Category Archives: the ongoing saga of my job

the ongoing saga of my job

Purple Pee and Workplace Bitchfests

Atkins diet is still going well, though I find myself occasionally desiring some ice cream or a serving of lemon shrimp from The China. I just keep telling myself that in another week or so, if we decide to stop the induction phase of our diet after two weeks, I’ll be able to buy the carb-controlled ice cream and the Atkins chocolate bars.

Aaron bought the pee strips that turn purple if you’re in ketosis (that is, burning your stored fat). His turned from light beige to dark beige on Tuesday or Wednesday, so I checked mine. It promptly turned a lovely mulberry. 🙂 So, I’m in all-out ketosis. I’m ketosing like a motherfucker. And I’ve lost five pounds since Monday, though I’m not officially updating the weight record until Sunday morning.

OK, here’s the latest on the work saga. Andrew’s boss, Ruth, is gone for vacation for another week and a half yet. So, someone in our department (I’m not sure who) talked to Justin, who is basically Andrew’s equal in the hierarchy, but over the Item Processing department, and also under Ruth. We ended up having a meeting with Justin (who’s probably my age or a year or so younger, and is a really nice guy). Actually, we had a bitch session with Justin, and he let us run it. He went through three sheets of paper, jotting down all the shit we unloaded about how much we can’t stand the shit Andrew pulls. Loni went a little over the top and called him a flat-out liar, but I tried to help keep things in perspective by offering specific examples. Everybody pitched in, except Lorna, who was out at the doctor’s office today, and maybe even the hospital. We’re not sure. Anyway, a lot of complaints were aired, and I think Justin is going to see what he can do to get some of them addressed. Technically, we’re part of Item Processing, so I guess he’s kind of like our supervisor, in some benevolent uncle kind of way.

That probably made no sense to anyone who isn’t familiar with my workplace. Ah, well.

the ongoing saga of my job, weight loss

Atkins and Aaron and work. (oh my)

Even though my site seems to be down, I’m still going to post an update.

Aaron and I are finishing up Day #3 of the Atkins Diet, and doing surprizingly well. People have told me they felt like crap during the initial induction phase of the diet — I feel great. I feel less lethargic than I did, though I’d stop short of saying I actually feel energetic. I at least feel more alert… though that could have something to do with my attempts to get to bed before midnight this week and last.

I’m enjoying having him home when I get home. It’s like every night is a weekend-night. All except for Monday, when I worked 12 1/2 hours.

At work, we swapped off what clients’ accounts we each process, and our temp, Rama, has apparently hit her breaking point with the stuff I used to run. She’s now complaining to our boss that she should only be working 30-35 hours a week as a temp, and she’s working 40+, and she wants to swap off with one of the other temps, so they can process for awhile and let her prep the work like they do. No dice, as per our meeting last week, but our supervisor, Andrew, said he’ll step in whenever she’s ready to go home. She was not satisfied with that answer, since it seems like he’s just trying to placate her, and not deal with the problem at its source — the problem being that the processors work 45-hour weeks (soon to be longer still), and the preppers are scrambling to barely make their 35 to 40.

We’re all at a snapping point. We’re sincerely hoping that we can all quit at once, having found other jobs, and leave Andrew floundering. We’ll see…

the ongoing saga of my job

I Suppose I Should Be Mourning Like The Rest of the Goddamned Country

nobody knows the trouble i've beenInstead, I’m playing on CafePress. I have a cheesy new store, with a boring new name: schnuthdesigns. I have one design (which is actually a ripoff of a shirt my Mom had when I was little), and I’ve got it in infant tee and creeper, baby doll tee, and baseball jersey. I only wish I could do different colored tees than just white… oh, yeah, and I wish the base prices weren’t so damn high. Nobody’s going to buy this shit.

Let’s see… where’s the list as long as my arm of random piddly blogables…? Ah, yes.

Continue reading →

the ongoing saga of my job

My Blog Is Too Mac-a-licious For Ya Babe

Nope, the PC is still not fully functional. I’m about this close *thumb and forefinger one centimeter apart* from taking the stupid thing down to Virtual PCs and making them fix it. OK, guys, don’t hose the second hard drive—this is not an option…

I guess the good news is that I haven’t gotten any of the new viruses going around. Very few hackers bother to make Mac viruses. 🙂

Now, let’s see if I can properly segue here without telling you anything my employer doesn’t want you to know…

Hey, guess what? Our e-mail was down at work yesterday. And our fax server. And, well, hell, the whole goddamn network was down. Never you mind why. It’s a bunch of fun to manually fax clients who either are usually faxed straight from our computers or receive their deposit reports via e-mail. It’s also a barrel of monkeys to work harder than usual to get less done than usual, all while the rest of the building is cleaning their workstations and going home early because they have nothing to do without their computers. Ahh… there’s nothing quite like having your primary workstation on a network separate from the corporate domain.

