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kraigus shmeggus' LiveJournal:
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| Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | | 7:14 pm |
I get paid a non-trivial amount of money to do my job. (If you want to know how much, I'll happily tell you. I work at a public institution and if you pay taxes in Canada, and particularly in Ontario, you pay some portion of my salary, so thank you.) I spent a good chunk of today finding one line in a configuration file and decommenting it. The sad part is, me-six-months-ago knew about that one line because he spent the better part of a *week* finding it, as well as several others, and figuring out another several dozen lines to add to make some things work. And he also documented this. I read his documentation, but missed that one crucial line the first several times, because it's in a slightly different format from most of the other lines, and in the middle of a paragraph. Bill for pushing a button: $500. 1. Pushing the button: $0.25. 2. Knowing where to push the button: $499.75. The worst part is, I've now half-forgotten why it is I needed to figure this out in the first place and have half-formed plans to work around the problem which suddenly no longer exists. Some days at work are awesome, others not so much. This falls towards the latter end of the spectrum, methinks. On the plus side, I had a good lunch with a colleague from another department, and had a good conversation with a faculty member from $job--. And it's not like I accomplished nothing else at all today, but hey. Recency effect. It's science. Originally posted at http://kraig.dreamwidth.org/888.html -- I'm putting new content there but leaving my LJ account active. I will eventually be disabling comments at LiveJournal. | | Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 | | 10:34 pm |
Dreamwidth
Incidentally, between my second-to-last posting here and my last, I obtained a Dreamwidth account. The previous post was my first real one there. I haven't decided yet if I'll move everything from here to there, or just start anew there. Either way, I'll keep this account active and continue as co-mod in uwaterloo, there's a lot of history and inertia here for me and everybody else. But if you're a friend and want a Dreamwidth invite, I still have some. I feel a bit better about DW than I do LJ these days; DW feels a bit like LJ did in 2001, to be honest. I can and will crosspost entries from there to here, and for now I'll leave comments open both places, but will eventually disable comments here. DW supports OpenID, so one may log in there and leave comments without actually having a DW account. | | 10:31 pm |
I feel terrible
I feel really terrible. After some discussion with my manager today, I bit the bullet and deleted all my work email from 2001 til 2007. I had no *real* reason to keep that stuff around; I'm on my third job at the university and I haven't needed anything much from my last job in months, much less my first job. I did have a quick spin through the stuff from 2001-2002 tonight though. I sent my boss a screenshot showing the obviously empty spaces where the mail used to be, I keep (kept) old mail in folders by year. I had no compelling reason to do this, he hadn't said I needed to delete anything at all, since our retention policy *suggests* keeping only a year, but a retention policy is coming. I told him: "Future historians are *so* going to hate our overly-litigious society. Diaries and journals and appointment books and letters and memoranda are treasure troves of information about people, personalities, interactions, what people *really* thought vs what they said they did, and how various people spent parts of their day. 7 years of history gone, to be followed by another year in less than 8 weeks. Stupid lawyers." The part of me that used to be an historian, even if only of the smelly-undergrad type, is furious. The part of me that thinks about protecting the institution which pays me is wondering if that was sufficient - really, I only started my current job at the start of this year, and I can reasonably tell anybody at $job-- so sorry if I need anything from the silo that was my email. Working at a university, it's not even just that we could be sued; all of my email is potentially liable to Freedom of Information requests, and having to dig through that stuff would be a massive pain in the ass. But still. My 21 year old self wants to punch my 35 year old self somewhere it'll really hurt. Originally posted at http://kraig.dreamwidth.org/680.html -- I'm putting new content there but leaving my LJ account active. I will eventually be disabling comments at LiveJournal. | | Friday, May 1st, 2009 | | 8:49 pm |
Moving
Boo: the dude who was supposed to be out today was just starting this morning at 1130. When we went by again around 4, he was about half done. This set us back since our apartment is mostly full of boxes and we're still not done packing yet, never mind cleaning. Yay: current landlord wasn't renting this unit this month anyway, so he's fine letting us stay on a couple more days, since we weren't planning on doing most of the move til tomorrow anyway. At a pro-rated rent, of course. So we're paying to get the chance to clean this place properly. I'm less than enthused about that for reasons some of you all know already, but hey, at least we're not totally stuck. Yay: dude at new place was at least half done, which means (assuming they kept working) he should be mostly done by now. We did tell him if he needs tomorrow to move more stuff out, that's fine - otherwise we'd be stuck with it anyway, but it never hurts to be gracious. Yay: I have several friends helping tomorrow, one of whom is even relatively able-bodied. So we should be able to get the hard stuff all done anyway, even if it means stacking furniture in the basement. Boo: moving stress (plus worry of how my cat is going to take it) is combining with stress of starting a class Monday then going to a 6 day conference Tuesday, so I won't even get to enjoy living in my new place until nearly halfway through the month. (And then I'll be returning to a lot of boxes...) Boo: since dude had Rogers, they didn't process my move request. Yay: I called them today and it'll be moved tomorrow - except Boo: our phone can't be done until the 12th. (Could have been Tuesday, but see above re conference.) Boo: I did something to my shoulder today and my back isn't a lot better. And we have furniture to move tomorrow. And it might rain. Boo: carpets in the new place are less than stellar, and I really doubt dude will have or take the time to clean them properly (although I did see a vacuum cleaner there, at least). But... at least we're moving. Some time. And while it's been pricey so far and will continue to be, at least I have a friend's truck to do the move with, so no stress finding a rental truck in Waterloo in May. (That apparently caused dude some stress, U-Haul screwed him which is why he's screwing us, but... yeah. University town, May... go figure, it'll be hard to get a truck, and U-Haul sucks.) Tired now, going to sleep soon I think. It was a long "vacation" day of packing boxes and stressing. | | Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 | | 11:06 am |
| | Sunday, January 11th, 2009 | | 4:09 pm |
An army story.
