CafeChatNoir

Still managing to get one foot in front of the other, and staying upright.

Only have one phone call left to make, thank god. (Those suck so badly.) Will also be getting my lawyers back on retainer today as I am sure there will be some point at which we need assistance navigating the estate maze, cause even w/a will I am sure there will be things that pop up.

Other than that, hanging in there. The dog is doing better than anyone - he’s settled right in to the new pack structure. :) (The cats seem to ignore me whenever I broach the subject of a new furry family member…)

All the good thoughts and kind words and hugs are very, very appreciated - I’m running out of interesting ways to say Thank You, so, THANK YOU to everyone. We’re doing as OK as we can, and so far, so good.

mazikeen, thanks for the call, sagamore, thank you for the trip to Wegman’s and the time and hauling off the old broken TV. mvllscott, go give Clifton a big hug for me.

The neighbors have provided enough food for us and the eighth army for at least a week. We’re getting through the various bureaucratic hurdles with relative ease so far, and any large decisions that can be set aside are being set aside for the time being. Yesterday’s phrase of choice was, “That’s the tomorrow list”. Did some file diving today and found some things we needed, and talked with one of my coworkers who is taking all my calls - both took a lot off my mind.

Again, thank you for everything.

My Mom died this morning. My brother & I are basically still shell shocked, but fortunately we have friends of our family in town staying with us tonight. Many thanks to for coming over and hanging out with us today. It’s gonna be a long road ahead I am sure, but I know we’ll be OK.

The two loaves decided they’d rather be one mutant loaf during the second rise. I’ve managed to get them separated and put them in the oven - I really need a bigger baking sheet for doing this. I seem to recall thinking the same thing last time, and then promptly forgetting about it every time I was anywhere that I could procure a larger one…

They decided they really wanted to be one… Had to cut them apart again after baking. They’ve cooled off enough to eat, so I had to test one. (Two loaf recipes work out so well that way!)

YUM! Crust is kinda chewy, but it’s also not completely cooled yet, but despite the dough fighting back from start to finish, we have a very acceptable product.

Brian Nichols is in custody.

If you’re not familiar, he was on trial for rape, overpowered a deputy on his way into court, shot three people, escaped, may have shot someone else (they’re not 100% certain it’s connected) and put the city of Atlanta on high alert for the past 24 hours.

He will likely never see the light of day again after this.

What bothers me the most about it is that it didn’t have to happen. I know it sounds like armchair quarterbacking, but I think my thoughts on this are reasonable and likely echoed by others.

– He was not handcuffed or shackled. Apparently there are concerns that being led into a courtroom in cuffs will sway the jury. OK, intellectually I can go with that, even if common sense disagrees.
– There was only one deputy escorting him. One. This is a person of large physical stature, on trial for a violent crime, is not restrained, and they only had one person on him. Some may say that one would have been OK had it not been a female deputy, but even his attorney says that he could overpowered a male deputy. Why did they not have at least two officers on him? Why?

It just really angers & saddens me because it just didn’t have to happen.

Kitchen is all picked up, bread is on its first second rise, and things should be done well before it’s time for me to go. I’m a touch concerned because the dough did not want to cooperate at ALL when I did the rollout… We’ll see how forgiving the recipe is!

Dinner should be fun - it’s gonna be a sleepover too! Linda (who is visiting) is like a second Mom to me. They moved up to PA a couple years ago when they retired, so it will be good to see her. Imagine Martha Stewart without the felony conviction and an actual friendly & nice personality. That’s Linda. There is nothing domestic that she cannot do, and do incredibly well. Cooking, baking, sewing, you name it. So, it’s a tiny bit intimidating to cook for her. :)

So, she’s staying over at Mom’s and I am gonna crash there too and we’re just gonna stay up late and talk and eat and drink wine and have fun.

