Archive for April, 2004

Friday, April 30, 2004

Apr 30 2004 Published by under Miscellaneous

Been a bad week for journal updates. As usual, this is because (A) it’s really been a bad week, and (B) I haven’t actually been busy, per se. I usually post when I’m most active and busy.

So. What has been going on, you ask?

Work’s sucked. I’m trying to get a feel for the amount of documentation work left to do, and some of the developers are a bit prickly about providing exact estimates. Ironically, after baring their prickers, they then give me excellent estimates. :sigh:

This, of course, affects everything else. I come home feeling like a wet dishrag after a day of dealing with this. All I want to do is watch MST3K and The Critic.

However, I’ve been paying better attention to the role of rest in my life, and as a result I’ve kept up with chores and writing.

Even so, this weekend will be a major relief.

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Thursday, April 29, 2004

Apr 29 2004 Published by under Miscellaneous

More of the VR story:

They stopped and Thomas replied to absolutely nothing, “This is a friend. I want to show her around, nothing more. I think she would be useful.”

Doodlehopper shot him a look that managed to combine worry and annoyance, but he grinned and waved it away. The air was still, but Thomas didn’t move forward and Doodlehopper was following his lead.

“No,” the voice intoned. “You are still new to this world. You may stay, but she must go.”

Thomas worked his jaw for a moment. He hadn’t thought about this. They were a clannish bunch. His mind sought desperately for alternatives, but he could think of nothing.

“Please?” he said, finally settling on simple honesty. “I really, really need her along with me.”

They heard a sonorous, rather impressive, but melodramatic sigh. “Oh come on,” the voice said, losing some of its depth and gaining a nasal tone. “These are the rules. This isn’t a democracy, you know. We make the rules, you abide by them. Do you want to get in, or not?”

“Look!” Thomas exclaimed, desperation creeping into his voice. “I’m in a lot of trouble, and I need you—”

He felt something tug at his temples, and suddenly he was looking at Doodlehopper, who was giving him the most outraged look he’d ever seen as she held the VR goggles she’d torn from his head. They were back in the hotel, disconnected from the VR world.

They then had a fight which was too ugly to record here. She could hardly believe that he would blab to a group of strangers that he was in trouble, and he couldn’t see why she was so dead-set against getting help from a group of strangers.

Their fight was mercifully interrupted by an impatient blue light that flashed on the wall, next to the VR jack. They glanced at each other, then Thomas slipped his goggles back on to see that they had a message.

Sorry about that. We’ll help.

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Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Apr 28 2004 Published by under Miscellaneous

…Tanjit! Forgot to post a VR story entry today. I should be able to do that tomorrow.

It’s been a bear of a day at work; a co-worker‘s comments completely dispirited me. But, after some time spent driving around and arguing with him in my head, I don’t feel upset anymore. Everyone on this deathmarch is stressed.

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Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Apr 27 2004 Published by under Miscellaneous

[Beat Under Control]

Magnatune just added a few new artists. Beat Under Control plays excellent “jazz/dub intense electro funk.” As weird as that sounds, it works. Meanwhile, Rob Costlow‘s piano pieces sound like professional movie scores. Both highly recommended.

Had a good day at work today. I normally start the day with personal e-mails, but found that this ruins my work attitude. I just can’t start working if I’ve started on my e-mails. So, I eschewed personal e-mails until late in the day, and by golly it worked; I’ve been quite productive all day.

Which is good, because I’m in the middle of a mini-crisis at work. One of the higher-ups shot out a horrified e-mail complaining about the current documentation status…just before leaving on vacation for a week. I replied in a way that should calm him down, but meanwhile some of us sat down and brainstormed ways of representing ourselves better.

It’s a common business problem: How do you let everyone else know what’s going on, in a way that makes sense to them?

Our solution is to beef up my clone of Intersect‘s flagship product, CrossPoint (please forgive the turgid marketing speech on that page; I didn’t write it). Instead of tracking tasks by ”percent complete” (which can change its meaning depending on how complicated the task is) to ”hours”. We’ll track how many hours each task will take, and the number of hours worked on each task per week. We can calculate the real percent complete from that.

This will bring my application ever closer to its eventual adoption by the entire company, and a pay increase with it! Muahahahaha!

Anyvay. On top of this, I discovered that one of our customers completely misunderstands certain MS Word features we’re using in our documentation, and I have to figure out a way to explain this to her gently in a way that doesn’t suggest that she’s an idiot, or that I’m a know-it-all who’s trying to force her to use these features.

But I’m feeling better, overall. I’m eager to write more of the VR story, despite the fact that it’s the least “marketable” of all my stories. That is…well, it’s a reprint. But I won’t get into that story today; I’ve written enough for now.

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Monday, April 26, 2004

Apr 26 2004 Published by under Miscellaneous

Yes, yes, I need to write a good journal entry. For now, I’m going to post this quote while I write something wortwhile:

“The Windows API is…so deeply embedded in the source code of many Windows apps that there is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system, instead. It is this switching cost that has given the customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high total cost of ownership, our lack of a sexy vision, at times, and many other difficulties. Customers constantly evaluate other desktop platforms but it would be so much work to move over that they hope we just improve Windows rather than force them to move… In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago.”
— Aaron Contorer, Microsoft’s C++ General Manager in 1997

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Friday, April 23, 2004

Apr 23 2004 Published by under Miscellaneous

‘Twas going to post a long, rambling screed about me and what’s going on with me.

