The After Hours Pub

Thank you, Penguin Dude.

Thu, 22 May 2008 12:53:06 -0600

Keith was kind enough to notify me that he was having trouble leaving a comment - getting internal server errors and whatnot. I'm looking into it. And oh what fun that will be. :beam:

What I'm thinking

Tue, 20 May 2008 21:53:15 -0600

You know you want to know. :cheesy: 1. I can't believe I haven't taken a single vacation day yet this year. Good thing I've got next week off. 2. I don't care what Microsoft buys, they'll never compete with Google. You know why? Because they're always late to the fucking party, and they're downright untrustworthy. They weren't about innovation, they were about monopolizing the internet with their shitty browser and their shittier operating system. Yahoo and Microsoft? Two wrongs don't make a right. 3. I'm seriously digging Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. I'm nothing like this chick... nothing. But I'm digging her journey. 4. I went to the Sam's Club in the next town down today, and they had Ding Dongs. I bought some. They haven't had Ding Dongs at my Sam's Club in damn near a year. And you know how I feel about Ding Dongs. 5. I'm ditching Dish Network next week and going back to the evil Charter. But this time I'm leaving the crappy cable modem out of the deal. 6. Making Zach Gormogon's apprentice was an asshole move. 7. Wondering when my betta fish Georgie is going to die. Gotta be pretty soon, he's not looking so good and he can't seem to get the damn food in his mouth. It's actually painful and depressing watching him try. 8. My gardens are fabulous this year. In spite of the ridiculously long and cold winter. Some stuff is slow this year (undoubtably because of that winter) but other things are moving right along on schedule. Like the poison box - that's what I call the big planter box because damn near everything in it is toxic: Columbine, Bleeding Hearts, Wolfsbane, Monkshood, Lily of the Valley, Fritillaria, Lupine, Cinquefoil, Dead Nettle, Vinca, Ostrich Ferns, and Cinnamon Ferns. This time last year, the Bleeding Hearts, Lupine, and Columbine were all flowering. This year the Bleeding Hearts are flowering and fabulous, the Columbine is maybe 3 inches tall, and the Lupine is maybe an inch. No Irises yet, no oriental lilac, no peonies, no asiatic lilies. The hostas and the ferns are HUGE. Very weird year. 9. I really, really need a vacation. I'm worn out. Past caring. The ennui is overwhelming. The past few months have been wicked traumatic, and it's just now setting in how god-awful it's been. Soul-sucking and horrifying, every day a bigger nightmare than the day before. But I held it together and got away from that stupid cow of a boss, and the past 2 weeks I've been busy learning the new job. But what I noticed by the end of the first week was I didn't come home from work and then spend the next few hours tamping down all that anger and frustration. It's a weird feeling, and I think that's what gave me a whopping headache this past weekend. Instead of going from zero to sixty, I've gone from 60 to 0 and it's freaking me out. I'm starting to feel like I can devote some time to things I enjoy again - and then I think, "no you can't, your life is too stressful." Then I have to remind myself I don't have that stress anymore. It's a weird situation, and I'm hoping I get over it soon because my creativity is really starting to come back with a vengeance. 10. You remember when I used to be creative, right? Sure, in a sick and twisted way, but you can't deny it's creative. :laughtears:

