Today I had one of those conversations that you will likely have had to been there for, for several iterations of "there", including contemporary US healthcare yelling, the giddy heyday of LiveJournal and its attendant Main Character Dramas, and late 1990s mailing list fandom.

It is extremely too long to explain or sum up, but that's what a blog is for, right?
My bullet points here get extremely sketchy. Steph is looking forward to reading the whole thing, and I'm sure the housemates will appreciate knowing why the pair of us were doing a video chat and falling over laughing.

(Minor edits for making things work)

( To spare your reading page. Nested cut tags within. )

Much less screaming today. Purple: "So how was your day? It can't have been too bad, I didn't hear that much swearing..."

Lunch with Purple, filing tickets for software, loon-measuring and the assorted lunacies and wordplay*, data entry in the name of 2nd Thursday, and then a brief breather in the form of the Search for Cardboard Sheldon. I was tiptoeing over to one of the other buildings to post the poster in the mail room when I ran into the Dean. I showed the poster to him. He was absolutely delighted, and took a selfie with us and the poster and sent it to [off-topic]. And then back to work!

Eventually Purple and I were both hungry, so he wrapped up what he was working on, and I busted out dinner. Shawn, calculator shenanigans, high school sex-ed. And by that time it was late enough that I made the executive decision to come home. Now I shall wind down briefly and crash.


* sithjawa is reading up in preparation for NaNo. One of the readings included a top 10 list of birds likely to kill you. ( Loon unit. )

It turns out that learning at 2am or so that Kat's and my proposal for a talk at Open Source Bridge was approved will delay my bedtime a bit. Just a wee bit. I woke up in the middle of my sleep cycle to plot a bit with Kat. I am delighted. Stage fright has not actually walloped me (yet) so I am pretty giddy and also overflowing with words from one or another of the screeds I'm writing at any given moment.

I noticed last night at work that the bottle of cherry-lime cough coffee syrup had migrated back into view: it had joined the rank of coffee condiments in the kitchen corner. The level of syrup is down to three or four fingers. Even if it's a garlic wine incident, eventually people will finish it and then it will be gone. (I shared the story of "blak" with Purple. He is a person who will take his friends' words when something is too horrible, though if the general public says something's horrible, he may try anyway due to his opinions of the good taste and common sense of the general public.)

My 1:1 meetings with my manager have been shuffled up due to various schedule-bits and such; they're now Monday afternoons late-ish, rather than Tuesday afternoons shortly after lunch. They're also down in the depths of the new building near our new corner. It's not as bowel-y as it sounds, because there's a perfectly good door with windows right nearby.

To illustrate how much of a problem my manager telling me to file tickets about things wasn't, I gave her the illustration about my shower-thoughts on that professional conference session video comment moderation policy I was thinking about, with Avengers as examples. I started describing the feedback on Pepper's impeccably put-together presentation, to my manager's howls of laughter.

Today, after lunch I cruised by the ergonomics lab, and got myself measured for the proper standing desk height. The answer is in fact apparently 42 (inches).

The fucking database has improved, amazingly! Now, when you try to upload something and the upload fails, you get a (poorly spelled, but we can't have everything) error message saying which lines it had choked on and vaguely why. This resulted in me dancing in to Purple's office and beaming at him and explaining that the world was not made of fail, and then dancing off to wash my coffee cup.

My (iced) coffee cup now no longer sufficiently insulates its bottom. This is because I tried washing it with water that was much too hot for the plastic. Alas.

One of the screeds of the moment is entitled "Our Dick Jokes are Different", and should probably come with a TvTropes warning, because that title is straight out of the Our Monsters are Different (TVTROPES!!!!) index. Sometimes the people who are important in my life are very wrong. When that happens, the best idea is to let me screed from a safe distance. We'll see exactly how much research this particular screed takes. I <> you very much, my good friend, but you are still wrong, both off and on the internet.

We still don't know collective moving date for sure. Maybe tomorrow we'll know.

Today my manager was Out, and I used the 1:1 time shoving things into boxes, and reconciling papers with computers, and pulling things out of closets.

I popped by the desktop office with two briefcases full of ancient Latitude mumblety-something versions. Poor long-suffering Chip. Then I returned with a third briefcase, because there was really nowhere else to put it.

As part of this whole exercise, various things are being put out for salvage, such as the tablecloths of bad mojo, and a whole bunch of random swag. People from the team were coming up to me the whole day, asking whether I had any left. The vultures claimed it all, very quickly.

Transporting an array of coffee syrup bottles coherently is less fun than you might imagine. This is complicated by the need for everything to be in boxes -- if I thought I could get away with it, I would have left it intact and just carried it across and down myself. But probably not, no. So all the syrups went in one box. I top each box with my email address, just in case the external labeling fails and I have an orphaned box found somewhere.

