Monday, March 10, 2008

How I completely missed Daylight Savings Time

I woke up at 7:30 this morning, like I’m supposed to on any workday. Then I thought I woke up at 6:30.  Then, after some Googling, I realized it really was 7:30 and that I had missed the switch to Daylight Savings Time altogether on Sunday. Here’s how it happened…

Most Sundays are stay inside and spend quiet time with each other days. It’s my favorite time of the week. Most of the time I hear some word on Friday from coworkers or the radio or something about the upcoming time shift. Not this time. Saturday was my sweety’s birthday (I got her the Best Cake Ever, also known as “Berries and Cream” from Lido Bakery in El Segundo). Family showed up and we chatted and watched movies, and time was never really an issue. Sunday came around and I took her out to breakfast, then we came back to snuggle in front of the DVD player. Again, time was never an issue. It felt good.

The first bit of strangeness occured at bedtime. We watched a movie until 10:45, then I had to go to bed since it was Monday the next day. We did the usual puttering around, brushing our teeth, moving things off the bed, and other night-time before bed things. We snuggled and talked some, and then I happened to glance at the time on the ceiling from the projection clock. I was astounded to see that it said it was 12:15am. I was all, “Wait, what? How on earth did we manage to waste an hour and a half doing what we normally do??” It was so weird, but I never thought about Daylight Savings.

This morning when I woke up, the clock said 7:30, so I thought, “Well, time to get up.” I took a shower, got dressed, and as I was heading to the kitchen, I glanced at my watch to see how I was doing on time. I was baffled when it read 6:50am. Believe it or not I still hadn’t thought of Daylight Savings. Instead, I thought, “Dammit that stupid clock shifted time zones again.” The bedroom clock is one of those digital things that stays in tune with some atomic clock somewhere in the country, and it also has a button to change what time zone you are in. That button is all too easy to hit accidentally, and that’s what I thought had happened.

Then I glanced at the big clock in the living room, but it was agreeing with the bedroom clock. I looked from it to my watch several times, feeling like my brain was moving in very slow motion. It was kind of pathetic actually. That living room clock also stays in tune with the atomic clock… sometimes. It’s not as responsive as the bedroom one. Finally, it clicked. Sort of. I was still in disbelief. Was it Daylight Savings already? I don’t know why I found it so hard to believe. I went to the computer to Google it and find out exactly when it was supposed to be. Second Sunday in March, it said. Was it the second Sunday of March? After staring at a calendar for much too long, I finally decided that yes, indeed it was, and it really was time to spring forward. Damn, and here I thought I had an extra hour this morning before work.

Friday, February 29, 2008

Dirty vs. Messy

I think everyone falls into one of two categories: neat freaks and non-neat freaks. I’m not saying the non-neat freaks (such as myself) live in filthy pigstys, but they definitely have lower standards of what they consider “clean”.

The difference is in how you define “clean”. Neat freaks define it as spotless surfaces - no clutter, no dust, no smell. To them, “dirty” and “messy” and indistinguishable. My sweety will look at the living room one weekend and declare that it was dirty. I would look at it, see the few cups and tissues laying around, and reply that it was only slightly messy, but not dirty. Had there been mud tracked onto the rug or spills on the table, then I would have called it dirty. Messy means things are a little disorganized, but generally still clean - you won’t get dirty by hanging out in that living space.

In this case, I think tidying up a bit is in order, but not necessarily cleaning the house. Not so for my sweety, who is quite the stickler for neatness. Whether it’s messy or dirty or whatever, it doesn’t matter. You clean the house. It used to be a point of contention because she would always see dust and I would, admittedly, always turn a blind eye to it. I can’t help it. Dust doesn’t bother me. It always comes back, so why fight it?

The way people define “dirty” and “messy” occurred to me this morning when a coworker said her desk was dirty and then went off to find the Simple Green. I looked at her desk and only saw a bunch of papers and folders. For me, stacking them all together would have solved the problem, especially since she already Simple Greened her desk a few days ago. The funny thing was, after she cleared off the papers, I saw the big, pink strawberry juice stain in one corner. Turned out her desk was dirty after all, even by my standards.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

The seedy underbelly

Most companies want you to see their rosy exterior—everything’s peachy keen, everyone gets along great, and it’s a well-oiled machine. It’s not until you’ve been there a few months that you start to learn about the seedy underbelly of that company. The real truth comes out.

