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Diary Segment: 2007, April 01-15

Entries are shown in chronological order; scroll down to see later material.

Apr 15, 2007

A month, more or less, since I last updated this diary. This is either an indication of how little is going on in my life, or how much; more likely the latter. On Monday April 9th, I came into work (the second person into my office area) and found this pigeon roaming around. He's sitting on a junked printer in this picture. There was a small pile of "gifts" left on the floor near the front door, and presumably scattered over the office area as well. Eventually, we chivvied this confused fowl out the back door of the building.

That was the start of Inexplicable Week from Hell.

The reason it's inexplicable is that there was no one particular thing that stands out as being unusually stressful, yet I finished the week with an inescapable impression that I'd just run several marathons. Part of the problem is that one of the projects I'm working on right now is heavily analog-oriented, and analog electronics for me is a long, hard slog through looking up formulas and working things out from first principles. This has always been the case, and I suspect it always will be; I'm just not an analog maven - plus, I don't work at this level very often, so I don't get a chance to get into practice.

On Monday, I shipped out project #525, which is basically a blinkenlights device for a satellite weather company in Seattle. As near as I can make out from the specification, my little gizmo is simulating the flash patterns from some sort of buoys. There are some tweaks required to the software, but it's basically a completed project.

Judging from the cries of pain from neighboring cubicles, I wasn't the only one having a weird and difficult week. So, on Friday morning I bought two dozen donuts and 50 donut holes and left them in the "vulture feeding zone", a bench in the kitchen area of my building. Anything there is fair game - unwanted product, electronic parts, books, records, and of course FOOD.

These donuts set a minor record; I put them down at 7:00am, and they had vanished by 8:10 (the starting time at our office is 8:00 but I have to come in earlier in order to make up time I miss by going to school).

The week just past was the last week to get tax return stuff together. I had FedExed my documents to my accountant a week earlier, but of course it's the busy season for her. She mailed my documents back on Monday, but by Friday they hadn't arrived. At this stage, it is too late for even a FedEx to get to me in time for me to mail it in on the 17th, which is the due date in my state. Cue panic and consternation. My accountant is in the town where I used to live, in Westchester County; it's a long drive and I rarely pass through that neck of the woods. It was convenient when I lived and/or worked in Westchester, but now it's downright annoying. However, it's much LESS annoying than trying to find another accountant I can trust. I don't want one of these accountants you read about in the news. I want a vanilla, straight-down-the-line tax return prepared with no creative embellishment whatsoever; my life has enough "fun" in it without having to face a tax audit.

Fortunately, I've been talking to a Scout restoration guy up in Rhode Island about buying a replacement transmission for my Scout; he had a T90 with 40,000 miles on it for $350, including the transfer case. While the trans in my Scout does work, it leaks oil and the second gear synchro could definitely use replacement. The thing is, I don't want to pull out the transmission, start working on it, and make some dumb mistake that leaves me with an immobile truck. So I want to reseal this trans, put it in my truck, then rebuild the one I pulled out and keep it as a spare.

In a rarely-matched feat of serendipity, I was therefore passing through Port Chester on my way up to RI on Saturday, so I stopped at my accountant's for a copy of my tax return, and I took the opportunity to snap a few nostalgic pictures. Little has changed in Port Chester. The apartment where I lived when I came to the US is still just as it was, and of course Pat's Hubba Hubba is going strong. The last picture below shows the blanket-swaddled transmission lashed down in the cargo area of my Jeep, on the way home.