Baking with a cat that is excessively interested in food is a challenge. First there is convincing Snoopy that no, the flour is not powdered milk, and don’t even THINK about jumping up on the counter to do a swan dive into it. The yeast isn’t either. Nor is the salt. Then I had to forcibly remove him from the butter. (No, that butter did NOT go in the bread, and yes, I should know better than to turn my back for one second with him)

Having dinner at Mom’s tonight, family friend is in town. I’ve been requested to supply the French Bread. :-D

However, considering that it takes about 3 hours start to finish (lots of sit around and wait time…), I had better get cracking on it. Especially considering that I have to get all the kitchen counters cleared off to actually *do* anything…

Snoopy decided to upend half a cup of coffee in my lap, and some on the keyboard. I have the keyboard drill down - toss cat, grab towel, flip keyboard over, get paper towels, pop letters off keyboard to dry things off. I carefully laid the keys out on another paper towel in the right order. Great idea, right up until Snoopy comes by with a mighty swipe of a paw, and I just have a pile of little plastic squares in no order…

Two new folks starting next week. Thursday & Friday I have to tend to one of them. Bad enough, cause I just don’t do well with someone hanging over my shoulder. But it’s more than that. Newbie is a former client (not unusual), who I also had a call with about a month ago…

So, she calls, explains problem, feeds me a line of crap about what happened, sends info, I figure out her issue (user error) and call her back.
Me: “OK, this is what went wrong here [did things out of order], and here is how to fix it.”
Her, with massive attitude: “HMPH. Well, I KNOW that isn’t how it happened, but fine…”

I so want to start with, “The biggest problem we have is with clients that lie to cover up their mistakes.”

I won’t, but I really would like to. As it is, I think she’s being put with me as punishment of some sort…

Just as good as I remember. :)

I submitted my taxes Monday and got my state tax refund TODAY. Sweet.

I did call a couple clients this morning to give them one last chance to get the answer to their problems so they don’t have to wait until next Tuesday. However, they weren’t there so - sucks to be them!

Stitches are out. They had to do a little more pulling than I would have preferred, but not much you can do about that.

Shopping - have jeans without holes or spots threatening to turn into holes!! Also have a pair in black & khaki that I can wear to work.

And now I am going to take a nap, because I can.

I’ve got a FOUR DAY WEEKEND!

I ended up with the same number of calls at days end that I started with, possibly more… :( But, nothing that is mission critical that will screw over any of my clients by my being gone, and I gave my buddy the rundown on each. (I always feel like my call notes are too formal and hard to get an idea of the real story, ie, “this is just so broke it will never work again”!)

I also inadvertently went barging in on her personal time today - all of a sudden she was off IM and the queue towards the end of the day - she’s been having connection issues the past day or two and I figured Citrix crapped out again and that she’d tossed the computer out the window. So I call to see if she’s OK or dead in the water w/her connection and needed a call put into our help desk. Oops - she was on her way to the eye doc! (It wasn’t on the schedule! I was trying to look out for her! I am a schmuck!)

I stopped at Wegman’s on the way home this evening. 7PM, parking lot is only about half full, so not bad at all. And I have to say, WOW. Really, really nice. I didn’t go through the entire place top to bottom cause I had been looking for something specific (discontinued by the manufacturer as it turns out) and also was ready to just get home, but damn, what a really terrific place to do the marketing. Was a bit confused at first, as the produce section then dumps you into the “Nature’s Marketplace” section (I didn’t see the actual sign) which is decent sized, but certainly doesn’t account for the size of the building, and I am thinking, “Hmmm, they don’t seem to have a whole lot here, and it’s not normal brands…” then I realized, it’s just the organic-type stuff.

They’ve got all the regular market stuff, and well priced. Then all the extra spiffy stuff. I happened upon the beer section. My eyes locked onto the best thing ever. I’ve had it in bars. I’ve only seen it at Total Beverage. That would be Youngs Double Chocolate Stout. Yes, CHOCOLATE BEER. Yup, everything you need to conquer PMS in one bottle, and now available at the local market. (They also have Negra Modelo, another personal fav, which is hit or miss to find at the other markets.)

The asian section is actually split out into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, etc… They had several variations on chili-garlic sauce, and at some point I am going to have to get some of that & some shrimp sometime soon and see if I can recreate the best shrimp dish ever that I had at a Chinese restaurant when I was living in Japan.

It’s the type of market that makes it a lot easier to be more adventurous with cooking, cause they appear to have everything you could possibly need to make anything…

I also had a box of Pocky go leaping into my basket. No clue how that happened. ;) (I haven’t had it in about 20 years. We’ll see if is still as good as I remember.)

