Z-Man's status update

[Z-Man]

Sadly, I had to abort my PHD thesis It got too complicated and I couldn't handle it no more. Yeah, it was a very hard decision, but I wouldn't have had a future in research anyway. I'm just not cut out for it.

But: after a while of exclusive family time paid for by the state (yay Germany!), I now work as a reasonably well paid software developer in a small, cuddly company. So all is well again. Z-Girl is still a bit of a night owl, so I can even spend a reasonable amount of time with her during the week, a luxury other working dads often don't have.

Unfortunately, that means that between work, commute (either by bike or half bus half train, neither suitable for work on the go) and family time, only very little time remains to take proper care of Tron. I still manage to check the forums often enough, but coding... I'll try to steal a couple of hours here and there, but it's difficult. To justify doing that and to keep my sanity, I'll have to cut down my tournament recording, too. I'll still record what happens on my server for bug cries alone, of course, and at the very least leave a running recorder on the designated finals server.

On the plus side again, once our budget has stabilised, there should be room for better server hosting.

[sinewav]

I now work as a reasonably well paid software developer in a small, cuddly company.

Cool! What kind of products do they offer? Is the work interesting and challenging?

[Z-Man]

Design helpers for Elevator/Escalator systems. Essentially, you click together the main specifications (how many floors, what capacity, which system) and details (door/engine/frame/counterweight types) and it produces technical drawings and 3d model exports for you to use as the basis for the real design later, and as a quick way to put together a sale pitch for a customer. Highly specialised stuff. Most of the actual work is standard moving-data-around, but apparently there is math involved in the drawing generation code under my responsibility.

I'm still trying to build a space elevator in that thing. The first idea was to let it just have 12000000 floors, but it doesn't allow more than 100. Lame. The second attempt was to give it just two floors with one very high one, but apparently it plans out some finite size structures (support beams and the like) to fill the whole shaft, so it then ran out of memory. I'll find a way!

[Word]

You could try to make an escalator to nowhere

[sinewav]

I'm still trying to build a space elevator in that thing.

Ha! Awesome. I'll take that to mean yes, your job is interesting and challenging.

[Lackadaisical]

Sucks about your phd z-man, in my mind you've been a phd student for as long as i remember so there must've gone a lot of work into it. Care to elaborate what your subject was about?

Good luck with the new job!

[Jonathan]

I'm still trying to build a space elevator in that thing.

Ha! Awesome. I'll take that to mean yes, your job is interesting and challenging.

That's actually a sign of being bored. But, yeah, awesome!

[Z-Man]

Bump. We're moving on Saturday. And the great news is we'll be out of home Internet for about a month. Yay. So if I'm still a little quieter in November, that's why. We'll be getting us emergency internet via my wife's phone and of course I have net at work (and enough compilation/test run breaks to use it), but it probably won't be enough for proper live server administration and definitely not enough to do four recordings at once.

Connections to the master server I usually run at home have been rerouted to my other master server, so that's covered.

[delinquent]

I don't mind doing some recording, why don't I do this months?

[Phytotron]

We'll be getting us....

You're learning to speak in American Southern vernacular. 'Cept, it's gittin'.

[Lucifer]

So, would you say that you're fixin' to move?

[Phytotron]

Wait, who was that question directed to?

[Lucifer]

Z-man. Why, are you fixin' to move, too, Phytotron?

[Z-Man]

Oh. After looking that up to make sure I'm not admitting to something I'd rather not, yes.

The move is more or less complete. Mobile internet is working about as expected, a little better even. As long as I don't open five browser tabs at the same time, it's fine. Physically, all our books still are in the boxes because we don't have proper bookshelves yet (the old ones are in the basement for being fugly and unstable), but nothing of significance has been lost or broken; my alarm clock and our stirring machine succumbed to the combined abuse from Z-Girl and the move, and the Kinect thing must still be in some box somewhere (I hope). The big PC box isn't set up yet, no hurry there becasue without proper net, there is nothing much to do with it anyway. Plus, there are shelves to build, things to shop for and the old flat needs to be cleaned out properly, so no time anyway.

[delinquent]

I hope it goes well for you. If you get the time, I find great pleasure in building my own furniture, like book-cases and beds etcetera