It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it
It’s been an interesting and event-filled few days at Chez Templin.
As I mentioned, I had an interview last week and turned down the resulting job offer.
On Friday I had another interview with a company in San Francisco. A very interesting, young vibe to the place, and the technology was very impressive. In all I met with 4 different people over the course of 4 hours and my impression is that it went very, very well; the next step is a meeting with the CEO and the delivery of references. This certainly seems like a fast track and I rather look forward to that; it’s nice to have something engaging to work on.
This position does mean a few changes for me. I will have to commute into the office – work-from-home was not discussed in detail and it’s not a deal killer anyway – but my commute will be by BART now. I’ve never taken a regular train as part of my daily routine and I’m interested to see what this will bring. It is nice to think that, although the ride is about 40 minutes, I can read or code or do other things while someone else handles the locomotion details. I just need to make sure I don’t miss my stop. 
The walk to the office is about 4 blocks (one way), so I will be getting some exercise as well. That’s a bonus I hadn’t counted on, but losing weight and getting in better shape are definite goals of mine for this year. Pam and the boys went so far as to meet me at the train station when the interview was done – the SF end of the train ride – and rode back with me. John chatted up a lady sitting in a seat; he ended up scooting her over so he could sit down. I think he can charm paint off of walls, a trait that will come in handy one day when I buy a house.
In other news, we have ADT coming out to activate the alarm system at our house. On Thursday our next-door neighbor had her house broken into while she was home, and this does not bring a warm, fuzzy feeling. And, yes, while anyone that knows me will say breaking into my house is not a wise decision I will say that I’m a big believer in “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, or in this case about a metric ton of cure. (Yes, the neighbor is fine other than her peace of mind; only a burglary, a few possessions taken.)
It’s pretty obvious that the break-in artistes were at least thinking of us as our main back gate was slightly askew and there is no way I left it in that condition; it was unclear whether or not they actually tried to force the back garage door open (it does have a deadbolt lock) or whether the old “Protected by ADT” signs and the automatic light scared them off in search of easier prey – in this case, my neighbor.
This is the neighber that has 2 pit bull terriers (and one mop-head dog of some variety). Sadly, the pit bulls were asleep in her room that night. It would have been quite funny had they been downstairs as they normally are – well, funny to me, anyway. Humor is so dependant upon your point of view.
Moving on…
I’ve decided not to press the issue with my daughter on “getting her things out of my garage”. Yes, her possessions do prevent me from parking our cars in the garage. However, if she were to remove every single one of her possessions from said garage the end result would be that I could park my truck about 24 inches further in… for a total of about 4 feet total length in parking room. So, I figure I won’t complain about her rather modest amount of stuff until I deal with the gigantic mess (MY gigantic mess) that is the other 97% of the garage floor surface area.
Allison did stop by yesterday with her boyfriend to say “hi”. I got the distinct feeling that she wanted something, but she did not ask for anything. Perhaps I’m just being cynical; in fact, that’s entirely likely in this case. She revealed that, no, she has not gone back to school because “she has no way to get there”. I think I’ll investigate that one a little further; it has an air of “convenient excuse” to it, but I’ve thought that before and been entirely wrong. Like I said, cynical.
I spent yesterday reloading computers. The eMac we have was upgraded to Mac OS X Tiger (10.4), which promptly broke one of Phil’s favorite games: Tony Hawk Underground 4. As I do have a spare “emergency boot” partition on one of the drives I took the time to load OS X v 10.3 from the original installation disks so he can boot 10.3 and play his game. Yes, I dote. But I’m not done doting.
I also backed up all of the user data on Phil’s iBook and reloaded the original OS, upgrading it to OS X Tiger. The reason for this tedious (but not difficult) exercise was the iBook’s inability to boot OS 9; apparently I did not format the drive with the needed OS 9 drivers and as a result OS 9 could not see the drive.
The reason for OS 9 is the game Total Annihilation – Phil loves it, but it only runs well in OS 9. Mission Accomplished.
I also loaded Quake II on his Mac OS X partition and we played a Deathmatch game last night – Dad on his Powerbook, Phil on the iBook. It took him a few minutes to get the controls, but after that he took to it like a duck to water. Once he learns not to stand around in one place I’m going to get creamed. He’s already trying to talk Mom into playing with us so they can gang up on me. It’s nice to be loved.
Seriously, though: I haven’t seen such pure joy on his face (as I saw last night whilst he was fragging Dad) in a long time. It’s so very nice when you can make a loved one that happy.
Time to go. There’s a guy at the door with a BFG10K that really, really wants to talk to me.
