One fun little anecdote from last week that I’d forgotten to share, and didn’t want it to go without mention. It was Monday night and I had to get to Home Depot for some supplies. I went to start my car and I’d left an internal light on, so that wasn’t happening. I knocked on my neighbors’ doors, looking for someone who could jump my car, to no effect. Evening on a three-day weekend, big surprise. I walked all over my neighborhood till I found someone. Then I darted back to my place to give my car a shove out of the garage, as otherwise there was no way we’d get the jumper cables to reach. Ran to get into the driver’s seat before it rolled too far away, then let it coast out to the street and banked it around so it stopped at the opposite curb. Got jumped and on my way; mission accomplished.

Also last week I excitedly made mention of the spring growth in the back yard. I hadn’t yet noticed the patch in the front yard, which had downright flourished over winter.

I have no idea how the other plants got there, but I couldn’t’ve arranged it better myself.

Our team has gotten too crowded in our current office location, so we’re shifting over to a different building. If we had done this move a couple months earlier I would’ve missed my current location a lot more. But they just kept cramming and cramming. Here’s a before and after pic:

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Walking in to my desk had started crushing my soul a little bit.

The new digs aren’t quite as spacious as the first pic, but the desk arrangement precludes any further densification. A couple days previously I’d stopped by the new area to get a feel for it. My desk sat perpendicular to a window, which was nice. What wasn’t nice was that the window I’d be spending most of my time looking out of was split vertically, with a crossbar right at eye level. Makes the window look way smaller. And an awkwardly-placed column would keep me from being able to lean too far back without bumping my head.

I figured out that I had enough space to rotate my desk 90°, so I would be facing the window directly. My monitors would then occlude the crossbar, and I’d be able to lean all the way back.

We each get an assigned drawer set, a compact unit on wheels with a padded top. The move announcement said that these drawer units wouldn’t be getting moved. I noticed that my new unit had an ugly chewing gum stain on it, and it was ~4″ shallower than my current unit. I followed the example of a co-worker and pushed my drawers all the way across campus to the new desk, shuttling the other drawers back as a replacement. Caused quite the ruckus as these are not the quietest things to move around.

The movers wanted all packing done by 4pm, so they could start shuttling stuff over to the new building. Workstation powered off, all cables disconnected, desk cleared off. One benefit of pushing my drawers over was that I didn’t have to empty them out, so most of my stuff didn’t need to be packed away. But I’d had a crazy busy day and hadn’t had a chance to finish some testing I really wanted to get done before the weekend, so having my workstation disconnected till Monday wasn’t an exciting proposition. While I have a laptop, there are some core pieces of work I can’t do without remoting in to my workstation.

I headed out to grab some Subway, then went on a little walk around downtown Kirkland. Headed back to the office and the movers had made short work of migrating everyone’s stuff.

What followed was an hour of bliss: being able to sit in peace with no one around while I did desk rearrangement and cable management to my heart’s desire. I’m quite proud of the end result.

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I then decided to try out the rig and finish up the testing I hadn’t been able to earlier. Test succeeded, huzzah.

Rewinding a bit. On Wednesday morning I had a cleaning crew come through and do their thing. I’m still finding cat hairs in the most random places, but one day they shall be no more.

That evening I got invited out to a soccer match. Great seats, not so great game; lost 2-0, but it was still fun to watch.

Thursday night I went out on a date; pizza followed by Alita in IMAX 3D. I dunno if the 3D was that compelling, but it was still fun to watch again.

Friday night was the aforementioned moving day. I also picked up a first-generation Amazon Echo I’d claimed on an internal ‘forsale’ mailing list, for the steep price of $10. The problem with my current setup is that the Echo Dot is plugged directly into the sound bar, which spends most of its time powered off. So if I want to hear anything out of the Dot I need to power on the sound bar and make sure it’s set to the right input. Just fine for light control, not so much for casual Echo queries or music requests.

So I’d been thinking of getting something for my room. A Google Home would be nice, but I can’t address it as “computer”, and that’s a hard line for me. My phone can act as a rudimentary Google Home, but it annoyingly refuses to control my lights without first being unlocked, which kind of defeats the purpose.

