Well, after six years, it looks like my employer is on the verge of going out of business. Even if we survive, it's not a place I'd like to work anymore.

It's been a terrific learning experience. It's allowed me to break into the world of RF engineering. I've had a lot of good management experience. And it's been generally a good place to work.

I've got financial incentives to stay on until the bitter end, which puts me in the perverse position of hoping that the place dies sooner rather than later. I'm honor bound to do the best job I can, but I can't say that my heart's really in it.

It's kind of a "take stock" moment right now - I've got a great family, a house with a reasonable mortgage, and a lot of good prospects in the area. I've been dreaming about a shorter commute, bonuses (we've had none for a while now), perhaps stock options that are worth something.

It will be sad, though, to see the products and designs I've worked on so hard for the last few years disappear.

Since this is not yet documented, I figured I would mention this here now... we are experimenting with some very rudimentary keystroke navigation in the discussion2 system. We support both FPS style WASD keybindings, as well as the standard vi layout of HJKL. Down/Up will cycle you through next/previous comment chronologically... left/right will cycle you through next/previous in thread order. Holding SHIFT down while you press the navigation key will collapse the previous comment. And when you get to the end, pressing down or right will attempt to retrieve more comments if you want them.

What this means is that you can now use D2 to simulate most of the most popular viewing modes of the original discussion system. By dragging both the abbreviate & display sliders right next to each other you effectively remove abbreviated comments which simulates nested mode. By toggling comment retrieval order to 'Oldest First' and using up down, you can effectivel read the discussion from oldest to newest. And of course the default settings gives you the best comments first, providing a nice default view of discussions for most anonymous users (who rarely participate and we want to really show only the best comments).

You can also disable D2 in the comment prefs (the word 'prefs' in the floating dialog box) if you are logged in. Right now we're testing D2 for a large percentage of anonymous readers. As soon as we finish IE7 support we'll roll out D2 for the rest of the ACs.

I just added a new device to the I2C bus on my system. It always takes an hour to figure out the damn address on the thing. You set it up, it doesn't work, and if you are inexperienced you hook up the oscilloscope. I've finally learned to go back and reread the datasheet, where on page 673 they mention, "oh by the way" that the device in the MSOP package has a different address then the SOT package. Then does the configuration software bit shift the address to the left by 1 to make room for the write bit, or does it just OR it on the end?

Arghh... at least I finally got the damn thing working this time before I pulled out the scope.

The Ann Arbor party seemed to go great- lots of people packed Leopold Bros place, doing battle with barflies and football fans. It was somewhat bizarre watching obvious normal bar people try to figure out what this large crowd of 'different' people were all about. We handed out a ton of t-shirts, drank much alcohol, ate nachos etc. Our party had a great number of Slashdot and SourceForge staffers... all folks who have been with Slashdot for so many years it's hard to remember Slashdot without them. I'm not exactly sure how many people eventually showed up... a lot of our RSVPs didn't show, and a lot more didn't bother sign up at all, so I think the two balanced out.

For me personally these sorts of things are always difficult. I'm not very good at crowds. I can smile for a picture, but I'm perpetually nervous when surrounded by strangers who have certain expectations of me. There's a reason I live life behind a keyboard!

Further compounding matters lately is baby induced chronic sleep deprivation. Me want REM cycles. It's always nice to get out and have a beer. Kathleen & I get only so many hours "out" together now, gotta make each one count. The party attendees were all cool... and understanding that I was pretty tired.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who showed up... I've still got the california party later this week. Hopefully my throat heals up by then. The only real problem with this location was the acoustics... I had to shout to be heard, and stick my ear in front of people to hear them (baby crying has done some amount of hopefully temporary ear damage). My throat is raaaaw from yelling. Sucking on cough drops helps.

As for other parties, boxes have been shipped. Hopefully they have arrived to most places on time, although I think they were shipped on a slowish shipping option so I'm not sure. I know some folks got shirts on friday, but I'm sure the others will arrive monday or so. Also, keep in mind that we only had 700 shirts and 2300 attendees from 136 parties with more than 5 attendees. So obviously not every party is getting a box... when we sent out the bulk mail, we had over 100 replies, and I'm sure there was nowhere near enough to fill even that.

