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Remember last week when I was whining about the 800 words abstract? Well, it has now become 1200 words long. I argued with Harry for over an hour today on whether to include a 4th author on the paper, which is absurd since the abstract hasn’t been submitted.
When I got back to my desk after the meeting, I saw an email that asked me to change my entire CCTV design. I happen to like the current design and I don’t understand why anyone would want fifty cameras in a room that doesn’t have much going on.
Even with the coffee, I felt like I ran out of fuel by the time I left the office.

Here’s my observation:
When I have my spiked coffee, the day goes well. Really well. I hum at work, my pace is faster, and I’m usually able to put in a few minutes of over time without rushing out the door. However, when I come home, I don’t feel like doing much. It’s like I fast-forwarded my day and now I have a few hours of sitting still time.
Today, since we were having a pizza party, I decided to forgo my coffee. The afternoon was hard to get through, but the evening was pretty normal.

With all the financial hype, I started listening to the Taiwanese news radio in the evening to hear the Asian stock market opening. I never knew how important export is to Taiwan. It’s almost the island’s sole economic indicator. I also learned how many indexes Taiwanese keep track of. In addition to Dow Jones, Nasdaq, S&P500, BCC news reports on the stock market in China, Korea, Japan, France, GB, Russia, and indicators of Latin America, plus price of silver, gold, platinum, and exchange rates of all currencies. Maybe I’m surprised because I never listen to news radio at the States.

If you watch a DVD every 1.5 days on average, and you get the “3-at-a-time” deal with Netflix, you should never run short of movies. Not even on Mondays if you do your look-aheads. But I’ve been off my game, due to the spiked coffee I’ve been drinking and those “Bonus DVD” of TV series that takes up an entire disk. That’s why I’ve been going through a lot of instant watch movies.
Anyway, I happen to stumble upon “The Jane Austen Book Club” this evening. My favorite line from the movie: He looks at me like he’s the spoon and I’m the dish of ice cream. Wow… that line leaves me speechless.

I was reading this book on Provence and it mentioned that many of the vineyards are owned by retirees, trading their office lives for a slower pace in the French country.
As much as I love European vacations, I don’t think I can give up office life even if I don’t have to work. Sure, there are bad days, really bad days, days when I just want to sit in the bathroom till quitting time, and days when I feel like going postal (I wouldn’t, of course, but I’d understand if someone else did). But there are good days too.
Today, while doing my hourly walks around the office buildings, I figured out this great model that would work really well as my paper conclusion. In fact, it’s such an excellent model that I’m pretty sure someone had thought of it already… But seriously, it’s both simple and beautiful. It’s everything you want in a human performance model and more. It explains every problem and all the solutions fall into place perfectly.
On the down side, I found out that my mod is due on Monday. I didn’t even realize that until the electrical guy mentioned it to me… *sigh* and I thought I had at least another two weeks.

I finally figured out how to calculate the MPG of my car.
I know I sound dimmer with every post I write, but… at least I admit to my faults freely. Anyway, so this question had puzzled me for years: How do people figure out their car’s MPG number? I remember SO and Tong having this conversation about Tong’s new Scion, and Tong said that he tested it and his car gets blah miles per gallon. I always thought that maybe he drove a full tank of gas until he had to push his car to the nearest gas station, or at least estimate the amount of gas left in the tank when the low fuel light came on.
Long story short, mine gets 33 MPG on highways. The number’s a bit short from the advertised 37 MPG, but I’ve been driving in West Virginia and Maryland, which have really hilly roads, so I guess I’d be getting better numbers if I were driving through Iowa.

I have no idea what comes out of the wall sockets. I’m pretty sure it’s AC, but can’t venture a guess at the voltage. I have no clue why European appliances cannot be plugged into US outlets, or vice versa, and why some appliances have two prongs while others have three.
In my third year in college, one of my professors pointed to an outlet and asked the class if anyone knows the frequency. No one answered and that led to a lot of sighing on the professor’s part. So I felt pretty at home with my ignorance at school, but now I’m starting to think that I need to polish up this field of common sense for the sake of my job.
Here’s a conversation I had today:
Electrical guy: What kind of power requirements do your CCTV equipment need?
Me: Looking at this drawing my designer gave me… these just say “PS”, which I’m guessing is your vanilla flavored power. Then there are these two that say “12/25VDC”…
Electrical guy: We can’t do that.
Me: … what do you mean? You can’t change it to… 12/25 VDC?
Electrical guy: No *brief silence* So how do you plan on powering your equipment?