My 90-grams-of protein-and-30-minutes-of-exercise-a-day diet died a quick death. Like, two weeks. I’m trying to convince myself that just because I’ve been off the diet for as long as I was initially on it doesn’t mean I’m necessarily a failure. *smirk*

Aaron told me today he’s been contemplating the Atkins Diet himself. Yes, I slammed it earlier, I know, but if he’s willing to give it a shot, I’ll do it with him. He hasn’t totally committed to it yet—he wants to double-check what’s legal for the first couple of weeks to a month and figure out some potential meals first. Chicken, burgers, and tuna would get kind of tedious after about a week, we’d imagine. Anyway, both of us need to lose the same amount of weight (and, oddly enough, have the same starting point), so if we managed to coordinate our weight-loss efforts, I think we could succeed. All I know is I’m tired of being frumpy.

When Mom visited last weekend, she told me she thinks I don’t eat enough. Gee, thanks, Mom. That’s just what I need. —Anyway, she’s probably more correct than I want to give her credit for. I think eating, for me, is a social thing. When I’m by myself at home, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if I eat dinner or not. I say to myself, “Hey, I’m hungry.” I look in the kitchen, and if nothing strikes my fancy, I don’t eat. I pay my stomach about as much attention as I would a headache (and Aaron always bugs me about not taking anything for my headaches when I have them). I just don’t give a shit. If it’s the weekend, though, and I’m out with Aaron or other people, I tend to order up something huge and full of pasta. Lately, I’ve ended up taking half of it home, but still. Maybe I have more of a laziness problem (like, not wanting to actually make anything for dinner). I’d believe that, too. Actually, that’s probably right on the mark.

Part of me is sad that all my pretty code will probably get reorganized once I put this back into DreamBeaver. The rest of me smacks the first part and says, “Dreamweaver lives on your GIGAHERTZ machine, and you’re currently coding this on your 275 MHz PowerPC. Get a life…”

jobhunt

I *heart* my Macintosh

Finally couldn’t stand having an un-updated blog. Since I’ve been downloading fix-it stuff on my Mac, zipping it to floppies, transferring it to the broken PC, reconstituting it, and attempting to fix it, I’ve been feeling the love for my trusty Mac. I ended up using Fetch to grab the code for my blog, and (since my blog is too large to be opened by SimpleText, and I don’t seem to have BBEdit on my computer) using MS Word 98 to edit code.

Also, I have to give it up for me. By using stylesheets, I have made my little blog so much easier to update manually. It’s so much easier to type <p class="entry"> than trying to set all the font sizes and colors, indents, and all that crap. I’m also editing the HTML straight just to try to trick Word out of reformatting everything for me, as it is oft wont to do.

So, here’s the skinny on the PC. I was a little too eager to get my kick-ass system going, and failed to note that I had no driver disk.

This is bad, mmm-kay? So, between my existing Win 98 SE cab files (thoughtfully stored on my computer by Sheryl), Aaron’s Win 98 Update CD, and downloading/transferring files from the internet, I have seriously fucked up my OS. It refuses to recognize that I have an onboard nVidia video card, and sound card, and it keeps giving me errors when I try to install the drivers for the onboard LAN. I finally did download the drivers I needed, and get them on the PC (which required nine, count ’em, nine floppies), but Setup.exe doesn’t launch. I had to attempt to load the drivers manually… but I think the damage had already been done.

I asked Loni at work if she had a Windows 98 Second Edition disc I could borrow, and it turns out that she does. I’m planning to bring it home tomorrow (assuming she remembers to bring it to work), install the fucker, and hope I don’t have to wipe my entire C: drive. …Though it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Most of my important stuff is on the other, newer secondary drive.

On the weight loss/fitness front: I have been attempting to raise my protein intake to 91 grams a day. That’s harder than it looks—yesterday, I felt like all I was eating was meat. Today I made myself a yummy dinner: two chicken breasts baked with a glaze consisting of honey mustard, organic honey, the juice of one lemon, one teaspoon of soy sauce, and two slices of sushi ginger. (Hey, we didn’t have any ground ginger, OK?) Because I was feeling the need for some noodleage, I also made some ramen noodles, topped with a little butter, parsley, and lemon pepper. And, just to be silly, I garnished my plate with two lemon wedges. (I always find it silly to think about food presentation when I’m the only one going to be eating it. But I need to realize that the look of the food is half of the experience. —OK, maybe not half. But some.)

I have also eaten a banana for breakfast every weekday this month, and have exercised at least half an hour (with the exception of Tuesday, when I thought I was making progress with the computer-beast, and didn’t want to quit).

Wow… I haven’t spent this long coding straight HTML in… years? And to think I used to take pride in this ability. Maybe I should do this more often.

Oh, yeah. On the job front. (Did you even know there was a job front?) I sent an e-mail to one of the managers in Sky’s Marketing Department today, detailing my desire to work in said department. I told her where I currently worked, how long I’d worked for Sky (almost a year, fyi), and gave her my qualifications, including my bachelor’s degree and my experience in graphic design, web design, multimedia authoring, and video editing. I requested that she (or the appropriate person) let me know if there would be any positions opening up in the department anytime soon. She sent me a prompt reply, and copied the two VP’s of Marketing, and told me she was forwarding my message on to the people who did the hiring for the department. So… the ball is rolling. We’ll see what happens…

Unk. Now to upload and make sure I did this dang thing right.