Category Archives: Diary

Scratch Pad May 3

11:42:
Now it’s a game. Can I transfer a certain number of words to another level to make the numbers even out? (If I think of it as a game, it’s fun.)

13:35:
Lunch out with the gang! I will have make the effort to come downtown semi-regularly once this contract is up simply for the lunches.

14:51:
The entire room emptied out to surprise our assistant producer in the cafe, as it is his birthday. Very cool. I am now back as I have a pile of work to do before tomorrow afternoon, and I am the only one in the room, which is eerie.

16:15:
I cannot believe this pile of work that persists in not going anywhere fast. It’s all about adding a word here, taking one away there, shifting between the levels to keep things at the target numbers… but there are still over three hundred missing. I am not bitter about the loss of the supplemental dictionary, but I could be if I dwell on it too long. It comes down to adding as many new words as possible, then doing a reverse casade thing where I move blocks into higher levels and look for lower level words to replace them, over and over.

22:47:
Yes, I am at home, and am slogging through this redistribution and inserting words into various levels, readjusting, inserting, readjusting… I’m not going to bed until my target levels are within ten or so words for each level. That gives me enough room to lose more for various reasons. Figures this would happen today, when I got three secondhand cello books in the mail that I won on eBay and want to play through them. Liam has a very definite cold, and is back on his cold syrup. It’s almost gone; there will be just enough to send to daycare with him tomorrow before I have to pick up more. He’s not happy and he’s kind of off his feed, but he’s not deathly ill enough to keep home. (Good thing, because I can’t stay home, and neither can HRH after taking Wednesday off for Liam and Tuesday off for the car.)

11:17:
There; done. Tomorrow, I get definitions for the five hundred-odd new words and make sure they’re within the specified length. That’s all I have to do before sending it to the people who need to upload it, to make the demo ready for next week. I say “all” but I know damn well I’m going to be working insanely hard, and taking a short lunch in order to get it done by five.

Now: bed.

Scratch Pad May 2

Happy anniversary, HRH! Eight years ago today we became engaged. I still haven’t completely forgiven you for proposing when I was exhausted and sticky from spilling apple juice on myself during our pause to rest in the middle of a long bike ride on a ridiculously hot day.

9:28:
I just mistyped “polygamist” as “ploygamist”.

9:44:
“Sleep”: something I only got 4 1/2 hours of last night, because of working on the tarot kit review (thus my brain was still active and wouldn’t shut up till after midnight), and waking up early before 5:00 thanks to intuition, twenty minutes before Liam’s asthma woke him up. Poor little guy is at home today, with HRH staying home from work to be with him.

9:51:
Craving all sorts of bread today.

10:01:
I am engaged in a morphological process. I love my job.

12:55:
Back from lunch and had to take a tour around the desks to dodge the cluster of guys playing Guitar Hero.

14:03:
I have just made sure that “cowbell” is restored to the dictionary. This dictionary: now with more cowbell!

16:01:
Okay; now it’s all about moving things around to even out the numbers. Ugh.

16:35:
I got an email dictated by Liam:
“Happy! Down wa car caarr oh hoo a a Liam Ma Ma Juice….Nemo!”
It made me smile. Apparently he had a nap that was just shy of three hours this afternoon. I’m not surprised.

Scratch Pad May 1

9:43:
I’ve just read that Boo has passed away! I’m sitting here in the office trying not to cry. He was a wonderful bunny, and gave Liam so much pleasure at the caregiver’s. He will be sadly, sadly missed.

9:44:
Beltane today. At least it’s sunny. I’m so sad about Boo that I’ve lost the cheerfulness I had earlier about the holiday.

11:40:
Life is playing Calvinball with my poor husband’s brain. Interviews, no interviews, job leads, more job leads… at least no one is pressing him for a decision nownownow, so he can explore all of them properly.

13:08:
Mmm. Every time I have the quesadillas at the Mexican restaurant here, they’re different in a totally delicious way. Today the onions were caramelized. Although for once, I couldn’t finish it, possibly because I didn’t have breakfast until 10ish. Had the pleasure of Scott’s company at lunch today too; very enjoyable indeed.

13:47:
Have I mentioned how appalled I am about the incorrect that/which usage?

13:49:
Somehow a bunch of the final level words were marked to be edited when most of them were OK. Hmm. Must have had my finger on the wrong button while I sorted things mechanically one day.

15:35:
DONE!

16:05:
And now we scramble to replace the words we’ve had to remove. Lots of copy/pasting, and math to see if we’re closing in on our target numbers. Friday is our deadline. It would have been easy if we hadn’t encountered that double setback.

16:54:
Enough. To public transport, and to continue reading Diana Wynne Jones’ The Pinhoe Egg (a Chrestomanci book! about Cat!).

Scratch Pad Apr 30

9:16:
The metro went out today while I was on it; it spent a lot of time sitting in stations, then at Lionel Groulx the power went out entirely, the cars going dark, the air flow ceasing. My first reaction: “I’ve read ‘Crisse, des zombies!’: I know what happens next, and I’m ready!” It went operational again within ten minutes, but altogether my metro trip in took forty minutes instead of twenty. And I still got into work only fifteen minutes late. I don’t understand public transport at all. Also, when it is sunny, the buses are more on schedule than if it is overcast, rainy, or snowing.

