Category: Generic

Network Fun

I had 15 minutes to go until a meeting with a customer. Not just any meeting, but a meeting where I was going to have to present something to them. Now I don’t talk to customers directly. It’s not in my job description. That being said, we’re all in this together and we are all one big happy team, and if the folks who usually do talk to the customers directly are tied up in other things I am happy to pitch in. Happy yes, stress free? Hell no.

The information I needed to present would, best case scenario, involve two, maybe three sentences and that was it. If they asked me questions I told the people I was covering for that I would panic quietly and then mumble responses until they stopped asking. I was kidding, of course. I didn’t expect any questions. I expected my speaking time to be wrapped up in a manner of seconds. Still… yikes.

Then that happy moment, about 15 minutes before the meeting… when our entire network went down. Oh… no… now what do we do??

I wasn’t going to be able to join the call… potentially neither was any of the other 50-70 or so people who were scheduled to represent my company… and we had no way of letting each other know, and no way of letting the customer know. What do we do?

One guy in my building who fortunately sits near me found a work around and yelled it out. Everyone else yelled it out too. I got onto the call with seconds to spare, then waited about 20 minutes for my turn to speak, then spoke my two sentences and asked for questions and there were none.

Oh, what a relief that was. Over and done.

After that I spent two hours on another meeting and now I am going to spend the next 90 minutes on yet another meeting. What a thrill! I just want to go home and go to bed.

Shitty Morning Blues

It’s 9:08am and this day is already an epic pile of suck.

I overslept a little. Just a little. It was enough to screw up my whole routine though. I managed to get all of the trash out to the street and get some semblance of my morning exercise in with enough time left over to have me outside in the car by 7:30. I would have preferred 7:15, but 7:30 usually gets the job done.

Usually.

Not today though.

I had construction traffic on my street, I had gridlock on route 213 and gridlock on route 93. Google Maps told me to exit route 93 and take route 495. There was gridlock getting on to 495. It was about 8:15 when Google Maps started telling me I wouldn’t be at my destination until after 9:20, 20 minutes late for work, when I said screw it and turned around. I got on route 495 North instead of South, which is one of two main highways that get me home, and of course there was gridlock on 495 North as well. I was home by 9:40 and immediately punched in to work.

I have to work from the office three times this week. One of them has to be Wednesday. I already worked from the office on Monday and I fully expected to do it today (Tuesday) too, which would put me at home for Thursday and Friday. Now I have to work from the office on one of those days to make up for today. It will probably be Friday.

I am so pissed off and frustrated right now, I can’t even think straight. I ate breakfast in the car and was so stressed out that it affected my stomach and now I feel all blocked up and bloated and gross (it’s a gastric bypass thing, you probably wouldn’t understand unless you’ve had the surgery too).

9:15am and it’s already a Grade A Shitty Day. Fucking traffic!

(insert the sound of a frustrated scream here)

Gift

We got a lot of snow. I can’t really say how much because it tends to drift into my driveway. That’s just how the wind works in our neighborhood. A lot of the snow and leaves and stuff blows down the street and piles up in front of my house. I’d say at least six inches of snow, maybe more like eight. Could be a little more, who knows. It was enough.

Fortunately it was nice and light and I got outside to shovel before it started to melt and refreeze, so it wasn’t a million tons of slush. It just picked up easy. The huge snow bank at the end of the driveway that the plows left behind was heavy, but not world ending heavy, if you know what I mean.

I cleaned off the cars and shoveled the driveway-proper nice and easy, then spent a big chunk of time on the snow bank. The piles on either side of the driveway are getting big enough that you really need to chuck each shovel full far and high to get it over the top. I felt a little like a soldier in World War I wandering around in a trench (no I didn’t, really, but you get the idea).

When the snow bank was gone I walked over to the fire hydrant at the other end of our front yard and found a really nice gift. Someone had already dug it out. It looked like the work of a snow blower, but I didn’t see any evidence of who might have done the work. Whoever it was (whomever it was?), I thank them very much! I don’t mind digging out the hydrant (it’s on my property after all) and you will never, ever hear me complain about doing it, but it was a really nice treat to not have to today. Again, thank you so much!

I finished up by digging out the path around the side of the house to where we keep the trash barrels, and to the back door. Once it was done I came back inside and wrote this literary tome. Now I get to make my wife some lunch! Snow sucks, and shoveling sucks more, but it’s all done for today so it’s time to celebrate! Huzzah, babie!

It is Snowing

When I went to bed an hour ago it was not snowing yet. I just got up for a minute and looked outside and it’s snowing like crazy and we already may have a couple of inches.

Lovely (he said, dripping with sarcasm).

During our week in Florida it snowed twice. In the eight days we’ve been back it has snowed twice more. The last time I looked at a forecast for this coming week it said it was going to snow more or less every other day.

Do you think mother nature is exacting some kind of asshole revenge on us for going to a warmer location on our vacation?

I think so. Mother nature is a prick.

It is Going to Snow

We had plans to go to Vermont My step son celebrated his birthday on Tuesday and we were going to go see him for a slightly belated birthday lunch.

That was before the winter storm warning was announced and the forecast started calling for maybe 10 inches of snow.

Eight days ago we were in Florida and it was 88 degrees out.

Winter sucks.

Haiku for You #229

I feel the need to express my political outrage in haiku form tonight. I just don’t know what to say. Let’s just unload a little brain dropping and see how it goes……

Secession might be,
the only valid outcome.
except “eat the rich”.