So I’ve been at my new job almost seven months now. I didn’t realize it had been that long already! Lucky for me I still enjoy the work (most of the time), and the people I work with are all right. But the thing that I find most alarming about this place is the number of people leaving. I found out the other day from a coworker that, between people quitting and being fired, the turnover rate around here is 70%. Seventy percent! That is incredibly high! I don’t know where they got their information, but I believe it. Only one other person besides myself remains of the original design team. Everyone else either got canned or couldn’t take it anymore. The web designer who’s been here the longest started one week before I did.

I think it’s the way the company is run. Communication is a little off. I didn’t find out that the most senior member of the design team (who started 3 months before I did) was leaving until two days before his final day. He says he gave two weeks notice, and it was never announced. The receptionist, who was always busy and seemed to have really cared about the employees and did her best to accommodate their needs, got fired inexplicably. There was an announcement via email, but no explanation was given. Everyone was baffled and shocked. We prodded the HR assistant for information about why this happened, but she was tight-lipped about it, stating she wanted to maintain the woman’s privacy. A week later she quit too. Only I didn’t find out about it until two weeks later when I asked if she was on vacation or something.

Why are people so eager to leave? Why are they so eager to fire people? I’m not a gossip, so I’m usually the last to find out about these things. Maybe it’s just as well that I remain oblivious. Ignorance is bliss, right? If I don’t feel like I’m being wronged, I’ll still be happy at my job. Lucky for me (and I mean that in the most sarcastic way possible), the one web designer left on my team is Chatterbox.  Mr. Nonstop Blabbermouth who would be the most amazingly productive coder if he would just shut up. He bugs me, but the upside to the incessant chatter is that he chatters with everyone else, and it’s how I get most of my information about the goings on around this place.

So far, from what I can understand, most of the trouble stems from a few key individuals in upper management who are more interested in job security than in a well-oiled company machine. They promise the moon to the clients and then make us lackeys take the fall when we can’t meet their unrealistic deadlines. I don’t know. It’s what the last web designer who quit said. Maybe it’s true. If it is, some people around here need a swift kick in the pants and a vigorous poke in the eye.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

I haven't been to the gym in 3 weeks

But it’s not out of laziness! Hey wipe that knowing look off your face. About three weeks ago I came down with the flu—a really nasty strain that had me bed-ridden for 3 and a half days. I could trudge around the house and stuff, but it was really uncomfortable to do so. I can’t recall that last time I’d ever been that sick. Shivery, achey, chilly, sniffly, phlegmy and whiney (these must be the dwarves that didn’t make it into the movie). Going to the gym was out of the question.

But why for three weeks? Isn’t that just some silly excuse? Oh ye of little faith. My sweety’s brother-in-law had the flu too (his whole family did!) He would stay home for a couple of days, then go back to the store he owned to work. And not just walking around here and there selling things, he would actually make deliveries of extremely heavy mattresses. He got sick all over again, with aches and a fever and everything. So he stayed home a couple more days, then again went back to the store and did the same thing… and he got sick again!

I guess this flu virus is quite tough to fight off, because any strain you put on the body can cause a relapse. No way I want to get that sick again, so I’m taking it easy until I stop coughing up this nasty phlegm. I feel fine, except for this persistent cough. I figure if there’s still phlegm, then there’s still a battle going on inside. No sense in diverting energy away from it to exercise. And if it means I get to play video games during my lunch break instead of lifting weights and running nowhere on an elliptical, then oh well!

Monday, February 11, 2008

Wii-ly big disappointment

Fellow video gamers have told me that the downfall of a really great systems have usually been a lack of really great games.  Like the Sega Dreamcast.  Sega Game Gear was also really good, I thought, although it ate through batteries like some kind of monster. They just never really caught on. Maybe it was bad marketing. I don’t know. The point I’m actually trying to make is my Wii-playing time is suffering a lot because there needs to be more great games for it that really take advantage of the unique wireless controls.

