End of week recap Jan 18th – Jan 23rd 2010
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Monday Jan 18th –
Nike Campus, south entrance
It was 50 degrees out today! That’s warm enough to wear the fingerless gloves again! … and get rid of the jacket! Finally made use of my jersey pockets again for the first time since November
Full ride stats can be found here. I cycled Baseline from my place all the way out to Cedar Hills and back. It’s not the most fantastic route ever, and you spend most of that time sucking down car fumes, but the weather forecast was saying 30-40% chance of rain so I wanted to stay close to the max line in case it pours. (It didn’t).
I caught up on some work e-mail and did some work for the evening. What? I left early. It balances out, I guess.
I’ve also been doing laundry for the last 6 hours. I guess I shouldn’t wait close to 2 weeks before washing a load of whites, dark clothing, jeans and most of my cycling gear. Have a good night everyone.
-T
Tuesday Jan 19th –
I got my boards today! They came to the lab at the end of the day (LATE!), but at least I have them now. I was able to spend one hour on the initial bring up of the switching power supplies this evening. They all work and are within regulation tolerance (thank goodness). I’m fairly relieved that at least that portion of the board started up with no issues. Other subsystems aren’t working yet, but we’ll see how that goes. Obviously I can’t tell you what I’m working on, so we’ll just keep it high level. Though… if you want to sign your soul away to me, I mean… yeah , I’ll gladly take it in exchange for information
Wednesday Jan 20th –
I went to sleep at 3am this morning. I couldn’t sleep at all. Just worried about the project and why the storage controllers aren’t seen at all. Is it a manufacturing defect? Is it a design issue??? I commented on my Facebook page that I really need a sleep button so I can just zonk out. That would have been real nice.
5 cups of coffee, 1 tea and 1 soda got me through the day today. Yeah.
I spent half a day of debugging and I got one of the two storage controllers working this afternoon. The issue was due to some resistor stuffing options which is a relief. The lack of sleep from yesterday isn’t particularly helping either.
I left work at 5 and started to prep for the Wet Wednesday party at my place. Teanna and John came over. It was a small crowd but still fun. I made spaghetti with sausages. The tomato sauce was from the store, but I added a red bell pepper, 2 fresh tomatoes (coarsely diced), and a small pack of mushrooms, also coarsely diced and half an onion. It took a while to reduce the contents, but it turned out well. Dinner was served with a side salad and garlic bread. Yum!
The movie selection for the night was Seven Pounds. It was nice to just chill for the evening and get my mind off of work.
Thursday Jan 21st –
I got 8 hours of sleep! Yesterday night was definitely some “me time.” So I’m halfway functional this morning.
I was chatting with Jessica online. She commented that it would be a great day to go cycling – lucky you since you don’t have classes in the afternoon – but I was stuck at work instead. 30 minutes later, I decided, screw it. I needed some mental health time so I left work around 2:30. I figure that I’m waiting for responses overseas anyway and their work day doesn’t start until 5pm US time. I hopped on my bike and put in 30 miles in 1hr 45minutes. It was really nice outside – around 53 degrees. Eat your heart out Jess Ride stats can be found here.
I went back to work around 5 and worked in the lab until 10 or so. The only thing that I had the entire afternoon was just a Clif bar during the ride. Man. That is not good at all. I was the only person left in the entire building… it felt like the long work nights back in August again. I did manage to get 90% of the board working and functionally tested. Just one more part to check out in the morning. I have less than 24 hours to figure out what is wrong with this board.
I went home and ended up working until 3am Friday morning wondering what is causing the remaining board issues. I learned the hard way that I should pay more attention to my own energy levels as the schematic error was right in front of my face and I said “oh, that works!” instead. Shoot.
Friday Jan 22nd –
I managed to subscribe to the 5 hours of sleep work plan this evening. I do not recommend it, especially after a less than stellar week of sleeping habits.
I did get the board completely working before 10am!!! This will be a nice and short afternoon… I still need to finish packing. Packing seems to always take forever!
