Category archives for At work

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

It all balances out

Yesterday was… uh… a day. There was cool stuff and crap stuff. I'll leave it to you to sort which is which.

  • The Chicken had his first day of 2nd grade. We were up out of bed early and off to the bus stop. Chicken was mostly excited about school, but I'm definitely not excited about getting up earlier again.

  • A little over an hour later I was leaning against the car and having a cigarette before work. An old woman asked me for directions and I was so lost in thought I could not remember my own address, either street name or house number. She went on her way before I had a chance to forget in which city I live.

  • About an hour after that I was at work when the hard drive in my workstation spun its last. Big pile of suck. There's nothing like a key piece of hardware breaking to stop you dead in your tracks. If only I knew someone who could fix it. Oh, wait… that's me. So, yeah. Spent most of the day getting my own workstation up and running again. The process will continue today.

  • Did you know we have a rental property? Yup, I am an evil scum-sucking slumlord. I would not suck so much scum, nor would I do it so evilly, if our tenants weren't so goddamn frustrating. However, after yesterday my frustration is not quite so intense. Some loan officer of some sort called me at work for a reference. Apparently our tenants are trying to get credit for something or other. The woman on the phone wanted to know about their payment history. It was wonderfully and maliciously fun to be able to truthfully tell her that my tenants are not current on their rent and haven't paid anything on time for years.

  • Lists are fun!

 
Yeah, so… little of this, little of that. I still haven't quite decided if yesterday was good, bad or "other."

posted at 09/05/2007 08:16 am : Permalink
Categorized At work, General : Tagged , , , ,

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Symbolic

This is the perfect example of everything wrong with Microsoft.

Image: screen capture

 
You see that? A security update for the tutorial videos. How in the hell do you make insecure tutorial videos? The engineers at Microsoft are finding a way.

posted at 07/10/2007 07:12 am : Permalink
Categorized At work : Tagged ,

Thursday, March 15, 2007

A murder most foul

[This happened Monday. Shut up, I've been busy.]

Goat is a cold-blooded killer. Cold. Blooded. He killed the office mouse.

I was in the back room working with one of our test machines when I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. It was the mouse scampering across the carpet. I use "scampering" loosely because he was actually pretty sluggish, but scampering seems like the kind of thing a mouse would do.

I was pretty surprised by this. How often do you eyeball the mouse in the house? Those things find the most obscure corners in which to hide, and generally stay there until you've gone away. I wonder what could have brought Mousy out right in front of me in the middle of the day?

I called Goat over so he could share in the oddity. "Bold little sucker, innit?" I said.

"Not anymore." [squish]

Goat squished Mousy under the toe of his shoe. Perhaps he's an old hand at mouse stomping because he seemed to know exactly how much pressure to use to crush the mouse without leaving mouse guts all over the place. Goat then scooped up Mousy's still-twitching body and threw him/her out into the snow.

Sniff, sniff.

Now we're going to need a new office mascot.

posted at 03/15/2007 08:42 am : Permalink
Categorized At work : Tagged , ,

Thursday, January 4, 2007

Two things that drive me buggy and one thing that doesn't

  1. The city's trash collectors. Because they're contracted union employees, they get paid days off for major holidays, right? This week they decided not to take off for New Year's Day. Apparently they decided they didn't want to work Saturday to make up for it.

    Normally a holiday will put off everyone's trash pickup by a day. But not this week. The fuckers didn't take the day, and didn't tell anyone. Lots of people were caught unprepared when the trash collectors scooted through their neighborhood a day earlier than expected.

    The arrangement the city has for trash pickup is such that if it doesn't fit in your trash can, it costs extra to pickup. Our issued trash can will fit about three bags of trash, which sometimes isn't enough for one week, let alone two. Each extra bag requires a $1.25 sticker affixed before it will be collected.

    Those pricks who changed their schedule without telling anyone are going to cost us an extra five bucks next week. Bitches.

  2. Me. I drive me buggy.

    The other day I had a very awkward exchange with a customer where I had to admit that I may have lost his software. I apologized profusely, but passed the buck to Goat about resolving my fuck up to the guy's satisfaction. And I don't feel bad about that buck-passing bit. Goat's supposed to make those decisions.

    Anyway, I turned my workstations inside out. I dug through the trash. I called every customer who'd picked up a machine any time after the guy with the lost disk dropped off his. Those were some embarrassing calls. "Um, yeah… could you check your laptop bag this…"

    Retard that I am, I didn't really lose the guy's software. His CD was sitting right next to one of mine. I picked up his disk and filed it away in my rack by mistake. Even though I could distinctly remember putting away what I thought was my CD, I was completely unfazed by the fact that same CD was still sitting out.

    I may be an idiot.

  3. Keith Ellison, first Muslim in Congress. Had you seen any of the news stories about people bitching that he was going to take his oath of office holding a Qu'ran instead of a bible? Twits like Virgil Goode shouted things like "American values!"

    Ellison is a beautiful, beautiful man. He took his oath of office holding the Qu'ran owned by Thomas Jefferson. How sweet is that? That's pretty goddamn clever on his part.

posted at 01/04/2007 08:48 am : Permalink
Categorized At work, General, News : Tagged , , , ,

Friday, November 24, 2006

It's not just me

It's been suggested by several people that I might be a little hung up on the dick lately.

