One outside of MOPT, even.
For instance, I live in an apartment. This apartment rarely requires maintenance, but upon occasion it's necessary.
One of the major benefits of renting is that when something breaks, they have to Send A Little Man to fix it. Generally once said maintenance has been performed, I'm gushingly grateful. (I consider that the LM is part of what I'm paying for each month, but that doesn't stop me from being happy to see him.)
It's also true, though, that getting them to SALM can be tricky. In my experience, it requires 2-3 increasingly insistent calls before a LM actually materializes. The office staff is always very nice. They always promise to send someone right over. And they're always regretful when we call back five or six days later and repeat our request. But we always have to call twice. Or three times.
They always send us links to a survey so we can give them feedback on our Maintenance Request Experience, but I usually delete them. I don't care that much.
Two or three weeks ago we started seeing little black bugs in the kitchen. Not all the time, but once or twice a day.
So, the R.C. gives them a call and says, "We have little black bugs! Many things we are willing to tolerate, but not bugs! SALM!"
And they say, as they always do, "We'll get right on it!"
And a week goes by and we see no LM but we do see more LBB. So, the R.C. calls them again.
In the meantime, I get a survey link for how we liked our Maintenance Request Experience for the first call we made.
You see where this one is going yet?
Being, as sometimes happens to me, in something of a cranky mood that day, I followed the link and said we were highly dissatisfied and I wrote that our request had not been handled and to please SALM.
ALM shows up the next day and spritzes bugkillerjuice on the kitchen floor and says to let it "soak in" for a couple of days before we clean it. He does not spritz bugkillerjuice up on the counters around the sink, which is the actually place we saw the LBB, but he assures us that our problem is handled.
(And it was, by the way. Not a LBB to be seen since then.)
And then, Wednesday of this week, MollyManager calls from the office. She is in charge in and it is to her that the surveys are forwarded. MollyManager is very sorry to hear that we always have to call two or three times to get anything handled.
I assure her that we don't really care that much, that we don't really call that often ("I know that," she assures me) and that we're usually pretty tolerant about such matters.
"However," I confess. "I could have been in a bad mood that day. There are days when it's a little annoying to have to write ourselves reminders to make three calls because we need a maintenance request handled. Frequently, we just live with whatever it is. I might have been in a bad mood and I probably shouldn't have complained."
(I am not a doormat. I am Setting Her Up.)
"No, no!" she exclaims. "It is Not Right! This is Not How It Should Be! I want to know if you have a problem. This is what I am here for! Call me directly if you need anything. "
"We don't need anything most of the time," I repeat. "We're really not that demanding."
"This I know," she weeps. "But if you have a need! Call me!"
"Well, now that you mention it," I say slyly. "Your guys put a new sink in my bathroom five or six months ago. It's lovely! It's all clean and fresh! Thank you! I should have asked for one years ago!"
Expectant silence from MollyManager.
"But," I say. "Since you ask. Would it be too much trouble to have them come back and finish hooking it up?"
Appalled silence from MollyManager.
"It's the plug-thing," I say, tossing technical jargonese into the conversation with ease. "They didn't hook it up, so if I want to use the stopper, I have to crawl under the sink to push it up and down. It's kind of a nuisance."
"You mean the drain?" She asks in an odd tone of voice that I never did identify.
"Yes," I say. "The drain. So you can fill the sink with water. It's not that I can't crawl under the sink, but it's sort of annoying, so if you could send someone one of these days...."
My plug-thing was working when I got home yesterday. It was lovely.
I have a life. It's just not a very interesting one.
I'll bet that right now you're all looking back fondly to the days when I used to complain about psychotic co-workers all the time, aren't you?
I said that was the last of the Magic Of Public Transportation (MOPT) posts, but when adventures happen, I feel the need to share.
So, where were we?
Ah, yes. Yesterday, when the roads were horrible and the weather was stinky and I was thrilled to climb on the bus and wend my way to the train station without fighting the madding crowds of cranky drivers.
But. Party Time didn't happen last night. I was bussing down to the train station to meet the R.C. when she called up and said she'd put her car into a ditch trying to get into the park-n-ride down by our place and that she'd be waiting 75 minutes for AAA to come and drag her out, after which she intended to go home and never leave again and by the way never talk to her about public transportation again because she wasn't having any of it.*
No, it's not RTD's fault that the weather was bad or that the park-n-ride stations were slippery (although one does wonder how I, personally, managed to commute to work past many of the city's major arteries and down one of the busiest highways in Denver without ever seeing a single snowplow or sand truck) but I maintain that it is their fault that they dug a hole for a planter and didn't mark the excavation. I don't think people ought to go around leaving sneaky and treacherous holes dug next to driving areas.
