Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2014-09-18 12:53 am
azurelunatic) wrote2014-09-18 12:53 am
White flowers, murder, and #fishbrick.
I really really needed a "white flowers and MURDER" perfume for work today. The J-Horror BPAL from synecdochic worked wonders today.
I woke up substantially before my alarm, and decided to say fuck it and get out of bed around 8:30 (only a half-hour early). Then I took a leisurely drive to work, chatting with Nora the whole way (well, post-coffee).
My Overlady popped over to see what was the matter, that I was in at the normal beginning of the engineering day. I explained. Her 12:00 was with someone I have dearly missed; I suggested some choice snippets to mention. Basically no sooner did she pop off to her own office than lb and the angry man with all the tattoos showed up. My cube was a distracting cave of wonders, but we went over the sortable chart of grouses (the wiki page with the timeline of the helldesk software, the sortable wikitable with requested improvements, the R&D end-user profile, and the picture of the ruffed grouse) and made a few edits and priority confirmations before marching off to the meeting itself. Beldorion was not in the office today, and Gramp had a conflicting meeting.
The meeting was on the ass-end of campus, in perhaps literally the furthest building from where lb sits: definitely the horizontally furthest, although there is a diagonal building which may have a little greater actual distance. Some people were at no pains to be friendly to engineering-land. We got there a minute after by my watch, while the people already in the room were giving it a few more minutes to see who else would be there and get the webex started.
I was correct in yesterday's assertion that today's meeting was unmissable. I believe I am recalling my manager verbatim when I relate that her instructions to me were: "Give 'em hell."
In the room: the aforementioned incomprehensible twerp, the highly placed dev running the demo, someone sitting quietly and shutting up, Too Much Eyeliner Lady (somewhere highly placed in local ownership of the helldesk software, but a consummate buck-passer), someone from IT, and then the engineering-land contingent. We were, in order: the Desert Islander, very chill; the Angry Tattooed Man, angry; lb, stern; Azz, by turns stern and earnestly, specifically, functionally constructive. Engineering-land contingent got printouts of the wiki page for reference. lb and I took notes (him every now and then on his phone, me with pen and paper).
The engineering contingent post-mortem lasted the twenty minutes back to engineering-land, with further follow-up to follow at some point I am sure.
Lunch was with Purple, and pleasant. He has an ambitious project to spearhead with the knowledge and blessing of his manager.
Wednesday is the day when the cafeteria does their hump day takeout program: place your order before early afternoon, and you too can take home a corporate cafeteria quality meal at takeout prices. It looked decent, so I ordered.
My Overlady came back from her 12:00 with many bits of information. She perched on my couch and shared the intelligence from this meeting. Oh, my.
My computer's been in need of a reboot for a bit, so I was chipping away at getting the things done that I needed to get done before that point. Eventually it hit mid-evening. I pinged Purple and (after flailing atsithjawa a bit) mentioned the concept of dinner, and did he want any. Which he did. We opted for my cube this time. I have a guest couch! He said he'd be over in a bit, and to feel free to start without him (always a dangerous statement from an engineer). I was just separating the plates when he arrived. It's nice to have guests in my cube! I began to tell him some of the highlight from my Overlady's 12:00.
I heard Designer Sparkles coming out of an office. "There's nobody here at this hour!" she said. "No," my Overlady agreed, "except maybe Azure." Designer Sparkles wandered out of the office in search of places more like home. And as my Overlady came around the corner, there I was! With a Purple in my cube.
Then followed a delightful conversation wherein my Overlady shared intelligence from her 12:00 with Purple, we compared some experiences raising hell in school, and all in all a great time was had. My Overlady headed off in search of her own dinner, and we finished ours. Then Purple went back to his desk, and I had the joy of a very crashed computer in need of some Windows updates. My next task: install Notepad++, because I do much better about autosaving in that than in Windows Notepad. (Which I just typed as Nopetad.)
