12:24 PM 5/23/2007
wAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! *cries* Neptune, or, The Tragedy of Veronica, Daughter of Mars, Epilogue.

Moon icon, #102: I plot to snag that.
http://community.livejournal.com/girlyb_icons/49977.html

http://community.livejournal.com/cat_macros/1981185.html -- song. omfg.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2344838.html -- omg wow.


3:01 PM 5/23/2007
The girl who was rumored to be Doing Things with Leftover Leftovers Guy came back, with kid.

http://synecdochic.livejournal.com/130874.html -- fic I need to read, but I'm not about to read it at work just in case.

It's weird to hear JD not being called JD.


4:04 PM 5/23/2007
I feel ill, and like leaving for writers group now. I want to have the time to collect my thoughts before the meeting, but then I'm also writing documentation today, so. er. um. Actually, I should check in with the office on getting them dragged through training on my database.

I'm also thrilled because omg. Database.

Really seriously need to look on Judy's Book about local dentists, as the situation is getting critical, then get back to Mama about what I've found.
Tomorrow (well, today) is the Supervisor Party at work.
Friday, I need to get the remaining fudge components and assemble them.
Saturday is the Phone Goon Party, the one I'm part of the committee on. (We don't have time to discuss this in committee!)
Sunday maybe Darkside will be up for some socializing.
Monday, work again, and probably another Dreaded 6-Hour Spreadsheet.
Tuesday is planned for Anime Night. myrrhianna, would you be up for that/would that be logistically possible for y'all? The short bus The carpool departs five-ish from My Place in the direction of Scottsdale via the 51 northbound. Things can be adjusted.
Wednesday is writer's group again.
Thursday is Solstice.
Friday, gods know what.
Saturday is the 23rd and I have no current plans.
Sunday is the 24th, Christmas Eve. I have no current plans.
Monday is the 25th, Christmas. I have no current plans.
Tuesday, back to the grind, I think. That week at work is going to be slow, and people are going to be doing training and cleaning. Skeleton crew. I don't know what my role in the madness will be. That weekend and Monday is the new year.

Darkside has first dibs on my holiday time. This is valid from when I realized that he had root access until potentially forever, as he is in the #1 spot of Family of the Heart, and has earned his place there.
The greater part of the biological clan and and spr0t have second dibs. (I used up vacation time on the LLG Existential Crisis, so I have virtually none to burn, and I am in Broke And Proud mode. This makes the whole vacation-with-family like I do from time to time not so viable, given that I actually do need to work. However, there's some local spr0t, depending on who's around, and things could be fun.)

My Semagic is b0rked. I'm thinking it's the IE-7 update.

Group was mostly excellent except for M having one of her, um, moments. That was after, not at -- evidently when she's supposed to meet up with someone at Location A, and we switch the venue to Location B, and the someone gets informed of the location change and shows up at Location B, this is Cause for a Hissy-Fit. This is because M is 40-ish going on 7 at some points in time. After exposure to her, suddenly all other implementations of Drama Queen seem a little pale and thin and not even worthy of notice.

Worked on The Hisssstorical Fic at group; read the Roomba scene from the Nano. I'm going to have to go through and re-write the romance after I get done with Chapter 1 of the Hissstorical Fic. (And I'm *dreadfully* worried about my co-writer, as some gnarly stuff is going down with her.)

Today at work I did spreadsheets in the morning, reports with Pink Shirt Guy in the mid-day, and decoration in the afternoon. Chaos was had by all.

I have been offered a position as administrative assistant to pink shirt guy and the rest of management. Glee. This would be a lateral transfer, away from Leftover Leftovers Guy.

I have the jitters. I also have the sarcasm set to high. Therefore, I must be careful to school my face into an absolute blank. My default expression is actually slightly smiling, but we all know how a slight smile can get out of control and twitch and waver when one is trying to not smile as much as one wants to. Therefore, my blank face is on and on hard.

Jitters are from coffee. Sarcasm/fight for the face is due to the Leftover Leftovers Guy incident, and how very much things are going according to quiet little rule books and procedure and not the Good Ol'’ Boys Network. Snarky Lady is not about to take shit, and if Leftover Leftovers Guy dishes any out, there will be rather official shit dished right back. Because, well, some things are just wrong.

