Archive of Marcia's Musings July 30-August 5, 2001
Sunday, August 5, 2001
Ouch!!
We moved the garage today-- okay, we moved the contents of the garage today and boy, we sure had a lot of crap in the garage!! It is currently sorted into several stacks: Christmas Crafts/Crafts, Christmas Decorations, Garage Sale, Carpentry Stuff, Computer Crap, Clothes that will Fit Soon, and To Be Sorted.
The To Be Sorted pile is going to take the longest, of course. I've got wedding pictures that are going to be gotten rid of-- permanently (Why would I want them?). There's stuff in storage from when we moved apartments and decided we didn't have space for in the new apartment (like we had any different space in the first apartment!) Whatever doesn't go in the house goes in the garage sale.
I didn't want to wait for the garage sale for too long but it looks like I'm either going to have to do it on a Sunday (in fact, two Sundays in a row) or I'm going to have to wait until September for a Saturday/Sunday that's free. Of course, since September is one of the dreaded end-o-quarter months, that's probably not a good idea sooooo, the Sundays might be the best possibility.
At any rate, I did more bending over, picking up (apparently correctly because my back is fine), stetching, reaching and lifting today than I've done in a loooooonnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggg time!! My feet hurt, my legs hurts, my arms hurt-- my fingernails hurt!! I've got a feeling that I'm going to be losing weight during this move!! (Not a problem for me-- I'm looking forward to it already!!)
Sparse
I've got a feeling that the reports this week are going to be sparse. As I just told my sister in an email: We're going to be unpacked before we move!! Brian's going to start moving boxes over on Tuesday and I should be able to start unpacking soon after-- I may not miss my mark by too much!!
Rest assured that we will survive this move-- somehow so if I don't post for a night or two, don't panic-- I'm alive and well and getting happier by the trucked box-load!!
Have a nice evening . . . or whatever!!
Saturday, August 4, 2001As I expected . . .
. . . by the time we got home last night, it felt like I was using toothpicks to prop open my eyes. I did wake up a bit around 9pm because Brian said it was too early to go to sleep and challenged me to a game of Trivial Pursuit. Oh, yes, he soundly beat me on this game but, it was only by sheer amazement on my part that he won!! Every time I went to read a question, I had to vary the holding distance of the card until I could find the distance at which I could read it!! My eyes were extremely tired, needless to say!!
This morning, however, after a half cup of coffee and a good night's sleep, I realized that, because of going to dinner with Pat & Nathan tonight, I probably won't get a post up today if I don't do it now so, here I am!!
More Gadgets
Due to the fact that I'm deaf in one ear, I've been given a couple of new devices: the first is a battery that makes my cell phone vibrate instead of ring when I have a call. Prior to receiving this battery, every time my phone rings (which isn't often), I have to look around to see whose phone is ringing. I look and look and in the meantime, people are looking at me very weirdly because I'm not answering my phone. Being deaf in one ear does not allow me to have directional hearing so I can't tell that its my phone that's ringing. Now I'll be able to feel when my phone is ringing so I'll know to answer it.
The second new gadget that I was given is a headset because, at present, if my cell phone rings, I have to hold the phone to my left ear and, when I'm driving that means I can't use my blinkers without endangering myself and the vehicles around me trying to reach for the blinker with my right hand. Not a Good Thing. Now, I've got a headset that I can plug in my good ear and clip to my collar that allows me to hear and be heard while I'm driving. I feel exponentially safer in my truck now, especially considering that its the truck.
One of the reasons that I became concerned about both things (being able to tell when it rings and being able to talk on it) is because we are switching from using two different devices (a cell phone and a pager) for our paging service. I tried it yesterday and it did work-- I can get a page on my cell phone and, as long as I carry around the instructions on how to retrieve messages, I'll be able to read or hear my messages, too. Very complicated life, don'tcha think?
