CafeChatNoir

Starts off with a check for way overdue taxes (slew of errors on all sides) that is supposed to have been mailed directly to Arlington County (from A/P in Orlando) sitting in my chair. I call the woman that is supposed to get it, fax her a copy, package it up to mail it to her w/ the documentation, and it would seem that all is well. She is happy, I am happy.

WRONG!

The police showed up to inspect and sieze our assets over this check!! Fortunately, our division head was able to talk them into coming back tomorrow - fortunately, I had a copy of the check, and the mail hadn’t gone out yet, so we’re dropping it off there. I called her and asked why the police were here - she said she didn’t send them. So, who knows, but they’re gone and we’ll have a receipt tomorrow morning when they come back.

It was a fluke to begin with that the check ended up back in my hands. It shouldn’t have. Good karma or something it would seem. I don’t need that kind of excitement.

Vincent ‘Vinnie’ Antonelli: I never touched a gun in my life. That and that alone forever doomed me to middle management.

Steve Martin, My Blue Heaven

Closing is going semi-smoothly. I’d hoped to get the costs closed tonight (early), but the revenue manager needs to make some accruals, and we still have some questions over how we’re supposed to get the payroll data from corporate since we’re not doing our own payroll anymore, but we’re just about there.

I feel SO sorry for the new guy - he has absolutely no idea what he’s gotten himself into. He’s already been told a pack of lies by Sideshow Bob, and has walked in right in the middle of closing and well, that just makes it that much harder.

Tomorrow morning we’ll get costs closed and rates run and my part in the division books is done until Thursday. Unfortunately, that time will be filled with trying to get the corporate books in sync. Revenue and A/R will be done by noon on Friday, and then we’ll slam those into the corporate books, and we should be done with it. I need to remember to segregate the NIS costs out of the system and the prior year adjustments out of the system.

On the getting out of the 8th circle of hell front, I did get a call again from the company I interviewed with a few weeks back - she said she would have “official good news” by Friday. It would REALLY be nice if this came through. So, do continue to keep your fingers crossed for me.

So, again, my life is revolving around closing the books. Sheesh, that just has to come to an end…

Wow, it’s beautiful out there this morning. Was just out in the backyard and it is such a nice quiet, peaceful spot - everything looks so nice and smells good too.

One more cup of coffee and it’s off to the office. It will most likely be a late night anyway, getting in a touch later won’t hurt. That, and I’d rather be a little more coherent when I get there than I am now. Sure, with it being the new guy’s first real day in the office, I should get there earlier, but I made it clear yesterday that I *wasn’t* going to be arriving at the crack of dawn, as I feel like crap.

On a catty note - anyone see any of the pics of Christina Aguilera at the GLAAD awards? Someone needs to take her to the Prescriptives counter at the mall and explain to her that foundation should *match* her skin tone. White skin and an orange face. Not a good look.

Only 4 more days of closing to go………

Have a great day everyone.

Made it through the day. Tired as all get out.

Ms. Snarkypants didn’t bother me today, so that was good. I know, she’s probably a very nice person and she seems to be pretty smart, but seems to be lacking something in the interpersonal communications department. I will try harder to get to know her better.

Met Mark’s replacement, sort of. Bob spent the whole day dragging the poor guy all over creation, so we didn’t get too far past “Nice to meet you”. Bob also has this problem where he just doesn’t stop talking, so the poor guy couldn’t get a word in edgewise if he wanted to.

The PC pool allocation still has problems. I am going to have to go in, manually change the end dates of 70 projects, post it, and then change them back. We can’t find the table that the process validates against, so we can’t just download the table, change it and upload it and be done with it. I don’t have the manual with all the tables in it, so I can’t do anything about it.

I left an outline of how the entire closing process works for the new guy, since he’ll be in before I will in the morning. I am also going to STRONGLY encourage him to have someone who understands the corporate/Oracle side of the books explain it to him - it will make his life easier in the long run if he gets that. (No one did it for us, so I just barely understand it, and not to the point where I can explain it)

We all agreed today that the poor guy just doesn’t know what he’s in for.

The upside of all of it is that we’re about 50% of the way to having costs closed, so we should be able to have that knocked out by COB tomorrow.

