I was kind of mum over the weekend. I know that I’m just starting to post again so bear with me.
 

( Just a jumble of stuff...you can ignore it if you wantCollapse )

 

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So tomorrow I go to the specialist about my foot. I have waited over three months to supposedly get my life in order so I can have surgery. For some reason my foot doesn't hurt as much for the past two days.

I hate that. I have been waiting over 18 months of doctor visits and PT. The minute I may have closure it seems better suddenly. I'm not going to worry because I have not done a lot of walking since Friday and I was off my feet during my vacation. The longer that I'm on my feet and walking around the more I have problems. It's not like I took a foot-bath at Lourdes.

I just want a couple of things:

• I want to be able to buy a real pair of shoes.
• I want to be able to walk for more that ten minutes at a time.
• I want to go back to the gym.
• I want to quit the painkillers killing my stomach.
• I want to change primary care doctors once this is resolved.

Tomorrow is going to be a slight pain in the neck on another front. My company is rolling out another way to appraise performance. It used to be that three-fourths the way though the year someone said, Hey, it's time to rate the employee's performance." That is when they actually started to write the goals. None of the goals usually pertain to the employee. They are more corporate goals. Then a month later you have to do a self-appraisal which is a total work of fiction. Eventually, the manager adds their two cents and spends ten minutes going over it before you sign off on it and get your merit raise.

      I have been at this company for over 14 years and I have yet to have an appraisal that actually addressed what I did. I have never been given any goals which are attainable or relevant. My manager never talks to me about my job. I do not get any feedback at all. Also, we never talk about development. My one on one meetings consist of me handing her a list of what I'm working on and her saying ok.

     This new thing that they're rolling out is more of a dialogue between the manager and employee. I'll have to see what else it is tomorrow. I have to go to a Lunch and Learn. They provide a light lunch. Whatever, It breaks up my day and I leave right after it for my doctor's appointment.

Night
Tomorrow



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Brief word about work…

AR was in on Monday. Apparently the infusion thing she gets is once a week for six hours. That started on Friday and is for the next month. However, she has some other issue which she was going to have to see her doctor about after work. Hopefully she is in today. Btw, get this: She is going to Georgia on Friday and won’t be back until Tuesday.

WTF is going on with all these people going on vacation in the middle of a huge project which impacts the entire company? Whatever!!

Politics:

I had a discussion with someone on my commute in this morning. I told them that the Presidential election is my new Olympics. There is nothing on television and I’m bored. Politics is beginning to get very interesting as we enter the last couple of months until the election.

Yesterday just amused the heck out of me. Missouri Congressman and Republican Todd Akins tried to explain “legitimate rape” and how women’s bodies have the ability to prevent pregnancy from the rape naturally. Yes, the man is an idiot and an airhead. I was watching Jennifer Granholm’s show early this morning. She had a quote from a book from 1814 which is exactly what Adkins was saying. This is another issue which though muddying the waters of the campaign is important. Why? For the past year Women’s rights have been being trampled over. At some point all this crap needs to be addressed.

I would never get an abortion but I feel that it is my right to have the choice. I should have choice in the decisions of my health. I don’t want a lot of ill informed, male lawmakers taking that choice away. I cannot wait until the RNC next week. It’s being held in Florida. How many people think that there won’t be a lot of protests? There is the issues of Medicare, Immigration, Women’s rights and the whole issue of the right to vote. The economy is important but because of the Republican ticket and their views/voting record it may take a back seat.

Again, this is going to be like the Olympics as we get down to the last couple of weeks.



Off to work. This entry was originally posted at http://discord26.dreamwidth.org/959269.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Two instances;

1. There was this horrible smell as I was walking down my street. It kept getting worse over a the period of a week. On my way home from work one day there were police all over my neighborhood. There was police tape around my next door neighbor's driveway. The smell was from a dead baby wrapped in plastic under the neighbor's car.

2. The second instance was when I was walking passed a parking lot behind a bunch of restaurants in a major square of my city. It smelled like a barnyard that had never been cleaned. I think the issue was that the restaurants were disposing of their swill down what is called a "pig" and never cleaned it out everything was fermenting and rotting for weeks.