Parking lot conversation was largely fishbrick. Also puddinghandle, toiletjello, blenderpoop, shortsheet, notebolt, and other mostly theoretical forms of mayhem. To be clear: very few of these are actually good ideas to do! Puddinghandle: mix up some very, very chocolatey chocolate pudding. Put a roll of toilet paper on top of someone's car, to catch their attention. Spread the pudding under the door handle. Toiletjello: this is a Shawn stunt. Mix clear gelatin with the boiling water. Pour into the cold water of the toilet bowls at school. (This works best in a cold climate.) Allow enough time to set before the students come in. Shawn was disappointed in the janitors in that they did not think of the hot water (add more hot water, perhaps from the coffee pot, to dissolve the jello safely) and instead removed it by hand. (Purple: "That would be an unforgettable parfait.") Blenderpoop: targeting the Insufferable Smoothie person, either by actually doing it (ideally with multiple DNA sources) or just leaving a note with a crude depiction of a stick figure pooping in their blender. Shortsheet: this is the classic prank. Notebolt: leave a few spare bolts on somebody's desk with a note saying something like "I think you'll need these." The bolts are not actually from anything they own, but they spend some time looking fruitlessly. (Sort of like releasing the five pigs, numbered 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, into a sufficiently large building.)
Beardwatch 2014: still on.
At the end of the day, I still smell faintly of white flowers, although less like murder.
synecdochic worked wonders today. I woke up substantially before my alarm, and decided to say fuck it and get out of bed around 8:30 (only a half-hour early). Then I took a leisurely drive to work, chatting with Nora the whole way (well, post-coffee).
My Overlady popped over to see what was the matter, that I was in at the normal beginning of the engineering day. I explained. Her 12:00 was with someone I have dearly missed; I suggested some choice snippets to mention. Basically no sooner did she pop off to her own office than lb and the angry man with all the tattoos showed up. My cube was a distracting cave of wonders, but we went over the sortable chart of grouses (the wiki page with the timeline of the helldesk software, the sortable wikitable with requested improvements, the R&D end-user profile, and the picture of the ruffed grouse) and made a few edits and priority confirmations before marching off to the meeting itself. Beldorion was not in the office today, and Gramp had a conflicting meeting.
The meeting was on the ass-end of campus, in perhaps literally the furthest building from where lb sits: definitely the horizontally furthest, although there is a diagonal building which may have a little greater actual distance. Some people were at no pains to be friendly to engineering-land. We got there a minute after by my watch, while the people already in the room were giving it a few more minutes to see who else would be there and get the webex started.
I was correct in yesterday's assertion that today's meeting was unmissable. I believe I am recalling my manager verbatim when I relate that her instructions to me were: "Give 'em hell."
In the room: the aforementioned incomprehensible twerp, the highly placed dev running the demo, someone sitting quietly and shutting up, Too Much Eyeliner Lady (somewhere highly placed in local ownership of the helldesk software, but a consummate buck-passer), someone from IT, and then the engineering-land contingent. We were, in order: the Desert Islander, very chill; the Angry Tattooed Man, angry; lb, stern; Azz, by turns stern and earnestly, specifically, functionally constructive. Engineering-land contingent got printouts of the wiki page for reference. lb and I took notes (him every now and then on his phone, me with pen and paper).
The engineering contingent post-mortem lasted the twenty minutes back to engineering-land, with further follow-up to follow at some point I am sure.
Lunch was with Purple, and pleasant. He has an ambitious project to spearhead with the knowledge and blessing of his manager.
Wednesday is the day when the cafeteria does their hump day takeout program: place your order before early afternoon, and you too can take home a corporate cafeteria quality meal at takeout prices. It looked decent, so I ordered.
My Overlady came back from her 12:00 with many bits of information. She perched on my couch and shared the intelligence from this meeting. Oh, my.
