Power Failure.

Last night I walked in to work and about 4 people stopped me to fill me in on the happenings of the last half-hour. Apparently some weird transmisssion-line something failed near Central Sq in Cambridge and caused this huge power outage that ran from Kendall to Harvard Yard. And because our servers are located in another part of town they were affected. So we had lights at work, and little else. No phone, no internet, no network drives. Nothing. It made my night really quiet, as I only had to field questions. I think everyone else's night was a lot busier. Lucky for me, one of my co-workers took pity on me and found me a book to read to help pass the time. (Yeah, it would have been a good night for me to have actually brought my homework with me. I would have gotten tons done, oh well. hindsight is 20/20.) But it made for a nice evening. I got to enjoy the effects of a power outage in a warm, lighted building.

http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2012/11/29/cambridge-power-outage-thousands-hit-blackout/0r93dJVZglkOagAFw8w9bK/story.html 

Something exciting

I had something exciting planned for today, but I'm not really feeling it right now.

Instead, enjoy this picture of a sunset in Antarctica that I found on Google.

On being an adult

I've decided that being an adult is a hassle. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that we hadn't gotten any mail in a long time. But because I'm not always the one to check the mail I couldn't be sure. And my memory isn't great for things like that (I mean, why should I remember when the last time the mail came?). So I started paying more attention. And luckily I was expecting a letter. By mid-week last week I got concerned. We didn't even get grocery ads before Thanksgiving. So over the weekend I called up the post office. After some research they managed to establish that our letter carrier refused to deliver our mail after they slipped on the leaves on our sidewalk and fell. I told the post office that the walk would be cleared by Monday and that our mail needed to be delivered. Well, Monday came and the landscape people did a great job cleaning up the front walk and still no mail. So I called again. And this morning I went down to the post office (where they gave me the go-around and were utterly unhelpful) and ultimately I ended up spending more than an hour sitting on my porch waiting for the letter carrier to walk by so I could ask them personally to deliver my mail (in case you're wondering, it snowed all day--I only went inside because my fingers were so cold I couldn't type anymore).

When our mail was finally delivered this afternoon (about a 2.5 inch thick pile of it) some of it had postmarks back nearly 3 weeks ago (good thing there was only a handful of time-sensitive things in it). I understand the letter carrier's concern over delivering mail to a place where they had slipped and fallen, but what I don't understand is why the United States Postal Service can stop delivery without informing their customers. I can't think of any company where the service provider can quit providing that service without notifying anyone. I would have been more than happy to have swept the front walk 3 weeks ago if I had known it was problem (no one in the entire building uses the front door), but if no one tells me it's a problem then how can I fix it?

What it comes down to now is that I'm going to spend the entire snowy winter wondering if my walk is clean enough for them to deliver my mail (what am I supposed to do, quit my job so that I can be continuously shoveling?). I'm losing faith in USPS, and if I had another option for mailing letters I'd use it.

An online portfolio

I am sure I have a nice long-winded post about how awesome my thanksgiving was, but for the moment I need your help.

I'm working on developing a website (ok, actually I've developed it, it just needs some finishing touches)  for my technology class this semester. The assignment was to create a personal website (with a variety of constraints, like the presence of 20 pages). I decided to create an online portfolio that I could show to a prospective employer.

What I'm looking for from you is feedback. What works and what doesn't? Where did my editing skills fail me? What do you wish was there that isn't?

http://folioleaves.wordpress.com/

I really appreciate your feedback. It will help me a lot. Hope your Monday has shaped up well.

And now it begins

Here we are. Black Friday. A day that some people love and some of us dread (technically, given the two options I'd fall in the camp of the latter, but since I don't really care to shop on any day of the year, this day isn't really much different). Since I'm currently playing with my family in Utah, I am just reposting a timely article I read earlier this week from Slow Your Home. It's about preparing your home for the holidays with a "pre-holiday de-clutter."

Enjoy.

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you all are enjoying a food-filled day with friends and family.

Happy Thanksgiving!

When to call a place home

The question always is at what point in living somewhere does it become "home"? I think one thing that makes a place "home" is the ability to navigate it mostly successfully, most of the time (not perfect, but good enough).

Yesterday I went on an adventure to buy books for a book drive my library is hosting this month and so I went to Porter Square Books in (you guessed it) Porter Square. Even though I've lived in Boston for nearly a year I've not really spent much time in Somerville, and so don't really know my way around it too well. I looked up directions to get to the bookstore and then to get to work afterward. They seemed simple enough and so I headed off on my bike.

Getting to the bookstore went as planned and I had fun picking out some books for a book drive the library was having. After getting my books I headed to the library. I'd been riding along for a while watching for the street I needed to turn on and eventually I decided that I'd missed it. Luckily the next intersection had a long line of cars coming from the direction that I needed to go and so I turned to "follow" them, figuring that they were all people commuting out of the city. Not too long passed before I found myself on a familiar street and much closer to the library than I had thought.

This was one of those moments where I felt at home. I managed to successfully navigate a city that I'm not at all familiar with because this is my home, and ones knows their way around their home.

Greatest accomplishment of 2012

Janssen and her sisters shared their greatest accomplishments for 2012 today. Reading about their wonderful accomplishments has gotten me thinking about what my greatest accomplishment was this past year. Of course this year isn't over yet, but it's close enough that I doubt anything truly earth-shattering will happen. It's been something of a struggle to think of what my greatest accomplishment has been this year, I've done a lot. But one thing that I'm really proud of this year was the bookbinding class that I took this summer. I learned to work in leather which is a lot of hard work, but is really quite fun. And I even got to dip my feet in the waters of gold tooling. I learned so much in that course, and I hope that bookbinding can be a continuing part of my life.

I even took this picture myself.
Sometimes my camera turns out reasonable pictures.