My various sites are being spammed. I don’t know how to stop it. It’s getting annoying. It’s to the point where I can no longer find a genuine comment because the spammers are sending in so much stuff. On the plus side, it took them more than a year to find me.
Well, that was a nice four days off… and now I’m back at work. Truth is, I did work a great deal on those days off, but on a contract job. I’ll definitely put in more contract hours this coming long weekend as well, but during the week, it’s chips at the main job.
Actually, today mostly centered around getting a new environment up and running. Our EDA vendor worked their butts off to get a new environment to us; and while I appreciate that, they obviously missed a few things. The new environment doesn’t work. We’ll probably spend the rest of this short week fixing it.
I did a stupid thing over Christmas – I told two friends that I had an elliptical machine. They now want to hear how long I was on it each day. I guess this means that I have to go exercise now.
Today was all about the chips. I managed to modify three schematics, preparing them for IC layout, and then started and completed one of those chips. Granted, the task was sort of easy, but still, I was able to do a chip in a day, which made me feel pretty good. It verified correctly the first time as well – a rarity. This little test chip is ready to go! If it works, it will become a very important product for us.
Unfortunately, I also spent three hours of my day this morning attempting to simulate one of those three schematics, only to discover that I lack a single part that will make the simulation work. How frustrating! Now I have to find design help to get this thing working and all the designers I know are on vacation.
In the evening, we watched several movies. It’s sort of something we do every Christmas break.
Yeah, a work-at-home day – I got a lot accomplished, though not what I thought I’d be doing today. I wound up doing the final finishes on our company’s executive summary. With this summary, we can better talk to investors and banks. Tonight, the summary goes out to a few folks who have been asking for it, and tomorrow, my boss will present it to a bank that has offered to help us find the best way to finance the company (should we go the SBA route). Originally, I was to attend this bank thing along with the other company officers, but the bank wanted to keep it small an informal for now. We’ll all get a chance to dress up and look competent sometime later.
With my workday done, it was time to practice Christmas music for this Saturday’s Christmas Eve service. As always, Christmas music is a lot more challenging than everyday music, but that’s what makes it so special! I put in about three hours on three pieces of music, and then went to practice. Everyone else obviously put in a lot of practice as well because we sounded marvelous. I hope we’ll sound as good in a few day’s time.
Seven of us decided to drive 200 miles – each way – for a steak dinner at F. McClintock’s in Pismo Beach. It wasn’t so much the destination as it was the journey, though it was a nice destination as well.
Our first stop was to the Paris Bakery in Monterey. Yummy! We drove around Monterey for a while, looking at parks and the Presidio, and then we drove to a Greek sandwich shop. It turned out that they weren’t open on Wednesdays. Go figure. Fortunately, there was a Subway across the street. With all our food in hand, we set off for the spot between Monterey and Carmel where there are good tide pools. The kids looked at all forms of sea life for a while. Sometime later, while I was watching the kids from a bench, some old people began to yell at me. My daughter had a bucket and a net with her on the beach, and I guess it’s a $1000 fine if you are caught with these items, and several thousand if you have any sea life in the bucket. No signs are posted anywhere, but the coast here is considered a National Preserve. I quickly got the contraband off the beach and began walking it to the car. I saw a police car coming my way, so I hid the bucket in a large aloe plant. The police were not looking for me, but they must have been looking for my kids. They parked right where my kids were and began to watch them. Those old folks called the police on us! The police watched the kids until I picked them up in the van. The police then moved on… and we grabbed the bucket and net from the aloe bush.
Next stop was Mission Carmel. Half our car had never been to a California Mission, so we decided to pop into one of the better ones in California. The kids were largely unimpressed. I guess they don’t like history too much at this age.
The drive down the coast for the next three hours was lovely. Many of the cars ahead of us were enjoying the scenery too… at 30 MPH. This got annoying as it cost us an extra hour on the road. We absolutely had to get to F. McClintock’s by 6:30 or we wouldn’t get a table until after 7:30. I began to pass cars whenever I could, which is not easy on a single lane highway. Just past San Simeon (Hearst Castle), it opened up to two lanes. There were still a number of people who don’t realize that you need to stay in the slow lane on a two lane highway, but I was able to weave around them (while still below the speed limit no less!). We got to the steakhouse with four minutes to spare.
