Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2014-10-14 01:19 am
azurelunatic) wrote2014-10-14 01:19 am
#cupcake jellybean vodka photo session
22:56 Friday, 10 October, 2014
Today (Friday) was actually kind of good!
Sadly, still dealing with the current round of Skin Woe. (It's driving me the kind of batty where I just can't even with advice, but I wanted to mention it because it's driving me kind of batty on an at least once-daily basis.)
Today had a nice solid chunk of transcription, unlike yesterday.
Yesterday was 2nd Thursday. Wednesday was kind of auugh, so I was underprepared, so I determined to come in earlier than usual in the morning, which worked out all right except I didn't get much sleep because my sleep schedule hates me. Thursday morning was all right except for the part where one of the customers somehow got his hands on a copy of the VirtualHammer-internal copy of the invitation. Which is not an inherently terrible thing to have happen information leakage-wise -- it has the same basic contents as the customer-facing invitation, just with the contents rephrased for perspective ("This week we'll be asking you about..." vs. "This week the panel will give their thoughts..."), the internal schedule (8:30am- set up in room. 8:45am- webex starts. 8:55am- all VirtualH people should be dialed in & muted, or in the room and seated. Customers begin arriving. 9am- introductions. 9:05am- presentation. 9:55am- wrap-up. 10am- customers leave; 5 minute break in conference room. 10:05am- debriefing, VirtualH only. 11am- we lose our conference room.) We learned this because one of the Speakers-to-Customers emailed Carmageddon and me, saying quite frantically that there was a customer on the line and no host. And when we got on the line, Carmageddon chatted a bit and we learned that he'd got the email for 8:30. Which doesn't get sent to customers. Carmageddon and I independently came to the conclusion that Speaks-to-Customers was the culprit, because of various circumstantial evidence.
One bit of Wednesday which wasn't complete auugh was Cardboard Sheldon.
There was a cardboard figure of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory that for a time lived in the office of an executive, and then lived in a conference room upstairs in Purple's building. Apparently people got sort of attached to him. This week my Overlady has been in Phoenix at GHC, and some people were talking nostalgically about Cardboard Sheldon. Naturally, since I am a Person Who Knows Things And Also People, my Overlady pinged me to see if I knew about the whereabouts of Cardboard Sheldon. I did not. Nor did I actually know who might. Nor, in fact, had I previously been aware of his existence! But I figured I'd know who knew, so I pinged the A-Team group on Not!Facebook.
Shortly I got a response: my friend the slightly camp guy with the reverse-DA haircut actually seems to be Cardboard Sheldon's person, and if anyone finds him, to let him know!
That was enough information for me, so I found a Missing Person template for Word and filled in a few things: a googled-up photo of a cardboard Sheldon, taken from an angle so it was clear that he was cardboard, a few personal details (name: Cardboard Sheldon. Height: Tall. Weight: not very much. Physical traits: stands very still. Sex: Male. Hair: cardboard. Eyes: cardboard. Clothes: cardboard. About him: tall, snarky, made of cardboard.) and contact info. Then I took a much-needed short walk and placed a poster in each of the main quad buildings.
On my way over to C, I saw the Dean. I showed him what I was up to. The Dean was absolutely delighted, and insisted on taking a selfie with both of us and the poster. He then sent it to [off-topic].
Today, someone I ran into in the break room said something very sweet about the [off-topic] post. I have no idea who he is, but he was wearing a shirt which says he's in Purple's old working group. (He's not part of the usual lunch crowd, since I absolutely don't recognize him at all.)