 

1. AR did not show up at work yesterday. I don’t think anything will be said because she has filed FMLA papers so that if she has to take a day off because of whatever is wrong with her she can. A total downer would be if I had to do her work.

 

2. I was so excited yesterday because it was quiet. I was actually able to concentrate and get my work done. I don’t think that is going to be the case because AR will probably be in.

 

3. We had snow yesterday. I should have taken a picture because that has not happened much. The biggest storm we’ve had was in October. The snow is all gone this morning. It is raining out.

 

4. We have a casual day at work because of the shock from the weather….just kidding. We get casual days for the oddest reasons.

 

5. Comment: Commercials are odd. I think the one that just strikes the wrong cord in me is the one with the bears and the toilet paper. It’s just wrong. Away from those series of commercials there is just TMI in commercials today. I don’t need to get all the details of feminine products. I don’t need to see Kirstie Alley selling bladder leakage products. What the heck was her manager thinking? I want to see clever, funny and minimally informative. Actually, the problems with commercials are they are predominately for drugs, especially erectile dysfunction ads and kind of lame. If the ED pills are working why are people in separate bathtubs out on the lawn somewhere? Okay, I’m stepping away from the issue.

 

6. Tough if I’m spoiling you. What the heck are they doing on General Hospital? First, they killed Robin off. Then they bring Starr Manning from One Life to Live onto the show but kill her boyfriend, Cole and her daughter, Hope in the process. GH is becoming  kind of a vicious show.

 

7. I’m really kind of enjoying The River. A very big plus is Paul Blackthorne (Harry Dresden in the Dresden Files). They also had Lee Tergesen on the other night.

 

Work calls….

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Let’s recap and then I will have a moment or two on other things.

Yesterday

1. I had 4 new testing request and they are due by noon Tuesday. There is absolutely no coordination in this process. The guy in Puerto Rico is all set. He did his thing and now I’m going to do my thing. The guy sitting two desks from me has not gotten the go ahead to do his thing. The huge request which ruined my life for a week because what I tested now has to be moved to another environment and more configurations has to be done on it. Most of these requests have been sitting out there for months and now there is a big rush to do them.

For my part I have all the scenarios in place for three out of the five. The other two will take me an hour to do.

2. I had a meeting with my manager on the big project. She wants me to create 500 test cases. The actual testing begins around Thanksgiving and ends at the New Year.

3. Thank you…we did not have the stupid emergency evacuation. It was hard enough for people to get to work yesterday without having to wander the street of Boston in the rain. I know…emergencies don’t wait for good weather. I was not in the mood to fall down a couple of steep, grimy staircases and be on leave while my broken arm and leg heal.

Back to culling the heard.

I think that the advent of technology is another way of decreasing the population. You know that all these people who wander around plugged into MP3 players or fixated on their smart phone/tablet/netbook while getting from point A to B are doomed…right? I’m just very annoyed by people caught in their own little world to the detriment of everything and everybody around them. Hey, I have a smart phone, an MP3 player, a netbook and an e-reader but I don’t plug in and tune out.

I was trying to get to my bus and this woman was on her cell phone in front of me. She wasn’t talking…she was reading. She drifted in every direction so that you couldn’t go around her. It was useless to try to get her attention because she had earbuds in. I eventually found a way around and had to run for my bus. This would not be a problem for me if it was an anomaly but it is the norm. People can’t look up from their e-readers long enough to watch where they’re going.

Why will this cull the herd? People will try to cross streets while talking on cell phones or while listening to music. Cars will not stop for you. They will suddenly see you and slam on their breaks but it will be too late. I’m not letting people in cars off. A car is to drive. It is a place where you attend to the road. It is not a place where if you are the driver you get dressed, put on make-up, read the newspaper, make calls or text your friends. I don’t want to see earbuds either. Do people care what is going around them? Do they have any concern for themselves or others around them?

I think that the stupidest thing I have ever seen is people walking alone at night with earphones on. As far as I’m concerned they are culled. If they actually make it home with out being robbed, raped or murdered I will be surprised. In the morning I have to walk almost two miles down a deserted bike path. Am I paying attention to multi-media? No. I am walking with purpose. I have my cell phone in my hand but I am very aware of my surroundings. I also walk with attitude. This means that if you come near me someone is going down but it won’t be me. You ought to see me when I have to take an umbrella…also known as “the club”.