Wii Sports, which comes with the Wii console, is fine example of what Wii fun is all about. Simple to learn, fun to master, and great either alone or in groups. When Winter Sports The Ultimate Challenge came out, I thought this might be another fun title to have. The reviews I read on Amazon seemed generally positive, almost glowing, so I thought this would be a great addition.

Boy was I wrong. It’s so boring. The speed skating you just swing your arms back and forth. Is there some kind of strategy to it? Do you just pump the controllers as fast as you can like in some minigames? I don’t know, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of training mode that tells you. The ski jump has even fewer instructions. After the fourth time landing on my face I had the sinking feeling this game was a loser. The bobsledding seems pointless after you run and jump into the sled. What are you supposed to do, lean or something? Two minutes of leaning back and forth with no visible difference in the action gets quite tedious. The figure skating is a rhythm game, which I tend to be sort of good at sometimes, provided they’re simple enough. The cross-country skiing was weird in that your skier kept losing stamina and and pretty soon everybody else is miles ahead of you because they can inexplicably ski harder than you can. There’s just nothing giving me tips on how to do it right. I stop moving and your stamina goes up. I start skiing and he immediately loses steam. What a loser. I’m sure it’s probably me, but what kind of a stupid game doesn’t have tutorials?

There were other games built in there, like the luge and curling, but I couldn’t bring myself to try them after being bored to death by all the other events. I’m going to try poking around some more to see if there really isn’t a training area hidden somewhere in the game. But more likely than not I’m just going to put this thing up for sale and get rid of it. 

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Ouch

Anyone here who’s ever hit their shin in the same place three times in one day on a file cabinet raise your hand.

*raises hand*

*looks around*

*slowly puts hand back in lap*

Uhh… yeah, me either. But I’ve heard it hurts like a bitch! And that it takes weeks for the bruise to go away. So I’ve heard.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

What's that smell?

In the last few days, a strange smell has started to emanate from inside my car. I can’t figure out what it is. Unfortunately it’s not strange as in odd, like “Why does it smell like hot dogs in here?” It smells more like something is starting to decay in there, like turning moldy or something. At first I thought maybe it was my gym bag. Yeah, ew, I know. But when I opened my trunk, it smelled really clean in there, not like a locker room at all. So it has to be something in the cab of the car.

The car is only 7 years old, so it shouldn’t be acquiring that “old car smell” just yet, especially not so suddenly. Someone must have dropped something in there. This morning I checked under all the seats and didn’t find anything that shouldn’t be there. I don’t eat in the car, so it must have been someone else, right? (Yeah, keep telling yourself that.) Hmm…

Maybe I need to pull all the sunshades and things out from under the seats and make absolutely sure there’s nothing carbon-based decaying in there. We did haul some potluck stuff over the holidays to someone’s house. It’s possible some food escaped. Yuck, I just hope I find it before the smell becomes really foul.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Comment spammers please curl up and die

Am I being harsh? I mean, they’re just trying to make a living too, right? Well so are theives and dictators. Doesn’t make it right though. In the last few months, I’d guess about 80% of the comments I’ve been receiving are from fucking spammers listing their stupid links to sites nobody cares about. I can block all the IP addresses I want, they just change IPs and go right on spamming.

I can’t really tell if it’s automated or not.  It’s usually one or two here and there, but sometimes there will be 5 or more at a time. It’s weird. Isn’t the word verification thing supposed to eliminate the automated spammers? I even added on random numbers, not that it changed anything. I still get comment spam, and it’s very irritating. I’m guessing they actually hire flunkies now to manually enter these spam comments. I think I’ll call them “spamments”. If the phrase catches on, please remember that I coined the term and send me money, thanks. (And if the phrase already exists, please ignore me. But feel free to send money anyway, heh.) I need to do a little research and figure out how to put up a tougher wall, or else I might have to require memberships to comment. I wouldn’t mind feeling all exclusive and important and stuff, but that’s just deluding myself. The most likely outcome would be people start thinking, “What? I have to register and log in to comment? Forget it. It’s not that important. See ya.” And there goes my little bitty fan base. Ha. Haha. Fan base. Like I’m a celebrity. Yes please kiss the ring and swear your allegience! No wait that’s being a queen. Nevermind. If you think of ways to make spammers eat shit or at least leave my blog alone, please do share your thoughts. Thanks!