What got me through the winter: Watching Hollywood get stupider by the minute

Sat, 17 May 2008 08:12:34 -0600

First there was the Writer's Guild of America (WGA) strike. I was fascinated, riveted. It seems that corporate bullshit is corporate bullshit no matter what the industry. Also, it amazed me how far behind the rest of the world Hollywood really is. Now the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) will probably strike. And caught in between the WGA and SAG is the Directors Guild of America (DGA) - who I have no pity for because if they had any balls or honor at all wouldn't have made a crappy deal in the middle of the WGA strike. They would have insisted the AMPTP complete their bargaining in good faith with the writers. But they're assholes. History is now repeating itself. Where the AMPTP faked bargaining with the WGA, then ran to the DGA with a crappy deal a not 6 months ago, they have now faked bargaining with SAG. They've just walked away the same way they did before, to start bargaining with AFTRA, another asshole union. Don't take my word for it, take Justine Bateman's - who fabulously turned "Wal-Mart" into a verb. Love that. Instead of standing up and insisting the AMPTP bargain in good faith with SAG, AFTRA is ready to step in and take a crappy deal. In the middle of all this drama, the DGA is now crying about how these times are so "rocky". Yeah, they're rocky. Your writers had to strike because you're historically a jackass, and now you're actors have to strike too. Did it not occur to you to stand with these people? The writers and actors had no trouble standing together - realizing the value of eachother's contributions to their work. But you guys... what did you think? If you hurried up and made a deal you could get back to work? Doing what? Standing around with no script and no actors? Dumbasses.

Dirt covered and delirious

Fri, 16 May 2008 22:13:52 -0600

It's done! The planting is done! (Ok, as good as.) The tomatoes are in. The radishes. The leeks. The snap peas. The string beans. The cucumbers. The sweet onions. (At which point I said, "Hell, that's a meal right there." and Halfast said, "Yeah, maybe with some meat." and I said, "Of course, meat. I can't grow a fucking cow, dude." Because I'm charming like that.) The thyme, rosemary, oregano, lemon balm, and lavender. The lemon verbena, the sunflowers, the liatris. The rose garden has been divested of every fucking hollyhock in the joint. (Shame too, some of those things had roots in excess of 4 inches across. As they sucked the nutrients from around my roses, the bastards.) The tree trunk garden has been completely weeded and Preen'd. That just leaves some Malva, Yarrow, Dianthus and bizarre morning glories in the little greenhouse I bought for Mom a few months ago. The Dianthus is slow coming, but the others look pretty good. And the tickseed, don't forget the tickseed. And all that accomplished after I come home from work in the evenings, all this past week. The roses are looking downright fabulous this year, so I had to get rid of the choking hollyhocks. Left the columbine, and the wild coneflowers and wild daisies. I'd post some pictures and I have some to post, but I've been having trouble with my camera. First I thought it was firmware, but it's not. I was already up to date. It's the compact flash card. The first one I had for years is finally crapping out, so I got another bigger one. But that size isn't proven compatible with the camera, as I found out. So I went shopping again, ended up with SD cards instead of compact flash - because the stupid Nikon site said, "Here are the compatible compact flash cards" and proceeded to list all SD cards. So took those back and just went to Amazon. Meanwhile, my Dish Network is acting fucked up. I'm convinced it's a conspiracy to try to get me to use their DVR instead of my TiVo. I have their DVR upstairs, and next to the TiVo it's a '59 Edsel. Halfast thinks it might be my cabling, and while I'm not disputing that, I think it's a little weird that more than half the week the Dish box down here with the TiVo on it craps out at exactly the same time every day. At 5:10am, give or take a few minutes, it "loses" the satellite signal. But the other day it lost it in the middle of the afternoon and Mom was down here watching Masterpiece Theaters we'd TiVo'd on Sunday so she didn't notice. Then we went to watch Bones, and no Bones. Just "Acquiring Satellite"... which you can get out of easily by pushing the button on the satellite remote - another bullshit factor. So I missed an episode of Bones, THE episode of Bones. But I was also recording it upstairs on that shiity DVR, and it recorded fine up there. Whatever the problem is, screwing me out of the season finale of Bones was the last straw. I'm going back to cable. They'll be here on the 27th to install it. Which leaves me one digital recording device short since they'll be taking that shitty DVR. So, I ordered another TiVo! This one is a Dual Tuner! It came today, but I haven't hooked it up. Maybe tomorrow, but first I have to get the shows off the shitty DVR upstairs because I've been stockpiling up there. Bad news is I can't just transfer the stuff to the computer like I do with the TiVo, I actually have to watch it through the computer. Ugh. But I've got to do that before I send these receivers back to their maker. Anyway, feeling pretty good about it. Got the TiVo (Series 2, Dual Tuner) for $99 from the TiVo website. Their TiVo wireless adapter was $59.99, but I got the exact same TiVo wireless adapter from Amazon for $29.99. Made 4 separate calls to the cable company asking questions and getting quotes before I finally settled on a package and service, which turns out to be about $25 less that I'm paying for the Dish stuff. Got the lifetime service on the new TiVo (happy to see they reinstated that), so no fees there, and the Dirtfarm TiVo I already have is on my old multi-device discount so it's still all $6.95 a month. Now I just need one more thing, and that's an external DVR drive. Whoops, don't need that anymore, just ordered it. In for a penny, right? :cheesy: Tomorrow I'll write a long and thoughtful post. Or maybe I'll just stand around the yard watching the plants grow. You never know, I'm unpredictable that way. But for now, it's bedtime. See ya!