When I was in the Reserves, I was on a 10 day field exercise in the summer at CFB Gagetown. We were occupying pre-dug trenches filled with cement on a live fire training area. Our mortar pit was wide and shallow. We moved in the late afternoon, and spent the evening setting up. The trenches were near a pond. It had been raining fairly hard the week before, but most of the water had drained out of the trenches. The bodies of the frogs who had jumped in and subsequently drowned had not, however. While I busied myself with readying 60mm mortar bombs, my fire team partner picked up all the little froggie corpses and flung them out of our pit, one by one. One lasting memory of that summer was seeing their flying bodies silhouetted against the setting sun. | | Thursday, January 1st, 2009 | | 6:03 pm |
Resolutions
It's that time of year, when everybody's making resolutions. I'm not though, and I'll tell you why. I understand how they work (and don't work) for some people. I understand that for some, it's a good time of year to reflect and decide what they'd like to change about themselves, their lives, whatever. To me though, it's just another day. I always reflect and think about what I'd like to change. When I decide to do it, that's when I do it. The whole arbitrariness of "NOW let's think about last year" actually kind of pisses me off. I understand it's a good hook for things like news stories and such, but aside from that, I'm not sure I really see the value in reserving a particular time of the year for introspection. I like to live New Years every day. | | Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 | | 1:58 am |
Commenting and jerbz.
Every now and again I need to remind myself forcibly that weblog comments follow Sturgeon's Law. While reading comments can be ok (you can even learn a lot from that other 10%), trying to engage those responsible for the 90% of the crap posts and comments only leads to frustration. As Neal Stephenson said, arguing with them is a sucker's game. It's made all the more frustrating because while 90% of those responsible for the 90% that's crap are consistent and you can just filter them out without thinking about it, the remaining 10% of the crap shifts - even smart people come out with indefensible clunkers now and again, and they'll tend to defend those just as tenaciously as they do their other, better comments and posts. Yes, even I do this on occasion, just as I'm sure I sometimes make mistakes while driving that must infuriate other drivers the same way they usually do me. Sometimes it's best just to get up and walk away, remember life before the tubes and find something else to do. Read a book, pet the cat, write a journal entry with a real pen, take a nap, play a game... anything. Or, as a compromise, write a stream of consciousness Livejournal post. In other news, I start my new job soon. I've technically already done a few small things for it, but it's fr srs in less than a week. It's one thing to know intellectually a lot of the things that need to be done, quite another to have as one's major responsibility having to help pick the things that are possible given resource and time restraints, and then have to implement them. It's not just the fun stuff any more. | | Sunday, December 28th, 2008 | | 7:33 pm |
When I was 7, we moved to Edmonton. My dad was a hockey fan then, and in that heyday of Gretzky and Messier and Fuhr, so did I become one. We used to call watching the game on ITV or CBC "watching the game" and listening to it on 630 CHED was "watching the game in black and white." If you came home and the game was on, you asked the score. If it was tied, you'd still ask who was winning - that would be the team who had lost the lead when the score became tied. | | Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 | | 11:56 am |
Modern technology is scary
I am currently nomming the contents of a can of beef ravioli I purchased for "emergency rations" (ie, Mike forgot lunch and is too hungry to not eat but still too lazy or broke to wander out and get something). This can was part of a bunch I bought one job, four offices, five pay grades, and ~55% of my current salary ago. It had a best before date that is still 7 months in the future. I do not know if this is wonderful, or terrible. It is definitely scary. | | Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 | | 7:17 am |
Blast from the past, thankfully not an IED
I'm always worried about seeing somebody I knew from my time in the Canadian Forces in the news for the wrong reasons - lately, because they've been killed in Afghanistan. So far only once, and I watch that news like a hawk, but I feel sick to my stomach every time I see that headline and feel vaguely guilty for not being over there myself. It was therefore a bit of a surprise to see my platoon commander from my QL3 Infantry course interviewed in the Stars and Stripes. And yeah, news flash: the Canadian military has higher standards of operation than does the American. Why you would allow Private Bloggins, who has all of a year and a half of training in marching around and how not to kill the wrong people with his bangstick, to interrogate prisoners is completely and utterly beyond me. I'm not quite sure what relevance the relative values of the dollars has to pay though. It's not like our troops come home and get to pick whether they buy gasoline and bread at US or Canadian prices. Major Noel (then Lt. Noel) taught me, among other things, how dangerous even 1 ounce of plastic explosive can be when it's in a casing designed and built by Canadian engineers. Hopefully he won't find out the hard way how dangerous roadside bombs and RPGs can be as well. | | Thursday, August 28th, 2008 | | 6:18 pm |
