Aperture Science Chronological Life Data Tracking System

So close!

I mentioned in an earlier post that there’s an absolutely awesome white cat that lives outdoors in my apartment complex. It’s just the friendliest cat you could ever hope to meet, and usually comes running up for attention when I park my car.

I was hoping to take the cat in and give it a home, but unfortunately it turns out that he’s owned by one of the downstairs neighbors. It kind of sucks that they just let him run around outside (declawed), but it’s good to know that there’s people looking out for him and taking care of him.

Booo. I was so looking forward to adopting him.

A chill wind blows

November is just around the corner, and northern Florida is finally starting to see a bit of the colder weather. For most of the last week we still had temperatures in the 70s, but the last few days have seen it drop to the mid-60s, and as low as 40 at night.

Yes, I said 40. All you people with snow suck.

Anyway, this cold weather isn’t that big of a deal for most of the people I know. Really it just means digging a light jacket out of the closet. However there’s always the weird Florida people who just can’t cope with any kind of cold. Last night as I was coming back from Krav class I passed my upstairs neighbor giong out to her car… and she was fully decked out in a winter coat and gloves, and had a scarf covering her face.

It wasn’t even 40 yet! Probably somewhere in the mid 50s.

It’s not just my neighbor, either. Every year about this time the residents of Florida start looking like they’re headed to ski resorts instead of work. We won’t even see our first freeze until after December, most likely. I don’t understand how they’re not sweating under all those layers.

Honestly, sometimes I just don’t understand Florida at all - and I’ve lived here most of my life.

Guest Relations = Awesome

One of the things that never fails to impress me about the Disney corporation (other than it’s ability to separate people from their money) is the class of customer service they provide.

Several months ago Jess and I went down to Walt Disney World using the passes I bought at the beginning of the year and spent the day at Epcot, the best Disney park EVER. The fireworks, the culture, figment…. it’s just COOL!

Disney runs a hydroponics facility at Epcot (in The Land) that they use to provide food for some of the restaurants in the park. There is a behind the scenes tour you can take where they go a little more in-depth on some of the methods they use to grow the plants, and at the end they’ll give you a little paper that explains how you can set up your own mini-hydroponics at home. Unfortunately when I moved I lost my copy.

After a few months of looking through various boxes and stacks of papers that I still need to deal with in my apartment I gave up on finding it. I guess a bear ate it or something. I figured perhaps Disney might be able to send me another one, so I filled out the little ‘contact us’ form they have on their web page. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t really expecting a reply. However, I saw this in my inbox this morning.

Thank you for your interest in Disney’s Horticulture at the Walt Disney World Resort. We are always pleased when a guest takes special interest in our landscapes. I have enclosed a few pieces of information for your reference. Hydroponics is a really neat system of growing different crops-and The Land at Epcot is a great example of what hydroponics is all about. Basil, beans, broccoli, mint, peppers, strawberries, and tomatoes are all plants commonly grown hydroponically.

In addition to the enclosed information, you may want to check out the websites listed below (these websites are not endorsed by Walt Disney World(r)).
www.howtohydroponics.com
www.growingedge.com

I hope this information is helpful to you. Please feel free to contact me at the phone number or e-mail address listed below if you have any other questions about Disney’s Horticulture.

Happy Gardening!

WDW Disney Gardener
(phone and email snipped)

Attached to the email was a PDF copy of the original paper I had misplaced.

How completely awesome is that?

<3

For saying her name and then snapping the photo as the turned around, I think this came out rather well!

( She doesn’t like cameras. )

Here kitty!

A lot of times when I write in my blog I feel like I what I want to say doesn’t come anywhere close to the amount of words I wind up putting in an entry. This is definitely one of those.

I read this morning an article on Fark about the number of pet abandonments on the rise, partially due to the economic crunch. There were stories in the comments about pets being left on the side of the road, tossed out of moving cars, even locked in homes that were repossessed.

How the hell can someone do that? I mean seriously, how? I understand everyone has different levels of affection for their pets, but it’s not a television! You can’t just leave it behind for the next person. Just…. arrrgh!

There’s this fantastically beautiful white cat that lives around my apartment complex. Just the friendliest thing you could ever pet, been declawed and everything. How could someone just put a cat like that outside and walk away?

Otherland: The MMO

I was doing my normal daily routine of catching up on news (and avoiding work) when I noticed the below tidbit quietly hidden away on Slashdot.

Otherland: The MMO

(If you’re not familiar with Otherland, I’d suggest brushing up on it over at Wikipedia real quick.)

