Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2014-04-12 04:39 am
azurelunatic) wrote2014-04-12 04:39 am
2nd Thursday, osbridge proposals, and a dying hard drive.
2nd Thursday happened. Nothing caught on fire. I like it when things don't catch on fire. I sat down with the magic pen and the computer on Wednesday night and made another whack at seeing if I could get it to autotranscribe my handwriting.
Reader, it turns out that the magic pen talks to OneNote.
The magic pen has talked to OneNote since 2012.
Poor Purple got to hear most of the cursing. There was a lot of it.
There was also the vague complaints out in the parking lot as Purple and I headed our separate ways, about the state of having Entertaining Lists and no-one suitable to share the contents with. I came home to a memo stuffed into my door about the state of the apartment-painting: that they understood that not everybody could arrange to take the day off on Thursday, and therefore there would be a security guard present while the paint dried on our open doors, which they would be painting. I looked at the date and grumbled to myself that while it would not be great timing, I might just arrange to work from home next Thursday.
I arrived early Thursday morning, having not slept long but having slept hard. I had time to get coffee and breakfast, and still lay out the traditional post-its and pens. I reviewed the meaning of my flags with the person running the demonstration. She really liked my alphabet soup can, and asked who had drawn it. Then she suggested that perhaps we should have me doing icons or something. (No. I should not be doing icons. Not for anything external-facing. But the suggestion was flattering.)
Purple fetched me for lunch. He was surprised that I hadn't gone yet (despite it being the normal time) because I'd been in so early. He pointed out that while I was currently on the way, this wouldn't be the case forever (his department is also moving buildings) and poking me in person wouldn't be practical; he should therefore add me to the email group of other people he pokes for lunch. He is that rare creature, the highly sociable introvert who rolls into every position with existing friends, and rolls out having collected ever more. He is a social katamari.
The quiet time after the rest of the guys headed off involved some hilarious Shawn stories, including the one time I will ever be an action hero. There are three Shawn stories from his bachelor party, it turns out. The action hero story, the campfire story, and the Mountain Dew and microwave story. Purple chided me gently: if that is the one time I will ever be an action hero, why did I have to waste it on that? :-P
I powered through a lot of the transcription. Eventually I started hating everything. I discovered the chocolate whey protein powder in my drawer. I dumped some in my coffee. I left a review for a technical book that was precisely in keeping with how terrible it was. I started to feel better. For the record: "makes me want to punch babies" means it is a bad book and should feel bad.
Purple tried to send me home. I feel that this may have been a wrongfully-sent-to-bed situation. ;) I was headed in that direction, but I did have to answer a few emails...
I did head home after that, where I discovered that while I had thought that the memo stuffed into my door last night had indicated next Thursday as the day they'd be painting the doors, that I did in fact have a glossy painted door. Today.
There was, again, sleep. This time I got quite a bit, waking up briefly a few times (as usual) but conking right the fuck out again. I could have got up at nine, but I slept an extra little bit and got up with my alarm, and then refueled Vash before work. (Also I got myself some coffee.)
Purple was invisible, so I gravitated back to my desk for lunch, where I opened up the computer to a situation of true alarm. Windows was politely informing me that I had a hard drive problem, and it felt bad for me, son. 99 problems and a disk ain't one. Fortunately most of my files were already on the network drive. There was one nice large one that wasn't (hello flash drive), then I snagged the logs out of Pidgin. Meanwhile, I opened a helpdesk ticket and dashed over to the desktop guys, where I dropped some chocolate on Chip and told him of my woes. We discussed options briefly -- we could try to remediate now, and see how long we could hold the thing on -- or he could try replacing the drive. He then mentioned that it might be possible if the disk was still mostly intact to try cloning it onto a good drive, and see how that worked. But that would run overnight. So I could finish up and then let him know when I was done, sometime before he left. And when was he leaving? Well, what with all the moves, he'd be there until midnight. (Erk. Poor guy. I came back with more chocolate later.) And then I remembered that all my Outlook rules were local (as they involve categories). My Overlady pulled up her Windows box, and Outlook; it eventually fell out that it was that version of Exchange vs. the categories that was the stinker. Alas.
