Last December, the departmental manager had a TV installed in the office where I work. The stated purpose was that we would leave it tuned to news channels, but everyone assumed that the real purpose was to use up some of the budget at the end of the year.

The oldest guy in the office likes it tuned to CNN. The youngest guy prefers Al Jazeera America. There's one guy that likes Fox News, and another that tunes to the MSNBC. He told me doesn't think that's the best news source, but he enjoys irritating the Fox News guy.

For most of us the TV is basically useless as a new source. We work at real-time terminals, and have lots of Google News alerts to let us know about anything that's actually relevant to our jobs. But the TV is nice for me, because when I'm working overnights and the manager is at home sleeping the sleep of the just, I can change the channel to something more entertaining.

We get a special corporate channel package, with basically every news channel that Time Warner offers. But there are a strange collection of other channels too. We get the NFL Network. (Apparently because one of the guys called in a favor.) We get the Military Channel. We get H2 but not the original History Channel. We get the Cooking Network but not Food TV. Country Music Television, but no other music channels. It's all very strange.

My favorite random channel has been El Ray Network, which doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry last I looked. It's basically the Quentin Terantino and Robert Rodriguez channel, if you know who they are. I watch it because Saturday nights they show six hours worth of classic kung fu movies.

Sadly, last week we had to add some more equipment to the office, and it went where the TV was. So some technicians came in and installed a wall mount for the TV on the wall behind everyone's backs. It's nice that it's out of the way, but now the original purpose is completely obviated, since you can only watch the TV by turning away from the computer where you are expected to do your actual job. Originally it was in one's peripheral vision. I figure in another six months it'll be gone.

Or maybe there'll be more money left over in the budget, and we'll get a second TV.

Posted by: Boviate at 08:19 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It turns out there's a little bridezilla in every bride.

Specifically, my fiancee objected to one of the menu options, because the same side dish had been offered at her sister's wedding.

Which was eight years ago.

Posted by: Boviate at 09:58 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I just got back from shipping a care package to a former classmate of mine who is now a soldier in the 'Stan. After I sent it off that I realized that I had failed to include one of the required items for this sort of package: a think bundle of USMC recruitment pamphlets. It's all part of the honorable tradition of intra-service rivalry.

Next time, I guess.

Posted by: Boviate at 03:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I got with the times and purchased myself a Kindle. (The "Paperwhite" model to be specific.) I've only had it for a few days, so I can't really review it at length, but so far I'm quite pleased. The battery life is very good, its onboard storage is sufficient, it's survived one fall onto the floor so far, and it's quite lightweight. It charges by USB, but it didn't come with a USB power adapter– if memory serves, it's the first device I own that charges via USB that didn't come with a wall-wart. I guess they assume everyone now has a zillion of those things.

One interesting feature is that Amazon has a program where if the publisher agreed, a Kindle user that has in the past bought a physical book can get a discounted e-book edition of the same book. But Amazon's computers, as smart as they are, are not all-knowing. I can now buy very cheap electronic copies of quite a few of the physicals books I've given as gifts over the years.

Posted by: Boviate at 11:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I got home from work today at about 3:30, and it's warm. I'd like to go for a bike ride, but it feels like there's a 50% chance of rain. Breaking that down further, there's a 0% chance if I stay home, and a 100% chance if I go out riding.

Posted by: Boviate at 02:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I work in a bank's office building. As you might imagine, pretty much everyone dresses like, well, a banker.

Except for the copier guy. The promise of the "paperless office" has still not arrived, so there are multifunction printer/copier/scanner/fax machines all over the place. The bank has a contract with the manufacturer– the bank pays a fixed fee every year, and the copier company provides all the hardware, maintenance, and supplies. We get an eighteen-wheeler full of paper every two weeks.

Anyway, the copier guy. Part of the supply contract is that there's a copier tech in the building every weekday from 9-5. He looks to be in his early twenties, and stands out from all the suits because his work attire is "skater casual", with sneakers, jeans, and flannels. He has a closet full of his supplies in the loading dock, but no actual office, so most of the time he can be found lounging in the lobby's waiting area, just playing with his smartphone and waiting for some work to do. I'm not sure if I pity him for his boring job, or envy him for getting paid to sit around 80% of the time.

