Remember that part...

...where, in my previous post, I said I'd go home and go to sleep? Well, aside from inserting a "cook rudimentary meal and serve Galina and myself" task between "go home" and "go to sleep," that's pretty much exactly what I did. Unfortunately, after rising to hit the can about two hours ago, I realized - after an hour of tossing and turning - that I'm not going back to sleep any time soon. Thus, I'm fully conscious and at my desk at a quarter to 2 in the morning. My bad.

I accepted a short 17-page translation for Monday. Its length can be viewed as bad news (not much of a payday) and good news (more time left to finish the paper chase), or... as I sit here typing... as no news at all. It occurs to me that by signing the closing papers today, we just paid $750 to a company to act as an intermediary for a tax maneuver called an exchange, wherein we have 45 days to identify potential properties to acquire with the proceeds from the Houston sale, and then some additional inflexibly fixed period of time to close on some such property, else face the capital gains consequences. That adds additional urgency to completing the paper chase, all aspects of which must be complete by the time Galina and I leave for Houston within the week.

Cheers...

Ruminations on thumbdrives...

The recent job in Albuquerque really brought home the ubiquitousness of these convenient USB devices. Just about everyone had at least one of these things, and they were being used in about the same way diskettes were back in the day. In fact, there is now a market for "giveaway" thumbdrives, to be used as advertising gimmicks (the ideal - and cheaper - replacement to those cute little Victorinox nail-clipper/toothpick/tweezer/penknife combination keychain thingies that seem to have gone the way of the dodo since you can't carry such lethal hardware on your keychain any more, at least not on airplanes, which are still the preferred means of travel to and from trade shows, but I digress...).

The loop that goes around one's neck on a Lexar JumpDrive is attached to the part of the device that contains the electronics, which makes a kind of intuitive sense to me, as it would tend to keep that sucker around your neck should the cap covering the USB connector fall off.

The Memorex thumbdrive, on the other hand, is attached to the loop that goes around your neck by the force of the connection between it and the USB connector cap, because it is the cap that is attached to the loop around your neck. This basically means that if the cap should separate from the device, the device will obediently fall off your neck, leaving you with the cap. This would seem contrary enough to simple common sense, but there is one more point.

When I said the cap of the Memorex thumbdrive is attached to the loop around your neck, I left something out (as I wish Memorex had): there is a plastic clasp between the cap and the loop that, when squeezed, separates normally joined pieces of the plastic clasp, thus affording you the convenience of being able to lose your device - cap and all - without actually having to take the loop off your neck.

This, my friends, is progressive design!

I seem to recall thinking about this design "feature" briefly when first becoming acquainted with the Memorex unit ("Gee," I thought to myself, "I'll have to be careful."), but was only reminded of it yesterday, when I spent 15 minutes looking for my 256-MB Memorex thumbdrive after the plastic clasp had separated as a result of absent-mindedly bracing a box filled with mail against my chest as I loaded the car at the post office.

I will have to be more careful in the future.

Cheers...

Slowly recovering...

By the time I finished my diatribe about the design of Memorex thumbdrives this morning, I was beginning to notice a definite coolness in the air. Since I am usually asleep at three in the morning, I paid no attention to it, but did notice that it took me some time to get warm under the covers when I did crawl back into bed.

The temperature last night was the talk of the town, or at least of the store, for most of the morning. A few customers went as far as to estimate temperatures of around 35°F last night. Feht came by the house later and said it had actually gone slightly below freezing. It was still cold at 8:50 am when I opened the store.

Galina and I managed to work the store today without much difficulty; in fact, it was nearing 2 pm by the time I looked up to glance at the clock. However, we were both pretty zonked from the combination of work and lack of sleep (Galina couldn't sleep either, and did a load of laundry while I held forth on device design), so when we got back we both napped before Feht arrived. The kids ought to be back tomorrow night, and Drew and Shannon ought to be back in the store on Monday. I'll probably be there, too, just to bring them up to speed on all the stuff that did, and did not, get done.

In other news, I can actually discern a vaguely rectangular shape under the papers on my desk. I hope to be able to put a real big dent in the remaining paper-chase tasks tomorrow, and to finish the 17-page translation (lotsa pages, few words) that's due Monday as well.

For now, I shall content myself with continuing to process the miscellaneous stuff on and around my work table.

Cheers...