Ahhhh. A day off.

Sat, 10 May 2008 20:57:20 -0600

(7:30am) I just called the greenhouse to see what their hours are today and she said, "Eight to eight! And it's a beautiful day so come on out!" Small towns are funny. :cheesy: Started my second day off in 14 days (and the first one didn't count, last Sunday, because I was all shell-shocked by moving my shit down to Janesville and realizing that I really don't work for the stupid cow of a boss anymore) by cleaning off my desk. Haven't really opened any mail in a couple weeks, so I started with that. While I was doing that, I was also importing the soundtrack CD's from all three Lord of the Rings movies into my iTunes. (9:30am) Grandma's been sleeping for 13.5 hours now. Maybe I should go hold a mirror up to her nose and see if she's still breathing. But I won't because I promised I'd let her sleep in. The last couple days we've been babysitting Lindy's dog Archie, and that was taking a bit of a toll on Grandma. Archie had to sleep in her room because I already have 3 dogs sleeping in my room and a 4th would throw us all off our game. I did the getting up in the middle of the night thing for PeeDee when he came along, I'm not doing it for dog-sitting because I've got to work during the day. So Grandma did it. The first night he slept on her bed but he got off in the middle of the night and pooped in her room. I told her to put him in his crate, but noooooo. There's no way to know when an 8 pound dog gets off the bed, and he's pretty flaky anyway. But the second night she put him in the crate, and he was good to go until about 5am. Eight hours of sleep a night isn't enough for her though, so she's catching up now. And since she's catching up, so much for me getting to the greenhouse when they opened an hour and a half ago. I wouldn't go without her, she'd never forgive me. Although, really, I could have been there and back again already for chrissake. (10:30am) Grandma got up. Finally. (11:00am) We went over to the greenhouse, stopping at McDonalds for breakfast, only to realize it's too late for that. So I got a quarter pounder with cheese meal and she got a Big Mac meal, and we ate in the van in the greenhouse parking lot while listening to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on my iPod over the radio cuz I've got one of those kewl radio/ipod doohickeys. (12:30) Got back home to find Halfast already here. Then we got down to business, doing some serious gardening and weird household projects until after 6pm that I'll tell you about tomorrow. :cheesy:

Huh.

Thu, 08 May 2008 18:23:29 -0600

Work is so calm and peaceful and refreshing and entertaining and fun now, I can't think of a single thing to post. I'm not so sure this move was a good idea. Heh. :laughtears:

Everyone needs a hobby

Tue, 06 May 2008 18:41:00 -0600

Sometimes, when the weather is warm like it is now, I stand at the back door looking out at the yard through the screen... with a can of Raid Flying Insect Killer in my hand intermittently spraying the flies that want to come in.

I see something like this...

Sun, 04 May 2008 18:16:51 -0600

and I think someone's got a bit of a PR problem. :laughtears:

And the stars aligned...

