Not Necessarily Interesting News

I think this is my favorite pic from tonite.

My flight into La Guardia took the pretty approach to landing so I yanked out the camera and took some quick pics. I’ll post some more later.

Click to embiggen

• Listening to them speak Japanese over the p.a. for boarding to Tokyo made me just wanna ditch work and hop that 777. #
• Awesome. They cancelled my Toronto flight. I can sit for 5 hours in DFW or connect through ORD and get into Toronto 3 hours sooner. #
• I'm gonna start an airline. If you fly less than twice a year go fly Southwest. You're not welcome here. No 45min board times here, n00bs. #
• I can tell summer travel season has started. The planes are filled with morons. #
• Whose stupid idea was it for companies to expect you to 'self assess' your job performance? You're my employer, you tell me how I did. #
• Guess where I am. http://yfrog.com/1qsuezj #
• Cold rainy day in Toronto. Time for soup. http://yfrog.com/j5rxvuj Yum. Cream of broccoli. #
• Canadian traffic jam. http://yfrog.com/0xb66yj #
• Looking at job postings. One place is looking for a 'Linus Systems Engineer' They want an RHCA but can't spell Linux right? #
• I came to my current company to get away from corporate BS. It found me. I played buzzword bingo on the 'self-assess' forms and won. *sigh* #
• I'll give a shiny new Canadian Loonie to the first person to invent a way to reach through the internet and slap someone. #
• 1.5 hours to get through Customs in Toronto? Are you kidding me? Gotta love US Govt efficiency. #
• 1hr20mins to get through Customs on the way back to the US. — at YYZ Toronto Pearson International http://gowal.la/c/KNB1 #
• Well, I'm in the right country and even the right state. Now to get to the right city. Might even happen tonite. #
• Made it home just before the big thunderstorms started. Only 13 hours after starting out in Toronto. #
• Had a student this week in Canada ask if I'd heard of Round Rock Donuts. Duh! Guess what it made me crave this morning. Mmm, orangy goodness #
• Kind of awake now after a Monster and donut. 13+ hours of travel yesterday wore me out. I fly to NYC in 18 hours. *sigh* #
• Finally bought a new roll aboard suitcase. Spent way too much on a Briggs & Riley. Up side is lifetime guarantee, even if airline kills it. #
• That's better. I got my Maudie's before flying out. — at Admirals Club http://gowal.la/c/LgDT #
• Renewed my Admirals Club membership. Best $300 I'll spend all year. Without it I'm pretty sure I'd hurt some tourists every week. #
• Don't know to be happy or pissed. Got bumped to 1st Class for DFW›LGA: happy. Paid for breakfast already: pissed. Free booze will fix mood. #

Got a chance to throw together a panorama photo of Niagara Falls from the Canadian side. I took the images yesterday when I visited. I spliced together 8 images to make this. Full resolution is about 10,000×2000.

I haven’t visited the US side but I think the Canadian side looks like it’s a much better view.

Click below to embiggen.

Got a chance to drive an hour from where I’m working outside Toronto down to Niagara Falls. I arrived around 6:30pm or so and the whole place was shut down. It was actually kind of nice. All the tourist traps were closed and the tourists gone home for the evening.

There was a stiff breeze out of the east and since I was on the Canadian side of the falls that meant all the mist was headed my way. It was almost like rain. I was able to snap a few pics but didn’t want my DSLR to get drenched so I hid it in my jacket mostly. There were only a handfull of people on the CA side. It was pretty cool being able to stand right at the edge of the falls which you can’t do on the US side. You’re literally 2 feet from the water watching it go over the edge. Neat!

After freezing in the spray for a half hour I headed back to the car to warm up and drive back to the hotel. I drove through hotel row and all the shops still seemed to be closed for the season. I guess they open around Memorial Day.

I’m sure this place is a mad house come summer time. I’m glad I got to see it with almost no one around.

