sentience

Just got off 2 days of virus symptoms (fever, aches, nausea).  Now my wife is in worse shape.  So to help her through it, I'm doing what I can to work from home again today.  So far, not off to a good start:

 

1.  Data connection for design review crashed within the first 15 minutes.

2.  Daughter used up battery in cordless phone so I'm limping along with a VOIP connection for a conference call

3.  Showed up 30 minutes late for previous call, so I have LESS idea of what's getting talked about

4.  Very tired and have little patience for these early "hiccups".

 

Anyway, the best I can hope for is that my wife starts feeling better today.  She looks better and is sitting up in bed at least.  I might get some Halo 3 play in later this week if all goes well with getting housework caught up.  I'm on a Forza 2 run lately enjoying the Career mode racing and beating my earlier "noob" times on the tracks.

Well I sucessfully survived the first company wide layoff of the year!  Yay!  My wife's workplace is also in the midst of a layoff but she also seems OK.  Huge relief!!

 

Work was rough today as I had people I depend on just not doing what they should.  I ALMOST sent them a nasty email but thought better of it and saved it as draft instead to let it sit and cool off some.

 

My stepdaughter recently BROKE a drum pad clean off my Rock Band 2 drums.  The whole family has really gotten into this game!  It's the first where it wasn't just ME playing the xbox but now everyone, even the 7 year old is getting into it.  So I really need to replace the drum set so we can all play together.  Hope to next week (bonus pay comes in).

 

As for bonus pay..yeah thanks company BUT timing is bad as the car needs $1000 of work on it!  Apparently Mercury Sables are known for the bad rear struts.  Those babies need replacement on top of all four tires (which I got a great deal at Costco on) and the front end alignment.  Bummer!

Ok, I'm back.  Why?  Well, boredom maybe?  Feeling settled into my new place?  Yeah all that.  Good to be back.  I think in general I just got my act together and can actually carve out the time to do something here.  What exactly I'm doing, yeah I don't know.  But it'll come to me.  Like the snow in Vermont, it's bound to show up.  My bet is first snow hits somewhere around November 6.  It's already starting to get cooler and the nights are leaving frost on the ground.  Anyway, here I am and it's good to be here...try the veal.  Oh yeah, got a webcam yay.  Like I know what I'm doing...pheh.

Wow...what the heck happened to me?  Well, more like what happened to my space??  Neglect.  Actually, it's more a fact of me not paying my DSL bill and yeah..some neglect.  Anyhow, I spent half of my time here trying to get my video player working on this space.  It's not happening this morning.  So I think I better leave it alone for now.  Anyway here's one of my favoirite Nine Inch Nails tunes, live: 
Video: right where it belongs by nine inch nails

I've added a WMP gadget to show a video of IBM's 300mm wafer manufacturing facility in NY state.  This may give you some idea how next-gen gaming chips are manufactured every day. 

 

 

Hello BLOG!  Yeah I know...I've been away a LONG time.  No overall excuse...maybe just a few little itty bitty ones:

 

1.  I hit the brick wall emotionally sometime around the holidays...somewhere between work and home I just completely shut down.  I think I took 2-3 days off from work for being completely useless.  Don't worry, I'm ok...I'm on meds and getting counseling.  I've even taken up meditiation at the local Shabhala Meditation Center.  I love meditation.  I always come away from it completely refreshed and renewed. 

 

2.  I took a week off to NYC with my wife who had a conference there.  While she was in class, I spent time walking the cold but busy streets of manhattan taking in all the sites.  Between A Chorus Line (which my aunt starred in as an original cast member) a dinner at Gramercy Tavern and fantastic beers at Heartland Brewery under the Empire State Building...I really loved NY!  We even took the 9 hour train ride to get down there (the weather in mid Jan was HORRIBLE for driving down).   I even finally got myself a cellphone (yes I'm one of the last humans on earth to buy one).  I really do love this helpful but sometimes annoying gadget.  Overall, NY was a good time, I need to do that again!

 

3.  I'm doing great things at work again...but no it's not the next XBOX chip.  Work has been busy but manageable.  Not that I really should use work as an excuse not to visit my blog but it does take up fun time.

 

4.  As for funtime Crackdown Demo has had me completely addicted.  They should have just called this "Crack".  Love that thing!

 

Hopefully this will mark an occasion for more frequent blog updates.  And maybe more pics!

Anyone catch good glimpses of this years' CES?  Anyone see anything about IBM?  Anyone EXPECT to?  Probably not.  They were there anyway!  I personally worked on both the Microtune and Dialog parts.  and gee...I didn't get to go