An office moment

(this was sometime in the past month or so.)

Mr. Zune & I were chatting. Along comes someone senior to Mr. Zune in his management stack; we've seen each other in meetings. The following is paraphrased but retains the general sense. Mr. Zune is a denizen of #cupcake, and thus sees me by my initials enough to stumble over my given name.

Mr. Zune: $BOSS, Azure -- erm, a.j.l.
Azz: Hi.
$BOSS: Nice to meet you, a.j.l. Say Zune. When you're done with a.j.l., why don't you c.o.m.e. to my o.f.f.i.c.e. to talk about that c.o.d.e.
$BOSS departs
Mr. Zune & Azz: *dying laughing*

I believe I approve of $BOSS.

Looking cool, or something

At one point the Renaissance Man discovered that in California, small lighters are "smoking paraphernalia" and are therefore age restricted to 18+. Barbecue lighters are not. Even if all you're lighting is a candle.

Now contemplate the mental image of the kids out smoking in back of the school, lighting the cigarettes with a long-ass bbq lighter.

"Maybe if you had a long cigarette holder?" I suggested, and tried to mime same.

The Renaissance Man's description of the negative coolness factor of this look cannot be printed by this publication. "Only if you had like a velour suit," he conceded, touching off another round of hilarity.

Mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be on fire. Or use bbq lighters on cigarettes. Which is possibly the same thing.

New Year's Resolutions

Again with the new -- in the coming year, my resolutions for home are:

1366x768
+
1960x1080

This past year, I kept the same (frustrating) laptop, but swapped out my old and dying external monitor for a new one.

I'm not sure offhand what my work resolution is, but it's likely to change as well -- my Overlady has cast an eye upon the situation and declared that when she's got two monitors and is using zero, and I have one monitor and am using it, perhaps some hardware should be shifted within the department. And I am inclined to agree.

Less snarkily, I intend to continue with my current self-driven, fitbit-monitored program of rehabilitation, and see where it takes me.

I have recently seen general improvements in energy and wakefulness, and I intend to bring some of my increased resources to bear on work. I find when I'm working flat-out but have the energy to do so, this has good knock-on effects to the rest of my life (versus when I don't, and then it's bad).

I should also follow up with that likely-looking apartment complex, because the rent here isn't getting any cheaper.

My tweets

• Mon, 14:24: Photo: unconventionalist: Black British Actors that aren’t Idris Elba — #13 Michael Obiora (Hotel Babylon,... http://t.co/k1pKaTganA
• Mon, 19:12: Photo: mairzydozydiveydoats: Raise your hand if you used to play with these things for hours and if you... http://t.co/tNj0GzVBkp
• Tue, 01:03: My fitbit #Fitstats for 12/30/2013: 1,961 steps and 0.8 miles traveled. http://t.co/gFMrr7HEB6
• Tue, 03:11: Photo: Alchemists in the western world tended to spend their time in useless pursuits, tinkering with... http://t.co/ZLc5AU4Xja
• Tue, 03:47: Photo: lemondifficult: Taking mental health advice from pastry recipes. http://t.co/sXDG14voGy
• Tue, 04:48: "Most people have heard of purity balls — formal events where young women pledge their abstinence to..." http://t.co/aLaqV3MaVR
• Tue, 09:36: Photoset: http://t.co/9GbQLFXpY8
• Tue, 10:36: Apartment complex post holiday garbage notice that starts with "Take your Christmas tree and"

Like a handbell choir, for airhorns.

( various work stuff )

Lunch was good: I sat down with the Renaissance Man and someone who may have been his former teammate, yet another guy with the same freaking name. (Darkside, upon receiving my wailings on this topic, made some historically-themed jokes at my expense.) Shortly Mr. Zune joined us, and the four of us made quite the jolly half-hour of it. Topics included The Aristocrats, piano comedy as a genre and its brightest stars (which is not a topic the gentlemen had really intended to become experts in, but it turns out if you're into standup and music, you're going to hear of Tom Leher), what-if, the Renaissance Man's status as the Good Twin (his evil twin moved to Alaska), the incredulous powers of my eyebrow to extract increasingly defensive explanations from the relatively morally upright party, my manager's long-suffering patience with the wacky hijinks of myself and others (no, really, I'm not the only loose screw in my department), the requisitioning of odd office supplies via Office Depot, the blanket prohibition on noisy and projectile toys as gifts for all conference attendees, the loophole that didn't prevent noisy toys as committee/manager/helper gifts (I had a few slide whistles), the unlikelihood of getting chainsaws via Office Depot, how helpdesk is basically unflappable, and how if one person walked in to Helpdesk and asked for a chainsaw they'd think he was weird, and if two people do it, they'd think they was friends, and if three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in to the helpdesk and asking for a chainsaw, and they may think it's a movement.

And all of us chainsaw-lovers belong on the Group W Bench.

From that point, someone, someone who was definitely not me, and was probably one of the #cupcake crew, suggested a team-building exercise where half the people get cans of air, and half the people get little horn-shaped bits of plastic, and you have to build team by finding one person with the other part, and then you're teammates. Later I elaborated on the concept such as each horn would blow at a different pitch, and you'd have to organize yourselves by tone, sort of an air horn version of a handbell choir. I found the idea hysterical.

My Overlady was not impressed by this genius idea, and told me that I wasn't allowed to play poker. ( Read more... )