Reading The Earth Path on the commute now. I keep coming across things that make me peaceful, or wish I had time to write responses in my notebook. The main reaction is, why wasn’t this book available when I started writing the green witch book? Starhawk says things so much better than I do. (As to why I didn’t pick it up when it came out: I’d already done a pile of GW research, then I changed gears and wrote the Wicca book, then I had a baby. Never got around to it. It’s entirely possible I would have been tempted to give up if I had read it, because why bother?)

Slept horribly — didn’t fall asleep till after midnight, woke up at 5:30 and couldn’t relax enough to fall back asleep for the last hour before I had to get up. But when I did get up I saw that my new French door was up on my office, after much trial on the part of HRH due to power tools losing their charge and doorframes being badly bowed out of line. The cats are very upset, particularly Nixie.

9:53:
I want to edit MORE! Curse the contract which requires us to use as much of the original as possible! The colloquialisms and lack of that/which agreement are driving me around the bend!

10:53:
A (sends this definition to t!): “parapet: to be brave enough to state an opinion that might upset someone”
A: *beats dictionary*
A: *a lot*
t!: I thought parapet was a kitten with ESP.
A: [howls]

15:28:
“Prawns: large small edible seas creatures.” *headdesk*

15:41:
Ouch. Hello, brick wall. I’ve done an insane amount of work so far today, and I think I just died. Also, my back hurts.

16:43:
Yup. My brain is pudding.

What I Read This April

Betrayal by Grace, Lady Cavendish
Conspiracy by Grace, Lady Cavendish
Firebirds Rising ed. Sharyn November
The Rest Falls Away by Colleen Gleason
Melusine by Sarah Monette
Mia Tells It Like It Is by Meg Cabot
Victoria and the Rogue by Meg Cabot
The Hours by Michael Cunnigham (reread)
Dead Man’s Ransom by Ellis Peters
Princesses by Flora Fraser
A Long Shadow by Charles Todd
Un Lun Dun by China Mieville
Magic’s Child by Justine Larbalestier
The Earth Path by Starhawk
So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane

Wow. Busy month. But spending two to two and a half hours commuting every work day gives one lots of time for reading.

Present

Shock of shocks: I am actually at my home computer. Liam is napping, and I have a review to write, which is due… yesterday? — WHERE has the this year gone? I don’t get a chance to be here often; I don’t have the time in the mornings and I generally fall into bed directly after dinner these days, which in turn follows dinner for Liam, his bath, and putting him to bed. (I was asleep at 8:30 last night. Seriously.)

So naturally, I am hopping about on the net while I think about how to phrase things properly.

(Later: If you run the questionnaire and the daemon’s form shifts, do me a favour and let me know what it morphs into so I can track the changes? Thanks!)

It is very odd to be working with an ergo keyboard again, because of course, my keyboard at work is a regular one. Speaking of work, as of Friday I have been on this contract for one whole month (see above re. ‘where has the time gone’). I got to invoice for another very nice amount.

We did a $250 grocery order today. It feels very, very good to have a full pantry and fridge, and even overflow in the garage. And HRH has headed off to the hardware store to buy a French door for my office, because the cats have officially demonstrated themselves as untrustworthy in it and I’m tired of how dark it gets when the office door is closed, as it shuts away the light of one of the few windows we have. We’ve been talking about a French door for this room since we moved in; it will be nice to finally follow through on it.

The general feedback I’ve been getting from people is confirming my suspicion that the Shorter OED is more useful, so that’s the one I’ll end up buying. This is fine; it means that I can buy myself an older edition of the Compact for the geek factor at some point in the future as a completely unnecessary gift.

I have a babysitter for the gig night, which means both my parents and my in-laws can come to the show! (Thank you Sam, and thank you Scarlet for suggesting her!)

Back to the review. This is the first bit of writing I’ve done in, well, a month. (Yes, that means exactly what it says, for all of you who have asked for work from me. Full time work plus toddler equals no time for anything else.)

Scratch Pad Apr 27

10:35:

Damn. We may have just run into a problem that might affect the quality of what we’re trying to provide. Damn, damn, damn. It also possibly renders the work I did for the first two weeks I was here useless. Now we need to find another solution.

11:55:

I just deleted the o, then the l, instead of the u from colour. Argh. Definitely lunch time.

12:56:

Just loaded Meallanmouse down with piles of mini Cadbury eggs. Heh heh heh.

13:14:

We could buy a Wii so that we would be able to use the product I’m working on, and if we get bored with it we could always use it to build our own robot.

16:05:

Er… there are words in our database and we’re not sure where they came from. I think they have bred. My colleague thinks a test failed at some point and words that should have been rejected were instead added.

16:26:

I enjoy my life. I mean really, how often do you get to use the word declension several times in one day, in casual conversation?

16:35:

Goodness – I’ve now been here for a month. *blink blink*

16:41:

Isn’t “in unison together” a redundancy? *beats dictionary*

16:49:

I’ve offered to work on this at home over the weekend. I only have another two weeks, and with the two wonky discoveries today regarding words in the database which oughtn’t be there and the need to add new words that can be found in the source dictionary as opposed to the supplemental words I worked on the first two weeks I was here, we suddenly need to have a clean product to start from next week. The good thing I get to charge for my hours, whereas if I were salaried I wouldn’t.

Postscript: So much for that idea; I didn’t get the file I needed emailed to me after I left, only the updated supporting file. Oh well.