tomleslie.ca |
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Tom Leslie Toronto, Canada 
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Thursday, February 15, 2001
There's a uniquely betrayed feeling you get when you lose work because your computer has crashed. I'm in the middle of developing a flash tutorial animation for my client(yes, I do do real work) to explain to their customers how the moderately complex security system protecting their data works. I was working on some tricky buttons, trying to get the flash version of a web page to work the way the real web page does so I can simulate navigating the real site. So the message that Flash had performed an illegal action and would now be shut down was, to put it mildly, unwelcome. It's a familiar feeling, and this particular time I probably lost no more than an hour or at most two of work. Plus, since I remember what I did, I can probably recreate it much faster than I spent creating the work the first time. So instead of feeling rage and the overwhelming need to throw the monitor out the window (not the smartest idea for a whole long laundry list of reasons, not the least of which is that the monitor was simply the messenger and what I really need to do is throw the Flash development team out the window), I instead have the wounded spouse's self-condemning feeling that it was, in some way, my fault: I knew the program wasn't completely stable, I've had problems with it before, and yet, I went back to pretending that everything was ok. Plus, I didn't save my work frequently enough. While my desktop is still in the process of trying to kill the loose threads in its memory and shut itself down (advising me gently but, it appears, futilely, that I should wait for its interminable cleanup process to track the rogue threads down and purge them in a safe way) I turn to the laptop, connect to Blogger, and type this note. And you know what? Blogger hasn't crashed yet, but the laptop--which has died three times already today, although since I had nothing unsaved any of those times has avoided my wrath--is equally, if not more fallible, and I'm just running from one abusive relationship to another here. Not to draw this whole rather unsavory metaphor out too much, but it's interesting how readily the world as a whole has dumped the slow, boring, and safe mainframes, that never crash, and moved whole heartedly to the snazzy, sexy, dangerous PCs that keep coming back to hurt us. Wednesday, February 14, 2001
I think I may have a slightly addictive personality, which came out Monday night when I was working on a small presentation for Tuesday. The assignment was to create a 5-7 minute presentation. Now I *know* that some presentations can take 10 minutes to cover a single, high value Powerpoint page, but I still spent 3 hours on this silly thing, which ended up being an 8 page argument for Accenture doing more sponsorship of the arts. A good chunk of that time was searching the web for the right graphics. This is not a sign of brain cells being used in the most effective manner. Stephen Covey would not be impressed. What made it worse was that the training, and my subsequent work, was in Etobicoke (see note below about travel to and from Etobicoke) and I hadn't yet done my laundry, and I needed to pack for a week and a half on the west coast, where I am as I'm writing these words. Nuts. Reminds me of the time I spent 3 days working on an algebra proof for my Grade 10 math class. I ended up producing a rigorously-defined beautifully formatted 3 page proof for a problem that the teacher later admitted he'd written up incorrectly. I bet he never even looked at the result. So anyway, Monday night, I picked up sushi at Sushi Bistro on the way home (9:15), put on my laundry (9:45), ate dinner watching the National (when did they get their new theme?), put the laundry in the dryer (10:55) and then installed and played the first mission of the Starcraft Expansion Pack (12:15) before finally starting to pack. Which I finished at 1:30, leading to my second night in a row of 4 1/2 hours sleep. Tuesday we wrapped up the presentations course (which went well, although I was for some reason quite tired and didn't do a great job on my 7 minute presentation) and I got on a plane back to Seattle, where I'm writing these words. And now for the good news: this is my last trip out here for this project. I don't have another project lined up yet (although a couple in the 'States are possibles) and I might actually get a few more days at home before my next project. And mom and dad, if you're reading this: I'll come and pick up Hoover on the March 3-4 weekend, and I'll have my cat at home again! Monday, February 12, 2001
Oh, Dad would like me to provide a link to his web site. I'll probably build a links tab for this site, but for now, here's Professor John Leslie. Oh, and in case you were wondering what the "link" links after every post were, they're actually links to that post in the archive files. If you click on one, your browser will jump to the archive section and the address field on the browser will have the exact URL for that particular post. Just in case I said something clever that you'd like to bookmark or link to yourself. Knock yourself out.
Monday morning, and I'm back in Toronto attending a class on how to make presentations. They're videotaping us so we can see just how excruciating our personal mannerisms are. Whee... The course is being held in our office in the wilds of Etobicoke (that's Ih-toe-bih-coh for out-of-towners) which is difficult to get to by public transit. As I don't have a car, this means I have to leave extra time in the morning to get to class on time, which would be ok were it not for the fact that... I'm operating on about 4 1/2 hours of sleep, owing to my determination to finish Starcraft over the weekend, a classic videogame that's taken over my spare time (at home) for the past few weeks. The final missions of the single player game wrap up an epic storyline with a satisfying conclusion, and were a lot of fun to play. Starcraft is a wonderfully balanced real time strategy game, and if you like that kind of thing it's a must-have. It's been out for a couple of years so it's pretty cheap, too. Back to Seattle tomorrow evening, and on Wednesday I'm having lunch with our project sponsor to plan our "ramp down", final transfer of tasks, documentation and training, and I'm expecting that this might be my final trip out there for this project. Mixed feelings; I'm looking forward to getting home, but (as I've mentioned before) this was a great project. Thanks to the great people I worked with! |