So the new Echo is a welcome addition to the family. Now I can just say “Computer, bedroom lights off” and my will is made manifest. One neat trick you can do with multiple Echos is whole-home music playback. Each Echo syncs up and you can play the same music all throughout the house. Once again though, my sound bar throws a wrench in it; it’s doing some sort of audio processing that adds a quarter-second of lag to its output, destroying the effect. From what I can tell the Alexa app does allow you to adjust delays on a per-Echo basis, but only if they’re hooked up to a Bluetooth speaker. The app engineers must’ve assumed that a direct-line connection won’t experience lag. So I guess that’s a feature I won’t be using.

Saturday was a cleaning day. After a year living here I figured it was time to clean out the fridge and wash the shelves. Ran five loads of laundry; the lint filter was full of cat hair on each one. Last Monday I’d taken a hack-saw to the felled tree in my back yard; yesterday I took the branches I’d cut off and trimmed them down so they’d fit in a garbage bin. I think it’ll take two weeks’ worth of garbage runs to clear them out entirely.

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It turned out that my dining room lights were so dim because, well, they were dim, but also one of them was burned out. Replacing them with a pair of 100 watt LED bulbs was night and day. Don’t pardon the pun, that was horrible.

That evening I had a couple friends over to watch another Bollywood movie: Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. It’s another winner; we can watch it next time I’m back in town.

After the movie I darted down to catch the tail-end of a YSA dance. Normally totally not my thing, but I’d spent most of the week on my own, and the movie night didn’t quite do it for me. The dance was ok. It was fun to catch up with people, but I was reminded why I usually avoid them though. Just the whitest dancer ever looking super uncomfortable.

(I’m going to leave the prior sentence as-is because it’s too funny, but on review I realize I should specify that it’s dances I avoid, not the people.)

I asked but unfortunately they didn’t take requests, else I would’ve had them queue up this little number.

During dance clean-up a couple of the balloons got lose and were hanging out on the ceiling. I headed to the custodial closet and found some pipes that could be assembled together to span like 25 feet. After adding some tape and a pair of scissors to the mix, I had a formidable weapon against the Ceiling Clingers.

I got one down, but as I was within a foot of the other, a member came up behind me and authoritatively asked,

“Sir, excuse me. Sir. Um, can I please ask you to put that away. Uhh, sharp objects on the ceiling, could hurt someone. The balloon will come down on its own.”

I’ll have it down in like 3 seconds lady. “Uhh, ok, sure.”

So I came away from that empty-handed. The pole was proving difficult to disassemble, so I enlisted the help of another member to play tug-of-war to get it unstuck. As it was coming apart the woman from earlier again showed up.

“Can you please just put those away and stop playing with them?”

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(Context)

We reassured her we were just disassembling it for storage. “Thanks, I guess I just act like a mom sometimes.” So she wasn’t in any actual leadership role, just a busybody. Yech.

So, that’s my week. Till next time!

Today was a productive day because I managed to get three whole things done!

But first, some pics of my little vacation.

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Afterwards we had a rousing game of Arabian Nights.

Meanwhile Mom turned this…

…into this…

…which eventually turned into this:

As Kent Mansley would say, mmmboy.

On Sunday I had a little Washington reunion in Alpine. Friends came from Logan, Provo, Idaho, and Lehi. Grand old time.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were the days where I earned my keep at Google, running recruiting events at BYU.

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We ran out of food at one of our events, so Mom and Dad were just awesome and saved the day by darting over to the Cougareat to completely clean out Papa John’s.

Afterwards we had a little get-together at a local sushi joint.

Another evening I dropped in on a Washington friend and got to say hi to the cats again! While I’d been down in Utah she’d come by my place in Washington to pick up the cats and flew them down to her new place in Lehi.

Scout got some attention this week for sure.

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On Saturday Hayden and I went for a bike/run, then picked up the new living room TV, a 65-incher.

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We’d been instructed not to lay the screen flat, else it could get damaged. And since it was too large to lay straight up, we resorted to 45-degree angles.

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I introduced the fam to Bollywood this week, with the film Three Idiots. Seems like it’ll be an Andersen favorite.

