Distant Worlds

For the first time in long long time (10 years?), I purchased a compact disk with music on it. I don't really do the iTunes you see. It arrived today.

When it immediately became one of the most artistic things I own.

The CD is Distant Worlds and I think it's great. Lots of memories from old video games. Somewhat old anyway. Really, the signal has been that I am old.

I grew up on the first ones they ever made and I think of Final Fantasy VI (III in the U.S.) as the definitive Final Fantasy. It was made in 1994. There's one track on the CD that's medley/homage for the first three games and that's the ringer for me. The others are pretty, but trigger my "new stuff, got no soul" response. *sigh* That's right, I was a fan when it was Squaresoft, not this Square Enix business (they merged in 2003).

While I'm feeling sentimental, it's a good time to get out that I stopped keeping up with technology in the 90's. I still think web apps are the next big thing. I've completely missed smart phones. I think iPads are super cool, but I can't figure out what I'd do with one. There was an awesome moment about a month ago when I asked an older co-worker to explain twitter to me. After that, I suppose it's not surprising that I bought an old school CD.

So, the only downer about the CD was that it arrived damaged and it won't play in my car. I think it was cut off center or something. My computer plays it. No biggie, I'll rip it and play the copy in my car. See? I still got skilz. Right? Right???

Segueing from my lack of skills...

The Evolution of a Good Question

I've been having a totally one-sided email conversation with one of my bosses over the last two days. Today I was three emails in when I re-read it and decided he was just waiting for me to ask a proper question. Check it out.

It turns out Dan was just making a reasonable guess.

He got back to me this afternoon and I got what I needed, but check out the progression.

Email 1: "...they looked like letters but they were squiggles and... anyway, help?"

Email 2: "Ok, I think I've got this. You must have..."

Email 3: "What were you using for the skin factor?"

Turns out, he wasn't using anything. He was picking numbers out of the air. But, I thought this was a great example of dumb questions (e.g. "I'm too lazy to think for myself, what should I do?") and eventually a good one (e.g. "You have something I need!"). Somebody else was talking about the spectacular powers of procrastination today, the two seem to dovetail well.

Grumpy Old Man

Hey, speaking of screen shots of my email client, I pulled a grumpy old man move a couple days ago. I use Thunderbird. For a long time, I've used Thunderbird version 2. Team Thunderbird has been working long and hard to make version 3 great and earlier this week, they got everything just right and sent it out to the world.

I did not like it!

The moved stuff around. They changed the icons. They added tabs. It was different! I tried it out for half a day, then went though a tricky process to not only revert to the old one, but to also scrub out all the little settings changes the upgrade had made.

To put that into perspective, we've been working for a year and a half on a big upgrade to our PetraSim software. We've made all these huge changes (improvements?) to the way you use it and I'm sure all our customers will be absolutely delighted. The beta testers have been reacting a little mixed, but they probably just don't get the awesomeness. Yeah, that's it, the awesomeness...

Hey, on the bright side, my rowing is improving. When the robots take over, I think I can make myself valuable as a boat rower! ...yep, I'm moving backwards through time.

Comments

julie said…
Poor Grumpy Charlie. You are getting old, you know...being 30 and all... :p

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