So there was the matter of getting the syrup pumps out of the bottles. This involved unscrewing, draining, rinsing, and being careful about angles. I had a little more coffee than usual due to using up the drained syrup.

One of the bottles was the ill-favoured cherry-lime. I left that in the traditional free-stuff place.

I got the notice that I was accepted in to the transition pilot for the leap from Exchange 2007 to 2013. In the absence of my Overlady, I had to check her inbox to make sure she'd got the same message (because we go as a unit). In said inbox, I found a question from the PM on the other end of my block. So I hit the database again, and shook it until candy fell out, and this time I was careful to reply as myself and not as my Overlady. So another PM is learning where the information comes from.

One of the mover guys came past my cube and asked was I going to use all those boxes. Yes. Yes, I was.

The PM down the corner is not sure when she's moving, but she thinks it's soon. She is also going to be out of the state next week sometime. This may interact poorly. I bequeathed her two of my boxes -- when I run out, I can request more, but if she's going to be out of the office, she has a limited time window for packing.

The large metal rooster goes in the box before the lava lamp.

I saw JD checking in vaguely near where I was at, and called to ask if he needed a ride home. He allowed as how that might be good. Various communications later, I made my escape and headed in the direction of dinner. (Purple was delighted to learn of a place that did Mongolian beef in the general area, but was staying Somewhat Later.) I joined JD and his hiking buddy. Om nom nom beef.

When I headed out from work, the cherry-lime syrup bottle was still as I'd left it.

I had forgotten how very much I dislike driving and parking near Castro Street in Mountain View. It is not my favorite thing. Fortunately, parking garage. Fortunately, legs.

Then I drove JD home. Yay!

The Starbucks near my friendly neighborhood Trader Joe's is open hella late. I got a cookie. Then I came home and finished up my step count while detangling and re-braiding my hair.

Part 2

Azz is not Skippy. Many of these things are rules gathered from situations encountered, rather than actual orders issued. My long-suffering Overlady does in fact know where to find my blog if she so chooses.

39. Should not come to work if I am actively a zombie.
40. Not allowed to emulate Facebook employees and discuss technical work information in the clear on Caltrain.
41. While 10 copies of The Mythical Man-Month would be a hilarious way to underscore a point with an unrealistic manager, we do not appear to have any of those in our department. (I did not pull this prank; I heard about it on Twitter.)
42. Even though getting a papercut from a post-it is a stupid workplace injury, it should probably still be reported as one.
43. Should not cause the fancy, expensive, imported espresso machine to explode. Or dribble water all over the counter.
44. Yes, the gods of the supply closet have yielded 25 each scissors and rulers unto me. They are not, however, to be used for nefarious purposes.
45. Not allowed to have knife fights on the footbridge over IRC nicknames. (Actual order first issued by Rah.)
( Up to item 80. )

azurelunatic: (my workday was completely hilarious; I should write it up in my journal.)
synecdochic: hilarity is good!
azurelunatic: "hilarious" is sometimes one of my new synonyms for The Bad Kind of Fun, but I hope my login will be working tomorrow.
synecdochic: oh my

So I roll into work actually somewhat earlier than expected, given that I had a late-afternoon meeting, and my mood is darned decent: I'd slept, I'd eaten, I'd remembered to take my morning-pills, and it was gloriously rainy. Fucking chipper, man.

I was curious to see what the aftermath of the much-talked-about (and also much-delayed) email system migration, from Outlook to $PROGRAM, was going to be like. I start in on my day. I log the heck i -- no, I don't. Argh.

I call tech support with the details of my error (password's accepted, but can't connect to the remote system). It is lunchtime, so I suspect that he-who-usually-handles-this-noise, $FLOOR_IT_GUY, will not be back for a good hour. I sigh, slap headphones on my ears, and start up my trusty little iPod Fruitz, who has been freshly loaded with my favorite jams. I try to, at least. Fruitz is out of battery or something and will not start.

( It only got better from there. )

So as per usual every couple of weeks, cleverthylacine and I went on a shopping run. We arrived at the final leg of the tour all caffeinated and ready for entertainment, so we naturally stopped through the Halloween section. The first part we looked at was the part with the colored hairspray, and I grabbed a bottle of the blue and silver glitter, because, hello, blue hair + Azz = yes.

We made a double circuit of the section, first chattering about the lovely Spider Girl outfit that was totally age-appropriate and cute and neither "sexy" nor OMG PINK (though there was also a pink Spider Girl outfit, but together with the red and blue one that meant, you know, CHOICES) and then looking at the other costumes, trying to figure out where the cutoff was where the women's costumes were all SEXY VERSION WHERE MAN'S COSTUME IS NOT SEXY. Pirate, sexy pirate. Ninja, sexy ninja. Doctor, sexy nurse. I saw a "vampiress" (sexy) costume and pointed it out to Tif, who was righteously disgusted. "You know what, if I dress as a vampire this year, I'm going in FLANNEL," she said. "Flannel and GLITTER." We agreed that Halloween in the Castro is no time to be wearing one's good clothes. "And if someone asks you where Edward is, you can say 'I divorced his ass twenty years ago and went to college'," I added.