Totally not true. It's just that I'm surrounded by penis imagery.

Robin the Cockenballs

In case you're wondering, this particular piece of hardware is a cockenballs assembly.

posted at 11/24/2006 05:47 pm : Permalink
Categorized At work, Photo foolishness : Tagged

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Uh… k

My shit-cookin' brother-in-law just drove past my office. He was riding a Vespa. And he was wearing goggles.

Goggle guy

Ok, not those goggles. But he still looked pretty fucking stupid.

posted at 09/12/2006 05:24 pm : Permalink
Categorized At work, Photo foolishness : Tagged ,

Scattered observations from a very strange day

  • If ever you're looking to sell or give away a Pomeranian puppy, you may want to consider not magic markering your tiny little sign:

    Puppy
    Pom

    because passing motorists such as myself may misread that as:

    Puppy
    Porn

    Said motorist may then briefly consider calling you out of morbid curiosity. Said motorist would be disgusted, yet completely entranced. This is assuming said motorist did not read again, realize his mistake and chuckle while mentally calling himself a retard.

  • The psycho burnt lung lady? Yeah, she's far more weird than she originally seemed.

    Apparently her lungs are so sensitive that she was unable to use her shiny new laptop for a considerable amount of time. She says the new plastic was giving off an odor that kept her from breathing. So she left the laptop at a friend's house to air out for the better part of a year.

    Whether there's any truth to that or not, she now has a laptop. Last Thursday she brought it by to discuss a problem. She made an appointment to return yesterday for service. Friday she stopped by to see if I could work on it early. I could not, so she stopped in yesterday for her scheduled appointment.

    She was wearing the same clothes on those three consecutive business days.

  • Stopping by my house in the middle of the day because it's raining and The Bunny may need our only umbrella (conveniently located in the trunk of our car) may occasionally cause Bunny's head to explode.

    Ok, it's probably not me bringing the umbrella that caused her head to explode, but goddamn did she have an impressive headache. I think I could actually see her skull pulsing.

  • On returning to my office, I got a good eyefull of the crazy burnt lung woman's car. I'm pretty sure she's living in it. Her blue Delta 88 was stuffed with a fantastic amount of objects. Piles of clothes, old newspapers, food and a lot of things that looked like plain old trash were crammed into every nook of the passenger compartment. There were even stacks of junk on the dashboard.

    If she's living in her car, how important or relevant can her internet access really be? Wouldn't most people sell that laptop to scrape up some rent money? And wouldn't living in a rolling refrigerator box cause problems with dust, mold and a variety of other lung busters? When she talks about those lung problems, I think she's full of shit.

    Oh, and lest I forget, I'm pretty sure she's crazy. I mean really crazy. Unbalanced. Unstable. Disturbed. Fucking nuts. When she finally stormed out of my office, angry that I was unable to produce a lunar eclipse on demand, I was thrilled by the thought that she's probably too unsatisfied to ever return.

  • A snippet:

    The Chicken: Dad?

    Me: Yeah?

    Chicken: Did you ever shoot with that bow and arrow in the garage?

    Me: Yeah, buddy, I used to shoot that bow all the time.

    Chicken: Did you ever… target it at… shooting stuff?

    Me: Yes, I've gone target shooting with that bow.

    Chicken: Did you used to shoot targets a lot?

    Me: Um… yeah, a fair amount.

    Chicken: Was that your hobby?

    Me: Yeah, I suppose it was a hobby.

    (pause)

    Me: What would you say is my hobby now, Chicken?

    Chicken: Um… smoking?

posted at 09/12/2006 12:04 am : Permalink
Categorized At work, Huh?, Snippets : Tagged , , ,

Sunday, August 6, 2006

Not a micro-manager?

Laura

Right.

I work in an elementary school and we got a new principal in January. At first things went. . . well, not smoothly but at least not real bad. I should have known he was just waiting for people to be lulled into a sense of calm.

Since I don't want to keep referring to him as "the new principal" I'm going to call him W.

One of the first things that W told the staff at my school was that he was not a micro-manager. He put that claim to rest with me at least shortly after it was made.

I am what is called support staff. I'm a teacher and I provide assistance to other teachers at the school who have special education students or just have students that need extra help. We have another teacher that helps with students with behavior problems at our school. I'll call her K.

Just a couple of months after W arrived he started telling K and I how to do our jobs. Now, neither K nor I are new to what we do. We both have a lot of experience working with the needs of special education students and working with teachers. Apparently, though, W knew better than we could possibly understand.

Now, W is not a brand new principal. He's been a principal before. However, he is brand new to being a principal for an elementary school. Previously he has only been a principal for a middle school. What W doesn't understand is that elementary schools and their students just don't tick the same way middle schools do.

Even though W told me I would be a part of the process to work out how the students would receive services this year, my advice was never sought. I tried multiple times to set up an appointment to meet with him to discuss my concerns and he either canceled the meeting outright or didn't show up that day or left early.Fast-forward to Monday.