So on Thursday morning, my task immediately after connecting the Magic Pen to the computer to upload the autoscanned notes (I think the cable on the syncing cradle is busted, which is going to mean hunting up the other one), my task was to add the dude here who had got the wrong invite to the correct invite (simple) and to draft an email to Speaks-to-Customers (fraught, but I was better up to the task at that moment than Carmageddon, who woke up in serious pain in the neck presumably from sleeping wrong as a hot shower did help unclamp all the muscles). (yes, I asked him to make sure it wasn't meningitis.) Technically, the entire Speakers-to-Customers group outranks me, so I had to be sensitive to that. Plus the evidence connecting this guy was merely circumstantial. My eventual strategy was to reply to his "btw, customer in and the meeting's not started!!!" email, thanking him again for calling attention to the situation, explaining that somehow the customer had got ahold of the internal invitation, and saying that now the customer was on the customer invitation, and then explaining the difference between the two invitations and the rationale for that, plus the method of adding new people at a customer site (ask me or Carmageddon to add them). That took some time. Purple was kind enough to give it a quick beta, as Carmageddon had disappeared. (When he reappeared, I produced the naproxen sodium and made there be a hot rice bag.)
Then there was the team meeting. It was actually twenty minutes shorter than the full hour, as my manager is pretty concise in the Randomizer's absence. The Randomizer is getting bored of convalescing and plans to return to work on the 20th or something.
So what with all that going on, I went home not that long after the team meeting, and promptly fell the fuck asleep for a good chunk of evening.
22:42 Monday, 13 October, 2014
Friday: productive with a solid chunk of transcription, and then there was the non-beer-bash gathering of all currently in-state members of #cupcake (R was out of state for a conference), at which all sorts of fun was had. Various people brought various boozes. lb came down first, then I joined him with supplies. I called Purple (to ping him to come out) and phone (to ping him to come over). Purple showed, and returned with more cups, ice, soda, and an orange. The Chill Aussie showed; I was a bit surprised and then I realized that he is a #cupcake-er now. We saw Not Mr. Rainbow walking across the quad, and he joined us for a bit. phone showed. Mr. Zune showed. First we entertained ourselves because the warning statement on the red rum involved opening the bottle before drinking the booze, so everyone tried to figure out how to actually drink the booze without first opening the bottle.
Not Mr. Rainbow got a phone call from someone at least approximately boss-shaped. He explained that he was out in the quad drinking now. (It was, I believe, after fuck-it-all o'clock by then.) He gave an answer to the guy along the lines of being able to look at it after finishing drinking. Some time passed. A guy came out with a distinct "don't shoot me! i'm just the messenger!" attitude. (He may have actually said these words.) He was vaguely surprised to find Not Mr. Rainbow (as described) drinking in the quad. He relayed some questions. Not Mr. Rainbow had some answers, but it largely boiled down to "I'll look at it" and "when I'm done drinking". Some more time passed. Then someone boss-shaped appeared, with a small sheet of yellow lined notepaper with a diagram on it. Not Mr. Rainbow explained that he was out here drinking, but took a look at it and asked several clarifying questions. The boss-shaped guy disappeared again. After an interval in which he finished his drink, so did Not Mr. Rainbow, presumably to do more of the things.
I had brought my big jar of jellybeans. This proved to be a hit. It was a fresh jar. lb tore off the seal on top and used it as a little plate. Purple used a chunk of the peel from his orange as a bowl, to much hilarity. Mr. Zune was very careful to put the lid back on the jar (as were the rest of us) because we all knew what sort of woe could result from an unlidded jar mostly full of jellybeans at the table with a bunch of people who had been drinking.
Eventually we mixed jellybeans with some of the smells-like-red-jello vodka. Hilarity ensued. Someone, perhaps Mr. Zune, speculated about what would happen if vodka went in the jar. Or if jellybeans went in the bottle. I decided that we could do this on a smaller scale. We poured a substantial handful into an empty cup and removed the too-dark, too-strong items like licorice and coffee. Then we poured in enough vodka to cover the beans and then a bit.
