Based on conversations with a coworker on IRC that led to ambermae wondering about "Blue Cheese Beer" [1] I give you a partial list of things I've created in my own head while in our work chat room.

• The Smurf Mulcher
• Imperial Lard Ale

1. I suppose it ought to be Bleu Cheese Beer

My parents commute to work together most days. It's a minimum of 45 minutes each way. I used to have a similar commute when I spent a series of summers working in the same office as my dad, as a data entry contractor. And, for a summer, it wasn't so bad. I came across a New Yorker article talking about some of the various extreme commutes while reading about developer Buzz Anderson leaving Apple to follow his dream [1]. As Anderson put it:

As the stress and hours increased at work, my 45 minute commute down 280, which I had initially thought of as a reasonable (even pleasant and scenic) drive, became a soul crushing daily slog.

One of my projects at work is getting contacts in each of the departments of both my shop and the paper to revise their portions of a course guide for a company wide leadership program. This is a little challenging this year. There is a bit of process revision going on in each department as we gather what courses are still valid, what's no longer valid and what last year's participants [1] said needed improvement.

Part of what I found out in looking at last year's feedback is that some courses weren't taken until a friend vouched for them, because the descriptions weren't very descriptive. So, being the chair of this year's curriculum committee, one of my goals became giving the descriptions more punch. Or, rather, asking each of the departments to punch them up.

By and large, it's been coming along, but one department I've gone back and forth with a couple of times. The staffer I've been talking with asked me, "Why are they being really critical this year."

Well, it's not a they, really. It's me. I explained what I was doing, why I was asking for more changes. She said OK and said she'd have the edits back later in the day.

Yes, it's work I'm asking people to do, but I'm happy for insisting on what I want from the project. And I figure, if I'm getting one or two people out of their comfort zones, in a respectful way, that's good.

1. I was one, and provided quite a bit of the feedback

51/Raleigh f/4.2 @ 1/100 sec

Being accused of being a narcissist over participating in the 365 days project, I decided to take my self-portraits in a different direction for the next little bit.

Goodness: My payment for appearing in JPG Magazine, Issue 8 showed up in two parts. A lens on Saturday, a check today. Secondly, in a sign that a feature I'm working on adding to a utility script for one of our products is desired, a guy in our support dept. has promised me free bagels. Yeah, it's not hardware, but nice to work on something that's appreciated.

Other things to update on in the near future:

• Last week's concert
• Fondue
• My Technological Failures class
• Development projects

• Jay Rosen, answers questions about NewAssignment.net.
• Bloggers face an increase in libel suits.

Rosen is speaking at the N&O today in about 30 minutes, also about NewAssignment.Net. Should be interesting.

Nice. Not too terribly stressful. A couple of large tasks accomplished.

• Completed a six-month "extra-curricular" course at the N&O.
• Dinner w/ saspenguin and Jason.
• Moved out of Whitaker Park, along with several other people. Found out there have been a variety of dates thrown around for people to move out, such as "right now." It was claimed, however, that my apt. is being rented out until May.
• Cleaned apt.
• Discovered a headboard travels quite nicely on the roof rack.
• deviant_ was in town so Robin, myself, deviant_, ambermae and gorski got together for beer. Had Magic Hat No. 9 for the first time, and a black currant lambic. Both tasty.
• Saw Clash of the Titans with R, ambermae, gorski and badger after badger put the event on our radar a few weeks ago.
• Flickr outing Tues. 10/03.

<coworker1> I'll try to pin him down a bit more, thx
<nwalls> I don't suggest waterboarding.
<coworker2> until it's been thru qa

"Quality Assurance for Torture" both sounds like a Field Manual and an emo band name.

Handful of Bees/Raleigh f/8 @ 1/50 sec

At some point, I'll actually update on the past couple/three weeks. But, that whole real life thing keeps happening. So, I figure I can at least post some quick hits.

So, got to see where Jeremy, starchyld's other half works as our sysadmins gave us a tour of HoSo, Raleigh.

Key was walking into the power room and seeing the redundant Square D equipment and the nervous look from our tour guide as one of my coworkers stepped a little too close to the Big Giant Off Switch.

Now, it's quite possible data centers should not put me in awe, but it did. Especially the spiffy mantraps and biometric hand thingy.

Pretty decent weekend. The first in a while where I wasn't either injured or on-the-run somewhere or other. And that was nice.

Friday

Taking full advantage of some free evenings, I managed to get to dinner at Royal India with Tom, Bethany and ambermae. Quite delicious and far too long since I'd been to Indian. ambermae had an eggplant based dish that looked good. Tom and Bethany both had magic vegetarian platters of rice, five mini entrees and a sort of potato dumpling. I ended up having what was essentially tandoori red snapper, followed by mango ice cream. Very, very good.

[	Tags	|	email, work	]
[	mood	|	amused	]
[	music	|	Tool -- 10,000 Days (Wings Part 2)	]

So, no shit, there I am reading my work email, when I see the following subject line on an all hands message:

"Boo & VD sale today"

A little later...

"The VD sale is next week!"

As expected, the purchase announcement was the big talk of the day for cowokers in the office and on the West Coast. Many of the big questions we have remain unanswered, however the general tone after the annoucement was excitement, with veins of concern. As mentioned by McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt, there is some overlap with Knight Ridder Digtal and where I work. I don't know how much or in what areas. However, I'm not overly concerned. In fact, it was one of the more genuinely exciting days at the office.

Knight-Ridder agrees to be purchased by The McClatchy Company for $4.5 billion.

This should make for some interesting conversation around the office. Yes, I own shares of McClatchy.

This Is Your Life/Durham
Originally uploaded by base10.

Setting aside seeing World's Fastest Indian last night, I have had almost zero time in the last week or so to do much of anything outside of work.

Getting called "back" to work at 9:30 p.m. after the movie is not how I wanted to spend last night. Really, it wasn't. Thanks, are due to gorski for providing post work beer and bourbon.

I'd go into detail, but there's little point. Having to commit code so another developer can put a release into QA at 11 p.m. for a morning release is not generally the way we like to do things. Ever.

One of the busier weeks at work in a while. The fact that I've had to return home to monitor a server paging for high CPU load doesn't please me, particularly since it took me from an in-progress birthday.

At least there was scotch and dancing before I had to leave.

Henry Petroski is speaking at the N+O Friday. I think I've convinced half of my dept. to go. I doubt I'll be able to finish Remaking the World by then.

Sometimes, we do get really cool stuff coming through.

On a completely unrelated note, the circus left town overnight, so if you weren't on the train, you missed your opportunity to punch some clowns and/or start a new life/job.