Update: After some initial research, I’ve discovered that the goal of these annoying spamments isn’t to advertise to bloggers or blog readers, but to increase their rank on search engines. For example, a Google bot might find a post of mine and scan its contents, including comments. Any links also get indexed, and the more links you have going to your site, the better your rank in the search engine. Sneaky. So my first step in squashing spamments is to remove automatic linking in comments. Expression Engine (the thing I use to run my blog) has a toggle setting for automatically turning URLs into links. I’m going to turn that off. I’m also going to see if I can prevent links altogether. People can still post URLs, so if anyone is really interested they can copy and paste it into a browser. But a search engine bot won’t be able to follow that anywhere. I think it’s a step in the right direction.

Another update: I’ve turned off HTML in comments altogether. So it sucks you can no longer bold or strike-out anything, but you can’t create links either. We’ll see if that works to deter spammers.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Nerd or Designer... can I be both?

In all my previous jobs, my title usually involved something along the lines of web developer or HTML programmer or something similar.  This new job is the first one I’ve had that was an actual design position. Web Designer. It sounds kinda glamorous, doesn’t it?  Any kind of designer automatically has some cool points associated by default.

In all honesty though, I do feel a little out of place. The other designers are more than 6 years younger than me and are so much better at what they do than I am. They also like to drink and party. At the Christmas party they each had at least 10 gin and tonics and were wasted by the end of the evening. Is this where creativity stems from? Being wild? I am so not wild, and when it comes to web design I am not very creative or fresh. I never got any formal training in design or graphics, so maybe that’s why. It makes me feel a little insecure sometimes, like maybe it was a fluke that I got this job.

I’ve learned more about new web technology in my first 3 weeks here than during the entire 3 years at my last job. I think the company will see that I’ve been putting in the effort to catch up and be a team player. They pay for training, so maybe I can finally get that formal design training so I too can design cool things despite my ability to draw only stick figures. The nice thing about these web designers is that they are not trend-setters by any stretch of the imagination. They may be able to design circles around me, but they’re still nerds and can talk about video games all day long. I dress better than they do too, believe it or not. All is not lost.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

It's Vegas baby

Has it really been nearly a month since my last post?  Oops. Well the company holiday party was this past weekend. Remember when I mentioned they were going to put us up in the Mandalay Bay casino hotel? Well it turned out they even upgraded us to some VIP suites! Check them out! Huge marble bathrooms, plasma TVs, floor-to-ceiling windows, comfortable beds… it was awesome. I think it’s the nicest place I’ve ever stayed at, ever.

Winter seems to be the best time to go to Las Vegas. Most of the times I’ve been there in the past, the heat was so intense we could never walk very far before feeling like we were going to pass out.  This time the air was pretty cold, but it was easy to bundle up to go outside. It was nice to finally walk down the street without succumbing heat exhaustion.

I’m not a gambler, at all. I didn’t spend a dime on a single game of chance. (Though my sweety did drop a quarter into a slot machine and tripled her investment, heehee.) I prefer to spend my cash on sure things… like buffets. Ooh the food… By the way, Sundays are the worst day for buffet breakfast, because all the casinos charge double for the food! What a ripoff. They claim it’s “champagne brunch” and justify the extra cost. Bullshit. Who the hell drinks champagne for breakfast? (You lushes keep quiet.) But Monday morning we went for the buffet breakfast at Bellagio. Yuummmy. Money well spent, I think. Better than losing it in a round of blackjack, that’s for sure. Breakfast at the Paris casino buffet is also scrumptious, with fresh breakfast crepes made to order.

Is it funny that the highlight of my trip to Las Vegas was the food and the room? The company party was okay. They went all out and hired a magician who was pretty good, and two supposedly hot musical acts who were so-so. The food was so-so as well. It was very disappointing to see my meat-eating coworkers have their slab of meat accompanied by veggies and fancy mashed potatoes, and all the vegetarians got was grilled veggies sandwiched between medium sized portobello mushrooms, cut into a round mini-burger shape. It couldn’t have been more than three inches across. What, do vegetarians not eat potatoes? Do vegetarians require less food than everyone else? What the hell?

