The World of Scott Mindeaux

Quantum and Temporal Mechanics

Well what a Friday it was. Robert was out today attending his boy’s graduation from Kindergarten, Dan was out on vacation still and Joe was out on comp day. We headed to breakfast. It was just me , John, Ken and Dave. John Murphy was busy re-building a system. Breakfast turned into a discussion of Quantum Theories and Mechanics and well as well as Temporal mechanics. John’s head was spinning. After breakfast I worked on a couple of tickets. There were a few new system assessments that needed to be completed.

I left work at about 1:40. I headed home to take a nap. I’m working a party tonite at the school for a private event. I went to take nap, fearing that I wouldn’t be able to wake up I set the alarm. You ever have one of those dreams where you thought you got up and all ready to head out, only to wake up and find that you’re late? Don’t you hate that?

Well, needless to say, I was NOT late. In fact I was first on the scene. The school was hosting a party for a law firm. The partners wanted to do something for their interns. There were about 20 of them. 3 partners, their office administrator and the interns. What a handsome set of people. Good mix of age and gender and ethnicities. To make things easy, the dishes were a Tomato and Bean salad, served cold or room temperature. We grilled three beef tri-tips and 2 salmon filets. The group also baked Carol Cotner Thompson’s famous Brownies! I met a new TA tonite, her name was Terry. We were both commenting on how we thought we knew everyone at the school only to surprise ourselves. I really liked Terry and I hope to work with her again. The party seemed to be a success.

I got home around 10:30 and decided to stay in instead of heading out… my social life sucks.

P.S. Watched Stargate SG-1 from taping it earlier. I have one thing to say… Jonas Quinn (CORIN NEMIC) looks good in wet clothes!

More Arrests?

As soon as I got up this morning..that song was in my head…

I wish I was brave
I wish I was stronger
I wish I could feel no pain
I wish I was young
I wish I was shy
I wish I was honest
I wish I was you not I

The song has a good beat. Anyway…it was meetings again today. Dan is on vacation for the next week, so I’m on ticket’s until he gets back next Friday. We had our bi-weekly Mac meeting with Pleasant and Fisher Price. Just prior to that however, was all the hub-bub about the arrest of a Mattel Employee and the possible dismissal of another. Don Roussin in our Samples group was seen being taken away in handcuffs in the Tower yesterday. Then was the apparent dismissal of Frank Foretich, Senior Vice President of Creative Services. Needless to say it was the subject of many hallways talks today. A lot of people huddled in groups talking about what happened. Then today around 3pm, two squad cars were parked in the circle in front of the Tower. Were there additional arrests today? Know one knows.

Eric Vidar at the Pleasant Company started the meeting. We talked about our various OS X progress reports and talked about Mac representation on the various task forces formed last week. I’ll be serving on the Communications and Future Standards committee. After the meeting, Dave, Ken and I stuck around to talk about our previous past live experiences in other companies. Then we talked about that at one of my previous jobs, we had user group meetings and even put out a monthly newsletter that informed the Mac user base of new information and troubleshooting tips. Why haven’t we done this at Mattel?? I think I asked once, only to be dismissed.

Then Josie, Chris, John and I went to Tony’s for lunch. We had burgers and pizza. But the most bizarre thing happened at lunch. We were sitting outside enjoying the sun when all of a sudden Chris started turning red and his eyes were tearing up. He was gasping for air and he started to point at himself. The sound coming out of him was like no sound I have ever heard before. We kept asking him if he was choking, if he could breath…all we got was the sound and him pointing at himself. Finally his color began to return to normal. John, Josie and I were just staring at him waiting for some kind of response. It turns out that something in the carbonization and fizz of his coke went down the wrong pipe and I guess he was choking. Needless to say it was the topic of discussion for the rest of lunch. Poor Chris…

Getting back to the office brought me to some email and voicemails then we had a 3pm meeting to go over the “Cumulus” incident.

6:00 could not get here fast enough after the meeting. I went home, watched some Buffy, Changing Rooms, Ground Force and ER. Now its like 12:30am and I need to get to bed. Happy Friday everyone!

P.S. OH…. Joe and I found another sushi partner. It turns out that Ken is a major fan of sushi. Joe and I go to Hana Haru almost once a week. Ken will be joining us next Tuesday for sushi. He also made some recommendations for other sushi bars in the area. I’m going to have fun exploring some new places! Thanks Ken.

Jonathan and Red Bull

It’s going to be a long day is what I told myself when I got up. I had class tonite and it made for a real long day. So the ball was thrown to me and I went off running. Tickets and Zeus issues were on my plate this morning. I said my hello’s and sat down in John’s area. He asked me what duties I was doing that fit under the hat of Unix or Cadcam. We’re trying to justify the hire of someone to replace what Mark Sackett used to do. Primarily the support of all of our CADCAM programs like PRO/E, MAYA and FORMZ.

I had lunch today with Joe. He needed to go to the mall to get a new pair of shoes. I went along cuz I was craving fish and chips and there was an H. Salt in the food court. When we got there, it was like a high school cafeteria. I guess the high school near the mall had an open campus policy. Joe had Panda Express and I had my H. Salt. So…after craving it, I was WAY disappointed. The fish was dry and the batter was too thick. Never eating there again. After lunch, we went to Foot Locker to find Joe’s shoes. They didn’t have his size so we headed back to the office.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in Games and Puzzles working on double calendar entries on Lucy Schultz’s Outlook. I talked to Doris Panopio in Systems Engineering and she couldn’t offer why everything doubled. Needless to say, I had to manually delete all the double entries.

