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My coworkers took me out to lunch today and it was nice to deal with them in a more social environment. The line between social time and work time is a bit more rigid at my new firm so I get less information at work about the wife and kids as it were. Everyone chatted about what was going on in their lives and I was invited to play racquetball with some of them near work. I’d never tried it, but it sounded like a fun addition to the list of things I can now probably do without killing myself.

After work, I took the subway to a friend’s apartment and she and I reminisced and had some artisanal cheeses. Later, I planned an overnighter at a friend’s house where I’d take the train to a station near their house, stay over with them, and be dropped off at the train station the next morning.

In a single week, the nature of my interactions with friends had changed from “who’s within a 30 minute drive on a weekday” to “who has a guest bedroom near a mass transit line”. I understand this fact but a part of me is uncomfortable with the degree to which social relationships emerge from convenience. Social engagement being a byproduct of my schedule makes me uncomfortable but I suppose that’s why I have parties.

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I got in a little late as yesterday ended around 4am and got to work around 10am. Normally, I’d have drifted through the day, but I was asked to error check an Excel spreadsheet. I love error checking! In the process of doing this I found two reference errors, one formatting inconsistency, and learned four new functions. Four!

What’s the terrifying part? My excitement about the above is in no way sarcastic. I think I’m going to like my job.

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*After long session getting acquainted with expected loss ratios*

Coworker: Any questions so far?
Me: Whenever I think of ground-up losses, I think of coffee grinding and I laugh at a storm of grinds destroying the East coast.
Coworker: Soon enough, whenever you see coffee grinds, you’ll think re-insurance.

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I had slept well, had a good breakfast and remembered to bring an umbrella. Why such synchrony? Today, registration for the Hyatt hotel at Dragon*con opened at 10am and I intended to get a room. I got to work around 7:30am, loaded my browser to the registration page and saw the “registration is not yet available, you will be processed in the order you visited.” screen. This wasn’t the “this registration page is unavailable” error that happens when a page is swamped so I had a good chance of actually getting a room when registration opened in a little over two hours.

My heart began to race as 10am approached when at 9:58am the fire alarm went off. I dutifully went to the assembly area and waited. At 10:15 the drill was over and I returned to my desk to see two things:

*A grayed out browser window saying “please make a room selection”
*A pop-up on top of it saying my session had timed out after 15 minutes.

I reloaded the page to see the display showing “no rooms available” and frowned a bit. Had I been more prescient, I would have tried this operation on my phone, but working in a skyscraper leads to dubious connections so I’m not sure how this would have worked.

My backup was to use Airbnb and I found a place located next to the Hyatt where the convention happens listed for $650 a week. This would prove to be about 1/2 the price of the Hyatt for an equivalent stay so I attempted to book it. Later I received a rejection email with a comment from the renter saying that a number of people had contacted him for the room. I indicated it was probably due to Dragon*con and he replied that he’d probably want more. I offered what the hotel charged after fees and he replied with “we’re not sure who we’re going to go with but we’ll consider you when we choose.” I replied with “if you accept my bid I will bring to you a bounty of baked goods the likes of which you’ve never seen”. Later that evening I received a contract offer from him. Not only do I now have a reserved space for Dragon*con but the car will probably smell wonderful on the drive down.

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I managed to wake up on time and make my train to work for my first day. I was 30 minutes early but not wanting to look like a try hard I walked around until my orientation started.

There were only two people in the orientation and the other person was a contractor much like I was at my old firm.

HR Person: So you’re back as a contractor?
Contractor: Yes. So, no health benefits for me.
HR Person: Yeah, and no flu shot, paid time off…
Contractor: Yep.
HR Person: I guess you don’t go to our company lunches either.
Contractor: Nope.
HR Person: Wow, it’s like you’re not even a person.

I think that summed up a part of my experience at my old firm.

The presentation was long and boring. Not falling asleep on it should make my accomplishment links on LinkedIn. Next I was picked up by my boss and introduced to my new cube. While I was making 50% more than before, my office space was about 1/2 the size. A trade I’ll gladly take.

My first whiff of what I’d be doing for my job came when I was asked to troubleshoot a VBA function that was spitting out the wrong file format. I lost myself in that for a few hours. I didn’t fall asleep during that either. Two victories.

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Janine had come home with me and we spent the next morning trying to get a Team Fortress 2 Dodgeball server up and running. First, I loaded the wrong server type, then I loaded the wrong server type again, then I put it in the wrong place, then we learned the plugin was borked. It only took us four tries to do what we found out we couldn’t do. I consider that a successful morning.

Suzie came over later for baby back ribs, rib eye, and peanut butter pie during a “steak n’ cake” luncheon. The baby back ribs were good but not so much better than the spare ribs to justify their being triple the price.

I dropped off Janine and made my way home to get ready for my first day of work. I went to bed at a little after 10pm, stared at the ceiling for 45 minutes then walked until I was exhausted around 4am. I’m going to be totally fresh for my first day of work.

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Makers to me are latest embodiment of the cyclical interest in crafts. This incarnation marries modernity with the craft skill set to make either interesting things at scale or in ways previously impossible. For instance, 3D printing has allowed almost anyone with an interesting widget idea to make said widget. Additionally, access to supply chains have allowed new people to make things with previously unavailable parts whether it be cheap micro controllers or GPS chips with what was previously military-level accuracy.

