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January 31, 2007
Sick
I'm sick. And like everyone else in the known universe I hate being sick. Sigh. It is one of my least favorite types of cold too -- sore throat. So I'm staying home today. I've got plenty to do, but with the amount of water/liquids I've been drinking it is really nice to have my own bathroom not more than 10 feet away. Also I'm not sure why, but working in your PJs always seems to take less effort than working in work clothes from the office.
Work has been going well, but slowly. This week and next week I've had to dedicate a good deal of time to writing conference papers (which will probably be incorporated into my thesis) but which are a bit bothersome to me right now. The upside is that I can easily work from home today, as writing papers doesn't really need the dual monitors I have come to rely on for my coding work.
Posted by kfeigh at 08:21 AM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2007
Cold
Yes, it is finally cold here. The temperature at 7am this morning 16 degrees. Good grief. That's below 0 celcius. Luckily for us all of the rain we got the day before had dried up. It is still really cold. I have to say though that the cheap ear band that I got from wally world for under $2 really works. My ears are nice and warm.
Posted by kfeigh at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2007
More code
Sometimes I feel like an infant. For example when asked what I did yesterday I told Brian that I had made a button (which I had created previously) take data from a bunch of different other boxes and display it in a table (which I had also created previously). That was it and it took all day.
Reminded me of those baby blues cartoons where the father asks the mother what she did today and she tells him all the stuff that she did only to find herself right back at the same place she was when she started. Today should go faster, now I get to do the same thing that I did yesterday lots of times -- lots of buttons will work after today (I hope).
Becca, I've got one piece of advice. Schedule someone to call you in the middle/end of the date. If the date is going well then you don't answer and if it isn't going well then you take the call and find some excuse to leave shortly there after. Good luck.
Posted by kfeigh at 09:21 AM | Comments (4)
January 23, 2007
And then it dawns up on me
What difference does it make what the "event planner" thinks? I only have to convince the 'planner' that we don't have to be on the books to take the work shop. I play stupid, call the 'planner' to veryify that she has everything she needs. When she mentions about checking that we are on the official marry at the church list, I simply inform her that we don't need to be. The brochure statest that the workshop is open to couples of any faith, so we need not be getting married at The Church.
Problem solved. (I think)
Posted by kfeigh at 10:33 AM | Comments (5)
The saga continues with the church
So on Sunday I had dinner with a group from my church (we have monthly dinners) where I told them the story of dealing with the church's event planner. They were not terrilby shocked as almost all of them had some sort of similiarly bad experience. They urged me to call and speak to the Rector (whom I had not complained yet because I just didn't feel like it was worth it). So yesterday I called and told him the whole crazy mess. Like any good priest he is a good listener and empathizer. I felt much better and was hopeful that type of experience would not happen again to someone else.
I then went home for lunch and found a voice message waiting for me. It was from another "planner" at the church. As part of the getting-married-at-the-church process Brian and I have to go through couple's counceling. Pretty standard stuff so I was expecting it. At my church these are offered in group sessions -- not one on one with a priest, twice a year: March and September. They are a Friday night/Saturday thing and are planned pretty far out. Now Brian and I have no idea where we might be next September so I signed us up for March -- might as well get it over with right?
The message was to say that the coordinator had received our application, but that she wanted to make sure we had spokent to the 'event planner'. I called back assured her that we had spoken with the 'event planner' and that we were going to get married at the church and we knew we needed to do this prior to the wedding.
The most amusing/anoying thing about this whole process is that you don't have to be getting married to attend this workshop. You can simply be married -- and given the high number of homosexual couples at my church I'm not eve sure you have to be married.
So then I get a phone call from the 'event planner' today because the other 'planner' has talked to her to veryify that we are getting married in the church. This causes a breach in the space-time continuum because we aren't on the calendar. Why? Because the freaking calendar only goes until this June!!! She first begins by explaining the problem they are having and then continues by asking me where I found out about the workshop. I tried explaining and answering her questions for about five minutes before I finally cracked.
I simply stated, "This is not my fault." I have done everything you have asked of me. I have filled out your form, I have attempted to get on a waiting list. This is not my fault. Where upon she explains to me that my form is INVALID because we want to get married in 2008! I reiterated that "This is not my fault" "It is not my fault that you do not have a waiting list, that there is no way to officially sign up for a wedding more than 12 months out. Are you not allowed to make decisions and create a waiting list?"
I broke again -- seeing that the answer to "are you not allowed to make decisions" was (at least in her mind, NO). I finally said, what do I need to do to make this happen? The answer -- as I could have told you all from the beginning was to once again appeal to the commonsense of the Rector's secretary. Who appears to be the only member of staff allowed to make decisions.
Posted by kfeigh at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2007
Code, confusion and code
Yes I've got java on the brain. I've spent all day trying to finish up my synchronization class. The biggest problem I've been having has to do with the really slow transfer speeds I was getting. It was taking ~4.5 seconds to transfer data. Now I need to do this every 60 seconds, so this was a BIG problem. I fret about it all day, do my best to wrangle the most efficient algorithms, delve into the crazy world of recursion and finally emerge no better. Then I finally get all of the kinks worked out and stop running in debug mode -- poof problem solved. The non-debug mode runs lightning fast (something rarely said about java). The transfer now takes about .1s. Much more reasonable.
