If you are leaving then I wish you luck
I hope someone can make your heart warm
I was a baby when I learned to suck
But you have raised it to an art form

"Wind it up", Barenaked Ladies

Ah, the double entendre from the 'Ladies. I've been listening to them on the commute.

The first week of the new shift has been awesome. I do less. I get paid more. And the crew I work with is insane. Tonight's score: me 2, rich 1, stu 0, scoot 1.

I got points tonight for "with *ONE* eye" (Stu was talking about 'the' watering hole in Elizabeth, and that he was looking at the waitress, and she was looking at him) and "... and that's what happens when people call you stuart" (Stu again, was saying that only his mom called him Stuart, and she was dead.)

God, I've been laughing all week. This is much better. With the exception of my 2 hour commute home last night... they didn't plow very well from Monument down, and I drove over snowpack for about an hour. I'm not going to drive 75 on snowpack, people. I have more sense than that. I want to live.

I have an order in for sock needles. I have a serious issue with knitting the second sock, but I figure that knitting 2 socks on 2 needles will help with that. It helped me get the second sleeve knit for Ben's sweater (which is done). I will definitely have the time.

We don't generally go to movies. We've got other things going on, for the most part, and for the rest of it, dropping $20 to see parts of a movie (with children shrieking, people yakking through the film, cellphones ringing, etc.) that may or may not be worth seeing doesn't really appeal.

That aside, GO SEE LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. GO NOW. Stop reading this JE and go.

The way it was described by Fandango wasn't very flattering. The trailer may or may not be flattering; I've got no sound now. But what are you doing clicking on things? I told you to go see the film.

It's sweet, it's laugh-out-loud funny, and it's a great "bonding" film. It reminds me in that aspect of "the Ref". Only without Denis Leary.

Still alive.

Work: changing shifts to gain the 15% shift diff mid-october. 15% more for doing 40% less... ok. can do. Lappy comes along for the ride.

Birthday: last wednesday. really good. new camera. See it on dA if you're interested. It rocks. The tea rocks as well. And the new sunglasses, well, they rock, too. Oh, and the new BNL album... doesn't rock, it's more mellow.

Home: Busy. Much knitting going on - Ben's sweater is coming along; much spinning, much dyeing.

All, I am happy to announce the internal promotion of [the guy you can't stand] to NOC Supervisor effective September 3, 2006.
Stop by and congratulate him when you get a chance!
[idiot manager]

This guy who just got promoted didn't even interview. Didn't apply. Just got "promoted". While 2 other (qualified) people interviewed, went through the whole process to be denied because of "lack of management experience". And 3 people (2 of whom had no management experience) got leapfrogged to sup without being in the tier 3 position.

I need to get the hell out of here. Only 1 more hour. 1 more hour. And one more day of work this week. Unfortunately, the refi closing got pushed off until the 18th, so I have to stay here at least another month.

Archive.org to the rescue. Stupid script kiddies hit my crazymonkeycreations site, and a friend's site, too. replaced all our index.php's.

Dumbasses.

It does little to improve my mood today.

I spent an hour or so working on my knitblog; changing the 'look', writing a shortened version of how i feel about the explosion. I'm tired now.

Today, I've taken my vitamin, my st johns wort, and a claritin. Something's gotta give.

Off to zap my leftovers.

Obviously no one else can do the work.

So, if you fail something over, you create a ticket. Nice, shiny, happy, ok. The ticket gets closed after the fail back, right? You know, at night, right after you have all the customers online. No? Well, just leave it for days.

If you're having a network issue affecting more than a handful of customers, you open a network ticket on it, so you can link your customer tickets to it. At some point, you should FOLLOW UP on the ticket, perhaps explain what the problem actually was, who resolved it, etc. Close it after the problem's over.

Well, here, you open a ticket, link customer tickets to it, and let it sit there for ~2-3 weeks until someone gets tired of seeing the damned thing and closes it because the problem, whatever it was, isn't going on anymore, and there's not enough information to really give to someone to follow up with.

That's the kind of behavior that gets you promoted, you know. Leapfrogged over the next tier up straight to supervisor.

And don't get me started on the frickin' bill runs. They're so complicated only 2 of us are any good at it. But it's documented. In small steps. In english. Really.

I think I've made myself invaluable in my current position. That's never a good thing when all you want to do is get out of your current position. :(

My knitting group self-destructed sometime Friday night.