There’s a few reasons I’m excited about this. One of the attributes of Otherland that is made very obvious in the books is the ability to completely ignore the rules when designing an area of the net. Bug-sized avatars in a giant world, corrupted versions of childhood stories, other planets - these all happen in the novels, and I fully expect the game to be the same way. Each place could have it’s own physics, it’s own rules. It would definitely make for a much more dynamic environment than most MMOs currently have. It sounds like they’re also hinting at the possibility for player-created areas. So cool!

There’s also another reason that I have fairly high hopes; Tad Williams (the author of Otherland) is directly involved with the creation MMO. According to his website he seems to be pretty happy with how it’s going, and it looks like he is having a huge role in the design process of the game. This is definitely good news, and is at least a guarantee that it won’t be the player slogging through the story that’s already been told - it will instead be an extension of the books.

I’m definitely looking forward to checking this one out.

Pictures of you!

So you might have noticed funnly little alien-lookin pictures of people who leave comments on my blog. Those pictures are merely placeholders for what should really be there - a Gravatar!

What is a Gravatar, you ask? It’s a universal avatar that many weblogs support, including wordpress (which I use here). You simply give Gravatar your email address and the picture you would like to use, and when you leave a comment on someone’s blog that has that enabled, it goes and grabs your image for all to see.

Pretty neat, huh? Go check it out!

Werk, werk

Wow, has it really been a month since my last post? It really doesn’t seem like it’s been that long - in fact, this whole year feels like it’s just flying by.

I remember when I first started this blog that I told myself I’d post at least once a day, every day. Ahhhh well.

—

I’m always used to being the person giving help and very seldomly asking for/receiving it, so it comes as a pleasant surprise that people keep asking (with genuine interest and concern) how things at work are going, and if the situation is improving at all. In all fairness, it’s not as bad as I made it out to be in my last post - that was definitely a venting time. However… nothing I said in there is an exaggeration, or untrue. It’s more of a Cliff’s Notes version of everything that’s happened so far this year.

My company is not necessarily a bad company to work for. For a financial instutition in today’s economic brouhaha we’re doing really well; they avoided all that sub-prime mortgage crap, and our business is showing steady gains. The problem lies moestly in the IT department.

The pay here is not competitive, and the company knows it. It’s not uncommon for someone to leave and get hired back at a higher pay. We also have about 2/3 of the IT staff that we really need, with most people being the sole person who knows a system. It’s stressful enough like that, more so when they leave.

We’re also constantly under audit, both from internal and external sources (including the OTS audit next week. Eeeeek!). It’s not so much that the audits are difficult, it’s that there’s so much gathering of proof and documentation that there’s less time for doing actual work. Again, more stress. Multiple audits at a time do not help.

I still say my boss has the attention span of a hyperactive monkey though. Part of that, I’m sure, is just the amount of work that she has to do and the amount of data that flows through her - information overload is very real. I’ve actually learned that it’s best to catch her in the hallway away from her desk; if you’re in the office talking to her and the phone/IM/email goes off, you might as well just get up and leave - she won’t notice.

It can be a very frustrating place to work.

Why I hate my job

• Meetings, meetings, meetings. Everything gets discussed to hell and back.
• Capslock should never, ever, ever be used in a corporate environment. NEVER.
• I don’t care how much you’d like it to happen, boss, technical support can not help me violate the laws of physics and technology.
• I am not an engineer. Why the hell do you have me working on servers? Pay me for it or go away.
• 6 am sucks as a start time.
• My boss currently has like 13,000 emails in her mailbox. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get her to reply to an email?
• I have three weeks of vacation that I haven’t been able to take because I’m “the only person who can do my job”.
• Did I mention I’m the lowest paid person under my boss? I’m the only one still hourly, too, because she’s too damn busy to remember that she said a year ago she would promote me.
• It’s impossible to work here without backstabbing or being backstabbed.
• STOP WITH THE MANAGERIAL LEET SPEAK. WE ARE PEOPLE, NOT RESOURCES. YOU DO NOT ‘ENGAGE A RESOURCE’, YOU ASK AN ENGINEER FOR HELP. IT’S NOT AN ‘ACTION ITEM’, IT’S A TO-DO LIST.
• Bosses, please don’t micromanage. If you ask me to do something, trust that I’ll get it done without calling me at 11pm.

I’m sure I’ll be adding more to this as the day progresses.

Tags: rant, work

Random anxiety

So I’m sitting here at my desk, contently stuffing my face with a brownie, when suddenly out of nowhere I get that feeling.

I hate that feeling. That sinking feeling deep in the chest that tells you something bad is about to happen, or that someone is watching you waiting for you to screw up. Some call it a premonition, some call it nerves… I don’t care what it’s called, I just want it to go away so I can finish my brownie in peace.