I can go home happy tonight.
Posted by kfeigh at 06:14 PM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2007
Back from Reno
I got back in town yesterday afternoon and spent the rest of the day cleaning up from the various craziness that went on before I left. For example, I had re-grouted the seal between my tub and the tiles on the wall before we left so that it could dry while we were gone. This desperately needed to be done as the tub had settled and there was a good 1/8" gap near the faucet which was probably letting a lot of water into the wall. I figured I had just as good a chance of fixing the problem well as maintenance -- actually probably better.
Then there was the food from the cupboards which had taken up residence on the kitchen table since the discovery of ants a few days prior to leaving on the trip. In classic insect style, by the time I bought and distributed the traps, the little buggers had disappeared. I can only assume the guys downstairs got to them first. So I put all of the food back where it belonged.
I still haven't folded the towels in the washer -- I think I'll leave that for Brian.
Today I met "the team" and like all good first-day-of-class lectures I think I overwhelmed them. Which is good because now we are all overwhelmed. I still cannot believe that I passed up my nice cushy TA position to lead a design team. God help us all.
Posted by kfeigh at 02:51 PM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2007
Software Engineering
Considering that I in no way studied CS or software engineering as an undergraduate major, I seem to find myself doing an awful lot of it. Right now after a two-year hiatus, I am back at it.
I'm trying to teach myself Java while simultaneously designing a decision support tool using it. Fun, fun, fun. I'm using a hodge podge of tools, because all of the real software planning tools are much more complicated than I can handle. But if anyone knows a nice simple tool which allows you to just plan out your classes, objects, variables and methods whithout too many more additional options, please send them along.
Also for anyone who is interested I'll be at Reno Monday and Tuesday next week.
Oh, and my supervisor just talked me into leading a design team for the FAA design competition about runway incursion -- so if you have any ideas about that feel free to send them along.
Posted by kfeigh at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2007
Meeting with the church "event planner"
So the meeting went something like this:
EP: Hello, I just need you to fill out this form and then we'll get started
K: (Filling out form as best as can, don't know answers to things like date, number of guests etc.)
EP: Done?
K: I think so, there's some stuff we don't know yet.
EP: OK, let's take a look
K: Silence
EP: Well, what date did you want?
K: Well that depends upon when the church is available -- we were thinking sometime in April/May 08
EP: I cannot help you then. I don't have the O8 calendar. You'll have to come back when the new calendar is out.
K: When will it come out?
EP: I don't know. Sometime in the summer. Whenever the clergy get around to it.
K: So does our name go on a waiting list or something?
EP: No, just come back then.
K: OK, that's fine. Can we have the packet for planning purposes. We know it is likely to change, we just want to get a basic estimate so we can begin saving and budgeting.
EP: No, I'm only allowed to give the 07 packets to the 07 weddings.
K: What's in the packet?
EP: CD of your musical choices, lists of readings, things like that.
K: (giving up on actually laying my hands on the packet, after sensing that it doesn't have the much needed price list) What does it cost to have a wedding here?
EP: Well it depends?
B: (Having reached his seemingly limitless patience level) We don't need exact numbers, just a ball park figure.
EP: I'm not sure. Once you have a date and we assign a clergy person to you, then you get a price list and send that back into Christine (no idea who that person is)
K: What about the reception hall, do you know approximate prices for that.
EP: Well it will depend.
K: (Inwardly sighing) Depend on what?
EP: (List lots of random things)
K: Do you know who might have the price list?
EP: The rector's assistant
We finally decide then that we've gotten what little can be had from her and leave to go find the rector's assistant. Pronto, we get an 07 price list. Price of a wedding at my church in 07 $750, price for 3 hour reception $1100.
If you don't believe me you can ask Brian, he does a nice rant about the EP. Plus only he can verify how I managed not to yell at the EP. I am extremely proud of myself.
Posted by kfeigh at 01:53 PM | Comments (2)
January 02, 2007
Details
Becca wanted details, so I applogize to everyone else who reads this blog, here are the details. So far Brian and I are trying to bask, but my need to plan and to know as much information as possible as soon as possible has made this fairly impossible. Luckily for me I have a thesis to while away the time. So far we've put together our super-huge-everyone-we-or-our-parents-ever-knew wedding invitation list. We've come to around 275. This number scares me a bit and frankly terrifies Brian. We don't really expect this many to come but will be devising rather complicated statstical models to determine exactly how many will show up and what the confidence interval on that number will be. In the mean time atleast it gives me the data that I crave.
Tomorrow we have an appointment to meet with the "event coordinator" at my church to get what I am assuming will be the shockingly bad news about how much using the church and parish hall for the wedding will cost. So far I don't like the lady much as she has blatantly lied to me over the phone about not knowing the costs (even ball park) for either the ceremony or the parish all rental. So tomorrow Brian and I are going to try to look the part of poor graduate students and present ourselves for inspection. I'm half tempted to wear a small opal ring my parents gave me for my 15th birthday (instead of the graphing calculator I had asked for) instead of my engagement ring just for effect. More to come later. But if you want to be shocked, just google "episcopal wedding cost" and look at the numbers that come up.
Posted by kfeigh at 01:09 PM | Comments (1)