rickvs

I'm typing this with a big jury-rigged bandage enveloping my left index finger. It serves more to remind me not to bump it than anything else.

I made a nice half-moon-with-flap slice on the end of it last night while attempting to cut a cantaloupe in twain. While I rinsed it off in the sink, Pat was kind enough to avenge me on the melon.

It never hurt (sharp knife!), and I thought it was healing well when I woke up this morning. I rewrapped it, and through lunchtime had only a small dot of blood that soaked through the pad.

Until...

One of our vendor's delivery trucks called ahead as they pulled up to the door, with a COD package. I scrambled out to our car for exact change from the ashtray -- and pinched my finger between the door and the jamb. Again, it didn't hurt, but immediately felt warm, and the cotton pad began to fill in red from one end to the other, like a progress thermometer at a pledge drive.

I never lost enough blood to be hazardous, but spent a few interesting minutes trying to juggle paying the delivery lady (with Rachal's help) without staining the money, the package, or my boss's furniture.

In other news, I'm in another vehicle drawing: one of the local radio stations is giving away a classic Corvette, to celebrate the 30 years their DJs have worked together. I've got, I believe, a 1-in-92 chance that my midlife crisis car will not be a Hyundai Accent.

In the spirit of recent memes, I have a twofold question:

Anything you'd like to know about me?

Any technical things you'd like to know about my field of expertise? (I'm a graphic artist / illustrator / computer operator).

I am easily foolish enough to take a swing at almost any question in a public forum; please fire away.

Had a couple of interesting computer anamolies crop up at work. First, while I had tech support on the phone for a different problem, they walked me through a procedure I would loved to have known about -- oh, a year ago. The software my company uses to lay out its artwork requires that a security dongle be plugged into each machine, else the software won't work. The procedure I was taught narrows the security check to the single USB port on which the dongle resides -- until today, my computer had been running its little confirmation routine on *every* port available, *each time* a key was pressed or the mouse was used. This, as you may have guessed, caused my machine to run rather slowly ... but I never knew it was supposed to run any faster. Ignorance is bliss.

The second anamoly involves the timekeeping software we have installed on most of our machines. At preset intervals, it sallies forth on the net, adjusting itself to match any of several atomic clock servers. A couple of my co-workers have been complaining that some mornings when they arrive, their clocks have been slow -- by over three years. Turns out that some of the time servers think it's still 1999, which causes all sorts of havoc with our accounting programs ...but the servers with the misleading dates have now been deleted from the go-to list.

Man, this is like coming up with a hundred punchlines, and letting the audience reconstruct the stories. But here goes...

( Fifty the First )

Current Mood: introspective
Current Music: eulogy for the Cowboys versus the Eagles

For starters (thanks to

gridlore), there's a "What Science Fiction Author Are You?" test here:

http://gning.org/skiffy.html ...According to it, I am Robert A. Heinlein.

Quelle surprise.

I've only read, oh, 99.9 percent of his stuff :)

We played a different who-am-I game at my company party last night. As you walked in the door, a sticky label was placed on your back, where you couldn't see it unless you were flexible enough to lick your own genitalia, in which case why would you be wasting your time at a party?

Each label had a character's name on it (E.T., John Lennon, James Bond, Jackie O, etc...). You had to determine who you were by asking your fellows a series of yes-no questions.

Correctly guessing my first one (Einstein) wasn't difficult, as I'd typed up the labels that afternoon, and could see everyone else's. So they made up a second one just for me (Count Dracula), which I managed to get with ten questions. This game was more fun than I expected it to be when first explained; I recommend it at your next party.

After that, since we decided not to play Pictionary, I took my Christmas bonus (a poinsettia) and went home.

Not a bad party, although somewhat stiffer than last year's.

The good news: Rachal and I had quite a pleasant visit for Thanksgiving. A relaxing time was had down at her parents' place, although her pneumonia tried to reassert itself in the form of her lungs hurting ...so she got a lot of bed rest, rather than working on her dissertation while I was off at work Monday and Tuesday. This was a good thing; I hope she continues to rest up back in Nashville rather than making herself sicker. She plans to move in with me no later than the first of February whether she has a job or not. I like the idea that I'll see my wife for Ecks-mas in a few weeks, and then a few weeks after that we'll be living together for the rest of our lives. I hope to do the Paul and Linda McCartney thing for the next fifty years :>

The less-than-good news: Rachal spent part of her trip patting me on the head after I got written up at work. It was part of a wake-up call to the entire store, I think; half of our sales staff also got written up, for basically the same reasons: too many jobs have needed to be redone lately due to processing errors, culminating in one big, expensive job that was supposed to be sent out while I was on Thanksgiving vacation but ended up being redone almost entirely from scratch. Every single person, I believe, who touched this job screwed something up on it, and then to top it all off I thought of something else I wanted to triple-check on it after I got home and it was already off to FedEx. Turns out it had been correct when shipped, but I still had to explain to my boss that I was showing up after hours not because I had left one of my own tasks undone, but to confirm the final proofing of someone else. (My own recent errors have been due in part to my lack of mental focus after my wife's last spate of medical problems ...and to my perception that I'm being rushed by my bosses so that I don't work over forty hours per week. My boss was receptive to this explanation, and is having one of the production people take some of the work off my plate).

Anyway, while the next few weeks promise to be hectic, everything should be kibbles and beer by the end of January. I hope :>

Current Mood: calm

Good news: yesterday I clocked about eleven hours, which means slightly more money on my next check (unless my bosses chase me out early near the end of the week to compensate, as they did last week).

Bad news: I had to nursemaid one computer into doing the job of another -- that other one having gone little rubber feet up in the middle of a big job.

Fortunately, my sign shop lives next to a computer shop, and we scratch each other's backs. By the end of the evening, the technician there had narrowed down the problem without quite fixing it, so later this morning I'll call Dell tech support and tell them their machine fell down went boom.

That makes today officially Limp Day, as in: I'll limp through the (small) workload, swapping cables between different output devices as I need them, until our mostly dead secondary output server gets revived. I don't mind the extra hours, but wish I could spend it doing something that feels more productive. My one-hamster machine can't process jobs in bulk, being less than half as fast as the dead one.

Other good news: I managed to see one shooting star at 4:15 this morning, from the tail end of the Leonid shower. My first sighting of one, I think, and this despite the heavy lights in my apartment complex.

Current Mood: Enh...
Current Music: muted Mtv2

( Wife and work and wending my way to another apartment )

More later, as it happens.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: My landlady's snuffling dog

I had a bunch of drama at work on Thursday, most of it my own fault. (I failed to notice one project deadline until after it had passed, ordered too little specialty vinyl to finish another, that sort of thing). It all worked out, and the production staff downstream from me (on whom most of this fell) were forgiving and jovial, rather than justifiably pissed off. I didn't get it all worked out till Friday -- I matched the specialty vinyl color I was short of with our heated-foil printer, and finished the signs with that ...after I fixed the broken machine that was supposed to cut out the sign shapes. It wasn't unpleasant, and at least Friday's drama wasn't self-inflicted.

My wife's still looking for a job, and has been manic for the last two days, getting little sleep. Her doctor told her what pill to take when she got home last night, and I've not called her so far today because I don't want to wake her up. I believe/hope that she's sleeping the weekend away, which would be preferable to her being awake the entire time.

Current Mood: relieved

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Entries tagged with work

Resource Management

Ask me somethin'....

These are not bugs, they're features.

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Thanksgiving, and work wackiness

Well, I suppose I'm happy to have the hours...

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