Angelic Eye for the Gendered-Species Individual

16:55: things fall together
As well as the travel sorting out, I have essentially completed one of the two big work projects that looked last week like they were landing on me last minute and might make this week hectic. The other, between this morning's power outage and $programmer being out sick yesterday and today, is right on a cusp of "not worth thinking about in the time remaining", so yay.

Weekend and past few days have largely been spent getting ready for travel, chatting online and also rewatching more Age of Kings - I am really in awe of that Henry V. And $programmer and his SO joined P and Z and A and me for dim sum Sunday, which either I have not had for a very long time or was even better than usual. (Between the mushroom ravioli/lasagne thing papersky made last week, the duck sandwich with onion jam, and the salmon pie with lobster of which a third is still in the fridge awaiting me tomorrow, I am feeling thoroughly indulged on the food front.)

Also, it's actually getting warm, which is always uplifting.

I have a number of small things I meant to do last night, and was just too tired for, which I should do tonight, so that I do not spend tomorrow night in a state of panic.

16:47: wings
I have, I think, got pretty much everything finally sorted for the imminent travel, thanks to hearing from a couple of people this morning. The plan, fwiw, looks like this:

( because we can plan plan )

16:18: minor edit to last post
Make that thirteen genomes to process; I will get them all to a consistent and somewhat useful state by the end of the day, but I do not envision completing what I have to do with them.

That's a real "living in the SF of my childhood" sort of thought to be having, come to think of it.

14:32: under a green sun
Clawing my mood back into something more workable continues. Thank you for being supportive along the way. Thanks also to zorinth for identifying the home connection problems as a monitor issue and bringing over another monitor to swap in, which works perfectly.

I finally have my data; nine genomes' worth to process, and am belting along through the first stage of the last one at the moment, which will at least get all of them up in the interface for scientists to assess. I am supposed to get the server for my thrice-cursed genome editor install hopefully by Monday, too.

Also, I got into The Avengers at Cavendish no prob at all:

( thoughts )

11:53: are they together and the same ?
Could have done without vicious nightmare about financial ruin followed by not getting any sleep after 3 am.

Could have done without showing up at Cinema Paramount last night at 1740ish and finding The Avengers sold out except for half a dozen seats at 2300, which would be dubious even without a work-day following.

Could have done without being finally given something resembling a Plan for all this crazymaking work stuff yesterday morning, and then having it taken away again directly after lunch.

Could have done without... a few other things, net impact of which is making me feel like large pieces of my self have been taken out and put in again wrong way round.

(You know the way people sometimes complain about posting moans to lj not getting serious useful engagement, just hugs and sympathy? Right now, my ability to find an angle for serious useful engagement on any of the things I am stressing on is being totally balked, any suggestions that were not perfectly right would likely make me want to bite the suggester's head off and I have no idea at all what "perfectly right" would look like, but hugs and sympathy are entirely welcome. As would be cheerful distractions.)

15:09: on a backcloth of ashes and stars
That was a fairly full week. Tues night did bed assembling and then had a hot bath which only partially countered the effects on my back of said assembly; Wed went out for sushi with papersky; Thu went out with P and Z and A and cyberneticnomad, it being the only day during the week A was not working too late, and had excellent Mitteleuropean food. And Fri, between having a seminar from a senior visiting scientist (rather interesting; largely about all the useful things we can do with Aspergillus), going out to have a sizable lunch in anticipation of no solid food for a while after the fillings, and then having the fillings, I got gvery little done at all. The fillings went smoothly, though they are still annoyingly temperature-sensitive. The rest of that evening I went flop. Saturday I had phone conversations with my mother and daharyn, and wrote. Sunday papersky and I went out to see a musical version of Hamlet, an intriguing thought, and found it had apparently closed the previous day, which was irritating; instead we did some second-hand bookshopping and came home via carrying a large pile of shopping from Atwater Market.

