Damn, my lungs grow weary of this coughing. They ache.
If I had narcotics, e.g. Vicodin, the problem would magically go away. Or maybe if the DAMN MUCUS would leave me alone.
So, the Dr said that yup, I had the flu. And that it would get better soon enough. But if it doesn't, like I get a sympathetic infection, I also got a scrip for germ killer.
Bleh.
I tested last night and did well enough. Friday I become a Brown Sash. Most TaiChi, and many other martial art styles, don't do colored belts. But I like it, since it gives a sense of progress.
The big, significant one will be Black Sash. That will be December 2006.
My lungs continue to give me grief. I see a doctor at 2:15 today, who will either give me antibiotics (which I hate), or tell me it will all be better soon. So I'm not really looking forward to it.
The device I made for the show worked well and the effect ran without a hitch. So that's good.
I'm still trying to get PAID for the previous one. I'm out about $2,000 in physical costs for all this so far, so they damn well better pay me.
Today I test for my brown sash, which could be interesting. Due to being sick I haven't practiced much the last few days... and due to being sick, I may be a bit wobbly tonight doing the saber form.
I know it, or at least I know it at home. I just hope I know it *right*. I learned it mostly from other students.
Wednesday I was feeling a bit... off. Head a little throbby, kinda "woogy".
1:45 am on Thursday I wake up, feeling like I've been in bed for many hours... like I had been dragging myself through sleep uphill and against the gale. But it was only 1:45. My head hurt.
I slept the rest of the night in 10 and 15 minute chunks.
Thursday I went to work anyway, but of course I felt progressively worse and left at 3:00 while I still could.
Ever since I've been pretty much coughing up my lungs. I haven't actually eaten much since Wednesday so I'm kinda weak and dizzy, but I did manage to get a little this and that into me, so I'm not dead yet.
It's Sunday now and I'm still coughing my brains out. Thank god, however, that the headache portion only lasted a day or two. And it's also amazing that I haven't destroyed my throat coughing, but I've been careful about my coughing posture to minimize the impact.
Of course, the muscles around my diaphram, back, and rib cage are not happy with me. Oh not, not happy at at all.
All of this has put a monkey wrench into almost everything -- I missed the twisting convention I took the vacation for in the first place, heck, I don't even remember what I was going to do anymore. Whatever.
I do seem to be progressing towards health a little bit, at least. I should be back at work by, oh, Tuesday.
The Crazy Week continues.
Yesterday during lunch, I ordered a zillion dollars worth of stuff for the current Alain effect. I also thought back and noticed that I continue to put spoilers into this journal! I'm not entirely sure if I will get into trouble for that or not... okay, Alain called (15 May 2005) and he is a bit miffed so I'm stripping more stuff out. I'm afraid some of it will live on in Google archives, though. I'll see what I can do.
The interesting part of these effects is not the effect itself, but the way the live audience reacts to it. To them, it *is* magic, and seeing them see magic is interesting.
Each person creates their own reality, their own explanations as to what is "really" happening during an effect.
Anyway...
I don't know how much homework I'll get done this weekend, and I'm even contemplating NOT going to the twisting convention Fri/Sat, just to get everything that needs to be done, done.
Which sucks.
But I have to prioritize.
Okay, I'm pretty darn sure they actually want and need the remote control lights... but they don't know if they want four or seven, or something in between.
So I'm making six. Of course, I had to buy about $700 worth of stuff to do this.
Most of the money went on the biz, because I transferred cash to cover it... but this is costing more than I thought (since they want 6 and not 4), so some of the cost went on the Amazon card. I'll need to pay that off when *I* get paid.
Now to build the little buggers and get them to the site... soon!
One of the harder parts, it turns out, was finding a way to mount the lightbulb in the damn reflector.
Maglites are focusable, which means that the light is not attached to the reflector and is, in fact, in a special little socket that is attached to the body of the flashlight. Held in place with a clip. A clip that drops into a groove in the floor AND the wall, so it can't be removed.
Okay.