OMG, I am soooooooooo tired this morning. Took for ever to get to sleep last night. Weird dreams. Wishing like mad I could telecommute today so I could have gotten the extra hour of sleep.

9 calls. I just have to get rid of 9 calls today and that’s all.

9 calls, and then I have four days off. :-D

9 calls…

Oh, and one of my stitches decided to remove itself last night. This does not help with the temptation to remove the rest myself…

Long day. Worked a lot. Came home. Worked more. Still have 9 calls to close by COB tomorrow to have everything clear before my long weekend. Will probably have to dump a few on others…. Hate that.

…cause then they share pizza with you. :)

Well, the snow stopped, the wind started and the temps dropped like a rock. Painfully cold out there.

The next two days I am going to try and concentrate only on getting rid of the 9 calls I have open - I’m out Friday & Monday and I would kill to have things cleared out Tuesday morning when I get back. I’ve got 14 in total, but 3 of them I can close tomorrow as soon as I talk w/the clients, and two are bugs that I just need bug numbers for.

Tonight I am going through my old bugs to see what has been fixed so I can clear some of those out, too. If I’m feeling ambitious, I may do some testing, too… We shall see, though, cause we were slammed again today, and I’m kinda tired…

65 degrees yesterday, snowing today.

Oh, and by the by, my hair is long enough to braid again. Such a strange thing to make me smile, but it does. :)

Amazing what a difference a couple of days of nice weather can make!!! Sunny and in the 50s yesterday & 60s today.

We got totally hammered at work today, but being able to roll down the windows and blast the music on the way home just made it all go away very nicely. Came home, did laundry, had some dinner, reviewed my taxes and I have just hit the send button on those suckers and I am done with that for another year.

Keyboard was getting wonky so I popped off some keys and went to town with the can o’ air. Also realized I need better storage for all my computer CD’s - they’re kind of all over my office right now… Gosh, if there were only a store on the way home from work where I could stop and get nifty organizing things… Yeah, I’ll be back there next weekend trying to find some way to deal w/all these CD’s.

Really, I can’t attribute my bounciness to anything other than the weather today - cause lord knows I didn’t get enough sleep last night and we truly got steamrolled at the office today. BUT - I closed a call. Not just any call. A call on a very stubborn, pain in butt module that I am to become the expert on. Not quite to that point yet. But I am very pleased. VERY pleased. :-D

Wegman’s in Fairfax is still WAY too crowded to be looked upon as a viable place to do your grocery shopping… (Perhaps after 8 PM in the evening it’s better, but during daylight, no way.)

If you’re squirrley about crowds (I am), you’ll not even be able to get past the parking lot. (Which I didn’t.) Hopefully it will lose the tourist attraction status here soon, because from what I am hearing it is very well stocked, and cheaper than Giant & Safeway. It’s right on my way home, and I’d like to be able to actually go there at some point.

Did get over to Organized Living w/ - OMG, what a horribly dangerous store. Lots of shiny things that make you go “OOOHHH!” They do have the wire shelving I want for the utility room, though, and they have it in stock and it’s cheaper (and closer) than the Container Store. And many, many other cool things that you don’t necessarily need when you walk in, but suddenly you MUST HAVE! If anyone would like to get me a gift card from there, I would put it to very good use, I promise. :)

Taxes are done, laundry is not, but I am sure I’ve got something around here I can wear tomorrow…

Not really being in the mood to fight traffic today over at Tysons, I remembered that I have next Friday off - so after I get my stitches out, the quest for jeans will begin again. Let us all hope that the Levis store actually has 501s and/or 512s in stock - according to their website, they do still make them…

Today’s big excitement is some errands and LAUNDRY!! Now, the upshot is that with the sweaters I got yesterday, I only have to make sure I have clean pants. So, as long as I get those done, the rest can wait if (ok, when) I get lazy and decide I don’t feel like doing laundry after all…

I suppose I should get a move on so I can get everything done that needs to be done without staying up until midnight, shouldn’t I?