All I have to say is to be aware of people and things around you. The media will be there when you get to your destination. Is your life worth it? Are you that sheep waiting to be culled by the wolf?


Work calls….

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Yesterday…let us speak of annoyingly crazy crap and other things.

First let me just say that some days you think that their trying to whittle your sanity away with stupidity. It wasn’t anything monumentally stupid but something which just slowly erodes civilization over time. Okay, so I’m dramatic…whatever….

I spent the better part of the day fooling around with SQL to build queries which will improve my life …not really but it will save me time. I have to validate that a new batch of codes (over 20,000) have been loaded into the computer system and a few other things were loaded in with them such as description etc. I don’t have time to manually verify all those codes. If my query works it should take about an hour to do the whole job. I haven’t got the okay that they’ve all been loaded but when they are ….Yay!!

I talked to my manager about the test application. I think we’re fine to put the upgrade into production. She agreed and told me to move the process along. I sent an e-mail to the two people at my company working on it. A couple of hours later I got the go ahead to test the application in the production environment. Here is where my sanity began to erode.

I opened the application through an icon. The application opened and most of what I’ve been doing for the last year was not there. Minor personal meltdown which no one witnessed and I talked to my supervisor for a second. She was in the middle of the final employee reviews. I had to interact with the people who ran the upgrade. The first annoyance was that I could not actually talk to anyone because they do not answer the phone. They work only through e-mail. There was back and forth e-mailing for an hour when a five minute conversation could have clarified everything.

It was 3pm and I finally got to talk to my manager. We sat down for two minutes and figured out what the issue was. There were two icons for the databases…a production one and a test one. They had pointed both environments to the test database instead of upgrading and pointing the production environment to the production database. As I was sending out an e-mail about this to the two IT people there was a flurry of e-mails from the vendors who had been contacted. They acted like I was the moron. I shot an e-mail to the IT people at my company and e-mails to two separate vendors explaining the issue. I won’t know for a couple of minutes if the issue is resolved.

I was able to leave at my regular time…barely.

The possible fun of the day: I think that each department has a budget to do something for the employees. We’ve been stuck in this huge project and fun is at a minimum. My director sent out an invitation for an outing on Thursday. We’re going to lunch and going on a Duck Tour of Boston. That should be fun. The only problem I see is that it’s supposed to rain. Humor: I accepted the invitation but did not send an immediate response. That was a mistake because at some point in the day all the managers came to me and asked why I hadn’t accepted the invitation…wasn’t I going…The Director wanted to know. Okay, okay…I’ll accept it again and sent an immediate response this time.


I just looked to see if the issue above was resolved…That would be a big …”No”. I receipt all my correspondence and the DBA has not opened my e-mail regarding the issue. I’d call her when she comes in but she doesn’t answer her phone. Slow erosion of my sanity.

Last night was pretty quiet.

Today is casual day and there is a little event with some breakfast foods.

Work calls….

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1. Nobody left my company yesterday. Yay!! There was a different vibe about a year ago when they didn’t send out the “Notice of Separation” emails. There was a certain calm in the ignorance. Now it’s just very disconcerting. Granted some people have left because they have found better jobs. I expect those to be one person e-mails. Sometimes I’m okay with being ignorant about why they left. Sometimes I go on vacation and there is an e-mail with seven names and you know that was not voluntary. My company needs to give its employees an odd treat or new policy like…jeans can be worn everyday not just casual Fridays. Throw us a bone.

 

2. Yesterday was “Team Spirit” day. It was the opening game of the Football season. We were allowed to wear jeans and a sports team shirt. Later they amended that because not everyone in Boston is a sports fan and some of the employees are not even from Massachusetts. I wore the previously described fish t-shirt.  How else did they celebrate? We got a mini bag of Smartfoods popcorn. Just what I need a bag of salt.