So a cheap-ass flashlight from HEB has the bulb attached to the reflector, but there is no graceful way to wire to the bulb without soldering onto it.
That's too gross.
So today, while buying most of the high intensity Maglite bulbs from Fry's, I found ANOTHER cheap flashlight. Disassembling it in the store, I find that it actually has a decent socket for the bulb. Tonight, I test.
Now, I don't know HOW the hell I'm going to build all of this stuff on time.
I think Thursday, instead of reading management crap, I assemble.
I think Friday and Saturday I may also be doing work on it, in between trips to the twisting convention.
Too damn much going on this week!
I am, and have always been, a fan of the horror genre. Perhaps it is a reaction to the nightmares I used to have, or perhaps something else.
When I was a kid in Washington, I remember reading these great horror comics, you know the ones. There were only a few back then.
I loved 'em!
But after a while, reading them made me feel sea-sick, kind of woozy like I were reading in the car.
So I had to stop.
I don't know what that was. Sometimes I still get a little bit of it, but these days I can pretty much read anything without ill effect.
So, got the call today from the Alain show, and they want me to manufacture a new effect -- which I'm not going to describe here.
I had the heads-up on this last week, so I'm a bit prepared.
Today I need to put together a proposal and e-mail it to the producer.
This will be fun!
A year ago or so, my truck (a Ford Ranger) had the MOST ANNOYING problem EVER... when I closed the door, the dome light and door ajar indicator would not turn off. The dealer said it would be a pain to fix and a Google search didn't turn up anything of use. A browse through the truck repair manual didn't help, either.
It went away.
Two weeks ago, it came back.
THIS time a Google search came up with a low-tech fix -- hose the latches in the doors down with WD-40 to fix a sticking sensor. Turns out this is a very common problem with Fords, and not just their trucks.
Not having any WD-40, I hosed all four door latches down with Liquid Wrench. I then cycled the doors a few times and then added some more lube.
A miracle! It all works perfectly now.
Of course, the cab smells like solvent... but it's a small price to pay for working door sensors.
No memories for you! Maybe next week...
Doing good work these last two days or so. Actual work with actual challenges that are amenable to actual solutions.
Today one fix was pretty blind -- I wasn't seeing it, so I called Daniel over. We reversed two calls that shouldn't have been reversed (I thought) and it worked. The MCU was being weird inside. Dan thinks it was to save a few gates in the FPGA... cheap bastards.
I still don't have the saber form entirely memorized, but I got a good chunk of it into my brain today at lunch. I'll work on it more tonight, between sessions in the textbooks. Tomorrow I need to make a good showing at the make-up class, so Connie doesn't lose faith in my greatness.
I've been putting off some of the work on Alain's effect... my Mon/Tue/Wednesdays are completely shot in February.
The effect is on the 20'th... so close! The twisting convention is next week! Tai Chi testing the week after!
AAAAAA!
They say that time flies like an arrow. And, umm, fruit flies like a banana...
It's been a week since I've written here! Egads!
Friday we got the stuff we had been waiting for, and all this week we've been trying to make things work.
The big thing on my plate is hooking the interrupt for the USB setup request. First, I couldn't get the interrupt to fire. Now I can't get it to stop!
Tomorrow I'll have to drag the hardware guys back in and we can analyze what is going on. Grrr....
Tomorrow morning (since I'll be here for a coupld of hours before the H/W guys), I'll re-organize the test code, make it obvious what is happening, and generally do sanity checks.
I've been working myself too hard after work, trying to get ready to advance to Brown sash in a couple of weeks.
On top of that, Alain wants me to work up some gimmicks for another effect... for the 20th! That's Sunday, right after the twisting convention.
We'll see how that works out.
Oooh, my son Nikolas is turning 16 on the 19th! Woot! I'm planning on getting him /gift spoiler censored/. I think he'll like that.
I was a stressed kid all through school. One thing stress does is it screws with your mind... or, in my case, my memory. I think certain parts of my brain remain severly underdeveloped because of that stress.