Today was Teanna’s last day at work. I organized a going away lunch at CPR. It was mostly co-workers that attended, but Jessica, John, David Z, and Reed showed up as well. Good times! Glad everyone could make it out there. Note to self: I still need to e-mail each person that has a photo with Teanna in it… I’ll hopefully get to that in a day or two.
I hung out with Jessica and we watched some Firefly. The plan is complete! I have you addicted to the TV show, now you should spread the addiction on to others! Maybe the movie will make more sense now. I did get some work completed this evening at Starbucks. There are lots of reviews left to finish up and the next two weeks will be super busy.
Saturday Jan 23rd –
I decided that I should try to invert my nights and days while I’m still in the US – I went to sleep around 5am this morning! I drove up to Skyline and saw the view of Beaverton and Hillsboro from the West Hills. It’s always a good calming place to check out. Definitely worth it.
This week would have been so much easier if I didn’t have to go to China. I guess I should stop complaining because I’m going regardless and it should be a good experience.
I woke up at noon. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was actually sunny outside. The weather forecast was calling for 40% chance of rain and cloudy conditions. I’ve lost all faith in the weatherman. I’m glad they are wrong on this occasion. I went on a 11.5 mile cycling ride and rounded out 100 miles for the month of January. That’s good for now… but I put in 150 in December, so that’s a regression, not an improvement and it’s definitely not aligning with my resolution to cycle over 3K+ miles for the year! I need to get it together… maybe find more time in just riding during the work DAY and just work at night when the Asia teams are awake and online. I should let my manager know this is my intention, I’m fairly sure that will be OK to do. 
Found out someone decided to wake up at 4pm for the day. That’s just lazy For the record, I went to sleep at 5am too, and this was also after 22 hour day, and having little to no sleep for the week AND cycling twice this week. 
I’m spending the night out in PDX and had dinner with the parents. My flight is early in the morning on Sunday.
No one has a wireless network that I can tap into at my parents place. So I was in a pinch to find SOME kind of connectivity and connection to the world. I discovered the wonders of internet access on my phone. Free for the next 30 days. $10/mo after the trial ends. The browser on the phone is limited in capability, and it doesn’t seem to store cookies well at all so I have to login after almost every page load on FB… it does a little bit better on GMail though.
End of week recap Jan 11th – Jan 17th 2010
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Monday Jan 11th –
Heritage Dr. Pepper - made with real sugar
I got my flight itinerary updated for my Shanghai trip. I’m currently traveling Sunday January 24th through Thursday Feb 4th. This should be an interesting experience.
I noticed that the cafeteria is now carrying the “Heritage” Dr. Pepper that is made with real sugar and it has an old school branding look to it. I personally still like the high fructose corn syrup version.
I did manage to finish up my performance review by 2pm. I didn’t have anything else to do for the day so I just left and went cycling for an hour. I got my ride fix, and it made up for missing it yesterday. It was mostly cloudy outside. It was around 46 degrees. Perfect. I posted the ride stats and route map. I spent the rest of the day shopping for stuff that I may need in China. It was one VERY relaxing day.
I found out that there’s an A-Team movie that’s coming out June 2010! I think i’m going to watch that
A-Team theatrical trailer: http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1808402981/video/17565315
-T
Tuesday Jan 12th -
Dynamics = fun
I did a dynamics problem this afternoon because I had nothing else to do I secretly still love that class.
I ended up prepping food in the evening and got the chicken ready for tomorrow’s party. I’m pretty sure I will not have time to do that tomorrow before the party and I am making sure I’m gonna be part taking in the party activities this time around I’m also glad that the number of people invited is substantially less… and way less chaos to deal with! (Sorry!)
-T
Wednesday Jan 13th –
Notable things for the day:
Garlic lemon chicken breasts
- Google Analytics report states that someone is still using dialup to visit my site! I feel sorry for ya since it may take a while to load the content and have it all rendered.
- I ordered the Linkin Park Minutes to Midnight album. It was weird to think the last physical album that I bought was over 10 years ago.
- The shared video memory for my work desktop is starting to crap out. I really should ask for a new work computer.