Got to spend Sunday evening at Grandma’s monthly dinner before heading on up to the airport. Bittersweet.

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During the week I’d received some pics from my neighbor. The snow had come down hard, and unfortunately my old lilac tree wasn’t able to stand the weight.

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I got back and did some damage assessment.

It was a good thing the next day was gonna be a vacation, would give me time to work on this in the daylight.

I’d forgotten to re-enable my heating system before arriving, so I got to walk in to a house at 42 degrees. It was too cold to sleep so I flipped on the TV, and was met with this message:

Looks like Vizio may have sold my viewing data without proper consent, so I get a sweet sweet payout of ~$20. I’m quite sure I unchecked that setting, but I’ll take the cash anyhow.

So today I got the hack saw out and went to town on the tree. Uncle Dan said the prognosis was slim, but there was a chance it could be saved.

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We’ll find out in May if there’s any growth.

But amidst this cleanup job, I spotted new life! The hydrangea bush Mattie and I picked out last year had looked pretty dead all winter, and I’d had my doubts that it’d come back.

So that’ll be pretty.

Cleaning up the tree was one of my things I did today. The second was smarten up my bedroom. Due to some really poor electrical work, my wall switch has never been able to control the outlets in my room. Many months ago I ordered some smart switches to help rectify this, but I’d never gotten around to installing them.

Z-Wave smart switches have this feature called “association groups”. You can designate up to four other devices that turn on and off with the switch, whenever it’s toggled. I use it on the ground floor to have one switch control all floor lamps in the living room. I can also use the feature to install a switch that doesn’t actually electrically control anything, but sends a signal about four feet away to a smart outlet, into which my bedroom lamps are plugged. Voila, switched outlets. With three more microprocessors than should be necessary, but whatevs.

The third thing today was rectifying my mistaken door handle purchase. When I called for a locksmith to re-key my front door, I’d also wanted to get my garage door re-keyed as well. Unfortunately I didn’t have a key to that lock, which ends up being kind of critical to how re-keying functions. So I went out and tried to buy a new lock that matched up with the old one. I’d have keys for it, so it could be re-keyed.

Ended up getting the wrong brand, with incompatible mechanics. I’d be stuck with two sets of keys for the front and the garage doors. Thankfully I’d kept the receipt, so I disassembled the lock and took it in for a return. Picked out the actual right brand this time, and, got them to re-key it on the spot. Chatted with the guy doing the re-key operation so I could see how it was done.

He was an interesting character. Knew lock-picking because he’d been a magician for 30 years. Said he preferred Schlage locks (the brand I’d just purchased) because their competitors were too easy to pick.

When I brought the lock back home to install it I realized how many extra parts there were that I didn’t need, and I felt bad about not having those parts when I returned the other lock. They were totally nice about the return, but I wonder how they’ll process it.

In any case, I now have matching doors and matching locks, woohoo.

As I was writing my last missive I felt an hungered. Eventually my desire to catch up on stuff was overtaken by the rumblings, so off I went for lunch. Found a nice-looking burger place, parked nearby, strolled past a Subway, and realized that all I ever wanted was a good sub. The Subway was right across the street from a CalTrain station and I mulled over just heading on up to San Francisco for the day. Ultimately decided against it, as I’d be arriving at 5pm with no idea what to do with myself.

Instead I walked around downtown Mountain View. Some really neat parts, like an exclusive-looking Fraternity of Eagles lodge, and a museum for locks and keys.

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Ended up in a book store and thought I’d look around in the sci-fi section for another book to add to my collection, but something called me to the history section, and I found a couple of really cool books. One on “America’s violent birth”, having to do with the revolutionary war and such. Flipped open to a random page that was talking about the complexities involved with prisoner exchange between the British and a revolutionary force that they couldn’t afford to grant legitimacy to through the use of official negotiation channels.

Another book had to do with poisons used in the 20th century, and the story of how we learned to detect and neutralize them. A random page described a period of history during the Prohibition era where the U.S. government would deliberately poison alcohol, to disincentivize people from drinking it. Didn’t work of course.

So I picked both of them up and may end up taking a break from the expansive Culture universe for a while.