The first presentation I went to was by Seth Goden who commented on the failure of the US education system to produce useful results. He spoke very well without notes and had some good one-liners:

  • If what you’re doing doesn’t have a chance of failure, you’re not making.
  • The person who invented the ship also invented the shipwreck.
  • The first person to put a urinal in a public space was Marcel Deauchamp, an artist. The second was a plumber.
  • If you make something amazing, how dare you not share it.
  • Freelancers are paid to work, entrepreneurs use other people’s money to make something bigger than themselves to make money while they sleep.

During the Question and Answer segment, a person asked him to comment on how the internet had killed the serendipity of the library. He replied that he would do so only if the questioner could say that they’d never gotten lost on wikipedia.

The next presentation involved Bre Pettis and Chris Anderson talking about 3D printing and the lack of a next industrial revolution. Both were interesting and compelling and both agreed that should kickstarter.com stay relevant it will have completely changed how gadget start-ups work.

After this, I walked around the venue a bit and started experiencing camera trouble which put the kibosh on many of the shots I wanted to take.

One display that struck me was the nerdy derby where one could race on a pinewood derby track with any car they wished and even with auxiliary power. There both a hump in the track and overhang bar that prevented abuse of external power sources. This is something I’d like to bring to Scouting in the area.

The final presentation was on The Illuminator which beamed populist messages on surfaces around New York City. My respect of the presenters rose appreciably when I found out that they had day jobs.

On the way home, I executed one of my five most illegal driving maneuvers by making a U-turn in the middle of a six-way intersection.

[flickr album=72157632108716873 num=30 size=Thumbnail]

The ride home was quiet and I had dinner in the sous vide rig in the form of spare ribs. They turned out quite well as indicated by the near reverent silence in which they were eaten.

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I left Pat’s house at around 3am and made it home by a little after 8am shaving a full two hours off of the Google estimated drive time. During the drive I listed to “Automate This” an unremarkable book on the importance of algorithms in the modern world. The periodic asides into the personalities involved didn’t justify it’s length and often the author sounded like he was waving a magic wand labeled “computers”.

This trip represented my last lark, my last time when I’d just kind of take a trip for the hell of it, at least for a bit. The money-time equation has tilted back toward time being the valuable resource.

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Yesterday evening we dropped 10 lbs of short ribs into the water oven and then went to sleep. Today, Pat and I went to the Rochester Museum and Science Center and it was surprisingly good. I purchased a student pass and reached for my ID but the teller stopped me saying “you look honest”. Pat and I took our time and learned about local… things and I learned that Pat was thinking of becoming a falconer. This sounded lame until I learned that after raising a falcon and receiving several more years of training Pat could capture and train owls. F-ing owls. How bad ass is that? I’d totally train burrowing owls and just have this team of them scurry across the ground and attack people’s ankles.

The museum had a nice collection of displays centered around the last ice age and fought the good fight on evolution and the timescales of paleontology. After the museum, Pat and I stopped at a butcher shop and he talked about arranging some expensive cut of meat to be available for him for Thanksgiving. I didn’t follow most of the conversation except for the line “and then you hold its still-beating heart” was said.

Clara returned home and we had the spare ribs. For $2.00 a lb plus spicing and electricity, those spare ribs may be the best flavor per dollar ratio food I’ve ever had.

That evening, Pat and I took a long walk around Rochester of about four miles. Rochester is a small big town rather than a big small town and it had all the trappings of a major city but simply smaller. Parking everywhere cost about $1.00 and there was a tiny tiny arts and culture district. It seemed just large enough that it would take one a full day to become familiar with it.

We had fourth meal at a diner and returned to Pat’s. We talked, and not wanting to miss an engagement tomorrow evening, I left for home.

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Pat and I stayed up late enough that we were able to drop Clara off at work at 5am. She’s in her residency and her standard shift is at least 12 hours. Pat and I retired and when our day started around the crack of 2pm we went to the largest Wegman’s in North America. Wegman’s home base is in Rochester and the store is quite nice. We purchased seasoned chicken breasts in plastic vacuum packs with the idea that we could save a vacuum step. They had artisanal cheeses and being a sucker for such things, acquire the makings of a lovely cheese plate.

Returning to Pat’s house, the rig was brought to temperature and the food simply dropped in. The elegance of the water bath as a cooking method tickles my love of parsimony. There is also a trade off in precision when cooking via sous vide. One trades thermal precision for temporal freedom. The cook times with sous vide are often 30 minute windows as opposed to the 60 second window during which a steak can go from caramelized to burnt.

We talked, tweaked, salivated and picked up Clara. She was concerned that we’d left the rig running while we were out but once we served dinner all objections dropped. The chicken was either the best or the second best chicken I’ve had in my life, only possibly being rivaled by a plate from The Brothers’ Moon in Pennington where I received two chicken tenderloin pieces that clocked in at $28.00. This plate of broccoli, pork tenderloin, and chicken cost about $6.00 including the power to run the device. Clara was equally pleased and the rig joined the cats as Pat and Clara’s newest family proxies.

That evening Pat and I walked around the High Falls area of Rochester and I took pictures.

Favorite Rochester Bridge

This was my favorite bridge shot.  The symmetry is delicious.

 

White Balance Blend

Rarely do I like clashing white balances.  This is an exception.

Just Water

Pools of light.