We had a yahoo group, and recently, the missing moderator/owner appeared with a new list of "THIS IS WHERE WE MEET, NO CHANGES!" and "THESE ARE THE RULES! NO TALKING ABOUT ANYTHING BUT KNITTING!" Hardly the group I joined, where we all had a hand in deciding where to meet, and could talk about anything, but I thought, "whatever".

Then the emails started about people getting their FEEEELINGS hurt when people talked about spinning, because some people didn't want to talk about it (didn't want to spin, didn't want to talk about fiber, didn't want to talk about spinning). But no one SAID anything during the actual meetings. Because they didn't want to hurt anyone else's FEEEEEELINGS. (eyeroll)

Repeat after me, people. If you don't tell people what you want, you shouldn't be disappointed when you don't get it.

SO, one of the members started a spin-off group for those who *wanted* to talk about spinning and needlefelting and weaving and whatever. Some people joined. One person left the first group (because spinning is a BIG part of her life, and she felt unwelcome) and joined the second. Most of us who joined the second group did so without the intent of leaving the first group. We had one email accusing people of finger-pointing and talking about others behind their back, which was thoroughly unfounded.

If there was ANY "talking about others behind their back", it was the "concerned people" who didn't have enough guts to speak up at knit group who went running to the founder of the group (who hasn't shown up in 4 months, mostly because of her knee replacement surgery) whining about feeling left out and having their feelings hurt. From my reading between the lines, there were two or maybe three 'concerned people' im'ing and emailing each other, the group owner, AND NOT THE GROUP talking about how left out they felt.

Because, you see, we OBVIOUSLY started talking about spinning all the damned time, and didn't focus on knitting (although if it was happening, it was a few side group people, and not a huge amount of time spent on it... everyone was talking about the damned log cabin knitting, which I found insanely boring, as I came from a quilting background and there's nothing new about a log cabin pattern).

There was a big "I can't believe this is such a big deal" brouhaha and then, sometime in the night, the group... disappeared. No longer existed. Bereft of life, it rests in peace... etc. It was a very "I'm taking my toys and going home" move. Not something that should've been expected in a group of women ages 30+.

Seven of us met at the place we were supposed to meet on Saturday morning. None of us understood why this happened. Whoever's feelings were hurt by the discussion of spinning didn't show up (as one of the 7 wanted to buy a drop spindle from me, and the others were all as confused as I was). We talked about the things we normally talked about (and I jokingly steered us back to knitting, as part of the new rules stated "We are a KNITTING group, primarily focused on KNITTING.")

I'm mostly frustrated because I thought that part of being a mature adult was being able to speak up for yourself when you felt uncomfortable.

With 26 members, we weren't a huge group, but we were a group. We had connections with each other. I thought that we could say anything in our meetings because certainly topics were brought up that were... let's just say "blue", along with the normal bitching about work, and being laid off, dogs, clothes, shoes, etc. There were usually 6-10 of us, and with that many people, there are bound to be multiple conversations. Topics enough for everyone to get involved with.

I know I didn't care about Crocs (the shoes), knitting for pets, knitting charity blankets, the log cabin craze, or some of the other topics that came up, but that's when you nod politely, pick up your knitting, and knit a few rows.

The split in our group may be a good thing, or it may not be. It will take time to heal. Time to fix hurt feelings.

I told one of the group (the one who left, actually) that this was to be expected when this many women got together. Someone was bound to take something personally that wasn't meant that way, and it was bound to blow up.

*sigh* All I really care about now is, "Where are we meeting next Saturday?" I don't really care who shows up, as long as I can spend some time with my friends.

So, Ben & I were discussing voting on the 'Word of the Week' (it's a contest on dA -- see this url for more info about it). Slightly edited IM logs follow.

Me:
i voted for um... the wallpaper and the rose, i think

Benny:
Hmm ,theres a fairytale for you
"The Wallpaper and the Rose"

Me:
once upon a time, there was a roll of wallpaper....

every day, it sat in the corner and looked out the windows at the rose bushes, thinking to itself "why can't I be as pretty as the garden of rose bushes? I'm just a boring plaid wallpaper that was left over from decorating Suzie's room"

one day, as it sat sighing, a faerie godmother came down and said, "wallpaper, you can have your wish... I will make you as beautiful as the beds of roses in the spring", and with a wave of her wand and a *poof* of smoke, the wallpaper... well, it FELT unchanged, but it was now three rolls of a rose border that matched the plaid wallpaper it had been.

