Allegra is on my desk again while Thalia is in the shop. I'm writing this from hcolleen's machine, because it has a larger keyboard, a happier processor, and a larger screen. Allegra is a good and steady little machine, but not quite what one would want for one's web-surfing needs. I ought to mail the BOfD to let her know that yes, the system is on her bloody way in. ( I write a stiff little note. )

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At work on Tuesday, I was all set to leave at 8:30 when Field ambushed me with a "few questions" about the spreadsheets they use. Some of the stuff used to boggle me about those spreadsheets, but after all the database work I'd been doing, and all the digging around in the Queen Bee's spreadsheets, these seemed almost simplistic. I poked at things and realized (to my horror) that there were things going on in there that ought not to be done the way that they were being done. (To wit: there were three-positive-line entries that were being treated as if they were two-positive-line entries in the formula at the very end. O, the horror of it all. I got in there and fixed it with some swiftness.

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Group tonight was fun. I've been working on "Hell's Angel" in slow but fairly steady little dribbles. I still don't know where it's going, but it's going somewhere. It looks like it may be the corporate novel that Welcome to the Workplace didn't turn out to be. Nick is much more fun than a thinly-disguised co-worker, and Mary is much more fun than the Mary Sue I was trying to float. Mary is quite possibly a teacher, and goes out drinking 'cause of job stress ordinarily, but now what with Current Events, she's out not just getting tipsy, but getting plastered.

... In hell? Twelve step meetings are hellish.

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I was at least somewhat out of it tonight. I did get M on film sniffing her shoulder to clear out her nose between sniffing at highly scented tinned candles. That was amusing. Dinner was Of the Fun, though I can't remember much of it. There was silliness and whipped cream, and I employed my Book of Quotes happily. (I still want a scan of the workplace Book of Quotes, because there's so much good stuff in that one.) I had this pink water bottle of grape juice and blackberries, and I took to forgetting it places.

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"I'm parking in the car wash." There's this broken sprinkler at the one end of the iHop parking lot, and I picked the spot that gets rained on the most. hcolleen thought that it might have been fixed, but no -- kilarneyblarney came in, letting me know that my car was under the water spout and getting righteously drenched. (Right on!)

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A couple weeks ago there was a Crazy Lady dropping in on group, someone rather frantically worried about her ex-husband and his computer follies. She was exceptionally non-technical, and had a distinct case of non-computer-person paranoia. I wound up giving her what tech support type help I could. She was absolutely paranoid about identity theft, and seemed to think that her daughter's social security number written in a file in the computer was an open invitation for identity theft to happen. ... rather along the lines of "OK, so this text file is in a non-shared folder on the computer that I use on dial-up with a firewall. Someone is going to telepathically sense that this is a machine with juicy data ripe for the taking and break in to it and STEAL MY BABY'S IDENTITY OMGZ!" I gave her the hairy eyebrow and pointed out that if she's running with a firewall and not doing anything, say, STUPID online, there's probably about as much chance at identity theft as someone doing a physical break-in and identity theft. The risk exists, but she's ... being over-cautious. She chilled out, finally. That woman made me very very nervous, because she seemed the type to become psycho!clingy. Today I saw her poking her nose near the door of the writers group room. Scary!

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I didn't do plasma today, because I am due my annual physical, and I got off to a late enough start that I did not have time. Alas! If only I had gone to bed earlier Tuesday night!

Very angry. Stated what I wanted in the bluntest of terms: "A new, 40 gig or better HD sent to me, me shipping the 30gig one back, and I will install it my damn self. I have a fucking screwdriver."

Madwoman got the supervisor, after a lengthy silence where I was afraid I had broken my technician. Supervisor is escalating it.

10 gigs is not much these days, but DAMN.

Today my cussing at work reached an unprecedented high: there were several instances of me replying "No shit" to an interviewer telling me that they were not getting numbers. Eleven hours, all told. I sat at the big desk, the better to keep an eye on my phone goons.

The job didn't close.

Things I never thought I'd have to ask my phone goons: "You do know that there's popcorn in your hair, right?" It looked like the Mustachioed Slacker decided to relieve some of his boredom by decorating iPod Guy. iPod Guy had not known this. He was on a survey at the time. I have a great new draft of a cartoon of this one.

The chiller was chilling away merrily when I got home. Thank goodness.

Darkside and I had a nice long conversation. Nothing of great import, just warm words and giggling. I like those conversations. Then I called amberfox and we chatted. She pointed out that popcorn on the guy's head was nothing compared to the very left-over leftovers.

Thalia still not back. I miss hanging out with the spr0t crew.

As a reward to myself for not completely fucking losing it today, I went and worked out for a half-hour. Then I indulged in the guilty pleasure of continuing for the five-minute cooldown, and then went another half-hour and cooldown. Last night I painted my nails. I can't justify staying up later to re-do them, but I can have a nice happy shower.

XP is verily installed on the new HD. The installation + drive combo has been named Mnemosyne, which is potentially one of my read-only words, given that the only MN word I can reliably pronounce is "mnemonic".

...why, yes. Most of my Saturday afternoon was taken up with Finding Mnemo...

She's to be Mnemosyne no matter what machine she's actually in. So I may wind up wandering around with either Gemini-the-lappy or Allegra running Mnemosyne.

Via raranax: The threat of gay marriage! ...I think I need a colorbar.

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Today's a day off. I don't want to so much as move, really, but there are things that need to get done. I was up late reading. I'm into Blood Debt, and I think I'll be letting Darkside borrow the series. ...If he doesn't go screaming off with "Ewwwww!" when it starts mentioning Henry/Tony.

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I've essentially been living at work for the past week, since Thalia wasn't working right and still isn't working right. IE has to crash twice before it will work, it seems, and Semagic and Firefox don't work at all. I don't even want to try Gaim.

At least I have my Windows XP Home Edition CD. Dell shipped it to my old apartment. DHL noted on the envelope that at the apartment 5 doors down from that, it was a No Such Person. They called me the morning after, waking me the hell up. I told them my current address (the address I'd verified with Dell twice on the call, before they shipped it to the wrong address) and said if I was not there, to please leave it with the office, because it is a Bad Neighborhood.

I returned home from work, to find my CD envelope thoughtfully leaned up against my door, complete with footprint on it.

...yeah.

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I may or may not actually emerge from the apartment today.

I'm on dial-up here, so I'm not going to be reading loot lists or fic or anything like that right now. Thalia and the AirPort (Apple modem + wireless router) are not playing nicely with each other.

The family is mostly playing poker upstairs. I still have to call Mama. It's all snowy out there. There is chocolate in here. I got a fog ring gun and a 70% chocolate bar. Yum. The air cannons mostly stayed in SF, as it was too hard to fit them all in the car with the dogs.

Life is good. I am recovering. I still sound horrible.

I have good cellphone reception here. I'm going to keep posting from it mostly, and clear the saved messages off when I know they post. LJ has a text message function. :-D

And yes, I am a little bored. Haven't gotten many more pictures. My sleep schedule is wacky.

Thalia down. All urgent contacts text message me. LJ text message interface on userinfo page.

[edit 6:05 -- working now. continue as normal.]

Did laundry tonight. I've found that I can actually put orange juice concentrate in those little snack-tupperware thingies, the ones that they're making now that are semi-disposable and you don't feel so bad when they leap out of the freezer and shatter on the floor. (Yes, I have recurring problems with this.) That means that I don't have to make up an entire pitcher at once.

Dishes also, and some picking up and some putting things in the mending queue. Lake is not yet entirely operational. S/he and the synchronizer-dingie have some talking they have to do first. A few things to straighten out.

Meanwhile, I sleep.