At first it just started to be a bit cloudy. Then it started going greyer and greyer. Purple (I think) said something about (I think) possessed chocolate milk. At some point, he recounted the tale involving his father and some very, very, very expired milk. (Purple is, on a few axes, sufficiently Foul Bachelor Frog that he had some at least six-months-expired milk in his refrigerator. As one has to immediately remove the thing from the premises upon removing it from the fridge, and the times that he remembered the milk were also not times of being willing or able to Take It The Fuck Out. So in it stayed. And then his parents visited. Purple saw his father with the milk in hand. He foresaw this ending badly. He yelped that it was expired. Now, Purple's father is a ... certain kind of man. He has a way of needing to put in his oar every time he thinks there is something Not Right. He has a standard speech about how "expired" does not mean the same thing as "bad". It runs on for a while, and cannot be stopped once started, and he is not particularly amenable to interruption. And before Purple could in fact get a word in sideways, the guy opens his mouth. Upon the milk hitting his tongue, he promptly walks to the sink and spits it out, and agrees with Purple: this milk is expired.)
The liquid got increasingly grey. I was trying to take pictures when Drewface rang my phone. I texted an explanation that made sense to me. However, without context, "#cupcake jellybean vodka pictures" only served to confuse. I had to explain.
Purple volunteered to try it. He survived. I volunteered to try it. I poured a little bit into the bottom of my cup. I had a milkshake straw, so I tried sipping through that. MISTAKE. Sucking that small amount of vodka, jellybeaned or otherwise, through a straw results in a blast of vodka vapor to the back of the throat. I coughed.
We decided that we would, FOR SCIENCE! leave it over the weekend. Since it was in a glass and not some sort of bottle, it went into my little refrigerator.
On Saturday, I headed up into the city for some fabric shopping and millinery. I only burned my finger once on the hot glue!
Sunday was sleep, laundry, and lack of sleep.
Today, I dragged in to work late for lunch, and joined Purple's table as they were winding up. Purple went on in rhapsodic detail about the various synthesizer-related programming he's been working on. I sat and absorbed the delight. He headed back, and I was about to head back as well when phone came through with his lunch, so we chatted a bit.
Aside from the brief 1:1 with my manager, and the exploration of the swag brought back by my Overlady, the day was largely transcription. Purple thought he was going to bail an hour before he actually did, but the new guy needed some orientation, apparently.
If scary bunny masks become the new V-for-Vendetta mask in certain parts of the Valley of the Cloud, don't look at me.
There is no such thing as "spider bacon" that I know of. Not even for sufficiently large spiders.
Today (Friday) was actually kind of good!
Sadly, still dealing with the current round of Skin Woe. (It's driving me the kind of batty where I just can't even with advice, but I wanted to mention it because it's driving me kind of batty on an at least once-daily basis.)
Today had a nice solid chunk of transcription, unlike yesterday.
Yesterday was 2nd Thursday. Wednesday was kind of auugh, so I was underprepared, so I determined to come in earlier than usual in the morning, which worked out all right except I didn't get much sleep because my sleep schedule hates me. Thursday morning was all right except for the part where one of the customers somehow got his hands on a copy of the VirtualHammer-internal copy of the invitation. Which is not an inherently terrible thing to have happen information leakage-wise -- it has the same basic contents as the customer-facing invitation, just with the contents rephrased for perspective ("This week we'll be asking you about..." vs. "This week the panel will give their thoughts..."), the internal schedule (8:30am- set up in room. 8:45am- webex starts. 8:55am- all VirtualH people should be dialed in & muted, or in the room and seated. Customers begin arriving. 9am- introductions. 9:05am- presentation. 9:55am- wrap-up. 10am- customers leave; 5 minute break in conference room. 10:05am- debriefing, VirtualH only. 11am- we lose our conference room.) We learned this because one of the Speakers-to-Customers emailed Carmageddon and me, saying quite frantically that there was a customer on the line and no host. And when we got on the line, Carmageddon chatted a bit and we learned that he'd got the email for 8:30. Which doesn't get sent to customers. Carmageddon and I independently came to the conclusion that Speaks-to-Customers was the culprit, because of various circumstantial evidence.
One bit of Wednesday which wasn't complete auugh was Cardboard Sheldon.
