Busy

Very very busy.

Work is trying my patience. There's some damned drama going on there with one of my bosses trying to set me up for failure. I take it in stride, and I explain my case to the clients that end up getting screwed. Upper management knows and they just kind of shrug at it because there just isn't enough staff to make sure I get all the information I need to do my friggin' job.

Part of the drama now is not just not giving me all the data I need to do my job (I refuse to start on something now without it). Now I'm getting LIES and MADE UP THINGS for the data I need.

Pfft. I don't care. I get paid one way or another. But what ends up happening is that the clients don't get "sassified." They don't recommend friends, they don't come back for more work. They won't give me good references if I want to give out their contact information. So it's a lack of business for the parent company. And with enough lack of income, they are going to start trimming people, in order of least useful to most useful. I just trust that upper management is going to realize that I'm very useful and Boss Asshat is the one ruining everything.

But, you know. Trust no one. In the meantime I'm trying to adjust my resume again to really encompass the breadth of skills I have. Over the past two years I've gained A HELL of a lot of new skills. I just havn't noticed. The trick is cramming it all onto one page.

I believe a resume should be short and sweet. "Sassify" their curiousity, sure, but leave them wanting more. Then you get interviews. All you gotta do is not fuck-up the interview and you're in. They call you for an interview because they're interested. Remember that.

Aside from that... I need to just fucking finish some projects. I keep starting things and NOT finishing them. I havn't really FINISHED anything (not from work) in about 3 years. Not good. I keep getting distracted. I want to be a busy bee and just finish some code.

After all, did I mention I got myself a Logitech G15 keyboard? NO I didn't pay $100 for it. I got it because my spacebar was starting to break down and piss me off. I wanted to hold out for the Optimus Keyboard, but, seriously, yo, that fucking spacebar was going to make me flip my lid and kill people. Honorable mention to Das Keyboard, but if I'm NOT going to pay $80 for a keyboard that's MISSING SHIT. Even the DK1 is $60. I ended up paying $60 for the G15 and it's got a damned LCD on it, 18 programmable keys in three banks (54 total), a "gaming switch" that disables the Windows key, also known as the "OMFG I WAS GOING TO FRAG THAT ASSHOLE AND I ACCIDENTALLY HIT THE FUCKING WINDOWS KEY AND NOW I MINIMIZED MY GAME AND I GOT KILLED!" key. The keys feel really good on this thing. It's a pleasure to type on. It's also got lit buttons that I can easily turn off, because I've got too many LEDs that glow in the night and I don't need another one... or 129 NEW blue ones. It's a USB keyboard which I've always wanted because I wanted to break the shackles of vintage connectors. Just a USB keyboard? It's got two USB ports on it. That's pretty cool. Now I am literally no farther away from a USB port than I am to my bottle of water. If it were any closer I'd have a USB port on my head. Oh oh oh oh , and, well, goddamn, multimedia buttons that actually WORK. That's a first for me. I've never seen a keyboard with multimedia buttons that works for longer than a few weeks. Surprisingly, it even works with Media Player Classic, which is AWESOME.

Anyway, the main focus of this thing is the LCD. Last weekend I figured out how to program it. Now that I know HOW, I need to know WHAT. I figured I'd make a demo for it in the traditions of yore. I havn't coded in assembly in a long time...

... and I don't have to now. The speed of the LCD really isn't fast enough to handle 60 frames a second. I get reliable framerates shooting for 10 frames a second, and I only get to about 13 until it starts collapsing under the bandwidth. Considering 1/6 is an easy number to use (well, easier than 13/60), that's what I'll use. And it's not that it's really the bandwidth, it's that the LCD response time isn't fantastic.

Old technology. 160 pixels wide, 43 pixels high, either ON or OFF for each cell. Hell, GAME BOY had 4 SHADES!! At least if Logitech gets good response they might make some keyboards with really nice screens on them.

One app running on it: SirReal's Panel. It's really good at doing what I want. I'm now able to remove the time display and network activity display from my taskbar since this thing supports monitoring of those things. Which means more real estate on my taskbar for the other billion programs I run at any given time. It's not perfect, it's got a bug where I can't switch back to my non-5.1 stereo setup, but it's small consolation. The multimedia buttons are cool and I can see the track and artist of what I'm on, even if iTunes is in the background. That's pretty efficient. Volume control on the keyboard is nice, too. All around I'm really happy with this keyboard.

But, all in all, I'm still busy. You wouldn't guess it by the length of this, it just typed so fast that I didn't notice it. I'm looking forward to finishing something cool and THEN sitting back with a long sigh of accomplishment.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh....