originally posted july 20, 2003

pointless milestones

As the month of July wears on, the weather keeps getting hotter and less pleasant in Pittsburgh. Good thing I spend so much time indoors.

six months on the job

July 20 marks six months to the day since I started my job. At a company that's only three years old, I guess that makes me a veteran. I joined the company in January, during a period of rapid growth. Since then, a few more engineers have joined the fray and others have left. Three summer interns, our first ever, now work on project testing. In stark contrast to last summer's lack of work, there are more clients and more projects than ever before to keep my co-workers and me busy.

For me, a 60-hour work week has become a rarity. My average work week runs between 40 and 50 hours, depending on the types of projects that I'm working on. A pronounced shift towards quality work has meant that projects might take a little longer than they did before, but we test everything thoroughly. The occasional long day still happens if anything needs to be fixed, but it's not necessary all the time.

As the company continues to grow, I'm wondering how the engineering department will continue to change. Currently, people can come and go as they please -- will this change to ensure engineer availability? Engineers can bring their own laptops and use their own software -- will this change as the laptops get infected with spyware and Trojan horses?

One thing is for sure: as the company grows, and particularly if it goes public, you won't hear too much about it on-line. I don't want this site to become a haven for insider trading information.

six months in pittsburgh

July 10 marked six months since officially becoming a resident of Pittsburgh, after three and a half years of living on campus. This was my first apartment, my first time living alone, and of course the first time I being employed full-time.

The first few weeks were very rough, wrought with anxiety as I tried to get everything up and running. Even with a week to plan everything out, I still had to set up brand-new furniture, get everything unpacked, get my car registered, and otherwise become a functioning member of society. I swore never to cook after dealing with all the regular tasks of everyday life. It really is incredible how little dorm life prepares you for the real world: dealing with everything from cable TV to plumbing requires any number of phone calls and follow-ups, and labor is expensive.

Over these past six months, I have slowly but surely evolved in my definition of homemaking. Now, I bake and cook a couple of times a week. Small appliances have eased the transition greatly: cooking a chicken dish in the oven seems like a huge chore, but grilling chicken cutlets is incredibly easy on my George Foreman grill. My newest addition to the kitchen, a waffle maker, was welcomed into service yesterday with a batch of delicious "All-American Waffles." I can bake chocolate-chip cookies easily, although other recipes are still coming along. I even bought another bag of shrimp today at the store, expecting to fry or grill it up this week.

Cooking for one is still pretty tough. Most recipes are designed to feed two or more, whether they say so or not. A box of rice pilaf mix can't easily be split up, since I don't know what effect that has on the cooking time or how much I should expect to cook. Halving my Belgian waffle recipe would result in obtuse measurements like "7/8 cup flour." More than once, a failed recipe has resulted in forfeited prep time and a half-prepared meal in the garbage. The experience counts, I suppose, but there's definitely an element of bravery that I take on when trying to cook something for the first time.

one year since Weill in Japan

One year ago today, I was doing much the same errands as I was today -- except I was near Tokyo. My trip to Japan was a fantastic experience, and I documented every day of it. Hundreds of photos and thousands of words are part of the web site created to commemorate the trip.

The trip is still fresh in my mind, to the point where I aggravate friends and co-workers by talking about it entirely too often. If the opportunity should arise at work, I wouldn't mind traveling back to Japan on business. It'll be nicer if someone else pays my way.

Well, time to bake some cookies and head out to Flagstaff Hill tonight -- "Star Wars Episode II" is playing, and I expect a big crowd to show up.

Back to July 2003, or to the year 2003.

Where am I?

This is Weill Aspects, the official news archive of Jason Weill Web Productions. All articles posted to the front page end up here. This page was generated automatically by a series of Perl scripts.

Articles in Weill Aspects are organized solely by date. You may find the Google search in the left column to be useful if you are looking for an article but do not know the date on which it was posted.

Weill Aspects is composed of static web pages generated as appropriate when a new article is posted. It was developed in May 2001 as a way of managing the content on this site. I also used it extensively while in Japan, during which time I did not have continuous access to the Internet. I was able to write daily updates during July and August 2002, pack the files onto a CD-R or memory device, and upload them from the Internet-connected computers at school.

These scripts are all hacked together in less than elegant fashion, and I don't plan to release them. Some of the design that went into Aspects also was used to develop Livestat, a suite of Perl scripts to process statistics for academic competition tournaments. Livestat is available freely.