There are things what try men's souls and there are things what don't.
Me, I have zero patience for inefficient store clerks (which is aggravating, since my Super Power happens to be the uncanny knack for picking the check-out lane with the most neurotic, lazy, and/or twitchy clerk in the store) or for, really, standing in almost any kind of line. But a wait of ten or thirty minutes for a train or a bus doesn't faze me. I watch the people, stare at the sky, ponder passing clouds, or mentally re-landscape my surroundings. I'm always happy inside my own head.
But the R.C. has no kind of patience to wait for transportation. When she wants to go somewhere, she wants to go there now. So, you know, public transportation was already something of a tricky proposition for her.
And then I spent all day yesterday emailing her to convince her to park down by our place and ride public transport downtown so that she wouldn't have to drive in the bad weather. And she had an accident by following my advice. Sigh. (In my own defense, had I known how much icier it was down south where we live than it was at my office, I'd probably have voted to skip the party.)
So. One demerit for the MOPT.
Then. Not having a ride car and what with my ride being 4 miles away in a ditch, I realized I'd have to brave the perils of the city streets and pick up a bus to get myself home from the train station.
To refresh our memories, we're talking about the 5:25 bus, the one I have to circle a square mile of roadway to reach the bus stop for and yes I know that's bad grammar but stay with me, people.
Because I had the time, I circled the aforementioned mile of roadway and plopped myself down, ankle-deep in snow, at the unlit bus stop. And I waited.
Eventually (and right on schedule!) a bus appeared in the distance. I watched with disapproval as it changed lanes, moving away from me, and then turned left to go into the park-n-ride lot.
"That's my bus!" I thought, since the "27" on the front was clearly visible. "Why is it going in there? The website trip planner said it didn't go in there."
I'm looking around and pondering this when a passing car's headlights illuminate the bus stop sign next to me.
This stop, the sign said, will be permanently closed on November 19, 2006.
You remember how I was annoyed and thought it was stupid that I could get to the train station on a 27 bus, but I couldn't pick up a 27 bus from the train station to get home again?
Apparently I can. It's just that no one told the RTD trip planner about it.
So, I'm standing there thinking I'm going to have to retrace my steps (and I was right - there is no sidewalk on that road, or at least not one I could find in the snow) back to the train station and wait for the next bus, since there was no chance at all I could get back there in time to catch the bus I'd just seen.
Then the bus came back and in spite of the fact that I was being a moron, standing at a closed bus stop, it stopped for me. So, a demerit for RTD, but a point for the driver, making it a wash overall for MOPT.
I had to endure weird looks from the driver and the helpful advice of everyone riding, all of whom wanted to explain to me that there was a park-n-ride just out of sight on the other side of the road and that if I'd walk over there, that's where the bus was going to stop from now on, but I took it well, I think.
I do go on, don't I?
And I haven't even gotten to today's adventures yet, but since they largely involved me accidentally getting off the bus four blocks before the stop I needed and thus having to walk an extra mile, I don't know that I'd be able to work it up into a story. Not even if it was ten degrees out there.
____________________
* I lost track of that part of the story, so let me complete it. She was rolling very slowly through a parking lot, so no personal injuries were sustained beyond the discomfort attendant upon standing in a 15 degree parking lot for an hour and a half.
AAA showed up, towed her out of the hole, and said they didn't think her car was too badly damaged. She drove it home last night and to work today. She's going to need a new bumper, but until she has it checked by the garage, she doesn't know if any structural or other damage was incurred.
I remain firm in my plan to Mass Transit two or three times a week. I'm going to shut up about it. Very soon. But I'll still be riding. In fact, I'm already having trouble imagining putting myself through the hassle of driving every day.
Like today.
I was laughing, people.
I caught the bus to the rail station, then the bus to my office. 55 minutes, in spite of traffic backed up in every direction due to icy roads and continuing snowfall that the City of Denver inexplicably decided would not require sand trucks or snowplows. If you're not on the roads (light rail, I heart you), then you don't have to care about road conditions.
Mind you, I caught the bus at 7:35 and heard other passengers complaining because it was the 7:05 bus that was running late, but that didn't affect me.
