first there was no more chair:

now there’s no more couch. we bought a leather couch and chair to replace the upholstered couch and matching swivel chair (that we had since re-upholstered since it looked pretty bad) about a week ago, and last night i helped dad get the couch into his truck so he could take it to goodwill.

after dad and i got the couch into the truck, i went inside and grabbed the cushions and carried them first to anne and then to mom and proclaimed “last chance to touch the old couch!!” it was a very comfortable couch, so anne hugged one of the cushions, while mom just kind of patted one cushion in a “oh-alright-glenn” sort of way.

well, apparently at goodwill they don’t take upholstered stuff, so he took it to the dump, and at the dump there’s apparently a giant shredding machine that the couch was dumped into and shred up.

at dinner dad told me about shredding the couch (he had already told mom and anne), i said “SEE? SEE WHY I LET YOU HAVE THAT LAST CHANCE TO TOUCH THE COUCH? SEE??” and mom and anne said that they understood why i did because when they had heard that the couch had been shredded up they were both sad about that couch coming to such an ending — anne said she got to thinking about the times she was sick and ended up spending the day stretched out on the couch, watching tv.

the new couch is ok, but it’s not as comfortable to sit in. it’s ok for me to lie down on it, though… there’s too much padding in the back cushions to make it comfortable for me to sit up. maybe it’ll be better once it’s broken in some.

at work, the quality team is split into two (well, technically three) groups:

– quality

– continuity marketing

– executive relations (which is where i am)

continuity marketing, or “CMO” and executive relations both fall under the same umbrella and supervisor. the quality team has its own analyst, while CMO has an analyst that also does some work for executive relations. the quality team has its own supervisor, while CMO and executive relations share the same supervisor. all three teams fall under the same manager.

well, that was true at least until yesterday when a team huddle was called for everybody in quality, CMO and executive relations, and our manager told us that the analyst for the quality team is no longer with the company. :/ they’ll probably open up his analyst position, and while an analyst role is what i should be looking at for my next step, i’m not at all interested in being the analyst of the quality team, or having to report to the supervisor of the quality team.

i still haven’t heard anything about the analyst position with the systems team at work yet. because i’m still technically on this special 90-day project, i can’t really do any work for executive relations in case i’m needed for something related to this special project (i’ve helped out on easy ones once or twice when someone was out sick), but on the other hand there’s not been much work for me to do so i spend most if not all of the time at work taking trainings (both required training, as well as continuing this 44-segment training on preparing for the six sigma black belt exam) and trying to find anything interesting in the intranet to keep me occupied (today it was reading through the logic tree to see what happens when someone calls the 800-line… FUN TIMES. though i also found out that there’s a way to get certain account-related information as XML data by constructing certain web addresses in the intranet, which was a little interesting).

i’m making a list of some things i’d like to explore further if i should get the analyst position with our systems team, but if i don’t get it then i don’t know what i’ll do since what i’m currently doing is REALLY BORING and i’m not exactly looking forward to going back to executive relations since that’s MOSTLY BORING and not at all what i want to do long-term.

i still haven’t fully decided if i were to be offered this position as an analyst at work if i’ll take it or not.

i’ve been slacking a little in my external job search recently because i want to find something else but i’ve been busy. i’m frustrated that it seems almost like to do anything involving technology around this area, you’ve got to have a security clearance, which i don’t have. however, i remembered a position i also applied for about 2 months ago now with the department of energy doing information systems stuff that i qualified for and checked on the status of my application; apparently i’ve been recommended to the subject matter expert for further review. it sucks though because i can’t quite put my finger on exactly what i want to do, but it’s like i’ll know it when i see it.

i still drive my coworkers bonkers with bad jokes and such, though:

coworker: “i dropped my earpiece in my iced tea and it sounds garbled.”

me: “it should still work…”

coworkers: “glenn, NO. SIT DOWN, BE QUIET, NO JOKES FROM YOU.”

me: “…if you were making cold calls.”

coworkers: “SIGH. YOU’RE NOW ON PUNISHMENT.”

coworker: “those schools are filled with thugs and gangbangers and such.”

coworker 2: “they’re 5 and 6 years old!!”

me: “that means when they cut each other, they use safety scissors!”

coworkers: “YOU DON’T KNOW WHEN TO STOP, DO YOU?”

and why is it that mom’s coworkers appreciate the “roy rogers bought a new pair of boots” joke, and none of my friends do? hm? hm?

i ordered a usb turntable last week and it arrived on friday. since then i’ve been going through some records of dad’s and that i got from gaiadea and geminid‘s dad and have been importing some of them into the computer. oh, i’ve imported some of these a few years ago, yes, but this is better. why? here’s why:

i had tried to import some of these records several months ago but our record player seemed to be acting up, so it couldn’t be trusted to play back properly (though dad tested it after i got my turntable in the mail and he claimed it seemed to be working fine, huh). at least with the usb connection to the computer it sees the turntable as just another audio input and i actually haven’t needed to mess with levels and all sorts of knobs just to get a good sound of the the record player.

