Every Day an Adventure

I'm all sleep-shifted again, which sucks. I even slept straight through my alarm clock this morning. I got to work a little after noon. I'd feel worse about it if not for the fact that I was surprisingly productive today -- finally officially "finished" and released the error progression graph generator, and managed to rattle off a script relatively quickly to do a report checker -- I feel awful lately if I say "I'll have a solution by the end of the day" and then just can't quite figure out how to make it work, so it was good to get that done. Also, I am wandering into the realm of "on call" -- I was supposed to apparently have the pager last week but it went to Phil, who gave it to me today. Jack and I made sure I have access to the appropriate places if necessary, and... and now I carry the pager for the next six days and pray that it doesn't go off, because I'm pretty sure I can't solve 95% of the problems that it'd be going off for. Has it really been seven months since I started working at IDX (err, GE)? I've learned so much, and yet so little.

Last night I didn't write an entry because there wasn't much to say. I got home from work pretty late, had a sandwich, played a little Puzzle Pirates since I'd been out most of the evenings and hadn't seen people on lately. Then I banged my head against my baseball box score logic problem and actually came up with a solution. It makes me feel all smart'n'stuff. Unfortunately, it sent my brain into overload, which is probably part of why I couldn't fall asleep and so overslept.

Today after work I went to Cory and Heidi's house for board games. Well, er, board game. Josh, Justin, Jarrett, Cory and I played the World of Warcraft board game again. Unfortunately, there's really no good way to do unbalanced teams, and so Josh and Cory were the Horde and Jarrett, Justin and I were the Alliance. Cory and Josh had to play three characters between the two of them -- as a joke, I suggested they name their NPC player "Mike", after Cory's brother Mike, who used to be in our D&D group and hung out and played board games with us all the time, until he graduated from college and got a serious girlfriend and got a serious job and stopped hanging out with us. (Jarrett actually replaced him in our D&D group and in the social circle, pretty much.) Anyway, back before Mike officially dropped out of our D&D group, we'd make his character do stupid things we didn't want to, like opening doors and running into combat and whatnot -- so it was pretty freaking hilarious to me to have the Warcraft NPC be named Mike. "Okay, well, how bout we go take on those gnolls, and uh, Mike will go solo that naga?" "Oh man! Look at how lousy Mike was rolling! He sucks!"

Anyway, I played an elven warrior, and thanks to choosing a pretty good path of ass-kicking and getting lucky enough to pick up a badass bow and two badass swords and dual wielding talent, as well as the super defense stance and armor and shield wall, by turn 30 when we were doing our gigantic PvP battle, I was entirely and totally maxed out and rolling all the dice the game came with. It was pretty funny. The only unfortunate thing was that Jarrett's character kept having to rest to regain magic energy, so Justin and I sort of shot ahead of him on the XP table. With two turns left in the game, we noticed that we couldn't get the whole party to level 5, but we could work it out so Justin and I got to level 5 and Jarrett would pretty much suicide against a Doomguard, and on the very slim chance he survived, he'd also be level 5. Whoosh. So in the final Horde vs. Alliance PvP, Justin and I were both level 5 and he had the Ice Barrier, one of the most broken powers in the game and amplified by Arcane Focus. He was actually putting more armor chips up than I was even with my Shield Wall and Shield Discipline and Defense Stance. At any rate, the net result is that we SMOKED them. Ironically, Cory and Josh's characters finished at level 4, but "Mike" finished at level 5, heh. Still, the second round of the PvP combat, I think we did 26 damage to them, with like 15 points of armor on our side, and they didn't even chip our armor and had like 4 armor points themselves. Ouch.

So, both games of the WoW boardgame I've played so far, I've kicked butt. Last time I was a priest, this time I was a warrior. Next time maybe I'll try being a mage or something, who knows. Oh, also surprisingly, I actually like the game. I'm still not playing the bloody online version, though. I might get into D&D Online for a bit if I can figure out a way to play only with my local friends, though; we'll see.

Got home around 2am; it's 4am now; gotta be on the East Side tomorrow afternoon for Twilight Imperium. I'm sure after this weekend I won't be in the mood to play any more 6-hour wargames for a while...

