blog.circusgeek

a personal blog with nerdy bits thrown in

Category: Work

  • Busy working & Run Fatboy Run

    This week I’ve been swamped with work, frantically trying to hone in some big design changes for the next version of SuperSweetCo’s web app. A bunch of work has been done, both by myself and my team, but there’s a lot of details to work out, and development starts, like, now. It’s going well, but just a bunch of stress. Taking some time off in a couple weeks, looking forward to that.

    Kelly and I set our preferences on Netflix to ship movies from our queue in Bluray (since we now have a player) and our first one arrived yesterday… Run Fatboy Run, which we promptly watched. The movie itself is funny, if a bit overly slapstick at times, but it was a joy to watch in hi-def. I get the feeling I could watch the worst movie ever right now, and still enjoy it just because of the picture clarity. 🙂

    In kegerator-related news, I think it’s about Guinness time again, now that the weather here has suddenly turned from summer to almost winter-like cold. And just in time for my birthday. Hooray!

  • Happy birthday Ty

    Tonight Kelly and I went over to our friends Ty and Aymie’s place for Ty’s birthday party thingy. Happy birthday man! Had a great time hanging out and catching up with all the crew.

    Been a while since the last post, so since then:

    • Saw Hellboy II: The Golden Army (finally), liked it quite a bit
    • Been working my ass off, lots going on
    • Been fighting a sickness this past week, ughhh
    • Saw Dogville, what a depressing flick
    • Saw Doomsday, what rubbish
    • Went to the Goose last night with Mr & Mrs Ghost Dog, brilliant!
    • Bought a Blu-ray player today, brilliant!
    • Bought Iron Man on Blu-ray, also brilliant!
    • Still pouring Trumer Pilsner in the kegerator, alsø alsø brilliant!

  • Lazy day, Goose night

    Today I had all kinds of plans to get outside and get something done in the yard. However, none of that worked out, as I ended up spending (wasting?) my day at the computer, browsing music, playing games, and generally not getting much done.

    Tonight Kelly and I went to the Goose Hollow Inn to have dinner with some friends. On our way we visited one of my coworker’s for a little bit (who was having a small BBQ gathering). We had a fun time even though we were only there for about an hour… the Goose and their delicious sandwiches beckoned.

    The friends we were meeting had never been to the Goose before, so the evening was largely planned due to my raving about their reuben sandwich. Had a fantastic time, and our friends were soon praising the Goose reuben as well. I think I won the Goose a couple more converts. Amen! Goose Hollow reuben be praised!

  • The vault at my new offices

    I’ve already mentioned how my work moved to a new office (near the deliciously evil Kenny & Zuke’s, and Powell’s Books), but what I don’t think I mentioned is that the building was the former location of a federal reserve bank (a branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco). The building is big, and SuperSweetCo will, once the build-out is completed, have 3 floors (two standard floors and a penthouse with some outdoor patio space). One cool bonus though was something I saw a couple months back on a tour of the building, only at the time I didn’t have my camera with me. The basement level has this massive vault, the kind of thing you’d typically only ever see in movies. Last Friday I had my camera with me so I snapped a few photos.

    In the process of taking this shot, I had to unhook the door from the wall and swing it out a bit, and that got a little scary for a moment. The door, being so massive, didn’t want to budge, so I had to put all my weight into it to move it. However once it got going, I suddenly realized that it wasn’t going to stop, so I had to dig my heels in and pull with all I could to stop it before it swung closed, crushing the ventilation that has been added into the door frame over the past month or two. I got a couple more photos of it so you can see the how thick the door is, and what the inside of the door looks when it’s fully opened and latched to the wall. Pretty effin’ cool.

    I think my employers should arrange my office inside the vault, complete with banks of levers, buttons, little blinking lights, absorption wavemeters, tesla coils, assorted chemistry equipment (things that smoke and bubble are a must), and dark spooky music. My mad/brilliant scientist dream would be complete. “We must now descend to the vaults, and see what Doktor Designer has stumbed upon.”

