Zzz: August 1, 2008

The Amazing Sitting-Down Smarry

Nothing motivates me to learn Perl and SQL like being faced with the prospect of waiting for a day and then pestering someone in their cube to update the tables for me. I'm sure there's a Python module out there but it's not installed here and I'm too lazy to do it.

Does anyone else commonly hear someone talking on their phone and their voice coming out of a speaker phone in an office a dozen-odd steps away?

End of an Era

Eight years or so ago, the group I was in launched a new product, and we had a party, with dinner at a fancy restaurant, where I turned out to be allergic to the appetizer. I can tolerate salmon, but only if it's been cooked to a fare-thee-well. They gave out a desk clock on a cute little cantilevered stand to everyone involved,and probably to everyone else who would take one.

The product sank without fanfare in a few years, eventually becoming a component of another product, which turned out to be much more popular. Despite that I set up the launch toy on my desk and have been checking the time on it ever since, because I usually have so many windows open that I can't see the Lisp machine clock clone running in the lower right corner of my display.

Today, right around the time my boss was planning to call me to talk about what's been happening this week, the battery in it died. In the intervening time California has enacted new waste disposal laws so I'll have to take it out to the E-waste drop-off in the barren outskirts of Sunnyvale. Also in the intervening time, my old phone got replaced with a VoIP phone, with an LCD display that of course shows the time. So I'll just be glancing over to my right now to see how radically I've been goofing off, instead of to my left.

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