Because of my (lack of) web design skills, I was told to find someone to help me make the welcome page for our tool prettier. After exhausting the MS options that were available to us, I mentioned Andrew to my lead, and she told me to go ahead and ask him to do it. His results were infinitely more liked than mine, and as a result, there will be a much “prettier” experience. He has me as his personal grammar checker, and I have him as visual web resource. I guess it all really does come down to who you know.
With only four days left for me in Seattle this year, I need to make sure that I have everything entertainment wise ready to take to Dallas that I’ll need for a three week period. My laptop is a given, my Kindle and DS are easy to include, but at some point I have to draw the line between necessary and unnecessary gadgets. Now, since I have no 360, PS3, or Wii in Dallas anymore, it isn’t like I can just “go play video games” whenever I get bored. This will take planning, foresight, and probably a tiny bit of luck to pull off flawlessly.
Personal - Seattle
So, just to be clear, I haven’t seen a temperature above freezing in my car over the past couple of days, even though today the high was supposed to get up to 35. However, the next three days (with highs of 38, 38, and 39) all have snow in the forecast. Now, sure, maybe the snow will happen when it’s below freezing, but I see the irony of having snow on the warmest days of the week (even though that isn’t saying much).
I might go see a movie this weekend, but probably not. I need to do some DVD ripping of all my new movies, so that will hopefully take place this weekend rather than me otherwise needing to take all the discs down to Dallas (and obviously, bring them back). The “most important” of these is Star Trek since the current plan is to watch both it and Galaxy Quest when my grandparents are in town right around Christmas. With my WD TV Live which I’ll be taking as an experiment, I won’t even have a streaming issue since it can play videos off of attached storage.
Personal - Seattle
Tonight, after over a week of not having webmail (and using Andrew to verify that it wasn’t just me), it magically began working again. I have no idea what happened, other people on my team at work didn’t seem to be having issues (they all seemed surprised when I mentioned that it wasn’t working for me), and then magically, right before midnight tonight: poof!! Even the helpdesk people at Microsoft didn’t seem to have any clue about what was going on, so I just think the email fairies took a week long vacation, and when they got back, they realized how much everything had fallen apart without them. I dare you to come up with a more believable explanation than that.
Tomorrow I have four meetings back to back (to back to back) in both my old and new buildings (well, not exactly my old one, but the building right next to it), so I will definitely be moving back and forth as quickly as possible. On the bright side, this keeps me quite busy throughout the day. On the not quite as bright side, since their all together, I’m left with a significant block of time at the end of the day with nothing to do except sit in my office and come up with stuff to do to entertain myself.
Personal - Seattle
Blizzard, Blizzard, Blizzard… WoW came out over five years ago, you’ve gone through two expansions, have a third one on the way, but you still can’t manage to pull off a patch day without massive server issues? I mean, we can be thankful for the small things in life such as not having to have Tuesday maintenance every single week now (at least I’m pretty sure that’s changed), but come on. I know that with the amount of money you pull in each month, even after taking out all your costs, you could spend a little on upgrades or something to make it a smoother ride.
So, instead of playing WoW this evening, I watched Daredevil from Netflix. I saw Elektra (its spinoff) when it came out, but I avoided this one. I think it was the weird looking costume and stuff that turned me off, but the movie itself was just average for me. It started off very cool and interesting, but then it kind of slipped a little and never managed to crawl back up to where it started. I probably would have enjoyed it had I done to see it when it came out, but I don’t like it enough to add it to my collection now. My score: 7/10.
Personal - Seattle
At what temperature does a Goob freeze? I believe this to be the weather gods newest form of amusement, and if you take a look at the temperatures in Seattle this week, they are definitely fully committed to finding out. Today it was 24 and 28 the two times I was in my car, the low tonight is 16, the high tomorrow is 31, the low tomorrow drops to 15, and then Wednesday is very similar with 33/15. I guess all I can really do at this point is be thankful for the small things in life, like not having a football game to work in this weather.
Because people felt the need to email me during the day (and guess what, webmail is still down!), I didn’t actually leave work right after my training class was over, but I instead headed back to my office and gave Outlook some love. On a slightly tangential but still work related note, a week from tomorrow is my last day to go into the office until 2010. I wonder if people at Microsoft got to take time off going into the year 2000, or if everyone was on pins and needles just waiting to see what broke in order to fix it as fast as possible?