Work is being rather irritating, in that several major or majorish things are now looming over me needing being done asap but cannot actually be done without key pieces being done by other people first, and I am in a state of dread that some or all of them will descend upon me half an hour before I leave for Hyperborea. I've been clearing up lower priority stuff on my desk, but there's not overly much of that left to do at this point.

There is a dramatic reading-thing of the Odyssey in Ottawa June 16 to which P and cyberneticnomad and I are considering going; and the other useful thing we found by going out to the venue for the musical Hamlet is that they do classic films on the big screen and on June 18 they are showing Lawrence of Arabia. Also was thinking of seeing The Avengers with Z tomorrow night, but this does require Z to get back to me and confirm interest and availability. Also, he needs to have a look at my home desktop, which is being irritatingly temperamental in re whether it will talk to its monitor or not, which is another reason why there's been little posting here this past week.

22:47: happy birthday !
Happy birthday to the excellent daharyn, with lots of hugs.

10:16: caught up on this line again
papersky is home again, safe and sound; so are Z and A but I've not seen them since they got in.

cyberneticnomad kindly took us out to Ikea last night, in consequence of which there is a replacement main bed for me to assemble tonight. Tomorrow P and I will be going for sushi for my birthday; Thursday, us plus Z and A and maybe cyberneticnomad will go to Prague (the restaurant) because it's the only evening this week A's not working times incompatible with going out for dinner, and Friday I have the last of the current round of fillings so I'll probably write Sat.

Workwise, other people are testing more sets of data and think they have a reasonable set to replace the dubious ones from last week, so at some point hopefully earlyish today I will have a large pile of data coming in needing processing. Getting that off my desk will be a great relief.

My desktop at home has been misbehaving unpredictably; Z is going to have a look at it soon but in the meantime, do not expect to see me online from home with any reliability. I have updated a laptop daharyn kindly gave me some time ago and can use it as a fallback, but there are ways in which it's not a great idea for me to have a computer I can use in bed, it's way too easy to think "just one more thing" and feel the weight of all the things I yet want to catch up on.

21:58: books, December 2011
( books read, December 2011 )

14:52: graffiti of the civilised world, #3


Photo taken by daharyn, in the pedestrian underpass under the railway line a block and a half north of my apartment, April 2012.

Tags: i never met a meta i didn't like

10:30: food and good things
Last night daharyn and I finally got around to going to Du Pain de l'Inde, which several people recommended after Farthing last year. I was very pleased with what I had, and to note that their calibration of "mild" is such that I might at some point find it worth trying their "medium" as well; only real downside was that the portion size for lamb korma was between half and two-thirds of what a hungry rysmiel can actually eat. And after that, as the Metro was down for a bit, we walked over to the downtown Suite 88 and had icecream, and then went home and watched more West Wing. It was all very pleasant indeed.

13:43: and in retrospect I'll say we've done no wrong
daharyn's visit has been going mostly very pleasantly, with lots of good food and good conversation (not all of which was about my writing) and plenty of West Wing; the only real downer has been the last few days of horrible wet grey weather. I got summer shoes, as my boots had begun to disintegrate.

$IT_boss had a meeting this morning to plan out a chunk of the next major phase of the project, which both $programmer and I independently made sure $project_manager came along to on "we'll be damned if we get avoidably caught between incompatible priorities again" grounds. It wasn't actually too bad, though definitely benefited from having $project_manager along; it does mean I have to do more of the bits of my job I like less well in the immediate future, but not excessively so. It really would help if the things I need other people to do to allow me to finish some of the things currently on my desk would actually happen, though.

00:12: book post, November 2011
( books, November )

15:52: I could have counted down to this...
$colleague, back from holiday for 48 hours, has insisted on renaming two columns in the central table of the database stuff has to go public in next week because it's "clearer to the users". (By which she means, she's forgotten what she thought was "memorable" last time she wanted them changed, so wants them changed to something that strikes her as "memorable" now.) The only people who see these names are $colleague, $programmer and me; the broader userbase gets a pretty interface that can be labelled whatever the heck we like.

