| Housing update |
[Jul. 17th, 2006|07:12 pm] |
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Since my last entry I've been looking at more and more houses trying to reach a conclusion about which one to buy. Yesterday afternoon I decided on one. It's a nice two story house, lots of light, high ceilings, 3 more or less reasonably sized bedrooms, 2.5 baths, fairly new, nice yard, etc. It's a little small and a little expensive but i talked myself into it after going back to see it for a second time. When i left the open house i was excited about it. Trembling, i called the my real estate agent to say i wanted to make an offer and... I got his voice mail.
When he called me back he said that the Klahanie house i wrote about last time was going to go back on the market and was i still interested (it was gone a few days after i made my last post and i was a little sad to see it go). We went over to look at it again and my decision that had been relatively firm an hour before was shaken all over again. I spent another hour debating and then eventually decided to stick with the new house. We had found out that there were several other offers on it, and that they were going to be considering them that night. We went to his office to draw up the paperwork, and got the offer in just in time.
I woke up at three in the morning worrying that i had made the wrong decision. Surely that house was too small, and too expensive. What had i done? I eventually fell back asleep and when i woke up i felt a little calmer. Its a nice house, i needed to relax.
Then this afternoon my real estate agent called and said that somebody else got the house. They had waived the inspection and put more money down. Also, the Klahanie house wasn't going back on the market after all, the seller and the buyer had worked out their differences (something about the fence).
So now i'm back to the drawing board. I've looked at too many houses at this point, the ones i've seen have all started to blur together and my interest in looking at more is decreasing. Unfortunately, time is also running out. Robin and John will be arriving in about a month, and they're going to need a place to live. I need to get John enrolled in a school somewhere, and I can't do that until i pick out a house. Sigh.
Anyway, sorry to all that i didn't respond to the comments on my last entry. For those who asked, some clarifications from my house hunting adventures:
- Rambler = Rancher = Ranch House = 1 story house. Maybe Rambler is a regional thing, since all the house listings around here seem to use it.
- 1 bath = Shower, Tub, Toilet, Sink.
.75 baths = Shower, Toilet, Sink, no tub. The Klahanie house had one of these in the master bedroom, as does our house in Berkeley Heights.
.5 baths = Toilet and Sink only. Also known as a powder room.
2.25 = 1 + .75 +.5
- Klahanie is a little neighborhood in issaquah. I've actually seen several houses there in addition to the one i've written about here. In terms of size the website says it's 900 acres and has like 3000 families living there. It also has like, community parks and pools and stuff. Seems to be lots of families with little kids. |
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| Houses |
[Jul. 5th, 2006|02:23 pm] |
So, I spent a lot of time this weekend looking at houses, first wandering open houses aimlessly with Pablo on Saturday and then with a realtor on Monday. I find this whole process rather scary. Apparently, i'm supposed to wander into a house, spend a few minutes looking around, maybe come back and do the same thing one more time, and then offer to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to live there. That's mind-boggling to me. Apparently if you want to, say, take a week to think about it the house will be gone and you'll be back at square one. Now, in reality there's like, you know, an inspection and stuff so you can get out of it if there's something wrong with it, but still, it feels a little sketchy.
I did see a few reasonable options though. The first one is two story house, 3 bed 2.25 bath, in a neighborhood called Klahnie. I saw it first at an open house on Saturday, and it was at the point that i saw it the only reasonable option i had seen. I'm sure that made me more receptive, but it was still my favorite at the end of the day. It has two stories, lots of common space downstairs, and a nice back yard with landscaping (not too much grass to mow, but a reasonable amount of space, including a nice patio area for barbeques, and a storage shed). Downside is that the bedrooms seem a little small to me. The current owners have one of them set up as a nursery (crib, changing table, etc.) But i'm worried it might be a little tight once a full size bed is in there for whatever other stuff whoever lives there wants to put (like a computer, say). I went back to it on Monday with the realtor, and he seemed to think it was a good house, the neighborhood is apparently highly desirable, and the structural stuff (siding, roof, whatever) all look good to him. He told me he didn't think it would last the week. When i checked this morning it was still available.