Wet Wednesday party at my place. Happy birthday Erik, Teanna, Jared and John! I made garlic lemon chicken breasts from a cooks.com recipe and served them with a side of rice. I think it turned out pretty well and it was good! Photos have been posted on Facebook.
-T
Thursday Jan 14th -
Went to lunch with Sue and David at Coyote Grill on Baseline. Had an interesting convo that went like:
- David (to Sue): What do you do?
- Sue: I work in HR.
- David (turns to me): So you brought the devil with you!.
- Me: Stunned, silent. Awkward.
Real nice, dude, real nice. LOL
Went to a CPR outing afterwork. Not happy. Keep your cool and move on, I guess. GRR.
-T
Friday Jan 15th -
At Blazer game w/Sue
I can tell you one common theme this week: the work day was boring. I’m still waiting for boards to arrive in the lab. I’ve been looking for any excuse to leave the office mid day ’cause I don’t have much to do at the moment. I guess I should enjoy that while it lasts for another 3 days – then it’s hardcore project time for the next 6-7 months.
Anyway, I checked my work e-mail late Thursday night and noticed some Blazer tickets were up for grabs vs the Orlando Magic in the RadiSys Suite. I got 2 tickets and took Sue to the game with me. It was a good! Blazers won 102-87. We went to Henry’s afterwards for a drink. I came home and watched a few hours of Firefly into the wee hours of the morning. Good times!
-T
Saturday Jan 16th -
Defrost heater
I got the new defrost heater installed in the freezer today. The heating element works like a charm in bypass mode. Now I just have to wait a few days to see if the coils automatically kick in. If it does, then great, all is solved with my freezer issues. If not, then perhaps the thermostat is busted, or the control logic really isn’t working. If the issue is the latter, I’m just planning on connecting wire leads to the control board and have a toggle switch for a manual bypass. We’ll see I guess. It does, however, remind me of a light saber.
AVATAR!!
-T
Sunday Jan 17th -
Axis and Allies
It was a good packed weekend spent with good company! Yeah, I noticed that my entries are a little short. I’m tired at at least I jotted down the highlights for the week. Good night.
-T
End of week recap Dec 28th – Jan 2nd 2009
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Monday Dec 28th – It was nice and sunny outside, but the day was very slow going. The temperature was around 45 degrees, and I had a sore throat in the morning and decided to just stay inside and rest. I really wanted to go cycling and get some more miles on the bike before the year is up. 2500+ miles for the year should be enough, but apparently not enough for me!. Weather.com is predicting a snow/rain mix for Tuesday onwards. I’m hoping they are wrong (as they have been for most of December).
I copied most of my phone pics to Facebook. It’s about time I did that. Thank goodness for the microSD card. I noticed is that the EXIF data is missing on half of the photos- this was rather problematic as I wanted to assign a date comment each photo, so there was some manual labor going through old e-mails and chat logs to find out when some of the photos were taken! There was also something about the phone JPG files that the FB uploader didn’t like. I had to re-save each one in Photoshop to get the JPG headers correct again before it uploaded. That took a better part of 3 hours. I also started to play around with the Facebook Mobile feature the night before. I guess it’s pretty convenient to take photos with the camera phone and upload them directly, but that’s a one photo at a time type of operation. I’d much rather use my small point and shoot or DSLR if i have it on me. We’ll see how much I use this.
My friends finished tagging my Mania Monday party pictures from Dec 21st. I woke up and found 80 new photo tags. There are a lot of pics, and I thank you (John, Clara) for tagging the remaining ones! Jessica blames me for sending a bunch of FB spam. Ha.
I finally made the chocolate chip cookies — almost 30 hours after I said I would make them. The recipe [allrecipes.com] says this would yield 60 cookies. One thing that I realized is that it would yield 60 small cookies. I made 18 small cookies and 20 large ones instead. I figure why make a bite sized one?
I organized my FB Home Cooking album. I also added recipes to some of the captions and updated my recipe folder.
