100 word minimum

Ahead of the game

Ratso is working on the digital design homework. I worked on it till late last night and finished it up this morning. Once I stopped second guessing myself, I got through it okay. Like, ten times, even. Nothing reinforces a concept like intense repetition interleaved with errors both stupid and confounding.

"I won't tell you how many hours it took me," I say. "Or maybe I should. It'll probably make you feel good."

"Uh. I doubt it. I spent quite a few hours on it and one of those was with a professor," Ratso says.

Well, that makes me feel better.

"Review"

I'm taking a brief break from my homework (check out the time stamp on this post) to whine a little bit, because this is a genuine, hours-long, engineering homework. It shouldn't be as bad as it is, because this is ostensibly a review problem set to see what we've retained from the introductory digital design class we took two years ago. I'm glad I kept the textbook, I'm finding it useful to read the sections of the book that we didn't cover in that class. Not exactly a normal component of the review process, but one does what one must. This type of homework is a direct result of professors not talking to each other.

Relatively painless

Our mission: Acquire interview suit and appropriate accessories.

Mission accomplished, but I'm now having pangs of the "does it make my butt look big?" variety. I'll try it on again tomorrow and see if I still like it. Not that there's too much selection out there. Who thought that low rise pants were such a good idea that nothing else should be sold for years and years? That evil cabal must be stopped.

Then it was shoes. Amazingly enough, I found two pair that were the right size, shape, and general conformation to go with the suit and not hurt my feet. Needless to say, they looked nearly identical, but I bought them both because it's sensible to have a spare.

Next mission: Get to a tailor and have the assorted hems adjusted.

All this is just way too girly.

You call that a homework?

A homework problem that takes less than two minutes hardly counts. In engineering classes, I've routinely had homework problems take hours. Not the whole assignment. One problem of eight or more. While I've on occasion had the same experience with maths and computer science homeworks, those have been less usual, if not the exception.

The first assignment for my computer science class in discrete structures was fifteen of these two-minute gems, with only one to be turned in. The other fourteen are for practice. Since all fourteen of the practice problems together added up to less than half the time necessary for, say, a filter design problem and also because I'm too diligent for my own good, I went ahead and did them all. I'm such a good student, but not so much that I don't hope this assignment sets the tone for the rest of the semester.

And, of course, this just confirms my suspicion that computer science majors are a bunch of pikers.

Let's go shopping!

The Internet has made life much easier for engineers, fledgling and otherwise. We are looking for the various bits and pieces we need to add on to the Hamsters. In the olden days, we'd be pawing through smudgy catalogs (which we could do now; we have plenty lying around the lab), squinting at fine print and blurry pictures of chips, or flipping through industry magazines to look at ads. Thanks to the Internet, we can do that online! In addition to the visual zoom, advantages are that we can download a complete spec sheet for anything we're interested in and even order free samples.

I am loving the free sample thing. Yeah, we only get two chips, or whatever, but we'll be able to plug them in and test them out before we buy the eight that we need. Besides, as we are still very much in the fledgling stage of our lives as engineers, we find the language on the spec sheets to be obscure and sometimes the only way for us to get a clue is to plug-n-chug.

Some things we have to buy up front. In the spirit of plug-n-chug, we're ordering six different kinds of temperature sensors because we're not sure which will work with the Hamsters and the total is only going to be ten dollars, well within the departmental budget.

We can also use information resources to clear up professor-induced confusion. For example, I am told to get an amplifier with a certain gain. "Look for an instrumentation amplifier," Dr. Smith says. I find one that looks good, order samples, and pass the spec sheet on to Dr. Smith, who points out a few days later that this amplifier is for DC signals, not AC.

"So I think you need an instrumentation amplifier," he says.

"But, that was—" I return to the altar of Google, make the appropriate sacrifices, and find a definition for "instrumentation amplifier" (an amplifier optimized for use with DC signals). I go on to find a nifty "isolation amplifier" which works for AC signals. I'm not sure it's what we need, but, whoo, free samples!

Word problems

Our first assignment in Microfabrication involved some basic arithmetic. Given the wafer diameter and chip size, calculate the number of chips you can put on a wafer. Then calculate cost per chip given a certain yield, and so on. Not hard, except that our professor, somewhat distracted by being locked in an interdepartmental fight to the death over funding for a scanning electron microscope, has neither covered the material in any detail, nor managed to get the textbooks into the bookstore.