Didn’t sleep super well last night and I’m pretty much in an overall fog…

Have decided that I am going in a bit late, getting as many of the division level entries done as possible and then leaving. Ideally, I am thinking 6 hour day just because I don’t think I can be even semi-coherent for much longer than that, and I think I can still get enough done to not fall behind. Have sent off an email to my partners in crime letting them know I really am coming to work today.

I have decided the easiest way to deal with “Assistant Manager” will be simply to avoid her. Fortunately, her supervisor will be returning tomorrow and that should probably keep her out of my hair. If nothing else, I’ll tell her not to get too close cause I’m still waiting for that pesky SARS test result to come back. (I am nothing if not mature when dealing with people with their heads up their asses.) Will also enlist the assistance of some of my senior people to run interference so I can work in peace.

Let’s talk about the new computer. I’m just really pleased with it, even if I got it a little bit earlier than I’d planned (it would have been in the next week or so anyway…)

The monitor is awesome. 15″ flat panel. All viewable. Except when you don’t have the power cord plugged in all the way, then none of it is viewable.

Keep in mind I’m coming off a laptop - PII, 128 ram and a 6GB hard drive.

This sucker has a 40GB hard drive, 256 mgs of ram and a P4. Sweet. And this is pretty much bottom of the line.

Got everything hooked up and discovered the only spare cat 5 cable I have is designed for the laptop… And Staples is already closed. Target to the rescue. $7 later I have 14 feet of cat 5 and a slurpee. Internet up and running and whoosh!! Seems that the laptop didn’t have quite the capacity for speed that this one has… 10Mbps vs 100Mbps.

The OS is WinXP. Definitely a little different, but not too bad so far. All my apps are working with no problems. Really weird thing, though - I have Office 2000, and every time I’ve had to reinstall it due to a HD crash or something along those lines, it gets pissy when I register and I have to call Microsoft to get a code, yada, yada, yada. Installed on this machine, it hasn’t even asked for registration. Thinking this is some thing that XP does automatically somehow, but I’d still think that it would get cranky and want an extra code. Either that, or Microsoft has notified the authorities and the police are on the way to my house.

…ok, in a good way. Headed over to look at the flat panel displays and ended up walking out with a new system. Yeah, that cash & carry thing they have now is dangerous.

But, I’d been planning on it anyway, got what I wanted, and got it before the other computer had died on me.

This one is almost the bottom of the line (second to last) and it still WAY outperforms the old computer. :-D It is bunny fast.

Don’t mind me, the head cold is still in full swing, and breathing through my nose is a mighty challenge.

Ended up going out last night - one of the big guy’s coworkers was having a combo Pampered Chef/Cookout/B-day party and decided that cruddy as I felt, I just didn’t feel like sitting around the house either.

Had a interesting twist on a margarita - frozen limeade, tequila and…beer. Pretty tasty, no real alcohol ‘bite’ to it, very smooth. Gotta get the proportions on that one.

Downside was that I couldn’t get more than a foot away from the box of kleenex all night.

Woke up this morning to discover that I’m out of cat food. ACK! The horror! (Well, *you* try explaining it to the cats…) Quick jaunt to the store and all is well again. And, because I was not too bright and left the one bag of dry food out, it already has a hole in it, courtesy of the furry ones.

Weird dream of the night: In Iraq, filming a documentary. I’m told that I have to make two versions - one that can be viewed in country, and one that is the real one. I refuse. Hand over the real version to the in country people, and the run like hell to get out of the country. Very, very strange…

Still debating heavily on the new system: Laptop/Desktop…Laptop/Desktop…Laptop/Desktop… Lather, rinse repeat. Gonna swing by the Gateway store today to look at the flat panel displays (if I get a desktop, gotta have the flat display. *Hate* the big honkin monitors and the desk isn’t big enough anyway) Wanna get out of the house anyway for a while.

I am really not looking forward to work this week. Closing is bad enough, add an icky cold on top and it’s going to suck. I need to be able to think quickly and clearly and not tell anyone to go to hell. That’s not going to be easy. Biggest preventive measure will just be avoiding the “Assistant Manager” I had to deal with on Friday. She pisses me off very quickly.

Well, off to enjoy what’s left of the weekend. Where did I put those tissues???