Yet Another BSoD
Yesterday morning when I got into work, I started up my laptop and, after it booted into its appropriate space, I clicked to open Outlook and waited . . . and waited . . . when it finally opened, my system crashed-- Yep, I went to a Blue Screen of Death. So I hit a key in an effort to respond to the phrase "Press Any Key To Continue" and, it blue screens again and again and again. Finally, I shut it off and when I tried to bring it back up, I got a blue screen but it said something different this time: something about VxD's and, of course, the inevitable, "Press Any Key To Continue". So I did but it didn't and I was on the phone with MIS and the guy, thankfully, was in our building. He came over and scratched his head and started doing some different things and ran a Norton Antivirus and a McAfee and my AVP called and wanted to have a conference call with me and the sales rep about a contract/deal that we've got going. Okay, not a problem-- I could run the McAfee scan in the background and open Word to look at the document . . . except for that pesky really slow movement stuff, it would've worked so I killed the McAfee scan. When we were finished with the call, I restarted the scan and waited and waited and waited for an hour for it to run its scan on the 33,476 files (not an exaggeration) on my system and, of course, all of them were okay.
So I restarted my computer and . . . yes, it blue screened again!!! I was not happy-- I had been at work for three hours and, except for a half hour phone call with the AVP, had not done a lick of productive work. I was ticked!!!! I paged the guy from MIS again and, in the meantime, went to another computer and logged into my email via Netscape and https capabilities that are available to us. It was at that point that I saw an email with the subject line "Your inbox is too full" (or something like that). I "read" it-- there's nothing to read, really, and deleted it and went back to my computer which was then working perfectly.
By the time the MIS guy got back to my computer, I was working away. He asked what I did and I explained how I went about deleting that email. His comment: "Oh, yeah, that email notice sometimes causes problems on systems." My response? "If MIS knows that, why are they sending it out???? Disable the sucker soit doesn't get sent out automatically!!!!!!"
My kingdom for an MIS department that knows what it is doing!!!
When the guy from MIS saw the VxD message, he didn't know what it meant. I called Brian and asked him what the VxD thing was and, he gave me a URL to look at which explains what that is-- I forwarded it to the MIS guy and, amazingly, haven't heard a peep out of him. Is anyone else surprised? They really don't like the fact that I know more about computers than they do and, as vain as that may sound to say, it is true, I'm quite certain (Brian's pretty certain its true, too--). I'm not saying that I know very much-- I'm just saying that I do know more than these guys do!!
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Enough of that aggravation for today-- I've got packing to do!! Brian's going to be under the new house stringing wire for phones, cable and tv. I'll bring him a sandwich for lunch around 12 or 1 and then he'll go back to slinging wire and I'll go back to packing boxes until its time to go for dinner with Pat & Nathan tonight.
Sounds like a fun day, eh? Yeah, well, to each their own!! You have a nice day, too!!
Friday, August 3, 2001No Post Today!!
Thursday, August 2, 2001Big Difference!!
Last night, I was in bed by 9:30pm and believe me, today I feel a lot better for it-- I do not feel this tired and I am glad!! I woke up at about 5:30am with a half-hour to spare before getting out of bed and just kinda dozed until the alarm started going off. I had a much more productive day as a result, I believe.
Speaking of a productive day-- and yes, I was-- I have been assigned Canada as an additional territory effective immediately except for the vacation that I've got scheduled in a few weeks (we're not going anywhere so I can tell you about this one). As far as Judy, my manager, can tell, I am at least temporarily going to keep the NDAs but the goal is to get rid of them eventually either to the corporate paralegal or split by regions. I could handle that since very few of them come from Canada or the Southeast region! John, the AVP for the Southeast region doesn't know it yet-- I think it'll be interesting to see how he works out "sharing" me with another region.
Well, I Have Been Told!!!
Tonight, after work, I went in search of plastic boxes suitable for organizing our closets and such. I'm tired of my hair clips, etc., being all over the place in the bathroom along with all of the other miscellaneous things we have to sort through every time we need one little thing. So as I said, I went in search of them and while I was in search of them, I found something. It just jumped into my hand-- its a "To Be" Christmas Present for Alexandra, our niece (Brian's sister's daughter). I couldn't resist it-- its something that she would love and, afterall, Christmas is coming!!
