deunionising the Fat Controller 3
Some small measure of success yesterday. The first time Fritz and I tried, the Fat Controller ran at an eighth of his advertised speed. (Clearly, working to rule.) For the next two days, I beat my head against the wall, trying to convince him his intransigence was unnecessary: I didn’t post anything in this period because anything I could possibly have said would have been an unappealing amalgam of swearing, crying and maudlin pleas for death. Finally, some kind soul on the picbasic.co.uk forums suggested we set the OSCCON register, and suddenly the sun came out. Everything worked.
So, naturally, the only way for this happy saga to end would be that the serial dongle we’re using to program the Fat Controllers blows up, with no spares in sight. I’m leaving it in Fritz’s lap for the moment - he’s the chiphead, I’m just a lowly software engineer.
In other news (because I do understand that none of you give a damn about my techie posts), I’ve found a judo club, but the training session starts an hour and a half before I finish work each day. I’ve also found someone who plays judo in my compound, but he’s working shifts, so we won’t be awake at compatible hours terribly often. Some days, I feel the God I don’t believe in is taunting me for my apostasy.
In other other news, while waiting to get my liquor licence ($400 deposit, if you can believe it), I met a lecturer from the Doha branch of Georgetown University. Brendan has been the consummate host - I’ve been given the tour of Doha, introductions to some people I don’t work with (!), and permission to swim in his compound’s pool, which has chillers that actually work, as well as waiters to bring you real coffee on demand. I’ve also visited “Ric’s Kountry Kitchen”, which is rumoured to have real bacon smuggled in from the American military base. The food’s ok, in a down-home American way. The coffee, however, is flat-out awful. I always thought Dad was exaggerating about how bad American coffee was, but it’s worse, if anything: if you load it up with milk and sugar, it sorta tastes like milky sugary hot water. I need drill sergeant coffee, the sort that’ll scream in my face and call me a pissant. This stuff is more like a guidance counsellor…
Would a care package of real coffee and a plunger help.? FIZBANG DOES NOT LIE!
So where are the tour of Doha pictures?! Crappy weeks just get made up for by more excessive weekends. You need to put something on this blog that shows how long you have been in Qatar, so every time you look at it and compare it to how many photos you’ve put up here you feel suitably guilty.
I have lots of great pictures, even considering the crappiness of my cameraphone, but they all have confidential stuff lurking in the background, and I’d get fired for putting them up. You can’t really turn around at work without seeing something from the ceremonies. Still, I’m off to the beach tomorrow, and I promise, I’ll take some pictures I can actually show you. Provided I don’t spend the whole weekend too paralytic to pointy-pointy-click-click, of course, and I make no guarantees of this.