The Mad Schemes of Dr. Tectonic

So I just spent all evening writing a huge long summary of what we're planning to do for this grant proposal, which I then condensed down to a little over a page as the first pass at the abstract of the proposal, and when I went back and re-read it, I think it actually didn't suck. So yay, I think. Let's hope the other people involved also think it doesn't suck; their turn to edit now. [We want money to model people's hurricane evacuation decisions, BTW.]

I also did a bunch of estimating of what, exactly, I was planning to do for my contribution to it all and how much time it is likely to take. I used the best-worst-most likely estimation thingy, and I think I have a number that's not totally fake. And I remembered to include a temporal overhead factor in my estimate, so maybe it's actually even vaguely in the right ballpark.

Big grant proposal. Eek. Here's hoping it won't suck too much...

I've been making climate change projections at work. (Vaguely frantically, since this latest, mmm, let's-call-him-a-client, close enough, wants the results soonish and I'm off to New England on Monday, so I want to get this big batch started quickly enough that I can be done with it before then and still have time to deal with the other things I should be dealing with and not need to work this weekend, at least not more than a non-trivial amount, so what I am I doing? Blogging.)

Anyhow, there's this weird aspect of working with this stuff because I've automated the whole process, and none of the people using the data it generates really gets that. I think they're under the impression that I'm doing it by hand. They're always saying "well, I don't really need X", and it's somehow very difficult to explain to them that it would actually be more work for me to NOT give them X. No, seriously. Let me give you X as well, it's easier that way.

The only thing that's work for me is when they have a request that's either ill-specified, or that requires something new in the way of input or output. (That's what this one is: non-rectangular regions, adding a histogram.)

Not that I'm complaining about them thinking that I'm some kind of superhuman data analyst, rather than just a guy who's so lazy that he builds tools to avoid doing anything by hand more than once, but it's kinda weird.

Since I didn't have any meetings or anything planned today, I decided to telecommute.

Despite not taking a shower until mid-afternoon, I got about as much done as I would have if I were in the office, I think. I mostly had to write code that crunched numbers, which is pretty well-suited to working over an SSH connection. And I was able to run over to the barber shop and get a haircut (after the shower).

It rained this evening, and it seems to have cooled off considerably.

Nothing much to report in my life. Things are fine, kinda boring. Mostly catching up from working way too much the last week or so.

Board games at Tom's tonight. We played Fearsome Floors, and it takes a LOT longer with six people who are actually thinking about strategy. (Last time, it was very late and we all played kind of haphazardly.)

My workshop at the beginning of the week went well. It was kind of a pain to have to catch the bus early enough to show up at 8:30, but the S bus goes right by the hotel it was at, at least.

Work is back to busy, but not stressful. I'm getting good at saying "yes, I can do that, but not until next week" to keep things from getting overwhelming. Hooray for having work that's mostly without built-in deadlines.

My coworkers are totally amazed by my super-ergonomic Kinesis keyboard.

I am in Galveston. Yesterday morning I was in Boston. I had to call a cab at Stupid O'clock in the morning yesterday, but it got me to Logan and then I flew home (via St. Louis) and despite an hour delay leaving St. Louis, I still got home right about when I expected to, and I got to see my boys and relax some.

I had to do laundry and repack and I was up until 2 burning CD-ROMs of my game, so I started off my day pretty tired, because my flight was supposed to leave at 10 am, so I had to catch the SkyRide that gets to the airport at 8:30, which means catching the bus near my house at 7:20. But, y'know, not so bad.

Note the key phrase "supposed to" in the previous paragraph.

Flight was supposed to leave at 10 am and arrive at about 1:15, central time. Guess when we actually landed? Go on, guess.

EIGHT PM!

Oh! Em! EFF! Gee!

The flight was seven hours late!

First, we had to wait for our flight crew to show up, so we boarded late. Then we taxied out onto the runway and something was wrong with one of the engines, so they had to fix it. And then they had to fix it again. And then a third time! At this point, they parked the plane and we went back to the terminal and waited, and eventually, they told us they had gotten us new equipment and we got back on the plane. (It turns out that "new equipment" doesn't actually mean "a new plane" the way they kind of insinuate, because it was the same plane, so I guess it just means they swapped out the bad bits.)

So then we had to wait for a new place in line to take off. And then, finally, finally! we're in the air and heading towards Houston, and there was a massive thunderstorm that shut Houston down and we had to divert to San Antonio! (And wait for the weather to clear up, and wait to get refueled, and wait for a new place in line to take off...)

Holy crap did that suck.

I just brainstormed ideas about a board-game version of my educational hurricane game with one of the student assistants working with us, and now I'm all psyched up! I think it's a pretty solid concept for the mechanics, and we just came up with it on the fly! I'll probably be bringing a prototype to our coalescing monthly board games night one of these days.

I usually like my job. Today, I like it a LOT!

(I need an icon for 'glee'.)