Mother came in, was delighted to find the border, and installed it in Suzie's room. Every day when the roses were in bloom, Suzie would bring in a rose, and point to the wallpaper border where the color was found.

In the winter, Suzie would count the roses to fall asleep.

And the wallpaper lived happily ever after.

The end.

Benny: :P

I'm sure y'all were all wondering, and worried. NOT. :D

Well, I got back from vacation, slogged through 7 grueling days of work, and promptly got sick. WHEE. I'm feeling better today than I've felt in a week, and I'm still sounding like a freight train's rumble when I talk. BUT. We're going camping tonight with some friends from dA, and going for a hike tomorrow.

I've kept on my routines fairly well. We hiked for 2-3 hours every couple of days on vacation, I ate dessert once, when I split a slice of cheesecake with Ben, but I mostly kept on-point and focused on eating and drinking right, and exercising. I'm all screwed up this week because of being sick, but we got out last night for a nice little bike ride (~30 minutes) around the trails in our neighborhood.

I'm doing well enough that my massage therapist noticed. She was rather happy to not have to work out too many knots from my shoulders, neck, and back, and for the most part, she got the muscles to "release" rather quickly. Even after a 3-week hiatus. I'm now on the every-other-weekly plan, which is a good thing, I think.

Work? Still sucks. Sucks in slightly different ways this week, but still sucks. 3 of my co-workers got promoted to "shift supervisor" positions. 1 of them I rather agree with. 2 of them, well, I don't agree with wholly, but am looking forward to the train wreck. This means we're hiring 2 from outside. No, I didn't apply, because I don't want to be responsible for other peoples' fuck-ups. I closed 47 network tickets on Monday, some of them open for MONTHS without any updates. "No one cared for 2 months? Close."

There is a plan in place to get me out of this hell-hole. A cunning plan. In fact, it is so cunning, that if you put a tail on it it would be a weasel.

Found in dominator2010's JE. I thought it would be interesting to take the quiz, since tabletop gaming is too slow and drawn-out for me to actually play.

I Am A: Chaotic Good Elf Ranger Bard

Alignment:
Chaotic Good characters are independent types with a strong belief in the value of goodness. They have little use for governments and other forces of order, and will generally do their own things, without heed to such groups.

Race:
Elves are the eldest of all races, although they are generally a bit smaller than humans. They are generally well-cultured, artistic, easy-going, and because of their long lives, unconcerned with day-to-day activities that other races frequently concern themselves with. Elves are, effectively, immortal, although they can be killed. After a thousand years or so, they simply pass on to the next plane of existance.

Primary Class:
Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy.

Secondary Class:
Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit.

Deity:
Solonor Thelandria is the Chaotic Good elven god of archery and the hunt. He is also known as the Keen Eye, the Great Archer, and the Forest Hunter. His followers respect nature, and only hunt when needed, but are quick to defend the forest from intruders. Their favorite weapon is the bow, and they tend to be extremely talented with it. Solonor Thelandria's symbol is an arrow with green fletchings.

Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy of NeppyMan. Actually, that's more or less who I am, except that I'm not short. :D

We've all, by now, seen the saying that "it could by that the purpose of your life is to be a warning to others."

Yesterday, I experienced another, related truth. "it could be that the purpose of your child is to be birth control to the rest of the population".

I flew yesterday, for 3 hours, with a 4-year-old named Max kicking my goddamn seat and shrieking in the way that only children can. For. Three. Hours.

His mother demanded no respect from him, and got none. He continued to shriek, make noise, complain, and ask for his mommy. Who was right there next to him. She gave him "his pills" at the beginning of the flight... wait, let me back up.

We were checking our bags, and the terror and his mom were behind us. She was checking his stroller. He was rolling around on the floor and dragging his Thomas the Tank Engine bag. She threatened a "time out" and he paid about half a wit of attention, yelled something about hating her, and 'you're hurting me' (although she wasn't close enough to TOUCH him, much less hurt him), and walked closer.

Sidenote: Checking our bags actually was more difficult because there was an old lady in front of the kiosk trying to figure out how a 3-hour flight can take off at 5, and get to denver at 6, and desperately needed to know this information.

So, we went through security (surprisingly easily) and found our gate. There was food near it, and we ate lunch (i guess, as it was 4pm and the 2nd meal of the day) while waiting for boarding. We didn't see Max or his mother, and we got on the airplane, thinking we had dodged that bullet.