Now that I had secured all the files that needed securing, I started through the process of doing what Windows wanted me to do. What Windows wanted me to do apparently involved its backups. I remembered that there was supposed to be a location we were supposed to use for backups, which I hadn't really been paying attention to because basically all of my stuff was on the network drive anyway. But this seemed like the time. So I looked that up, and set it up, and left Windows to chew on that for a while.
"Do you really trust 'the cloud' more than your own hard drive?" Purple asked (having returned from what turned out to have been someone's departure lunch), upon my mention of where most of my files were.
"More than an actively failing hard drive?" I replied. He conceded my point.
I did get a decent chunk of things done. At length it was time for a break. There were a group of us -- me, Purple, Purple's friend with the long-distance marriage; we were then joined by the guy with the slightly less popular spelling. Mr. Zune wandered over after a while. Good times were had.
I got back to my desk and was getting more stuff done when I realized that the deadline for osbridge proposals was impending. So I bade Purple and Mr. Long Distance farewell, with some jesting that required explanation.
When your friendly local lunatic says: "I was smart. For once. The rest of the time I'm a smartass. Or a smart Azz!" this is the sort of thing that requires explanation. So Mr. Long Distance learned my true name.
I chatted with Nora, who has lately been dealing with computer woes at work far above her pay grade. She identified, duplicated, and reported a weird fucking computer security hole in a system critical to her business. (Not world-ending, but good to get noticed and fixed.)
I collected pizza. Yay, pizza. I sat down and hammered out enough of an outline that I'm comfortable doing the thing if I'm picked. I tried every possible variation on Kat's name that I could think of, but the search failed to pull her up. Someone from the convention was able to add her manually, yay! And I got my proposal submitted! And I will bounce ideas off Leigh sometime after I sleep! Yay!!!
There are enough various Dreamwidth people who are going to osbridge that it is going to be AWESOME. This will also be the first professional conference that I've gone to that I wasn't also helping run. (Because I'm not a sff/fandom professional.)
It's been a bad two weeks for my step count, but today I was close and I was able to get some time in on the bouncy-ball, reading Indexing, and I think that may be the first Seanan book that I loan to Purple.
The next step in the conference thing is transportation. I think the answer may be ROAD TRIP!!!! It is possible that this may also involvekaberett on the return leg.
And now it is time for all good Lunatics to go to bed. Possibly with books.
Reader, it turns out that the magic pen talks to OneNote.
The magic pen has talked to OneNote since 2012.
Poor Purple got to hear most of the cursing. There was a lot of it.
There was also the vague complaints out in the parking lot as Purple and I headed our separate ways, about the state of having Entertaining Lists and no-one suitable to share the contents with. I came home to a memo stuffed into my door about the state of the apartment-painting: that they understood that not everybody could arrange to take the day off on Thursday, and therefore there would be a security guard present while the paint dried on our open doors, which they would be painting. I looked at the date and grumbled to myself that while it would not be great timing, I might just arrange to work from home next Thursday.
I arrived early Thursday morning, having not slept long but having slept hard. I had time to get coffee and breakfast, and still lay out the traditional post-its and pens. I reviewed the meaning of my flags with the person running the demonstration. She really liked my alphabet soup can, and asked who had drawn it. Then she suggested that perhaps we should have me doing icons or something. (No. I should not be doing icons. Not for anything external-facing. But the suggestion was flattering.)
Purple fetched me for lunch. He was surprised that I hadn't gone yet (despite it being the normal time) because I'd been in so early. He pointed out that while I was currently on the way, this wouldn't be the case forever (his department is also moving buildings) and poking me in person wouldn't be practical; he should therefore add me to the email group of other people he pokes for lunch. He is that rare creature, the highly sociable introvert who rolls into every position with existing friends, and rolls out having collected ever more. He is a social katamari.
The quiet time after the rest of the guys headed off involved some hilarious Shawn stories, including the one time I will ever be an action hero. There are three Shawn stories from his bachelor party, it turns out. The action hero story, the campfire story, and the Mountain Dew and microwave story. Purple chided me gently: if that is the one time I will ever be an action hero, why did I have to waste it on that? :-P
I powered through a lot of the transcription. Eventually I started hating everything. I discovered the chocolate whey protein powder in my drawer. I dumped some in my coffee. I left a review for a technical book that was precisely in keeping with how terrible it was. I started to feel better. For the record: "makes me want to punch babies" means it is a bad book and should feel bad.