a month or so ago i was also importing some of my cassette tapes of my high school band’s performances from freshman and sophomore year (junior year and senior year we finally got into the 20th century and started releasing cds of the performances) and was frustrated at the amount of hiss on the tapes and tried to find a good program to lessen the hiss sound. i’d looked at programs like soundsoap years ago, but that’s $130. since then i found these programs clickrepair and denoise, made by a retired australian mathematician professor or something, and they’ve been AWESOME. and only $40 US each if you order them one way (through the automated online software licensing system), or $40 australian each if you order another way (he sends you a paypal payment request and after you’ve paid he sends you the license). so the $40 australian way is a little slower, but cheaper because of the exchange rate, so it cost me only $65 for the two licenses. what i really like about it is that you can listen to the incoming file, the output, or the noise that’s being removed. so, by listening to the noise, you can tweak your settings so that you don’t remove any of the actual music and that you remove only the hiss and such that you don’t want.

some of these albums are taking more tweaking than others, but some are pretty impressive. i imported some 78s earlier tonight on shellac (which creates a pretty severe hiss, much worse than vinyl because of the physical media, vinyl is much smoother), and after i removed the clicks and pops with the clickrepair app on the default 78 mode and the hiss with denoise on the default 78 mode, it doesn’t sound perfect but it sounds incredibly better than it did originally.

when i originally imported these records years ago, the software i used just put a filter on the entire recording to remove the hiss or the rumble or clicks, so it really degraded the sound. these new recordings with the clickrepair and with denoise are terrific since they work on only the actual clicks and pops and such.

i was going through my mail while some of these records were being imported…

first letter: bill from auto insurance (which reminds me, i need to put my new insurance cards in my car)

next letter, also from auto insurance. ooh, a check! free money!! i guess i overpaid… oh, wait, it’s only for $3.24. turns out it’s what’s left over after i cancelled my renter’s insurance, hah.

still no word about the position at work. we moved our desks today to temporary cubicles, since where we’re going to be moving hasn’t been fixed up yet. we don’t like our new spot, though — it’s right in the middle of a bunch of supervisors so there’s always people coming and going and they’re all surrounding us and it’s loud and there’s some motor that keeps starting up right underneath us and making our floor vibrate and it’s freezing cold and far away from the bathrooms and the people who previously inhabited these cubicles were pretty gross and so even though we cleaned the desks and computers and keyboards and mice and chairs it’s still pretty gross. rumor is we’ll be in these seats for the next two weeks (which i guess is ok by me, since if it’s three weeks i won’t notice since i’ll be leaving for london as of next friday).

i went to the baseball game with bruno_boy on saturday and we saw matt wieters hit his first major league hit (a triple!). i guess you should believe the hype. i partially went to see the game, but also to pick up an awesome father’s day present for dad (ssh! it’s a secret!). i saw on tv the other day that the orioles are selling game-used baseballs at the park after the 6th inning for their “orioles reach” charity – they have a spreadsheet printout with the date, the opponent, the pitcher who was in the game at the time, the player who was up to bat, and what inning it was, and you pick which ball you want from this list and they find that ball in a box with other balls from that game (each has a hologram with a serial number, also on the spreadsheet, and there’s a website that major league baseball has where you can put in the hologram info and see that same information about the item as well if you want to verify it). premium balls (i guess yankee games and red sox games) and if balls from that current day’s game are $50 each, and all other ones from the previous games are $30. so, i bought dad a baseball from the second game this season when the family went to go see the orioles play the yankees. unfortunately they didn’t have any left thrown by uehara, probably since it was his first game in the majors leagues, so those were gone. but still i think it’s a pretty neat surprise for a present. picked up a display case for it and everything.

a week ago, cynicalscribe‘s dad was trying to talk her sister, her sister’s roommate and i into doing the marine corps marathon’s 10k run (gotcha! bet you thought i was going to run a marathon. yeah right.) later this year. i kind of haw-haw’d it (which is a bit like pooh-poohing it), but i warmed up to it more once i remembered it was a 10k run and not a half-marathon like i somehow thought it was, and also when i realized that it’s not until the end of october so it gives me plenty of time to train. plus, my nike+ has a special training thing so i told it that i’m a beginning runner and that i needed to train for a 10k run and it plots out a running schedule for you for 12 weeks, and so today, day 1, i had to run 3 miles. i ran 1 mile around the track around the stadium next to my house a week or so ago and probably did half-run and half-walk. this time i still probably did half-run and half-walk, but triple the distance from that last time, so go team me! plus, i uploaded an appropriate image for my nike+ training regimen:

there’s also a similar one on my website, over on the right-hand side where i keep fit.

i don’t know if cynicalscribe should approve of me running around the track, since there are some very attractive ladies who also go running around said track, or walk their dogs, or go for a walk themselves. but then again, maybe she doesn’t have anything to worry about because i generally have to take my glasses off when i go running so they don’t get all sweaty or bounce around, so i can’t quite get that good of a look. but let me tell you, those are some attractive blurs i can kind of see when i go around that track. and speaking of running around a track, i remembered these pictures i put together years ago when i took a running/jogging class for my phys-ed credit at umbc:

thank you, i’ll be here all week. try the veal. etc.