Category: Work

Categories
Beer Movies 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!

Categories
Beer Entertainment Food Movies Work

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!
Categories
Beer Food Work

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!

Categories
Work

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.”

Categories
Beer Food Technology Work

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!