Here’s another good conversation that took place today:
Civil guy: What did the vendor say about the mounting requirements for the cabinet?
Me: I asked and they didn’t mention anything specific.
Civil guy: But they’re the vendor, they’re suppose to know these things. Is it going to be stable on a slopped floor?
Me: I don’t know…
Civil guy: It’s not much of a slope, 1/8″ per foot, but the cabinet is pretty tall. You sure we don’t want to secure it?
Me: I don’t know…
Civil guy: We can anchor it down, but then we won’t be able to move it. Did you ask them about casters?
Me: I don’t know…
Civil guy: You know, those screws that you use to adjust the height. Does the cabinet come with casters?
Me: I don’t know…
Civil guy: We can go all out and order casters ourselves. Are there any other cabinets being installed? We can see if they’re using casters.
Me: I don’t know…
Civil guy: Well, go ahead and ask the vendor what their mounting requirements are.
Me: I did. They didn’t mention anything specific.

I felt like shooting myself after that one.

On Sunday, I was deciding between AIG and GS… then I went with GS… and of course, AIG went up 30% today. DAMN ME AND MY FUCKING DUMB LUCK!

Onto more pleasant subjects…
Since I started spiking my coffee, I don’t feel as hungry during lunch time. It turns out that 45 minutes is a long time to kill if you don’t plan on eating. So I went shopping during my lunch break today.
Our office is practically next to a strip mall, and I found the cutest pair of flats on sale. I think I’m going to get it tomorrow if my size is still available.

I know I’m suppose to be correcting my grant proposal, but I have severe attention deficit disorder…
I finished the 2008 Christmas plate last weekend (I really wish I remembered to take a picture ) and SO helped me to take it to the shop to get framed.
Here are the choices for next year’s Christmas plate:

It’s hard to decide…

Tall Dark and Handsome (TDH) got a new cube-mate. For fun, we’ll call him Short Pale and Awkward (SPA). And what a pair they make; NEITHER of them smiles… ever. I can’t figure out what the problem is. Since they have nothing else in common, it must really suck to work in the scheduling department.
The office scene changes a lot. When I first started 3 months ago, the cube was occupied by Cathy and Jason. Then both of them left and it was just TDH for about a week. I was hoping that if I go without my P3 for a week, I can ask Jason’s replacement for the printouts (instead of TDH, who obviously doesn’t like me).
Lesson learned: I should never wait for a replacement personnel. If I knew Jason’s replacement was going to be SPA, I would have asked for my P3 a long time ago.

I’m in love with Ohio travel plazas. They are these huge affairs that include well lit lobbies, huge cafeteria with a hand full of dinning choices, and (most important of all) really clean toilets. Compared with the Ohio travel plazas, the rest stops in Indiana and Pennsylvania seem like dingy holes where you can catch syphilis just by walking through the doors.
I stopped at one of the last plazas off the Ohio Turnpike and bought a couple of bagels. Then I remembered that I should probably get gas as well.
I’ve been getting increasingly paranoid with touching stuff in public. I don’t know why… germaphobic I guess… So I got some napkins and used them as a shield between my hand and the gas pump. While the gas was filling, something in the garbage can next to the gas station caught my eye.
It was a stack of CD cases lying on the top of the trash pile. I picked up the one in the middle. It was Maroon 5’s Songs About Jane. I opened the case and the CD was intact, looked a bit used but has no major scratches. So I picked up another one, and it was Natalie Imbruglia’s White Lilies Island. I don’t understand why someone would throw away perfectly good CDs…
I left the two CDs that were on the left most and right most sides of the stack and picked up the remaining CDs that were sandwiched in between. Yes, I may use napkins to help me operate the pump, but I don’t mind a bit of dumpster diving when the mood strikes me.