Wow, it's been over a month since my last journal entry. I knew this would happen, that I would lose interest, but I'm here to try to get back into this.

so I went to Cali, and was ready to come back home on the second day there. Sister lives with boyfriend, both sleep most of the day. Did do a few things in the evening. But I'm one of those wierd people (i guess) that likes to go on vacation somewhere and DO something!! After traveling almost 2000 miles I wanted to go and see things and do things, and not sit in front of a tv (with only 5 channels) and try to entertain myself half the day.

And my car is finally finished, almost two months of waiting, the center wheel cap came in this week. Now I just have to wait to get my deductable back, if that womans insurance company doesn't do something wierd and screw it all up. But the car is fixed.

Oh, and this week was my birthday, yippee. I hate getting older. Actually it's not the getting older that necessarily bothers me as much as it is spending the time alone. I really get lonely around my birthday. I just want someone to spend the time with. I know, that's too much to ask for, I should be happy that I will probably live a long healthy life all alone. I'd rather of had a short life with lots of adventure. Too late.

I am not ready for this morning. Already the twit-brain is getting on my nerves. She has one of the most obnoxious laughs I have ever heard!!

Anyway, was an interesting weekend. I made plans to actually visit my sister in California. Was kinda pissed with Expedia but it's ok. I found a flight out that I liked that was a cheap price, and saved it in my itineray, called her the next day to make sure it was cool with her, then went online to make a change in my return date, but the flight out I wanted was like $100 more. But I found another similar flight a few hours later--I don't have to leave while it's still dark to go to the airport!!

Still no car yet, I talked to the guy Friday and they had to order another part. It should be done this week; or it needs to be done this week, the rental has to go back on Friday.

Well, I guess I should get busy with work-stuff. I may need to get the stick.

It was not worth chewing through the restraints this morning. People have really been getting on my nerves this weekend, and now I have to deal with even more people at work. To add to my frustration, we have two new people in our department, and the whole place just looks like hell. The partition walls are just propped up with furniture and there are computer parts strewn everywhere. And it just looks like crap!

And it's only going to get worse. They are wanting to hire another person. I don't know where the hell they are planning on putting this person.

I'm hoping that I will get my car back this week. I hate the rental I have, it just sits too damn low for my liking. I called the place that is working on it, and I get to wait for someone there to call me back about it. That just sounds bad. All I wanted to know is if the part were in, if they were working on it, or if they were still waiting on stuff or if they had an idea of when it would be done. I'm trying to be patient, but it is not an easy thing for me to do. It's not like I'm going ape-shit because it's not done, I just want to know what is going on!

Then there are other people here at work. They just bug me. I need a vacation, but that's been shot all to hell with the car problems. And I'm down to only one weekend I can go, which sucks. I likedit before when I had options of when I could go. At one point, I had 4 or 5 time I could go, now just the one. Sucks.

We've had some pretty wicked storms around here the last few days, and we have one getting ready to blow up now. I just woke up last night right after the power came back on (at 1:53am, had to reset the alarm clock, I hear you can put batteries in them), that was strange.

Still driving the rental car, which I hate. The things just sits too low for my liking, I want my SUV back!

We are getting two new people in our area, and my boss is racing around trying to get room for them to sit, the place is looking crappy again, it looked nice for about a year (except for all the clutter, that never went away) and now they have partition walls leaned up against desks and file cabinets to make cubicles. There used to be hardware to fasten the partitions to the real walls, making the cubes somewhat stable, but those were lost during the remodel. This place is nuts!

So I'm driving home Tuesday, just about to turn into my apartment complex, making a left turn on a single lane road (one lane east-/one lane west-bound) and this girl tries to pass my on the left, right where I'm turning. Smashes into me. Not a good way to end the day.

So yesterday I call in sick to work and intend to take care of the whole car wreck stuff. This being my only car and me needing it to get around, I kinda want to get it taken care of pretty quickly.