Why do companies these days expect you to ‘assess your own performance’? What happened to ‘You did a good job, here’s a raise’? Or ‘you fucked up this year. Don’t do X or Y again or you’re out the door’?

Now it’s a multistep process starting with: “List what you did in the last year” Seriously? You’re my employer.  Shouldn’t you know what it is I do for you? Are you happy with the job I did? Great! Tell me that. Was there something you didn’t like? Tell me that then so I know where I need to focus in the future. I’m a grown adult. I can handle creative criticism.

Next: ‘Give a list of your goals for the next year and how you will go about achieving them.’

Ok, this is easy.

1. Retire wealthy before the age of 40. I gotta get on this one soon as that’s only 7 months away. I plan on doing this by hitting the lottery. I guess it’s time for me to start playing.
2. Attend a party at the Playboy Mansion. This will be possible because the Bunnies will hear about my sexual prowess and invite me. I will then disappoint them when I point out that I’m married.
3. Ride a rocket into orbit. I’ll sneak into the Shuttle’s cargo bay. I haven’t figured out the breathing in space part yet.
4. Eat my weight in marshmallow Peeps. This time without throwing up. Easy to do. Eat peeps and not barf.
5. Drive a supercar on the Nordschleife of the Nürburgring. Fly to Germany, steal a Ford GT, and race.
6. Pilot an A-10. This one might be tough. I really don’t have a plan on this one.

There, that’s my list for FY’11. What? That’s not right? Looks right to me.

Then your manager gets to sit down with you and tell you if you filled out all their forms right, kicking back anything that isn’t ‘right’. If you know what you want on the form why don’t _you_ fill it out?

Having an employee assess their own performance just seems like laziness to me. I got out of management because I didn’t want to deal with all that HR B.S. It’s taking what was traditionally the manager’s job and foisting it onto the employees.

Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. If you don’t like how I do it, fire me. If I don’t like doing it, I’ll quit. It’s that simple.

Yeah, I’ll do it but I really, really despise the whole process. Not enough to quit my job, mind you, but it’s damn close.

I haven’t written anything here in over a year. I’ve been doing that over on Facebook. Now I’m getting sick of Facebook’s ever increasing desire to make my private things public. I’ll be killing off my Facebook account in the next month and letting all my friends know where they can keep up with me if they care to. If they don’t, they don’t need to visit.

I’ve always kept my ‘friend’ list on Facebook small. My rule has been ‘if I haven’t talked to you in person in the last year then you really aren’t my friend and I’m not going to ‘friend’ you.’ I have under 50 friends over there and could probably pare that down even more.

Anyone I care to keep in contact with knows where this blog is. Yeah, I’ll miss out on the informative ‘Visit me in Farmville’ and ‘Join my mafia’ invites. I know I’ll miss things here in there I might really care about but if it means I have to give up control of my privacy to see them I don’t really think it’s worth it.

So in 2 weeks I’ll ask Facebook to nuke my account and 2 weeks after that they’ll actually do it. Like how that works? You ask to nuke your account and they hold onto it for 14 days ‘just-in-case’ you want to come back. A nuke means everything I’ve ever posted to Facebook will disappear. Images, comments, wall posts. Everything.

If you want to continue to keep up with me I’ll still use Twitter, username TriggerTX and this blog. Images will go into my galleries here like they always have.

For more info on what I’m talking about see this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook#Privacy_concerns

My birthday’s over. It was a pretty good one. Started off with arriving home from San Francisco at midnight. I finally got home around 1AM.

We woke up early around 7:30 to get ready for the big day. My wife and son hopped on the bed ad made me open cards. I’d have rather slept in but we have a fairly predictable routine for my birthday and I knew it was coming. We got dressed and headed for Wimberely for their big market days. We love going down to look at funky antiques and finding cool little knick-knacks for the house. We spent about 4 hours there walking from booth to booth. We came away with a couple of neat fruit crate labels and a new-to-her antique pitcher for my wife.