When I got home, I pulled it out of the bag and said: "Look at what I got Alex for Christmas!!" Brian turned about four shades of red-- that's not bad, really-- and said: "No more buying stuff for Christmas until after we get moved! Repeat after me: 'I will not buy Christmas presents until after we are moved'". Hmmm, I think he didn't think that the Scooby-Doo squeeze bottle was such a good idea, huh? Hmm . . . spoil-sport!! (Bah Humbug is coming earlier and earlier, isn't it?) ;>)
Weekend Plans
This is a huge surprise for you, I'm sure but, we're going to spend the majority of the weekend packing. Well, actually, I'm going to spend it packing and Brian's going to be under the house running the wiring all over the place-- better him than me since I don't do spiders well, at all!!! We have dinner scheduled with Pat & Nathan on Saturday-- we want to show them the house in addition to just not having seen them for awhile. Tomorrow night, Judy (my manager) is having a party to say good-bye to everyone; Judy is being transferred to the east coast, specifically the Landover, Maryland office. Since they have a lot of friends in the area that they need to say good-bye to before moving back East, they're going to have one big party to cover both work associates and friends. Should be a good time, indeed but may lead to a rather absent post from me. We'll play that one by ear.
I think I've got the energy to do some packing tonight so I'm on my way to do some of that-- have a nice evening!
Wednesday, August 1, 2001Not Gonna Do It!!
Nope, I'm not gonna say anything about it being August-- already!! I'm not gonna say anything about two-thirds of the calendar year being behind us already!!! I'm not gonna say nuttin' about the fact that there are only 3 months and 24 days left to shop for Christmas-- already!!! I'm not gonna say nuttin' . . . Man, I hate when time goes this fast!!
Things are a changin' . . .
A few things at my office are changing. It appears that I'm going to get a new region in addition to the Southeast region. I'll either be getting Canada or "South Central" which actually only consists of Oklahoma and Texas (but there are a LOT of customers in Texas!!). I'm probably going to be dropping the exclusive review of NDAs which isn't a hardship for me-- people argue about the stupidest stuff on those things!! It'll be split out by region or a paralegal that is in our corporate department will work them for us. In the meantime, until all of it takes effect, I'm doing my region, NDAs, maintenance renewals and the overflow from the other regions. I am exceedingly busy at work which is refreshing to say the least.
There is one irritating part of it, though: I rarely go out for lunch. My department often pokes fun at me because I don't go out to lunch. Part of the reason that I don't go out for lunch with them is because of being on Weight Watchers and going out to lunch +/- three times a week is not condusive to losing weight. I also don't like being away from my desk-- yes, I'm a work-a-holic, I admit it, okay? Today, Joyce (the director, no longer "my boss") came around to ask if I wanted to go to lunch-- she told me where they were going and, since this is a restaurant that has a great grilled chicken caesar salad, I decided to go with them. Just as we were finishing lunch, her cell phone rings: It is one of my sales reps looking for me!! I about died of shock-- they never call me like that, let alone hunting me down through Joyce's cell phone!!!
I talked with him for a bit but not having my laptop with me, I couldn't respond to everything. Thankfully, the restaurant we were at is only a few minutes from the office so I signed off the call and told him I'd call him back in two or three minutes when I got back to the office.
I can't decide if I should be angry or flattered that he didn't think he could close the deal without me-- hmm, I'm gonna havta think about that for awhile!!
If that weren't bad enough . . .
I woke up exhausted this morning. I can't seem to catch up on my sleep no matter what I do! Brian had to fix something with the computer so he didn't come to bed until about an hour after I did but by that time, the damage was done: I wasn't going to sleep right last night! It is only PBS night so I think I'm going to go to bed very early tonight-- I don't think I'm going to be able to keep my eyes open after about 9, anyway!!
Have a nice evening!
Tuesday, July 31, 2001
Updated at 9:45pmOh, Yeah!!
Its been another one of those "End-o-Months" around my office today!! I was busy from beginning to end with barely enough time to turn around and spit (such a vivid, lady-like image, don'tcha think?) but, if I were asked what I'd done all day . . . Well, I hesitate to tell you this but I probably couldn't name more than two or three things that were actually finished.
I finished reviewing and revising (and redlining all over the place) a document from a customer who insisted we use their "Software License Agreement". This document is, among other things, going to allow them to modify the software (I don't think so, Tim) and then, after they've modified the software, my company is supposed to help them patent and copyright the modification and the documentation for how it works, etc. Can you say . . . NOTTTTT!!!!!
