Author: Eric

A friend was kind enough to invite me along on her sort-of-annual group ski trip and since I don’t have much to do these days I accepted. I’m generally a stick in the mud but, as was pointed out to me by basically everyone, how often do you have the time to just go somewhere and have fun and not worry about what’s falling apart while you’re gone. It was very generous of her to offer and I am grateful. The last time I was on more than an inch of snow was something like 15 years ago so I figured since I was starting over I might as well give the snowboarding a try. The resort has people up on the mountain with video cameras to record you so you can see how you’re doing it wrong and I have uploaded my particular wrongness to the youtubes for the enjoyment of one and all.

I had a lot of fun. The snowboarding has a tougher learning curve than I remember for skiing but it was enjoyable. The first day we learned how to not kill other people and then how to not kill ourselves. Mainly that’s by not letting the board get away from you when it’s not attached to you and how to slide down the mountain with the board across the hill with you on either the heel or toe side. The second day we did some “falling leaf” and then learned how to make turns. The third day it was just me and Bruce (the guy in blue in the video) so we made sure I wasn’t going to die on the bunny slope and then went up to the top of the mountain where the video was taken. My only real complaint about being up on the mountain was that I was thinking so hard about what I was doing that I didn’t really get to enjoy the surroundings. I expect once you get better that’s less of an issue. Maybe I’ll go back before another 15 years is up.

It was nice hanging out with everyone and I don’t think we got on each others nerves too much. Ready to go home on Monday but not quite ready to murder everyone so I guess that makes it a success. I am also now caught up with season two of House so that’s good.

Now I need to find some one to give me money.

I don’t talk much about work here for several reasons but I’m going to do so for a little bit. Friday was my last day at my now former job. I worked at a semiconductor fab near where I live which closed. There are a lot of reasons for the closure and most people who worked there have different mental pictures of the events and conditions that lead to the decision to close. I don’t really want to get into that but, much like most things, there is no single thing responsible. I ended up being one of the last people there since I became the manager of the IT group in the last year when my friend who had had that job as one of his many duties left to take a pretty fantastic position at Sun Power (solar company). So, we shut down the fab, cleaned up the equipment and then my group organized and dealt with the computers, servers and network hardware. I think we did a good job and I hope the few remaining people don’t have too much extra to do that I wasn’t able to get done.

This was my first job out of college and for a few years I was not very happy with it. I couldn’t say why now. I had less work and responsibility than I ended up with at the end and I was fortunate to not only get a job quickly after graduating but to then survive the several rounds of layoffs caused by the post dot-com bubble correction. I liked the vast majority of the people I worked with and towards the end I came to feel that had we not closed I could have worked there for the rest of my life. Still, eight years is a pretty good run at a job these days so while I’m sad I am also proud of the work that we did and of my contribution.

I’m going to spend the next week and a half going through some of my old textbooks (I used to know some math once upon a time sigh) and work on an application to a company some of my friends work at and seem to like. Then I’m going to go on a ski trip with some other friends which should be fun. It’s been 15 years since I’ve been skiing and I’m going to try the snowboarding this time so it’ll be an adventure. That reminds me, I need to buy the lessons and lift tickets today. Anyway, it’s not a great time to be looking for a job but I have some savings which means I have some time and, as has been pointed out by many people, how often do you have a lot of time off where you can do whatever you want. In fact several of them suggested I go to Japan like I’ve been wanting to for a while but that’s a little more than I’m willing to spend without an actual income.

I suppose that’s it. I’d like to think that having more free time will cause me to post more but I doubt it. Wish me luck.

Happy new year internets. I hope your 2008 was a good one. I have a lot of random little things to talk about so this is going to ramble a bit. My final weigh-in for 2008 was 182.6 lbs (EWMA 184.4 with λ=0.35). I started keeping track of my weight April 7th which is when I started exercising for serious and I’ve lost a little more than 30 lbs. That and quitting WoW have made this a pretty decent year for my physical well being.