OK, strange dream of the night… I went shopping and when I came back out, I discovered that the roof of my car had cracked down the middle, and one half of it was hanging down into the car. It had been raining, so the car filled with water and got so heavy that it broke the blacktop in the parking lot and had sunk down several feet.

So, I’m standing there, the car door handles are at the height of my ankles, looking at this and thinking, “Well, I think this finally justifies a new car.”

Cause I’m going through kleenexes like nobody’s business.

My computer is starting to get hinky on me. Was making some weird noises a couple weeks back, last night, HD made some really un-pretty sounds. Started researching a replacement, now it is a touch more urgent. Did get everything backed up again last night. Glad I didn’t toss that $100 off coupon from Gateway.

It’s gonna be an ugly week next week. I need to get out of this industry - it sucks having any job where you can’t get sick certain weeks out of the month.

At least it’s the weekend and I can veg out. :-D

that’s the cold talkin’. Happily, I realized I had a new box Afrin in the cupboards, so I can breathe through my nose! Woohoo! It’s the little things…

When I have a cold, unfortunately, I can’t communicate for shit, and my comprehension rivals a distracted 6 year old. So yesterday at work was all sorts of fun. Trying to fill out a metrics package where corporate filled in all the WRONG data to begin with and then trying to get an answer out of anyone as to what they wanted simply did not go well. Someone looked at me when I asked, “Exactly what do you want with this?” (If I know what you want, I can get you what you want.) - “Are you an accountant??” Oh, fuck off you bitch. Don’t get started with me today, I’m trying to get your damn request filled and for some unknown reason I would like to do it right and I am having trouble with that - would you prefer I just not do it, since I am obviously not intelligent enough????

It didn’t help that the person who could have actually helped me without being a bitch about it was out for the weekend, so I was dealing with her assistant. Oh, no, wait - it’s “Assistant Manager”, as is **clearly** displayed in her email. Assistant manager of what, we have no idea.

The amazing part is where I actually got it returned to them by the deadline - pretty good considering that I couldn’t get anyone to give me the right numbers until around 3:00. I still think it was kind of a piece of crap that I cobbled together, but I did what I could - had another senior person look over it, she said it looked good enough to her and not to worry.

I’d rather I did better than “good enough” but given the circumstances, they’re lucky they got anything…

Wednesday: Call HR lady at Deltek and get update on status of things. Figure a week and a half since I last spoke to her is a good interval, and she did say to feel free to call whenever I wanted to.

I am admittedly, quite fuzzy headed at the moment. Colds do that, and OK, so I’m not at my peak.

I’ve got this thing that got passed to me here at work, and I swear, it might as well be written in Greek for as much as I understand of it. So, I’ve called the person that wants it and asked her to call me back so I can get some guidance. She hasn’t called back, which tells me that yeah, this must be real important.

Update:
No call back, but I’m still trying to muck through this. I think they sent us a POS worksheet. Her Column A is $100 million. Mine is only $43 million. They should be equal. That’s just not a good start.

OK, so the sore throat yesterday wasn’t allergies, wasn’t just irritation from the coughing fit, it’s a cold. Got the whole stuffy nose/head/ears thing to go with it today. Going out last night didn’t help, but it was fun anyway.

Sent out the closing schedule to the team today. We may be leaderless, but I’ve got to keep the closing under control. Next week should be interesting to say the least. Things *look* like they’re well under control, but something will blow up - it’s just a matter of being ready for it.

OK, I’ve definitely got the classic (for me) cold going on. I’m absolutely starving. Time to go check out the lunch options.

1. What was the last TV show you watched?
Hockey game last night

2. What was the last thing you complained about and what was the problem?
Having a cold.

3. Who was the last person you complimented and what did you say?
Ack, I am sure I’ve said something nice to someone recently, but a specific example escapes me. Note to self: Say something nice to someone today.

4. What was the last thing you threw away?
Piece of adding machine tape

5. What was the last website (besides this one) that you visited?
Pentagon Federal Credit Union

fridayfive.org

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=996&e=2&u=/030424/168/3vqtk.html

I have a sore throat. It’s one of three things:

- Allergies cropping up.
- High stress, leading to lowered immunity, leading to my first springtime cold of the year
- The unparalleled moment of grace I had yesterday in attempting to inhale my milk, after which I had raging coughing fit for 5 to 10 minutes left my throat very irritated.