After that, the thing I really look forward to: The Saltlick for lunch. I gorged on much dead animals. Brisket, ribs, sausage, tater salad, bread, beans, etc. All you can eat. I only get down there one or twice a year so I really look forward to it.

After we hit our protein high we drove over to Buda to hit Cabela’s. I was thinking of treating myself to a new shotgun for my birthday. We got to the gun department there and I realized that wasn’t happening. It appears everyone and their brother was there buying guns today. They had a whole extra table set out for doing background checks. I can only assume the rush is due to the election last month. Democrats now control the White House and both branches of Congress. A gun ban of some sort is inevitable. All I ended up with was some new socks.

As we headed back home towards Austin my mother mentioned that she needed a part for her new camera so we stopped by Precision Camera. Bad idea. It happened to be manufacturer demo day. The place was a mad house. Vendors trying to hawk their wares. My wife bought me my birthday present while we were there. A brand new Tamron AF 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC LD Aspherical (IF) MACRO (how’s that for a mouthfull?)lens for my D70. It’s the newest lens from Tamron. An unbelievable 18-270mm zoom with image stabilization. I’ve finally reached the point where my lens is now worth more than my camera’s body. And I like it. The picture to the left is the first pic I took with it and makes a pretty good computer background if you ask me. The lens has macro capabilities and can focus down to 12″ at full zoom.

We stopped at the house and dropped off my mother then went for the last errand of our long day. Also the most important. Since we were first married my wife and I have always, always, gotten our Christmas tree on my birthday. We were tired and really didn’t feel like going out again but I insisted. In the 18 Christmases we’ve spent together we’ve only missed this day once. We were in Orlando at Disney that year so it was excusable. We went to the tree lot and the first tree my wife grabbed was perfect. A nice 7′ Frasier Fir. We loaded it into the Range Rover and took it home. It fits perfectly in the family room.

A little bit of Amy’s ice cream for dessert and the day drew to a close. Not a bad day at all. My wife really likes to spoil me on my birthday. So much so that it makes me feel guilty every year. It’s not like I’ve realy done anything to deserve it. Only get another year older. But I like her spoiling me anyways.

If you’ve ever considered severe dehydration as a valid form of weight loss I highly discourage it.

This past Sunday I woke up with a bit of a headache but nothing major. Pop a couple aspirin to kill it and get on with the day. About 10am I went over to my parent’s house to pick up our kid that spent the night. By the time I got there I had a raging headache. I figured a migrane was coming on so I popped a vicodin to kill it before it dug in too deep.

I took the kid home and by the time I got there my head was exploding. I couldn’t stand lights or sounds so I crawled into bed to hide from the world. An hour later the real fun started. I sat up feeling a bit woozy and realized I’d better get to the bathroom quickly. I spent the next 6 hours on-and-off throwing up and lying on the bathroom floor. Every time I tried to drink something to replace fluids it’d trigger another attack. I was spiraling downhill faster and faster. Around 6pm my wife had had enough. I’d drank and vomited back up over 1/2 gallon of Gatorade. So she took me to the E.R.

Honestly, I don’t remember much of the E.R. Only being very, very cold and being told by the staff that I couldn’t have a blanket to keep warm. Bastards. They put me on an I.V. for over an hour and squeezed fluids into me. They plied me with anti-nausea meds, chemo-therapy patient grade I’m told, so I could try to keep something down. The doc said it wasn’t the flu as it’d be her first case this year and one of the worst she’d ever seen. Some ‘quick onset viral thing’ was what I remember her saying. All I know is I was hallucinating something fierce.

Once we got home after 9pm I made a bunch of quick calls to my manager and folks from work to try to get someone to cover my class Monday. Luckily there was a local instructor that was off this week to fill in for me. All I know is I never want to feel that bad ever again in my life. I’m still downing fluids like it’s going out of style and I know I lost a few pounds due to the illness but I did get back to work today though not at quite 100%.

The picture below says it all. One of the good things about getting a California assignment.