One fellow web designer that I sit next to, whom I shall call “Chatterbox”, was especially irritating. He’s kind of annoying every day already, but he usually has some level of tact. He doesn’t know how to shut up and will waste half an hour blathering about one topic while only repeating one point over and over and over, but if he disagrees with you, he’ll at least be polite about it. I expected that plying him with alcohol would only remove his internal filter and amplify his obnoxiousness. I was right. He must have had about 10 gin and tonics, made fairly strong by a generous bartender near our table. An open bar has that effect on those who like to drink. By the end of the party he asked me like three times, “So what are you doing after the party?” It wasn’t in the sleazy pick-up line kind of way (thank god, eww, that would’ve been awkward), it was more of an inquiry from an overly social idiot who wanted find people to party and drink with. That’s so not my thing. All three times I told him I was just going back to my room because I was tired (we walked for hours up and down Las Vegas Blvd earlier in the day). All three times he would reply, “What?? No no you can’t do that, you’re in Vegas! You gotta drink and party! There’s an open bar for christ sake, live it up! Going to bed early is such a waste.” For the record, I don’t think 11:30 PM is early.

So I put up with his crap all evening, waiting for the party to be over so I could go snuggle up in the posh hotel suite again. People like him think people like me are totally boring, and I accept that. But when those people try to make me feel guilty for being a homebody, that’s when I start entertaining thoughts of planting my fists into their inebriated faces. Or at least telling them off. “Look, Chatterbox, I’m not like you, nor would I ever want to be like you. You’re a loser who needs alcohol in order to feel good about yourself. So fuck off and leave me alone.” I didn’t say any of this, of course. I just nodded and smiled. I still have to work with the guy when we’re all back in the office. There’s no chance of him getting fired for climbing up on stage during one of the band performances. Heh, that was some other guy. He got pulled off stage by the CEO himself. Talk about losing all dignity.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Tofurkey

Isn’t that a fun word to say? Tofurkey! TOFURKEY! If I were 7 I’m sure I’d say it over and over and over. Or if I was a blogger. Heh. Tofurkey!

I had some over the Thanksgiving weekend because my sweety and I have given up meat.  Multiple videos about how animals are processed like non-living factory parts really turned us off. We were apalled at how inhumane people can be, so we’re not going to contribute money to those atrocities anymore. Ideally we should become vegan since egg-laying chickens and milking cows are also horrifically abused, but I don’t think I could go that far that fast. I don’t think I could give up eggs, cheese and *gasp* ice cream. Besides, without that stuff, I’d be stuck eating nothing but beans and tofu for protein. I have nothing against beans or tofu, but every day? No thank you.

Back to tofurkey. (TOFURKEY!) So we tried this stuff while everyone else had turkey. It was all right. It comes as a prepackaged rounded ball, kind of like unsliced deli turkey, but with the stuffing already inside. The stuffing itself tastes very much like your standard Thanksgiving stuffing. But the “meat” itself wasn’t that great. It was mostly the consistency. Have you ever had extra firm tofu?  It was like that, except even harder. Instead of making the consistency like tender turkey, it was more like overcooked chicken. What a disappointment. It could have been a fantastic product if only they would not press it so hard. Such a shame. I was so looking forward to calling it Tofurkey Day instead of Turkey Day.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Maybe I should go into music video production

Because this new job is from 9am to 6pm, I eat breakfast at home before leaving (rather than eating my cereal at my desk).  That way I can fry up an egg to balance out the cereal. Anyway, I usually watch TV while I’m eating. This morning I saw a music video for some song I’d never heard of by Feist called “1234”. It’s a cute little song. My sweety says she likes it a lot, and was surprised I’d never heard it before.

So we’re watching this video… WTF… and my sweety is thinking the same thing. What the hell is this? It’s a bunch of people running around inside an empty warehouse in what I assume is a series of loosely choreographed “routines”. There’s some people wearing yellow, some wearing green, purple, etc. I suppose it’s kinda cute in a rainbowy, elementary school kinda way. But these are adults. We’re watching this video thinking, “Somebody got paid to produce this?” It’s like it was created by a volunteer parent for a troop of fourth graders.

