I was looking at a pilot's map of the northwestern united states when I realized how ridiculously close (for an airplane) all the other states were. I thought I was all isolated up here, but the map I have for Washington state has Salt Lake City on it. I didn't realize Utah was that close. In fact, I didn't really know anything about the western part of the country. I mean, I knew California was out here. And Washington. I've heard of Nevada. However, today I found this map on wikipedia and realized I never actually understood where Texas was. I knew it bordered Mexico somehow, but it my mind it used to be transposed next to, or on top of, Florida. Turns out its actually in the middle of the country--at least left to right wise. There's actually whole column of states whose existence I've almost completely missed: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma. Ok I've heard about Oklahoma. Something about a land rush.
Anyway, the western half of the U.S. seems a little better organized and slightly easier to keep track of, perhaps just because the states are bigger and slightly more squarelike. Washington only touches two states, three if you count Canada. It kind of makes me want to go exploring and check out all of these places.
In other news, I solved the problem that broke our testing system. The testing system was ridiculously complicated to install, so I actually just snuck my change out again, and messed with the files live. I was quick about it, so fewer alarms went off. This job is annoying when I'm alone banging my head against the wall, but when I'm with someone who knows the systems, it is exciting to zoom around on the command line messing with stuff.
I still have the personal problem of losing interest immediately after solving a problem. For some reason, if troubleshooting something takes more than an hour or two, I have to literally walk away as soon as I know the answer. Even if the solution is a five line code change, or to go to some website and do something, I don't bother. The only thing I can to is explain what we found, or think about something totally unrelated. Can you imagine anyone in another field doing that? Like a surgeon going, "oh there's a bullet next to his heart. I knew it! Let's get that out tomorrow I'm getting a soda." Yeah. I'm not sure I even wrote everything down...I just left all of my programs running and went home hoping there wouldn't be a power outage.
Had some people over tonight to play Settlers. It was awesome. I made the poor choice of starting with two harbors--ok actually it wasn't a terribly strategy. It sucked in the beginning, but I started with a sheep tile with a 6 on it, and a sheep harbor, and a rock tile with an 8 on it, and a rock harbor. So I was actually set up pretty good. Except that 6 hardly ever got rolled--probably five times in the whole game, and for most of those times the robber dude was sitting on my sheep tile with the 6. But I digress. It turned out to be a long, exciting, and close game, and I was close to winning when someone else one. Oh and none of that was important, actually. What was important was two girls came. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Carter is a girl's name. It kind of made up for a few weeks ago when I discovered that Fio, who talks too much on a mailing list at work, was actually a guy.
Ah, and my family visited this past weekend. Took them to dinner in the Space Needle, which was a great choice. The food was good and the view was great. I will probably take every girl(s) that visits me there. We also did an hour-long harbor tour, which was good because I got some skyline shots for facebook and the boat had a bar AND I found out that crane operators make 100k a year and work about 4 hours a day. I'm going to save that little gem of knowledge and bring it up every time one of my friends does some math and realizes they work more hours than I do. Ugh, and they get to play with a giant crane! I want to be rich just so I can build a crane to operate. I'll make it exactly one city block, and the crane snapper thingy will precisely fit most automobiles, and I will spend all day moving cars from one street to another so everyone forgets where they're parked.
Oh, and the underground tour. Interesting, definitely. Piqued my interest in the history of Seattle. Could be a good date, but only with the right kind of girl.
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