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February 26, 2000 |
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Today is actually a bit of a lazy day and I got to sleep in to some extent.
Sleep is wonderful. I love sleep. Unfortunately, I love doing stuff too.
I find that what I happen to find toughest is stopping whatever it is I'm
doing. If I'm working on something, whether it is programming at work, or
writing for this journal, sleeping, or whatever, I often find that it is
tough for me to stop what I'm doing. This means that I continue to the
point where I get my fill. If it is some task that I'm working on, it
means that I work myself to exhaustion; if it is sleep it normally means
that I sleep until I get tired of sleeping. Yes, I understand how
strange that sounds.
It was an early Saturday afternoon. I was still in bed and the phone rings. It's Pam. We talked about the wonderful evening we spent together last night. I felt a bit strange about it. At one point, we were cuddling and she was sleeping. I was wide awake since I've been running myself on a crazy schedule. Everytime I moved, she stirred which made me feel like an insensitive bastard. It's not that I had any problems staying with her; it's just that I wasn't going to be able to sleep or stay awake and lay perfectly still while she slept. I figured that as much as I wanted to stay there and hold her, she needed her sleep and I could probably be more productive with my time.
As we're talking, she asks what I had planned for today. I smiled and replied that I did not have anything solid planned for today; so we made plans to see a movie and get dinner. She mentioned wanting to see the new Michael Douglas film, Wonder Boys. I told her I would have to get online to find the times and locations and would have to call her back. I wander out into my living room. You know… the one that looks like a paper graveyard and sit down by my notebook. I dialed up and started to check the times on the movie. I also got my cell phone to call her while I was looking at the movie times. I had my cell phone in hand and was about to punch in the number.
[Ring… Ring…]
My cell phone rang. No joke. It was a number that I don't recognize on the caller-id. Few people have my cell phone number, I figured that if someone needed to get in touch with me there were many other ways to do it, for instance, my voice mail at work pages me. I answered the phone. It was my boss (or more accurately by boss's boss). He was wondering what had happened and why my bug count had ballooned to seven bugs. Seven bugs? Really?! After talking through some of these things, I told him that I would come in to work and take a look at some of them.
Terrific.
I called Pam back and finish looking up the movie times and locations. I told her that I would have to go into work for a little while today and investigate a few things. I was also thinking to myself that I had to go to the gym today and to my run and a number of other things.
Hmmm… Work. There were seven bugs assigned to me…
One was a duplicate of a bug that I had entered that was caused by a related component. One down; six to go.
One was an issue that we were discussing the day before, the proper fix involves a complete redesign of a particular subsystem. It's not my decision to make; so other people get to decide what to do with the bug. Either way it is out of my hands until they decide. One down; five to go.
Two of them looked like audio driver problems, neither of which I happen to have on any of my machines. I sent mail to a number of folks to get them to reproduce the bug and then to confirm that it is indeed a problem with the driver. Until then, I can't really do much more. Two down; three to go.
One of them involves having to investigate the bug with special tools (debug binaries), so we can track the internal activities of these components. I needed to see some of the output from these tools. Until then I could not investigate further. One down; two to go.
The last two are legit bugs. Wonderful. I was already starting to think about how to fix them, but I really needed to just sit down and do it. Two to go.
I sent mail out and gave them details about each bug. I also said that they would have fixes for the remaining two bugs by Monday morning.
I darted out of work and hurry to the gym. I got all my workout equipment on. I wear athletic shoes most of the time; they're Reebok "Allen Iverson" DMX Lite, if you're really interested, except that these are not the shoes that I wear for running. I have another pair that I got from a place called Super Jock and Jill. No, I'm not kidding. The point being that I also normally wear athletic socks and don't change those when I go to work out. I put my heart rate monitor on; there are two pieces. One straps across my chest; the other I wear as a wristwatch. I get one of my many workout shirts on. When in Florida, I managed to find 100% cotton shirts for $2.50 a piece, which is great for working out. The only problem is that these were GTE shirts and they had managed to irritate me recently. Running shorts… Check. I put my hair up in a ponytail so that it is out of my way and lastly I get my water bottle and membership card. I headed to the gym to do my run.
I cut my run short from the forty-five minute run to a half hour run. I ran 2.517 miles; I'm maintaining that average without passing my target heart rate. Way Cool!