I'm on the phone several times in the morning trying to get my insurance company to help me. Took my car to get an estimate. Mind you, the steering is messed up, not really fun to drive, but will move. Then have to deal with my insurance company, getting papers signed that the police said the insurance company would have and the insurance company said the police would give to me. Then I have to call her insurance company after we find out who they really are and answer more questions, and they tell me to wait two business days for them to call me to tell me what I need to do next. That would be Monday.

No. Unacceptable. Not going to happen.

They expected me to wait 5 days for them to get back with me to say if I could get a rental and what they needed me to do to get my car fixed.

I explained to them that I didn't have another way to get around, I need a vehicle to get to work. They don't care, it's not their problem. I could call them the next day and see if anything had been done.

So I go back to my insurance agents office, and proceed to have a melt-down. I can go through them (which may or may not make me insurance go up, they couldn't tell me that) or deal with her insurance, whenever they decided to deal with me. So I break down, I'm going to get screwed one way or another, I'm just waiting for someone to say "Bend over". So my insurance agent finally decides that my car shouldn't be driven, after calling the place I got the estimate and checking with them (if the wheels are out of alignment, you probably shouldn't be driving the vehicle too much) they decide to get me a rental.

About time, it was 3pm and I had been dealing with them since 9am, and was ready to just go slit my wrists and be done with it all.

So, finally I have my car at the shop, it will be about two weeks before I will get it again, and who knows how much other bs I will have to deal with before everything is all cleared up.

I just didn't have anything to write about last week. Not that I have anything great to write about now, just felt like I needed to put something in here or else I would completely forget.

I did finally get my new computer built this weekend. Splurged and bought a new 17" LCD monitor to replace the 10 year old monitor that wasn't playing nice with the video card. The system went together pretty easily, Red-Hat 7.2 didn't like my ATI Radeon 9000 video card, so I got RH 9 which actually supports the card.

I still haven't heard from my half-sister. It's going to be August before we make plans for me to visit in July. I don't know what's up with her. I think this is just her way of saying "I've changed my mind, don't come visit."

This week has drug on way too long. I woke up this morning and it just felt like it should be Friday. I have been avoiding dealing with the twit-brain, that's always good.

But other than that, not much has really been going on, making the week seem just that much longer! The only reason I'm writing this is to try to keep myself up on this thing and not let it be forgotten.

Ah, another week at the funny farm! I have to do training on Wednesday and I just have to get ready. Not much to do really, just make copies of manuals that they will look at for about five minutes and then toss in a corner and forget. Even though it's no big deal, I'm ready for it to be done and over!

Not much else going on really, I got all the data sent to the vendor that is supposed to be converting it from one program to the new HR program so he can get us a price on the conversion. And the only reason we care doing this is because HR wants their own program, they don't want to 'share' the program that we have for them to use with accounting, that would be too easy. They have to have their own program just for them and we have to make it work and interface with the accounting program by getting two vendors to cooperate! It's going to get ugly and it's just starting.

And in addition to getting this HR package up and running, we are supposed to be working on the new version of our behavioral healthcare information system. Yay-rah. Didn't we just convert to this system four years ago and didn't we hate it and say that we didn't want to do this again for a very long time?? I still remember how heinous it was going to it and I'm not ready to go the "new and improved windows" version just so people can use their mouse and not have to type!!!

Anyway, enough venting, if I don't stop, it will just get worse.

I really dislike co-workers who are backstabbers. I have one who will lie, cheat, beg and do anything to get an assignment that was promised to be or something that I had already worked on. It just irritates me to no end! Of course, having a manager who actually lets this happen doesn't help, in fact he seems to encourage this behavior. And yes, I've told him about this and how I feel regarding it as well. Does it do any good?? Of course not!

Anyway, it's a dreary day; it just needs to let loose and storm or something exciting.

And while I should be prepping for training on Thursday, I sit here playing on the internet. Kinda don't want to do the training.

Something on a more positive note: I got the online employment application live on the web page! Just waiting to see if anyone actually uses it!

