8 February 1999: The Last Supper

Monday, 8 February 1999:

The Last Supper

I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon logged on to work on a second CGI script for SF3, specifically, for WisCon. It's quite large, but happily a lot of it is just a long list with checkboxes next to each item, and it turns out that HTML forms handle checkboxes in a really convenient way for long lists of things, so that probably shaved about an hour (or more) of really boring typing off the project.

(Yeah, if I were smart I could probably write a script to handle the boring-typing parts for me, but I'm afraid that degree of smartness has so far eluded me. A drawback, I guess, to having a high tolerance for relatively menial work.)

I think it shaped up pretty well, so tonight I kicked the results off to someone else to review them. We'll see.

Then last night was the annual Epic dinner. I did get a couple of comments to the effect of surprise that I showed up, since I'm on my way out in a couple of weeks, but I think everyone was joking. The higher-ups all seemed pretty friendly, so it seems that my feeling that I'm leaving on good terms is justified. Which is good; I imagine leaving a job at a low and bitter point is no fun at all.

The food was no great shakes (the food at Monona Terrace - "The Wedding Cake on the Lake" which was quasi-designed by Frank Lloyd Wright - is nothing to write home about), although the dessert was quite tasty. Close to pure sugar, which is basically what you want in a dessert.

Afterwards we had a "sporting" event in a large chamber on the Terrace. This consisted of nine holes of mini-golf, darts, video skiing, and "sumo wrestling". This last was quite amusing: They had two large suits which made you heavier and bulkier and covered your hands, and you had to push your opponent out of the circle. I understand it was quite exhausting, but it sure was amusing to watch, as really no one was able to keep their balance in the things. No, I didn't feel up to trying it, but it was entertaining.

So it was a good final Epic dinner for me (and it's always nice to be able to walk to these events; another benny of living downtown).

I also got to chat with my boss, who showed up towards the end with a photo of his two-week-old daughter. We chatted about his fatherhood for a little while; he observed that you get numbed to baby-crying pretty quickly - a matter of days. Not that you ignore it, but you're not jumping up to react instantly the moment the kid starts wailing.

As he put it, "Except for the sleep thing, having a kid is pretty neat." I think I'd have trouble with the sleep thing, though. Not to mention that the urge to reproduce isn't really there for me.

Tonight I finally caught up on my taped television, and also started doing my taxes. My taxes are usually quite simple, so I can do them fairly quickly. I'd like to do them before I move, just to have them out of the way, but since I owe the Feds a big wad of money, financially it makes a little sense not to file them until the deadline. Sheesh. I'll probably do 'em early just to save myself the hassle.

I'm not quite sure why I owe the Feds a big wad of money, since I thought I reduced my number of exemptions earlier this year and consequently should have had more money withheld than last year. Hmm. Well, no sense doing anything now, with my impending job change.

I'm up to the letter 'S' in cataloguing my comic books. Surprisingly, I only own about four items beginning with 'R', and all of them are paperback collections. I'm not sure why that is.

And finally, I got a call from the guy who will be coordinating the elements of my move to the west coast, and I told him when I'd like to fly out, and he told me I'll likely be getting calls from the moving company in the next day or so. So everything is getting underway, and in two-and-a-half weeks I'll be living in a different part of the country. Wild!

Michael Rawdon (Contact)