 

3. P is going to be beaten up by me. He was having some worrying symptoms so he went to his PCP and didn’t tell me. Then he happened to mention that he was going for a six months check-up with the gastroenterologist. That was a lie. He was going for the symptoms. It turns out that it wasn’t anything to worry about …much. He has to take some medication for a week or so and he should be fine. I’m going to hit him for not telling me. I know he did it so I wouldn’t worry but I actually hate that. I hate being kept in the dark or out of the loop. It drives me crazy.

 

4. I incurred credit card fees and that pisses me off. I put my bills in a specific place so that I will see and pay them. P has a need to move things around on a minute by minute basis because he can’t stand things piling up. He moved my bills. I suddenly forgot they existed. This is a lesson to me to keep more mindful of where things are. It also tells me to pay by Paypal or my banks e-pay or by debit card. Screw the credit cards. Btw, I was on the phone with Sears last night and that will never happen again. I felt like I was in a bad comedy sketch trying to get through their automated system to a human. Making me fuck around on the phone and get annoyed in the process is not good customer service.

 

5. <lj user="azryal">has posted a new entry to “The Red King”…Chapter 8. She has set me on the path to Michael Fassbender/James McAvoy fan fiction with a pirate theme. Damn her. LOL

 

6. Possible humor from work…Yesterday, I spent the day cleaning, formatting and uploading data into the test application. At least, I was trying to. Everything has to be done in a specifically formatted Excel spreadsheet. I spent hours not getting anywhere because of the errors. I was totally, screamingly (it’s a new word) frustrated. A member of my team stood next to me and offered a couple of tips on dealing with Excel and the freaking things uploaded seamlessly. Every time he walked away I had problems. I told him that he needs to stand by me today while I upload the last batch of data. He had better because the last batch of data is something that he configured. I told him otherwise I won’t test it. I’m not evil. I’m just extremely frustrated by the test application.

 

7. My manager was locked in her office all day doing her personal review and those under her (me and another woman). I know she’s busy but she had time to do this earlier. It was due weeks ago. She can work on this from home. She only works half a day…from home…on Friday. I don’t really care what she writes about me because I’m not getting a merit raise because of the new job. I already got quite a pay hike. I’m not sure if I’ll see her today either.

 

 

Work calls….

Sorry about the lj user issue but it is azryal on livejournal. She's not on DW that I know about.

 

 

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Friday recap.

 

I had to take a test for this new position I was applying for. It was to test my analytics. I have no idea how I did and I may never know.

 An example question was : One of these things do not belong:

 

A. Mom

B. Elijah

C. Dad

D. Hannah

 

I picked Elijah because A, B and D all start and end with the same letter. There were thirty of these questions(some had drawings and logic problems).

 

Saturday:

 

I went to WW anticipating the worst because of the unrestrained eating during the vacation. I lost 2.4 pounds. How the fuck did that happen? I ate out every day. I snacked like a fiend. I had two days of intense activity followed by total sloth.

 

I had a hair appointment at noon. All I can say is…it’s shorter and waay dark. I’ve been having my hair highlighted for about six months. My hairdresser was having a moment and my hair is too dark for me to stand. He did put some highlights in. It will fade with washing but I look like I am the palest person on the earth.

 

As I was leaving the salon it began to rain. I hopped a bus, got some emergency coffee and got home as fast as I could. As I stepped though my front door it poured.

 

Sunday:

 

   I was totally screwed up. I didn’t have my much needed coffee and there was a storm outside. It was a day for sleep and television. My trees survived the winds. The basement has about a bucket’s worth of water on the floor.

 

Monday:

 

1. The bus took it’s time.

2. My Dunkin Donuts was closed so I had to wander the streets of Boston. My mission: score coffee. Accomplished.

3. Stupid work e-mail: They were going to open the offices on time. “Although many of us had candlelight dinners tonight, all our information has led us to determine that the offices will be open regular hours tomorrow. “ Is that a stupid sentence or what? I read this from home because it was sent out 7:30 last night. If you were having a candlelight dinner because you lost power how do you read the e-mail?

4. It will be interesting to see who makes it into work. People are coming from all over this state and two others(Rhode Island and New Hampshire).