I came back and showered and got ready for my hot date with Pam. Working backwards for the target time of 7:25pm, which is when the movie starts. I'd have to get to her place at about 6:55pm or so. This meant that I would have to leave my place at about 6:25pm. I finished my shower and stepped out and checked the time. It was 6:05pm. Yeah, just wonderful. My long hair is still sopping wet. I don't every blow dry my hair, but today I would be styling it. I started briskly towel drying my hair and going through the same routine. I wouldn't have time to iron any of my long-sleeve shirts so I ended up wearing a T-shirt. One of the ones that Lino got me just a week ago. As I'm pulling out of my parking spot, I realize that I had forgotten something… Lighters! I picked out two lighters from the bin of about seventy lighters or so that I have at home. No, I'm not a smoker.
The drive to Seattle was uneventful. The traffic across 520 was even tolerable; at least it was moving. It was typical Seattle weather which simply implies "wet and miserable". There are a number of people who complain about my driving and I do on occasion drive a bit crazily. I've even been known to tailgate on occassion. The one thing I don't mess with is driving recklessly on wet pavement. I have enough other adventures in my life without having to test this particular one. I arrive at Pam's; it's 6:50pm. [Damn, I'm good!]
On the way to the movie theater we chatted about a number of things. I mentioned that I would eventually have to go back to work. We just agreed to enjoy the time we would be able to spend together. We drive back across Lake Washington. The weather really wasn't that bad; it wasn't pouring or anything. It was raining hard enough to acknowledge, but not heavily enough to even carry an umbrella, which is typical in Seattle. We talked about our opinions on "Public Displays of Affection"; to which we were both pro.
We arrived at the theater, on time even. It was busier than it normally is, being a Saturday night and all. Once we got in line for tickets, we able to confirm that were both pro "Public Displays of Affection", so much so that we didn't even notice that they were sold out of that showing. With the two of us there's always some kind of mishap. We take a few steps back from the line. I'd like to say that we discussed what to do next, but the truth is that we were caught in a series of kisses and weren't doing much talking. After our intensity died down, we finally decided to get dinner first. Although she did explicitly say not to get the tickets for the next showing. We did see some kind of a gardening store in the plaza and she wanted to go. So we went, although she didn't end up getting anything, and I'm not terribly fond of plants.
As far as dinner is concerned, we ended up going to I Love Sushi. As you might imagine, it's a sushi restaurant, hence the name. We exchanged more kisses in the parking lot and while we were waiting to be seated. They didn't have any open tables, but they did have a couple of seats at the sushi bar. I thought a table might be more cozy, but we decided that the sushi bar would be fine. Between bouts of kissing and holding hands we did manage to order dinner, which consisted of a sushi combination, a spider roll, and scallop sushi. Sometime during dinner an older couple sat down next to us, the man seemed to be particularly chummy with the chef. I also found that I was able to use chopsticks passibly well with my left hand since I wanted to continue holding her hand. This isn't a complete surprise since I can now use a mouse left-handed. We did end up ordering another spider roll, but that was it. Pam went to use the restroom and I decided to pick up the check. Almost as soon as she was out of sight, the man sitting next to me turns and asks me if I was having a good dinner. I simply smiled and replied, "Yes". I told her when we stepped out of the restaurant; she was incredibly amused.
It was only 9pm by now, and the movie started at 9:55pm so we still had some time to kill. We decided to go to Tower Records. She liked the two CD's that I brought yesterday so much that she ended up getting them as well, in addition to another Luis Miguel disc. We also looked around the jazz and new age sections of the store. We were walking around in an embrace during most of the time at the store, although we didn't walk down the stairs that way. [That's dangerous] I picked up Writer's Digest magazine, something I do from time to time; this issue had an article on Dean Koontz, who I have read and whose work I find quite interesting. We were still locked in an embrace while we were waiting for the cashier. I see the door open and hear a "Hi Frank!". I look around and realize that it is Sean from my gaming sessions. I manage to break an arm free so that I could wave hello and reply.
She asked if she could play one of the discs she just got on the CD player in my car; I agreed. We exchanged some more kisses in the parking lot. I checked the time and found that we were going to cut it very close on the movie. She suggested that we skip it and go back to her place. [Really, no joke!] We did. What else did we do? We talked… we continued where we left off yesterday… and we… uhmm… well, that'll have to be enough.
You know what? I still don't know if I'm capable of unfastening a belt with my teeth and figeting doesn't help.
Well, I did end up going back to work after leaving Pam's place. I had the two bugs. I started investigating the bugs are little more carefully. I did find out precisely what was causing them and patched them up so that they worked properly. I sent the fixes to the appropriate test engineer, hopefully she'd be able to confirm them. It was 9am by now and I was getting fairly tired.
Oh, yes, Dan and I also took a break and played some table tennis, sometime during the night/morning. I'm not sure when, since the hours seem to blend together.
February 26, 2000