Not being a dick to people |4:57 PM|
Totally forgot about one of the things that happened last night.
We had a white elephant gift exchange, summarized thus: Everyone brings a wrapped gift, puts them in a pile. Each person goes up, chooses a gift, or if someone before them has already unwrapped something they want, they can steal their gift. Process repeats. We had a limit of one theft, which means if you stole someone's gift, it was locked to you. In any case, the budget for this was like $15-$20, and I had told my boss I wanted to bring "something flashy". (Not being able to decide on a gift, as it's hard to shop for a whole company, I went with a really neato flashlight. What a horrible joke). The first thing unwrapped is this huge, nice, folding poker table. Holy shit. Way out of budget, and I felt like a total dick.
The next couple of presents were stuff like "Box of soup" and "Roadside emergency kit" so I felt a lot less like a dick. Buuut... when it came to my turn, I went to steal the poker table. The woman who had it looked at me like I was the biggest dick in the world, which, admittedly, I felt like. I took it, and she walks off to the tree to get a new gift. I stop in place, and yell "I'll high card you for it!"
Yes, I happened to have grabbed a pack of playing cards and put them into my jacket when I was cleaning out my car.
Here's part of the deal, I knew it was a new, unshuffled deck of cards. That means I also knew basically what order the cards would fall. I gave them a single, crappy bridge shuffle, and put the deck down. The woman, Lana, took her cut, and I took mine. I was reaching for about, hmm, what would 3/4s minus 1/8 be? 5/8's? of the way through the deck. She pulled the Ace, I pulled the 2 of clubs. Wow. I was shooting to lose, but that was amazing.
It worked out. I felt like a lot less of a dick, no one else was going to steal that poker table from her, and I don't think I damaged my reputation with the company.
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Party, nipple issues |1:22 AM|
I miss my nipple bars. I had to take them out, I have to let them heal so I can get them re-pierced in a better location. The previous ones just had too many issues, so I'm upgrading. Like new shocks on a car, only this is steel piercing non-functional tissue.
This means in the morning, when I stretch to scratch my sides, my chest feels differently. When I'm brushing my teeth I notice something is missing. It's disconcerting. My deadline for re-piercing is like January 10th. Why not get it done sooner? I'm hoping to knock some more weight off before I do it, so if I have it video taped I'll look better. Speaking of losing weight, I'm buying some new pants tommorow, along with all of my Christmas shopping.
Had the company party tonight, and it was a blast, as office parties go. I brought Cass along as my guest (It seemed a good idea to take a woman along, even one I'm not dating, rather than a dude [Like, God help me, Kamon] and "raise questions") and she took care of my drink tickets. She even managed to snag a decent set of knives during the gift exchange. I myself won the tool related raffle, and got a kit of roadside emergency tools (Which for some reason, lacks jumper cables and flares.) Didn't win the gargantuan TV. Damn shame, even considering that if I owned it, I wouldn't be able to open the door to my house.
Got the bonus, too. I'd forgotten about it until they started handing them out, and good golly, I love my job.
A repair to be proud of, chocolate. |1:18 PM|
This is a pointless post, feel free to skip it if you value your time.
There is a chunk of chocolate here in the office, given to us by the office leasing company. It is so large, that it comes with its own metal hammer to break it up. I am not kidding. I really, really wanted some. Truly. When I told Sue(my manager) that I couldn't, that I'd promised someone, a higher up (Brett) said "They're not here, who will know?" I said that I would, and he reacted with shock. "A man with a conscience!" Sue said she'd be telling the big boss that Brett had reacted with such shock to an honest man in the service department.
I had a computer today that was completely screwed. To save you the boring details, I took a nearly hopelessly damaged case, and fixed it, using a mallet, a drill, a pair of pliars, broken parts of an LCD, and a tiny, tiny screw. I wish I could have fired my screwdriver into the air or something, when that guy was done.
This Dude bartered up from paperclip to a house
http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/
Superstar
Finally, Hertzfeld puts everything onto one DVD. www.bitterfilms.com http://stores.musictoday.com/store/product.asp?band_id=1025&dept_id=7
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Thursday, December 14, 2006
Reactions |2:37 PM|
Helluva way to run a day. Every machine I've touched so far today has had new and exciting things wrong with them. Parts came broken from the manufacturer, another tech's diagnosis overlooked an issue, etc. Oh, and this printer I was fixing needs a new color ink cartridge from the user. This is after we spent 2 weeks waiting for him to bring a new black cartridge in.
It's enough to discourage me.
(Telling quote of yesterday, when I was working on a terribly damaged machine, "Task manager has been disabled by the administrator? I AM THE ADMINISTRATOR!
I was thinking yesterday, that despite a few exceptions, I don't discuss politics here. I think it's because other folks, on other blogs, cover it far, far more effectively than I can, or could. In case you're curious, of the liberal blogs I read, the ones I check most often are:
To get an idea of the right-wing blogs, which by and large disgust me, I tend to check http://daoureport.salon.com . Yes, they probably pick and choose some of the posts, but if such posts even exist on your site, you deserve to be judged by it.
