Your Tax Dollars at Work

I'm writing this at a whopping 1600 x 1200 resolution on a 23" monitor that was sitting gathering dust in the room next door. Turns out it was for an Itanium workstation that has fallen into disuse, as Microsoft gave up developing a version of Windows for that architecture.

But all is not lost. Not only do I get a new toy for my temporary workstation (which is, coincidentally, the fastest computer I've ever had assigned to me alone), but I got to help my new boss put together a $5000 Pentium Extreme box. It should fly, although we're not sure how stable XP 64 is yet. Apparently getting a comparable system from Dell would set us back like 18 grand.


I'm going to a picnic tonight at the Flying W Ranch, which is apparently mandatory for tourists and strongly encouraged for employees. Should be some good food, although I'm still stuffed from the "lunch meeting" we had earlier. At the rate they're throwing hardware and food at me, it should be a pleasure to work unpaid overtime.

As an added bonus, I just scored a 30-foot ethernet cable, which means I can finally hook up my home computer in my room. Not sure yet how I'm gonna get the monitor above ground level; it might have to go on top of the TV to start with...

In other news, I had to send home my Dad's GPS unit so he can find his way up a river. Now I'll be lucky if I can manage to miss Nevada on my way home.

Given Me a Number and Taken 'Way My Name

Hi.

I'm...somewhere, doing...something, for an Uncle we'll just call...Sam...

D'oh!

This secrecy thing is new to me, so I'm gonna have to be careful. I guess I'm still free to make stuff up, and if it confuses the bad guys (although they won't tell me who those are), so much the better.

I found my place of business, on the right day no less, and got off to a great start Monday. Naturally every system connected in any way with processing me crashed at least once, from the key to my door, to the badge picture that wouldn't take, to the 401(k) that's actually a 403(b), to the new on-line security clearance request form that I won't write about for fear of offending the very people I submitted it to.

It turns out that you have to sign in in ALL CAPS on odd-numbered days and in all lowercase on even-numbered days. I think everything is right, although it wants to call me the 1Vth instead of IVth, but ya can't win 'em all.

So I got to look at the code base that I'll be working with. When he said it was sixty thousand lines, I had assumed it would be broken down into a nice hierarchy of modules spread across dozens of source files and grouped into sensible libraries, but of course it's all in one huge file.

The change history in the comments is dated in Roman numerals, I swear. All the documentation is in hieroglyphics, since the project started in MCMLXXI. I'm fighting the temptation to suggest rewriting it in a modern language, but as long as they keep throwing more hardware at the problem, maybe it will solve itself.

What else...my cell phone, which has a camera included, is banned from the facility, as it could be a leak. So I guess I can't show you all pictures of the inside of the place. To sum it up: these things are always more exciting in the movies.

I'll be sending out change-of-address letters to everybody I know as soon as I know what my new cell number will be.

Happy Belated 100th Post

So this is post number 102 for my humble blog. During that time, my readership has grown by leaps and bounds, or maybe just hops and skips and jumps, or maybe not at all. There's nowhere to go but up.

My major accomplishment for this week was getting all of my packages to my new place unscathed. Plus, I've elevated the TV to a good foot off the ground with a very professional-looking TV stand. Not that exciting.

What else...I sang karaoke the other day, but that was hopefully pretty forgettable. Just good enough not to be so bad I was good, ya know?

I got to see where I'll be working, or at least where I'll be while I'm getting paid. It turns out that I'm getting my own office, with my own name on my own door, and my own brand-new PC. Of course, the computer in my office won't be secure enough for actual work; we've got a stand-alone network behind locked doors for that. Basically, your office is where you go to avoid doing work; all the really productive stuff happens in the lab, which I'll share with two doctors.

The code I'll be working with is 30 years old, but still export controlled. I wonder how much farther it would have gotten if it were open, but then you've got to take into account getting bombed into the stone age if Charlie gets his hands on it.

So now my physical self is here, but there's still the small matter of sending out change of address notices to everyone I've corresponded with over the last year. I'll refrain from putting my address here, but just shoot me an email if you want to know it.

I'll be putting more pictures up on my flickr account. I won't annotate all of them here, because that would be double-blogging.

We have a sign!

We have a sign!
Originally uploaded by ojcit.

Isn't that special?

Kitchen

Kitchen
Originally uploaded by ojcit.

Well isn't this clever? Now I can blog from my phlog on flickr without even bothering with the Blogger logger.