The printers/copiers/etc are actually somewhat interesting from a technological standpoint. They are all networked together, so whatever computer you are on just prints to a central server. Then you walk up to whichever printer you want, wave your ID badge at a touch-pad so it can read the badge's RFID chip, and the pad will show "Two documents in queue. Print all?" (Or you can select copies, faxing, etc.) This means you never have to worry about stuff being accidentally printed somewhere across the building. Also, as banks have paranoid internal controls, I'm sure the central server keeps an audit log so they can investigate information leaks (e.g. insider trading and whatnot.)

Posted by: Boviate at 07:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I miss the sea.

Don't get me wrong, I don't miss riding in Navy equipment. Living conditions for officers were about equivalent to low-security prison, while enlisted got medium-security prison. The work schedule was twelve on/twelve off, except there was a forty-five minute passdown meeting at every shift change, so that's thirteen-and-a-half on/nine-and-a-half off.

But if I got a few minutes to steal, I could sit on the leading edge of the flight deck. The breeze riffled through my lack of hair, smelling of iodine. The ocean was a deep, mysterious cerulean, the sky a clear azure. On the horizon, a few small squalls added white and gray. If we were near shore, there might be dolphins playing in the bow wave; further out at sea, the flying fish would dance across the surface.

If I was a millionaire, I'd buy a yacht.

But Hil doesn't like the open ocean. I don't know if I'll ever again spend a week without seeing any land whatsoever. I guess I'm at that stage in my life, where constraints are more visible than they once were.

But I'll always remember that color, that smell, that feeling, of being on the sea far from shore.

Posted by: Boviate at 12:01 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Buffalo had its first official blizzard since 1993, and I got to be in the thick of it. Specifically, I was at work, in the heart of downtown. Someone has to be manning the control room all the time, and it was my luck that my shift started at about the same time the storm did. While we were there, the rest of the building was closed, and all the office workers scurried out. The parking lot was empty expect for my car, the shift supervisor's car, and quite a few tons of snow. Soon there was only the snow, because the building has an enclosed loading bay for trucks, and the two of us pulled our cars in there to spare us digging them out later.

Safety-wise, we were fine. The building has multiple regularly-tested backup generators, and we had permission to raid the cafeteria's deli cooler for food. We were busy with work, though, as the storm was causing problems with lots of our branches. Customers were slipping and falling in parking lots, sprinkler pipes were bursting in attics, freezing rain was messing up walk-up ATMs, branches were closing early, all sorts of crazy stuff. The only consolation was that the weather was so bad, potential armed robbers were staying home.

As the night wore on, we each took a nap- the supervisor in the mother's room, and later me in the passenger seat of my car. I went with the car because it was padded and reclined, and I was plenty warm enough under the wool blanket and the sleeping bag I keep in the car. After sixteen hours, another console operator managed to get to work, so I was sent home. The poor supervisor ended up being there for 24 hours.

After those 16 hours at work, it took me triple the normal time to get home, driving on terrible roads. The storm was far from over. It was fortuitous that I'd bought new tires a few weeks earlier. Once home, I slept for about four hours, then got up and tried to get back to work again. I was scheduled to be back, and in my exhausted state I was regressing to some Marine behaviors, like a bull-headed willingness to do whatever necessary to complete the job.

After an hour of driving, I was less than a quarter of the way back to work. I kept re-routing myself because I kept running into closed roads. Eventually another bit of Marine training popped into my head, that of Operational Risk Management. The people at work had power and food, but there I was risking my life on the roads. So I turned around, went home, and went back to bed.

Posted by: Boviate at 10:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Happy New Year to all. I rang in the new year at home with my fiancee and our cat, which was a perfect number. Earlier in the evening my future sister-in-law and her sister-in-law/ward were here, but they left at 11PM.

Anyway, come New Year's Day, I followed my grandmother's superstition and cooked a supper of ham and potatoes. Then I went for a three-mile run, despite the 4° wind chill with falling and drifting snow. I wore so many layers that my core stayed plenty warm, and I thought my feet were doing fine too. Turns out they were just numb, and I managed to injure my right foot. I didn't even know anything was wrong until I'd warmed up for an hour. I'm feeling sharp pain along the bottom of the arch, which might be plantar fasciitis, or it might be something else. At any rate, I'm trying to rest it, and it seems to be improving.

Otherwise, no news. Our wedding planning is kicking into high gear, though.

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