Work....I have coffee...crazy, unhinged laugh.... This entry was originally posted at http://discord26.dreamwidth.org/900750.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Well, I went to the doctor yesterday. At first I thought I was having one of those experiences where you go to the doctor to find out all your symptoms have miraculously cleared up. At first my doctor had me look at certain fixed points and nothing happened. Then he had me lie down and look around. There was still nothing. Then it happened. He was helping me sit up and my world began to spin. The problem is that it has not stopped spinning.

I had to pick up medication which was an annoyance but also a blessing. Why a blessing? It meant that I had to sit still for almost an hour. If I had to leave the hospital any sooner I probably would have been on the news for some crazy stunt. I was soooooo dizzy!!! There was an instance where I was walking across the street, spied a bug on my glasses and the spastic ballet known as crossing the street began. I did make it home….barely.

In retrospect I must have had this issue for a long time and not known about it. I have had this uneasy feeling which has left me practically running from meetings at work because of nausea. I have been very sensitive to smells. Now I know why…an inner ear infection.

They gave medication. Its kind of like Dramamine. It is making me very sleepy. Sometime today I have to make an appointment at Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary to see a specialist. That person needs to fix this before I do something stupid.

I saw the last episode of Game of Thrones. No spoilers, but there was an announcement at the end of the show…Game of Thrones…Season 2…Spring 2012. This is when P chimed in with, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding.” Yes, it’s going to be a long year until we find out what happens next.


I’m off to gather my equilibrium.

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What happened in my world on Tuesday?

1. One of my projects is almost done. OMG! Yay!! I just need to spend about an hour on it today and then a half hour after the corrections are sync’d with my test environment. Oh, the humanity! LOL

2. I had my 1 on 1 meeting with my manager. We talked about pain points with the department mailbox. Some of them have been alleviated because they changed my security and I was given an actual list of gatekeepers. Just so you know…Mr. KIA is not a gatekeeper so I should not be receiving anything from him. His manager, my old manager, is the gatekeeper. However, his manager likes to delegate so Mr. KIA will probably still be sending the painfully long and convoluted questions. We'll see.

3. We talked about the test application. I want to use it but time is always a factor. It’s something that will be worked on. Newbie is doing something in relation to it.

4. I walked into my department meeting. There was some talk of the Bruins before the meeting began. At the start of the meeting my manager was sitting with a little sort of sculpture in front of her. It was about six inches high with a blue geometric base and a wire hand coming out of it. In the hand was a card that said, “Thanks for the extra hand!”. The first few minutes of the meeting was presenting me with the said sculpture and card. She nominated me for the award for keeping the department mailbox pretty clean and chipping in to answer some of the questions. I was touched (not in the head, btw). It’s basically the first recognition I’ve ever received. I think I get some money. I looked at the nominating form and it mentions a standard payment of $200. We’ll see.

5. I almost made it through the entire meeting. Towards the end I started not feeling good. I was kind of nauseous and had this odd tightness in my chest. Why? They made me get involved in a discussion around some issue or another. Remember, I’m fine while I’m quiet but the minute I start talking I get a bit dizzy. I stepped out of the meeting for a moment and got some water. I was fine by the time the meeting ended and I was heading for my desk.

6. Everyone is talking about Game of Thrones. As I was leaving I became involved in a conversation about it. I had not seen the last episode but I knew that something was coming. Later I was in CVS and I overheard someone talking. The minute I heard, “It has one more episode. It wasn’t supposed to go for another season but it’s been renewed.” I knew what they were talking about. When I finally made it home I saw the episode. Bummer is all I can say. I can’t wait until Sunday.

Today

1. The electric company was at the head of my street. I was walking toward the main square and was amazed how bright it was out. It was so early. What I didn’t clue into was that there were no lights for blocks. I was getting a sinking feeling as I neared my Dunkin Donuts. The lights were out and the employees were in the parking lot. The counter person saw me and said, “I can still do iced coffee.” My morning was saved.

2. My bus driver has been on time lately. My morning was again saved.

3. The only thing not working for me is my dizziness. I’m fine for the most part but….when I look up I get a wave of dizziness. You know what that means? Yes, I don’t look up. I think this may be gone for the most part by the weekend. Here’s hoping.

Work….

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