Rain - It's been raining for a few days now and from the weather forecasts, there's little end in sight. The Souhegan River which crosses near my house about a quarter of a mile away is really high and really moving! At work we've had someone in from the UK office near London. We've been joking that we brought this weather so that he'd feel at home. It's been rather annoying to Michelle because we've had enough of a taste of spring to think that the days of 'cabin fever' are ending -- and then this comes. I predict that a month from now, everyone will have very green lush lawns. And by the end of June I'll be griping about our lawn turning brown, again!
Timothy - Timothy is improving on the walking front. He is still a bit wobbly and he can't yet get up in the middle of a room. He doesn't tend to look down enough and thus he trips on the toys that his siblings leave laying around.
Taxes - Today or tomorrow my copy of Turbo Tax should arrive. I've procrastinated long enough. I don't know why I hate doing taxes so much. I think it's related to the way I procrastinate doing expense reports at work. Collecting your paperwork, punching in all the data, it's sooo ... accountant-ish. You'd think I'd look at it like an engineering problem that I'm trying to solve or an optimization I'm trying to create, but no. I just find it boring, even though I usually come up with a sizable refund.
Safety enclosure - The safety enclosure for our trampoline came yesterday to replace the defective one that broke last fall. I'd install it this weekend but I don't think the weather will permit it.
TiVo - Since I'm stuck indoors (and doing taxes), if the wireless adaptor comes in by Saturday I'll put the newer TiVo on our home network. Having a network adaptor on a TiVo allows it to use your existing broadband connection for getting program scheduling info. This is significant for us because we don't have a phone connection near our television. This past week I also ordered the TiVo Home Media Option (HMO). It's purely a software enhancement to the TiVos. The feature enables a couple of things but what was the clincher for us is that it allows two Tivos to share their recorded programs with each other via the network. You don't have to watch a show solely on the TiVo that recorded it. Thus we can have it beam a show recorded upstairs to the downstairs television.
Training - I spent about half of this week getting trained on the architecture of ARC's upcoming ARC 700 processor. Whereas most new processor designs from ARC have been incremental enhancements on the previous designs, the 700 is a completely new architecture. It's compatible with earlier ARCs from a software standpoint but the guts are radically different. Because of it's seven stage pipeline, it has to do something we've not done before: speculative execution. The technique is common now in Pentiums and PowerPCs but it's our first time doing it. While I've known of the technique from my studies in computer architecture, this is my first time dealing with it "up close".