The second house i saw that i liked was one i didn't expect to like. It was a rambler, 3 bed 2 baths. I would have said that i didn't want a rambler, but this house is *really* pretty on the inside. Nice stone tile counter-tops, a nice leaf pattern rail thing (i'm not describing that well), skylights, a deck all along the back of the house that is accessible from all the rooms that face backwards. The problem with this one is less common space, the bedrooms and kitchen are bigger but the family room is small and with the screen door on the back, a fireplace in one corner, one side open to the hallway, and one side open to the dining room, i'm not sure there's a way to set it up with a TV. There is another little seating area by the kitchen, so maybe the TV would go there. This may seem like a silly thing to worry about but our family definitely needs a shared TV watching space, preferably one that also has a computer. Also, there's only two bathrooms (read, no powder room) and the overall size of the house is smaller. Ultimately, i think it's pretty but not necessarily practical, so i probably won't end up buying it. This probably doesn't make any sense, but i feel like living there might feel like living at The Lake (minus the lake).
There was another house in the running also. This one had a large deck with a hot tub, nice views, and in general seemed like a nice house. But the realtor said the the roof looked like it was in bad shape, and there were a few other little things (the dishwasher had like a broken panel piece or something, for example). Also the laundry was in the powder room, which seems like an odd choice. Maybe none of those things should be deal breakers (The realtor said we could probably negotiate them to fix the roof and stuff), but i don't know.
Meanwhile, another possibility just came on the market in Redmond that I should probably go see. All of these houses that i mentioned were in sammamish, and looking around there i'm starting to get attached to the idea of living there. But redmond is good too, and closer to work, so i should go see this house also, i guess i need to call the guy.
Speaking of the guy, he hasn't answered the email i send him yesterday asking him some questions. And my siblings haven't let me know what they think about these houses. These were my excuses for not taking further action yesterday. Also the holiday.
Also, the money parts of this are freaking me out a little. Being able to afford these houses depends on the insurance coming and the berkeley heights house selling eventually, and also on eventually not being too far away. I just hope that my calculations that say i'm ok in the meantime are right. The bank seems to think everything is fine, but i don't think that counts for much.
Ok, i should be working, not obsessing about houses :) |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 7th, 2006|01:45 am] |
I should be working on my mid year review. Actually, i should have finished my mid year review weeks ago and now i should be asleep instead of still up at almost 2 in the morning. But i've been putting this off and my boss keeps sending reminders so i told myself i would finish it before i went to bed. Unfortunately this has not motivated me to finish it so much as it has motivated me to not go to bed.
Things are going ok. I might even go so far as to say well. Or, you know, as well as they can be. There are many many things that aren't done, but there are also a fair number that are, and i'm making progress every week, almost every day. I'm john's guardian, i have a lawyer and a realtor, my room is cleaned out and painted. Hmm... i felt like there were more big things than that, but still, progress. Those things took time. Still, I guess it's little things like the plumber and the meetings and handling the phone calls and taking john to the dentist and so on that make every day have something in it. And the tiny things like making sure that there's dinner every day and that we don't run out of pop tarts and that the garbage goes out on the right days.
I return to Seattle on Saturday. I'll be there for at least 2 weeks, maybe 3 or 4. After that i need to return and do some serious work on the house. The realtor suggests we target early April for putting the house on the market. That's not so long from now. I think when i return to Berkeley Heights i need to take another week off. I find that if i work all day i have time for phone calls and meetings and other things that need to be handled during busines hours, but i don't have the time or energy to clean or paint or fix or sort when i'm done.
Which brings me back to work. I'm not working as much or as hard as i should be. I'm distracted. Hours pass and i'm like "How can it possibly be dinner time already? I haven't gotten anything done." I guess that's part of the reason i'm having even more trouble with my mid year review than i usually do. I know that i'm not exactly at full power and that i haven't been since the review period started (September). I guess that's to be expected, but mid year review, yuck.
In any case i guess i should bite the bullet and go finish it up. It's really not that complicated of a form. But right now i'm stuck on three strengths and three weaknesses. They changed the "competencies" into "career models" so unlike last year it's not just picking off a list.