Purple tried to send me home. I feel that this may have been a wrongfully-sent-to-bed situation. ;) I was headed in that direction, but I did have to answer a few emails...
I did head home after that, where I discovered that while I had thought that the memo stuffed into my door last night had indicated next Thursday as the day they'd be painting the doors, that I did in fact have a glossy painted door. Today.
There was, again, sleep. This time I got quite a bit, waking up briefly a few times (as usual) but conking right the fuck out again. I could have got up at nine, but I slept an extra little bit and got up with my alarm, and then refueled Vash before work. (Also I got myself some coffee.)
Purple was invisible, so I gravitated back to my desk for lunch, where I opened up the computer to a situation of true alarm. Windows was politely informing me that I had a hard drive problem, and it felt bad for me, son. 99 problems and a disk ain't one. Fortunately most of my files were already on the network drive. There was one nice large one that wasn't (hello flash drive), then I snagged the logs out of Pidgin. Meanwhile, I opened a helpdesk ticket and dashed over to the desktop guys, where I dropped some chocolate on Chip and told him of my woes. We discussed options briefly -- we could try to remediate now, and see how long we could hold the thing on -- or he could try replacing the drive. He then mentioned that it might be possible if the disk was still mostly intact to try cloning it onto a good drive, and see how that worked. But that would run overnight. So I could finish up and then let him know when I was done, sometime before he left. And when was he leaving? Well, what with all the moves, he'd be there until midnight. (Erk. Poor guy. I came back with more chocolate later.) And then I remembered that all my Outlook rules were local (as they involve categories). My Overlady pulled up her Windows box, and Outlook; it eventually fell out that it was that version of Exchange vs. the categories that was the stinker. Alas.
Now that I had secured all the files that needed securing, I started through the process of doing what Windows wanted me to do. What Windows wanted me to do apparently involved its backups. I remembered that there was supposed to be a location we were supposed to use for backups, which I hadn't really been paying attention to because basically all of my stuff was on the network drive anyway. But this seemed like the time. So I looked that up, and set it up, and left Windows to chew on that for a while.
"Do you really trust 'the cloud' more than your own hard drive?" Purple asked (having returned from what turned out to have been someone's departure lunch), upon my mention of where most of my files were.
"More than an actively failing hard drive?" I replied. He conceded my point.
I did get a decent chunk of things done. At length it was time for a break. There were a group of us -- me, Purple, Purple's friend with the long-distance marriage; we were then joined by the guy with the slightly less popular spelling. Mr. Zune wandered over after a while. Good times were had.
I got back to my desk and was getting more stuff done when I realized that the deadline for osbridge proposals was impending. So I bade Purple and Mr. Long Distance farewell, with some jesting that required explanation.
When your friendly local lunatic says: "I was smart. For once. The rest of the time I'm a smartass. Or a smart Azz!" this is the sort of thing that requires explanation. So Mr. Long Distance learned my true name.
I chatted with Nora, who has lately been dealing with computer woes at work far above her pay grade. She identified, duplicated, and reported a weird fucking computer security hole in a system critical to her business. (Not world-ending, but good to get noticed and fixed.)
I collected pizza. Yay, pizza. I sat down and hammered out enough of an outline that I'm comfortable doing the thing if I'm picked. I tried every possible variation on Kat's name that I could think of, but the search failed to pull her up. Someone from the convention was able to add her manually, yay! And I got my proposal submitted! And I will bounce ideas off Leigh sometime after I sleep! Yay!!!
There are enough various Dreamwidth people who are going to osbridge that it is going to be AWESOME. This will also be the first professional conference that I've gone to that I wasn't also helping run. (Because I'm not a sff/fandom professional.)
It's been a bad two weeks for my step count, but today I was close and I was able to get some time in on the bouncy-ball, reading Indexing, and I think that may be the first Seanan book that I loan to Purple.
The next step in the conference thing is transportation. I think the answer may be ROAD TRIP!!!! It is possible that this may also involve
kaberett on the return leg. And now it is time for all good Lunatics to go to bed. Possibly with books.