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* Wow, there is a U-Pick (gather) chestnut grove up on Skyline drive: http://skylinechestnuts.com/
* HINT: if you are applying for a senior user experience position, do not have tiled photos of your travels as the background for your portfolio. It doesn't do justice to your wonderful photos, and it makes the layout of your portfolio quite difficult to read. 1998 web design? Next candidate!
--==∞==--
I just took a glance at our state temperature extremes. I expect extremes, what with the sierras and Mt Shasta and Death Valley and ten degrees of latitude. My Dad quotes an altitude-latitude conversion for expecting first frosts and such: this state has those extremes.
So, no surprise seeing Thermal and Palm Springs in the low 60s right now, and South Lake Tahoe and Mt Shasta in the teens. But Imperial Beach is reporting 10°F. What humorist named some mountain town Imperial Beach? I must see where this is. No, it's a beach, it's the beach just north of Tijuana. It looks like some time between 10 and 11 pm on the 14th that thermometer started reading 10 degrees.
Why am i compelled to figure out things like this? Following![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dabroots and gurdonark, last night i skimmed back through the years to see what other Dec 15ths were like. One morning i became fixated on whether the Greek expression "rosy-fingers of dawn" used rosy as a color first or a flower first. I've got a link to a amphora with Athena handing someone a rose, links to analysis of that figure of speech.
These puzzles i pursue. Crosswords? Not so much.
Back to local skies, it cleared yesterday, so i had some sunshine into my office. Overnight the temperature fell. There might be frost on the car this morning.
--==∞==--
Yesterday i found myself blocked from productive work by worry. Another friend wrote about how, objectively, the patterns of her days are unchanged by an estrangement, but internally its all different. I responded to email and talked to colleagues, but somehow the impending install to production with the bug conflicts (no one could tell my lead engineer where to check in bugs until the TOO LATE moment; i didn't know we had these bugs; etc), the failure of two different laptops of team members, the sickness of four different team members, the onset of holiday absences.... Exhale.
I woke at 2 am this morning and was awake for some hours with the same worries. Eventually i calmed my mind and slept some more. I had gone to bed early so i'm sure i've had enough sleep.
I need to "get a handle" on the things i'm worried about, stack them up somehow, so i can attack the issues. I ended up choosing to handwrite notes on a technical requirements document and scan and send it to a colleague: that seemed far more efficient than trying to put comments in Word. The physicality of it appealed. I have a feeling i'm going to be covering my cube with post-it notes soon.
--==∞==--
Christine was picking me up after work, and our office manager was in the big conference room with holiday decorations. I offered to help and she gushed with gratitude. Moments later, my phone rang -- but no, Christine was in Palo Alto, so i'd have another thirty minutes to help. That was fine. I tied string to candy to hang from the ceiling. I ripped holiday CDs to the presentation laptop, set it up to project to both screens, found a visualizer theme of an animated snowman bouncing to the music, discovered the right speaker was blown when only one side of a Chipmunk duet was audible, and so on, and so on. As i was hanging silver ball ornaments along the glass wall (just so, high and low, but with different heights, at third intervals on the glass panels), i became VERY curious about why i hadn't heard from Christine, so i looked at the traffic map on my phone: red, red, red. It took her an hour and a half to get to the office. Meanwhile i'd found how our office manager is like my mother: listening to her critique the support staff in the building reminded me of mom's running critique of family. And the obsessive vision of just how everything should look. And the failure to invite collaboration early (no email out asking if folks would be willing to help decorate after work).
I was glad to be able to help, as our office manager really does make an effort to keep things nice and pleasant (and while i call her the office manager, that's merely a role she's been stuck with). But it was draining after the day of worry. Christine and i ate out at a nearby restaurant, and then we flew home on 101, the 511 service announcing it was just a 16 minute drive.
* HINT: if you are applying for a senior user experience position, do not have tiled photos of your travels as the background for your portfolio. It doesn't do justice to your wonderful photos, and it makes the layout of your portfolio quite difficult to read. 1998 web design? Next candidate!
--==∞==--
I just took a glance at our state temperature extremes. I expect extremes, what with the sierras and Mt Shasta and Death Valley and ten degrees of latitude. My Dad quotes an altitude-latitude conversion for expecting first frosts and such: this state has those extremes.
So, no surprise seeing Thermal and Palm Springs in the low 60s right now, and South Lake Tahoe and Mt Shasta in the teens. But Imperial Beach is reporting 10°F. What humorist named some mountain town Imperial Beach? I must see where this is. No, it's a beach, it's the beach just north of Tijuana. It looks like some time between 10 and 11 pm on the 14th that thermometer started reading 10 degrees.
Why am i compelled to figure out things like this? Following
dabroots and gurdonark, last night i skimmed back through the years to see what other Dec 15ths were like. One morning i became fixated on whether the Greek expression "rosy-fingers of dawn" used rosy as a color first or a flower first. I've got a link to a amphora with Athena handing someone a rose, links to analysis of that figure of speech. These puzzles i pursue. Crosswords? Not so much.
Back to local skies, it cleared yesterday, so i had some sunshine into my office. Overnight the temperature fell. There might be frost on the car this morning.
--==∞==--
Yesterday i found myself blocked from productive work by worry. Another friend wrote about how, objectively, the patterns of her days are unchanged by an estrangement, but internally its all different. I responded to email and talked to colleagues, but somehow the impending install to production with the bug conflicts (no one could tell my lead engineer where to check in bugs until the TOO LATE moment; i didn't know we had these bugs; etc), the failure of two different laptops of team members, the sickness of four different team members, the onset of holiday absences.... Exhale.
I woke at 2 am this morning and was awake for some hours with the same worries. Eventually i calmed my mind and slept some more. I had gone to bed early so i'm sure i've had enough sleep.
I need to "get a handle" on the things i'm worried about, stack them up somehow, so i can attack the issues. I ended up choosing to handwrite notes on a technical requirements document and scan and send it to a colleague: that seemed far more efficient than trying to put comments in Word. The physicality of it appealed. I have a feeling i'm going to be covering my cube with post-it notes soon.
--==∞==--
Christine was picking me up after work, and our office manager was in the big conference room with holiday decorations. I offered to help and she gushed with gratitude. Moments later, my phone rang -- but no, Christine was in Palo Alto, so i'd have another thirty minutes to help. That was fine. I tied string to candy to hang from the ceiling. I ripped holiday CDs to the presentation laptop, set it up to project to both screens, found a visualizer theme of an animated snowman bouncing to the music, discovered the right speaker was blown when only one side of a Chipmunk duet was audible, and so on, and so on. As i was hanging silver ball ornaments along the glass wall (just so, high and low, but with different heights, at third intervals on the glass panels), i became VERY curious about why i hadn't heard from Christine, so i looked at the traffic map on my phone: red, red, red. It took her an hour and a half to get to the office. Meanwhile i'd found how our office manager is like my mother: listening to her critique the support staff in the building reminded me of mom's running critique of family. And the obsessive vision of just how everything should look. And the failure to invite collaboration early (no email out asking if folks would be willing to help decorate after work).
I was glad to be able to help, as our office manager really does make an effort to keep things nice and pleasant (and while i call her the office manager, that's merely a role she's been stuck with). But it was draining after the day of worry. Christine and i ate out at a nearby restaurant, and then we flew home on 101, the 511 service announcing it was just a 16 minute drive.
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