It was getting on to evening and I wasn’t sure what to do with myself, but then I remembered that the Apple Park visitors center was a thing and nearby and I’d wanted to go for a while. It was fantastic. All y’all would love it.

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The next day was church. Attended the Stanford ward again. Showed up quite a bit early so I took a stroll around the neighborhood, and ended up walking through some Stanford dorms. Came across the largest crane I’ve ever seen in person. Like, I know Bagger 293 is the king of cranes, but this thing was still seriously impressive.

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Monday and Tuesday were more meetings. Of course I got to be in Sunnyvale during the best snowfall Washington’s seen while I’ve been there. Headed back Tuesday night, and got to catch some awesome sunset views.

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The cats were happy to see me.

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After I’d settled in back home I hopped online to do some more work. A large project I was in charge of coordinating was worrying me; we’d presented several options that’d satisfy the security requirements we’d been set, each of which entailed a nontrivial amount of design and implementation work that I was very worried about finishing on time. We hadn’t yet settled on a concrete plan of attack and we needed to get moving on something.

In my sleep-deprived state I had an epiphany.

I could see an entirely new way of designing our system that had far fewer dependencies and unknown unknowns. I spent the next morning at work selling my proposal and it seems to be gaining traction among stakeholders. So Wednesday was a really good day. May end up finishing this project on time after all.

I left work early that day to try and catch up on some zzzs. That trip to Sunnyvale really took it out of me, felt like I was “switched on” 100% of the time.

On Thursday it was looking like snow again this weekend. Of course I had plans to fly out to Utah on Friday evening and miss the whole thing. Well, to be accurate, the flight was at 7pm, and snowfall was predicted at 1pm. This was looking like it was gonna be even worse than the previous week’s weather, which cancelled flights and caused our office to declare a snow day, advising all employees to stay home and off the roads.

Feeling nervous about my prospects of making my evening flight, I decided to move it forward. Luckily Delta had issued a weather warning and was waiving all flight change fees. My options were 5:50am or 11am. I wasn’t feeling particularly lucky so I went for the earlier one, knowing that transportation would be an issue. I didn’t know how reliable Lyft/Uber was 4am. To be safe I booked a taxi as well.

I spent the rest of the night frantically packing. Frantically because it was 11pm and I have a history of missing flights when I’m running on insufficient sleep. I had previously acquired a box of swag I needed to get to BYU ahead of our recruiting trip; I had a shipping label all printed out but by the time I’d made the flight change it was too late to get the box to a UPS store. So I had to creatively pack the swag in with my luggage.

My internal clock did me right and I woke up on my own, on time. I spent some of the morning taking pictures of the two cats, as it’ll be the last time I’ll see them at my place. This Sunday their owner is coming by to pick them up; I gave her the garage door code so she can just let herself in. Then I’ll hire a cleaning service to deep-six the place. Can’t have a meal without finding a cat hair somewhere in the food.

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Anyways, I could see that my Lyft ride had been confirmed, so I called to cancel the taxi. That turned out to be a mistake, as my driver cancelled and was replaced by a new driver, who’d be there about 20 minutes later than I’d’ve liked. I called him to confirm that he was on his way and he didn’t pick up.

So I drove off on my own. However I neglected to cancel my replacement Lyft, and got a phone call on the road from the driver, who’d shown up after all. I explained the situation and how he’d arrived too late and hadn’t answered when I called. He ended up cancelling the ride, which I feel bad about because I think that somewhat negatively affects a Lyft driver’s ability to get assigned rides in the future. But nothing I could do about that at the time.

What I could do was offer a little prayer that Old Silver could make it to the airport parking garage on what little gas I’d left in the tank the night prior. I came close to biting the bullet and taking an exit to find a gas station, but told myself he’d make it, and make it he did, though making my way from the airport when I return is going to be a real nail-biter.

I was annoyed that due to my first Lyft driver cancelling I’d have to incur the cost of parking at the airport for a week, but I think Google will pay for at least four of the seven days.

Made it to the gate in the middle of boarding. Spent the first part of the flight writing this up, and the rest of it catching up on sleep. Got picked up by Dad at the airport and the kind folks at his office were nice enough to lend me wifi access and a conference room for the day.

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See ya tonight!