Pop'n 10 and 11 arrived today, as did IIDX 8-10. I'll note that the IIDX is still in the wrap, but holy hell I just played Pop'n'Music for the last 3 hours, pretty much from the minute I got home from volleyball. There's SO MUCH SANA! I mean, there's some Sana I don't have on CDs, like Space Dog and Half Moon Beach and Everyday Lovelyday, but then there's even stuff I have on CDs and didn't know had actually been put in the game. Like "Custom Made Girl", and her rendition of Moonlight Densetsu... and of course her singing Kanashimi yo Konnichiwa, the theme from Maison Ikkoku. So damn cool. Add to that the usual sleeper Sana songs like kuchiurusaimama (under motor 5, as "puchi-Sana") and all, and it was a sanatical evening for me.

Oh, and I nearly cried getting to play Murmur Twins on PNM 11. It brought back a rush of a feeling of being in Ikebukuro. Wacky.

I cheated and grabbed the unlock codes off gameFAQs so I could play songs like Chikara and Akumajo Dracula Medley (heh heh, that still reminds me of Keevon) and all. I was really sort of hoping they'd have put in some hypers for some really really old stuff, like PNM3 old, but oh well.

Anyway, woo, Pop'n. Good thing I have tomorrow evening slated for just doing laundry and cleaning up here and stuff (er, zqfmbg, can you let me know what you're up to on Friday?), since I can just sit around and play Bemani games for hours and hours and be "productive" since I'll be laundering as well.

Oh, tonight I also went to volleyball. I've had this ongoing joke about how I want to "blow my left arm out" and need to come up with more abusive things to do to it, like softball and bowling and some other sports (ha, and at this rate Pop'n'Music as well), but I actually think I may have blown my arm out just on volleyball, so maybe I should stop kidding about it. It is really satisfying to feel like I've improved so much as a player in just four months, though -- I really feel almost like I'm at my game from college again.

I guess today was also the momentous day that IDX officially became the "GE Healthcare IT subdivision" -- I forget the exact phrase, Jack told me it at work but it went in one ear and out the other. So, yeah, I work for General Electric now. Exciting, I know.

Oops, I guess I went to sleep last night without updating. I thought I had, weird. Friday at work, I was a bad girl and ducked out of yet another all-hands meeting, to go down to the IT guys and beg someone to make my laptop work for remote VPN stuff. They were all like "Bah, we are very very busy, file a ticket and we'll get back to you in a couple of days," and I said "Can't I just plug it in and show you the error I got since I already installed all the stuff and I'm just getting a weird message or two?" So they gave me a cable modem to plug it into, I booted it up, showed them one message which turned out to be that I needed to uninstall Norton, and the second was some arcane Lotus Notes problem, but the IT guy typed a few random incantations into it and it magically worked. I think I wasted a total of maybe half an hour of his time, so I guess I do feel a little bad, but it wasn't like I had some huge hours-and-hours-long issue to work through.

After work we had D&D at Cory's house. We now ACTUALLY have one session remaining. As in, our final boss to fight is in the floor above the room we're at. We've worked our way up the outside tower thing, found the ethereal plane portal, went up the other side, had a few fights, and are now there. We were going to do the shopping thing, since Cory got turned to stone (for like the third time -- honestly, he had sprung a prismatic spray trap early on and got turned to stone but Justin decided that'd be lame so instead he just got hit with a lot of damage by a ray. Then later, we had prismatic spray cast on the party and AGAIN Cory got hit by the "turned to stone" ray and AGAIN failed his save) but Josh decided to Miracle him back since I didn't have Stone to Flesh memorized, and so in theory we'll just plow through, next session. Though next session might not be until mid-December at this rate thanks to travel.

Today I meant to do some shopping and then go visiting people, but I was exhausted and slept until 2pm. Oops. So instead, I got up, called oren, went and picked him up around 4ish, and we drove down to Tacoma.