At the moment, I’m going with option 3. The other two would last for a few more days, and I’m not in the mood for that, thankyouverymuch.

Thank God for the many incredibly GOOD people I know (see that link a few posts back), cause they do help make up for the complete jackasses n my life…

Today I am outside taking a quick break, when Sideshow Bob and Gomer Pyle (his second in command) come strolling up. They’re here for some meeting with someone and say, “Hey, you should probably be in it.”

Crap. I say OK, I’ll be up in a few minutes.

I get up there, they are shooting the breeze w/ someone else, I get tired of waiting and tell another person to let me know when this actually gets going. (We’re all on the same floor, all in pretty much the same area)

So, I go back to my desk, get some things done, and wait and wait and freaking wait. Well, seems they decided I didn’t need to be there, but couldn’t be bothered to say, “Oh, don’t worry about it.”

Now, I don’t care a whit about the meeting - I am thrilled that I didn’t have to be in it. But because no one had the damn common courtesy to let me know I was off the hook for it, I wasted just as much time WAITING (I did get some things done, but YKWIM), and ended up getting lunch about an hour later than I’d planned on. (Again, not a huge thing, but damn, I needed to eat.)

And he is going to wonder why I am leaving.

I’d like to arrange an introduction…

Madonna Slams American Values

U.S. pop superstar Madonna (news - web sites), one of music’s richest performers, has attacked her fellow Americans for being obsessed with the “wrong values” such as getting rich and looking good.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=583&ncid=583&e=9&u=/nm/20030424/od_nm/quotes4_dc

Another day started off well, and shot to hell by actual work interfering.

My frustrations levels are VERY high right now, to put it mildly, and I swear I can feel the veins in my neck popping out.

Fortunately, we are one day closer to the weekend. And one day closer to me getting out of here, whenever that is - I’m still one day closer to it.

Now, on a brighter note - how often do you get to make a difference in the life of someone you haven’t really met?
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/6507704p-7458655c.html

at how much stupidity can be gotten away with under the guise of, “Well, he/she’s got a good heart.”

Well, sure, they may have a good heart, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re a fucking idiot.

that the end is in sight somewhere soon as far as this job goes, it is still hard (and probably just not in my nature) to take a zen approach to the whole thing and stop letting crap annoy me. The fact of the matter is, it’s certainly not worth it to get my knickers in a twist over this place. I just don’t get paid enough to care that much! :)

I am exceptionally lucky in having a coworker who is very good with knowing who I can throw a problem at so it’s not mine anymore. (That was Mark’s job, but since he’s gone, I’m lost on that front.)

We’re still have problems with our software. People are looking to me for a fix, but I don’t have the resources for it. Sorry, folks, this one needs to go through tech support, not me.

Staying relaxed shouldn’t be work, ya know? ;)

has gotten off to a immeasurably better start than yesterday did.

Didn’t get up as early as I would have liked, but that’s ok. Tomorrow is another chance at that.

Have already recieved one “Well, Mark’s voicemail says to call you” question this morning. Which I answered with another question. Way to keep the ball out of my court. :)

Laura has been an immense help to me as well. While I’m relatively competent, she knows who things should be passed off to, and she will gladly help me toss a problem in someone else’s lap. Actually, she likes taking a problem and completely winging it at someone’s head.

Got an email and there is apparently another change in the closing process. Oh, and our service center allocation thing in Costpoint is broken. We’re waiting to hear back from Deltek. (Oh, the many, many thoughts I had when I heard that!)

I remembered to bring in my lunch, and my carrots are cheese & crackers already gone. The sandwiches just don’t taste very good to me, though. Maybe I should slice up more of that chicken for sandwiches tomorrow, depending on what is still left tonight. Maybe I’ll just have soup tonight and then there will be enough chicken left for lunch.

Realized I don’t necessarily have to *make* anything to go w/ the chicken - still have soup & hashbrown casserole.

Dishwasher is running.

Dog has been tended to, cats have been fed.

Lunch is ready for tomorrow, just have to remember to pack it up in the morning.

Need to try and get up early tomorrow.