(They were pissy at the driver, which astonished me. In what way is the driver responsible for, as she informed them, accidents blocking the roads and cars in front of her getting stuck on the ice? I get that they were pissed they'd been standing outside in the snow for half an hour longer than they'd expected or wanted, but acting like it's something the driver did deliberately is just ridiculous. It's interesting to see that people can get road rage even if they're not driving. There's probably something Deeply Psychological in there, about a human being's response to minor irritations when repeated frequently, but I'll leave that to the experts. Since my own walk to the bus stop takes four minutes, if I'm moving very slowly, I'm not one of those who will probably wind up standing at stops for a long time. At least, not very often.)
It took so long for the bus to reach the light rail station (traffic, people getting stuck on the roads, other people causing gridlock by refusing to leave intersections clear, etc.) that I had time to figure out that I can catch the 8:05 bus, in good weather, and still be on time to work! (That's thanks to the magic of Buses Only lanes on the surface roads.)
The more I experiment with this Mass Transit thing, the more convenient it gets, you know?
The train was SRO this morning, so I was strap-hanging, but the 0 bus, in contrast to yesterday's wall-to-wall load, had only four people on it. Not that it would have mattered to me. I'm already a Seasoned Pro at this and I'd scavenged a seat by the exit before I realized the bus was going to be mostly empty. (The bus will stop upon request, but it's not going to sit there forever and wait for you to disembark. You have to be ready.) This morning I'd even packed all of my bits and pieces into a zipper bag, so I wasn't juggling two or three carry-on items like I had to yesterday. Today I had the one bag and my handy-dandy umbrella. (It keeps the snow off my head and out of my eyes and, being bright red, insures that drivers will see me as I'm walking across roads.) So it's all convenience and easiness. I'm thrilled!
But.
I have to report that so far I am grievously disappointed in the quality of my fellow travelers. So far they're all average, normal commuters. I mean, I wasn't expecting winos and stoners, not at 8:00 a.m., but I thought there's be some colorful figure in the bunch.
Okay, this morning there was a woman eating a frozen pudding pop for breakfast, but that's not that odd. And there was potentially something odd in the guy who chose to use the pull-down seat in the handicapped space, crowding up against my shoulder, instead of one of the five or ten entirely empty rows on the bus, but I was Pondering Public Transportation and didn't really pay that much attention to him.
Tonight - a party downtown, then Mass Transit Magic back to my part of the world. (Car? Who needs a car?)
(Okay, the R.C. needs a car. I'm relying on her to get me home from the train station. Still. I feel so urban! Not as urban as I felt last night, waiting for my train in the snow, but....)
I think I've exhausted the patience of the only person or two who ever evinced the slightest interest in my new Mass Transit Adventures. But I still have more thoughts.
I am working, but it's boring work (data entry) and a large part of my brain is pondering things like bringing a week's supply of yogurt into the office so I don't have to carry two meals in every day. Maybe even bringing sandwich stuff to keeping the refrigerator, for lunch on the days when I Mass Transit to the office? (Or figuring out how to pack two meals and a travel coffee mug in a smaller space.
("You could eat breakfast at home," I hear you suggesting.
"No," I reply. "I couldn't. It's taken me three years of constant effort to learn to eat 'the most important meal of the day' and I'm certainly not up to facing food at some ungodly hour like 7 a.m.")
I finally got the RTD site to disgorge a schedule for the 27 bus!
I ride it both ways. I pick it up on the corner by my apartment in the morning, at 7:35. A bit earlier than I'm accustomed to leaving for work, but not impossible.
And I catch it again in the evening, at either 5:25 or 5:52, but it doesn't leave from the parking lot of the light rail. I have to go across and down the street to catch it. I'm not sure about that part. It's a thing I'd do in the spring or summer without a second thought, but the idea of crossing that particular street after dark? I'm not excited about it. Streetlights are rare, and the traffic is heavy.
Oh! Oh! Oh!
After T-Rex finished rampaging through that intersection, I noticed they'd put in a walk signal at the corner with the interstate on- and off-ramps. I was wondering why since it's not really the kind of intersection that attracts pedestrians (beyond the odd panhandler). Now I've figured out that that's where they want light rail people to cross that street! (It takes me a while sometimes....) They want us to walk down that block, wait for the light, and then walk back up four blocks to the nearest bus stop. On people's yards, I might add, since I have no memory of there being a sidewalk there.