Alright, that's all for now. If i don't go to bed soon there's going to be no chance at all that i'll get up with john for school in 4 hours (don't worry, i'll go back to sleep once he's gone :)). Goodnight all. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 2nd, 2005|10:36 am] |
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Yesterday it snowed and my laptop arrived. :) |
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| Summer |
[Aug. 4th, 2005|05:04 pm] |
I was reading the LiveJournal latest page, as i sometimes do when i don't want to work, and someone was complaining that today was his first day of school. I was confused. Isn't it like the middle of July? Apparently not. Ok, so this school district seems to start a little early, but even so it is August that's sadly near to the end of the summer. One of the weird things about being in the "real world" that i noticed last year is that summer can kind of come and go without you noticing it. Especially living here in Seattle where it never quite gets as hot as it should be before i feel like its summer. It's finally been warm and summery these last few days (it actually hit 90 today) but it's already August. When i stop and think about it though, i've actually been having a pretty full and summery summer.
At the beginning of the summer i went to Italy on a bus tour. Rome, Florence, Pisa, Lake Maggiore, Verona, Venice, Assisi, Sorrento, Capri, Pompeii and back to Rome again. A little hectic, but we saw a ton of stuff. Venice was my favorite, as i predicted it would be. Also, getting to eat Italian food every day was something i could get used to. Only problem is that it was quite hot. "What can you do? Nothing. So there you are."
A few weeks ago I went to the lake with my family. Robin's entry was quite extensive on the topic, so i won't try to compete with that here. Swimming every day, boating, seeing family good stuff.
I got my very first ticket for missing a stop sign at an intersection which just happened to have a cop at it. In New York. Stupid Stop Sign.
I reread the first 5 Harry Potter books in anticipation of the 6th one coming out. By time a got to book 5 i barely remembered what had happened, so it was good to reread them. Robin and I read book 6 together at the lake, and had fun and trauma discussing it. I still have faith...
Last weekend i went to Vegas for the Pi Reunion. Vegas was cool and i'd like to go back sometime, but the key feature of this trip was the people. It was so good just to be able to hang out again. Also the star trek thing was neat :)
I haven't had a boss all summer. Well, ok, i've had a boss, but it was the person who should really be my boss' boss. In any case not having a boss has had its pluses and minuses. Having more responsibility is fun, and allegedly "good for my career," but, as it turns out, it's also, you know, responsibility. I've been enjoying being more in the loop and part of the decision making process, but i also have more to do and panic a lot more when it's not getting done when it should. At some point i've got to grow out of the breakdowns i've had twice this summer when i'm at home and it suddenly strikes me how much more work there is than i have time and skill to do it. In general though things have been going pretty ok.
I found out on Monday in my 1:1 with my boss (who should be my boss' boss) that he's hired a new boss for me. This new boss starts at the end of August (the end of the summer). I don't know how i feel about this.
My friends are planning a camping trip for the weekend before labor day. We've reserved campsites so it looks like its actually going to happen.
A Kinkos employee told me he had never seen such a large digital photo printing order when i printed photos from the italy trip to take to the lake. Is it weird that i want prints even if start with a digital camera? I went back to Kinkos today to get prints of the lake and vegas, but they were out of 4x6 photo paper so i failed. I'll have to return later. Or try a different Kinkos. Or FedEx Kinkos, as i should say. Maybe i'll wait until more people send me their pictures from Vegas (hint) and my mom sends me her pictures from the lake.
Robin made a lake mix that includes Summer Boy. I put it in my car. It also has introduced me to new songs to get stuck in my head such as the back to the lake song, the i hate vermont song, and the sad love song.
In any case, i'm having a good summer. It's time to go to geeky night so i'm going to have to end this abruptly. Happy August. |
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| Starting small |
[Mar. 14th, 2005|06:29 pm] |
My car got a spring cleaning this weekend. It's amazing the amount of junk that accumulated in my car during the winter when i couldn't have my top down. Now that it's warm again i've wanted to have the top down, but i had so much stuff in my car that i would have had things flying all over the place had i tried it.
So Saturday i took a trash bag out to the parking lot. I turned on the car, put on robin's teen comedy mix, and filled the bag with stuff. I brought books/jackets/papers into my apartment that have been in the car for months. I returned some games to a coworker that he had lent me and that had been in my trunk for an embarrassingly long time.