Fri, 02 May 2008 20:46:10 -0600

Tomorrow is my last day of work for the cow. Monday I start for the new boss. (Meet the new boss. Abso-fucking-lutely NOTHING like the old boss.) What this means is in a little less than 16 hours I'll be free. Free! I'm free! But let's not look at the psychological implications, let's look at the magical implications. First, the season. It is Beltane! The Earth softens under the caress of the sun and all the world is new. We emerge from the darkness of a long, difficult winter; our eyes drink in rolling green hills budding branches and tender shoots. We breathe deeply the fresh fragrance of radiant blossoms. We have survived! Yes, we're emerging from the three year reign of terror of my stupid cow of a boss. We have survived! Next, right this moment, we're under a waning moon. WANING MOON: Ridding and shielding. Rites and rituals involving exorcism, reversal, endings, banishing, purging, and protection. The waning moon is good to remove negativity, stale energies and unwanted spirits. Banishing and binding spells work best under a waning moon. I don't know about you, but as far as I'm concerned ALL of that waning moon stuff applies to me getting rid of my stupid cow of a boss. Especially the exorcism part. Heh. And finally, guess when the new moon is? Monday morning a 8:18am. Right around the time I'll be rolling into my new job for the first time. Do you know what the new moon is good for? Well, let me tell you! New moon is a great time for healing work. Casting positive spells or drawing spells are especially fruitful at this time. New beginnings and new ideas, abilities and projects. This move could have happened at any time. I was trying to get it 3 years ago. It could have happened at any time in the past 4 months since the opportunity really started taking shape. But it's happening now, at Beltane, with me leaving exactly as the waning moon ends, and starting the new job as the new moon appears. It really, really doesn't get any better than this. The Goddess works in mysterious ways. :cheesy:

Rounding it up

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 06:42:26 -0600

The BodyWorlds thing was very cool. Although I didn't really get the slices thing while we were there. Then I went back to work and my coworkers says, "You didn't see the slices of the guy with the tattoo?" I'm sorry to say I missed the tattoo. Reinstalled and rearranged a bunch of crap for the union site last week, that was a pain in the ass. But it was tempered by the fact that every day was sunny and around 70. As opposed to this week, where it was snowing yesterday morning when I got to work. Nothing that stuck, but still. :rolleyes: My stupid cow of a boss hasn't spoken to me since she sent out the email to everyone saying I'm transferring - let's hope it stays that way through the end of the week. I'm spending this week trying to help my friends at work. I've been doing this idiotic project for the past couple months, one person from each office has to do it. I've been doing my office. But it's not done yet, and I'm leaving. So I could just leave and screw the my favorite coworker because he'd have to come over and finish my project and also his own, or I can do what I'm doing - trying to get as much of it done as possible so he doesn't get stuck with it. 4 more days. I'm starting to get a little happy about that. :cheesy:

Happy Birthday to Me!

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 05:59:20 -0600

I'm 42 today! Older than dirt! And I'm celebrating by going to look at dead bodies! Because that's how I roll. :cheesy:

