Driver work continues, but no real progress made. Vendor people are working in parallel, so with luck one of us will find the answer soon.
Excited about the Gnome 3 release. Been using it at home for a while from the Ubuntu PPA. I’m told the experience is better on other distributions but I have it working well enough for now. I’ll probably check it out on my laptop when it hits Debian Unstable.
Home to play some more Mass Effect 2. It’s becoming an addiction already. I hope that the weather gets nice enough soon to draw me away.
Up early; turned 28 today. Running out of 20s. Somewhat disconcerting.
More audio driver work. Chip vendor has informed me that they are setting up a parallel system in-house so that they may try settings tweaks at a faster rate than the usual email ping-pong allows.
Lunch at India Palace. They must have known it was my birthday, since they put out gulab jamun (my favorite Indian dessert).
Home to find several birthday cards, all of which were much appreciated. Emily presented me with a copy of Mass Effect 2 for the PS3, which I’d had my eye on since it was announced. Played through the introductory levels after my guitar lesson. Looks every bit as fun as advertised.
Progress on driver performance continues. Seems every change brings incremental improvement, yet I still haven’t fully fixed the problem. Dialogue with the board vendor is helpful, and I believe convergence on a solution is imminent.
Stopped by the PennDOT center across the street from the office and replaced my driver’s license. New picture is every bit as dorky as the old one.
Home; informed of a party this weekend for my grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary. Should be a great time, as my family’s parties tend to be.
Dinner was feta cheese omlettes and salad lovingly prepared by my wife, who then lovingly encouraged me to get ready to go to the gym.
Still fighting with driver performance. Moving buffers around did not have the desired effect. Running low on options and time, as customer has a looming factory deadline. Have to look at DMA settings and see if some improvements can be made there.
Home then out to dinner. Tried the new How Lee. It was much more crowded than I ever saw it in its previous incarnation, which might be explained by the transformation of the food from “random greasy Chinese-ish food” to “only sort of greasy Chinese food that maybe had some thought and effort behind it”. Also some may have been there to view the men’s room artwork.
Returned to the Squirrel Cage (a.k.a. Squirrel Hill Cafe, a.k.a. the bar I frequented throughout my early-to-mid-20s) for the first time in a few years. It’s one of the few bars that still allows smoking, which is why I’d been gone so long. It’s still smoky, but the beer selection is still solid. Unfortunately for it there are now moreoptions with equal or better selections and no smoke. Maybe I’ll try again in a few years.
Up early, to work. Glad to see the reduction in bus service didn’t create the Mad Max-esque landscape that was predicted.
Looks like I’m closing in on the audio driver performance issue. Have turned my attention fully to the DMA subsystem. Armed with some suggestions from the vendor I should have this thing nailed very soon.
Tasty sushi lunch at the Original Fish Market. Hadn’t been there before, but will definitely be going back.
Came home and actually sat down to listen to the Pens game for the first time in months. Sad that they had to lose to the Flyers but still amazed thankful at how well they’re doing despite Crosby and Malkin being gone and most of the team banged up like crazy. My chin is preparing for an epic playoff beard.
Worked from home. Nice after a long car ride to sit in a comfy chair with a cat and a laptop and get some work done.
Further progress with the audio driver. From reports on the scene I infer that while the issue hasn’t been eliminated it has been improved. More work to come.
Headed to the gym in the evening, motivated by the desire to maintain my ability to toss my nephew around (30 lbs. doesn’t sound like much until it’s toddler-shaped and moving).
Drank some of the beer that East End isn’t allowed to call Eye Opener Coffee Porter and watched some Arrested Development while I noodled around with some hobby projects.
Some more driver issue help from the chip vendor. Exploring potential issues further on up the stack. Lots of register value dumps being exchanged.
Lunch at DiBella’s again. Ordering process went more smoothly this time. Unsure if it’s me or the staff that has benefited from experience.
Left for Michigan after lunch to spend the weekend with my in-laws. Nephew is at the age where he’s getting too big to toss in the air but that’s the one thing he’s most interested in.
Made good progress with the audio driver. Overcame a serious hurdle involving the FIFO through a combination of helpful suggestions from the vendor and my own random bumping around in the code. Unfortunately this epiphany didn’t happen until around 9 PM. Even more unfortunately, fixing the FIFO did not solve the larger bug. Sent some driver code to the vendor along with some register dumps to get more eyes on the problem.
Had a surprisingly productive engineering meeting in which we ate pizza and had explained to us some of the machinations of the executive staff.
Came home to an exceptionally understanding wife. Took the garbage out and contemplated ways to show appreciation for said understanding.
Up slightly late, but Emily was kind enough to give me a ride to my bus stop. To work.
Found out that all the work I did adding GPIO MUXing to my audio driver had no effect. Slightly miffed and now stumped to boot.
Meanwhile packaging tasks are piling up. Need to just take a day or two and bang those out.
Went to the final guitar lesson of this set. Played some 12-bar blues and learned about hammer-ons and pull-offs. I’ll probably continue with the next set of lessons.
Put off fixing the plumbing in the bathroom for tomorrow as we are both pretty tired. Watched some Big Bang Theory instead.