There was a cardboard figure of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory that for a time lived in the office of an executive, and then lived in a conference room upstairs in Purple's building. Apparently people got sort of attached to him. This week my Overlady has been in Phoenix at GHC, and some people were talking nostalgically about Cardboard Sheldon. Naturally, since I am a Person Who Knows Things And Also People, my Overlady pinged me to see if I knew about the whereabouts of Cardboard Sheldon. I did not. Nor did I actually know who might. Nor, in fact, had I previously been aware of his existence! But I figured I'd know who knew, so I pinged the A-Team group on Not!Facebook.
Shortly I got a response: my friend the slightly camp guy with the reverse-DA haircut actually seems to be Cardboard Sheldon's person, and if anyone finds him, to let him know!
That was enough information for me, so I found a Missing Person template for Word and filled in a few things: a googled-up photo of a cardboard Sheldon, taken from an angle so it was clear that he was cardboard, a few personal details (name: Cardboard Sheldon. Height: Tall. Weight: not very much. Physical traits: stands very still. Sex: Male. Hair: cardboard. Eyes: cardboard. Clothes: cardboard. About him: tall, snarky, made of cardboard.) and contact info. Then I took a much-needed short walk and placed a poster in each of the main quad buildings.
On my way over to C, I saw the Dean. I showed him what I was up to. The Dean was absolutely delighted, and insisted on taking a selfie with both of us and the poster. He then sent it to [off-topic].
Today, someone I ran into in the break room said something very sweet about the [off-topic] post. I have no idea who he is, but he was wearing a shirt which says he's in Purple's old working group. (He's not part of the usual lunch crowd, since I absolutely don't recognize him at all.)
So on Thursday morning, my task immediately after connecting the Magic Pen to the computer to upload the autoscanned notes (I think the cable on the syncing cradle is busted, which is going to mean hunting up the other one), my task was to add the dude here who had got the wrong invite to the correct invite (simple) and to draft an email to Speaks-to-Customers (fraught, but I was better up to the task at that moment than Carmageddon, who woke up in serious pain in the neck presumably from sleeping wrong as a hot shower did help unclamp all the muscles). (yes, I asked him to make sure it wasn't meningitis.) Technically, the entire Speakers-to-Customers group outranks me, so I had to be sensitive to that. Plus the evidence connecting this guy was merely circumstantial. My eventual strategy was to reply to his "btw, customer in and the meeting's not started!!!" email, thanking him again for calling attention to the situation, explaining that somehow the customer had got ahold of the internal invitation, and saying that now the customer was on the customer invitation, and then explaining the difference between the two invitations and the rationale for that, plus the method of adding new people at a customer site (ask me or Carmageddon to add them). That took some time. Purple was kind enough to give it a quick beta, as Carmageddon had disappeared. (When he reappeared, I produced the naproxen sodium and made there be a hot rice bag.)
Then there was the team meeting. It was actually twenty minutes shorter than the full hour, as my manager is pretty concise in the Randomizer's absence. The Randomizer is getting bored of convalescing and plans to return to work on the 20th or something.
So what with all that going on, I went home not that long after the team meeting, and promptly fell the fuck asleep for a good chunk of evening.
22:42 Monday, 13 October, 2014
Friday: productive with a solid chunk of transcription, and then there was the non-beer-bash gathering of all currently in-state members of #cupcake (R was out of state for a conference), at which all sorts of fun was had. Various people brought various boozes. lb came down first, then I joined him with supplies. I called Purple (to ping him to come out) and phone (to ping him to come over). Purple showed, and returned with more cups, ice, soda, and an orange. The Chill Aussie showed; I was a bit surprised and then I realized that he is a #cupcake-er now. We saw Not Mr. Rainbow walking across the quad, and he joined us for a bit. phone showed. Mr. Zune showed. First we entertained ourselves because the warning statement on the red rum involved opening the bottle before drinking the booze, so everyone tried to figure out how to actually drink the booze without first opening the bottle.
