Work

Things have been pretty crazy at work the past few weeks. A lot of changes
right now... including me finally having my own office! The first time I've
ever had my own office. It's pretty spacious, now I just have to
get some plants and other decorations (and attach my keyboard tray
(my wrists!!)). Don't worry, I'll be sure it follows Feng Shui ;).

My job at SFU is becoming permanent (formerly contract), but the way it works with the APSA people (the sort of half union I belong to) is that the job can't just change from contract to permanent, it has to be reposted. So it was reposted, but stating that an internal candidate has already been identified.

Anyway, I decided to touch up my resume at the same time and put it up online (also notice that the resume link on the right hand side is finally active (portfolio coming next)). Although the format I use works good on paper, I think the web interface could be a lot better. If you've got any suggestions or notice any problems with mine feel free to let me know (pleeeeease, and thank you :-)).

Coincidentally enough, this article was linked to on slashdot on thursday (I saw it shortly after my last post):
Warm Offices Linked to Fewer Typing Errors and Higher Productivity.

It basically states that some company did a study, and employees will be approximately 10% less efficient at 20 degrees celsius than they will be at 25. I would guess that my efficiency had probably dropped to by about 85% at the temp I was working at. Now, I don't know if the ergonomics lab at Cornell is funded by the Gas or Electric companies, but I believe it nontheless.

And just to follow up to my last entry, I had to work in the CS atrium with all the silly engineers all morning friday, but then they totally cranked up the heat at around noon... it was sweet, like 30 degrees in there after about an hour... nice.

a new record in coldness today... it's so cold in here I've been shivering for the past hour. sumo measured the temp in her office and it was 18 degrees. Doesn't sound that cold? Well that's the temp we keep our server rooms at. After spending an hour not moving around in that temp you'll start feeling pretty cool. Except in addition to that there's cold air blowing in at me from right above my head... air that's the same temp as outside (10 degrees). So with wind chill I'd probably say my office is about 14 degrees right now (I can't quite see my breath... but it's getting there). I can't even fucking believe it, I can barely type this email, let alone write code!

So things at work have progressively been getting a lot better lately. I'm finishing up a couple of major projects I'd been working on. Both of them will be going into production within the next two weeks (hopefully!). And just today my boss emailed me to say that he is going to turn my job from a 1 year contract into a continuing position, meaning that I'll be getting better benefits and real vacation time.

Oh yeah, can't remember if I mentioned this, but there was all this black mold growing in my office in some wet drywall, steve cleaned all the visible stuff out, but I'm sure there's more under the drywall. I reported it to facilities like a month ago and still nothings been done about it. Don't they know that stuff is toxic? I should get WCB on their asses!

I did a bunch of work on the gentoo linux script repository (glsr) this past weekend. The glsr is my primary responsibility at gentoo. It's coming along pretty nicely and I'm hoping it will be into beta testing by november and into production by the end of december or start of january.

word.