Max's mom (and max) got on the plane next to last, and sat behind us. Max immediately began to squeal as his mom had taken his Thomas bag and put it in the overhead bin. She gave him "his pills" and we took off shortly afterward. Almost immediately as we got to cruising altitude, I started feeling my seat being kicked by 4-year-old feet. "I'm sure that man"-- she called me a man, which just makes me fucking happy as all hell --"doesn't want to be kicked, Max." Which stopped him for 10 seconds.

She had NO control of this kid, no respect from him. She continually asked him things, and threatened punishment (but not real punishment, "time out"). But if you threaten something you'll never deliver, you'll get NO response from the kid.

I later likened her treatment of the kid to the way you treat a dog; dogs need to know their place in the pack. They need to have structure, and need to know someone's in charge, or they'll make themselves the alpha, and nothing you ever say or do will make the dog behave.

So, 3 hours of shrieking and seat-kicking later, the mom apologizes as we're getting off the plane. "I tried to get him to stop kicking your seat, he's just willful" and "He behaves for other people" and "No, max, you can't crawl under the seats to get out" and "He's so resourceful" and "He was such a good baby, and now he just acts out all the time".

I was about to say I can't imagine what would've happened if I'd have acted like that as a kid, but I know. I'd have been taken into the bathroom, spanked, and returned to my seat. And it wouldn't have happened again.

I'm not advocating beating kids (although I wanted to kill that one yesterday), I just think that kids need to have discipline. Sometimes, all it takes is one spanking to make a kid realize there are consequences.

You know the feeling when you've done something stupid, and you're mad at yourself for feeling stupid, but then you feel stupid because you're mad at yourself for feeling stupid, but then you're mad at yourself for feeling stupid about feeling mad at yourself for feeling stupid?

Yeah.

It's like that.

I'm going to try to sleep. I'm on EDT time right now, and should be asleep.

Before and After.

Can you tell that Ben gave me a photoshop tutoring session? I think I've got more of a sense of what I need to do to my photos now, and I have the tools to do so. I like having the right tools and knowing how to use them.

My lappy's here with me today, and I'll be re-working some (more) of my recent deviations. So if you're there and watch me, you'll see things pop up that you thought you already looked at. :)

That's what my shirt says.

I figure I've been a sysadmin long enough to wear the damned thing.

Some days I wonder what I'm doing in the NOC, but I want to see this company succeed. I want to be part of it. But I'm tired of being passed over for jobs that I am more than qualified for. Especially when I see a myriad of things that should have been worked on before we went live. Simple things that would take me a day or two to work on. (I've asked to have the ability to do so, on our overlap days when I'm not really needed, but been declined.)

Like we don't have process monitoring. Or filesystem monitoring. Or CPU monitoring. Last week, we had 2 filesystems fill up with NO warning to anyone until the (rather important) applications died. Maybe the apps would've had to have been restarted, but that would've been 5 minutes down instead of 15. :(

My sysadmin sensibilities and my NMS sensibilities make me frustrated with these things. All it would take would be a couple of good snmpd.conf files, and we'd have something useful. I've done it before. In an environment with 1000 systems. But alas, all I can do is point it out. And continue to be frustrated.

I'm working my first day of OT today, and was here at 4am. w00t. Tomorrow, I'll be in at 6a. Saturday, I will rest.

Let's see... the last goals were:

1. Ramp up the elliptical. I want to get to '7' in 2 weeks for at least half of my workout. [done]

You'd think this was the hard one. But Friday's workout was 18 minutes at '8' or above. I've not done as well this week with getting to the rec center, with the holiday (and me working it, and the rec center closed before I got home) and with being under the weather on Thursday. I still got 3 hours in this week, though, so I don't feel too bad. This week looks either really good or really bad for working out. I guess we'll find out which. :)

2. More yoga. [just one workout still] I was feeling under the weather on Thursday, and Friday was INSANE. work out, buy cat food, lunch with ben, massage, a hike, and I turned 4 spindle whorls.

So, for the next 2 weeks... ugh, this is gonna be hard, with the overtime and vaca...

1. More yoga. Twice a week. I'll have to bring the DVD with me, and play it on the ibook.

2. Remember to bring lunch to work. This week, I work 6 days out of 7. If I can remember lunch this week, I'll be well ahead of the game. Next week, I have my normal 40 hours, then we're off on our vacation.

I'm still feeling good, eating less. My "workin' britches" (overalls) are looser, and that's a good thing, too. :)