Personal - Seattle
So, since my webmail access is still down, I have to rely solely off my memory that tomorrow is not a normal day at work for me. Instead, I have to remember to be a a different building by 9:00 for…you guessed it, a training class! This one is at least with my team (and is supposed to be over by 3:00), so hopefully there won’t be too much boredom going on.
I didn’t go see any movies today, the Cowboys lost, and it was way too cold (yet again) with even colder temperatures the next couple of days. Dallas supposedly hasn’t been having much warmer weather, but still. Until I get around to seeing what the mountain resort scene is like up here, cold weather is just as much of an annoyance as it was down in Texas.
Personal - Seattle
Well, part of my weekend plans got accomplished today. I drove down to Ikea (but my GPS took me in the most roundabout way possible once I was down in the area, but I should expect that by now I guess) to get my filing cabinet, and fortunately it was one of the easier Ikea pieces to put together without help. Now, I have to go by an office supply store and get the hanging folders to go in the large drawer, but now hopefully my desks can stay clean(er) of paper.
I haven’t decided one way or the other on a movie tomorrow, so it’ll probably depend on what I feel like (and when) I get up. I won’t be able to see the Cowboys play, so I therefore don’t care all that much about any of the games. Still, whenever I’m playing WoW on my computer (because let’s face it, that’s what any non-movie time tomorrow will be), I’ll have some game on the TV for side entertainment whenever there’s down time for my character.
Personal - Seattle
Even though I’ve had a TV in my room since I got my HDTV up here, I think I might have used it once for about 10 minutes on a Sunday morning to actually watch anything. Today, however, I got my WD TV Live that I ordered from Newegg, and now rather than being able to watch live TV when I’m in my room (which is essentially when I’m sleeping), I can now watch all my movies and shows on my server which turns my TV into a much more desirable object for viewing moving pictures and sound. I’m not quite as happy with the device as I was expecting to me (primarily due to its UI), but it’s better than any alternative I have at the moment, so I shall make do.
Last night I watched Ella Enchanted from Netflix, and it really, really wanted to be a live action version of Shrek. Well, I can reveal that it…didn’t quite accomplish that feat, but it could have had the potential. I think the writers had the plan to be sort of a parody/satire like Shrek was, but they didn’t quite follow through on the execution well enough. My score: 6/10.
Personal - Seattle
So not only is my webmail still down (third night), but even Bing was offline for a short period this afternoon (probably less than a minute, but I was trying to do a search at the point when it was). Come on, Microsoft; someone is obviously dropping the ball, and a giant domino effect has begun. What’s next, Microsoft.com going down? Maybe the whole network at work? Actually, on second thought, don’t give me an answer to that question…
I have two non-“play WoW” items on my agenda for this weekend. First, I need to go to Ikea and get a filing cabinet from the same set that my desk came from. While not difficult, the trip involved will likely make that a 1-2 hour project. Second, there are quite a few movies out to go see, such as Planet 51 or (which I’ve heard to be good) Fantastic Mr. Fox. Doing Ikea and a movie on the same afternoon would just be a gigantic time sink, so I might have to spread them out over both days. Of course, Sunday is football day, but since I don’t get to see the Cowboys this week (I think), that eliminates one potential conflict of interest.
Personal - Seattle
Microsoft takes the top paragraph in my post today since their webmail access is still down (just checked again; yep, still down). Seriously, it’s a part of Exchange, so I don’t get what could have broken so horribly to have it offline for 24 hours. I know that my schedule is packed with a lot of stuff in a 2-3 hour timeframe tomorrow and then I have the rest of the day to relax, but really, come on, Microsoft. You make the software; I don’t think my expectations are set too high to assume that you could keep it running.
Two weeks from today I’ll be back in Dallas, and I’m already starting to make dinner plans. Brandon will be in and out of town a bunch over the course of around a week, so one night (potentially his last) we’re going to Benihana like we did last Christmas when he was in town. Either he or his mom referred to it as a “tradition”, but I think we have to wait at least until next year for it to gain that moniker.
Personal - Seattle