The rowing machine has a little computer that tells you how fast you’re going, how many calories you’re burning, how many watts you’re outputting and so on. It keeps track of each row and can even share this stuff via USB in comma delimited files. When you take the little smart card out when you’re finished, it also tells you how many total meters are on that card. Around the beginning of December I realized I was closing in on 1,000,000m and that it was possible for me make it by the end of the year. I was getting there until the holidays came around and then my normal schedule went all pear shaped on me and I was stuck at 980,000m yesterday. I ended up leaving work a little early and as a result I had a few hours to kill before I needed to be at Bill’s for New Year’s dinner so I decided to go for it. I had to stop and rest a few times but I did 20km yesterday and the card said 1000058m when I was done. Go me.

One of the many nice things I was given for Christmas is a bench for my entry way. I’ve been wanting one for a while and I had put it in my big to-do list as a woodworking project but I’m happy to not have to saw and finish that. It’s sturdy and has two storage shelves underneath which is a nice feature. I’m going to go see if I can find a cushion for it at Pier 1 or Ikea or something. The space on top is 13.5″ X 38.5″ though and I don’t think that’s a standard size. I’ll have to see what’s available.

I used some of my left over Wii points from when I got FFCC: My Life as a King to pick up World of Goo. It’s a fantastic puzzle game / physical construction simulator where you build bridges and towers and various other odd things out of little goo balls to allow other goo balls to get to a pipe at the end of the level. There are obstacles and special pieces and environmental things. It’s a lot of fun. The last three levels are fairly tough but I finished them today. The music is surprisingly good and the story (such as there is one) is funny. I also noticed while I was in the Wii store that they have made Secret of Mana available for download. Secret of Mana was my favorite game for the Super Nintendo and it’s still one of my all time favorites. In many ways Kingdom Hearts is the spiritual successor to Secret of Mana though it has an inferior menu system. SoM has these awesome, rotating pie menus that just work really well.

I think I mentioned that the Arduino came in a couple of weeks ago. I finally managed to find some time to sit down and play with it a bit. I got the built in LED on digital pin 13 to blink and I got one of my white LEDs on the bread board to fade on and off using one of the analog output PWM pins. Good stuff. I also spent an afternoon with nothing to do a work making the schematic for the 20 channel lighting controller. It’s really busy though so I want to try again. Maybe use some buses in there? I dunno. I also think it might be good practice to allow card edge connectors and four channel cards up to 32 channels just in case 20 lights isn’t enough and also so that the design itself is more generally useful. I don’t think it would be that much more work. Each card would have the connector on the bottom, the logical NOR chip, four power supply circuits and the plugs for the LED cable on the side. I know that’s not much of description but I can see it in my head.

I tried cutting 1″ base triangles out of 80mil acrylic sheet and it’s much more of a hassle than I had hoped. I don’t think the glass cutting will be any easier so now I need to explore my outsourcing options. Meyda Tiffany, who made the light that started this whole mess, thinks that they can make a 5″ diameter star which is one of the sizes I want. I’m also thinking about going to visit the nice folks at Anchor Ventana glass that made the glass top for the end table I made. I hope that for a large enough order (say 1200 pieces) I could convince them to use their fancy CNC glass mill to cut and bevel the pieces exactly the way I want and then I could assemble them.

I’m sure there’s more but that’s all I can think of for now. I’ll probably edit this later and put in some pictures but I’m going to run over and see if the Ikea is still open. Have a good 2009.

edit: I forgot to mention the garden. I’m planting a garden this year. The first step is to kill the grass. This is apparently done with either a big tub of poison or with newspaper and mulch. I’m starting with the happy, green, organic method and will probably end up with the poison. Here’s a small picture of the start. I need a bunch more newspaper and mulch. If anyone has newspaper you just let me know and I’ll take care of it for you.

It’s officially Christmas at the house. The living room is all rearranged and the tree is up. Looks pretty good too. My family came up to visit so I had a lot of help putting it up which is always nice. It’s a bit of a chore to do by yourself but it’s fun as a group. I need to make it out to the trail of lights this year. Preferably when it gets cold.