  • Server rebuild, office move, family weekend

    Server rebuild
    Last weekend (Labor Day weekend in the states) I spent my time rebuilding my linux server (circusgeek). The poor machine had been running non-stop for 4 years, 2 months, 27 days. The primary system drive was showing some signs of impending death, so it needed to be replaced. I also figured I’d add a bunch of memory since I was in there performing surgery. After meticulously backing everything up, I swapped out drives, added the memory, and began restoring everything. The new OS install was fast and painless (I chose Ubuntu this time around), but the process of getting all the server services running and configured took a bit more time. However, everything’s back and running better than it had been.

    Last day in the old offices
    This past week was the last for myself and many others in the old SuperSweetCo offices on 3rd and Alder. First thing tomorrow we’ll be joining the rest of the company who have been in the new office building for some months now. I’ve been in the same corner of the same floor of the same building since I started over 2 years ago, so it’s going to be a bit bittersweet. I’m looking forward to the change of work environment, but I’m definitely going to miss the location of the old offices, and it’s proximity to the waterfront, the MAX and bus lines, the restaurants and the shops. The new office however is very close to Powell’s Books and Kenny & Zuke’s, so that’ll be good. 🙂

    Family weekend
    On Friday after work Kelly and I drove out to a tavern in Beaverton to celebrate my dad’s retirement. My mom had arranged for a large group of his now-ex-coworkers to join, and they all got up, embarrassed him with old stories, and gave him gag gifts. It was actually pretty fun, even though I didn’t really fit in with a bunch of linemen. The thing that struck both myself and my brother was the camaraderie, the feeling of family, that the group had. They all work hard, they all risk their lives together, and they all rely on one another. Oh, and I found out that they put his hard hat on top of a pole to honor him, and it will stay there, even if they replace the pole. Pretty cool.

    Yesterday Kelly and I went to a BBQ at my aunt’s house because my cousin Julie was in town. I got to see a few other cousins (Kris and Dana) who I’d not seen in many many years. It was both a fun and weird BBQ. 🙂

    After I got home, I did some yardwork, sipped on some beers, and then dozed off watching TV with Kelly at around 11pm. Shuffled up to bed when I woke up at about 1:30 (Kelly was still up watching something). Woke up at 8am this morning, and am coffee-ing up so I can go out and do more yardwork today. Whee!

  • Weird week, birthdays, and other stuff

    This whole week has been a bit odd, somehow. It’s hard to explain, it just has. I’ve been feeling a bit more ‘out of it’ than usual. It might be the sudden change in weather since it’s recently gone from horribly hot to cool and (for a few days) rainy. It might also be that I’m just now recognizing that the days are getting shorter (I’m already missing it being light out until about 10pm). Might have been the strange but oddly fun downtown scavenger hunt my manager organized for SuperSweetCo’s engineering team Tuesday afternoon (part team building exercise, part reward for our hard work getting the latest version of software out the door). Maybe part of it has been the DNC. Dunno. 🙂

    Monday night Kelly and I watched Amazing Grace, a historical drama about William Wilberforce, the late 18th to early 19th century British politician, who fought to end Britain’s part in the slave trade. It was a really good movie, with a great cast. Worth watching.

    Tuesday afternoon was the aforementioned scavenger hunt. Ran around downtown Portland with iPhones and digital cameras, looking for random clues, performing silly stunts and making asses of ourselves. It was pretty fun overall (despite the embarrassment of some of the stunts).

    Yesterday I had a few pints from my keg with Snooks, talking about the DNC (love Snooks latest post, btw), the upcoming Hobbit film(s), and other totally rad nerdy stuff.

    Right now I’m at Moon & Sixpence, awaiting my brother (who’s birthday it is today), enjoying a pint of Guinness. Happy birthday Travis!

    Tomorrow we go to another birthday thing, this time for my friend Amy. Happy birthday Amy!

    Looking forward to the three day weekend. Much yardwork will (hopefully) get done. And much relaxing. I’d love to just spend 3 days at home, doing whatever the heck I want. That’d rock. 🙂

  • Anniversary, and dinner at a friends

    Ciao VitoLast night Kelly and I went out to celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary. Our anniversary was technically Thursday, but we went out for dinner after work yesterday instead. Kelly picked me up from work after a work happy hour (last one in the current office, I move to a new location in a couple weeks), stopped at home, and then walked down Alberta Street to the restaurant Ciao Vito. We arrived a bit early for our reservation so we went next door to Mash Tun for a beer and a visit with their friendly staff. Dinner was delicious, I had the Sugo of Pork dish, which was very good (and very filling) and Kelly had some kind of fried cheese thing (can’t find on the online menu) and a caprese salad for her dinner. Everything was wonderful, and the staff were friendly and welcoming. It was a very nice and low-key dinner experience, I recommend the restaurant. After dinner we went back to the Mash Tun for another couple pints before walking home.