I know how to hunt up information online, though. I find that Micron, in a shocking display of silliness, has similar exercises posted in their K12 education pages, except that the formulas they offer will only work on a square wafer. And the wafers, they are not square.

On the other hand, the instructor of a similar class at the University of Massachusetts (which probably already has a couple electron microscopes) has a more grown up formula and the time to post it.

Isn't it just totally wrong for a microchip company to post incorrect information about microchips? Or is Micron populated with evil geniuses who are manufacturing single-crystal silicon ingots with square cross sections?

A shock to the system

As of today I have outstanding homework assignments in all my classes: Microfabrication, Discrete Structures, and Advanced Digital Systems. Together with the Senior Design Seminar, these add up to a full course load. Oh, and there's that huge senior project (more fun with Hamsters) to do as well. Also, we are the class of record as my university goes for ABET accreditation for the computer engineering program (Now in its fourth exciting year!) so we have to prepare a portfolio of various lab reports, papers, and projects we've done over the years. And they want this portfolio in the form of an interactive website so it will look nice for the accreditation board. I should get cracking on that right away instead of leaving it till May. I'll get to it as soon as I finish up the little translation job that came in today.

If all that wasn't enough, we had the mandatory safety lecture in preparation for entering the clean room and making some chips. We will be using chemicals that can sink imperceptibly through your skin and dissolve your bones, chemicals that can reduce your lungs to jelly, and nail polish remover, which is pretty benign by comparison. And I thought the warning signs all over the ChemE floor were scary. Suddenly this doesn't seem like such a fun class. The bunny suits don't even have ears.

On names

Since I'm looking for a job and have been posting my resume around, I've been thinking about names and bias in America. As found in a study by economists at MIT and the University of Chicago, referenced in this Washington Post article about the Implicit Association Test (via John Scalzi), job candidates with stereotypically "white" names get 50% more calls than candidates with stereotypically "black" names. And this study was done with identical resumes, the only difference was the names. When I first heard about this study a few years ago, I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach.

What does this have to do with me?

My name is stereotypically more common among black people. I say "stereotypically" because I don't know if that is actually the case. The three people that I've known personally with my same name are all white, as am I. The two local newscasters with my same name are not. On the two or three occasions when I've introduced myself to someone who's told me that their wife/aunt/cousin has the same name as I do, those folks have been black. So based on this small sample, I'd have to say that my name is probably as likely to belong to a white person as a black person. But will a recruiter have the same perspective? Or will I have to settle for getting fewer calls than a less qualified person with the benefit of a "whiter" name?

I've probably been affected by this type of discrimination for years without even realizing it. All my work as a freelancer is handled over the phone, with clients whose recruiters have pulled my resume out of a pile and called me in spite of my name, and perhaps even because of my qualifications. Maybe the response rate would have been higher if I had a different name. If you want a Japanese semiconductor patent translated, who do you call first? A white guy or a black chick? (Actually, I think they call the lowest bidder. Think about that next time you complain about the bad translation of the instructions for your home electronics. The massive conglomerate couldn't be bothered to pony up the extra US$0.05 per word to have the job done right.)

Now that I'm making a career change to a very white-male-dominated field, I might consider using my middle name, which is gender-neutral and about as lily-white as it gets. But my name is my name. Besides, I'd rather work in an organization that hires on the basis of more than the supposed "race" of the name at the top of the resume.

My life as white sale

Oh goody! More shopping.

The flannel sheets I've been using for the past few years are wearing out. The fitted sheet is worn to the consistency of Kleenex and will probably dissociate into its component fibers if stretched over the mattress another time. The flat sheet and pillow cases are in sturdier condition, but totally denuded of fuzz and, a fuzzy surface being the very essence of flannel, are therefore candidates for replacement as well.

Today we brave the icy roads and head out to a large chain store. Well, an inch or two of ice overlays my block, but the rest of the roads are clear. Minimal bravery required.

In the bizarre world of American retail, however, it's already spring. A few ice scrapers and sleds stand at the entrance to the store, but inside April holds sway over the stock. This works to my advantage to a small degree, because flannel sheet sets are half price. The selection, however, is minimal. My choices are black or red (dark colors don't seem right for bedding), beige plaid (what is the point of that? If you're going plaid, it ought to be Royal Stewart or Black Watch), or granny flowers. The selection is a little better for queen size because it includes a print of little dogs wearing sweaters. Dogs with sweaters! Almost as good as monkeys. Alas, I must settle for the granny flowers.

