journal for 2002-08-19
the weekend
We had a pretty relaxing weekend, which is what we’d wanted.
On Saturday, we got bagels. The good bagel place was closed, so we had to go to Johnny’s, which was lame. I really, really want to go and demonstrate to the owner what “toasted” means. I’ll take visual aids. As an aside, I’d like to note that “Johnny” is a funny-looking word.
We saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which was pretty good, and then (after some Black Adder) we headed to the Starfish for dinner. I had skate wing, which was interesting, but not something I’d order again. The dessert, a caramel tart, was good, but I really should’ve ordered tea or milk with it.
On Sunday, we did laundry and visited the parents. The “highlight” of the day, though, was our second movie of the weekend, Blood Work. Man, that was a really bad movie! I like Clint, and I think he makes boss movies, but this one stank. There was almost nothing good about it, except some of the premise. I would’ve kept “Clint Eastwood plays an FBI agent who had to retire after having a heart attack” and rewritten the rest. Or, better, I would’ve just watched some Dirty Harry movies and Unforgiven again.
We also rented some movies: the Legend of 1900 and Resident Evil, neither of which we’ve watched yet. We picked up some GameCube games, too. We got the Mickey Mouse game, in the hope that Gloria would like it. It seems designed for five-year olds, though, and is all but completely unplayable for adults. We got Tetris Worlds for both of us, and we’ve done a lot of Tetrising. If the game wasn’t $40, I’d pick up it. Once it’s down to $20 or so, I’m there. Lastly, I got Smuggler’s Run. It’s pretty cool, but I get the impression that it’s one of those games that I’ll never master. I’ll give it another go tomorrow, but I think I’ve already found the level on which I’m stumped.
work
I also spent some time, this weekend, working on my prelim spec for one of the big projects at work. After some shaving, it ended up predicting about eighty days. I was told that they were thinking more like “two weeks,” but that’s just absurd. The original software, which doesn’t do everything they need, took something like a year and a half, and isn’t very good. They want me to rewrite it with more features and less problems in two weeks? Right.
I’ve been trying to reorganize my projects’ files and documentation, along with their Press Your Luck entries, to make everything nicely Makefile-able and linkable. It’s helpful to my organization in general to undertake tasks like that. So far, no layoff news from the UK. I’ve gotten the impression that by Wednesday we’ll know everyone who’s going. The fact that everyone in Wales has to come to work and spend half of their week wondering if or when they’ll be fired strikes me as pretty awful. Better them than us, I suppose!
music
Oh yeah. I picked up the new Elvis Costello album, When I Was Cruel, this weekend. It’s pretty darn good. Mostly, I like the tracks Tart, Alibi, and When I Was Cruel. I don’t understand where all of the reviewers got the idea that this was a return to his roots. It’s slightly more My Aim Is True-like than All This Useless Beauty, but it’s hardly a drastic change.
I also bought the debut album of Massive Attack. It’s mostly good, but partly awful. It’s interesting to hear that after only knowing Mezzanine and the Tricky albums—I’ll need to hear the intervening stuff before I know more, I guess.