Mass Transiting is many things, but convenient doesn't seem to be one of them.
That means the 5:52 bus, of course. No way I can leave my office at 5:00 and be at that bus stop by 5:25.
I'm sorry to go on and on about this. Once I get it figured out it will be no problem. It's just a puzzle trying to work out the timing before I do it.
Tomorrow I'm riding the 27 bus in, though. I'm meeting the R.C. downtown for a party tomorrow evening and it will be her problem to get me home. :)
So, this morning I had another Mass Transit Adventure. My first weekday commute!
Scorning the 27 bus, the one that would take me from my house to the park-n-ride as long as I'm standing out there in time to catch one of only three buses that pass by in the morning, I drove myself to the station. (I'm willing to stand outside and wait for a bus but until the RTD website provides me with some information on how I manage the return journey, I must decline to undertake the experiment. "Never go anywhere you can't get home from." That's my motto.)
My trip commenced at 7:10 a.m., when I left the apartment.
Six minutes to the station, three bucks for a round-trip ticket, including all transfers, and two minutes later, I was off! We arrived at Broadway Station at...I don't know what time. (I really must do something about my lunch bag and purse and coffee cup. I need things arranged better if I'm going to be juggling these things through a train and a bus or two in the morning.)
I looked for a "0" bus. I knew I needed a "0" bus. The website, and Bernie, an experienced mass transiter (hey! It's "make up your own words" day!), had been clear on that point.
0 buses abounded. They were scattered around the parking landscape with careless abandon. One of them, I knew, was mine, but which one? I scanned the map provided with great care and discovered that...wait for it...I needed a 0 bus!
Which one, the map coyly refused to divulge.
The various bus stops, although liberally provided with standard Colorado signs (i.e., printed in ten-point type and requiring you to get within five feet before being able to read them, thus rendering them useless to the motoring traveler and of limited use even to the foot passenger) didn't reveal any gathering place for 0 buses on a northbound route. (I found one on a southbound route but decided a ten-mile southbound detour was not going to help me to reach my office approximately 2-1/2 miles north of the station.)
Deductive reasoning was my salvation. (All those hours with Holmes were not wasted.)
Everyone, I reasoned, wants to go downtown. They take public transportation because there's no parking, and what parking does exist is expensive. So, I got on the most popular 0 bus and, sure enough, it trundled out of the parking lot and obediently headed northwards, down Lincoln.
Perusing my surroundings (It pays to be a compulsive reader - I can't pass a sign without reading it.) , I discovered that the bus would not, in fact, stop at 7th Avenue, as the map had indicated. Not without prompting, anyhow. If I wanted to stop at 7th Avenue, I'd have to pull a little cord when the stop was announced.
As we neared our destination, I pulled the little cord and started working my way toward the door. (People are always willing to let you off the bus, especially if they have their eye on your seat.)
7th Avenue to my office building. Two blocks. Three minutes.
I arrived at my desk at 7:54 precisely, making a 44 minute trip.
Had I stopped at Starbucks, a thing I'd imagine I'll do upon occasion, it would have added ten minutes to the trip, but it's still far short of the 90-minutes I'd feared.
So. Mass transit is more convenient than it seemed it was going to be. And now I'm a pro.
I wouldn't do it every day. I still feel that trading a twenty-minute commute for a 45-minute commute is a very minor sort of bargain, but I'll do it two or three days a week.
Now I need to figure out the 27 bus, how to get myself home, and this thing called a "monthly pass."
At least I'm doing something, right? My gift to the planet this holiday season.
I am so in a not-working frame of mind. Nothing like a four-day weekend to make you completely forget what it is you do for a living and create a sense of Monday morning panic as you stare at your desk and wonder what the heck it was you were working on that seemed so very, vitally urgent five days ago.
Sigh.
Also, I have friends. Not a lot of friends. Just a handful, but they're all precious to me. I'm currently in the midst of one of my periodic bouts of self-flagellation over how I neglect them.
It's a time issue. Although I rarely seem to do much that's worth blogging, there are just never enough hours in the day to get done the things I want to do, or enjoy doing.
I always want to talk to or to see my friends, I just can't always bring myself to lay aside one of my many hobbies to do so. It always seems that there will be time later. That there will be time tomorrow or something, you know? Today I have to watch this movie or finish this book or work on that drawing or, or, or....