Then i drove my car to the bear (Brown Bear Car Wash). I got the simplest drive through car wash they had, so as not to have any weird stuff damaging my top. There's a guy who works there (it's also a gas station) who is from Jersey, and every time i go he notices my Jersey registration sticker and asks me where in Jersey i'm from. This time after i told him for the 4th or 5th time that i'm from Berkeley Heights, he remembered me. I drove my car through the drive through car wash, and it was the first time i've ever been the driver in a car wash.
Then i drove over to the self service interior cleaning station. I spent $6.00 in quarters on carpet shampoo and vacuuming. On the edge of the driver's seat the cloth had gotten all spotted and dirty from where the rain drops fall on it when i open the door. After several somewhat incompetent attempts at cleaning the seat with the shampoo, i wouldn't exactly say it's in like new condition. The spots are gone though, and it's a marked improvement.
Before i left the car wash, i put the top down. The car is clean and happy. Next step: the apartment. |
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| 2004 was three hours longer than previous years.... |
[Jan. 4th, 2005|07:31 pm] |
This year i spent my first New Year's away from the east coast. I had some friends over to my apartment to hang out and celebrate. People were arriving supposed to arrive 9:00, and i was busily cleaning up in preparation for their arrival when i realized the ball was about to drop. The only channel that seemed to be covering it was CNN, so i watched that. Craig arrived 30 seconds before midnight (eastern time).
An hour later we watched midnight in central time, fireworks in Chicago. It occurs to me i've never really watched celebrations on TV for timezones other that Eastern. I missed Mountain time because we were busy making cookies and margaritas and Chex mix. I was told there's a commercial about a grown child making chex mix just like a parent used to when they were a kid.
When midnight came around, at least some of the networks were showing taped coverage of the ball dropping in New York. That seemed kind of pointless, even if we hadn't already watched that hours ago. We found a local station that was showing fireworks at the space needle. Somehow it wasn't quite the same as the ball dropping, but it was still nice. It did have the advantage of lasting for more than zero time after midnight, and they were nice fireworks.
At midnight we had champagne and grapes. Apparently you are supposed to have one grape for each of the twelve chimes at midnight. Unfortunately, we didn't have anything that chimes, so we just ate them quickly. I had never heard of this, but my fine friend google tells me it comes from Spain originally. I also learned from the New York Times about the history of time balls.
I had monday off and i spent the rest of the long weekend goofing off, watching TV on DVD, and playing the new Prince of Persia game on XBox. All in all a fine way to ring in the new year.
Happy New Year! |
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| Welcome back to me |
[Dec. 30th, 2004|12:14 pm] |
So, as it turns out I need to flatten and reinstall my dev box. Joy. They gave me internet connection back so i could back up my data under the condition that i would reinstall the operating system. This is quite annoying. Pablo generously loaned me part of his hard drive, so now i'm patiently waiting as i copy my data across the network to his machine. I hope i'm not missing anything. I'm sure once i get up and running i'm going to realize that i've left some crucial piece of data behind on the old machine. Not to mention the fact that i need to re-enlist in the sources and reinstall all my programs. Sigh.
What i'm supposed to be doing this week is a DCR. Peter's email said it had to be done by the end of next week, but i just looked at the bug and the bug said it has to be checked in by the 4th. Note how that is the beginning of next week (Monday is a holiday). Hopefully I will be up and running by tomorrow and it won't take to long to do.
The worst part is that they don't even know what (if anything) is wrong with my machine. The virus scan didn't show anything and the guy who came to check it out couldn't find anything either. However, i apparently triggered some alarm indicating i'm spreading a worm and under the "Better safe than sorry" principle i have to reinstall. The guy who was helping me sort of implied that given that they didn't find anything and i have my internet connection back, i could maybe get away with not doing it. I thought about it, but my boss was in the same situation a little while back, didn't reinstall, and just ended up getting kicked off the network again a week later and reinstalling then. Better to be out of commission this week when no one's around than next week when we're pushing toward bug goals.