We find a little more ice to drive over on the way home. We observe the chunks of blackened ice dropping off the SUVs on the interstate, as if the trucks are pooping. Outside the chain stores, winter is still in charge.

New Blankie

I have a headache. The muscles on the back of my head and neck were knotted tight when I woke this morning. I'm not used to tension headaches and I don't know what's causing this one. Tense? Atashi? I've got a couple weeks before the semester really starts grinding me down. (By evening my headache settles into its usual migraine form. Lucky me.)

We dither by the blankets. As a lap robe, I've been using a large piece of fleece I cut from an old robe and Oz thinks that's silly because it's just not big enough. So here we are at Target to get another throw to add to the pile of pillows and blankets on the futon I use as a sofa (soon there will be no room left for me). Our choices are a plain little down throw or a little fake suede and fake fur throw which looks mildly barbaric.

Oz compares them and holds up the down throw. "You probably like this one?"

"So you don't think I look like a Viking princess?" I am blonde and square-jawed after all.

He replaces the down throw and reaches for the fake animal products throw. "I guess the cats will like this one, do you think?"

"So I don't look like a Viking princess?"

"Ha."

I do now, at least when draped with this polyester hide.

Risk assessment

We are working on our preliminary design proposal for our senior project. In one section we have to make an assessment of our major sources of risk: what can go wrong and what we can do about it. We decide that our main source of risk, apart from human error (because we know ourselves), is the whole entire research facility that is running the Hamster project.

Hey, we're free labor. It's not like they can fire us for bringing up the blatantly obvious.

Case in point: The weather station we're supposed to be adding to the Hamsters

The portions of our design proposal relating to the weather station consist entirely of question marks. We got a glimpse of the weather station a couple weeks ago, but we don't have it in hand, nor do we have any technical information. We've been asking about it for some time.

Today we ask Dr. Smith about it again when he drops into the lab to discuss one of the New! Surprising! additions to the project. As he'd been expecting to receive the technical specs from Dr. Science this morning, he goes back to his office to check his email.

Five minutes later he returns, looking stunned and carrying a sheet of paper. "This is all he sent. Maybe you'd better email him with…specific questions."

I take the sheet of paper and see that it's basically a research summary, a few paragraphs describing the weather station, with all the technical content of a press release. "I don't think we know enough about it to ask specific questions." I think up some later and email Dr. Science, but I doubt I'll have any more luck than Dr. Smith did.

How much do you want to bet we never get it? Or that they haven't even put it together? What they showed us was a circuit board and a few loose sensors. I'd say not having the central component of the project is our greatest source of risk, except that it seems to have gone beyond risk and into certainty.

Milestone #1

Dr. Flight's first order was for us to get a few of the Hamsters up and running again so that we'd have a development system to work with. Hence the ripping of components from an old board and putting them on a new board. Today we test out the new Hamster board.

It flatlines. This is bad.

There is much messing with oscilloscopes and multimeters to trace the captured signal through the board and find out where it stopped. Attendant crises thereof are dealt with by setting the gain on the board to something other than zero (else you get a flatline), setting the scope to read a 10X probe as a 10X probe instead of a 1X probe (else you get one tenth the amplitude—nearly a flatline), and questioning Ratso about how he removed the very expensive amplifier chip from the old board ("We stuck it in that oven thing and got it really hot so the solder melted and it just fell out of the board. Along with some other stuff."). But once we get the probe situation resolved, we find that the amplifier is working correctly. We check the next chip on down the line and see—

The A/D converter chip is stuck in backwards. So no data, hence the flatline. Luckily for us, the A/D converter is in a socket, so it's simply a matter of pulling it out and popping it back in.

Now we have three working boards, four if you count the one that's missing a power converter (we can work around that by applying the correct voltage at the contact where the power converter's output would be).

Falling snow (excellent snow)

This is the picture.

We were supposed to have a half inch of accumulation, but the snow starts while I eat lunch and the half inch is soon buried under another half inch. People in the northerly climes will laugh, but the radio station started announcing school closings immediately. The mercury hovers around 20 °F and the snow fluffs around like powder instead of settling into a slushy mess.

Oz calls. "It's really slick outside. Be careful. Give yourself lots of extra time to get to class. And if you get stuck on campus tonight, call me."

"Yeah, okay." I'm checking my university's website to see if they've closed yet. Nope.