Way too early

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:00:03 -0600

I just spent an hour wandering around Home Depot looking at bathtubs and surrounds. Then I took a spin through the greenhouse section on my way out - gotta feel sorry for all those plants. And all those idjits snapping them up. It's way too early for most of that stuff. They've got columbine in there full and flowering, and I know damn well the columbine in my yard is just coming up, even on the south side. There were plants there in full bloom, and when you look at the tag it says "flowers late summer to early fall". Well, what's it doing flowering NOW?=20 What those people need to do the minute they get home is cut everything they bought down about halfway, plant it, and see what happens. But they won't, and by July their plants will be all leggy and spindly and sick looking. Anyhoo, I went looking at tubs and of course now I've decided I want a whirlpool tub. My bathroom is hideous and I couldn't stand it anymore so I bought one of those crescent shaped shower curtain rods and Halfast came over and took down the stupid glass and gold doors and put up the lovely brushed nickel rod. The glass doors just won't stop leaking so they had to go.=20 The bathtub space is a little different. There's a five foot tub in there, but it's a six foot space. So what the morons did was put a 5 ft tub in that 6 ft space, and then they built a crappy wall at the 5 ft mark so they could stick the cheap brownish almond colored surround on it, encircling the cheap brownish almond colored tub. Then they dressed that sow up with a big old bow made of beveled glass doors with gold mounting and trim. Just like tying a ribbon on a pig.=20 Then again, I don't think they ever bothered to clean the tub because there's a permanent ring around it, at about ankle height. You know, where the water reaches when you shower. Until I chemically roto-rooted out the drain up there shortly after I moved in, that is. A solution that apparently eluded these retards.=20 But the cool thing about the crescent shaped curtain rod is we were able to mount it to the outer wall, the 6 ft one, not the 5 foot one. Which is great because first chance I get I'm taking a sledge hammer to that wall.=20 Pictures at eleven. I should have taken before shots of the bathroom, but taking a camera in there honestly never occurred to me. :beam:=20

It's coming from inside the house!

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:00:02 -0600

You want to know what's scary? When you're sitting alone in a huge building, ostensibly working, when you notice that one of the lines of the multi-line phone on your desk is suddenly and inexplicably in use. Who's here? What's happening? Have one of the contractors gone round the bend? Is a CLEC employee downstairs with a rifle, having had just about enough of the Telecommunications Act of 1996? Is one of my coworkers disgruntled that I'll be leaving and they've decided to make it so I'll never leave?=20 =20 Or maybe I set my bag on the second phone behind me, causing it to go off hook. Hmm.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:10:30 -0600