First I stopped by Narrows because the In The Groove nationals qualifying tourney was going on and I just wanted to stop by and say hello to people. I didn't see many people I knew -- darknote and toastercookie and Jedi and Shakespeare by the 5th mix, and cynic573 behind the table, and bobsyouruncle and crackoon getting ready to actually compete, and keevon over by the Beatmania III machine. There were bunches of other people there, but I didn't know who they were. I played a game of Beatmania so I could play 20 November just in case, and I also played a game of Drummania for the hell of it. Oren played a game of Initial D, and in the meantime Jeff had called me, so I called him back and we headed even further south down to Lakewood.

We got to damienroc and wooko's place, and they were there, as was Pete, and Julianne. Wooko took Pete home for some reason or another, and Jeff and Julianne and Oren and I went to grab pre-HP dinner; we ended up at Applebee's. It wasn't too bad. islandergirlro and Brien caught up with us to give us movie tickets at Applebee's, and then we all ended up at the theater a bit later, and we saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I'll talk about that in a second.

After the movie we came back and watched a 5-minute episode of some weird anime (Magical Play?) with "The 2-D vs. 3-D fight!", and then I suggested we watch the Simpsons softball episode, which was of course vastly entertaining, and then we all headed home. Whee.

Tomorrow I might go try to play IIDX at that new arcade thing, or maybe stop by Illusionz or such, but more likely I will just go shopping for my trip and maybe start packing. I will make sure to play 20 November on some Bemani game one way or the other, though.

I guess I'll LJ-cut in case people haven't seen the movie, but is it really possible to spoil it?

( Harry Potter And The Triwizard Tournament )

GE Healthcare to Acquire IDX Systems Corporation

Whee, the company I work at is being bought out by General Electric. There's an all-hands meeting a little later today to talk about it. I'm surprisingly calm about the whole deal; perhaps that's because I've only worked here for a couple months anyway.

Or maybe it's because I think that "General Electric" sounds sort of like the lead guitarist and stage commander for Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. Can you picture that?

I am still awake because I am dumb.

Quiz night was fun tonight. We did okay, didn't win or anything, but it was nice to be outside at George and Dragon again for once. The questions didn't seem as stupid hard as I remember them. We had seven people because Eli and Jarrett both showed up, but Heidi sat out and read a book. It worked out fine.

Work was okay today. I have determined that my current project (automating this long annoying process with a perl script) is somewhat like technical writing. I interview the people who currently do all the processes, figure out what they do, and then document it... in Perl code! Yeah.

Anyway, I'm dumb because I decided to start reading Yahoo Pro Yakyu at midnight. After all, it's been a busy day in the world of baseball. And it looks like Kazuhiro Sasaki is retiring for real next week; I feel ashamed that I couldn't read most of the article without gratuitous use of edict. I suck at Japanese, I really do. I don't know if this means I need to study more, or if I need to just accept that I can't read worth a damn anymore, or if I need to go back to Japan. Yeah.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaawn.

Last night I got home around 9, and I crashed around 9:45, which is why it's 7:30am and I've been awake for an hour already.

Not much to say, though. Yesterday morning's chai came from Joelle's Cafe, across the street from IDX. This was the first place they actually asked if I wanted nonfat milk or soy milk or whatnot, so I got nonfat -- the result is pretty much the same generic chai every other coffeehouse has. Dammit, I want Taste of India to open a chai stand downtown.

(Yes, I really do pass by at least ten different coffeehouses in a 5-block walk from the bus to work. Why do you ask?)

I had a program I was working on at work. Jack asked me how long it'd take. At the time he asked, I was still getting my head around it, so I said "I'll be done end of tomorrow?" Then I actually started writing the script, and I was done by the end of the day. That's a good feeling. It's frustrating to be in a stage where I know I don't know enough to really be effective, but it's kinda cool to still be doing okay despite that.

Also, there was cake.

After work I went to Fuji Sushi with Drew and Jason, since I hadn't been there in forever and I had this sadistic desire to make Jason walk uphill from Pioneer Square to there. No, just kidding. It was fun, and Drew and I had some stuff to catch up on anyway.

Then I walked across town to catch my bus home, and I voraciously devoured another 50 pages of "The Ball" on the ride home... and then I crashed. Boom.