But shirts or not, I hope your parties go well. Remember to submit videos or pictures or whatever to anniversary at slashdot dot org for your chance at the $1k ThinkGeek gift certificate grand prize.

So if you only count anniversary parties with 5 or more attendees, we have 128 venues with a grand total of 2366 attendees. The largest parties include Pudge's in seattle with 129, mine in Ann Arbor with 194 and Hemos's in CA with 197.

I'm sure that there will be many RSVPs that no show, but still, that's still an awful lot of interest. We'll be shipping shirts to a good number of those parties, but we have triple the attendees to shirts available, so we'll see just how far we're able to spread the love. Emails will be going out to party planners in the next couple days to get postal addresses.

As we're nearing 100 signed up people for the A2 Slashdot anniversary party, we've changed the venue to Leopold Bros... it's just a block south from the other place and they can handle us. I've also got word that we'll be printing a few hundred extra shirts since there was already like 50 parties with 5+ people in attendance. We certainly won't have enough for everyone, but we'll make a good dent in it.

I will of course put this information into a story next reasonable chance I get for a story, but I figured at least I could get the word out there. The anniversary party entry on the official page has been updated with the new location & address.

The A2 party already has like 70 signed up. We're going to have to rethink venue or time I think if we really have that many people. Wait a few more days and see what we can work out. Keep reading in the party forum for info. We have 500 shirts to print and hand out... it'll be fun to see where they go.

more info as I get it. There will be notes on future stories as days get closer.

From: Askew@hollywoodsportsbook.com

Subject: OBTW

Msg: *All software!

even (W.indows

Vist.ta and Adobe(S3) 87% off goto:

(www.usa010.com)

I just received the above spam text message on my cell phone. This is the first spam text message I've received.

I called my service provider (the service provider formerly known as Cingular). First, I got them to rebate me $0.15 for the text message, which I did to both set a precendent and get my complaint into the system. I then asked about options for dealing with it if it becomes an issue.

At this point, my only choice is to deactivate my text messaging capability. TSPFKA Cingular has no way to filter text messages coming in. Now, I'm a very casual user of text messaging, but I do get updates from the city in case of terrorist attack or a hostage situation at my kid's school. Also, in times of marginal coverage/low battery/everyone calling because of terrorist attack/etc, it's the only thing that will go through. (I live in Washington DC, so I feel it's prudent to be prepared).

After I got my $0.15 refund, I got myself kicked up to a supervisor. I explained how text messages are an important part of my service, how if my cell phone spam goes the way of my email I'm looking at hundreds of dollars a month to pay for receiving spam, and so on. I recognize there's nothing the guy could do at the moment, but I wanted to get the complaint into the system.

I wonder where this will end up.

UPDATE: on 9/4/07, I received a second email spam of the stock pump and dump variety. I called Cingular for my $0.15 credit.

I just finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. My 8 year old finished it on Monday, which was 60 hours after it was released.

It was a great book, all of the loose ends were tied up. Some of the things I had guessed after book six turned out to be true, which is satisfying on many levels.

But really, I'm relieved. I've had my Slashdot filter set to screen out all comments rated less than 1 to avoid spoilers. I've minimized my looking at message boards. I heard there were a lot of spoilers on YouTube, including a video of somewith a bullhorn walking up and down a line of people waiting to buy the book, shouting out spoilers. What kind of person would want to ruin the book for a 10 year old?

If any of you are using an iPhone and are willing to help test out some Slashdot handheld crap, shoot me off a note... my email is the same address as always, and if you can't guess it, you probably can't help anyway ;) I've built a stylesheet and Tim put together a few little options that we think will make a few bits of Slashdot look nice on an iPhone (or really most lower resolution displays) but unfortunately none of us actually HAVE one yet... so anyway, let us know. Or if you work at Apple, send us freebies dammit!