Anyway, time for lunch. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 29th, 2004|04:08 pm] |
I'm back from work today after being home for Christmas vacation for a week and a half and i discover that i have no network connectivity on my work computer. I poke around at it some, try rebooting, trying different ports, etc, and eventually have to give up and call helpdesk. They tell me that they have shut down my port because they think i have a virus. They sent a guy here to look at it, but he couldn't figure anything out, so he started a virus scan and said he'd be back. In the meantime, i still have no network connectivity, so i'm writing a livejournal entry in notepad to entertain myself while i wait for him to come back.
Being home was nice, though as usual the time went quite fast. Part of the problem was that robin and i spent several days doing last minute shopping, so that used up a lot of the time. I think for the most part i successfully gave good Christmas presents to my family, so all is well. In between shopping and such i also went skiing, saw some relatives, and hung out with friends. Good times.
One of the things i got for Christmas was Firefly DVDs. Robin and i watched some of them the last couple of nights i was home and i'm so getting into it. I saw the true pilot for the first time and it was so much better than the train episode. I don't know what they were thinking. Oh well. I'm gonna see if i can't get Pablo to watch them with me, but i've discovered that it's kinda hard to describe. "It's a spaceship show that's a western, and sometimes they speak chinese."
At the airport at Newark i bought a book called The Time Travelers Wife. It's about this guy who involentarily travels through time to different parts of his life. At first i was a little skeptical (i had limited choices of books at the place i bought it) but it turned out to be sort of interesting. I didn't get a chance to read the whole thing on the plane (I took a break to watch the movie) but i'm almost done and i'm looking forward to reading the end.
That's all for now. I really need to write in this thing more often. Perhaps i will make it a new year's resolution of sorts. We'll see. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 26th, 2004|07:24 pm] |
I'm quite stressed at work lately. I'm in a new team with weird bugs and all kinds of setup things i didn't need to do when i was in happy isolated word. I don't know how to sync my emulator. I don't know how to fix MTTF bugs. I don't know what a "null cable" is and even if i did there doesn't seem to be any way for me to get one. Plus it seems to be crunch time. Sigh. I made a list on my white board of the bugs assigned to me to use as a to do list for asking people for help. This makes me uneasy as i don't like trying to get help from people i've never met, and that seems to be my whole job lately. Sigh. Also, this week my manager decided that we should all commit to a certain number of bugs we're going to fix based on what we know about the work we have. I didn't know what to pick (as i would have picked zero based on my lack of knowledge about anything), so i basically let my lead pick for me. It's a reasonable number, but i'm not sure i can do a reasonable amount of work in my current conditions. Ahhhhhhh
I don't know what i'm doing for halloween yet. Went costume shopping with Pablo last weekend but i was kind of uninspired by the selection. Thing is i don't think any of my friends have costumes yet either and we don't have any real plans past "We should do something for halloween". Last year we went to a halloween party at a club. Possibly this year i will fix bugs on halloween. Maybe in costume.
I feel like i should stay late and get more done being as i am all stressed, but i don't think i can make progress right now. I came into work on last sunday very briefly, as we have been encouraged to try to fix extra bugs if possible, but i only stayed for about an hour, and i spend most of that time reading about the election. I can't seem to make progress lately. I need help with stuff, not to mention confidence, and i don't have either right now. So instead i will go eat some dinner and play Kung Fu Chaos and deal with being stressed tomorrow :(
My birthday is coming soon, that is a happy thing :) |
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| Last day |
[Oct. 11th, 2004|05:57 pm] |
So it seems it's my last day on pword before moving on to my next task. I finished up one last bug i wanted to do before i left, so i'm feeling good about that, and i'm busily acquiring the correct builds i'll need to do the new stuff. I still have IDC support stuff i need to do, but in terms of bugs i'm actually fixing, i'm on to pim.
I'm a little freaked out about this whole thing. Rupali and Zeeshan both switched last week and they've both been stressed/unhappy about getting setup with new stuff, learning a new code base, and generally getting up to speed. I'm trying to be optimistic about it, but jumping into new code is always a little scary. Rupali said the other day that she felt like she was in her first weeks of Microsoft again. Personally, my first weeks at microsoft are not something i want to be reliving. Of course, my overall confidence is in theory higher than it was then, as is my overall knowledge of how things work. Hopefully all that will help and the transition will be smooth. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 7th, 2004|04:56 pm] |
I started writing a journal entry last week, but i didn't quite finish so it never got posted...
