I am covering the very early shift at the office today so I was up a little earlier than usual. I like the really early shift because it lets me go into the office when it isn’t so warm out and when the crowds are thin. It is nice that by leaving twenty minutes early I can arrive at the office thirty minutes early. I barely have to get up early at all to get into the office on time.
The office was incredibly warm when I arrived and it was quite uncomfortable to be there for the first hour or so. But eventually the air conditioning kicked in and it cooled down. But it took quite a while.
I have built myself an office “shelter” out of cardboard that was left in my cubicle when I moved in. I have my computer in one corner of the office and over that corner is quite a bit of cardboard being supported by a foam pole about two feet long that is standing on top of my computer which is behind my monitors standing on its side. It looks funny but it blocks most of the “eye strain light” that would come from that direction so it does its job. If I could just turn off the light that is on directly over my head it would be perfect.
I found out today that not only am I “on call” this weekend like I was originally expecting but I have a scheduled project starting a four in the morning on Saturday! That means that there is just about no way for me to get enough sleep going into the weekend again. Friday nights always go late and having to be up and working at four is an awfully short night.
Over my lunch break I walked up to Borders and picked up Core Java: Volume I Fundamentals 8th Edition. Core Java is the Java “textbook” published by Sun themselves. This is the new version that just came out a few weeks ago and covers Java 6.
On my way back I stopped into Cafe Wall St. and picked up a tuna fish salad panino. I ate at my desk and read the tech news for the day.
Today has been surprisingly quiet. Very little going on. My cubicle is in a very low traffic area and my “doorway” is quite isolated and so I start to get the feeling that I am alone. I don’t work with anyone in my building so I truly am alone almost all day. Very strange to be in such a huge office building and have no one at all around to talk to.
I discovered a cool website offering free web page templates – OpenDesigns. There is some good stuff there.
I got home at a decent hour. Dominica and Oreo were not too far behind. We didn’t do too much tonight. Dominica cooked dinner. And I got around, finally, to ordering her new HP laptop (dual core AMD Turion 1.9GHz, 1GB, 120GB HD, MS Vista Business 32, etc.) along with a docking station to go with it as she will be using the laptop as her main computer at home as well as when traveling, some ink for our HP DeskJet 5150 in the living room and two additional Samsung 204b 20.1″ 1600×1200 LCD monitors that I will be using on my desk at home.
It is a big order but stuff that we have really been needing. We don’t have enough space to be able to work on things at the same time. I end up using both my desk and Dominica’s desk at the same time so that I can get Windows and Linux concurrently and with enough screen real estate.
My classic, working Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 laptop came today. Complete in the original box with the vinyl carrying case and AC adapter. I plugged it in and fired it right up. It works great although the dimmer for the “monitor” is a little touchy and only works at certain settings. I put it into BASIC mode and wrote a tiny program and it worked. Oh nostalgia.
We ate dinner, watched Family Ties and went to bed early.