To end the night, I watched Stargate Universe, Episode 10 ‘Justice,’ and Stargate SG-1 Season 4, Episode 10 ‘Beneath the Surface.’ Not a bad way to wind down the day.
Tuesday Dec 29th –
I read my Google Analytics report this morning and it showed someone searching for “Facebook Thomas Ng” – I guess I’m the #2 hit on Google for this term. I’m currently ranked #4 if you just search for my name. The third ranked hit used to be my domain name as well, but it has been bought by some artist. I stopped paying for the .org domain since everything is re-directed to the .net domain anyway. Oh well. One more interesting tidbit: someone visited my website from South Africa!
Random thought: sometimes I feel like Doogie Howser sitting in front of my computer, reflecting back on the events for the day — except I don’t have an old CRT monitor or the 8-bit Doogie Howser theme song playing in the background. OH! Speaking of which, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this if you are a Neil Patrick Harris fan or just a dork (like me).
Hulu.com: http://www.hulu.com/watch/53001/saturday-night-live-digital-short-doogie-howser-theme
While searching for that clip, I noticed that Hulu.com has four seasons worth of DH MD online as well [Hulu.com: http://www.hulu.com/doogie-howser-md]. I remember watching the pilot episode back in 2004 when I was bored out of my mind studying at the library one day. I think I watched an episode of Duck Tales as well that day. Good times!
I’m gonna get my H1N1 vaccination today. That ought to be fun. I don’t mind needles, but I really don’t think I’ll need the vaccination either. I usually just let my body naturally take care of infection/cold and not take any actual medicine for it. Just getting it to satisfy the parents before I head on over to Shanghai for work for the last two weeks of January. Oh wow, it just hit me: I’m leaving the country in 3 weeks! Ack! I should stat looking for a decent sized suite case to fit 2 weeks of stuff and a winter jacket.
I’m aiming for a mid afternoon cycling ride at 2pm today as well. They are currently predicting a 15% chance of rain, and a high around 38deg. Should be alright for a quick ride around town. Today’s cycling plans currently on standby. Likelihood of precipitation is increasing. We’ll play this one by ear.
Alright, time to start the day.
-T
Updates for Tuesday: It started to snow around 1pm today. 3″ accumulated during the evening. The weather forecasts never said anything about it. I’m sure glad that I canceled my cycling ride. Oh well. I got my H1N1 vaccination. The nurse at Kaiser was quite cute and we struck up a conversation. Too bad she’s taken. :-\ Went to Fred Meyers for some groceries. Slowly drove home in the snow.
I made a snowman in my driveway, a snow angel in the front yard and captured some night shots around the neighborhood with my camera. Apparently I cloned myself in a multiplicity shot as well. Pictures are on Facebook (or on my Fotobook page). All in all, a good day.
Wednesday Dec 30th – I changed out the SIM card in my phone today. After installing the replacement one, it decided to delete all of my sent text messages from the phone, but it kept all of the ones in the inbox. There were some messages that I wanted to keep and didn’t have the chance to send them over to my computer yet. That’s a bummer — oh well, we’ll start fresh for 2010.
Party at my place 6pm. Made fried rice for dinner; had chips/salsa and cookies for snacks. Played Blokus, and Carcassone with a small skeleton crew.
Thursday Dec 31st – It’s been a really slow start for the day. I’m not exactly feeling 100% and I’m hoping I can thwart off a cold for another few hours. I woke up with my nasal sinuses plugged up and hurting. I woke up around 11am, checked e-mail and went back to sleep for a few more hours. I finally had breakfast at 2pm. The rest of the afternoon was met with vomiting and not feeling good at all. I did head out to urgent care to get checked out. Needless to say, it wasn’t a good night. Since I wasn’t in any immediate health danger, I didn’t leave with the answers that I wanted… I was just instructed to take some ibuprofen and wait until Monday when the surgeons would be back in the office. Ugh. Maybe I should reconsider my health benefit selections for 2011.
I went to the new years eve party at Chantelle’s place tonight. I was the only sober one there and it was freakin’ hillarious. I am glad that I got to hang out with my friends for the new year. I look forward to 2010. It should be exciting and challenging. I resolve to cycle at least 3K miles.