Have established that chalky obnoxious little candies are Bad Things. Query is still running, even though I'’ve been running little errands here and there to keep things going smoothly in the workplace.

Monitor room is hot. I overheat. This is combated with iced coffee. Hooray for iced coffee. It also takes serious processor and ages to do a hell of a lot with the pretty pictures I’'m making for Pink Shirt Guy.
Since I have a reasonably small processor that is not suited for things like gaming, it takes me blue forever. I'’m attempting to change things around so I can see what I’m looking at. That'’s going to be interesting.

Jitter, bounce, behave obnoxiously. I can run and get coffee in the time that it takes this thing to finish one thing. If I'’m going to be doing this a lot, I am going to have to have a top-of-the-line system to work on. ;)

St00pid slow compeh.

Black death stuck in my head again. "Speaking epidemiologically..."… This, of course, is the cue for me to make sure I am wearing perfume and lipstick. While I am waiting for the damn chart to render.

I'’m hoping to see a few pretty little curves. (Pretty curves!) I just have to know how to sort it. Oh, and I should filter for the thing. Pink Shirt Guy is going to be here pretty late anyway. What I want to see is how with a very few exceptions, people tend to do a series of ascending curves…... Bleep, I should just do one phone goon at a time, maybe? Or not. Or whatever. I like charts, but sometimes, oh sometimes, they are not much with the liking of me. Save the fuck out of it and start the hell over? Meh.

I have hair long enough to wear it in a bun. An observation that someone in the longhair comm made was that even Princess Leia does not have enough hair to do Princess Leia buns. When you see her hair loose in subsequent movies? So not long or thick enough to do that! I have hair almost that length now. It’'s not long enough.

Tomorrow, I wake up when I wake up, and not an instant sooner.

The escalation manager called. I was, for once, neither at work nor asleep. I did sound somewhat unexploded, and I remained that way. Will ship off Thalia when I am damn well ready and not before. Let the woman know that e-mail is the preferred way of contacting me. The message on the answering machine that says so will be remaining. Got her to re-send her information, as I had not gotten it earlier. Am still too angry to talk in any depth about the issue, so did not discuss it with her. Writing is much better. (And no, John, further lectures on the topic of proper treatment of tech support phone goons Will Not Help Matters. At all.)

Work is welcome, after dealing with BOfD.

Pink Shirt Guy called me into the office when I got there. He told me about my promotion. I was gleeful. I'd heard that this was in the works for a while, but it was nice to actually get promoted! Homie G, Trendy Chick, and few other people got promoted at the same time. I got my annual raise a few weeks ago; now I get a supervisor raise too! Glee!

I checked my e-mail, and found that our guru had modified one of the programs (the problematical one!) to spit up job number, ID number, and zeroes where appropriate, instead of no job number, no ID number, and blanks instead of zeroes. Oh, and drag up the job that gets stored in three-month blocks instead of one-month blocks as one-month blocks. Further glee!

The sheer glee was short-lived, as I holed myself up in the cavernous training room and buried my head in Queen Bee Monitor's spreadsheets, in hot pursuit of the numbers. I emerged two hours later, spitting, snarling, and ready to heave large and heavy objects at my predecessor's soon-to-be-pre-deceased head.

There are statistical obscenities in that thing. Obscenities. I plan to have words with and/or at Management and make it plain that they will not be repeated in the name of duplication. For that would be Bad.

I held an up-training class after we'd done the lunch thing. Apple sauce, as good as it is, is not a complete breakfast if I am going to be doing the brain thing. I had been expecting twelve people; only six were in and were able to be found. It was a rousing session, with discussion about what some people would like to do to some of the clients who provide rather unfortunate survey design.

I reviewed some individual stats after the session proper was over. I like being able to write ad hoc queries, and/or modify existing queries to get what I need out of the database. It was a delight! There was sarcastic commentary over my shoulder; the phone goons understand that this is a project under development. (I am gaining reputation points in this fashion.)

