CafeChatNoir

A new one I ran into today - email is tagged to send a return receipt when it’s deleted… So, if you don’t have your email to set for prompts on receipts, they know you have a valid address when you delete it. Tricky bastards. (Of course, this may have been around forever and it’s just the first time I’ve run into it.)

Well, at least we got *one* nice day out of the weekend. Weather is turning to crap and looks like it will be staying that way for the duration, which pretty much kills my afternoon plans. bah.

So, instead, today will be errands…. PetsMart for the cats, maybe Costco (I only need one thing, and it’s always such a madhouse), the grocery store. Then back home for the excitement that is more laundry.

If my life gets more whirlwind, my head just might explode. :)

First & foremost this Memorial Day weekend, to all that have done so much for our country, thank you.

Sagamore is volunteering up at the WWII Memorial Dedication today, so I’ve got the Eve’l Dog for the day. We’ll be heading over to Mom’s later so Eve can be scared of a 25 pound dog…

This is Miss Eve:

I have a devil of a time getting decent pics of her - she is really a gorgeous dog and I just can’t get any photos that do her justice. She’s a black border collie mix, with white speckle feet and the shiniest fur and big brown eyes and is a sweet, smiley thing. We’ve already hit the PetCo in Alexandria today to get her a new collar, since seems to have packed hers on one of the numerous boxes in his place. It’s quite spiffy (and I think she knows it) - black with red chili peppers on it. We’re going to the one over by Mom’s place later that has the tag making machine so she’ll have a good tag, too.

When we were checking out at PetCo and I was trying to sign the sales slip (not easy with a dog leash in one hand), she wandered away from my side and I suddenly hear this very odd rumbling hissing noise, and I look up to see that she has walked over to the kitty cages about 6 feet from the register. ACK!!! Actually, she was being VERY good and just standing there looking, tail wagging, no barking, nothing. The cats were not amused.

Then of course, when we get to MY place and I open the door and the cats are there, she barks, they run, and I **swear** the dog was laughing afterwards.

There is a fly buzzing about the upstairs and she has *finally* noticed it and hopefully she will take care of it shortly.

Can’t wait. Hopefully tomorrow will be QUIET. I only have *one* open call right now, and the wench client left early after I spent all morning trying to get in touch with her to tell her what she screwed up. The receptionist assures me she’ll be in tomorrow. Most of this week has been calls of, “I was drunk at the users conference and I overheard someone say that the new version of the software could do their laundry, so we’re testing it and now all my underwear is pink”

I should be getting my annual review sometime next week. Hopefully there is no “self evaluation” portion of it… I just despise those. Here’s hoping there is money involved, and it’s not me giving it back to them. :)

I do have some concerns, of course, because really, it wouldn’t be annual review time without them. I have a coworker who was actually on probation for a while, and she is off now, and got a “meets expectations” and a raise (she made all of this common knowledge)…and she’s dumb as a freaking post.

But she’s also good at faking** being quiet and demure and crap which I think appeals to my boss to a certain extent. And then there is my loudmouthed redneck self. From a pure stats/client compliments/lack of complaints standpoint, I run circles around this chick - but we all know that personality does play into this kinda stuff, and mine is well…different. Ah well, we shall see, won’t we?

That is one reason I will be happy to hit second line eventually - new boss. Not that my current boss is bad, she isn’t, and I do get on with her quite well, and the two of them actually co-manage the whole group - but I am more on the same wavelength with 2nd line manager than 1st line manager. Guess you could say it is a comfort level thing or something like that.

But still, after a year, I am SO happy I scored this gig. It is really perfect for me. I just hope they think the same thing.

The “downside” to having that after work, chillin’ out glass of wine? I don’t feel like doing shit - no cooking, cleaning, laundry, NADA. Woohoo, Cindy’s getting pizza for dinner!

Just went to put the garbage out and had a huge flashback to my grandparents house in Atlanta from when I was a kid - something in the way the air smells tonight, and it smacked me right upside the head.