My computer's been in need of a reboot for a bit, so I was chipping away at getting the things done that I needed to get done before that point. Eventually it hit mid-evening. I pinged Purple and (after flailing at
sithjawa a bit) mentioned the concept of dinner, and did he want any. Which he did. We opted for my cube this time. I have a guest couch! He said he'd be over in a bit, and to feel free to start without him (always a dangerous statement from an engineer). I was just separating the plates when he arrived. It's nice to have guests in my cube! I began to tell him some of the highlight from my Overlady's 12:00. I heard Designer Sparkles coming out of an office. "There's nobody here at this hour!" she said. "No," my Overlady agreed, "except maybe Azure." Designer Sparkles wandered out of the office in search of places more like home. And as my Overlady came around the corner, there I was! With a Purple in my cube.
Then followed a delightful conversation wherein my Overlady shared intelligence from her 12:00 with Purple, we compared some experiences raising hell in school, and all in all a great time was had. My Overlady headed off in search of her own dinner, and we finished ours. Then Purple went back to his desk, and I had the joy of a very crashed computer in need of some Windows updates. My next task: install Notepad++, because I do much better about autosaving in that than in Windows Notepad. (Which I just typed as Nopetad.)
Parking lot conversation was largely fishbrick. Also puddinghandle, toiletjello, blenderpoop, shortsheet, notebolt, and other mostly theoretical forms of mayhem. To be clear: very few of these are actually good ideas to do! Puddinghandle: mix up some very, very chocolatey chocolate pudding. Put a roll of toilet paper on top of someone's car, to catch their attention. Spread the pudding under the door handle. Toiletjello: this is a Shawn stunt. Mix clear gelatin with the boiling water. Pour into the cold water of the toilet bowls at school. (This works best in a cold climate.) Allow enough time to set before the students come in. Shawn was disappointed in the janitors in that they did not think of the hot water (add more hot water, perhaps from the coffee pot, to dissolve the jello safely) and instead removed it by hand. (Purple: "That would be an unforgettable parfait.") Blenderpoop: targeting the Insufferable Smoothie person, either by actually doing it (ideally with multiple DNA sources) or just leaving a note with a crude depiction of a stick figure pooping in their blender. Shortsheet: this is the classic prank. Notebolt: leave a few spare bolts on somebody's desk with a note saying something like "I think you'll need these." The bolts are not actually from anything they own, but they spend some time looking fruitlessly. (Sort of like releasing the five pigs, numbered 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, into a sufficiently large building.)
Beardwatch 2014: still on.
At the end of the day, I still smell faintly of white flowers, although less like murder.
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Not intended for actual deployment
First you take the fish and render it into slurry -- best, of course, if it's the parts of the fish that the fish doesn't want anymore. Then one allows it to age some, perhaps not gracefully. (Telstar may or may not be interested any longer, and Telstar's people will likely have long ago declined.) Then you freeze it, in some sort of brick-shaped mold. If you are adding anchovies (four short, one long, in the shape of a hand) this is the time to add them, before it sets up too solid.
Once completely frozen, one bides one's time, and waits for a long weekend.
The fishbrick is then mailed, at high velocity, from outside the window, well clear of the security cameras. It may then have time to melt in peace.
(Purple and I, Darkside and I,
Notebolt was the evil idea of Purple, and was also too evil for him to actually do.
Re: Not intended for actual deployment
Re: Not intended for actual deployment
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Non-exploding vacuum cleaner: put maybe two teaspoons of popcorn kernels in their vacuum cleaner bag. Wait. (This only works if they clean out the bag after using, not before.) (It won't actually explode, but it will make some very worrying popping sounds.)
Ekybaodr: requires a standard desktop keyboard. Pop all the small keys off (i.e. not Enter or Space etc.) Swap them around and reapply (optionally spelling out a message in the home row.) For extra credit, change the keymap to match the keys' new location.
Little googly eyes stuck on everything.
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I wonder how many people have googly-eyed Google.
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Picture it: you come into your office, look down, and your keyboard now reads:
QWFRTYUHOD
AJPENISKL;
ZXCVBGM,./
You roll your eyes and go get a new one from the supply cupboard, or pop the keys out yourself and switch them back. Then you start typing. Or rather, "Tifg you jtart tydkgn."
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(Cackling ensues)
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Interesting to know!
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