Talked with Stressy College Chick about the latest Leftover Leftovers Issue. Made the appropriate analogy involving the KKK; she allowed as how that sort of thing would be mighty disturbing. Communication? What's that? (My satellite manager had evidently not had words with his, so I had the words myself, see.)

Ikea later on today. hcolleen says that smmc needs to give me the hairy eyeball at each proposed purchase of mine and ask me, "So where are you going to put that?" Obscene answers are evidently not acceptable answers for these purposes.

I must remember to call Darkside, for he will surely want to hear about me vs. the spreadsheets. I can't wait until it's switchboard time.

Laptops are fun for the whole family! It's great -- you can unplug them from everything and keep working when lightning starts lightning-ing.

Woah, that was totally green lighting.

The power's been out twice, so I'm writing in the dark again. I think I won't be getting my shower until morning, which means I should probably be getting ready for bed soon.

(Oh. Lights on again. I wonder how many times this is going to happen? hcolleen's box booted down the first time we had an outage rather than a brownout, so it should be OK with the surge strip. The grass mat she put up on the balcony blew down, because the wind has been plenty intense. I want to be out in the rain, but I'm not so enamored of that to dare the "light-ming", as the LF used to call it.)

( work )

( Leftover Leftovers Guy )

( Technical Woes: End-User vs. the Man )

Snarky Lady was telling me about her experience with Dell Tech Support. She was having problems, and she was telling her tech about it. In some detail. Quite firmly. The tech asked her to repeat that. She did, with quite some vigor. The tech then told her that he'd needed to get her irate on tape so that a supervisor could take action -- evidently they only voluntarily take extended action if the customer is demonstrably irate. (Which ... wtf?) She hazarded, that from what I related, the tech had heard me just find when I stated what I wanted to do quietly and politely -- he'd just wanted me to blow up on tape for the supervisor. ...If any current or former Dell tech support peoples pass by, have you got any insights on this?

Lots of assorted wet out there, but not much more in the way of Dog-Eating Thunder Monsters or wild winds. Scary Lipstick Phone Goon was talking about the tree branches that fell all up ons her car last night. Crazy stuff.

Maybe the heat wave will break soon. I know legomymalfoy has been documenting the crazy heat we've been having -- oi! At least my chiller has recovered -- the thunder/lightning scared it into nonfunctionality last night.

Work has now seen me at the cold kind of angry I get before utterly losing it. Too mad to yell. Worse than BOfD.

Quote of the day: "I'm seriously insane, but that guy is CRAZY!" This was said by the Matching Hair Matriarch of the Philosopher. The Philosopher is, erm, an "odd duck". He would be a wonderful doting/doddering grandfather if only he'd confine the doting more carefully to his grandchildren, and less to the rest of the workplace. He is trying to grandfather the lot of us, and I am not the only one who finds it creepy.

We'd probably find it more pleasing if only his work habits were not sucktastic. As it is, he has that air of "tries too hard" that means that he doesn't have friends and he's desperate to get some, and will cling to anyone who shows the least sign of friendliness. And because aforementioned OMG CREEPY ANCIENT MAN WHO IS OLD ENOUGH TO BE MY GRANDFATHER BUT HAS NO CONCEPTION OF PERSONAL SPACE thing is going on, this does not endear him to many people.

---

( The Leftover Leftovers Guy is religiously insensitive )

OK, it's official. What's-his-face annoys me. ...And I left the window open and my seatmate saw the note in progress and asked who "what's-his-face" is. Erm. At least my seatmate is a girl, so she knew it isn't her?

---

The former lead monitor keeps printing the monitor reports before they have fully loaded. At least four people have talked to her about the issue. I have talked to her about the issue at least three times. Grumble, grumble, grouch. If I have to talk to her one more time about it, I cannot vouch for my general sanity and/or tactful handling of it.

---

Mending fences with the Figment. Calling before 11am is Right Out, but he's perfectly welcome to call otherwise.

Clarified the TV misunderstanding -- it wasn't that it was used that is the bothersome factor for most people. If someone just says "Hey, I want you to have this," of a used TV or something, it's kind of creepy, because if it's still useful to someone, and then they want to give it to someone else, is there something wrong with it, are they a stalker, what?