We don't always get tomorrows, though. So I'm going to turn over a new leaf.
I've turned over enough leaves in my life to outfit a small tree (or at least a good-sized bush), but maybe this time....
Probably of equal interest to you (meaning, not much) is my current dissatisfaction with the new high-speed light rail here in Denver. I tried it twice over the weekend, timing my trip carefully on at least one occasion.
The experience of riding was delightful. Smooth and easy. It was a joy to ride down on Friday, avoiding the red-eyed travelers grimly racing for various malls and shopping outlets on the city's highways. Meghan, the friend I was meeting for lunch and shopping, took the bus from her house (close to downtown) and we both agreed that this is the way we'll go in the future. Neither of us had any idea that it would be so simple.
But the time!
How can something call itself "high-speed" when it takes an hour to go a distance I can drive in half that time? I rode it downtown and back again twice this weekend and both times it took 50 minutes. I shudder to think how slowly it moves when the trains has to wait to load and unload masses of passengers during the weekday commute.
I've been planning, for a long time, to start using this handy-dandy form of mass transport, as soon as it was open from my end of town. Now...I'm not so sure. I accept that mass transportation is less convenient. I accept that it's more expensive than my highly fuel-efficient Toyota. I accept that it's going to take longer than just getting in my car and going where I want to go.
I'm just not sure I can reconcile myself to the idea of catching a bus at 7:05 a.m. to ride two miles, change and catch another bus to the light rail station, get on a train and ride three miles, change to a bus to take me a (not-walkable because of the interstate highway) 3/4 mile, change to another bus and ride it as it stops every block for fifteen blocks until it gets me within walking distance of my office at or near 8:30 a.m.
I can leave my apartment at 8:05 and make it to work by 8:30, you know.
(I've been trying to find a better route on the online "trip planner" but it's been down for most of the last 24 hours.)
You heard me. My daily commute, which takes me around 20-25 minutes when I drive, is going to balloon to a 1-1/2 hour marathon. And it's going to cost more than driving.
I would like to be Green. I'd like to Save the Planet. I'd like to Conserve Natural Resources.
But I don't know if I want to do these things badly enough to give two hours a day of my life to them, you know? I'm old. I have only a finite amount of time left to me.
Time. The real non-renewable resource.
I give thanks for many things, which include my friends, family, good health, and continued employment.
And I give thanks for being single and childless and allowed to choose what I like for Feast Days, instead of Traditional Food.
For Thanksgiving this year, for instance, the R.C. and I had High Tea.
A pot of Darjeeling. Cucumber, smoked salmon, and egg salad sandwiches. Fresh fruit, Four or five chocolate-themed desserts, including champagne-truffles, chocolate fudge cake, and chocolate-wrapped Milanos.
Mmmm.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)So, I'm out walking over to get some lunch just now, and a fire truck rolls past, all lights whirling and sirens wailing.
Then I hear another siren, and see a tractor-trailer coming around the corner, lights flashing and horn honking. On the side, it says, "Confined Space / Collapse Rescue Team."
And then more sirens, as a couple of police cars flew down the road toward whatever it is.
The frustrating thing is that "local" news is so feeble in Denver that I'll probably never know what happened.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:59 PM | Comments (2)Too much caffeine? Maybe.
I came in and buckled down to do some work today. And I have, too. None of it is anything that was on my Tasks list, but if any of that had interested me, I'd have done it already, so that's okay.
I'm learning to do new things today, which is something I really enjoy, so that's okay, too.
It's almost lunch time. Fish paste sandwiches and leftovers for lunch today.
(Or fresh, wild-caught, smoked salmon salad, and cherry-topped cheesecake, depending on how you want to look at it.)
I'm looking forward to the weekend. One Thanksgiving Tradition at my house (or at least something I'd like to make an annual tradition, if not for the perpetually reoccurring diet) is the making of gingerbread houses.
This weekend is Buy Ingredients Weekend. If you take a ten-dollar bill to the Dollar Store, you can buy an astonishing array of ingredients, from cans of frosting (used for construction and to make "snow") and decorative candies from which fences, sidewalks, doors, and windows can be constructed. If you take two ten-dollar bills, you can buy enough stuff to make two or three gingerbread houses and still have enough candy leftover to make yourself really sick.
Not that I do that, of course. I'm an adult. Adults do not gorge themselves on sugar just because it's there.
(At least, they don't admit to it.)
