An excellent day, actually

[stephbg]

Work
Had a quite productive day at work today, despite a bit of I-thought-you-were-going-to-do-that action. Made some progress on the mystery of the mystery consultant coming over to train with us for a while, part of the mystery being that we had the wrong person. Other than that, I clicked into gear with the integration demo materials with which I've been tinkering for far too long, and wrote a slab.

Trains. Nope, I've not run dry on the subject yet.
The new train system worked this morning, and I've quickly established that I will use the new "Perth Underground" (PUG) station from now on, rather than the new "Perth Arse End" Esplanade station. My that's a depressing place, by which I refer to the entire quadrant of the city.

I'd heard that the escalators weren't working at the new PUG station this morning, so this afternoon when I arrived I went straight for the stairs without bothering to check. I hadn't been too concerned about this particular problem when I first heard about it from an office mate this morning. Once I realised that PUG is in The Bowels of the Earth many many flights down I developed a greater appreciation for the morning travails of the stilletto-clad. Well, a bit. No-one has to wear heels like that, you silly persons.

PUG is not finished. It still has the glue smell, tradesman population and scuffed concrete dust of a building site. It also has a fascinating soundscape, reminiscent of THX 1138. I know I was feeling happy this afternoon because I didn't run screaming from the complexity of the sound. I waited my 8 minutes* and happily sorted the sound sources in my head, wondering if mikey_ob might find it professionally interesting. To list a few:

* The buzz of the powerlines

* The hum of the blowers

* The whirr of the escalators

* Feet on the steps and platforms

* "Testing testing" voices on the PA

* Several walkie-talkie conversations between tradesmen and security

* The subdued yet multi-channelled sound of the passengers' words, bodies and packages

* The roar and whine and squeek and rattle and purr of the trains themselves

* Clicks and buttons and switches oh my!

I have a feeling the overall effect worked for me because it approached white noise - something from every part of the audible spectrum. If I paid too much attention to some of the individual channels they because amazingly annoying until I stepped my attention back and balanced the mix again. Brains. Interesting things. Mine does tricks.

(*) That's right, 8 minutes. I know this because they've finally figured out that once you're at the station and going nowhere else, the clock time the train is arriving is not significant (and who knows what time the station thinks it is - their clocks never work)... it's the interval between now and then that you're more likely to care about. Signage now reflects this fact. Yay!

Books
Dropped in to Fantastic Planet determined to either buy or order John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades and dealt with young Emily for the first time. She was polite, efficient, and keen. In short, perky. The perkiest person I've met for a long time. So perky I felt I was running on the wrong frame rate. Did I mention she was perky? Very perky.

Perky.

Films
Last night watched the first of the many commentaries on the Hot Fuzz DVD (Writers/Director). Very very funny, even if I haven't seen Point Break or Bad Boys, or even Bad Boys II. I loved the fact that they used The Little Book of Hollywood Cliches as a checklist for the script. This is threatening to become my favourite film.



Anyone else have train fun today?