**I say faking, cause she’s already tried to stir up some shit by asking my 2nd line partner in crime (Tasha) how many calls she helps me with after I had my freakish 30+ call day - fortunately, she put a smackdown on that immediately, telling her that a) she doesn’t help me with much to begin with and b) that my brain just works differently…. LOL! I told Tasha, “Wow, that’s a really nice way to say, ‘the girl is just on speed or crack or something and just ain’t right in the head.’”

You’re GI Joe with the Kung Fu Grip!! You’re
strong, tough, and know how to kick some ass.
Don’t forget though, no matter how manly you
think you are, you’re still just a doll. God
Bless America.

What childhood toy from the 80s are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

…now I remember the fun of trying to program when you’re not really a programmer and Bill Gates hates you.

My text editor apparently has a compiler function that kicked in when I installed J2SDK, so I can test a .java file, but I can’t see if it is just compiling for testings sake (which I believe it may be) because I can’t find the friggin class file that should be created. But at the same time, it will run the java app, which I thought needed a class file to run. Or maybe not.

I have J2SDK installed, but I can’t get Windows to recognize “javac” at the command line for compiling, which means I have most likely done something else wrong too somewhere along the line.

But, according to the app I wrote…

This is what I like about the book I snagged - they let you think you rule the world at least for a few pages. :)

Edit: The text editor compiler is creating the class files after all.

You know how when lightning strikes a house, it can melt all the wiring inside (or something like that…) - that would be my brain today.

One of my calls from hell went over to the “it’s so broken we’re not going to count it against stats” queue and the other finally got closed. So, right now I’m back to 2 calls open, both normal things that will be fixed by tomorrow. That’s a nice feeling.

But I am brain dead now, which somewhat offsets it.

Mom duck is back and we’re back up to 7 ducklings. Don’t know where she & the other two were yesterday, but the 5 that were on their own were sticking together like glue. Maybe trying to make themselves look like one giant 5 headed duck?

http://members.home.nl/gis/

Half Life 2 Case Mod.

Sweet.

A woman on another forum I frequent is getting a divorce. While I am happy to give out the name of the law firm I worked with because they are very good at what they do, it makes my heart hurt to have to do so.

That would be me. It’s not too bad when you’re close enough to family to be able to drop in rather than trying to do it over the phone and you get paid in Guinness. I got the following email from my Mom today:

When you were staying with Mox [the dog], did you load anything new on my machine? When I turn it on, it’s looking for hardware(?) and when I tried to connect to the Internet, Earthling refuses saying something about “incompatible components.”

Eep. *Madly thinking what I could have installed.* Wait… All I did was check my email, so no…

Went over and mucked with it a bit - seems the system was a) discovering something new e improved called “the modem” and forgot the TCP/IP settings were already there. Reminded it of these things and she was back up and running. Did a full update on her virus definitions and a full scan, and she’s clean so it’s just Win98 being it’s snarky self it seems. I do need to run an ad-aware on her machine, I am sure it will find the usual crap, but for now, she’s OK.

Nice to be the hero.

Fortunately, we’re much closer to fully staffed this week than we were last week, which should make things a little easier. Then a THREE DAY WEEKEND!! Woohoo!!!

One week from tomorrow, I will have been here 1 year. Sweet. Doesn’t feel like it’s been that long at all, which is a good thing. :)

The cicadas are out in full force now, loud as all get out and flying all over the place in the woods behind the house. I love listening to them.

If the FBI is monitoring my book purchases, I am sure they are scratching their heads. Saturday I went and cashed in my 3 B&N gift cards and walked away with 621 pages of Java programming goodness and a paleontology book. Of course, they may also look at it and just go, “Yup, she’s single”, LOL.

On a bummer note, we’re down to 5 ducklings in the office park, and there was no sign of Mom anywhere this morning. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that she’s just hanging out in the shade somewhere and something didn’t happen over the weekend. (Note to self: You may not bring home baby ducks to live in the bathtub.)