Having purchased a brand new phone recently, I now have digital picture capabilities! Expect to have pictures inflicted upon you at some point. (If my gingerbread house stands up long enough to be photographed, that is. Some of my creations in years past have already been succumbing to the pressure of gravity by the time I was placing the last chocolate flagstone out front.)
Anyhow. Call me childish, but I like making gingerbread houses and I'm looking forward to it.
I'm making the R.C. do it, as well. Her idea of "fun" on Thanksgiving Weekend had to do with going shopping but I scoff at the idea of being trampled underfoot (or wheel) in a mall crammed wall-to-wall with already-frantic holiday shoppers and women using baby strollers as battering rams to force their way through the crowds.
(And the men. What's up with that? Cherry Creek Mall here in town has a sort of lounging area with a big-screen television so men can watch, one presumes, sporting events while their wives/girlfriends/SOs/whatever shop.
I mean, what the heck is up with that? Why are they even in the mall if they don't want to shop? Why would a woman force a man to go to the mall if he didn't want to be there? I assume that's why the men are there, instead of lounging at home in the comfort of their living rooms?
When you wonder why I find the idea of marriage uninviting, remember that many of the institution's time-honored traditions mystify and repel me.)
(Or maybe I've just loved too much in the past.)
I think that's sufficient reason to be cranky, even aside from the office full of drywall dust and paint fumes that are making my eyes look like I'm coming off a six-week bender, don't you?
I have nothing to say.
That's so odd for me.
Out my window, there's a construction site I've been watching occasionally.
Today there's a huge yellow crane lifting what looks like a yellow tollbooth high into the air.
He's already done another tollbooth and, for reasons I'll probably never fathom, balanced it neatly on the top of a humongous steel pole-thingy. Then he brought up another shorter, pole-thingy and balanced it on the tollbooth, creating another sort of crane-thingy.
I think I'm watching construction workers construct construction equipment.
Construction, like many things in life, is actually fascinating if you know nothing about it.
I feel that way about Britcoms. I watch a lot of them, knowing full well that at least 25% of the cultural references are going to go right over my head. It doesn't seem to matter, though. In fact, it sort of adds to the charm.
Doesn't work for football. I don't get what's happening, but that doesn't make it any less boring.
Works for cricket, though. I don't really understand cricket, and I don't really want to. It's an interesting mystery, and I like it that way.
Maybe I'm just more of an anglophile than I realize?
I wish They would all leave me alone. Bernie and Buehler and PoodleBoy are all wound up because the VPN is down and they can't get to their network files and e-mail.
How many times, I wonder, do you have to tell someone, "I don't know" before they stop asking you the same stupid question? We've been going through this for weeks. I've never yet been able to "fix" any technical issues, so why do they continue to drive me nuts?
Take Bernie. He asked me over and over and over one day, what was wrong with the network. He just kept standing there and asking me. And I'd say, "I don't know."
And he'd say, "can you reboot the server" and then he'd say, "what's wrong with it?"
Or, "can you call DiamondGirl and ask her" and then he'd say, "what's wrong with it?"
Or, "Is it the memory" and then he'd say, "what's wrong with it?"
The fourth time, I couldn't resist, so I actually said, "I have no new information since the last time you asked that question."
That tollbooth must have little hookies on it or something. The yellow crane eased it onto the pole thingy and it's sitting there like it was made to fit. Like TinkerToys. Or Leggos.
I've been having trouble with the old blog for the past few days. Actually, both of them. I was unable get either of them to display correctly. After much poking around and trying various things - none of which solved the problem and many of which probably came close to making it worse, I finally wrote to my webhost for help. Turns out that I talk too much. (Big surprise there.) I've used up all of the bandwidth allotted for my account.
I was all set to start deleting old posts when they pointed out that I have a couple of hundred Mg being sucked down by unwanted back-up files and a catch-all email account that I didn't even know existed. Deleting those should solve the problems and they're taking care of that for me.
At least for now. I foresee a time, if I keep posting to the blog(s), when I'll be forced to start deleting old stuff.
(I think that if I come in to work 45 minutes early so I can deal with issues involving my personal email and blog problems, I think it's grossly unfair that my boss should choose this day to be the one in sixty when he also shows up promptly in the morning.)
So, what else is new?
Studio 60 continues not to thrill me. I continue to be annoyed. I still maintain there's a great show in there somewhere, but Sorkin, et. al., just haven't identified what it is yet.
