Another Year Older... 34th Year Edition!

So I was going to write a blog post called "Another Year Older" describing the state of affairs, then realized that I've gotten to the point where I blog so infrequently that last year's post with the same name actually fit on the blog homepage.

Been a crazy week. I've been to New Jersey twice in the last week (we drove out for Victoria's PsyD graduation and our wedding anniversary over the weekend, and then I flew back for funeral services for my grandmother late this week). To make things more fun, we have a wedding next weekend meaning I will have traveled from Detroit to New Jersey three times in two weeks.

Went to Windsor yesterday to celebrate my birthday. Had never been to Canada before (despite a failed attempt around 1999 with my cousin and brother). Much like the United States, except all the signs are in both English and French, and there were windmills *everywhere*. Funny how here in the States the energy debate is over coal versus nuclear, while in Windsor it's whether or not to augment the existing windmills by placing them in Lake Huron.

Also, my wife made some kickass red velvet cupcakes.

34 feels old.

Need to spend time today getting caught up on work. They've been very supportive of my situation, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm falling behind on crap and need to get things in order. There was only so much I could do via the corporate email built into my phone.

Will have to get some photos posted from recent activities.

Fun with Taxes!

After spending most of Sunday, as well as working late last night, I finally completed my taxes. Whew!

I've discovered it's bad to do all of the following in a single tax year:

• Get married
• Relocate to a different state (including tax-deductible moving expenses)
• Operate two different home offices
• Sublet an apartment in a Cooperative
• Have tuition expenses
• Change jobs (but not at the same time as relocating)
• Have enough 1099 income to be deemed "self-employed"
• Have not-reimbursed business expenses, including travel and asset depreciating equipment
• Be enrolled in a managed fund with a high volume of stock transactions
• Compensation via a not-tax-exempt federal grant

In the end, my return was something like 92 pages, which feels a bit longer than previous years... Repeat after me: "Audit risk."

Updates and things and stuff

Been a while since I've posted anything here.

What's going on?

Still living in Detroit. It's cold here. I miss my friends and family back in New York and New Jersey.

I resigned from Hauppauge a few weeks ago and took a job at BMC Software (which I start on February 28th). It's basically the same people I worked with at my previous job, but they got acquired back in November. They are all good guys and I look forward to working with them again.

I'm still working on technical stuff over at KernelLabs, although my Linux work has slowed a bit since going to work for Hauppauge. It's a bit tough to bring myself to work on stuff as a hobby that I already work on all week long as my day job. I suspect things will pick up a bit though when it reverts back to being "just a hobby".

A busy month for travel. I fly to Long Island tomorrow for a week to wrap things up at Hauppauge. Then I'm back in Detroit for a week. Then I fly to New York to spend my first week at BMC. In a bit of irony, I'll be staying at the Hilton Garden Inn that's a block from my Manhattan apartment on 35th Street.

Victoria and I drove to Chicago last weekend to see Vanessa and Mike. Pics are on Facebook. I had never been to Chicago before, so it was nice to see a new city.

I've pretty much settled into a routine:

• I wake up at around 8:30.
  
• Go to "work" in my pajamas.
  
• Get caught up on work email from Germany.
  
• Walk to the local 7-11 and get my morning coffee (I'm no longer in pajamas by this point, thankfully).
  
• Resume working. Mostly mucking around with Linux drivers or the MediaMVP-HD.
  
• Lunch; usually leftovers from the previous night, or PB & J.
  
• Continue work.
  
• Afternoon coffee. Usually 7-11, or sometimes I just brew some instant if I'm feeling too lazy to go out.
  
• Victoria gets home around 4pm. I usually have a couple more hours of work to do.
  
• Dinner.
  
• Fun with Victoria.
  
• Bed.

Lately we've been going to a movie theater that has $2.50 movies. They have obviously been out for a while, but I'm rarely in a hurry nowadays to go to the movies, and at five bucks for the two of us you really can't lose.

Valentine's Day is on Monday, which is always a bit tough on me since it's my Dad's birthday. Because I will be out of town though, Victoria and I will be celebrating after I get back.

It's 3am, and I really need to get my insomnia situation under control. I've been working a lot of long days recently trying to get things wrapped up at Hauppauge, and I think it's screwed up my sleep schedule.

I've come to realize that one downside of working from home is that your boss has no idea when you worked a sixty hour week. If I were less honest though, I guess you could argue he wouldn't know if you worked a thirty hour week either.

Off to try to get some sleep.

Loss and grief

I've been thinking alot lately about the people I've lost. Sometimes it's hard to reconcile how long it's been.

I miss them.

Moving to Michigan....

Of all places people thought I might end up, I really doubt "Detroit" was on the list. Last week Victoria secured a one-year internship in Detroit, which starts on September 20th. It's a great position and I'm very excited for her. The downside of this of course is it means we have to scramble to get relocated, get a sublet for the apartment in New York, and did I mention it's Detroit?

Victoria left this morning with her sister and a carload full of stuff.

It's only for a year, and we're definitely coming back afterward, but the next couple of weeks will definitely be stressful (as evidenced by the fact that I'm blogging about it at 2:30am).

I have to catch the LIRR to Hauppauge in less than six hours.

Hmmm.... What else is going on. I spend most of my days staring at schematics and trying to figure out how the hardware guys screwed up, which I guess is fun. I started doing some OSX driver programming, which is new and interesting. I've learned enough Python in the last couple of weeks to not be up a creek working on a platform that lacks a Perl interpreter.

Helpful Safety Tip

If you're on a Linux/UNIX system, and you want to extract a CPIO archive, don't do the following as root:

cpio -idv < archive.cpio


Because if the CPIO archive happens to have absolute pathnames and contains files like /lib/libc.so.0, you will render your computer inoperable.

Here ends another lesson in the category I call, "Duh, I already knew that but managed to do it anyway".

Busy busy busy with the new job....

Figured it might be worthwhile to talk about the new job for a bit. For those who didn't know, I started working at Hauppauge Computer Works about six weeks ago. The product I work on is called the MediaMVP-HD:

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_mediamvp-hd.html

It's a pretty neat little box. Linux based, supports HD playback, and only sucks up 5 watts. Has lots of potential as a frontend for a certain home theater solution. They even let me write the start of a "Developer's FAQ" which is publicly posted on their support site.

As a result though, I've been *really* busy. Hence why there haven't been any recent LinuxTV contributions, nor have I been lurking in the #linuxtv or #v4l IRC channels. I still watch the linux-media mailing list, but generally speaking I've been pretty quiet.

If it's any consolation though, I'm not just ignoring LinuxTV: I haven't read Gizmodo, Engadget, or Slashdot in weeks, and my Google Reader has 1000+ articles in it.

But don't think that my going to work for Hauppauge means I'm abandoning LinuxTV. On the contrary - having another Linux evangelist working for a major tuner manufacturer is definitely a good thing for the community. Just wait and see what I've got up my sleeve... ;-)

But yeah, doing a wedding, a honeymoon, a job change, and a move in the same six week period turned up to be quite a challenge.