Friday Jan 1st – HAPPY NEW YEAR! I was going to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended edition = 11.5 hours) at Lee’s place, but I’m currently feeling a little bit under the weather. I guess I’ll stay home and spend the first day of 2010 sick. I spent way more time sleeping than awake in 2010 thus far. Currently waiting for clear skies, and green light to return to cycling. Ugg.
Saturday Jan 2nd – I woke up with a nice 101degree fever. I guess it was a good choice to stay at home yesterday. I thought about going shopping so I can make something nice for dinner, but was quickly reminded that I should be in bed and definitely not driving. I ended up making noodles for “lunch” at 4pm, and a tomato with egg dish (didn’t have beef though!) for dinner at 9pm. Ah, 2010… this has been a rough start.
End of week recap Dec 25th – Dec 27th 2009
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OK, lets get these end of week posts back on track. Here’s the weekend recap from Christmas through today, the 27th.
Friday Dec 25th – Christmas day cycling – 18.3 miles, 1hr 10minutes. [Ride info]. Had dinner with the parents in PDX. Secured some black tea
Saturday Dec 26th – Went snowboarding at MHM after dark with Javier, Chad and Jim. The runs were well groomed. Photos have been posted on Facebook.
Later that night, I started to plan out the major cycling rides for 2010. Some invites have already been sent out on Facebook (sorry for all of the spam). The ride events that I plan on doing this year are listed below. Note that most of these rides are for a good cause, I encourage you to participate!
- Worst Day of the Year Ride – February 14th – Tentative – I will most likely volunteer as a ride along mechanic (~40 mi)
- Reach the Beach 2010 (American Lung Association)- May 15, 2010
- LiveSTRONG 2010 (Lance Armstrong Foundation) – Seattle – June 20, 2010 (Tentative, falls on Father’s day)
- Seattle to Portland 2010 – July 17-18, 2010
- Tour de Cure 2010 (American Diabetes Association) – July 31, 2010
- Portland Twilight Criterium (Just a spectator cycling event) – August 6, 2010 (Tentative date; official event not yet announced)
- Hottest Day of the Year Ride – Early August – Tentative – I will most likely volunteer as a ride along mechanic (~45 mi)
- Providence Bridge Pedal 2010 (Providence medical) – August 8, 2010
- Portland Century – Mid August – Tentative – I will most likely volunteer as a ride along mechanic (~60 / 100 mi)
- Tour de Vine – are we doing any rides in Oregon’s Wine country this year? Seth??
Of course, there will also be a bunch of random rides after work and on the weekends.
Sunday Dec 27th – Went cycling with Erik around HB. 22.11 miles. [Ride info]. I DID IT!!! Cycled 2509 miles for the year! I’ll put in more if the weather holds for the next few days. If not, we’ll start counting the new miles early January 2010!
- March 2009 – 107.29 miles (3/12 start)
- April 2009 – 340.03 miles
- May 2009 – 463.55 miles
- June 2009 – 530.47 miles… See More
- July 2009 – 464.37 miles
- August 2009 – 308.76 miles
- September 2009 – 106.40 miles
- October 2009 – 000.00 miles – wow, that is sad.
- November 2009 – 38.33 miles – that is sad too!
- December 2009 – 149.36 miles (12/12 – 12/27)
79 total rides for the year. 162.8 hours on my bike (6.8 days).
I need to fix those low mileage months in 2010
Went to dinner at Panera bread with Erik, Irene and David. I got the french onion sour dough bread bowl. That was pretty darn good.
Alright people, until next time! Ride on and stay safe!
-T
Question to everyone that has ever baked
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OK – when baking something thick (e.g. in a deep container), how the hell does one avoid over baking the outside rim while getting the inside middle section cooked all the way through so it’s not doughy?
I like my non-stick-ware. It’s a single wall construction.. is that the problem, or am I just leaving it in the oven just a bit too long and missed the sweet spot?
Help!