office supplies
I was setting up some PCs for n00b grad students (who'd damn well better show up, now that I've sunk time into them), and one of the offices was newly set up. On top of each desk, I found no less than one bottle of cleaning fluid, apparently made for and supplied especially by the furniture company. I am at a loss. But not so much that I didn't scoop some bottles (that came with used cloths), as my furniture is not-new and actually could use some cleaning, whereas these desks are so new they still have that new-desk smell. | | Friday, July 18th, 2008 | | 4:34 pm |
| | Monday, July 7th, 2008 | | 1:17 pm |
Quote of the day
"Well, there's always the meat." Made my day. It's even funny out of context. | | Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 | | 11:37 pm |
Holy Conversations
While walking into work this morning, I saw a sign on a building: "Welcome to Holy Conversations" What is a Holy Conversation, and what does it sound like? I rather imagine the end of Dogma. I'm not sure a holy conversation is one I'd like to have, even if I was religious. | | Thursday, May 1st, 2008 | | 11:38 pm |
Academic collaborators
I don't know how anybody gets a damn thing done in collaboration. Maybe when you're both equal partners it's different, but trying to help Linda finish off a 5 page paper was hell. We did a couple of hours last week, and then tonight about 2.5 hours, but it felt like 12. At the end of it we had roughly 6 pages of reasonably well-written paragraphs that had a decent flow. She's going over a printout figuring out ways to work around the couple of XXX CHANGEME and XXX PARAPHRASE BETTER statements I inserted, and I'm about to get a (well-deserved, I think) beer. But there have been at least a couple of times I wanted to snap, and I'm sure the same goes for her. At least she didn't cry this time, and I didn't stomp off for an hour-long break. I can't even imagine trying to do something more complex, especially if both people have something actually invested in it. All I wanted from this was to give her drug-addled mind a break. (She's on strong painkillers for her back problems.) Linda's paper is about the speech John Kerry gave to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1971, by the way, and it was a very good one, although one of her secondary sources was all but fellatious in its tone. Published in 2004, how convenient. ... I forgot to transfer the beer from the freezer to the fridge, and now it's half-frozen. Crap. No sweet sweet alcoholic bliss for me. | | Monday, April 14th, 2008 | | 7:02 pm |
Treadmill for bucks
Today at the grocery store, Linda and I saw a treadmill. For toddlers. Really. Anybody who feels the need to get their kid some exercise without having to oh noes send them outside is welcome to trade domiciles with us. We live on the third floor of an apartment building, no elevator. Just have them run up and down the stairs a few times. If you're worried about their safety, you can eliminate the need for your own treadmill by accompanying them. | | Friday, April 4th, 2008 | | 6:27 pm |
we have a third story animal
Linda reports that there are bits of cheese and chicken bones on our porch. Fine, some animal is depositing them there. We know we have squirrels on our porch on occasion - which pleases our cats greatly. But squirrels don't eat chicken, do they? I shouldn't think bones are ideal nesting material either. What other animals live in a city and are capable of scaling brick up to a third story porch? I've seen raccoons, but I would think they're too heavy to climb that far. Bunny rabbits can't hop that high and certainly don't eat chicken. I've never seen birds on our porch, or at least nothing bigger than a sparrow - so it isn't crows or magpies. I really doubt skunks can climb that far. So what is it? | | Thursday, January 10th, 2008 | | 4:46 pm |
This past year, I billed out about 853 hours of work. At a rate of $50 an hour (which I think is what our "rates" work out to, even though it's all funny money in the end) that's $42,650. No, that's not what I actually get paid, it's just supposed to defray some of the cost of my salary and, er, living expenses I guess you could say - office, phone, yadda yadda. It's kind of depressing to think that it takes me a year to cost the Canadian taxpayer what I cost in one night of a live fire exercise. PS: plz 2 be payin ur taxes, I needz the moolah. kthx. | | Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 | | 9:48 am |
Early to bed and early to rise
Well, I've got half of that, anyway. The last couple of mornings I've set my alarm for 7 (which gave my cat great distress this morning, as he is unused to this shriek and is nervous by nature anyway). I kind of like getting in for 815-830, I can get a fair bit done before everybody else comes in and make things noisy. I just need to work on the earlier to bed thing a bit. And leaving work before 5:30. Maybe it'll help SB get her butt in gear in the mornings too. (Perhaps living bacon will suddenly grow wings too, but you never know.) And no, the new year has nothing to do with it. I hate new year's resolutions, the date is coincidental. |
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