At work lately we've been working a lot lately on the IDC transition. They in theory took over this week, but we're still on the hook for answering questions, code reviews, that sort of thing. To this end we're supposed to be available during some of their business hours, which means that i have to answer emails and be on messenger and stuff from 9:30-11:30pm. They're also supposed to be on around then their time, and that means i'm supposed to actually get to work at 9am instead of my usual slackerish 10. I've found that they don't really want to talk to me much at night anyway, so in general i just check my mail periodically and that's good enough.
Another consequence of this india transition stuff is that there is some talk of me going there. To India. How crazy is that? This had actually been mentioned before, but it had seemed like it wasn't likely to happen. But then last week my boss asked me to fill out a visa application form and bring in my passport. So now my passport is over at the indian consulate acquiring a visa. This week it's back to looking more like i'm probably not going to go, but nothing is decided for sure.
In other news there's a volcano that's been erupting in my state. Ok, maybe not erupting, but doing stuff. I find it very surreal that i live someplace with an active volcano.
Let's see, what else? I've started to follow the election a little bit. With all the news coverage (and livejournal coverage) i'm starting to get into it. The recent positive trend in the polls helps too. I even watched part of the vp debate the other night. Perhaps i'll try to watch on friday as well. I feel like should be more excited and involved in the democratic process, but i'm pretty uninformed about stuff.
Tonight is geeky night. I bought new dice last weekend so now i have my very own set. They are large and green and i am far too excited about them. Hopefully they will be as lucky as they are neat. |
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| GRR!! |
[Sep. 13th, 2004|07:26 pm] |
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I just wrote a livejournal entry and now it has disappeared. How annoying! I don't feel like rewriting it so here is the bullet points version:
- Labor day weekend i went camping and had fun. It's the first time i went camping since i was a girl scout.
- This past weekend, in addition to playing xbox buffy, i bought a new mattress. The quest was full of pushy sales people and confusion. Tomorrow i have to stay home for some two hour block and wait for it, but hopefully i will like it.
- Tomorrow is the Washington State primary. Washington has a system where you can get absentee ballots for all elections even if you're not absent. I have one that i've been sitting on for weeks but have been too lazy to fill out. It has to be postmarked tomorrow, or i can just bring it over to the polling place and give it to them. I may do that, as i irrationally feel that it counts more if someone gets it on election day :) Now i just need to figure out who to vote for....
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 1st, 2004|11:11 am] |
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Reasons not to leave the top of your convertible down when it is parked in your apartment complex parking lot:
- You may return to your car to find a CAT sleeping on the floor of your backseat.
- You may wake up at 6:30 am to the sound of pouring down rain, and have to jump out of bed, put on jeans, and frantically run out to put the top up (although it was covered by a little roof, so not as big a disaster as it might sound).
I don't feel like working. It's 11am on wednesday and already i'm like "is it the weekend yet?". I'm supposed to be working on a set of bugs that are basically (a) very boring (b) pointless 90% of the time and (c) critical the other 10%. At least when it finally is the weekend it will be a long weekend. Although maybe that's part of the reason i'm so eager to get there.
It's time for school to be starting again. I've been feeling nostalgic about the beginning of a school year. Most of my friends list is made up of my sister's friends (who are still at school), and the world is full of ads for back to school supplies. There's something nice about the fresh start feeling that comes with the beginning of a new term. I guess at some point we will finish this project and begin a new one, and that will have some of the same characteristics (new work, new people) but it's still not quite the same (i don't get to buy school supplies, for example). |
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| Friday |
[Aug. 27th, 2004|04:58 pm] |
Usually on friday at 4:00 we have a "meeting" called play-by-play. It's a pretty informal gathering of the division in the cafeteria. Chee or Amy will talk about the general things that are going on "x partner did y", "we need to meet z goal by w day", etc. There are also chips, snacks, beer, etc. to be had. It tends to mark the end of the week, we come back to our offices and casually finish stuff up, and then usually leave a little earlier than most days.
