James Mack's Weblog

I got sick late last Thursday, and today (Wednesday) I decided that it had lingered longer than reasonable, so I went to the doctor. I was told that the likely culprit was a secondary bronchial infection which auspiciously took hold during my initial infection. So I have been introduced to a new friend, a macrolide antibiotic known as Azithromycin. Hopefully I will be full strength tomorrow or Friday, but today, I enjoyed the down time.

And with that down time, I must say that I recommend Steve Carell's "40 Year Old Virgin". Maybe I relate. A bit.

We moved into our new building addition at work last week. The change was much less disruptive than I had anticipated, for both me and my coworkers, and within a day we were running again at full speed, despite missing some minor niceties like trash cans and soap in the bathrooms.

I had been dreading the move to some extent after seeing my new accomodations firsthand the week prior. I had grown accustomed to plenty of space and an amenable layout in the old building, with a large table people could sit down at and confer, room for a large bookshelf, and a corner for my bicycle or whatever other stuff I had to stash. My new area was straight out of typical white collar America; a cubicle big enough for me, my computer, a stack of papers, and a handful of personal items. To add insult to injury, I was the only engineer in the organization (out of about 50) who was condemned to such conditions. Needless to say, I felt undervalued, yet again.

Looking objectively, the new space seems to meet all my requirements for getting my job done. There are a few things which are less than ideal, and it's certainly more difficult to do my job where I am now than where I was before, but the bottom line is: I can still do my job. I voiced my concerns to anyone who would hear them, and was intially placated by a few words of sympathy, but I don't sense any desire to remedy the situation.

On an unrelated note, I found the new cleanroom to be rather interesting. Larger than our old one, and two floors tall, it is currently quite underutilized. I took this photo looking in from the window on the second floor, showing a lonely test setup and operator amidst the vast white room.

I've realized that my overuse of cycling metaphors has grown trite, so I'm going to lay off them a bit, at least for now. Nonetheless, I did have an excellent cycling experience that I wanted to share.

I had previously said that I was going to do my best to avoid letting mother nature get the best of me. Well, I got caught off guard in the first serious snow of the year, without my typical snow clothing and still running the slicks on my 'cross bike. This time, luck smiled upon me, in a somewhat unexpected way. The weather was absolutely frigid before and during the snowfall, which doesn't often bode well for cycling. This time, however, it meant that the snow didn't have a chance to melt, leaving it tacky and without ice underneath. The slicks had an astounding amount of grip (astounding for slicks on snow, at least) and the ride was cold but dry.



Next time, I'll know better. The weather report is now on my list of websites to check before leaving the door.