We need a lot less of Harriet being a Christian In Hollywood, which was boring after the second time they used it as the focus for an episode, and a heckuva lot less of Jordan's Jeri-Ryan-inspired sexual history, which was painfully awkward when they introduced it and doesn't get any less obnoxious the more they talk about it.
I'm just sayin'. If that's all this show is about, then I'll be tuning out very soon.
Working, as those of you who have known me for years know, on my holiday cards.
(For those of you who have not, annually I inflict the misery of badly designed and haphazardly manufactured "home-made" holiday cards on my nearest and dearest. Originally this was designed as a way to keep my hands busy in the evenings for a month or two in the fall, to cut back on my snacking.
Now I do it because...well, I don't know. It does keep me from eating all evening long, but mostly by now it's kind of a habit. If I were actually "crafty" I might be learning things each year and producing better results with practice. Sadly, as the kind of person who can inflict a serious wound on myself with a potato peeler, I am not "handy.")
About halfway through my second afghan, so the poor R.C. will have to take the two of them into her office soon and endure yet more gratitude from her co-workers. I still don't get why anyone would find an afghan to be something amazing, but it does appear that there are people in our society for whom anything hand-made is an astounding creation - something they'd thought of as a "lost art." (There are a bazillion knitters and crocheters in the country, 98% of whom are better than I am. I need to get them together with the charitable groups who would be thrilled to have warm blankets, socks, gloves, hats, scarves, etc.) (Since I crochet, like I made holiday cards, purely to keep my hands busy so I'm not eating constantly, I'd be lost without an outlet for my creations. There must be others out there who have the same problem?)
(If Bernie doesn't stop wandering in here and bothering me, I'm going to smack him. I'm in the mood to chat, not to work.)
(Also, I am in fact working on a complicated project and if he keeps interrupting me, I'm going to mess it up.)
(Yes, I can write a blog entry while I'm working on a complicated project. I write in the intervals when the file is saving or refreshing or I'm waiting on someone else to do something. I write when I have a few seconds. He interrupts whenever a thought wafts through his head, which is a different matter.)
I'm out of things to babble about anyhow.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)Did you miss me?
Didn't think so. I don't post regularly enough for anyone to find a five or six day silence unusual.
So, color me amused. And sympathetic.
How appalling to be the planner of a Conference and to have one of your featured speakers urged out the door, rather publicly, from the corporation that also just happens to be a major sponsor of your event. What do you do?
The Conference I was just working at chose to keep them both, although I think it was a bit uncomfortable for many of the sponsor's employees who were onsite. It may and/or may not have been a brave decision.
I didn't hear her speak - I have no time to attend any of the events when I'm working Conferences. Didn't get to hear Arianna, either, which annoys me slightly more, but whatever. I'm always a bit wary of the "born again" types anyhow. No one's more militant than a convert.
But!
It's over and I'm home!
It's not that I don't understand that the worker bees have to work and that sometimes it requires them to inconvenience the rest of the world. It's just that I'm the only (company-affiliated) person in the office today, by dint of tremendous effort I have everything ready for my trip out of town tomorrow, and I'm feeling friendly.
I'd rather be reading some of the massive backlog of my friends' blogs than working, but I don't really feel comfortable surfing around with them wandering in and out of my office, chatting with me about light switches and suchlike.
Actually, if they wander in here one more time, I'm going to shut the door. I don't often take chunks of time in a workday to goof off but that's where my mood is today and they're harshing my vibe.
And I'm compulsively checking the news sites, because that's what I do. CNN, the first headline I see this morning.
Glitches reported in early voting Well, duh.
Also: Poll: Americans favor Democrats on the issues. Duh some more. Americans always favor the Democrats on issues if you strip off the partisan language (from both sides) and don't identify "issues" with any Party buzzwords. And that goes far beyond war.
Obviously I want sweeping Democrat victories. Not because I'm amazingly thrilled with all of the candidates running but because if we can at least shift the Congressional majority to the center (the current Democrat leadership could not be described as "Left" or "liberal"), then maybe those of us who are actually liberal (they call themselves "progressives" these days, but I disapprove) can make headway against the appeasers.
Of course, voting problems, even corruption (both great and small, have been a part of the USofA political landscape for centuries, but I'm more than a little concerned about all of those electronic voting machines.
