Things I did today

I went out for a walk/run today, 28:30 for 1.7 miles. I also cooked some Picadillo and read more of my book from Douglas Adams, and caught up on the news. I learned about the file formats MP1 and MP2. I thought about how we used MP3 for audio and MP4 for video,and wondered what 1 and 2 were. The other files were audio formats that didn't have as much compression as MP3. There was a lot on the Wikipedia pages about psychoacoustic models, codecs and the best software name for the non-standard MP2.5 - LAME . It's extra great, because it's a recursive acroym - LAME Ain't a MP3 Encoder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-1_Audio_Layer_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-1_Audio_Layer_II https://en.wikipedi.org/wiki/MP3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME Here's the rabbit hole I went down, and I don't quite know enough except right now I need to go back so I can get to bed! I feel like I should go back to some of my old Sound Engineering books I have back

I'm about a third of the way through Douglas Adams' book Last Chance to See. It is excellent, and written as if he were playing Ford Prefect, describing Earth to non-Earthling in a much more vrbose way than "mostly harmless". I highly recommend it, and am a bit ashamed that it's been on my bookshelf for so long while I chose to read other books, or just watch the news or other YouTube nonsense. I've been enjoying my permanent staycation, interrupted with work on Monday through Thursday. I'm getting a lot of reading in, even when I goof off and watch a bit too much YouTube or read a bit too much Reddit. Having this time to go through my bookshelf makes me happy - I feel like I'm getting something done that I've wanted to get done for quite some time, which is why I've been lugging these books from Ohio to North Carolina. I've gathered other books along the way, and some I've borrowed and need to give back, but most have been sitting on

Today I sat in meetings. Staff meetings, meetings about cubicles, meetings about tickets, meetings about code. I did manage to find two bugs in someone else's code via testing, so I was rather pleased about that. It reminded me of what I liked about being QA - finding the bugs. I didn't like the regression testing or having to find every  test case, because many times there were cases you didn't think about that the average user would do. Think about the people who warning tags are written for. "Do not iron clothes while wearing them." "Do not ingest bleach." These, I think, are the test cases I would miss. "Well, did you test for the case where the user was trying to register but didn't have a keyboard?" Who the heck is using a desktop computer without a keyboard? Yes, there are now in-screen keyboards on tables and phones and desktop and laptops with touchscreen monitors, but they all still have keyboard input in some fashion. After t

I'm in the middle of the fourth week of working from home and it feels like the fourth year. I'm happy that I have my desk at home set up just like my desk at work, same keyboard, mouse, two monitors and docking station. The only difference now is that I'm in a room larger than my cubicle and much closer to the kitchen. But, the days fly by with report requests, deploys, external file requests, conversations about work and not work with coworkers, walks around the apartment complex and sometimes down to the local trail, chores, writing, working out - but mostly stretching and PT exercises. I don't understand how it's 10pm. But I also don't understand how I feel like I'm living in this Groundhog Day universe. Is it Wednesday? Monday? I know it isn't the weekend because my alarm wakes me earlier than I would prefer. Other than that, I look in my fridge and try to discern when I need to cook and when I need to freeze. Happily, my order of hot sauces a

I'm done grocery shopping for the month! Maybe two months. I ordered my groceries delivered, as I thought it would be safer for me to interact with one possible coronavirus case rather than the number of people in the store. I chose Wegman's, as I've not tried their stuff yet and as I hit "Purchase Order" it let me know that my selected time was no longer available. Then I noticed that they had dropped my beer and wine selections. I went back to the home page, and there was a new banner "There will be no beer or wine available for delivery orders." I guess that's one way to make sure you aren't accidentally buying alcohol for an underaged person. So, between not getting a time slot, and not being able to buy alcohol, I switched my order to Food Lion. I needed onions and celery for the next several recipes, and I ordered some beer and wine, and ground turkey for picadillo, and cheese and eggs to add to my bean and rice tortillas. The person that

Work was work, I fixed a report, discussed a new way of moving data with the DBA, and tomorrow I'll be testing his latest work. I caught up on some small odds and ends, and had my final grocery delivery for the month (or more)! At the insistence/competitiveness/encouragement of my running friend, I went out for a 2 mile run/walk and posted a difficult but not dreadful 30:27. After that was dinner, then I played Othello online, and Geoguessr. I learned that there are two Fukushimas in Japan and I had picked the wrong one. And now that I've got a headache, I think it's time to head to bed.

Today, beyond chores and ignoring the news, I started and finished David Thorne's book "I Won't Be Coming Into Work Today Because You're All Dickheads" and then started "Last Chance to See" by Douglas Adams. I looked outside to my patio, and didn't see any bees. I looked again a half hour later, and didn't see any bees, so I went out with cleaning supplies to clean off the rest of the patio furniture. It went well, wiping down the furniture, and I was about to sit down with Thorne's book. However, the bees reappeared and did not seem to like the fact that I just cleaned off the furniture, or maybe their way of thanking me was to buzz around my face and the patio door so I felt trapped. Luckily, the buzzed away from my for a bit, so I ran inside, sad that they spoiled my afternoon on the patio. Hopefully with everything cleaned, they'll go elsewhere, and I can get my patio back. I did finally remember to pull out my yoga mat and work o