Teachers in my county returned to school Monday to get ready for students who will start next week. Monday W confirmed my suspicion that I had been cut out of the loop in regards to how the school was going to work with the special education students at our school.

I was finally able to have a meeting with him to discuss my concerns that we did not have enough special education teachers for our Autistic students or for our Specific Learning Disabilities students. In regards to the Autistic students I was told that the need that we have right now, might be addressed in about 3 weeks. Might be. As for any other concerns I might have regarding any other special education students, well he told me he was "working that out with the teachers."

First off, the "teachers" are new to this field and don't have the knowledge to provide any input into any decisions being made. And from talking to the "teachers" they're being told what they will be doing and it is changing on a daily basis. School starts on Monday, August 7th and none of the special education teachers are sure what they are supposed to be doing this year.

W made it very clear to me that my expertise and input in how special education students are served at my school is not wanted. My feeling is that he would be very happy with me if all I did this year was push papers around and keep parents off his back. As far as providing advice and/or guidance to any teachers at my school, he's made it clear that he feels that his plan will solve all needs and if they don't the teachers should bring their concerns for specific students to him or the assistant principal.

Any and all decisions about how students will be taught, how behavior issues will be addressed, etc. have been made by W. He has made it very clear that federal and state regulations regarding special education students mean nothing to him. W told one of my special education teachers that there was no such thing as an Individual Education Plan. It doesn't matter that federal law says all special education students must have one and that their services must be provided as laid out in the plan.

There is only one way I'll be able to get through this school year. That is by smiling, saying "yes sir" and documenting everything that he tells me to do or not to do. I've already told most of the special education teachers to do the same thing. Unfortunately we have a couple that I can't trust not to go back to either W or the assistant principal and cause problems.

I do know that I won't be able to continue to work at this school next year with this particular principal. As much as I love the staff and want to help the students, if my hands are tied and I have to sit by and watch students not get the help they need then I just won't be able to stay.

The school year hasn't started and there are already people, myself included, who don't expect to be at my school for the 2007-2008 school year. It's too bad that one arrogant ass has managed to not micro-manage the school so much in such a short time that he's already destroyed the joy and satisfaction that several excellent educators felt helping students at my school.

posted at 08/06/2006 09:38 am : Permalink
Categorized At work, Guest posts : Tagged ,

Thursday, July 6, 2006

Note to self

When testing the ability of a customer's computer to play audio CDs without error, I must remember to never blindly click the Play button until I have first visually verified that the CD they've left in their drive is not a Christian pop band.

Eww.

posted at 07/06/2006 10:47 am : Permalink
Categorized At work : Tagged ,

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Not every post deserves a clever title

Yesterday I had one of my semi-regular customers visit. This guy's got a strange set of circumstances happening. He's a white guy. He's unmistakably Caucasian. Yet he and his New Zealander wife (love that Kiwi accent) live on an Indian reservation. The guy paid for his service with a check. His bank is in Ohio, but his address on the check is New Mexico.

Me: New Mexico?

Alan: Yeah, I teach at Western New Mexico University now.

Me: Really? Kind of a long commute.

Alan: Yeah it's a three day drive.

Me: Umm… ok.
 

The guy is keeping his house in the mid-west and driving back and forth to his job in New Mexico. That's easily the longest commute I've ever heard of.
 

 

My mom called me at work yesterday saying she wanted to stop by to see me. Immediately I was thinking mama drama. You know the expression. If it's not one thing, it's your mother.

But no, there was no drama. My mom was sorting through her great piles of junk and found something of an heirloom: my father's "yearbook" from when he went through basic training for the Navy in 1968. After apparently wrestling with the idea for two months, she finally decided to give it to me.

I'm so glad she did.

My father looks so young in those photos. He was only 19 or 20 then. Those pictures were from years before I was born, before he'd even met my mother.
 

 

Somebody stole our damn trash can. The company contracted by the city for trash pick up provides specific trash cans for us to use. Three different sizes are available, each at a different rate. I came home from work yesterday to find that some bitch had switched our large size can for a medium.

So… Michael Douglas stole my trash can.
 

 

I've been getting hammered by comment spam this week. In just a few days I've had at least 500. My filters have caught all of them, but it's still annoying. I do find it somewhat entertaining to read some of them. It's odd the kind of things that spammers think will catch your eye. Here are a few examples:

  • drunktv free scat movies amatuer video

  • fuck my drunk wife fucking drunk moms drunk yoda

  • free tranny pics pregnant model reverse gangbang

  • fat grannies gay teen boys brunettes nude

  • horse cumshots athletes foot amateur masterbation

  • forced anal drunk bitches japanese anime porn

  • camel toe rate dog breeds daddy daughter sex

  • mardi gras history anal vibrator amateurindex

  • free bondage pictures lesbian manga gay oil wrestling

  • mc pee pants girl peeing drunk girls flashing

Ok, first of all, how do these spammers know I'm so into transvestite grandmother anime foot scat porn? And second, how do they know my secret rapper name is MC Pee Pants?

posted at 06/28/2006 08:44 am : Permalink
Categorized At work, Geekery, General, Snippets : Tagged , , , , , ,

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