February 16, 2011
Big Day for Suzy 'n Brian
Good morning! Today is the 3rd anniversary of Suzy and Brian's wedding. And by sheer coincidence it's also the day they start their move back to Illinois, leaving balmy St. Petersburg, FL behind. Welcome back to Illinois Clausen family!
Today Abby tries her hand at skiing as her class is having a field trip to Crotched Mountain. The conditions should be nice today with sunshine and temperatures in the upper 30's. Much better than yesterday when Timothy's class went on a field trip snow shoeing and the high was 30°F with brisk winds.
After dropping the girls off at their schools, I head down towards Boxborough. For the first half I listened to yesterday's readings and homily. For the second half I offered up a set of Glorious Mysteries. I stopped for a fill up along the way. Diesel around here is now ranging $3.59 to $3.69 per gallon. Yowsers! Good thing George Bush isn't in office or that might be considered expensive.
It's that time of year for me again as an engineer. Twice a year I have to do a self-assessment for my supervisor, who combines it with 3rd party reviews to make my bi-annual performance report. When one looks back over six months of work and development, it's always a little eye opening.
Because of the acquisition of ATI's mobile graphics division by Qualcomm, my "Vacation Accrual Date" goes back to when I started at ATI, not my first day at Qualcomm. So today is my five year point. That means I now move up to 4 weeks of vacation per year! Now whether we'll ever have a break in the development schedule that allows me to actually take vacation is another story...
Went with two friends from AMD to grab some subs up in Acton. I've got two conference calls this afternoon. Hopefully I can squeeze out some new tests in between...
Learned an interesting if somewhat meaningless statistic this afternoon. In 2010 in terms of volume, Qualcomm is second only to Intel in terms of GPUs shipped. Surprisingly we're well ahead of NVIDIA and ATI. Over 150 million GPUs shipped in 2010. It's counterintuitive because Qualcomm is considered a cellular/mobile solutions company, not a graphics company.
Stayed at the office a bit late before heading north. Decided to take it easy and listen to BOL #1409 on the drive. Went straight to St. Patrick's for tonight's RCIA class. I did the exegesis of this Sunday's readings, where Jesus "kicks it to eleven" in these continuing verses from the Sermon on the Mount.
When I got home I saw the progress on the main staircase. The carpet is all gone, the new wood stairs are in place and things look promising so far. Tomorrow will involve more painting, staining, and polyurethaning the steps ... and making the house stink. Now... how to keep the cats out of the way during that time??
While Michelle and I wait for Claire to get home, she informs me that Abby had a good time trying her hand at skiing today. You couldn't have asked for better weather to try it out. Sunny and above freezing. I'm glad she had a good time.