May the best tracker win...

So the Misfit service was down all day yesterday. I sent in feedback and help requests and got back crickets. This morning, it was back online. I got a 'oh no! DM me with details' from their Twitter person this morning. And 3 emails asking for information - all of which was in my original requests and not needed to solve their problem. Their customer service so sucks.

The Fitbit arrived yesterday evening. The venn of them is that they both track swimming. The details of what and how they report the results and the other offerings they have is all really different. So now I'm wearing both. And the plan is to do that for a week and then decide which to keep. It looks ridiculous. But, who the fuck cares? Not me.



This morning, at the end of my swim, this really buff, very cute youngish (30's) guy who has been swimming several days a week lately asked me about my swimming - "you really go at it! are you training for something or just doing it for fun?"

Dear Buff Cute Guy,

Your good deed quota has been met for the month. Complementing an old lady on her athletic endeavors earns double points and a chance at our year end drawing for fabulous prizes. Thanks for your good work,

Sincerely, Karma

So last night, I was happily watching the game when BAM. Third inning. Here comes the asshole who usually ruins my Tuesday home games. I got Tuesday free from him but here he is to ruin Wednesday. So I hit mute. And I spent the game playing games on my tablet, while I listened to my audiobook and kept an eye, kinda, on the game. Just before 10 pm, it was the bottom of the 9th. Mariners 4 and Minnesota 5. There were two outs. A Mariner got a hit and went to first base. And then the catcher steps up to bat. He's been quite the hitter recently. And last night he plants a come from behind walk off home run winner. It was wild. And fun. Even with mute on.

When the asshole is not in the TV booth, I do love the tidbits dropped by the regular two guys. There's a guy who plays for Minnesota who was born in Germany and whose dad is a ballet dancer and his mom is from Texas. As much as I love Diamond Club games, and I really do, you just don't get that kind of fascinating detail.

The fire alarm is going off at the football stadium. It's been going off for about 20 minutes and I have not heard firetrucks so I'm thinking drill. And I'm thinking I'm ready for the end of the drill. Thanks muchly.

It's chilly and rainy today. Ordinarily this would be great news for me but they have not fixed that leak upstairs so it is raining on my new table cloth. Sigh. It's supposed to rain through tomorrow. My concern is if the ceiling falls in. It's on the terrace and so not really going to hurt anything irreparably but still it would be nice if it was fixed. I did get an email this morning from the building manager asking. I suggested maybe putting a tarp down upstairs. The good news is that I really don't have to worry about a fix or a repair, it will be done for me. Nice.

On today's list is to make a mat for Zoey. She's taken to these two particular spots on the day bed in the sewing room. And they are now full of cat hair. I think I have a use for those knit fabric scraps which won't work for dolls. They will work fine for Zoey nap mats - I just need to piece them together.

I may wander up to the park and get some lunch from one of the food trucks later. Gotta give these trackers something to track.

My tweets

• Wed, 18:15: The @Misfit app has been down all day. No way to sync/save/compare w/ friends. CS ignoring me. Is this the @Fossil end? Hey, @fitbit flex 2.
• Wed, 20:55: hey @davezatz - need new step/swim tracker vivofit 3 or flex 2? (need after swim nums - not during) - thots? Other ideas? don't want watch
• Thu, 07:14: Misfit vs Fitbit @ Seattle, Washington https://t.co/Y2xk6ocu4s

Continued

So... the new job at the little PR agency? Pretty much a fail. I was not at all comfortable there and did not enjoy the work or the people. The guy who owned the agency wasn't impressed with me or my work. So when that 3 months came up we could not agree to part ways fast enough.

But... he said 'so why don't you go home and work for yourself? you can have all of my web clients and consult for our web stuff plus just take John's work.'

It sounded like a good idea to to me so I did just that. His work turned out to be a couple of odd jobs and then nothing more but John's project had legs.

The John in this case was a real estate guy who worked in the offices next to ours. He had this whacky idea and had been talking to the PR guy and me about it for a couple of weeks. He wanted to put a kind of multiple listing service for commercial real estate on DVD's and sell it around town by subscription.

It quickly morphed into a website and for the next 2 and a half years, I worked out of my living room building and running Office Space Online. It was quite an adventure. I used skills I did not have. I interviewed with Jeff Bezos himself before Amazon was even a thing online. I was trying to find out how they were going to catalog their books so I could replicate it to catalog office space. He told me to use something called ColdFusion which is exactly what we did. (He saw right through my job interview ruse and turned out to be very helpful.)

This photo is from a newspaper article the Seattle Times did about this new thing called websites.


That cat is Bubba. I got Bubba as a tiny kitten when I lived in Rochester. He also enjoyed California. But, he, too loved Seattle best. He was the best cat ever. A big ole hunk o' love. He would actually give me hugs. He lived until he was 18. That expression still cracks me up today.

The work on Office Space Online was fun and interesting. But the fledgling company had a hard time financially and often I did not get paid. Then they hired a guy and paid him way more than me - and actually paid him. So I decided to move on. They had, at one point in lieu of some pay they owed me, given me stock in the company. (About 15 years after I left the company - and about that long since I'd actually even spoken to anyone there - I got a check for $15,000 and the next year $2,000 more. They had sold the company. It was a pleasant surprise.)

Meanwhile, I hunted around for a job and decided that it would be fun to work at Microsoft and I conned this very cool guy there into hiring me.

To Be Continued

Playing Fabric Chicken

Often when you are knitting, particularly when you are not working strictly off a published pattern (which happens more than not), you are really guessing as to how much yarn you need. When you guess wrong and run out of yarn, it's called playing yarn chicken (and losing).

Today I played a variation I just invented called fabric chicken.

I have a new pattern I want to try and it calls for 5 pieces. It's another shirt but with some fancy-ish details and I really want to practice the pattern at least once before I sink $ into good fabric so I pulled out the scraps from my old projects. Most worked but some didn't and I had to add pieces. In my mind, the result will be a fascinatingly eclectic one of a kind piece of clothing. In reality, it will likely look like a blind seamstress made it but, what, ever.

I got all the bits cut out and organized. I'll probably put them all together tomorrow and we'll find out - art piece or trash.

Today we play Minnesota again. We've now beat them twice and probably pissed them off so they will come out with guns blazing. Oh well.

Chicken and eggplant for dinner. I haven't decided yet how I'm going to cook either. Probably roasting.