, as well. My most best friend from California, Robert Cook, is one. Where the hell are you, Robert? I can't find you! Of course, he knew me as Brian Crouch, so it might be a trick for him to find _me_. I found Randy Eubanks, a mutual friend, but that contact didn't work out as well as it could have. I briefly found and then lost Sanjay Gidwani, you bastard, why did you disappear?

Then there is Megan Snyder, of the Eugene Snyder clan. Sally Kim from junior high in Long Beach, California (as if I'll ever find her, hah!).

I'm somtimes curious what has happened to Dennis Petrie, of Eugene. I still have the tapes for that show we did, "74.7".

And there are others. Right now my mind is blanking on their names, which is part of what slows down my searchs. Like most of the crew of the Starship Maelstrom... argh!

So if you knew Brian Crouch of Long Beach California (Lindbergh Junior High, Long Beach Polytechnic High) or Eugene Oregon (South Eugene High, University of Oregon), give me a ring, I'm feeling nostalgic this week.

As if this blog plea will do any good... who reads these things, anyway? But it certainly can't hurt.

Posted by Edwin at 08:15 AM | Comments (2)

January 28, 2004

More Bleh

Spent yesterday afternoon having a doctor stick his finger up my butt.

It turns out I probably just have an intestinal virus, even though it felt like a bunch of drunken Germans doing the Polka in there.

So Chapter 4 may be a bit weak. It's hard to be brilliant when your guts are being mangled by little bits of RNA in their little space capsules.

Viruses do seem a lot like aliens, with their little protein capsules, their little legs, their little RNA astronauts.

I wonder how Mars feels about our recent "probes".

Remember what I said about it being hard to be brilliant? It shows in this log entry, doesn't it...


Posted by Edwin at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)

January 27, 2004

Limbo

The cramps in my interior continued to get worse through Sunday, and Sunday night I was getting up every hour and a half trying to relieve the air pressure.

Monday, things felt better though a bit sore. It's still not "right" though.

I'm about six pages into the Electricity chapter... talking about electrons, charge, fields, the basic physics bits.

I hope the readers of this beginner's book don't object to all this groundwork! I'm hoping that a good grounding in the basics will make the advanced stuff easier. Or maybe I'll just confuse the crap out of everyone.

I was hoping to get a job offer from National Instruments early this week. Instead, I got a call from them saying they were still working on it, to keep my spirits up, and that they expect to be able to make an offer early NEXT week.

I hope they are right! It's not a sure thing until we all sign on the dotted line. So y'all keep your fingers crossed...

Posted by Edwin at 07:57 AM | Comments (0)

January 25, 2004

Ugh

I finished Chapter 3 _Simple Machines_ in the book, sent it out to my review team. I'm trying to get into Chapter 4 _Electricity_ right now, but my intestines hurt. Have been all day. Ugh.

Have I complained about my schedule recently? I love to complain about how overworked I am...

Saturdays I write for the book. Some Saturday evenings we go ballroom dancing.

Sundays I write for the book. Every Sunday evening at 6:30 we head over the Richard's place for our adventure game. Yes, I play D&D. Feel free to scorn me. Richard, by the way, is our dance teacher.

Mondays I work! Every other Monday night I go to ballroom dance lessons. The remaining Monday nights we play Star Saga at Tall Matt's. Once that is finished, I may move Even Friday board gaming to Monday.

Tuesdays I work! In the evening at 7:45 I do Tai Chi for 45 minutes at Tom Gohring's school of Tai Chi. Not counting travel times. Trivia fact, Joy Gohring, Tom's sister, has a new show coming out on the Oxygen channel.

Wednesdays I work! In the evening at about 7:00 I do Tai Chi leadership (going to lower-level classes to re-learn and also to set an example).

Thursdays I work! And Tai Chi leadership at 7:00 and my own class to follow at 7:45.

Fridays I work! And in the evening, starting at 7:30, we have group dance lessons.

Of course, Monday through Friday, I also squeeze in writing, since I need to do about 10 to 15 pages a week. A chapter a week, except for the "hard" chapters, where I give myself two weeks.

So, there's my bitching and moaning for today. I blame my intestines. Ugh.

Posted by Edwin at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2004

College Degree

So a few months ago I applied to the University of Texas in the hopes of _finally_ getting my college degree. I was getting interested in doing AI research or something high-level like that, and that paper would be my gateway to graduate work.

I was accepted and, slowly, as is the wont of giant organizations, all the bits and pieces got approved, including the ever-vital student loan. I have two lighweight classes this semester to "hold my place", as I try to get other bits of my life together. I also plan to test out of as many credits as humanly possible.

Fast forward a couple of months and I have the National Instruments job search. As of right now, it's teetering on the edge of an offer, but what the offer will be is up in the air.

The big holdup is my lack of degree.