No luck on finding any jeans today, apparently the current trends according to the Gap is that you buy them filthy now instead of actually getting them dirty yourself, or you can get them pre-ripped at Abercrombie & Fitch. (Let’s all jump in the way back machine on that one, shall we?) Levis 501s & 512’s are still my tried & trues, but they’re getting harder to come by in stores and it’s looking like I will have to haul over to Tysons to the Levis store to actually find any.

However, I did make a nice score on some mid-weight sweaters from a little shop in the mall that is on a temporary lease and is clearing out everything they’ve got. Also got my birthday gift of the second season of the West Wing from my brother. This would be from last year’s birthday. He’d said he would get it for me when it was released, and totally forgot, as did I. (He got me season 1 last Christmas, and season 3 this Christmas)

And here is your definite harbinger of Spring and warmer weather - I finally finished a scarf for MYSELF - a near guarantee that it won’t be cold enough to wear it until next year:

** “worn in” I believe is the technical term for “ewhh, those need a wash” Seriously, they looked like they’re already been worn for two weeks straight.

Forgot to reset my alarm last night, but damn, it was nice to realize I did NOT have to get up when it went off at 6 AM.

Off to mall crawl with little bro today, maybe get lucky and find some new jeans. If nothing else, there will be a stop at PetsMart for kitty food, as they seem to be a tad underwhelmed with the crunchy food that is kept on hand for when the canned stuff runs out…

Given that I am supposed to meet him at noon, and it’s already 11:41, I should probably be on my way here shortly…

You know, if I take the damn time to test something to recreate a problem, the software could at least have the courtesy to break on demand, dammit.

I was seriously planning on coming home tonight, cracking a beer and doing some testing for work, cause I have some majorly broken shit I am dealing with at work and no time for decent testing. However, I’ve decided against it. Mainly because I am a lazy git. ;) Actually, it’s looking good to be the Sunday project.

They’ve given us our incentive goals for the year - different from last year - half on personal stuff, half on group stuff. Double edged sword and all… At least if the team sucks wind you have a chance to make up on your own, but we really can’t afford to have anyone slacking on the team based stuff.

The individual ones are on adding entries to the knowledge base - 2 a week - this is doable, sort of - I tend to do them in big chunks, and I also tend to look and see if there is already a duplicate entry out there, and often there is - maybe I just need to say to hell with the dups and submit anyway. Can’t really have too much info out there.

Next is a survey that goes out to clients (ecch), on how wonderful you are.

The group ones are 67% of all calls coming with a resolution time of 8 hours or less - not quite sure how they’re going to calculate that one - previously it had been on average resolution time. That’s going to take some reporting gymnastics I think.

The last one is calls over an hour - they’ve lowered it from .9% of all calls to .5% - that one is going to kill us if we
a) don’t get upstaffed bigtime soon and
b) if new guy keeps cherry picking shit off the queue. (I swear I am gonna stroke out the next time he pulls one off that is 11 minutes old when there are ones sitting there at 55 minutes)

They still haven’t announced how much money is at stake yet. Last year it was $500 a quarter.

To be honest, I’m not sure we can do these. With the short staffing, the calls over an hour have been a problem, and resolution time suffers as well.

The upshot is that none of this is effective until April 1. So, that gives me 19 days to clear out everything that is assigned to me and hopefully I will start 4/1 with an empty plate. Here’s hoping, at least… I suppose this should give me some incentive to get that testing done this weekend, and start collecting knowledgebase entries to all submit on 4/1, shouldn’t it? :)

7:45 is just too early to go to bed. 8:15 may be another matter entirely… Problem is, I’ve still not gotten dinner, and I’m kinda hungry, but oh so damn tired.

Not a bad day, but I couldn’t focus on anything to save my life - just off in my own little world. Very good thing it’s Friday.

FYI, if you hadn’t heard about http://www.frienditto.com/ yet, here’s the rundown - it’s an “archiving service” that asks for your username & password… And anything you archive there is now public… Not such a grand idea by any stretch of the imagination, because not only have you compromised YOUR account, you’ve screwed over the folks who trusted you enough to allow you to see their Friends Only entries. So, in short, don’t do it.

Well, in the hour plus since I started this post (yes, I do compose these very, VERY slowly!) I’ve managed to stay awake. Not holding out hope that it’s going to last a lot longer though…