I head out, giving myself thirty-five minutes to make what is normally a ten minute drive. I brush the snow off the car and drive away, observing that the very dry snow gives the effect of driving on ball bearings. The car slithers around on the road and the ABS does its thing. Noting odd little traffic backups here and there, I creep very slowly down the hill (my neighborhood is on top of a hill). The car still slithers. I'm used to driving small, front-wheel-drive vehicles and the Volvo, being a very large, rear-wheel-drive vehicle, handles much differently in the snow. Really badly, in fact, no matter how slowly I go. What do Swedish people drive when there's an inch of snow on the ground?

Okay. So I'm still recovering from my last automotive brush with death. I start to shake and suddenly it seems like a very good idea to go back home. I don't see the point in risking my car, my relatively low auto insurance premiums, and my already damaged neck to attend classes, the main focus of which will be to go over a syllabus. I still feel guilty because I never miss class.

I creep along Franklin to 25th Street and turn left on 25th to head back up the hill. The front end of the car tries to go up the hill as instructed, but the back end keeps heading straight on up Franklin (also up the hill, but much steeper than 25th). Now I'm sort of crookedly sitting in the middle of the intersection.

The guilt over cutting class quickly fades. I might be able to drive up the hill backwards, but I'm not up for the challenge and navigating the hill in any orientation or direction suddenly seems like a terrible idea when I see a truck, driving slowly down 25th, slide into a parked car. I gingerly maneuver the car around and park it on a nice flat stretch of Franklin in the middle of a block where it should be safe from persons taking corners too fast.

And I walk home in the snow. Up hill. Both ways. Well, only one way. Full disclosure: it's only eight blocks and I can look forward to hot cocoa, novels, and the internet to play with when I get there. I'm not expecting sympathy here.

I'm glad I have pie

I shrug off the sense o' doom and make it through the first day of the semester. I get an announcement about the career fair in early February, so now I know I have just three weekends to acquire a business suit.

I should call Lisa. Lisa will know what to buy and I have enough credit to buy what she tells me to. Because a good suit is an investment and damn the finance charges!

Dr. Flight, who's managing the senior projects, brings up the very Hamster issue about which I was most concerned: the lack of a clear spec from Dr. Science. (Or even an unchanging spec. I'd settle for that. Or, even more in-my-dreams, a needs analysis interview with the people who will be using the Hamsters.) We proceed to figuratively nail Dr. Smith—our Dr. Science liaison—to the wall and insist upon getting a set of part numbers, if not actual parts, within the next few days.

In the meantime, we're ripping expensive components off old Hamster boards to populate the new Hamster boards. Ratso is most enthusiastic about this and I notice that one of the DC-DC power converters is decorated with bits of melted circuit board. Tomorrow I will be checking to make sure that the components survived the ripping off process.

The beginning of the end

Today is the last day of winter break. Tomorrow is the first day of my last semester. I keep thinking that this semester will be less bad, but I have a feeling that's wishful thinking. I'm not taking too many hours, but we have to make some major strides with the Hamster project and those Hamsters make you fight for every incremental improvement.

In any case, last day of freedom. So I work on applications for jobs for which I'm not quite qualified, but which I'd love to do. I write a cover letter. I gnash my teeth and gripe about the PeopleSoft interface and wonder if I really want to work for an organization that uses it. But what are my options there? I find it nearly every place I look.

I've got another cover letter to write. I've got my graduation application all filled out and ready to submit to my advisor tomorrow.

Only seventeen more weeks, one of which is Spring Break.

I have this feeling of impending doom even as I glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel. It's very odd.

Save the fork!

In our grocery shopping frenzy of yesterday, we picked up a package of frozen chopped rhubarb and a pack of pie crusts (because unfolding a pie crust is easier than making one). This morning I went out looking for rhubarb pie recipes on the internet. I found a lot of them, but this is the one I decided to follow, more or less.

Rhubarb pie

Ingredients:

4 cups rhubarb (one 20 oz. package of frozen chopped rhubarb)
Pastry for a double crust
2 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg, and powdered ginger
1 egg, well beaten
2 tablespoons butter cut into 12 bits (we used a little more than that, because it was the end of a stick)

Gear:

9 inch deep dish pie tin (mine is actually made of pyrex)
Bowls, forks, measuring spoons, knife
Whisk

Directions:

Thaw the rhubarb. This will take longer than you expect. Spread it out on a platter. Stir it around. Go out for brunch. Come back. Check the rhubarb. It will still be frozen. Stir it around. Set it aside and mess with the pie crust. Check it again. And so on.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Line the pie pan with the pastry for the bottom crust. Follow the package directions, because you are using the kind from the refrigerator case. Although, since it's taking the rhubarb so long to thaw, you certainly have time to make a scratch crust. Lazy.