Me, I voted "absentee" which means I wrote my vote on paper and mailed it in. I can't force them to receive it, I can't make them count it, and I can't make them read it accurately or fairly, but I did as much as I could do, short of hand-delivering the ballot (and I'm not sure they'd accept personal deliveries).
In skimming the early morning sites, I've read at least one account of a precinct where you have to hand your supposedly confidential ballot to someone and wait for them to scan it before your vote can be counted. Yes, your neighbor is sitting there, reading your "private" vote.
I've read an account of someone being forced to declare a party affiliation, out loud for the crowd, before they could get their ballot.
And, of course, Missouri's problem.
It's all very nerve-wracking in some ways. In other ways, I'd rather not get the results for a few days. Because that would mean we'd all voted on paper and those votes had been counted by human beings who were being watched by other human beings. That's not a perfect system, but it's better than untraceable electrons.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)It's always dangerous, I think, to have too much fun on the weekend. Aside from grossly overeating, I had a fabulous time this past weekend, celebrating my birthday for three solid days and enjoying visiting with friends, none of whom I get to see as often as I'd like.
And presents! I got presents! Not the least of which were the Season One Doctor Who DVDs! Because the R.C. is a wunnerful human being, she sat patiently while I watched four episodes last night. (I'm hoping she comes to enjoy the New Doctor Who, but I'm not trying to force her to watch it. But it was my birthday, so I got to pick what I wanted to watch.)
But today sucks.
Apparently UPStefan was off work on Friday and whoever took over his route didn't have his keys, because the shipment that I absolutely needed to go out on Friday was still sitting there, waiting for me, when I came in this morning. I've had to reship it using 2nd Day instead of 3-day and eventually I'll have to listen to Bernie bitch about the extra cost, which we won't be able to pass along to the client.
Something's wrong with my phone and it only rings about half a ring before it rolls all of my calls to voicemail. (Actually, I sort of like that. The phone has rung four times today and three times it was a machine with an "important call for you" if you'll just hold on until a human being is available to speak with you. I hung up on all three of them instantly.)
The Pushy Client who has one more job that needs to be done this week sent her text without her graphics and the links she wants in the mailing are broken. (Also, I had to spend half an hour going through and cleaning up my mailing list because I don't have time to use the fancy-schmancy automated system run by the guy who's only in town every other week and allow me to mention just how much I like having the wonders of automation available to me at all times except for those moments when I need to use them.)
There are workmen in the other half of the suite, preparing to build the wall to split this suite into two different office spaces. They've been supposed to be doing this since last February and I can't tell you how thrilled I am that they picked today to come in with their power saws and nail guns and whatnot. Also that they are using my shipping cartons, full of expensive electronic equipment, as tables for their tools. And that they have the power to half the lights in the main part of the suite disconnected.
Bernie called asking if I could "reset" the fax machine we had to move out of that other half of the suite last week, so he can test the fax machine he's installing, for some insane reason, in his mother's apartment. No, Bernie, I cannot "reset" the fax machine. As I have been trying to get through your skull for the past six months, we require a converter in order to use the analog fax machine on a digital phone line. This is why the fax machine continued to live in the other half of the suite long after we ceased paying rent on that space. This is a converter that our phone supplier earnestly assures me they can provide with no problem but which I have thus far been unable to force them to disgorge.
Also?
I am old.
Okay. Well. Hmmm.
Looks like our problem client will be walking out the door.
Not because of last week's chaos. No, we have a whole new problem.
I've been trying for two days to code a job in one of our proprietary software programs and it won't work. It crashes on the same question, even though I've rebuilt the question from scratch in three different ways, deleted the page twice and re-entered it, and even rebuilt the entire job from scratch. It crashes on this one question - even though the question has nothing special about it, has been built and rebuilt until I'm sure there are no weird and hidden codes buried in the text, and it's placed at a different spot in the job.
I'm sitting here (alone in the office, I hardly need add), looking at a Tuesday, drop-dead deadline for getting this coded and approved by the client (I have to fly out of here Wednesday) and thinking...this ain't going to happen.
Neither the person who originally built the program nor the person who later did updates are speaking to Bernie any more and neither of them will work with him any more.
Bernie claims he has a line on a "new guy" who will be able to help us out with problems, but we haven't even met him yet, much less do we know if he'll be able to look at the disaster area of code that is this product and figure out a "fix" in two business days.
I'm wondering if I shouldn't just pack up and leave now, while no one is looking?