I've decided that's what I have, because I'm getting my longed for wish and I can't seem to feel one way or the other about it. Ya'll know my boss is a complete and utter whack-job, right? I mean, for a while there she was all I blogged about, so great was my amazement that someone could be so brick-dumb and still manage to walk upright. (An opinion not altered by her voluntary admission the other day that she doesn't know what "Harry Potter" is.) Last year during a mass exodus where some folks wrangled transfers and a bunch more with seniority up and retired suddenly due to her extreme asshattery (would that I had that luxury), a couple of folks I call friends went over to the next town down, which the Stupid Cow isn't in charge of. They then proceeded to chase the resident whack-job that worked in that office away - you go, boys! - and so now there's an opening there. They've spent the last few months ragging their boss to get me down there, and I've spent the last few months making it worth my boss's while to get rid of me by making her life a living hell. Their boss is a guy who knows me, who managed the place I used to work for a few months before they closed us down and I ended up working for the Cow. I've been talking to him on the down-low, and talking only to my union president (because my chief steward has a yapper like a wide-mouth bass and who spends her days spreading rumors hither and yon) and between the three of us we figured out a way to get me down there without breaking any rules or pissing anyone off. I could have taken the easy route, something I like to call Joe's Cheat Train To Transferville, where our second level manager tries to make side deals to put people wherever he wants without consulting the union or respecting seniority. But I don't want to do that because I'm a damn union steward and that's no way for a union official to act. So I've been working this out within the rules for a few months and we finally got it going, so the cat came out of the bag a couple weeks ago. Or, I should say, it exploded out of the bag. Pandemonium ensues. Never let it be said I can't keep a fucking secret. But before said cat made its escape, the only people who knew were me, my would-be boss, and the union president. One day my would-be boss goes into his morning meeting and there's the Cow, screaming about how awful I am and how she'd pay someone to take me off her hands. (I was having some serious fun with her via email. Shooting fish in a barrel, my friends.) Would-be says, "I'd take her in a minute, and she wants to come down here anyway" and my boss is all, "Please! Please!" This conversation was relayed to me by Would-be, and we laughed and I assured him of two things: 1) I was doing my part to make her pray she never lays eyes on me again, and 2) I'll never do the same thing to him. :cheesy: The next day, I get a reply from the Cow about the issue we're arguing over, and she slides this in at the end: "Do you want to go to the next town down? I've been hearing a rumor." Which cracks me up because I already know where she heard it, and it wasn't from some phantom "rumor". So I write her back and say, "Yes, I would like to go to the next town down. Is it true you'd pay me a months salary to go? That's the rumor I heard." Her reply to that was a lot of huffing and righteous indignation, which was pretty amusing all on its own. :laughtears: Cat's out of the bag now because the Cow can't keep her mouth shut either which is why she wasn't consulted until we had it worked out. And here comes the pandemonium. Wide-Mouth Bass is in an uproar, flinging emails left and right and gabbing to everyone she could reach. Within 48 hours 6 different people call me to ask about it. Now I can say something because they're going to send an email out asking if anyone wants to go - a crap-shoot because if someone with more seniority than me wants it, I lose. But I was pretty confident because I'd already asked everyone above me. Heh. Long story short, we went through the steps and I got my wish - my last day working for the Cow is May 3rd. After that "Would-be" becomes "Is" and I get to wash my hands of her. I get to go to the next town down - which is just 3 miles further than I already drive, and 10 minutes shorter according to MapQuest (because it's interstate instead of state roads going through downtown during rush hour). I'll be working in a office with 2 people I like and whose work I respect. The most senior of us has only 14 years, so theorhetically the three of us will be working in that office for a long time - and we can run it any damn way we please. Property down there is way cheaper than here, and I can get twice the house on 3 times the land for less than I paid for this house when I get ready to move. No more crazed pages from the Cow about goofy shit. No more 8-10 emails a day boldly illustrating her incompetence in 22pt blue font. No more coming to work and seeing she's "helped" by loading me work other people were planning on doing, so the first hour of every day won't be taken up redistributing the work to the right people. No more worrying she's going to creep in unannounced at 2pm and try to get all managerial when she finds we're all in the break room. No more Outlook email "recalls" of a message 2 or 3 times because she's to stupid to send it right the first time. No more explaining to her over and over that the reason that 8 minute old trouble isn't fixed yet is that we don't have transporter technology, so I actually have to drive from office to office. And the only price for this impending peace is I have to say nothing as she runs around telling people about the huge favor she did for me, and how she always works to help people get what they want, and how hard she worked to make this happen. :rolleyes: A small price, really. Ludicrous, yet small. What I should be feeling now is elation. I should be over the moon. I should be dancing in the streets! But what I feel is... nothing. I can't seem to feel any way about it at all, one way or the other. I've been thinking about that, and I've decided it's shell-shock. I can't remember what it's like to want to go to work. I can't remember a time when my pager going off didn't fill me with dread. I had to set up an Outlook rule 2 years ago that automatically sends email from the Cow into the Deleted Items so I wouldn't feel compelled to open them and be faced with her idiocy. I'm so accustomed to being beat down at work that I can't imagine what it will be like not to feel that way. That's just sad, people. :wreck:

What would Jesus do?

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:44:58 -0600

The other night shortly after midnight I was driving home from work, in the middle lane of the Beltline, doing 62 in a 55. A semi was coming up behind me on the left in the fast lane, and as it passed me I glanced at the cab of the truck. "Divine Presence Trucking" it said, and a the body of the trailer passed me I saw their logo - a stylized crucifix, with a "D" and a "P" hanging where Christ's arms go. Obviously, several things passed through my mind at once: 1. Since I was already speeding, this guy was really speeding. Are the truly pious supposed to be breaking the law this way? I mean, I've got an excuse, I'm a pagan. I don't know any better and have an innate disrespect for rules, authority, and the safety of others (or so they say). What's his excuse? 2. Did he think this "divine presence" would stop him from a) getting a ticket, or b) having an accident? 3. How do you get a job with this company? What are the requirements? 4. And most importantly: What's in the trailer?