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Review
Ask a wise man to dinner and he'll upset everyone by his gloomy silence or tiresome questions. Invite him to a dance and you'll have a camel prancing about. Haul him off to a public entertainment and his face will be enough to spoil the people's entertainment.
-- Desiderius Erasmus
Thursday, February 19, 1998
My latest annoyance at work: a chatty new coworker in the bay. This person is narrating zir thoughts constantly. I know others are also bugged, so we might need to give zie a hint tomorrow. This was exacerbated today, because my second machine, the one with the sound card, was out of commission most of the day. We run an internal stress tool every night, and if a machine crashes, you are supposed to let a developer debug the problem remotely. So the machine was frozen and I couldn't reboot it till the end of the day; I was waiting for the developers to look at it. And they never did! Even though the machine was crashed, I put my headphones on. It's like having a seashell against my ear; just a faint hissing noise, but it blocks the chatter.
The last few days at work, I've been trying to coordinate our team's part of an all-team meeting for next Monday. This has been fun, but of course there are problems. Certain features that we want to demonstrate will only work when certain code has been checked in. Co-workers are waiting for the code to be checked in before starting work on their section of the demonstration.
Today I scheduled a meeting at the end of the day to review our progress. The time that there were the least conflicts for was at five o'clock, which is later than I usually stay. But things went expeditiously and I was out in time to make it to dance class.
No one had a working laptop to bring to the conference room and plug in, so we adjourned to my manager's office and looked at the demo site I've been preparing. We still have gaps and are dependent on a special build of my product, but I know what I need to do tomorrow and I'm still psyched about the whole thing.
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Because of the state of traffic, I drove back to Seattle what I think of as "the back way." I drive more miles, but by taking a different bridge, I can sometimes make better time. I went directly to the dance studio for the first in a series of Intermediate Lindy classes. This time I actually got to dance with our instructor. He's very good! (well, duh! of course he is.) They gave us the right amount of challenging moves to fill the hour. I feel that I'm finally making progress in the Lindy.
I ate one of those "Essential Sandwiches" between classes. I'm repeating the elementary lessons I took last session; it seems like a good idea to get more practice and drill.
My friend Tom Lawrence is repeating the beginning swing lessons at the Century Ballroom, also on Thursday nights, so I told him he should come to the swing dance that we have after the lessons at the Russian Center (where I study). I was pleased when he showed up! We practiced a fair amount, and I taught him a new step or two that fit in with what he has learned in class.
I didn't stay late at the dance, since I had some errands to take care of tonight. Grocery shopping for some company this weekend, and a few other tasks, were on my list. I enjoyed planning the food items that would please my guest. I like cooking, but it's not fun just cooking for myself every night.
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