Today there was no play-by-play. Apparently too many people were OOF (lame excuse). I was talking to Rupali at about 4:30 and we were both saying we hadn't gotten anything done since four because we were disappointed by the lack of play-by-play. I've been mostly reading the internet since then.
I haven't gotten much done today even before that, and i'm not sure why. The bug fix i thought was finished yesterday ended up consuming most of the the morning with its tricky edge cases. I worked on a code review from india in code that i honestly don't know any better than they do. I resolved a bug that was on crack as no-repro.
Wednesday was my one year anniversary at microsoft. In accordance with tradition i brought a one pound bag of M&Ms to share. Our recent move to 118 made them last longer than they usually would. Also, i had several people who i don't really know (one whose name i didn't even recognize) reply to my email to congratulate me. That was nice.
I also got my annual review on wednesday (a coincidence). It went better than i might have expected for my first year, so that was good. Maybe this working at microsoft thing is going ok after all.
Yawn. Lazy friday afternoon. Mark left at three to fly to utah. zeeshan took him to the airport, and upon returning went to 117 to look at an mttf issue. rupali left a little while ago. vishal is on vacation. I'm ready for the weekend. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 3rd, 2004|06:17 pm] |
Today i had a meeting with some of the IDC devs and their lead. I was supposed to explain to them how bookmarks, annotations, supercession, and majority data worked in pword. Given that i only knew how one of those things worked, i was kinda nervous about it.
Yesterday i was working on bugs most of the day, and making good progress so i didn't want to take a break and do boring documentation/learning stuff. Around 5:30 i started looking at one of the four things, around 8:00 i had finished writing the doc for that one and really wanted to go home.
This morning i came in and looked at the second thing. It was really complicated and confusing to me, and i had walked through it before. I sent some questions to John. I skipped a devD i really should have gone to to keep working on it. Eventually i decided i wasn't going to be able to get through all the details of it anyway (this was only supposed to be a one hour meeting) and i moved on to the other two things.
The meeting got moved from 1:00 to 4:30, although this didn't give me a lot of time as i had meetings most of the rest of the day.
The last two things were less complicated and i sort of understood better, so i sort of glanced over them in between meetings and doing some actual work.
I finished the meeting about half an hour ago, and i am quite happy. I was able to describe things at a level at which i understood them, not get bogged down in the confusing details, and successfully answer most of the questions they asked me. I'm quite glad to have it off my shoulders, and despite a fairly aggressive bug goal for tomorrow, not to mention the fact that i didn't fix any bugs today, i'm thinking about going home. I guess i'll see if i can get a little work done first. |
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[Jul. 30th, 2004|05:54 pm] |
It's a livejournal entry!
It's friday afternoon and i'm mentally done with work although i'll probably sit here for another hour or so pretending to fix bugs. I think i've made decent progress this week, today particularly, so i don't feel too bad about being a slacker now.
So i moved offices again last week. This is my fourth office since i've been here, which is kind of ridiculous. I'm happy about it though because now i have my own office. It's not as nice (obviously) as the one i had when i shared, but it's better to have my own space. It makes me much less self-concious when i'm working, and especially when i'm not working (now for example). I also have a door i can close if i want to not talk to people or when i answer my phone.(As i was typing that sentence my phone rang).
Pablo is on vacation this week.
I've been reading some lately. I read I Robot because i'm lame and haven't read it before and wanted to now that there's a movie. It was good, although it bore a superficial resemblence at best to the movie. It seems Will Smith's character does not appear until the second book. I was going to read that as well, but i went to two borders and neither of them had it. I also read brave new world (more fallout from going to the sci-fi museum when Robin was here). I should really read more books.
Tomorrow is the company picnic. I don't know if i'm going or not, i guess it sort of depends if my friends are going, and i haven't heard much from them either way. Sunday Ana organized an NGN women shopping event i said i'd go to, so hopefully that will be fun also.
This is kinda a lame entry, but it is in fact an entry, so yay for it :) |
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[May. 7th, 2004|10:39 am] |
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Happy Birthday Robin! |
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