    After getting home Kelly wanted to watch Serenity (I love her!), though sadly I was exhausted and fell asleep on the couch with the cat about halfway through, waking up at 2 or 3 in the morning and shuffling upstairs to plop in bed.

    Tonight we went out to dinner at a friends place in Hillsboro. Had a great time out… chatted, ate fajitas, drank beer, and got to see Battlefield Bad Company in action. The game looks like fun, too bad it’s not out for the PC. Grrr.

    In related gaming news, I’ve rediscovered OpenArena recently. It’s free and works on Mac, Linux and PC, check it out and get your frag on! 🙂

  • A short trip to Aspen

    I was sent to Aspen for a couple days for an Enterprise UI Summit that SuperSweetCo held. I flew in on Wednesday afternoon, got into the swanky hotel, and went out to dinner with my coworkers and all of the attendees, which included folks from Adobe, Google, SAP, and RIM, among others. It was a pretty crazy thing, but fun.

    Thursday was the first full day of the event, and was very interesting. I learned a lot about what the various companies are doing and how they’re integrating social software inside their various businesses. That night the group went out again for dinner and drinks at a tapas restaurant (you know, a bunch of little plates and little food pellets). I stayed up a bit later than I’d hoped that night, drinking beer and chatting with the attendees, so I only got about 4 hours of sleep before the second day of the event (which was focused on critiquing the application I work on) I was feeling a bit out of it yesterday. 🙂

    After the wrap of the event at noon, a group of us took a gondola ride up the mountain, which was amazing. The view was incredible. Got back down the mountain just in time to catch our car to the airport, and then spent the next several hours traveling back home. Got home last night around 8:30pm. Quite the whirlwind trip!

    Took a bunch of photos, check ’em out.

  • Happy birthday T-dog

    After spending the day working, I walked over to Tyson & Sujata’s (meeting Miranda and Brian on the way, since we live in the same neighborhood) for a party they were hosting to celebrate Tyson’s birthday. Had a really good time (as always) seeing everybody (which I will call ‘the gang’, also known as ‘the kids’ or ‘my special friends’), spending time in his beautifully landscaped yard, sipping on beer (Tyson had picked up a pony keg of Hopworks Urban Brewery‘s Kolsch, which was really tasty for such a summer evening), listening to music, and generally chilling out. Had a great time. Happy birthday T-dog!

  • Portland International Beerfest, 2008

    Today after a few coworkers and I walked to the north park blocks for the Portland International Beerfest to sample some delicious beers from around the world. We all left work a bit early to get there in time to catch the ‘happy hour’ price, where we got an additional 5 tickets for the regular $20 entry price (which includes a small, 4 oz glass, 10 tickets, and a guide). While there I got to try out some new beers, as well as use my tickets on things I knew I’d enjoy.

    Here’s what I had:

    • Two of the newer New Belgium beers I hadn’t had yet, La Folie (very sour and citrus-y, but not bad for a warm day, by the end I kind of liked it despite it’s very sour flavor) and Mighty Arrow (a fairly good if middle-of-the-road pale ale)
    • Echt Kriekenbier, listed as a Cherry Flanders Red from Belgium, which was a bit fruity, but really pretty tasty (considering I don’t typically like fruity beers)
    • Rochefort 8, a Trappist ale from Belgium, pretty strong (9.2% ABV), malty, and rich.
    • Lagunitas Brewing‘s “We’re only in it for the Money“… good beer, and bonus points for a hilarious name, and an even more hilarious title listed under it’s brewing style: Why Does it Hurt When I Pee?
    • Chimay Grande Reserve (aka Chimay Blue), something I’d had before, but not for quite a while, so I had some. A really quality Belgian Trappist dark strong ale.
    • Coniston Bluebird Bitter, a consistent favorite of mine, and what I kept going back to (both because it was 1 ticket and it’s good). I think I’d like to get this on tap at my kegerator. 🙂