Tag: woes

sing!

Oh My Lawless Mercy, MAH COMPUTER HAS BEEN SAVED!

We stayed up until four o’clock this morning duplicating my data to the super amazing off-board drive of terabyte awesomeness that Ray gave me, wiping my computer clean, then installing everything fresh. My computer is a jewel again, sparkiing in the sun, flawless and beautiful. He even whished out all the cat furred dust bunnies that had been clogging the fan. It’s not even plugged in yet, I got in too late this morning to spend the spaghetti time, but I already feel reborn.

You know what this means? This means I can bloody well work on my photography again!

I didn’t dare, before, at the risk of losing anything I opened. It was terrifying. Mail archives going back to 1992, phone numbers, music, writing, media.. everything was at risk, held hostage. (“Fuck the cloud“). My computer was in that dire a state. First it stopped seeing my disc drive, which meant no more burning DVD back-ups, then my photoshop wouldn’t save, then nothing Adobe would even open, then I couldn’t open any files from 2006, then, worst of all, if it froze while I was copying/moving anything, anything, whatever I was trying to back-up would vanish into the ether, never to be seen again, not even in DOS. It plateaued there for a few weeks in that purgatory land of uncertain files while I desperately ran malware-security scan after malware-security scan, purging the evils as best I could, before finally hard crashing so violently it would take out the internal clock. I’d have to reboot three times to get through my mail.

Curator Michael Wright with the first fully functional working model of the Antikythera Mechanism.

at least someone gave me a rose today, so that’s okay

In the hopes of impressing my office enough to finally garner full employee status and get new health plan discounted glasses, I spent a significant amount of my holiday signed in to work remotely, meticulously going through everything I could think of, so all our files would be perfectly updated for the coming year, with no more clients slipping through the cracks or being misplaced due to spelling mistakes. (The number of people who sign up with commas for periods in their e-mail addresses is simply ridiculous). I signed in when I got up and again after dinner almost every day of the holiday, without fail. “Notice what a shiny, industrious little go getter you’ve got on your hands,” I hoped. “See how I’ve gone through the worst of our dreary lists with a fine tooth comb, straightening everything up!” Even through the weekend, it turns out, because who pays attention to what day it is when on holiday, when what I really wanted to be doing was deleriously playing out in the snow.

Guess what backfired.

I filed my hours today and got a letter back, “Can you account for these hours?” Bafflement turned to shock turned to hurt when the term “honor system” was mentioned. I immediately saw what the problem was: Holidays are for Days You Do Not Have To Pay Your Employees. Apparently we were only ever meant to check in, not actively seek out what else we could manage to do, so now not only did it turn out that I worked those weekends for free, my employers might be questioning my work ethic! I don’t know if there’s any office accusation as depressing. Bah. Argh. Hate. I’m not one of those flaky “my word is my bond” types, but damn do I hate being even slightly accused of being a liar. I still occasionally feel terrible about how I misremembered who was in a story about spilling coffee on William Gibson from when I was fifteen. That’s how much it galls me. Going back on Monday is not going to be fun.

I’m still glad about what I accomplished, but now, instead of being pleased to be back, I’m simply morose.

it’s destiny

http://www.thingsyoungerthanmccain.com

I like my new job. I like the potential in it, the industry, the selection of tea. I like the Rikki quote on the back of the door of the women’s washroom, my co-workers who are all neat people who smile nicely and tell funny anecdotes and complain about the weather just the right amount. I like the view, the information I need to gather, how intricate this will all be, how interesting. It’s all amazingly pleasant.

I only wish I knew more about what I’m meant to be doing. I’m used to learning quickly, to being one step ahead almost all the time, but I’m only slowly figuring out what to do at my new job. I know I’m meant to be picking up the slack as other people get on with more important tasks, but it’s like all the work available to me is below the surface, there, but invisible until it’s shown to me. I wander links and websites, learning about how our products need to circumvent routers and how to explain to people what an IP address is, while I send out prefab replies through the help, and don’t quite know what to do next. The man who was going to train me on something today is caught in the crunch of a dead-line, my friend who works here, works on a different aspect of the company.. I’m falling back on educated guesses and verifying sign-up lists that require the same attention to detail a grade-schooler could offer. I feel lost in a segue.

By the end of the week, I’ll be better. Already I know where to sign in, where to find my mail, what tasks I can attend to when I first get in. The only question is, why am I worried when no one else is?

my ex is in the show tonight, maybe I’ll get to meet his wife.

My computer snapped yesterday, a nasty electrical crack that tells of either a power source or a motherboard. The acrid scent resulting leans me toward thinking it was a power source failure. I suspect that my power bar doesn’t have the surge protector I assumed it did and the fridge turned on at an inopportune time. I live in an old building. Currently I’m thefting minutes on my roommate’s computer until I can get it fixed. It’s a highly unreliable way to stay in contact, but feel free to continue sending letters, I will eventually get them, though I won’t be reading my flist at all. Also, all of my phone-numbers are now inaccessible. You have to leave your number when you call, else I have no way of getting ahold of you unless Andrew has your number in his phone.

I plan on sending Ryan out today, in fact, to see what can be done about fixing my quiet machine. I can only twitch on without it for so long without a base madness setting in. Today after work, the distraction is to the THE PARTY NOT STARRING PETER SELLERS, the 10 o’clock showing.