OK, off to spend some time in the sun before I run out of lunchtime…

Well, the house has been whipped into a state of “good enough” for the cleaning ladies and in a fraction of the time it took when I first started this whole deal with them - so, yep, it’s definitely been worth it.

So now, I can go out and play. :-D

While sagamore is off diligently looking for a place to live, I’m having an absurdly lazy Sunday. Up at 8, off dozing again at 10AM for a few more hours.

Wrestled my finances into submission for the week, goofed around on the internet and have had a generally non productive day. That is what lazy Sundays are for. :)

Time to go lay the smack down on the house so the cleaning ladies can get through without breaking an ankle and then off to hunt down some dinner.

PS, sagamore - thanks for coming to dinner last night. I would have likely killed my grandmother otherwise.

Called Mom last night to bail on pizza as I had a better offer (we have a standing agreement, if I have better offer, I go, or she kicks my ass.) 30 seconds later the cell rings again - Mom says my grandmother wants to talk to me.

“Don’t forget the cake!”

^@#%!@*$(&!!!!*#@!!!! No, I won’t forget the cake!

I went to the bakery this morning. Purchased the cake. Then, while putting it in the car, I dropped the damn thing.

Fortunately, the damage is very minor - it slid into the side of the box on one side and some of the poofy frosting things on the top got smooshed. But not the total disaster it could have been.

pisceandreamer

This is done by putting < font color="your username" >your username w/out the spaces…

…of wine. If you buy one of each wine that Unicorn Winery produces, you get a break for buying “the herd”. I did that last summer, and after today, it’s time to break out one of those bottles. I highly recommended the Vidal Blanc, and I’m not much of a white wine drinker, so that’s saying something. (Also, the fact that it has been sitting in the box on the floor in front of my kitchen window, which is Target cats’ favorite perch, and has suffered no detrimental effects says something too.)

Here’s an idea of how the week has been so far, and mind you, it’s only Tuesday:

In the mornings, I don’t really look in the mirror until about 2 minutes before I leave when I take 30 seconds to brush out my hair and put it up before I go tearing out the door. This morning, my hair was all kinds of messed up - so I slapped it up into a ponytail and went on my way. On the way to work it finally occurred to me - I took a shower last night, and I know my hair was wet, because I recall rinsing it one more time before I got out. However, I have absolutely NO recollection whatsoever of actually putting shampoo in it… Which would explain the um, interesting look I had this morning.

My commute this morning had me actively looking for residences in a new zip code. I swear, I was actually going backwards there for a while. The 265K 2 bedroom condo just down the street from my office is looking REALLY good at the moment… (Seriously, were it not for the fact the whole selling/buying/moving thing being such a PITA, I’d be all over a condo out there right about now…oh to be a renter with no home sale contingencies again…)

Every call I have had at the office has been like pulling teeth. The client that took 3 days to get data back to me - only so I could discover the process that she SWORE she had run - had not been run. Things like that….

On the rest of them, I am starting to suspect that I am actually sharing a brain with Tasha (my partner in crime & keeper of my sanity at the office) and that she took it with her on vacation this week. Jeez, I wish we’d thought to make arrangements for that before she left. Heck, she’s at the beach, she has no use for a brain!

I have two calls that I should be able to close in the morning if I can just get the clients to say, “Yes, we did what you said to do, and it worked.” Why they couldn’t bother to let me know TODAY, the multiple times I called back is beyond me…

Having my call count tank like this right before annual reviews is NOT good timing…

The client that I am responsible for this week while their consultant ditched them for the user conference actually called today… I think I’ve gotten them straightened out for now. I pray they don’t need to call again.

I am hoping that tomorrow I can get all my brain cells lined up in the same direction and get some of these calls CLOSED. The week simply cannot continue like this.

Completely random 1: I *love* the Bunny Sutra watches from Swatch. However, is it just me, or do the bunnies appear to be totally stoned out of their minds?

