journal for 2002-09-30

another day, another … whatever

Well, it’s nearly midnight. Today was OK. It was better than it could’ve been and worse than being at home. Really, my workday was better than many crappy days at work in Bethlehem, but those days ended with going home to my wife and my home, which compensates for crappiness. At the end of the day, today, I got back to my hotel room and watched part of a ST:TNG episode that I’ve seen at least three or four times.

I had a decent breakfast at the hotel; their breakfasts are always decent, although not much more than that. I picked up a croissant, among the rest of my breakfast, and it had a core of melted chocolate. It might’ve even been some kind of chocolate nut thing, like Nutella. It was darn good.

At work, we had a bunch of meetings about how to procede. They were about as good as I could’ve expected: they didn’t result in our ditching of the Giant Evil Software System, but the implementors here agreed that the original design (which was created by daft consultants, like much of our crappy software) was garbage. We’re going to go forward with an improved design, much like one I’d proposed about a year ago. Unfortunately, this should make my job here easy enough that I’ll need to do stuff that was originally outside the scope of my work.

Why can’t I just be left to work on other stuff? Sigh!

We hit the pub for lunch, and I ordered chicken tikka masala. They were out of naan, and they gave me “crackers” instead. The crackers were like puffed rice crackers; they tasted roughly like styrofoam, and dissolved when wet. The latter fact made them a pretty bizarre replacement for naan. I couldn’t sop up sauce with them; they’d just fall apart! Also, the sauce was pretty watery. I don’t think I’ll order that again.

When dinnertime came around, I was thinking I would skip it. I wasn’t really hungry, and I need to eat less, anyway. The guys ordered a pizza, though, and I had a couple slices. I am weak! The pizza was, too. It tasted like it came from a grocery freezer. Tomorrow, I will endeavor to be stronger. I mean, why should I eat if I’m not hungry?

It was also confirmed, today, that I’ll be staying with my co-worker Matt, come next Monday. He has a flat in Cardiff, only a few minutes walk from downtown. I’m not sure how much there is to keep me occupied, but it must be better than the hotel. The only thing in walking distance from the hotel is the pub and the office. That’ll get really tired after a few days.

Rahm also said that he’s up for taking me to see Portmeirion, in North Wales, where the filmed The Prisoner. That should be the high point of my trip, I guess. Well, that and my departure—or, better, my arrival home.

That’s about all I have to report. I did a lot of configuring of stuff on my laptop today. I set up Samba for sharing my music hdd and USB mouse support and Apache and some other junk. Tomorrow I hope to finish my Apache setup. After that, I can do some work on Debug. Maybe I’ll make a CVS repository for it on cheshirecat.

Anyway, I’m going to be waking up in about five or six hours, so I should probably get clean and get some sleep. Tomorrow, there’s database designing to do.

Written on September 30, 2002