If I remember correctly, no musical that I’ve ever wanted to go see has been one that I’ve hated; the ones that fall into the latter category are ones that my parents claimed I would like, but I was hesitant from the beginning. Even Spamalot, although I can’t stand Monty Python, was my idea to go see. As it turns out, my track record is still spotless with Legally Blonde being thrown into the mix. It actually stayed quite accurate to the movie, and the UPS guy even made an appearance (I was expecting him to be cut). It’s easily in my top 10, but with Spamalot and Wicked holding down the top two spots, it might be a stretch to put it into the top 5 range. My score: 8.5/10.
Tomorrow is my work week Friday, so that means tomorrow night I’ll probably do something like watch a couple episodes of Dexter (after Survivor, of course) or maybe even Legally Blonde since I don’t have to wake up early on Friday morning. Alas, this move only gives me one day of being able to monitor email from home instead of a repeat of the November move, but considering I do actually have job related work to do now, perhaps one is for the best. Then again, my limited experience with the movers haven’t exactly been classified as speedy, so I very well might not have an office on Monday either.
Personal - Seattle
Andrew and I played co-op Borderlands earlier, and while we made (what I presume to be) not that much progress, at least I can say it was something. Could my time have been better spent playing Bioshock 2? Probably. I’ve even held off picking up FFXIII since I know I won’t be playing it in the immediate future, and on that note, I’ve still yet to beat X, XII, or even start X-2. I figure that if I talk about it enough, I’m bound to get around to putting some effort into my games some weekend sooner or later.
I neglected to mention it yesterday, but this week is actually a short one for me. Friday is yet another move day (this time just within our building, and ideally the last until after Windows 8 ships), so we aren’t going into our offices since there won’t be one. Officially it’s a “work from home” (air quotes included) day with a morale event at noon for our team. Sure, I’ll be monitoring my email quite closely throughout the day while I try to force myself to play some game on some system.
Personal - Seattle
On my game list I have Bioshock 2 (which I’m still relatively close to the beginning of), WoW, and about 8 other games that I bought over Christmas/January still sitting wrapped on my table. On the TV front I have the most recent season of Dexter, the first two seasons of Fringe, soon to be the entire series of Lost, and let’s not forget about my Netflix subscription (I currently have the BSG miniseries from them and have had it for quite a long time, the instant streaming episodes of Dexter is what sidetracked me from that in the first place). In the land of books, I have numerous things I want to read, both on my Kindle and one hardback book I bought from Amazon. World, exactly how do you want me to find time to do all of this?
I guess the simple answer is to create a schedule. Sure, that could help, but knowing me I’d stick with it for about a maximum of a week and then declare that I didn’t want to do what was on the schedule at the time that it said I should be doing it. Not going snowboarding every Saturday will definitely help although that’s still not time that would guaranteed to be applied productively otherwise. Perhaps I just need to limit my interests? Yeah, right, like that’s ever going to happen…
Personal - Seattle
I will very readily admit that my lack of knowledge about the Alice in Wonderland books influenced my opinion of the movie, and all I really had to compare it to was a vague memory of the 1951 Disney animated version. Tim Burton’s take on the story is a hybrid of the two books with a whole lot of stuff changed (including, I think, the entire plot), but since I wasn’t looking for this to be faithful to the source material, I actually enjoyed it. The books might make their way to my Kindle at some point in the future, but for now I’m happy to just stick with knowing the movie. My score: 7.5/10.
Adrian has his interview with Microsoft tomorrow, but he isn’t sure yet which team he’ll be interviewing with. Andrew didn’t know until the morning of his interviews either, so apparently I was unique in that regard. Then again, it very likely might have had something to do with the fact I was interviewing for a full time position and both of theirs were/are internships. Adrian is choosing to forego the PM role and is interviewing for an SDET position, so I haven’t been able to give him super specific pointers on what to expect since I obviously didn’t go through that interview track.
Personal - Seattle
Two weekends of owning my snowboard, two trips to Stevens Pass. Don’t expect either the frequency or the location to remain steady throughout the rest of the season, although I will admit to liking Stevens Pass a bunch. Season pass worthy next year? Possibly, but doubtful. Instead, I think just their discount card (aimed at people coming 1-3 times) is probably the better purchase for me.
Two things I’ve taken away from today: first, it will be quite interesting to see if I’m able to walk tomorrow since my knees became very intimately familiar with the snow/ice/ground during my first run and have hurt the entire rest of the day. Second, you don’t get nearly as tired the second time you go snowboarding as the first considering I’ve been able to stay up this late without any problem. Don’t get me wrong, I am tired and will sleep quite well tonight, but I’m not nearly as exhausted as I was 7 days ago.
Personal - Seattle
As I type this on my mysterious floating monitors, I can be thankful that I thought ahead for once and wasn’t content with the potential worst case scenario. As it turns out, it wouldn’t have been “potential” if I hadn’t come back to my apartment during lunch to get my box from the leasing office. Apparently when meetings are supposed to be over at 5:30 but the agenda items aren’t complete and no one else needs the room (because really, who in their right mind is going to have a meeting starting at 5:30), people at Microsoft are totally content to extend the meeting to 6:00 and beyond. I say “and beyond” because at about 5:55 I decided that the debate happening between a few people which I was not a part of (I actually said nothing the entire meeting both yesterday afternoon and today) was not worth staying for, so I went ahead and left.