The dinner was excellent, though pricy.
Our drive up 101 on the way home was smooth and fast. It still took us a little over three hours to drive the 200 miles.
My wife told me this morning as I was leaving for work that she was going to spend all the money I don’t make. Should I be concerned?
Today was my last day in the office for a while. I’m working at home for the rest of the week.
On the way home, I was a model citizen until somebody got in front of me and proceeded to slow down to something below 60. When I tried to pass (slowly), he sped up to about 77. This annoyed me. Being that I had the yellow car today, I tapped the gas pedal and was quickly up to some higher speed (90ish?)… just as a police officer was entering the highway. I couldn’t slam on my breaks – a dead give-away – and the car simply doesn’t slow down (damn efficient German cars!), so I coasted into the slow lane, hoping that he wouldn’t notice the bright yellow car streaking by, still above 80. Amazingly, he didn’t. He soon passed me by without so much as a look. Whew!
My boss was back in the office today. His China trip went well, and he was in a good mood. I found out at the end of the day that today is his birthday.
I was going to spend my evening working from home, but I forgot my “dongle,” so I couldn’t run my layout program. I watched the 49er’s game instead. The stadium power went out twice, so it made for a long game. Oh ya, I watched the game in the comfort of my own bed on my new wall-mounted HD TV!
The TV wasn’t new, but the wall mount was. My son and I had a great time setting it up – It looks so good! A TV this massive really looks out of place in the bedroom, but I can totally see it, even when lying down. The old 20” TV sat on my dresser and I couldn’t see it over my massive belly and even when I could, I had to look through the bottom of my bifocals, which are for short distance, and not for TV viewing. The new 46” TV is just inches from the ceiling, so I can see it lying down, and through the long-distance portion of my spectacles. Yeah!
Driving to work is getting crazy. I believe it is the stress of Christmas – trying to get that last bit of work in before the break; knowing that you have so much shopping to do still and that starting tomorrow, the kids are home for two weeks. The result are a bunch of stressed-out speeders. I felt like I was in a rally car race!
On Monday, a new company (a call center?) opened up in my building downstairs (and it appears that three more companies will be moving into our complex at the “Water Tower” in Campbell, CA by New Years). This certainly looks good for our local economy — yeah, new jobs! — but with the addition of this company, we have maxed-out the parking in the area. By 10AM, there is no parking anywhere within a two block radius. Any business that relies on traffic (ie: cars being able to park near them) are in trouble. Even the two hour parking lot is now full all the time. Already, no one in our office wants to drive off at lunch because they know they will never park here again. It will be worse come the New Year with three more offices filled with people, and our complex is still not completely full! The only people getting spaces right now are the VTA Light Rail riders and folks like me who get to work at 7AM (and already, I’ve seen the number of cars here at 7AM more than double this week!). Our complex owners are going to need to address this problem, and soon.
I was again feeling pretty productive today at work. One of my two reliability vendor “finalists” came to the office today to pick up some parts to try out on their systems. The sales guy is a real go-getter, and if he can match the pricing of the other remaining finalist, he’ll have my business. The other team isn’t putting in the effort like this guy — much more lackadaisical. I appreciate his effort!
Aside from that, I set up a microscope/prober in my office while my computer was being upgraded, and then I went through a whole set of schematics in anticipation of starting another layout tomorrow.
Hey, you know what? That Cabbage soup was super delicious! I’m actually looking forward to finishing it off tomorrow. With time spent in the freezer, all the spices have blended, creating a wonderful taste.
Yeah, I got a lot of work done at home today!
With Christmas coming up, I also had a lot of Christmas music to practice. This year’s music selections are both fun and challenging — I’m loving it! My son picked up this week’s Christmas songs fairly easily; next week’s songs are extremely challenging, so I have already begun practicing them. Jeremy Camp’s version of “O Come all ye Faithful” is both beautiful, and complex; using “non-standard” chords for this song. Since the song is new, the chords and tabs have not yet appeared on the web, so I had to figure it out myself (Hey, I used to do this all the time before the internet started providing chords and tabs). It took about an hour to figure out.