Not unexpected. This is a part of a country where people seem to care more about such formalities. I'll still get a job there, it looks like, but without a good title or maybe making less money than I could be.

All the impediments go away once I get the paper.

This touches on one of my pet peeves. Will getting my degree really mean anything? Does it make me a better employee? Will it improve my programming skills?

Probably, to a small degree, yes. But not very much. It's like the discrimination given to women in business... and it irks me.

So now I'm looking to not get a CS degree, but to find a college within UT, or a different university even, where I can leverage testing, job skills, and evening classes to their fullest extent to slam a degree out of the way.

A degree gotten this way will have no meaning at all, other than I jump through hoops for a year or two. And THEN I can get back on track to actually learn something. In this respect, pushing for the quick degree so I can advance at NI will actually be impeding my education.

Go figure.

But NI only really understands college graduates. It's what they do, and I'm definitely throwing sand into their gears. They want to hire me, but are having trouble figuring out how to structure it.

I'm sure it's good for 'em. You know, like my dad calls it, "Another Fucking Growth Opportunity."

But me, I just want a job. Once I'm in, they can see what a great guy I am in person. I'll still probably have to have a degree to go anywhere, but at least I can eat while pursuing it.

Posted by Edwin at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2004

Productivity Virus

Have you ever heard of a productivity virus? You've seen them, even if you didn't know their name.

A productivity virus is something you find on the net that captures your attention enough to keep you from working. It eats your productivity, feeding on your attention.

So, yesterday I mentioned EHOWA? Their Tasteless Tuesday archives have been nibbling away at my attention. Those of you who know me won't be surprised, I suppose. But it's very annoying -- I have things to do! Pages to write!

On a more pleasant note, tonight we go to Friday dance lessons for the first time. Beginner stuff, stuff I already know, but it wll give me and Marla two hours of practice. And I'll get to practice with other dancers, which should enhance my social confidence for the Saturday social dances.

I'm looking forward to it!

Also, yesterday I passed my test (I think it's mostly a formality anyway) and tonight I advance to purple sash in Tai Chi. Yay!

Finally, I think today I'll tell everyone that I'm doing this log again, and this is where they can look to keep up with life here in Austin, Texas.

This page will always show the most recent ten entries. I'll have to figure out a clever, _automatic_, way to keep an archive list going for back-issues. This is all being handled behind the TWiki scenes by the Movable Type weblog system, so I'm sure I can find something.

Posted by Edwin at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2004

Tai Chi

Yesterday, I stumbled into Ernie's House of Whoopass (http://www.ehowa.com) and found their reader-submitted stories. Some of them are disgusting, some are making fun of others... but the good ones are those by people who have been really stupid in some point in their past.

It's always comforting to read about other people's problems, which I suppose is the whole basis of Soap Operas. And the SCO news coverage.

And this comfort is welcome, right now.

Today, I'm supposed to be testing to advance to the Purple Sash in Tai Chi (the sequence is white at start, gold, orange, green, blue, purple, red, brown 1, brown2, and then black, I think, though I may have missed something between red and brown). Tuesday we went through "pre-test", which is kind of like warming up for the test.

No problem.

Except we went through the "fast form", something we hadn't covered in class! That's just doing the form really fast; essentially one beat per movement.

Since this isn't how my body had learned to string the motions together, it wasn't about to do it this way. I kept losing my thread. I was floundering. I hate that. A lot.

So, of course, we did this three times.

Right now, I'm trying to re-link the motions in the form so I can go through them one per beat, and it's beginning to come together some. So we'll see.

Posted by Edwin at 07:27 AM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2004

New Journal

Ahh, the rush of coffee... invigorating.

So, last Friday I interviewed at National Instruments, and it seems that the interview went quite well. So I'm looking at having a "real" job in February. Yah! I can pay my bills!

Today, I'm going to try and hook the Movable Type data up to the Wiki. If that works, I'll have a live journal again. Heck, I may even write in it. That's my goal for the new year, to keep this record.

Not for you, mind you, assuming anyone out there has so much time on their hands that they actually READ this... no, I want to journal for myself. To keep a record, that kind of thing.

Some people have a book they journal in. I've tried that, and I can keep at it for about two days before I stop.

This way, also, the family and friends I have scattered around the country can keep up with my life. And, if I start any nifty projects, I can keep those in their own thread for people who like to tinker to read!

Like Boris. The Boris journal was quite popular. But I haven't done much exciting since then... the book projects were okay, but didn't seem worth writing about at the time. Especially since most of that work ended up in the books anyway.

Ah well, time to see about getting this data into the Wiki.

Posted by Edwin at 08:19 AM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2004

Movable Type

Okay, putting in Movable type. Bound to be more elegant than the Comment plugin... or not. Dunno yet.

Posted by Edwin at 03:31 PM | Comments (0)