Like the part of my brain that keeps track of maps.
I'm actually really good at reading maps, following maps, and even remembering maps to places. Assuming I've had three trips where I've had to navigate to a place, I'll have it pretty well locked down in my memory for a while. I'm useless, though, as a passenger. We could fly to the moon and I wouldn't notice until we got there.
But that's neither here nor there.
I got lost easily as a kid, and I still have some challenges that way as an adult.
I remember that I could barely find my way to school in Washington except by following the ant-trail of other kids. Today, I have no real concept of the spatial placement of my Washington school (that I went to for two or three years) and my Washinton home.
Some of my unpleasant dreams feature me not being able to find places (my classroom, my locker, whatever), and sadly these dreams are not just anxiety dreams but are anchored in reality.
I walked to a friend's house once, where we sat around and read ghost stories to each other. Walking home (in the dark) I had no idea where I was. I had to give up and use the phone at a stranger's house to call my dad. I don't think I was that far away, either!
Thinking back, I have no memory where things were -- I have no idea how I navigated from place to place as a kid. I'm sure it can't be as bad as I remember it, but truly, I remember the locations in my past as destinations floating in space with no memory of the paths that led between them.
I still have this problem. I can remember the place but not the path. If I visit a place often enough, its context "bleeds" and can connect with the context of another place... creating a path of fuzzy place blobs.
Remember the light spinner mentioned in an earlier post? Yeah, that was a cool thing.
I had a friend who was a girl... and was verging on being a girlfriend. Susie, I think she was, called "Suzie Q" by my great-grandfather. In fact, I think she was the one my Aunt played mind games with... or maybe she was the one who said she was dyslexic and couldn't discern between red lights and green lights but I didn't believe her. Or maybe those are both the same girl. But, does it matter which she was? Not anymore.
Once, we were sitting together on a couch in a darkened room watching the light spinner... yeah, I bet that would have gone somewhere! Woot! But nooooo.... my dad decides that it's somehow inappropriate for me to be sitting alone in the dark with a girl. Spoilsport.
I remain scarred for life, I'm sure.
So my group buys a two-license product costing over $20,000 (yes, COUNT THOSE ZEROS) that we've been trying to get for the better part of two weeks and... wait for it... they mail it... by... Fedex "I'm a cheap bastard" Saver class.
What the fuck?
It took DAYS to get the vendor into our accounting system, DAYS to get the massive PO approved, DAYS MORE to get it processed on their side and now... I have to wait DAYS for Fedex to deliver it?
And if they had paid an additional $15 or $20 I would have it in my hands NOW and not next monday or so.
Un-fucking-believable.
So I sit here essentially playing with myself waiting for it.
Tomorrow I'll have some programming I can do on the project, once some of Daniel's stuff gets checkpointed... you know, hooking up to his API, fixing up the main(), adding interrupt vectors. That should keep me busy for about two hours.
Ah well, on the bright side, I have official permission for a "10%" project that has huge potential to (a) be really interesting and (b) open up a new set of markets for our system.
So that's good.
Well, I may get called in to do another effect for Alain's show... that would be cool.
Some of my work here at NI is stalled while I wait for a development tool to be delivered. This bad boy was expensive -- so expensive, it took about a week to get approved at the highest level. Now I've sat twiddling my thumbs for two days waiting to get it delivered.
Blah.
Last week I sold my electronic drums on eBay. The buyer should be receiving them tomorrow and, if all things survived the transit, I'll be closing out the transaction in a couple of days. Then I'm going to run out and pick up some acoustic drums so I can torment my neighbors, and an electronic keyboard for Marla! Yeah, I'll be spending a lot more than I made, but it should be cool.
Also, this Friday we get the other half of our performance bonus, so that's cool. Then I add up my monies and look at buying the house.
School has cranked my Visa balance up a bit, so I'm paying interested on the stupid thing until I pass all of the classes and get reimbursed. I suppose it could be worse.
I've been spotty on my blogging lately, so for that I apologize. I've got more memories listed that I need to type in, too... but not today.