Monday, June 28, 2010

coincidentally...

I no longer care about the World Cup (except maybe to root for a non-European/South American team to win), but this still amused me.

An email from my coworker, who is Brazilian:

At the Chile airport. Flight back was cancelled. I'll be in late tomorrow and might WFH.

On a side note tomorrow Brasil plays against Chile. Not a good time to be in Chile.


I was thinking it might actually be a great time for him to be in Chile, as the game will probably be shown on every television everywhere...

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

classical literacy

There's a thread going on here at work about a particular branch of the codebase which is kind of crappy. (I haven't looked it at myself, so I'm extrapolating from other people's comments.)

Anyway, someone just referenced the Augean stables, while making a point about how to fix it. I love that!

My coworkers are geeky and proud of it, but they are also well-read, well-travelled, fairly athletic/fit, and they possess a wide range of interests and hobbies. Yay.

Friday, June 18, 2010

analyzing Disney movies

I'm thinking the first paragraph of this post might explain why I'm not a big Disney fan.

So one time, Chloe at Feministing posted about Disney’s The Little Mermaid, calling it “a feminist’s worst nightmare,” because it’s literally the story of a woman who gives up her voice to get a man, which: sort of true, but also no, because in a universe where you can VERY EASILY read the moral of Beauty and the Beast as being “if you love your abusive boyfriend enough, he will change for you,” The Little Mermaid is second-worst, at best.

The rest of the article offers some rebuttal to the above argument, but I think there's still some truth in it.

(Also, the following excerpt, from later on in the post, is hilarious.)

There’s the fact that Eric, who frankly has the personality of a Ken doll, saves Ariel from her distress at the end in a disappointingly mundane way (he rams a ship into Ursula. really? REALLY? She’s become this like giant ball of evil magic fury and all it takes is a little poke with some wood? …oh, I get it now).

Sunday, June 13, 2010

remodelling is messy

D and I are remodelling our house. (I understand that "remodeling" is the correct American spelling, but it always looks wrong to me, so I persist in spelling it the British way.)

Our architect told us not to be shocked the first time we went to look at our house after deconstruction. (Deconstruction is like demolition, but is done carefully so that old cabinets and appliances can be donated. It costs more but with the tax deduction is almost break-even, so we did it.) Apparently many homeowners freak out when they see their homes torn apart. Evidently D and I have no such emotional attachment to our house, because our reaction was one of excitement rather than horror.

This is the current state of our guest bathroom. Fortunately, we hated the guest bathroom; we look forward to the day when there will be no handicapped-accessible seat, the door will latch closed properly, and the walls and tiles will not be pink and blue and grey.


I guess a plumber was here recently.


I'm also looking forward to having CAT6 cabling in every room.


Not sure what this is...there are bits and pieces of things all over the house.


Things look like they're going pretty well so far. I guess our architect must have done an okay job drawing up the plans.

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

resolving naming conflicts

I correspond with our Taipei engineering office from time to time. About a year ago, they hired a new engineer who goes by "Emilie" (she speaks French, so she chose the French spelling). As a result, I have been dubbed "MV Emily".

I guess it could be worse; here in my group in Mountain View we have "white George" and "Asian George".

 

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