Author Archives: Alan V

Camera repairs, take three

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As further proof that it only takes one thing to ruin my day, I offer today as an example.

I had a very good day at work. Today was mostly spent integrating my bug fixes into the code base and ensuring that I didn’t break anything.
A nice surprise came at around 10 AM when the camera repair shop called me to tell me my camera was fixed. Yay!
I talked to another programmer about one of my bug fixes, as he had a similar issue that he was working on. He praised my fix and wondered how he hadn’t thought of that before, and said that he was going to base his fix on mine. That made me feel really good about my ability, especially since this was probably the most complicated fix I’ve done this summer (involving multiple asynchronous calls and interaction between more than three threads).
My boss said that he liked many of my fixes, and that the issues he was bringing up were all nitpicks.
Overall, I integrated over 10 bug fixes into the codebase today, fixing two priority 1 bugs, as well as a bunch of other lower priority bugs.

I headed home a bit early to grab my credit card, lens, and memory card (so I could pay and test my camera), leaving work feeling very satisfied.
I bused to the camera repair shop. It took about 30 minutes.

So apparently they decided to close over an hour early today, and hadn’t bothered to tell me this morning when they called about my camera… you know, in case I decided to go and pick it up today or something.
As a result, I was in a rather bad mood as I boarded the bus home.
The bus back was extremely packed and I was getting claustrophobic, and people were blatantly ignoring the “please move to the rear” signs resulting in there being about 10 people standing at the VERY FRONT of the bus (despite the fact that there were both seats in the very back and nobody standing behind the first row of seats), making me miss my stop at Craig.
Overall I spent over an hour on two buses going downtown and back. I was not very happy when I was coming into Fairfax.
As I approached the elevator, I saw this girl entering the building from the front, and held the elevator for her. Not only did she take forever to walk to the elevator (almost as if she was going deliberately slow to spite me, since she definetly acknowledged that I was holding the elevator for her and she wanted it). Then she proceeds to take the elevator to the second floor.
GAAAH.

Now I am rather annoyed at the world and this company, given that they took 4 days to even tell me what was wrong with my camera (because their technician was out… but it seems to me that if your company is named “Camera Repair Store”, you should have more than one technician), the repair was more expensive than I was expecting (although, to be fair, I suppose that wasn’t their fault), and they closed early and made me waste over an hour of my day for nothing. And I am still cameraless.
*sighs*

Camera repairs, take two

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So my camera cost over $250 to fix. That’s over a third the cost of a new D50 (theoretically speaking, since you can’t buy them anymore), half the cost of a new D40, and a fourth the cost of a new D80 (which I want).
Oh well.
If it needs another major repair, I’ll scrap it and buy a new camera.
Unfortunately, it probably won’t be fixed by this weekend, but meh. Alisa is awesome and is letting me borrow hers, which means I don’t have to worry.

Life has been really weird the past few days. Greg and I have had parallel-but-off-by-one weeks in that he had a bad day on Monday and spent a lot of money on repairing his car on Tuesday… and I had a bad day yesterday and spent a lot of money repairing my camera today. Meh.
Relatedly, all the things that were getting me down yesterday (problems with payroll at work, not having a camera for this weekend, my camera being broken, and feeling like I wasn’t doing well enough at work) got resolved today (payroll got sorted out, Alisa is letting me borrow her camera, my camera is being repaired, and I got a positive job review from my boss at work today), so whee.
Life is good.

I’m almost definetly going to continue work next semester, part time, and drop down to being a part-time student. So far, my schedule looks like work, OS, and Pen-Based Computing. I need to talk to my boss to make sure I can get time off around kernel crunch time, but I feel like I can handle that (especially since work would be like taking another class, except with no homework, and I’d only be working at most 20 hours a week). I’ve already talked to 8 (my OS partner) and he’s okay with it too. Whee!

Camera repairs

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My camera is in the shop for repairs. They charged $40 just to look at it… the estimate for repairs will come on Monday. Meh. In any case, I hope they can finish before next weekend, when I’ll actually need my camera. Worst case, I can just take my film SLRs and shoot color film… but who wants to do that?

Life has been good. Nothing really of interest happening. I should eventually post photos from Colorado… I got some rather nice landscapes I want to share.

Work has been good too. I’ve been cleaning up my bug fixes. Code freeze is on Monday, so I might stop in the office this weekend and do some more work.

Colorado day 2

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After a delicious buffet lunch today, we drove past the condos where I was born. My mom pointed out the window to the bathroom where I was actually born, and I could actually remember a lot of the area.
Then we drove past the house we lived in before moving to Arizona, and I remembered even more of the area. The tool shed/house thing my dad built in the back yard (during which time all three of us caught Strep Throat from digging in the soil so much) is still there and the house still looks very nice (it’s the same color; hasn’t been repainted). I have fond memories of that house and of the little structure… half of it was my clubhouse that my dad built to my specifications (including a door that was split in the middle so I could open just the top and sell stuff from it).
Finally, we drove down the appropriately named Roller Coaster Road to see the piece of land we still own here. It hasn’t changed at all since we were there last, though it’s been 11 years. It looks like some people have been sporatically camping in the area though. Oh well.

Tonight I hopefully get to see Carolyn, who I haven’t seen in many, many years. I’m also meeting Keith in a little while, and I haven’t seen him in 11 years… so wheee. Yay for the wonderfulness that is the internet (and, I suppose, Facebook).

I head home tomorrow. I think, for the first time since getting here, I’m not totally looking forward to it.

Colorado day 1 (and Harry Potter)

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Bought the last Harry Potter book today… had it read in about 4 hours.
I must say, I am quite impressed in the way she managed to tie together all the vague points from the first 6 books and make everything suddenly clear toward the end. I also like how we’re left in the dark as to everything until stuff happens (and oh god, the ending is amazing)… I think an omnipotent view (or more insight into other goings-on, especially Dumbledore’s plan) would have ruined things. Very well played.

So yeah, I won’t post any spoilers because people are probably still reading it, but I will say that one prediction I read in a certain someone’s LJ was dead-on… and I suppose I should have expected it, but really didn’t.

As for Colorado, it’s been mostly uneventful. I had a 2.5 hour layover in Chicago that sucked, but whatever. Wheeeee.
I guess I’ll post pictures eventually or something.