I really hate waiting for someone to get back to me on, well, anything. I'm still waiting on the HR woman to check out the online employment application. All she has to do is pull it up and fill it out once, just once so that she has actually seen in and can't complain that she never saw it when I put it out there for the real world to see. Then that project will be completed.

I'm also waiting on another HR person to get back to me so I can finish another web page and have it updated this week. And I'm sure there probably are other people here at work that I'm waiting on.

Another person I'm waiting on is my sister. She wants me to come visit this summer--all fine with me--she just needs to let me know when her schedule will be open. But I have to wait.

Did I mention that I don't like to wait?

Ok, I am seriously bored today. After getting the new web site graphics done, and getting the hr person setup to be able to get online apps, I am done. I have nothing to do.

I have spent the entire morning surfing the web, looking up ticket prices on the off chance I go see my sister this summer, and other non-work related subjects. And it's only 2:30!! I still have two and a half hours to go before I can go home!!!!

I probably should go grovel for work, but it's Friday and besides, I shouldn't have to go look for work, if there's stuff for me to do, my manager should bring it too me, not wait for me to come looking for stuff to do. And I told him yesterday that I completed the web site and stuff, he know's that's what I was working on and that I didn't have anything else. I'll deal, one day with nothing to do won't kill me, that usually the norm not the exception.

On a side note, the 'wonder-girl' of the department is back. I had hoped that she would be gone today and have a even longer vacation, or just not come back. I could be so lucky. I did quite enjoy having the week without her, it is so peaceful when she's not here.

I received an email from Myra yesterday, I hadn't heard from her in about 4 months, which is a long time even for her. As usual, she was vague about what she had been doing for the past 4 months, she did just loose her job, this if very Myra though. She didn't say why or go into any detail, I know she hadn't had the job long, she just moved to Denver in January so it's not like she had been there very long.

I was just glad to see that she wasn't dead, or had joined some cult or something, all of which sound just like Myra--she's just a very 'free-spirit'. I, of course, emailed her back immediatly. I'm hoping she makes it back here sometime this summer, what's a thousand miles?? But that is a lot to ask.

After my depressing meeting with the evil Marketing woman, (ok, maybe she's not evil, just very discouraging) I worked on the graphic to add more people, making it more 'diverse'. I should get even by being just as evil, and put a pict of an alien or something wierd like that, saying that I'm just making it really diverse. She wouldn't find that in the least bit funny though, and I would get in trouble.

Although, that may not necessarily be a bad thing. They are making some major changes to this department, and I really don't like the way it's looking like my job will go. So I need to really think about if I want to continue my employment here, or see if there is anything that I would be interested in, and could actually get. There aren't any other good places to work here, and I'm not sure if I'm ready to move someplace else.

Or maybe just ours. So last week I was working on redesigning the graphics for the web site, they just needed updates I thought. I get the nerve to show the new look to the marketing director or whatever they call her now and she gives me the same line she always does: "it looks nice but can you make it better? I could have our ad agency give us the graphics they used." If she had her way this almighty ad agency would do the entire site, which would be a huge graphic and take days to download, and I would just 'maintain it'. She hated the fact that the graphic had the picture of a white girl. "It should be more diverse." It's one freaking person, how diverse can one person be!! I was going to use the other photos of 'diverse' people on the other pages of the site, I just picked this one because it was the first one on our brochure. I think I need to drink tonight.

So I'm redoing the graphics for the company's web site, or at least creating new one that we may possibly use if the powers that be decide they like them. I have two versions of the top graphic: one with text on the right and picture on the left and the other opposite. The three people who have looked at them (and aren't the powers that be) two like the text on right and one likes the text on left. I'm kinda leaning to the text on left, but that's just me. Interesting point of it, the two who like the text on right are both women, and the other is like by me and another guy. Is this just a coincidence? Or do men and women favor a different layout?? Or am I just trying to make so order out of the chaos of the world where there is no real order?