Precocious boilers

How about them Boilers? I thought that the freshman class would be pretty good but who knew they would be this good. I think in general it is a "down" year for the Big Ten in men's basketball in general but here they are tied for second a third of the way through the conference season. And they SHOULD win their next three games (or at least be favored going into them). Exciting times once again for the Boilermakers.

Work has been "interesting". They always say that you should never volunteer for anything but in the past couple of weeks I just had to squeak loud enough that I finally got greased. Unfortunately, there was no one who was paying attention to the task of making sure that the final arrangement of the little solder balls on the bottom of the package (the ones that make the connections to the printed circuit board that the part is mounted on) was acceptable to be laid out on the PC board. If it isn't then our customers can't build a cost competitive product and they don't buy our ICs. This would be bad. Of course, once you decide how the solder balls are to be arranged you have to make sure that the places on the edge of the IC that we are designing are in the correct order to mate up with them. And then you have to make sure that the signals on the chip are assigned to the correct pins so that the IC itself can actually be arranged. The IC we are working on has about 450 bonding pads of which about 200 are power and ground (both digital and about eight different flavors of analog which have to be kept separate). This is one of those jobs that nobody wants (there is a LOT of grunt work getting all of the data gathered and a LOT of messing about with spreadsheets to get all of the data organized) but the guy that they had assigned the task had no idea what was involved and he had about three times as much work as he could possibly do assigned to him anyway and he was just letting it slide. It is not hard but its just messy. It gives me something to do :-)

On the home front I think that I have finally recovered from my cold (only coughed half a dozen times in the last 24 hours) and I think that there is light at the end of the tunnel for Alice and her cold (though she is still fighting it). We've just been pretty quiet home bodies trying to fight this thing all month.

Random thoughts while I munch my lunch....

How's about them Boilers? They have gotten off to a pretty good start in the conference with an actual honest to goodness road win last night. The grumbling that you heard last night was probably me concerning the lack of the Big Ten Network on my cable. I am getting to know the folks at BW3 though (the Parmesan Garlic wings are mighty tasty).

It is now official though. I have withdrawn my consideration of living in Alamosa Colorado in the winter. Minus 35 degrees? You HAVE to be kidding me!?!?! Hmmmm, summers in Colorado and winters in southern California? I don't know how I am going to afford two houses so I might have to have a chat with my dad about that whole snowbirding thing. Or maybe my daughters can work out the "in-laws" quarters thing??

Playing with blogger....a first picture

I am trying to "play" by inserting a picture. This is a "random" shot that I happened to have on my computer of a flight. Yes, that is my balloon (with me flying it - in other words I did NOT take the picture :-)

So let me try it...

and see how the post looks.

My boring life...

I listened to the Boilers on the radio last night because the cable companies and the Big Ten Network can't get their acts together. If they had played the first ten minutes like they did the last 30 it would have been an easy win. As it was they dug too big of a hole and just couldn't quite pull it out. I was encouraged that they didn't fold after they got behind but came back. I sure wish I could see more of the games....sigh.

Meanwhile, the folks at the video card support claim that the problem with getting the new card installed is a hardware problem with the card and that I should send it back so that they can exchange it for me. Hunh???? I sure don't see how that could possibly be but then I have been surprised before.

I stayed home from work yesterday and today I am pretty much dragging. Sure wish this cold would go away. I think that I am "better" today than I was Sunday and Monday but I am ready to move on.

A grey morning....

Wow, it is amazing how a cold can just drain you.

Saturday morning I went over and helped hang some drywall in Matt M's garage. They have a nice new house and his new garage is almost as big as my whole house. Afterwards, I came home and watched the Boilers win (it was a game that they should have won and they did). I then went to sleep and other than a few minutes here and there watching football and the Amazing Race I have been asleep ever since. And I still feel like crap. I am thinking today might be a half day at work and go back to bed.

Wow, what a week (or ten days)

Well, the bad thing from the last post meant that my dad and Loretta (I have a tough time calling her my step-mom though she is married to my dad - but she is REALLY nice and great for him) flew in for a few days and stayed with us while the girls were here. Great to see them all together. It seems that every time I see him the past few years he comes up with another story from his past that I had never heard.

In this case, it was another Leroy and Dianna story. They were my parents best friends when I was a kid and after all the kids left home my parents took them on vacation a few times (since they had never travelled much and my parents wanted an excuse to go). This time he said that they passed a horse who had her foot caught in a fence. They stopped at the next house and tried to find the owner but those folks didn't know anything. They then went back to the where she was and flagged down a pickup truck that was driving by. With the guys from the truck they got her loose but she was on the road side of the fence. After prancing about a bit she ran over to another fence and backed up against it much to the interest of the stallion inside that fence. The stallion pawed the ground, snorted and generally displayed his interest (the old phrase "hung like a horse" comes to mind). Dianna asked Leroy why the stallion didn't just "do-it" through the fence, to which Leroy replied 'I don't think that I would risk it either'. Dianna is the very definition of the city girl and Leroy had the quickest, driest wit of any one that I have ever known.

Meanwhile, both girls brought their parents the gift of a cold. I think I got Sarah's and Alice got Jenna's. Thanks LOADS!!

But even though it was hectic, it was GREAT to see them and get to spend some time with them. I sure would like to strike a balance of getting to see them more while not necessarily seeing them too much. It was good to hear from both of them that they got home safely.

Now it is time to get back to work and settle into the grind waiting for the next big event (scheduled for the end of March).