Sorry to all the nay-sayers, but I pretty confident now that multiply isn't going away. I already find myself going to that page before slashdot. I'd suggest picking it up, just so you have an ID there and are associated with it in case we don't come back.

Here's me as a starting person to be joined to. Make sure you give me you /. id when you join, though.

FYI - I've requested to the site a way to grab /. historical journal entries, and they are considering it (they already have this feature for blogger, blogspot, etc...). I'd also like to see cross-posting for those too stubborn to leave...

So, I've just been giving mod points, and there are some new categories I'd like to propose:

-1, bad analogy
-1, overly cynical
-1, you think you're funny, but you're not
-1, unnecessarily mean

+1, nuanced
+1, attempting to see things from another person's point of view
+1, acknowledging your own mistake

After serious consideration, I'm probably going to move to multiply, myself. My id was created a couple days ago (same ID as here), but I think I'll actually move journals over to it.

Most people that aren't on ask "what's so sexy about it"? The answer is it does everything we do here, plus a lot more (pictures, music, etc... but not terrible like myspace). The things its missing? The front page.
Now most people feel like there will be no more growth in the /. circle, which I feel is incorrect. The growth will be probably the same, but the reason will be different.
Right now, growth comes from a new slashdot id that stumbles onto us. We have lots in common, cause, most likely, the new person is a geek like the rest of us.
In Multiply, the new friends will come from other friends friends (follow that?). Basically, I'll become a friend of one of blinder's friends. Since blinder and I have a lot in common, his friend will, most likely, be compatable with me, also, so then the circle grows. Its just as open ended as the growth we have here, even more so, especially in the beginning.

I'd suggest everyone getting an ID, and start friending everyone up. I'd also suggest setting up your messages to only get the 'daily' email, not new emails for every little thing (as that is annoying as hell). Maybe do a weekly thing, who knows. Anyway, I'll still be around here, but probably not many more journals (especially since my journals have fallen off)...
Oh, and its easy to keep in touch with those that DON'T move there, as you can setup an RFF feed for your friends' journals here...

I got another ass kicking last night. Did legs and partially back. The leg squats really kciked my ass (on the hammer-strength machine, 3 sets of 12 forward, and 3 sets backward). Calves and hammys I did well on (especially calves). Then we started on my back. While working on my lats, I started getting light headed... stomach started to ache. I had to constantly take breaks. The PT asked what was wrong, and I told him the light headedness. He asked when I last ate (this was at 5pm), I told him lunch at 11:30. That's when he said "Don't move, I'll be right back"... within a minute, I was on the floor barely concious. Another PT was keeping me awake until my guy returns with a shake. I was seconds away from passing out. So a lesson to learn, here:
Always have a snack before going to the gym! (Yes indeedy! I'm a stupid idiot!)

Anywho, the bicep sprain wasn't a sprain or a strain, just a really sore muscle. We worked it out and its fine today. I must be favoring the right side too much when working on my arms...

Yesterday I went in and told the PT that initially put me on a workout that I want to ramp it up. He asked if I want to get 'big'.
Sure.
Ok then...

And then... he proceeded to fully kick my scrawny little ass. Spent an hour just on biceps, chest, and abs (lots of 'hammer strength' machines, which are machines with freeweights on it that NFL/pro athletes use, then lots of freewieghts. The only 'simple machines' we used was for me to work on my biceps one at a time). I was in agony. He set goals on what I was to do. Then he told me to lay off all the cardio. I do 30 minute cardio on Sun, Tues, Weds when I'm lifting, and 60 on MWF when I'm not. I'm supposed to do 60 minutes a week, and that's it. Plus the way he's working me out, I may not be ready to go at a muscle group after 45, so I'm supposed to work out a muscle group until I fail (then I know I've worked it to the max), and pick another muscle group the next day.
Monday we work on quads, hammys, calves, and tris. The triceps should be the only ones that give me a ton of trouble, as I used to run track in high school, and still have pretty large legs...