Brent Stace’s Weblog

Yeah yeah…it’s been a while.

Disclaimer: A long time ago my blog somehow got mentioned by some IP person’s mailing list or site. When that occurred the traffic on my site spiked. I got a warning from the president of the patent examiner’s union informing me that I’m being watched. As a safety precaution I have only mentioned work, but have not talked in great lengths about it steering clear of any potential issues. Having not posted in over a year, I doubt many people are keeping track of my blog, but I am still writing this under the illusion that people may be reading it. What I write on this blog in no way reflects the views or practices of the United States Patent and Trademark office. My personal views are not to be perceived as reflecting the views of the USPTO by virtue of my affiliation with the USPTO. Additionally, my views and opinions have not been reviewed or endorsed by the USPTO and do not reflect the official position of the USPTO.

Recently at work, I’ve noticed an increase in the lack of…for lack of better words, proper amendments. Specifically, attorney’s may amend their claims by canceling some claim, which is fine…but when they forget to amend other claims that now depend on a canceled claim it just really annoys me. I have to guess at what the attorney may amend the dependency to in the next amendment. Just a word to you attorney’s out there - take note of claim dependencies when you cancel claims. Having claims depending on canceled claims isn’t helping anyone.

On another note, Jenn and I signed up for a PTOS sponsored vacation cruise package in Nov. 2009. I have to say that was the BEST vacation I think I have ever had. If they ever to that again I think I’m going to have to go again . Nov. was a great time to go to the Caribbean. My advise: if anyone is thinking about going on a cruise for a vacation, don’t hesitate.

Also regarding work: I now have temporary full signatory authority. This means that I can sign more cases without my supervisor requiring to sign them (e.g. allowances, finals, etc. (From memory I think MPEP 1008 covers what I can now sign)). Toward the end of the fiscal year it gets determined if this is a permanent authority or not. Fingers crossed!

A note for the snow of this season: I got over a week off of work for the combined 2009-2010 snow season. Major snowstorms over the weekends and weekday in one case contributed to this. This made record snowfalls in the D.C. area. Still nothing compared to what PA gave me once ~15 years ago, but oh well. I have two main reasons for not joining the full time telework program on the USPTO (Hotelling). 1) I like my snow days, and 2) I fear I may become very distracted if I permanently worked from home.

Also - sorry to anyone out there that has been keeping track of my blog and has noticed the links section displaying bad links (e.g. sex links, drug links, etc.). No idea where these came from, but I think the only way they could’ve gotten in there is if some bot guessed my admin password to my site. Thankfully it was just a bot, but I’m gonna change the password now!

I got 200+ hours saved up for vacation time from work. I plan to use almost all but 80 or 90 of it from Dec. 25-Jan 28th or so. First, is the Christmas to new years break that I’m on now. Then, its the trip to Prague from the Jan. 7th to the 16. Then, I may take the last week of Jan. off to do some AI programming on Unoh. In all, I plan to be working 5 days in Janurary and 2 of those days I’ll be working from home. Its good to get out of work. I may get bored…but its a good bored.

Excluding the queen-size bed purchase earlier this year, over the weekend we’ve made another substantial purchase. We bought furniture for our over-1-year-barren living room. We bought a sofa, love seat, coffee table (with internal storage), and 2 end tables, and we should be getting them mid-late Oct. 2008. It was very hard furniture shopping, esp. with Jenn and the size of the room. This is probably why it took over a year to find the “right” furniture. So, we should have furniture people can enjoy come the Thanksgiving feast we’re having at our place this year. I’m debating if I should post a photo of the furniture once it’s in our house…or maybe I’ll just tell you that you have to come over to see it .

Well, the fiscal year is coming to a close at the USPTO. Officially it ends the beginning of Sept. Once I get all my due cases in, I’ll be a couple counts short of making 130%. I can get 5 counts in if the cloaked-in-mystery review team for my GS-13 promotion could review my cases prior to the fiscal year ending. Strange that a case I did in early July still isn’t reviewed, but a case done in late Aug. has been reviewed. So far only 1 of 5 have been reviewed, and 4 have been officially submitted. I’ve come to realize something at the end of this FY. And that is 130% isn’t worth it anymore. For future FY’s I’ll just do 110%. I’m not going to bust my butt (that hard) anymore. It gets more difficult to maintain a 130 as you go up in ranks at the PTO since more work is required of you as you go up. I’ll be able to scrape by this year…may have to take some time off to do it, but It’ll happen. Therefore, after my promotion (hopefully end of Oct.), maintaining that 130 will be more difficult that it has ever been. So, my logical response, at this point in my life, is to tone it down a bit (to 110).
What is sad is that even though I’ll probably be taking time off to make 130%, I’ll probably be working from home (voluntary OT) to hopefully get through some amendments so that I can have a real vacation in Jan. 2009 (passport pending) - probably more about this future vacation later.

The Unoh program is fully functional, as reported earlier, but adding advanced AI’s to it is taking a significantly long time to do. The logic is very complex. Actually I’ve kinda hit a…writers/programmers block regarding it. As such, I’m thinking that I may release version 1.0 as it was before I started hacking it up with AI code. When that happens, let the laughter begin (mostly at the poor interface). But, at least for me, it’ll be proof of concept. Hopefully when the FY ends and I switch gears/goals to a 110% at work (see above), I’ll have more time to devote to Unoh.