Completely random 2: Little bro called last night, he has procured the birthday gift for Mom! (Cause lord knows I can’t be trusted to get it.) He has offered to call and remind me about the cake….I told him he’d better also remind me to wear pants out of the house as well. (OK, granted, the shampoo incident highlights my level of scatterbrained, but still…no need to be snarky about it Grandma!)

Completely random 3: Anyone want to venture a guess as to why Gretchen Wilson’s song “Redneck Woman” speaks to me so clearly?

Hell, yea…………..

*Someone* had a birthday and I even got an email reminder that I set in Yahoo… or somewhere, I don’t know, it just showed up.

So, I’m almost a week late and definitely a present short, but

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MVLLSCOTT!!!!!

Frankly, I’m underwhelmed and I want my money back…

It’s going to be a long week. Our most productive person is on vacation, 2 projects people off writing training documents, the fixed assets guru is at the user conference, and I believe one more off the second half of the week. That’s 5 out of 10… Oh, and I’ve been made the direct point of contact for a client that is on an unrealistically tight schedule to go live and their consultant is at the user conference, and if they call, I get to drop everything for them. So, yeah, we’re a little light.

Spent most of the morning testing something, tomorrow we get to find out if development remembers how it is supposed to work.

User conference is this week, so most of the calls seem to be along the lines of “The person that does this is at the user conference…” (So why are you touching anything?) Next week will be, “Well, I saw this thing at the user conference and I want to start using it…” *runs and hides*

Came home and ordered papa John’s cheesebread and pepperoni pizza. Not just for breakfast anymore. I’m too fried to even do ramen…

Just happened to read that Geena Davis delivered twins last week. At the age of 47. Damn. Of course, at the rate I’m going, that’ll be me. Hopefully without four marriages, tho. That’s a little on the high side for me.

Coworker of mine who works offsite recently got married. Last time she was in the office, I offered my congratulations. “Thanks!! Only took 10 years.” *blink* Now, that’s patience.

Today I realized I have been at this job for almost a year, and I still haven’t figured out a really *good* route to get into the office…. Someday I’d like to have a job that is a little closer to where I live.

So, yeah, I am beyond rambling at this point and had best get to bed. Niters all.

So yes, today we had our belated Mother’s Day brunch. I got there and realized I had left Mom’s gift in my kitchen. (Hazard of bringing it inside and wrapping it…) So, I make a quick run back to the house & retrieve it. It’s a pretty glass hummingbird feeder, and she really likes it, and no one thinks anything of my bit of forgetfulness there.

We’re talking later about her birthday dinner next weekend and how we’ll meet at the restaurant, then back to the house for cake. Then my grandmother chimes in,
“Well, if Cindy bothers to bring the cake.”

Gahhhhhhhhh! This woman is making me insane already and she’s only been here a day.

, I really, REALLY need you at dinner next Saturday. It’s the Crabhouse…..you really like it….PLEEEEEEEEEASEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After a typical afternoon with my grandmother, I decided to spend the evening doing something a little more soothing - cropping, resizing and uploading the recent pics I’ve taken.

Samples

more at http://cafechatnoir.net/photos/timcar/

more at http://cafechatnoir.net/photos/office/

more at http://cafechatnoir.net/photos/moxley/

more at http://cafechatnoir.net/photos/momsgardens/

more at http://cafechatnoir.net/photos/ducks2/

Enjoy!!

Afternoon with grandma.

I am not sure there is enough alcohol to get us through the next month.

The cicadas are here!!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Grandma was here < 30 minutes and got pissed at me. Long story short, we missed her at the gate at the airport. (Sigh said 4 PM arrival, on time, she got there at 3:45, the 2 freaking minutes we were in the ladies room.) We find her down at the baggage area, and after I fucking RACED across the terminal as soon as I saw her, I get:
Where have you been?
Not lighthearted, not happy to see me, not with a tone of voice that just realizes we were upstairs LOOKING for her. Just completely, intractably pissed off. Great to see you, too, you loony old whack job.

And my spoiled brat cousin is getting married again. That’s kick in the teeth #2 for the evening.