We swung back for a third look at the shelves, this time with intent, looking for vampire teeth. Flannel is relatively easy to come by, Tif has sensible shoes she can wear, she already has plenty of glitter, she just needed teeth, and maybe -- maybe -- some fake blood. I spotted the party favor kids' teeth, $2~ for a 10-pack, but those wouldn't work. "I saw the makeup over this way," I said, and we examined the shelves. I eventually did spot one pair, in a package with some grease paint, but those were not satisfactory. I stared at the shelves while Tif poked around in more detail, and suddenly my eye caught on the colored hairspray display.

I did a double-take. I stared. I could not believe my eyes at first. I was struck by the absurdity of it all first, and then horror as I imagined the inevitable end result.

"Tif, can you spot what's problematic about this display?" I asked, pointing.

She looked. "Wait, is this the [social justice] kind of problematic, or the LOL FAIL kind of problematic?" she asked.

"The latter."

"There's ... pink paint on the shelf?" she hazarded.

So there was, and some was blobbed on one of the cans, but that wasn't it.

I will now share the pictures that I took, so everyone at home can play along. (I shared this in #dreamwidth and on Twitter earlier.) For those without images, there are six images; the first five are incompletely described, and the sixth is a repeat of the first image, with annotations drawn on the picture and also described fully.


( Full Shelf )


( Medium close )


( Close-up: blue )


( Close-up )


( Close-up: Side-by-side )


( Full shelf: annotated with explanation )


Tif did not actually register the real problem until I pointed it out, at which point she joined me in alternating between horror and snickering.


( I located an employee. )

Last night turned into a wacky adventure of sorts, with a Target trip turning into a Home Depot trip for in-depth color analysis. That and sightseeing involving the display toilets. And refrigerators and washing machines. Clearly, malerin should be somehow involved in the introduction of JD and 'bertos food.

After a while, we had the "froggy little roosters", as they were called when they'd just turned into that croaking teenage stage of chick-hood, still rather indeterminate as to sex. We'd named them Hematite and Onyx, both of them being pure black, having learned the wisdom of androgynous names such as plant or mineral. Both were banties, and both turned out to be hens. Onyx was Narcissa's, and Onyx was an Old English: broad, prominent breast, lovely fan-tail, and more eyes than brain, the pure barely polished black of her name. Hematite was mine, and a banty Sumatra, with short black comb and greenly iridescent shine on her feathers, long tail drooping like a raven's. Hematite and Onyx were as sisters, and went everywhere together.

Their first winter, Onyx took sick, and the two had to come in the house while she recovered. We'd earlier tried, and discovered our error, at grabbing one of the two to pet and hold without grabbing the other. Onyx would cry (piercingly: Old English screech!) and Hematite would fret in her raven-voiced way.

FatherSir discovered, on his own, the folly in grabbing just one. He'd picked up Onyx, and he'd picked her up with less care than he might have, and she yelled about it. That set off Hematite. FatherSir found, much to his surprise, that he was holding two little black hens: Onyx, in his hand, and Hematite, dangling by her beak with a mouthful of the skin of the back of his hand in her sharp little mouth, screeching bloody murder all the while.

The neighbors came over, to see what was the matter.

After that, no one separated Hematite and Onyx.


Onyx got the idea in her cute little black head with the floppy red comb that she, after her winter in the house, needed to lay her tiny white eggs in the bathroom. Nothing would do with the nest boxes in the henhouse. She'd fuss about them, scream about them... we decided, after comparing the size of the egg (she laid every other day) and the size of the bird, that the eggs must have really bad cramps along with them. Mama and I sympathized.

So Hematite and Onyx would hop up onto the steps and wait until someone opened the screen door, and jump in the house.

One day, the door was completely closed, and Onyx wanted to come in. Narcissa and Mama and I were doing something, when there was a disturbance at the window by the couch. Silly little Onyx was trying to perch on the moulding of the outside of the picture window, and not doing a very good job, as it was so narrow. She beat her wings against the window, trying to keep her balance.

We rushed to the door to tell Onnie to get her fool self off the window ledge before she bashed her silly little head against the glass. As we swept aside the screen door, Hematite jumped up, and a few moments later, Onyx came running around the corner and leaped in the house after Hematite.

It got to be a habit for them, after that. Onyx would knock on the window, and Hematite would wait around the corner at the door, to distract the person from closing the door until Onyx got inside.