I am Earning Merit by not exploding here. Really.

10:33: few and far between are the tribulations not mitigated by katsu oysters
redbird's weekend-centred visit has had lots of food and chatting and stuff, and I am still here and still alive, if not entirely great at not falling down various metaphorical rabbit holes. (crotalus_atrox, one of those is mostly your fault. I glower in your direction, but not very convincingly.)

Called my father, having confirmed that the mail had reached him; he appears to be thinking in terms of everybody getting together for a big bash when I am in Ireland. I have fended the thought of doing any actual planning for that off for the moment.

Also, the wonky leg on the bed in the main bedroom here finally broke. On the one hand, one could have hoped for a somewhat more interesting story attached to it than "I sat down on the bed while getting dressed, and gosh dismantling a bed and carrying it downstairs piecemeal to leave for the rubbish pickup is no fun in 26 C with humidity". On the other, nobody getting hurt is definitely a plus there.

My boots appear to be coming to the end of their natural lifespan, too. Should get summer shoes soon.

22:04: books October 2011
( books, October 2011 )

13:36: when the warm wind comes again
Progress since last post:
- lodged cheque of papersky's
- went to middling-good burlesque, successfully got natas afterwards
- rail pass ordered (to my surprise, it arrived yesterday morning by FedEx)
- furniture moved for cleaning beneath, and said cleaning done
- appointment made for last filling, afternoon of Friday May 4
- thorough kitchen clean including mopping of floor
- long constructive gmail chats with daharyn, hobbitblue and livredor
- some clean-up and reorganisation on my home computer
- read cyberneticnomad's Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind
- a handful of soothingly non-challenging movies
- tracking registered post confirms that my father has received important post sent him
- a couple more episodes of West Wing

!Progress since last post:
- my watch has had the standard strap integrity failure, and I've not yet managed to get a new one
- no writing done (hopefully tomorrow)

07:46: books, September 2011
( books, September 2011 )

15:53: whatever else I may say about my workplace
...$programmer and $systems_guy have just spent the last ten minutes arguing about whether Autobots would get health insurance or auto insurance.

Also, I absent-mindedly wore the t-shirt with the attached userpic on it to work today, which is a bit more frivolous than I usually do, and $systems_guy complimented me on it.

(The VM for $programmer and me is nominally ready, but is taking about six hours to install in the right place, so I will not be getting to it until next week. In the meantime I have resolved two smaller problems. And in an hour or so I shall leave to go to the bank, have dinner in the Main, and go to a burlesque, and along the way may get natas from Coco Rico.)

16:29: the internet is for whine
I started today with two things of significance to do at work.

Thus far, I have been not getting one of them done, in a most irritating fashion, largely because $colleague's requesting me to quickly move some recent changes on server A over to server B is not readily doable because of a large number of complicated ways the two server differ which ultimately derive from $colleague's tendency to tinker wildly with things in the moment on the apparent assumption that whatever makes sense right now is going to be utterly reliable and straightforward from this point out, without any acknowledgement that she will very likely tinker with them wildly again in the near future, and forget which bit applies where, and...aaaagh, basically.

I also had three other things of significance given me during the day.

I want to go home and watch a really stupid movie.

15:20: things which do not help
It would appear that Bryan Adams is playing here on the 17th inst.

This means that there is a significantly higher than normal chance that any incidental shopping I do over the next couple of weeks will be backgrounded with "Summer of '69" and/or the Robin Hood song. This is not a prospect that cheers a rysmiel.

(Seriously, summer of '69 ? Bryan Adams was ten. That song totally does not read like the narrator is remembering being ten to me, and this is the sort of thing on which my world-building brain goes crunch.)