Then I read this Washington Post report:

The House of Representatives passed a measure Thursday to ensure Congress can continue its work if many lawmakers perish in a terrorist attack. But opponents warned that the bill would not prevent a power vacuum at a time the country could least afford one.

In other words, opponents complain that the bill would not prevent a power vacuum if many lawmakers died suddenly.

Um, duh?

What do the opponents want? A law that legislates normal operations of government after a nuclear strike?

There’s a quote attributed to Voltaire that applies here: The Best is the enemy of the Good.” More accurately, the quest for perfection usually precludes work on a solution that works now.

From what I can tell, lawmakers passed a reasonable law, essentially calling for special elections within 45 days of a massive death toll (defined as at least 100 dead out of the House’s 435 members). Not that we couldn’t anyway, but this provides a battle plan: if a bunch of representatives snuff it, we all hold special elections in a month and a half to elect new ones.

Are there potentially better solutions? Sure. Opponents suggest the immediate instatement of temporary replacements. But even that is at least questionable — who picks these people? I can easily see a Palpatine taking advantage of this sort of situation to choose a lot of convenient replacements who can enact some very nasty legislation within 45 days.

Anyvay, the point is that the opponents appear to want to wait until somebody comes up with the best possible solution, rather than adopt a reasonable solution now.

I say: No. You deal with your current situation as best you can. And if your solutions don’t work in the future, you fix them.

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Thursday, April 22, 2004

Apr 22 2004 Published by under Miscellaneous

Good entry on Whatever about writer’s workshops, particularly regarding a tiff within a Gene Wolfe workshop.

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Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Apr 21 2004 Published by under Miscellaneous

Arrrrg. Started writing a journal entry yesterday, and my computer froze before I saved it.

My eyes have continued to frustrate me. I still hold the record for slowest-healing eyes in the universe, and that’s impacted darn near everything in my life. I can’t work, or read, or write for more than half an hour at a time now, as my eyes get tired quickly.

And it’s pushed me into a blue period for the past couple of days. I’m not depressed, really. My brain is processing a lot, so I’ve been emotionally okay, just distracted and only partially engaged in whatever I’m doing.

But these periods are best met by recognizing them and responding to them, finding new ways to deal with changes, and using them as whetstones to sharpen ourselves on. So, I’m working and reading and such in smaller chunks now. Seems to be working.

He blew out a big sigh and looked around, squinting at the empty azure sky. “Not quite. Hack-and-slashes are games. This is more of a shared environment. But it’s not just any shared environment; it’s the oldest and most respected one out there.”

“So what?” she asked, looking back at him with real curiosity.

He turned his back to her. She could not see him grin as he explained, “Only the best play here.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Not just in terms of experience,” he added quickly. “To play here, you have to be smart, and you have to have been around awhile.” He paused. “Just my kind of people.”

“Do you have to walk everywhere in this world?” Doodlehopper asked, scuffing her feet as they strode over the gently rolling emerald hills towards one particularly high mountain.

Thomas grinned. “Actually, yes.”

She scolwed and glanced behind them for what seemed like the hundredth time. “I don’t like it.”

Thomas looked up at the cloudless sky again, then down at the small clusters of daisies that grew in patches in the grass. “I kind of like it,” he said.

She threw him a questioning glance, and he explained, “They want you to experience this world. Everything here is so carefully crafted. Hey, look up.”

He pointed at the blue sky above them, where they could just make out the dot of a bird leisurely wheeling hundreds of feet in the air. “Most games,” he said, “will put birds in the sky. Some games will create birds that circle realistically. But here…if you stayed here and just watched that bird, you’d be able to follow it back to its nest. It would have a nest. It might have a mate, and it might be raising young. That’s the kind of detail they put into this place. This isn’t just the background for a random monster fight; this entire world is a home.”

She had nothing to say to that, and they continued in comfortable silence for a minute or so, until out of nowhere a sonorous, bell-like voice called out, “One of you is recognized. The other is not. Explain yourselves.”

(In other news…tanjit, two new blogs to add to the daily roster: Patricia Nielsen-Hayden‘s “Making Light” and John Scalzi’s “Whatever”. “Whatever” includes a brilliant article, Even More Long-Winded (But Practical) Writing Advice.)

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Friday, April 16, 2004

Apr 16 2004 Published by under Miscellaneous

I need to write a letter to Ray Bradbury.

Just, in general.

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April 15, 2004

Apr 15 2004 Published by under Miscellaneous

Imagine, just out of interest, spidering Microsoft.com for Microsoft Word documents. Then, keep only the documents that have Track Changes (a feature where old text is kept within the document, and you can see who’s made what changes). Then, turn the Track Changes on, and look through those documents to see what’s changed in them.

Here’s the result. There have been some interesting changes to various press releases.

[Memories image]

Well. I’m feeling better today, somewhat. It’s more a matter of having a good day in the midst of bad ones, but at least it’s a good day.

And, in terms of weather, it is a beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky, a warm sun, and an occasional bracing breeze. Mmmm.

I watched Katsuhiro Otomo’s Memories last night. It’s a set of three short films strung together as a theatrical release. The first is a weird and haunting piece written by Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Millenium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers), the second is a fun little comedy about a walking biohazard, and the third is a unique, experimental short about a Soviet-like society of constant, grinding, pointless military production. They were all excellent, in their own way.

Only the third was actually directed by Otomo (creator of Akira), and ironically, I liked it least. It was much more experimental than the others; it felt like a student film full of long, sweeping shots, minimal dialogue, and (purposefully) ugly character designs.

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