I left for class right at 5pm. Traffic was unusually light. I got to school and guess who was there??? Jonathan was there! It had been quite a while since I’ve seen Jonathan. He had called in sick or to cancel the last few Wednesday’s that I really didn’t expect him there tonite. But it was nice to see him and have him there. I’ve been TAing the Basics course for about 8 times now that assisting the class alone has not been a problem for me. Jonathan scares me sometimes. So tonite he had an Energy Drink and a Red Bull and still managed to feel sleepy. He also broke out into song a few times. SO cute of him when he does that. Jonathan made a ginger/fig/vanilla ice cream tonite. It was very good. Class overall went well. It was meat nite. Everyone enjoyed the dishes…even Jason!

I got home and got a few emails from Mario. He emailed me his resume and asked if I would print it out for him. He was also surprised to find that I had a website. I wonder how much of it he has read!

Time for bed. I spent some time creating a new column on scottmindeaux.com. Its a section to reflect how I feel thru music. Check it out! Nite!

Garbled Communications

OK…so just as I finished writing my journal entry for Tuesday the 18th , my computer crashed. I lost the entire entry. Here is a quick recap:

Running late today
Dan proposes moving meetings to 8:30am
Microsoft Office for OS X issues
Bland food at The Chile Verde
Tickets, tickets…
Krista couldn’t print TRAC reports
Met a nice guy Dave online tonite

Happy Dad Day

Happy Father’s Day dad. I know I don’t say it enough, and I know we have had our fights and we’ve always had problems getting along, but I wanted to take the time to say I love you. I’m glad to have gotten the chance to be close with you since I moved back from Washington DC. It hasn’t been an easy re-union, but I’m glad to be here Dad.

The weekend was kinda weird. Saturday was spent inside. I heard the weather was real nice on Saturday, but I wasn’t feeling good and just needed to sleep. I spent a good chunk o my day napping. My stomach kinda hurt most of the day, but I’m not sure if I was sick of if I was just hungry. Saturday was pretty much shot.

Today, I got up at 7:45am and got some breakfast. I read the paper and waited to hear from my sister to find out what were doing for Dad today. After a couple of hours, she called and said to come on over. I was cooking lunch. Target time was to meet at 2:00pm. Here’s the menu: Filet Mignon, Beef Tri Tips, Alaskan King Crabs (my dad was craving these) and Kung Pao Shrimp served over rice. We also had roasted asparagus and potatoes. Lunch was a success. My sisters actually arrived on time and we were cooking by 2:15. Everything was cooked by 3:30! My sisters served as prep cooks and I was at the grill. Needless to say, since I didn’t eat yesterday, I kinda made up for it today. I was sick to my stomach. My sister Lynn had to get home to John to celebrate Father’s Day for him. Beth and the kids were still there and I spent about an hour playing Obi Wan on the XBox with my nephew Dallas. Needless to say I was beaten every time. I want one of these XBox things.

I went home and tried to get some errands done. Went to Target to get some detergent and soap. When I got home, Mario told me he just bought a computer! I couldn’t believe it. Mario with a computer??? He got a Windows machine (a surprise). He went to CompUSA with Scott Shu (from Barbie) and picked up a system with a 19″ monitor. He also got free internet. Watch out chat rooms! Mario seemed to be happy that he finally has a computer. Too bad it took leaving Mattel to motivate him. He has a CDRW now so I won’t have to burn CDs for him now.

Well its gonna be a week. I can feel it. Hope you all had a good weekend…. nite!

Making Boxes and The Mario Incident

This was a long week. Can’t explain exactly why I feel this. When I got in I finished up on last minute setups and SCORE software installation for the cutting room computer. I heard Josie in the hallway and I knew it was time for our staff breakfast. I had my regular Friday morning meal. An omelette with tomatoes, onions and bacon. Juan, the cook for the first time knew the ingredients without me having to say it. I sat at the table talked about the week and the tasks for the upcoming week. John looked over and asked if I was ok. I said I was and he said that I looked “down”. Maybe I did feel a bit down then..but not for the reasons he thought.

I invited the group for lunch at the house. I’ll set a menu on Monday and publish it to the group. I found out that Ken won’t be able to come for he’ll be with Jan helping her thru what will be her first major surgery. Ken said she would be having her gall bladder removed. My thoughts are with you Jan. You’ll be fine.

The rest of the morning I was in the cutting room with Dennis, the tech from DataTech. We were hooking up the computers and systems to get the 3rd cutting table up and running. The tables are used by our box engineers to cut and score box designs using chip or corrugated materials. The software used to make this happen is called SCORE. After about an hour and half, we were ready to run our first test and it was successful! We had a few more details to work out in the settings. I went upstairs to get Bill O’Keefe to inspect the installation and make sure it was to his specs. He ran a test and all went well.

Back in the cube I spent time cleaning up from the week. Next I looked up it was 1:30. Time to go home. Joe was still around, he was on his way out too.

Once home, I came online and checked email. I came home expecting Mario to be home. His car wasn’t in the garage when I got in. Around 2:30 he called for me. He asked if I heard all the hub’bub at work. I was puzzled and said “what?”. He said “You didn’t hear??”. I replied “Hear what?”

Mario was let go today. I couldn’t believe it. Apparently rumors were abound across the design center but Rosie was sure to go around and squelch the rumors. I felt so bad when he told me the news. But he seemed ok. I just don’t think the news hit him yet. 3:00 came by and he went back to work to clean out his workstation. I feel kinda weird that Mario won’t be at Mattel anymore. I feel sad.

I went out and got some dinner and then decided to go out and get some air. I got in my car and just drove around. I stopped by a friends house to say hello then went home. It was a weird day. I don’t have any major plans for tomorrow and Sunday I’ll be at my dads for a few hours for Father’s Day.