If your companion looms behind you, breathing like Darth Vader and his (or her) stomach growling like the inner workings of The Force, put him (or her) to work, especially if he (or she) offers an excess of unsolicited advice on pie assembly.

While your companion is fiddling with the frozen rhubarb, mix together the flour, sugar and spices. Spread 1/4 cup of the sugar and spice mixture into the lower crust. Add half the rhubarb and give your companion a set of chopsticks so that he (or she) can arrange the rhubarb in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Add half the remaining sugar and spice, the rest of the rhubarb, and the rest of the sugar and spice. Better yet, have your companion do this. It's okay to have extra rhubarb heaped in the middle, it will sink down when it bakes. Also, rhubarb pie is not like lasagna. Convection of the ingredients during baking mixes up the ingredients (so you don't have to), so that even though the sugar and fruit are layered in the unbaked pie, that is not the case in the baked pie. Trust me.

Pour the beaten egg over the rhubarb and sugar. Dot with the bits of butter. Put the top crust on and "gash it well" for steam to escape. Crimp the edges to form a good seal and minimize leaking. Sprinkle a little sugar over the top for pretty. We found that this pie did leak a little, even with the deep dish pan. Put a cookie sheet or something else thin and oven-safe beneath the pie dish in the oven to save yourself the work of cleaning your oven. Actually, I have a self-cleaning oven. I should probably figure out how that works.

Bake the pie at 450 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and continue baking until the fruit is tender and the crust is brown and puffed—about 40 minutes longer. Because the rhubarb was still quite cold, we had to bake the pie an extra five minutes or so. We didn't have a problem with the crust getting too dark, but if you do, protect it with aluminum foil.

Cool the pie so as to avoid third degree burns. Eat it.

It's on sale!

When you have a "10% off everything" coupon, everything in the store is on sale. For some reason our grocery store is generating these coupons, good for 10% off your total purchase on certain Saturdays. How could we resist?

"School is starting, you'll need canned soup," Oz insists. "And crackers. And cheese. And apples."

"Hey, I'm reading one of those Highland romances right now, I need some Scottish shortbread."

We also needed some rhubarb and pie crust, yogurt, cinnamon buns, almond biscotti… Obviously, we're using the word "need" in its absolute loosest sense. We now have lots of junk food and a ton of canned soup. What's worse, the cash register generated another "10% off everything" coupon along with our receipt. Guess what we're doing next Saturday evening.

End of the tunnel

Finally, today I resolve the last, lingering questions about transfer credits and basic requirements. I get the word that I will definitely (Hah!) graduate this spring and I won't have to take any more classes than what I've already registered for. That is quite the relief. I had noticed that transfer students seem to have more than one "last semester" and I didn't want that to happen to me—even if I did have to take extra credit hours and have a nervous breakdown this semester.

I also seem to have recovered from the last semester. My energy's back, I'm feeling creative and stories are bubbling up out of my subconscious. This means that it's time to start contorting my brain into the unnatural configurations necessary for designing circuits and logic. Great timing, eh?

Why can't I post?

It's not that I don't have anything to say. I keep getting error messages. This happened briefly around Christmas, but it was resolved in a day. I hope my hosting service isn't getting flakey right when my contract is up for renewal.

Herding cats

On Monday I dragged the whole Hamster team (I have minions now) down to Hampton to see Dr. Science et al. We had to demo the Hamsters, show the techs how to work them, and answer questions about the system from Dr. Sounds, the researcher who is going to be examining the data collected by our trusty Hamsters. Now is probably a good time to reiterate that the Hamsters are microcontrollers and circuit boards that sample and send data to a PC. No animal testing here. I won't say "cruelty free" because of the sheer number of issues that keep cropping up. A Hamster is a cruel master indeed.

In the lab, they pounce on my USB drive which has all the files relating to the project and run around making copies of the files (Second Amendment Guy makes, like, five CDs so everyone has a copy and he has two) and trying to collect all the people who are supposed to see the demo. They find Dr. Science, but we have to wait for Dr. Sounds. Dr. Sounds turns up, but Dr. Science has wandered off. By the time they find him again, Dr. Sounds has gone somewhere and then suddenly it's lunchtime.