However, if it's a situation where someone has upgraded and the old TV is still good but of no more use to them, that's a legitimate motive for wanting to get rid of the thing that does not involve being a creepy stalker or someone who wants to ditch something with something wrong with it, like hot property or a lemon or explosive or something.

---

One dude wound up being a guest author for my work-based comic, because of the Do Not Call List quip he made. Many people do not know that legitimate survey research are not one of the classes of places banned from calling under the Do Not Call List. This leads to certain kinds of bad little situations. Thus quipped the dude: "You're on the 'Do Not Call List'? Well, I'm on the 'Do Not Care List'."

---

V came by with my spare keys. She slept in, took a dip in the pool, had a good relaxing morning. I left one of my coffee cups in her car. I introduced her to the workplace, a bit.

Work has eaten my life, with no foreseeable letup until gods-know-when. In fact, it's likely to get worse.

The Check-In Princess has been removed from the check-in e-mail group last I heard; she's been in the office off and on, mostly on, since the new system went live, and she may be there semi-permanently. This means that there are only two of us regular check-ins, myself and my opposite. (I haven't a nickname for her yet, because I don't work with her much; we're generally on opposite shifts.)

The shortest check-in shift is generally Sunday, and that's usually at least eight hours. With just the two of us, we're each to be working 4 shifts check-in, and someone's got to cover if the other has to be out. There is one other regular check-in trained person in the building, and that is Comic Pirate Super, who is in Fulfillment these days on a regular basis (and therefore not available to fill in). Poser-Geek was the other check-in trained person, and he's not working with us any longer.

That would be dire enough, but we're also short on supervisors who run jobs. This means that phone goons are getting pulled to be trained for supervisory duties. Groucho Marx Guy is getting pulled now; Flattop Dave is getting pulled; Ponytail Dave is getting supervisor training as well as monitor training. (He was Fulfillment about half-time earlier.)

My opposite and I were intended to be trained to run jobs as well, but due to random people quitting when we were getting trained, we never wound up finishing. We've both petitioned to finish our supervisor training so we can fill in as needed. But the training is going to take time (ours) and going to take up supervisory time (theirs, to teach us as well as running jobs).

I'm feeling a lot more confident in my ability to be a good supervisor. I remember enough of the mechanics of running jobs to have a good handle on doing it; the theoretical hooks for the actual skills are in my brain already. I could probably limp through running a job with the notes I took last year and heavy reliance on other supervisors to remind me what I need to do. The retraining will bring me up to speed. I'm hoping I get someone other than Grandma Supervisor, because she prefers to tell what to do on the system without explaining how it's done. I learn best when I know why I'm doing it, rather than following by rote.

Unfortunately, as geek, stuff that's Heavy Geekage for the average supervisor is shallow to me, and I'm going to want something more in-depth than I think most of the supervisors are capable of giving me. What I really want is to be apprenticed to the back-room geek who's currently out with his tonsils out, but I don't think that'll happen for a while. That man is highly respected around the workplace, and I have the core technical competence to hang the system details on. He knows the refinements of the system, whereas his opposite number knows the basic functionality but doesn't do the little things that make the field staff exceptionally happy. Ah, well. I can start out learning the basics from whoever happens to be around to train me, and work my way up to learning the cool stuff at some later point.

All this means hectic schedule insanity. It's probably going to be something like me pulling five shifts a week for a few weeks all check-in and her pulling five as well, three check-in and two doubled up with me getting trained, and then me doing three check-in and two training while she does five check-in. And it's going to be insane.

Did I mention I was having sleep issues? Perfect timing for those. I've got the cold that's going around, the tail end. A little congestion in the sinuses is sufficient to screw up my life for weeks. My voice gets all nasty and rusty. Oh, and I'm working this Wednesday. If it weren't already apparent, National Novel Writing Month is over for me.

To top things off in an even more interesting development...
Short Chick Super was admiring my ribbons on Saturday (I wore the Ravenclaw colors to work this weekend because I was still feeling festive), and that reminded her that she'd been searching for a cheat code on something Harry Potter, or some game or other, and she came across a website. And the person looked a lot like me.

So. It looks like my co-workers have found my LJ.
It had to happen sooner or later.
Hi, co-workers.