Tomorrow the plan is basically exactly what it was last weekend, just with more people this time. I still have to wake up early tomorrow, I’m still driving over to my friend’s apartment first (although this time picking up someone along the way), and I still am betting that I’m going to be ready to go to sleep by like 8:00 tomorrow night. I think that last weekend I effectively “slept” (using the loose definition of the word by also including the amount of time staying in bed after waking up) 11 or 12 hours. I’ll let you know on Sunday if I came close to matching that again.
Personal - Seattle
So, I have mixed feelings about UPS leaving packages for me at the leasing office. Generally, I have no problem with it as I greatly prefer it to just leaving my package in the hall outside my door, and under normal circumstances, I have no problem getting there to pick it up before they close. Well, when you have meetings up until 6:00 and that just happens to be the time the office closes also, things don’t work out so well for picking up your package. No problem, this has happened before, I’ll just go grab it tomorrow morning. Not so fast, says my schedule. First, I have another 9:00 meeting (which, surprise!, is when they normally open), but tomorrow they’re even opening an hour late because of a meeting they have. Tomorrow afternoon then? Hopefully, but I have a meeting up until 5:30 then. Fine, so Saturday I can get my package. Uhhh…I could, but I’d rather go snowboarding. So, it might take until Sunday (and thankfully they’re open on the weekends) for me to get my package. It better be worth it.
Actually, since I know what’s in the package, it is worth it. Monoprice had a really good sale on monitor arms last week, so Andrew and I each bought two. Whether I should have bought more (since I do own 5 LCD monitors, 4 of which are still up here) is a question up for debate, but these two will at least get rid of the stands on my primary desk. In a way I sort of like the stands since there’s a nice little indentation for me to put my thumbdrives, but I’m sure a quick trip to Target (I would say The Container Store, but I haven’t seen any of those up here) can produce a holding receptacle just as useful.
Personal - Seattle
I’ve never been super awesome at searching for lost stuff. Of course, I’d tell my mom that I was looking for something, and she’d find it within 5 minutes after I had been searching for almost an hour (and it was invariably in a place that I had looked numerous times before). This time, it didn’t help that none of the locations I would have thought to look for stuff previously applied anymore. In addition, there’s also the question of whether what I might be searching for I actually left down in Texas thinking that I wouldn’t ever want it up here.
The item in question: a soft shell, small drink cooler that Jarrett gave me as a high school graduation present with my initials sewn on the top. The reason: on the way back from Stevens Pass last weekend, I was thinking to myself, “Man, having a bottle of water in the car would be super nice right about now. Next time I should remember to bring one.” The search: I was pretty sure it was in one of two places (either my main hall closets or in my bedroom closet, but my initial looking turned up nothing. I checked every other logical place I could think of, but it was still nowhere to be found. Convinced it has to be in one of the hall closets, I kept looking in them about every 5 minutes, thinking that doing so was going to help or something. Finally, on the third or fourth time looking, I was convinced that it had to be there, and I started looking between every possible thing. Ultimately I located it on the ground of the closet, positioned so only the all black edge could be seen, hidden behind other stuff sitting on the floor. Maybe with some practice I can revise my searching algorithm and cut the time it look me to locate it in at least half.
Personal - Seattle
Of all the games I could have chosen to play this evening, which ones did I go with? World of Warcraft and Portal. It’d actually been some time for me since playing either of those, and while Portal will probably go back into the piles of games I only pull out once every two years or so, I might just be seeing a resurgence of WoW playing in the near future. I still have work to do on my Horde character before the Cataclysm event happens, and it isn’t like I can rewind time once that occurs.
Tomorrow is a day much like today as far as my schedule goes, but luckily it starts at 10:00 rather than 9:00. It really doesn’t impact the time that I wake up so much, but if I have a 9:00 meeting, I get out of bed a little earlier just to make sure I’m there ahead of 9:00 instead of getting there pretty much at 9:00. Since laying in bed in the morning is one of the best parts about sleeping, the more I get to do it, the better off the world is.
Personal - Seattle
What went from a single snowboarding trip mainly just because I wanted to go at least once this season has snowballed (pun 100% intended) into two additional trips: one next weekend back to Stevens with a group of people including my friend I already went there with, and a second at the end of the month with Austin (of HP trainer fame) when he’s up here later on in the month as a part of his spring break. Now I’m really glad that I ended up buying my stuff instead of renting as I’ll be getting at least three uses out of it within a month. At this rate, I’ll probably have it paid off by the middle of next season!
If today was the day that looked full but wasn’t, tomorrow is the day that looks full and is. From about 9:00-4:00, I get approximately 30 minutes to myself where I don’t have something scheduled. I’m not sure what you call it, but I think that’s a pretty full day of work. Of course, with the exception of the first hour, it’s a whole lot of me just needing to be places, but at least that tells me that I’m wanted. :)
Personal - Seattle