In the meantime, we've powered up the Hamsters and started running them. They work! We mess around with the extremely expensive microphones, do some testing with the super-long cables that will be used in the field. We're not used to the nearly flat line of the graphed data (this is real data, not the sine wave input we've been using for development), but it gets a little more exciting when the jet planes take off from the air force base and the microphones have something they can pick up.

The system keeps on working throughout the demo. I am able to answer all the questions they ask. It's great. Every time they say, "Can it do —?" I am able to say, "Yes." This segues into a meeting in which they tell us all the other stuff they want us to add now. I take notes. Half the time I don't know what the heck they're talking about, so I just write it all down and figure I'll find out later.

We also go over to the gantry to see the old system that the Hamsters will be replacing. Problems with the old system include the following.
It's really old.
It's really big.
It's flakey.
It consumes a lot of power.
No one is sure how it works.
If parts break, they can't be replaced because those parts aren't being made anymore.
No one likes this machine.

Being none of all that, the Hamsters were quite the hit. Dr. Sounds has been waiting over twenty years for this system. The techs are overjoyed. Dr. Science is trying to figure out how to use it underwater.

Perspective

It's very difficult to photograph very large structures from when you're practically standing beneath them. If you can't get anything else in the picture, it's also hard to tell how large the structure is, because there's nothing for your eye to compare it to. Consider the gantry.

If you look up at one end, it looks almost lithe.

The end where the elevator, stairs, and other gear all come together is much more substantial.

You still can't tell how tall it is. I don't actually know, two hundred and fifty feet, I think. I guess the trees help.

Yes, I was holding the camera crooked. The ground is very flat here—no slopes.

Notice how part of the structure looks rusty, but some bits are freshly painted? Rumor has it that they started to repaint and then decided that it would be cheaper to tear it down. It's a national historic landmark because of the moon landing practice they did here, but apparently it's okay to tear down landmarks as long as you leave the plaque intact.

Tired

Wow. Tired. No energy. No words. Big day, though. I'll have more to say tomorrow.

Utensils

Remember how the side rail of the four poster bed broke? And Oz fixed it up? And then I made up the bed all nice and cleaned the room of all evidence of woodworking and handyman type activities? Probably not, because I didn't write about all that. But it did happen and we were very pleased about it, until yesterday, when we noticed a serious twist on the footboard.

The unbroken part of the side rail is heading towards the broken end of the side rail spectrum. Rather than wait for it to break before we do anything, we decide to deal with it like grownups. "Besides," Oz points out, "I still have all the clamps and glue in my car."

This afternoon he gets to work. I help unmake the bed and then retire to my office where I stay out of his way and write a user manual for the Hamster system. Mostly out of his way. I do go up and visit a few times.

I find Oz prying away at the end of the side rail.

"Is that my nail file?" I ask.

"Yes. I have to get the metal pegs out somehow."

"Oh. Well, I guess that isn't the only nail file in the world."

"I'm using your tweezers too." He pauses to hold up my good pink tweezers.

"Oh." I'm less blasébout the tweezer abuse, but in the interests of getting the bed fixed, I'll deal. (Later, I find them back in the medicine cabinet, apparently none the worse except for being less pink where the paint chipped off.)

Right now the side rail is all clamps and glue. Tomorrow we'll reassemble the bed, make it up, and clean up the room. Again. I'm hoping that nothing else is going to break right away, but that's silly of me, isn't it?

After the sniff test

Today I translate (for money, even) the label on this clothing spray product. The idea is that you can spray it on your clothes and it will remove wrinkles and odors, leaving behind a smooth, crisp finish and a fresh citrus scent. The secret ingredient is "nanotechnology" which is, I guess, the new new buzzword.

I wonder about the advertising campaign. It can't possibly show how the product is going to be used, really. Because the image of a slob pulling a shirt out of the pile on the floor and spritzing it with Wrinkle-B-Gone is just not that appealing. Unless, maybe, the slob looks really good without his shirt on…

One wonders

The Gray One, Monte Alban, would be happier without fleas, I decide and scoop him off my desk. He knows something's up and struggles when he hears the crackle of the package of flea stuff as I pop the tube out of its foil-backed capsule. I hold the cat between my knees and quickly squeeze the flea stuff onto the back of his neck. He twitches and jerks his head around.