Not Mr. Rainbow got a phone call from someone at least approximately boss-shaped. He explained that he was out in the quad drinking now. (It was, I believe, after fuck-it-all o'clock by then.) He gave an answer to the guy along the lines of being able to look at it after finishing drinking. Some time passed. A guy came out with a distinct "don't shoot me! i'm just the messenger!" attitude. (He may have actually said these words.) He was vaguely surprised to find Not Mr. Rainbow (as described) drinking in the quad. He relayed some questions. Not Mr. Rainbow had some answers, but it largely boiled down to "I'll look at it" and "when I'm done drinking". Some more time passed. Then someone boss-shaped appeared, with a small sheet of yellow lined notepaper with a diagram on it. Not Mr. Rainbow explained that he was out here drinking, but took a look at it and asked several clarifying questions. The boss-shaped guy disappeared again. After an interval in which he finished his drink, so did Not Mr. Rainbow, presumably to do more of the things.
I had brought my big jar of jellybeans. This proved to be a hit. It was a fresh jar. lb tore off the seal on top and used it as a little plate. Purple used a chunk of the peel from his orange as a bowl, to much hilarity. Mr. Zune was very careful to put the lid back on the jar (as were the rest of us) because we all knew what sort of woe could result from an unlidded jar mostly full of jellybeans at the table with a bunch of people who had been drinking.
Eventually we mixed jellybeans with some of the smells-like-red-jello vodka. Hilarity ensued. Someone, perhaps Mr. Zune, speculated about what would happen if vodka went in the jar. Or if jellybeans went in the bottle. I decided that we could do this on a smaller scale. We poured a substantial handful into an empty cup and removed the too-dark, too-strong items like licorice and coffee. Then we poured in enough vodka to cover the beans and then a bit.
At first it just started to be a bit cloudy. Then it started going greyer and greyer. Purple (I think) said something about (I think) possessed chocolate milk. At some point, he recounted the tale involving his father and some very, very, very expired milk. (Purple is, on a few axes, sufficiently Foul Bachelor Frog that he had some at least six-months-expired milk in his refrigerator. As one has to immediately remove the thing from the premises upon removing it from the fridge, and the times that he remembered the milk were also not times of being willing or able to Take It The Fuck Out. So in it stayed. And then his parents visited. Purple saw his father with the milk in hand. He foresaw this ending badly. He yelped that it was expired. Now, Purple's father is a ... certain kind of man. He has a way of needing to put in his oar every time he thinks there is something Not Right. He has a standard speech about how "expired" does not mean the same thing as "bad". It runs on for a while, and cannot be stopped once started, and he is not particularly amenable to interruption. And before Purple could in fact get a word in sideways, the guy opens his mouth. Upon the milk hitting his tongue, he promptly walks to the sink and spits it out, and agrees with Purple: this milk is expired.)
The liquid got increasingly grey. I was trying to take pictures when Drewface rang my phone. I texted an explanation that made sense to me. However, without context, "#cupcake jellybean vodka pictures" only served to confuse. I had to explain.
Purple volunteered to try it. He survived. I volunteered to try it. I poured a little bit into the bottom of my cup. I had a milkshake straw, so I tried sipping through that. MISTAKE. Sucking that small amount of vodka, jellybeaned or otherwise, through a straw results in a blast of vodka vapor to the back of the throat. I coughed.
We decided that we would, FOR SCIENCE! leave it over the weekend. Since it was in a glass and not some sort of bottle, it went into my little refrigerator.
On Saturday, I headed up into the city for some fabric shopping and millinery. I only burned my finger once on the hot glue!
Sunday was sleep, laundry, and lack of sleep.
Today, I dragged in to work late for lunch, and joined Purple's table as they were winding up. Purple went on in rhapsodic detail about the various synthesizer-related programming he's been working on. I sat and absorbed the delight. He headed back, and I was about to head back as well when phone came through with his lunch, so we chatted a bit.
Aside from the brief 1:1 with my manager, and the exploration of the swag brought back by my Overlady, the day was largely transcription. Purple thought he was going to bail an hour before he actually did, but the new guy needed some orientation, apparently.
If scary bunny masks become the new V-for-Vendetta mask in certain parts of the Valley of the Cloud, don't look at me.
There is no such thing as "spider bacon" that I know of. Not even for sufficiently large spiders.