Category: Crankypantsing

Crankypantsing

Decisions, Decisions…

Shelly

Friday night (it always happens on a weekend night), I was on the computer and heard splishy-splashy noises coming from a room that had no business making splishy-splashy noises. Hmmm. I went to investigate, and there was water dripping from the overhead light in the bathroom. Water + electricity? Fun! So I went upstairs to tell my wonderful neighbors that it seems like their shower is leaking. Again. They apologized, as if it were their fault Mr. Fix It didn’t actually fix it the last two times he was here.

They called the emergency repair number, and were told someone would be out Saturday ayem, and that I would need to be around as well, so that they could get into my apartment. What for, I can’t imagine. There’s not actually anything broken here, and as soon as the leak is for real fixed, the light should be fine. I mean, it’s not like they’re going to replace the light or wiring. They are too brimful of slackertude for that.

I got up early Saturday morning, just in case. At about 3:00, there was a knock on my door from one of the upstairs guys. Maintenance had called and weren’t going to come out until Monday, because they’d decided that water + electricity was not, in fact, an emergency. Huh.

So apparently, I got up early on Saturday and wasted half the day waiting around, for bupkis. And now, I have to decide whether I’m going to stay home tomorrow, go in to work and leave early, or just go to work as normal and let the maintenance guys figure out how to navigate the dog. I know that if I go to work for the whole day, they’ll show up, and if I stay home, they won’t.

Decisions, decisions…

Art, Crankypantsing, Doodles

Staff Meeting Doodle

Shelly

Staff Meeting Doodle
gel ink in steno pad
7 1/2 x 6 inches

This was a week of meetings and training sessions. Today’s horror was a 3 hour long workshop on using Outlook’s calendar. Three. Whole. Hours. The less said about it, the better, I think. Even though it was hands-on, I had plenty of time to doodle, and thank goodness for that, or I may have had to poke someone with sharp, pointy objects. It was only slightly less traumatic than Wednesday’s hour-long presentation on libraries in Second Life.

Crankypantsing, Meta, News & Politics

From the Special Moderation Queue

Shelly

If you leave comments like this, I am not likely to approve them. Especially if you don’t even have the testicular fortitude to leave a real email address.

the earth, the moon, the stars, liberism, abortion, gay marriage, free sex, killed unborn children, 50 million dead, no problems.

That was left on the Bill O’Reilly-Christian Bale mashup video post. Funny thing is, I had almost made a comment about how much I fucking loathe Billy-O, but decided against it. So whatever this anonymous troll was responding to, it wasn’t anything I actually said. Maybe she and/or he is psychic, in addition to addle-brained?

Seriously, liberism? I am not, nor have I ever been, an ancient Roman. And to wingnuts, isn’t “killing unborn children” the same thing as abortion? So he is not only illiterate, but repetitious. I don’t know what the 50 million dead refers to, but I’m pretty sure it’s not my fault. Gay marriage? Why should straight people have all the misery? The best part, though, is that Trolly McTrollersons seems to be advocating sex with prostitutes. Again, WTF?

Crankypantsing, Photography

Faucet

Shelly

100_5750

Disgusting, isn’t it? I wish they would put this sink in a trash bag, if they aren’t going to clean the crusty grime off it.

And that’s about all I have today. I had a two-hour customer service training workshop this morning, which was just about useless. The cranky it inspired is still bubbling away. An adult beverage might help, and maybe a couple of House re-runs. (Seriously. The woman running the workshop made a big production of going around and shaking hands with everyone. Aaack! I nearly turned around and left, when I saw her barreling over toward me. I don’t touch strangers. Period. And I really don’t appreciate them touching me. The whole thing was kind of ironically funny, in retrospect. That sort of overly aggressive sales job is guaranteed to lose me as a customer for life.)

Anyway, about the only good thing I can say about this day is that it’s nearly over. Oh! And I got some doodling done during the stupid workshop.

Teh Enb.

Crankypantsing, Photography

Progress

Shelly

My studio/office is, if not exactly clean, then tidy. I’ve sorted and either put away or thrown away everything that was sitting out. There are still piles and stacks of stuff, but not as many, and the ones that are left are things I’m currently working on. Like, The Wall o’ Basquills.

I also managed to reduce the large stack of Post-Its to three back-to-back pieces. I don’t know why I take so many notes on Post-Its. A woman at work got huffy with me for “wasting” them on notes. WTF?! Um, what the hell else are they for? Granted, most of the notes I take on them don’t end up stuck to anything, but sometimes they do, and it’s nice to have the option of sticking-and-filing them away instead of having to rewrite everything on a proper piece of paper. And anyway, what difference does it make whether I write on a note pad or a Post-It?