He runs away and I figure he'll be avoiding me for weeks.

He doesn't.

Twenty minutes later, he slinks into the room, making googly eyes, and chirps at me. He purrs and slithers around on the floor. I suspect subterfuge: that he's manipulating me, trying to get me to rub the flea stuff off on my hand.

After all, he is the smart one.

But he is defeated by my distraction. I catch a whiff of—can it be?—cat pee and spend the next several minutes crawling around and sniffing the living room rug.

Monte Alban is mystified and eventually withdraws to watch.

By these little things

I spend another afternoon in a waiting room. I read, listen to the desk staff chat. One of them starts humming-singing a blues (gospel?) tune in a low, but perfectly pitched voice, another joins her. Harmony, until they laugh at themselves because it's such an old song.

Finally I'm back in an exam room and the doctor comes in.

"So, how are you? Let's see those films," he says.

We look at the MRI of my neck, the film clipped to a light box, and look at my spine, my disks, my spinal cord. And a slender whisper of white therein.

"Ah, see. Here, this is what I thought." The doctor traces the thin dash of white with his index finger. "This is fluid, that shouldn't be there." He tells me about how the consequent disruption to the nerves in the shoulder can lead to the destruction of the joint. "You need to see a neurosurgeon."

He dives for the door and I contemplate the film while arrangements are made.

A feline forgives

I have two cats, the Fluffy One and the Gray One. Somehow, despite the fact that they never set foot outside, they managed to pick up fleas. The Fluffy One has them worse than the Gray One, probably because he's extra fat and juicy. I have been remiss. I didn't pay too much attention to the flea situation (there's been a lot going on), and when I did, I got the cheap flea stuff from the pet supply store. The cheap stuff doesn't work; it actually bothers the cats more than it bothers the fleas. I swear, after I put this stuff on the Fluffy One, I saw fleas prancing across his tummy. Then poor Fluffy One had a big greasy spot on the back of his neck for weeks! In addition, as the Fluffy One became a slightly less hospitable environment, the fleas hopped over onto the Gray One.

I decided that for their seasonal gift I would get the cats the good flea stuff from the vet that costs ten times as much but actually works. Today is the day, I decided after I saw all the flea poo in the spot where the Fluffy One sleeps. I sat on the Fluffy One, squeezed the stuff onto his neck, and let him go. He cringed and ran away to sulk on a windowsill for awhile, but within an hour he was demanding lap time. I hope I can get away with dosing only him. The Gray One takes flea stuff really personally and will not forgive me for weeks, but when I dose the Fluffy One and not him, he makes extra nice. The Gray One is a little smarter than the Fluffy One, but a lot more neurotic. I should dose him anyway.

Catwalk

South 21st between East Main and Cary Streets
Catwalk between two tobacco factory buildings in Shockoe Bottom.

This picture dates back to last February. The catwalk is still there, but the buildings are being worked on, so who knows for how much longer? I like the velvety greens, but not the glare so much. I took the picture standing with my back to an abandoned safe and this courtyard.

Can you tell nothing happened today? That's why you get a picture.

Or maybe not.

I got the car an oil change, did more office cleaning and shredding, got calendars. One thing I like about January is when I set up my calendar for the year. I page through last year's calendar, reading the notes I wrote about what happened when, and mark important things from it into the new calendar: dates when tax forms are due, friends' birthdays and anniversaries, friends' kids' birthdays, etc. I mystify people by my ability to remember birthdays, but there's no magic to it. I even mark the birthday of my first novel, the day when I finished it. The novel turns three this November. Alas, it needs to be rewritten. It's novel #2 that's sitting in a slush pile. I did figure out how to fix up this first one. If I cut out half the characters (way too many characters) and break apart the plot lines (way too many plot lines) and rewrite it as two novellas, it'll work. If I only had more time, but when the time is right I'll write. All right?

Confetti

I'm a fairly organized person with a certain amount of tolerance for clutter. Over the past few years, that tolerance has turned to blindness and denial. When I stop doing school for the day, I basically collapse with my iBook, some Scotch, and whatever banal drama is running on TV Japan. Filing bills, tidying up the office, picking up books and putting them—where? I've got no more room in the bookcases. I guess I'll just stack them here on the floor in the pile with the binders of notes for my sad, neglected writing projects and the magazines that I'm going to read as soon as I finish up this YA novel.