And that was just the first half of my day!! The second half was just as exciting and, I hesitate to say this, I'm not finished yet-- I've got a form that I need to make up tonight so . . . I'm going to cut this off early to go work on that.
Heads-up for tomorrow night however, as we have found some more pictures from the Vancouver weekend (aren't you glad Brian's in "control" of the camera?) and, I have to share something with you from one of my co-workers. I don't mean to keep you in suspense or anything but I've gotta work on this form!!
Thanks for coming by-- more than 6600 page reads for the month which includes over 40 countries!! That's a record for me, I think! Thanks again for your patronage and, feel free to drop a line to me anytime!! Always great to have you buy-- Have a nice evening!!
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Ya know you have one of those . . . moments (I won't specify hair color or age) when you can't remember how to do something and then, suddenly, the lightbulb goes on?!?!? I had to make a table in a Word document-- I can't begin to tell you the last time I did that-- and I couldn't remember how to make a table!!! Talk about feeling stupid!! SOOOO, I finally figured it out and sent it off to my office so . . . I'm back.
Okay, first of all: Our admin and my friend, Nina, has decided that our eventual bundle-o-joy needs to have a "Doggie Shower". Until such time as she can get everyone at the office to agree with her, she's going to be bringing gifts for him/her. Yesterday, she bought the placemat pictured above left and today, a toy was presented. She's such a sweetie for thinking of our dog-to-be but I think its particularly odd because with the way that the timing is going to work out on this, it'likely that the puppy is not even a twinkle in his mother's eye yet!! Oh, yes, Auntie Nina is going to spoil him/her like crazy!!
To the left is Landon, tearing through the kitchenette in the hotel room where we stayed; he has a real expression of concentration and intent there, doesn't he? I have no idea where he was bound but I'm ever so very certain he arrived!!
And here . . . well, ya know how Tom and Leah quite often complain about the fact that the kids came into their bed and that was the last sleep the two of them saw for the night cuz the kids took up all of the bed?? Well, we now have digital proof that they aren't lying!!
And, on that note, I'm outta here for the evening for sure this time.
Have a nice evening whatever you do!
Monday, July 30, 2001Too Much Like Work!!
I just went through quite an exercise getting to where I could publish this post-- Brian and Greg Lincoln (Thanks to both of you!) have been setting up the server at Greg's place. Of course, I'm not as geeky as my better half (contrary to my administrator's nickname for me: "Mrs. Geek") so, I have to confess to being pretty lost. And, I have a habit that I can't seem to break whereby Brian will be explaining something and suddenly, and quite inexplicably, my eyes glaze over. Can't help it-- it just sorta happens without realizing what's even happening to me.
Just as I was about to slip into that nirvana, when he was trying to explain the process of publishing, Brian recognized the expression on my face and, figuratively of course, pulled me back from the edge. He managed to find a way to explain the situation to me so that I could understand it. That was scary, let me tell ya!!
Anyway, so this should all be set up with a little bit of interruption due to the physical move around the middle of next month. Not bad, really-- by that time, you'll probably be ready for a break from hearing about the move!! ;>)
Change of Mind
I decided to post four of the pictures from the panoramic shots: 2 are from Atlanta and 2 are from Vancouver. These things will take awhile to download, I fear and then, I'm not sure how legible or viewable they'll be for you.
This is the Coca-Cola Museum and plaza-- kinda pretty, huh?
This is the CNN Building on the right
as viewed from Centennial Olympic Park.
The picture on the left is from the Suspension Bridge Park, looking upstream from the bottom of the ravine. The picture on the right points out two things: 1) The things that adults will do to their children and their friends' children and 2) how smart I was not to go onto this bridge!!
These photos are difficult to download plus also, if you don't open them "just right", they don't open properly; just looking at the thumbs, they aren't downloading right to me so . . . now you know why I was hesitant about putting these on the site. Yes, I realize that is probably not the correct geek terminology to explain that but, ya know what, I'm only married to one--my admin is wrong!!!
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The shelf liners and checks arrived today; Brian goes tomorrow to pay the rent and get the keys. There are times I wish we could get this done now and there are times when I'm really glad that we've got another ten days or so to pack-- especially when it comes to getting things there in one piece. Oh, well, it'll all come together soon enough.
Have a nice evening!
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