And then, get this, on my way to work this morning, I hear it on the radio for the first time. That stupid video was inserted back into my head. Good grief. 1234…

Monday, November 12, 2007

Catching up with The L Word

What a wonderful relaxing weekend. For once we didn’t have to visit anyone, buy anything or go anywhere. And people pretty much left us alone. Which meant we were able to spend hours cuddled in the bedroom watching DVDs.  We were finally able to rent Season 4 of The L Word. Since I don’t have Showtime, we had to wait until it came out on video in order to watch it.  If you haven’t watched it yet, then you should stop reading since the rest of this post contains spoilers.

First disappointment - they got rid of Carmen. Come on. She was cute, didn’t have bizarre issues like most of the other characters, and was quite a hottie to boot. They got rid of her and decided to replace her with some ghetto girl from the hood who acts worse than most of the cholos I see around LA. Can you see my eyes rolling? Please can we just have a normal character to keep the rest of the crazy cast grounded?

Second disappointment - Only 12 episodes? Come on! I feel cheated. I waited this long and the entire set didn’t even last us the weekend. Boo.

However I am quite glad they decided to cut down on the number of whacko head trips from Jenny’s demented mind. Seriously, I had to fast forward through too many of those last season. If I wanted artsy fartsy, I’d go to a freaking museum.  It’s kinda cool sometimes when she says the things that everyone is thinking but is too polite to say, but her behavior is just inexplicable sometimes. So she’s now floating out in the open ocean without paddles (and likely without her mind as well). Will she disappear? One can only hope. But probably not. She’ll come back to civilization with some new epiphany and a new set of head trips to share with everyone. Ugh. Jenny, get a therapist already.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

The bitter with the sweet

No I haven’t been consumed by the fires, but I have been consumed by work.  Ugh. It went from being really laid back to “oh my god we have ten million things to do in a week!!!” As is the nature of the web development business, we often don’t get all the information and content we really need until it gets really close to the deadline.  The bastards take their time, change their minds a thousand times about everything, and then expect us to magically pull a working website out of our asses by their ridiculous deadline. And because this site is supposed to be ready for some convention, the deadline is tighter than my pants after Thanksgiving.

Normally we can push back and say, “Nuh uh, you gave us this crap late, so we have to adjust our timelines accordingly.” Not this time. This time, we had to work long hours AND come in on the weekend. Friday I worked 12 hours. Saturday I worked 10 hours. Sunday I worked 7 hours. Not. Fun. At all. Of course the company doesn’t mind doing that to us because we’re salary, so no overtime pay. *grumble*

On the bright side, the company’s Christmas party this year is going to be in Las Vegas, and they are paying for everyone’s room for one night at the Mandalay Bay! Woohoo!  I’ve never stayed there before, so it should be fun. I wonder if it’s as shiny on the inside as it is on the outside?

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

What's all this dust?

I never watch the news on TV, so the only current events I ever know about are the ones I hear on the radio in between song sets and from other people. This past weekend was just another relaxing, normal weekend for me, spent mostly inside the house. Imagine my surprise Monday morning when I went to my car to go to work and found it covered in a thick layer of dust (kinda like this blog sometimes, heh).  I had just washed it a few days ago. It wasn’t until I heard mention of the wildfires on the radio that I realized where all that dust came from. That wasn’t just dust, that was ash. I didn’t realize the severity of it all until I looked it up online. There are like 12 different fires going on all throughout Southern California!

Lucky for me I haven’t been affected other than the extra-dusty air. Those hot winds blowing in from the east are making the fires a lot harder to contain, and are also causing a brown haze to form in the sky. (Here’s a satellite photo of only one small section of the fires.) Last night as I was walking the dogs around the block, I could smell the smoke. Not sure if it was a fireplace or someone barbecuing, but I don’t think so. Who lights up their fireplace when it’s 70 degrees outside at night, and who barbecues on a Monday night?

I was just reading that over 500,000 people have been evacuated. Wow. I never realized how many people live in the sticks.