And speaking of progress, I have finally managed to get all my files migrated to the new computer, my back-up drive cleaned up and re-formatted, and then everything copied back to that drive, just to be on the safe side. I expected compatibility problems with some of my software, since the new OS is 64 bit instead of 32. The only one, though, was my genealogy program. A) The author has packed up shop, and the program is no longer being distributed or supported (I don’t know if the unlock key will actually work if the program cannot contact the mother ship), and B) the program just plain won’t run on the new machine. Hrmf. So I’m going to have to come up with a Plan B. Unfortunately, most of the programs I’ve tried have done really unattractive things with some of the custom data fields. Not unexpected, but a total pain in the ass nonetheless.

Anyway, where the hell did my weekend go?! I’m not at all ready to go back to work tomorrow.

Crankypantsing

To Do

Shelly
  1. Get staff ID
  2. Buy legit Windows XP disk
  3. Go home and walk the dog
  4. Go to bank
  5. Stop at Hobby Lobby
  6. Stop at Target
  7. Do laundry
  8. Wash dishes
  9. Bathe dog
  10. Put away Laundry
  11. Reformat second hard drive
  12. Reinstall Windows on second hard drive
  13. Install Adobe junk on second hard drive
  14. Wrap little kids’ (late) Festivus presents
  15. Make sure extra camera battery is charged and memory cards are empty
  16. Pack
  17. Take all the crap to the car that I promised my mom I’d bring

I’m probably forgetting a thing or three, but that’s okay, because I don’t think I have enough time to get everything done tonight as it is.

Crankypantsing

Snow Day

Shelly

The university was closed today, which was good. It means that I won’t have to use vacation time, as they’ll compensate everyone who was scheduled to work. It also meant that I got to shovel snow, which I kind of enjoy. Unfortunately, there is so much snow that, even with 4WD, I don’t think I’ll be able to get out of my parking space until they plow our lot. Which they still haven’t done, and probably won’t do until sometime tomorrow.

Normally, I’d be perfectly happy to stay in all day, drinking hot cocoa, eating buttered toast, and reading a good book. But! Today was supposed to be Operation Cracktop Day! I was going to go pick up my new laptop. Hrmf. It’s going to have to wait until tomorrow, and my inner five year old is not amused.

Crankypantsing

Hmmm.

Shelly

I think my computer overheard me talking about Operation Cracktop, because ever since then, it’s been randomly crashing. This is not good! I don’t know if my hard drive is going out or if my RAM (which I already know is wonky) is getting even wonkier. My plan is to give this machine to my mom when I’m done with it. I’m hoping that replacing (and upgrading) the RAM and installing a new hard drive, as well as reinstalling a clean copy of XP, will fix whatever is wrong with it. I’m not about to start on that project, though, until I have Mr. Cracktop in my greedy little hands and have got him properly set up.

Hrmf.

The other thing that has occurred to me is that the problem may be with Windows Media Player. I don’t use it for anything, but the crashes have all happened when other programs were/could have been interacting with it. It first happened when I was trying to use Amazon’s music downloader, which I know uses WMP. Then, it happened while trying to use QuickTime (which I loathe, so uninstalled, hoping that would solve the problem, but alas, no).

Thinking back, though, the problem started after installing QuickTime, so I have a feeling that’s the culprit, and that it’s overstepped its bounds and corrupted something that WMP required. I ran into the same problem with iTunes a few years ago, and ended up having to uninstall a bunch of programs, uninstall iTunes, then reinstall the affected programs again. Apple knew there was a problem with that release of iTunes, but did not fix it until 2-3 iterations later. Bastards. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar problem was going on with QuickTime.

Crankypantsing

Taxes

Shelly

I didn’t use I-File last year, because there was some sort of glitch. First, it gave me a wildly inaccurate amount that I owed the state (I have never, ever owed the state, because I rent and take the renter’s deduction). No way did I owe anything, much less a couple of thousand dollars. And then, I-File got stuck in an endless loop when I tried to find the mistake. After having a giant panic attack, I ended up paying to file through H & R Block or some other service, which worked Just Fine.

Because of that, I was leery of trying I-File again. I did, though (cuz it’s FREE), and ended up getting a little more back this year than last year.

All in all, Operation Tax Filing 2008 was a success.

The next step in my plot for world domination: Operation Cracktop.

That is all. As you were, comrades!