However, the leaning tower of unfiled bills, bank statements, and unopened statements from the mutual fund people has gotten too unstable. It's been growing since the filing cabinet became too stuffed to accommodate any more paper and is over eight inches high now. The filing cabinet (obviously the culprit here) contains filed bills, bank statements, and opened statements from the mutual fund people going back to 1998 when I last purged the files of ancient and unwieldy quantities of paper.

In the spirit of New Year's Cleaning, I decide that today is the day to do some filing. Purging the filing cabinet is kind of fun. I find the receipt from a luxurious weekend at The Homestead (1998, back when we were making money and BES (Before Engineering School)), some papers relating to a court case that I never did contract to translate (Small World Alert: the plaintiff turned out to be the father of the girl who sat beside me in my first calculus class at Reynolds), and various "Why did I even file this?" sorts of papers. Some stuff goes into the trash, but anything with a credit card number or account number goes into a bag to be shredded. This bag gets rather full.

Then I sort the stack of unfiled papers. I even open my mutual fund statements and find that things aren't as bad as I feared. Then I file things and take out the trash. It's actually rather satisfying to have brought order to a corner of my office.

I sit down and push paper through the shredder till it jams. I fix the shredder. I think, "Given that I broke my washing machine this morning, maybe it's time to quit for the day." I now have a grocery bag half full of white confetti and I wish that credit card companies and banks were more exuberant in their choice of paper colors.

Fair trade coffee. Must it suck?

The answer is no. We're pleased enough with the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe from The Righteous Bean. We are, however, less pleased with another brand we tried today. Mocha Java should have flavor, no? Oz even tried melting a piece of Belgian chocolate into his cup, to the betterment of neither. Although it was interesting to see how it melted, the chocolate deserved a better fate. The coffee is going to Oz's house, where it will be left in the path of his son and the son's female companion who haven't got quite the sophisticated palates that Oz and I do. There was plenty of caffeine, though, so I'm going to be up for a while.

You'd think that with all this stimulation I could come up with more to write about, but you'd be wrong. Blah, blah. What else happened today? The side rail of the bed broke and fell off while Oz was in bed. Very dramatic. One of the finials popped off its post and was thrown across the room. This was not a big surprise, for me, anyway. (Oz might say something else, like "Help!") The bed had been telegraphing its intent via the steadily increasing torque on the head and foot boards. It's a four-poster and while the posts on the right side were mostly vertical (| |), the posts on the left side were not (/ \). Our errands today included a trip to the hardware store for assorted adhesives, brass screws, and fittings to be used for repairs. We also bought cat food and coffee (see above). At the cat food store, we paused to look at the hamsters running in their little wheels. Two Chinese Dwarf Hamsters were trying to run in the same small wheel at the same time, alternately falling out and hopping back in. The wheel kept on turning. That's, like, metaphorical or something.

New Year's Day

Today I did the following.

Out loud, I said, "I survived 2004!" I was thinking these words last week when the tsunami happened, causing 140,000 (and counting) people not to live out the year. I thought I had better keep quiet till I was certain that I had made it.

I had a headache. Where did that come from? I only had two glasses of champagne last night.

I cleaned the telephones. Lots of crud collects in the handset rests, especially in the case of the phone that sits near a window. I cleaned up some cat barf too. Nothing says "Happy New Year" like cat barf. Thanks, kitties!

I donated money to Mécins Sans Frontiès for tsunami relief.

I applied for a job at Apple, because they've got a cool job for which I am (or may be able to make them think I am) qualified, and I love my iBook. Wouldn't my brother be envious if I got it?

I didn't make any resolutions. I've got enough on my plate as it is: finish the last semester of engineering school, get a job, relocate if necessary (involves getting my house ready to sell, etc.), continue trying to sell my novel, continue dealing with the medical fallout from the accident, negotiate an insurance settlement for the accident. Who knows what else is going to pop up? I would like to get my life settled down enough that I could write more.

I went for a drive with Oz on this pretty, warm day. We drove east on Route 5 into the sunshine and saw lots of mistletoe hanging green in the oak trees, hunters' trucks pulled off by the side of the road, a "hunter" beagle with bright orange tape on his collar, and lots of folks taking their Harleys or boats out for a spin.

I ordered a new bag that is big enough to hold all the stuff I want to carry around all the time.

I ate good chocolate and drank delicious coffee.

All in all, this was a pretty good way to start the year. Hello, 2005!