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1999 November 7 : Specialisation is for insects

I've had a busy week and I don't know what to write about it. I'll be flying back to Boston next Friday to spend a week working in person with the rest of revbox's technical team, and on the way will stop in Toronto to get a new work visa so that revbox can start actually paying me. This would be a good thing. In Toronto I hope also to be able to visit my brother, but haven't been able to make any plans because right now he's in Cuba with his girlfriend.

I'm having a great time at revbox so far. One thing about working at a start-up is that nobody can afford to be rigid or overspecialised, and when something needs to be done nobody says, "that's not my job." I think that's cool, even if it does leave me having to troubleshoot networking problems and Microsoft software, when it randomly stops working. (Previously, it had been our CEO getting stuck with this stuff, since nobody else in the SF office knows diddly about computers.)

I'm looking forward to the arrival of my own workstation, so I can stop having to use Windows. On Thursday, they managed to find a decent monitor for me -- a huge improvement -- but things are still pretty chaotic. <% cr_cdots %> Thursday evening I hung out at a bar with Emily's history grad student student friends. Had a great time talking to _______ and _______ (crap, I forget their names) about the comparative ethical value of Indiana Jones vs Star Wars, and with Holly about the modern history of Eastern Europe. Didn't see much of Emily, though. The woman seems to be a natural social director, and she had a big gathering to organise. <% cr_cdots %> Today I have to finally finish editing the paper I wrote last August. The referee's report was generally favourable, but he wanted some changes. I've got some other business to close up with Stanford as well -- we'll see what I can get done this afternoon. I'm going down to Dave and Karen's tonight for a round of Settlers.

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