14:52: some kind of angel let me look into your eyes
papersky and zorinth and A set off on Friday, so I have spent the bulk of this weekend crashing out, with less online time than me crashing out usually involves because my eyes have been benefiting from not reading off a screen for a while. There has been house-cleaning, of which a fair bit has been done and a fair bit remains to do. There has been attempting to get back to a sensible sleep pattern, with mixed success. There has not been any writing. There has been non-challenging reading, and there was a smoked-meat sandwich. $programmer has been out sick today and Friday, so work has been mostly pointed in other directions, in a mildly frustrating sort of way.

Tomorrow afternoon I will be going to $programmer's thesis defence, for which he is husbanding energy, and quite possibly then to an early evening screening of Wrath of the Titans in glorious 2D. Thursday I am contemplating going over to Mainline Theatre for a burlesque and eating in the Main; Coco Rico may not be open late enough for me to pick up natas thereafter, though. And I have things to post, and rail passes to book, and line-edits to engage with, and more house-cleaning to do, and all in all, really kind of busy.

I have however remembered to water the jasmine every day thus far, and am giving it more water than I was; it does not seem to be objecting to this treatment.

13:02: between the cracks and hollows, the earth is good
dhole and aethereal_girl and Uriel left yesterday for New York, and papersky and Z and A will be leaving this evening for Hyperborea. The swede Iron Chef was a great success from the point of view of eating the food if a serious logistical challenge; papersky made swede souffle and a baked vegetables and cheese thing, and aethereal_girl did swede gnocchi in a mushroom sauce, and a pecan cake with grated swede, and of which I think there may be a little left for me to finish up.

Today I finish up the last of my antibiotics, and this morning's checkup with oral surgeon confirms everything healing fine. I have also done bank stuff. And the systems person responsible for setting up VMs was out for a bit and will have the server we want for clean install ready Monday, so the demo for $bio_boss has been postponed until somewhat later. Probably a fair bit later. $programmer is out sick today.

Also, have some awesome Secret Agent Calvin Hobbes artwork, link c/o tsuki_no_bara.

15:46: open the skies, and burn it all away
+: $project_manager really liked the upgrade of the genome editor that $programmer and I ran by him yesterday.

--: he wants it ready to show $bio_boss Monday.

-: This entails a clean install on a new server, because the version we have has lots of different layers of encrusted not-quite-working attempts. The person with the access privileges and skills to set up the relevant VM has not been in this past two days. This is looking increasingly like we're going to have to postpone showing anything at all Monday, let alone the cut-down version that was the best I was hoping to have by then.

+: I am getting to do some real programming in directions I can make work, which is pleasingly less frustrating than much of the time.

++: $programmer is really good.

-: $programmer's MA thesis defence is Tuesday next, so there is a hard limit on how much of this stuff I can load him down with.

+/-: $colleague is going away for a fortnight so I am unlikely to get interference in this project from that direction; otoh, I may find myself needing input from that direction at some point soon.

++++: Kosher sushi last night lived up to our various anticipation of just how good their tartares are. And we turn out to be in their delivery radius.

+/??: At Uriel's suggestion, aethereal_girl and papersky are talking about Iron Chef tonight, with the ingredient being swede.

12:54: hold your head up high
dhole and aethereal_girl and Uriel are here, arriving off a very long trip yesterday evening. The timelag between Jerusalem and Montreal is such that people were up and about at 4 this morning, but everyone was very good about making minimal noise. Also papersky got a couple of most unpleasant knots out of my back, which helped.

Other than that, this weekend was spent largely cleaning up, and watching Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources on Saturday, which are one four-hour film split in two; very beautiful and highly recommended, if wrenchingly intense. And ringing my mother who appears to be in good form (and there was some squee about Game of Thrones); it seems however that my sister mentioned to my father about looking forward to seeing me in May, and my father had forgotten me mentioning that was when I was aiming to be there, so goodness knows whether there might be huffiness there. Also my winter dressing-gown finally gave up the ghost, and there was an unexpected couple of hours out getting a new one on Saturday.

$programmer and I are presenting the results of the last week and a half's labour to $project_manager some time this afternoon. I am feeling reasonably optimistic about it.