thedwick

Today I gave a presentation about grid computing to the IT heavyweights in my company. You’d think I’d get an opportunity like that because I’d been slaving away on a guerrila grid project that was finally paying off and gaining visibility, but the fact is that I got the opportunity simply because I spoke up at the right time and nobody else did (eg. when they were asking for ideas to present at this offsite). And there are in fact other people at my company (and at this offsite, even) who have indeed been slaving away at guerrila grid projects that are just gaining visibility, which I did feel a little bad about.

Anyway, 4 weeks ago I knew nothing about grids other than having had SETI@home installed on a computer or two in the past. But I now had an excuse to spend some work time surfing the net, doing research and learning lots of new things. I took my head out of my day-to-day tasks and it was really invigorating. They say Google requires its developers to spend 20% time on their own projects and while I think that might be excessive, I do think all companies should place more emphasis on making sure people get to explore new technologies. You never know what might come out of it.

So on my trip to the UK, the guys in the office took us out to a Scottish restaurant where they goaded me into eating haggis. I was a bit worried to say the least, but it turns out that haggis tastes pretty good! They tell me this haggis was an exceptional example of a haggis.

I expected it to be bigger than it turned out to be. It was about the size of a tennis ball and kind of looked like a giant stuffed mushroom. It had a peppery, smoky flavor.

So they’re getting down to the finishing touches and the progress isn’t as exciting to watch anymore. It’s the old 80/20 rule: the last 20% takes 80% of the effort and time.

I recognize in myself that I much prefer the rough work where I can see quick progress than the finishing touches that require lots of fine-grained detail. I’ve been able to train myself to do that finishing stuff in software (luckily for my career) and I struggle though it in my hobbies, like when building furniture.

I recently built a shelving unit for our bathroom. I copied the design out of a Pottery Barn catalog but modified it to fit our space. I had the thing cut out, assembled and lightly sanded in no time, but took about a month to finally finish painting it. I’m hoping that when I’m older I’ll develop the patience to do that finishing and even enjoy it more, especially since my tentative retirement plans might include building furniture.

Ok, so back to the house remodel. Tuesday they start putting down the hardwood floor. This week the start painting and finish off the deck. Not long to go!

I’m leaving today for a business trip to London. This is only my third time there, so the novelty hasn’t worn off yet, but I know it eventually will. But for now I’m excited even though I’m going to miss Miles and Lindsey a lot.

I talk a lot with Lindsey about “going global”. Basically, at my company if I want to advance any further than where I am now I need to take on global responsibility for something, which in turn means traveling a lot more and staying gone for longer periods of time.

I just can’t manage to do that right now, which is pretty frustrating. I’ve never been in a situation before where I knew what I had to do to move ahead, but wasn’t willing to do it. Grrr.

When I left college I didn’t pursue the lucrative and probably very interesting positions in consulting firms because I didn’t want to travel. I hope all careers don’t end up at a point where I have to travel to advance, but I’m starting to think maybe they do.

The other day I was walking from my office to Lindsey’s office and I saw out of the corner of my eye a teenager putting one of those pre-written graffiti stickers on the side of a bus. This was at a busy intersection at 5pm on a weekday and nobody (including me) said anything. I wish I had. At the time, I was in a hurry and anyway taken by surprise by what he did and wasn’t thinking fast enough. But the light took long enough to turn green that I had time to mull it over and still failed to say anything.

What would I have said? I’m not sure, but even winging it would have been better. Anyway, I was morally obligated to. It made me feel in some small way like a failure.

So our cat disappeared for a couple of days, very uncharacteristically missing her dinner. We’d feared the worst, especially since she’s a black cat and hard for cars to see, and somewhat skinny compared to some of the mega-sumo cats in the neighborhood.

But she finally came home yesterday and proceeded to sleep for 24hrs straight as if she were sleeping off the bender of her life. We’d thought she was uninjured, but just this evening (because she’d been sleeping so long) noticed that’s she’s really favoring one of her legs. Poor thing.

It’s a real dilemma trying to decide if we should take her in to the vet. She might be better off without the stress of being stuffed in a box, driven to a weird place, and manhandled by a stranger. But if she’s got an infection then it will only get worse. I really wish she could talk, similar to when we’re trying to figure out if Miles has an ear infection or not and we wish he could talk.