Has anyone else read anything by Daniel Paisner? This book is amazing -- not just from a baseball perspective, since it isn't really about baseball, but it's more about American culture and the psychology of wanting to "own part of the action", and the controversy that stemmed over the people who caught and kept home run balls from the 1998 season. I'm really wondering if this guy is always this good -- just like when I read Moneyball, I wondered about Michael Lewis, since that was such an amazing book as well.

D&D lasted way too long tonight. We basically played one battle from 8pm until 12:30am. That was just... bad. I lost interest about 2 hours in... well, really, I just got tired.

It was good to see people though, we had a whole buncha people hangin' out at the House of Slack for a while there. We listened to the Mariners game, which sounded fun.

I went to the gym after work and before D&D. I swam for half an hour. It felt really good, what with being sunburnt, but it felt really bad, what with being somewhat sore still. Walked to the HoS from the gym, which is also good exercise.

I left work right after getting a script to work. That was pretty satisfying. It's nicer to leave on an accomplished note than a "dammit, I'll figure it out in the morning" note.

Work was pretty good, too. I feel like I am getting more into the "how to sp34k p3rl" mindset every day. It's cool when I figure out the "right" way to write stuff the first time.

This morning, chai from Torrefazione Italia or however you spell it. Still generic, just like yesterday's chai from Tully's. I'm going to try chai from every coffee shop between 4th & Union and 4th & Madison, since I walk that every morning from the bus to work.

I'm sorry about London. I wish I knew if rkane was okay, since I know he's there for some Magic tourney that was starting today, but other than that I don't think I know anyone currently in London. It's very sad. Bad people suck.

Second day of work. I actually wrote a little bit of code today, with Jack. It was exciting!

I walked around the area my building is in, to look for lunch. It turns out I can walk to Soup Daddy (one of my old favorite lunch spots when I worked at Amazon) in like, 7-8 minutes. Dude. I should see if any of my Amazon friends want to meet up for lunch there one of these years (I grabbed soup and salad there, and the place was crawling with Amazon folks, though none I recognized)

I went to the Mariners-A's game with Laura, Matt, and Ryan. Matt and Ryan had driven down from Canada specifically because they wanted Ken Griffey Jr. statues. Apparently many many other people did as well. Infact, it pissed me off how many people were just walking in, getting their statue, and walking out. I think they said attendance was 31000, but in reality I'm pretty damn sure that 31000 people walked through the gates and about 15000 of them immediately walked back OUT of the gates.

The game itself was pretty good, especially when I decided to start committing the ultimate sacrilege and root for the goddamn Oakland A's. (Well, I was wearing my Kendall shirt. I think it started there.) Ryan and Matt insisted on making dirty jokes about Johnson and Swisher all night.

I joked that the A's won because my Canadian friends came down and the starting pitcher was Rich Harden, who is from Victoria, BC.

They played TMBG's "Don't Let's Start" as the background music for the bloopers reel.

I kept singing things like "K is for Kielty and that's good enough for me. K is for Kielty and he's number 23. K is for Kielty and that's good enough for me. Kielty, Kielty, Kielty... starts with a K!" Then he'd strike out. It didn't work for Kendall and Kotsay, though.

I still have nobody going with me to tonight (Wednesday)'s game, if anyone is interested. It's in my normal season seats.

Called and accepted the job offer at IDX. I start on the 20th.

(I'll be in New York City from June 29th to July 5th though... leaving here on the redeye on the evening of Tuesday the 28th and coming back here early on the morning of wednesday the 6th. Only plan for sure so far is that I ordered tickets to the Yankees game on the afternoon of July 4th. Though the Phillies will be at Shea from the 28th-30th, and the Marlins from the 1st-3rd, and Nick's birthday is July 1st so we'll try to do something cool then too, I'm sure. Anyone around NYC that wants to hang out with me, lemme know or something.)

But yeah, so I'll be starting a super-challenging job in ten days. My mind boggles. I better get cracking on the Perl books again so I can be sure to hit the ground running, or at least jogging.