I asked a couple people for some random words, and these are what I got back. Numbers correspond to whatever the word prompted me to think of, written below. Also I'm futzing around with relative links to named anchors, which is something I never bothered to learn. Speaking of web design, I really hate that IE can't deal properly with PNG transparency, so if I want to use 'em, I have to set the background color. Jerks.
1. Disclaimer 4. Assault client hides 2. Lungs modify developers 3. Induction 6. Banana Tycoon 7. Bugs Your mom 5. Boomerang As we walk steadfastly into the night Cheap as free I have been reading Ayn Rand, and my co-workers say its making me snobby Let the spam filter catch that, bastards!
2. I always had a fascination with the term "Sucking Chest Wound". You're trying to breathe, but because of the hole in your chest, you're collapsing your own lung! How absolutely horrible. Speaking of sucking chest wounds: This guy, this guy ought to run for president: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/12/13/weinstein/ Just click through the damn ad.
I was thinking of adding something to my car to increase its affect on those coils, but the size of the magnets/chunk of steel I would need would seriously impact performance, with little gain. This biker, however, has an interesting idea: http://www.instructables.com/id/EL8EH6RZ1REP286X29/
4. Assault can be just me threatening you. Aggravated assault is me threatening you with a weapon. I learned this just after having a crapload of cops point guns at me in Phoenix in a case of mistaken identity. They did not put a bullet through my heart.
5. http://www.terminalpacketloss.com/gallery/whoamI/images/boomeranima.gif This link, like so many things, works a lot better in Firefox than in IE. It's a little big, so if you're on a modem you may want to skip it. Yes, it is me, but I still find it hypnotic (I usually hate watching footage of myself). I can hear a little "Bop!" noise when it loops, right as my hand goes down/backup. I've (briefly) tried to teach other people how to throw a boomerang, and the next time I do so I'm bringing extras, so it's not just a lot of me running after a boomerang that has slammed into the ground.
6. An old coworker of mine, who I really wish I could remember the name of so I could track him down, grew up on a banana plantation. Or so he claimed, he didn't really have reason to lie to me. In any case, he had a murderous dog, that would occasionally, for whatever reason, decide it had to kill something. Usually, he'd go and track down an armadillo, knock it over, carry it to a lake, and drown it. Not even eat it. Weeeird shit.
I need to finish these out and expand that social circle one.
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Monday, December 11, 2006
Two Parties in December |2:05 AM|
I was at two parties in the last couple of weeks, and not a lot of pictures came out for either of them. I combined them into one gallery, to save hassle.
The first was a "Come as what you wanted to be when you grew up" party. My costume got buried under a bunch of crap in my car, so instead of dressing up as an astronaut, I have a new mop bucket. (Otherwise I was going to cut a hole in the side, wear it like a helmet). My friends and I met some good people, and played word games on the porch for most of the evening. It was casual and relaxed.
The second party was for a guy known as "The Neon Cowboy". I don't know much about this fellow, other than that he can throw a hell of a bash, and his pals include The Enigma and The Lizard Man.
The Chicago Trip |12:57 AM|
I went to Chicago on a day's notice a few weeks back. A nice, eventful trip. The first couple of photos depict when I showed up, and met up with the wedding party during some pre-event celebrations. I finally got to meet the groom, who seems like a nice guy, and treats Erin well. The family was thrilled to see me, and we nice enough to rent me a room at the inn. As I am not the "thank you" card type, I thanked them with a big damn box of chocolate. Damn, I need to send them a Christmas card.
Then I met up with Chris H. (Who just happened to also be in Chicago, and who I would see less than 48 hours later back in Austin), trying to get to second city. A train, a bus, and a lot of walking later, we got to see some mediocre comedy. Well, except for SHAH 2, which is funny for Chris and I, but not anyone else.
Later is the actual wedding, and since the light was so low, not a lot of pictures came out. Erin seems really happy with her husband, which is probably a good thing, since they'll be seeing each other a lot for the next lifetime or so. The whole shindig was well rehearsed, and went off without a hitch. I even managed to do some horrible dancing. I slipped out quietly.
Later that evening, I met up with John L. outside of a best buy to wait for the Nintendo Wii. Also present was his girlfriend, Krystl, who I hadn't seen in years. The last time I saw her, she had hair past her waist, and would only wear skirts, as Pentecostal women cannot wear pants, nor cut their hair. John and I ended up waiting quite a while, in increasingly cold air, then raining, then snowing. Information travels between these groups, these lines, (such as back during the Star Wars lines). Information like how many Wii's Best Buy had in stock (90) or how many Toys R. Us had (5, after all the pre-orders). We played bean bag related games, held each other's places in line, and generally pal'd around with a bunch of other nerds. At about 4 or 5 AM, John managed to find a Walmart that had 20 units that no one else seemed to know about, and instead of having to wait until 9am, we got the damn console at about 6. Those were an important 3 goddamn cold hours.
