Wednesday, January 31, 2007
americans = stupid.
Monday, January 29, 2007
flu.
It just had to happen this week. Yep, I do believe I've come down with the flu. Of course, had I been able to get Nestor started last week (if certain people hadn't let paperwork sit on their desk for weeks), I might have actually been able to take most of today off to get healthy again. Instead, I'm sitting here at work, sweating from a fever (which can't be good considering that there's still no heat in my office). At least I'm in better shape than I was yesterday. I was pretty much immobile, alternating between chills and fever, nausea overcoming me the entire day. Thankfully Danielle took care of me with crackers, soup, juice and Coca Cola. I've been sick for over a month now (a nasty cold that has lingered since December 20th), but yesterday just seemed to kick it up a few levels. I need a real break from work...but that ain't gonna happen. Hopefully being able to get back to a "normal" schedule (meaning that I'm out of work by 5 or 6) will help me recover a bit. For now, I'm popping some DayQuil to keep me from collapsing.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
"can i get a diet coke? ... where's my diet coke?"
everybody's working for the weekend.
Or at least, Danielle and I are. She gets out a lot sooner than I do, though. I got here at 7am today and I'm stuck here until about 5pm or so. Relief is just on the horizon, though. My new technician (Nestor) starts up here on Monday and I will once again be able to leave work at a normal time. First time since August that I'll be able to do that consistently. Ah, it'll be nice to be able to watch TV shows when they're actually on instead of backlogging the DVR from week to week. And I'll be able to watch hockey again! It's going to be weird being at home more often than I'm at work.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
busy day for blogging.
I've just experienced the checkbook equivalent of finding $5 in your pants pocket when doing laundry. Apparently I logged a $25.00 charge twice. Which helps, because I completely missed a charge for $7.17. In any case, more money for me! w00t!
now listening to...
shoeformers?
The sad thing is, I'll probably buy these when they're released. I'm a sucker for a bizarre Transformer.
rtfm!
It is not our job to know where your class is if you don't know where it is. And if you don't know where your class is, we cannot roll around the building with a TV/VCR/DVD rack looking for you. Simple as that.
Yeah, the spring semester started yesterday. Can you tell?
Monday, January 22, 2007
and it's broken.
That was quick. Heat's not working again.
But that aside, I have a bit of a commentary (not so much a rant) today.
In the main academic building on campus, they tend to showcase art pieces (sponsored by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, from what I can tell) along the walls in the hallways. I have no problem with art myself; I rather like a lot of the pieces they've had hanging up there. Now, it's been mostly paintings/photography that has been showcased up until this point. There was a period where they had some sculpture/pottery out in the halls and unfortunately, some was broken and some was stolen.
The current showcase in the main hallway of the second floor is, for lack of a better description, three-dimensional art. Old large wooden doors accented with various objects, paint splatters and so on with lots of pieces sticking out from the door itself. And again, I have no problem with these pieces. But something needs to be considered here.
This is a college campus. College students can be (and often are) very rowdy and sometimes disrespectful of the property of others. I can't even count the number of times that I've found a broken table/desk due to a student's carelessness or broken stage glass on an overhead projector with no one claiming responsibility for it. Broken windows on campus used to be a weekly occurrence because apparently some students find it amusing to throw bricks/rocks at glass panes. There's also the aforementioned sculpture/pottery exhibit that suffered from broken/stolen items.
After reading all that, would you think it's a good idea to have a whole exhibit of large art pieces with protruding objects in a hallway frequented by college undergrads? I give it a week until something is seriously damaged or someone is seriously hurt from behaving irresponsibly around one of these pieces. Like I said, I dig the pieces themselves, but they're in the wrong place on this campus.
Friday, January 19, 2007
a failure to communicate.
Apparently, according to one party, I phrased a recent memo in an "arrogant and hostile" manner. Bizarre. I thought I was rather diplomatic about it. So did other people who have read the memo. For the past three years. Now, my predecessor, bless her heart...she could be hostile. And you know what? People listened to her, respected her and followed her rules.
Excuse me for not wanting to be a doormat. Being the nice guy doesn't work in my department. The faculty will eat you alive. I have enough problems already.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
hell, fourth.
Now they just fixed the heat in my office! Amazing! Apparently...a valve was closed. That was it.
hell = teh frozen ovah?
There are two reasons for my belief that hell may have at least chilled somewhat, if not completely frozen over.
First, it's actually snowing outside right now. First significant snowfall of the season, but no real accumulation or anything.
Second, they actually installed security cameras in the main academic building on campus over the winter session. This is something I never thought would happen and it's something I've been trying to make happen for at least three or four years.
In another stunning (maybe not) revelation, I've decided that, on the whole, I don't enjoy brothy soups. Sure, I love French Onion soup as well as the occasional cup of chicken noodle when I'm ill, but other than that, I'm a creamy soup fellow. I had a can of Progresso Chicken and Sausage Gumbo yesterday and it was rather disappointing. Bland would be the best way to describe it, with a shot of cajun spice to make it hot, seasoning-wise. The sausage was bland, the chicken was bland, the rice was bland (although, in the rice's defense, rice is normally bland). Very disappointing. A shame too, because brothy soups are so plentiful - especially in the canned varieties - but creamy soups aren't as numerous. And soup is very easy for me to bring to work for lunch, since I have a neat mug-with-plastic-microwaveable-lid dealy that makes soup prep quick and neat.
I'll just chalk up this gumbo to a failed experiment and fall back on the Chicken & Corn Chowder and New England Clam Chowder in my cabinet.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
wo-wo-windows!
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
brrr redux.
The colder it gets outside, the colder it gets in my office. You would think that wouldn't be the case. You would think they would adjust the heat accordingly in relation to the outside temperature. Ah, but you forget...this is FDU. I've been without working heat in my office for three weeks now. Would I be in the wrong if I went out and bought a space heater and charged it to the university? Or perhaps some warm winter socks, since my toes go damn near numb every day now?
In happier news, I "beat" Chibi Robo last night after really having played it for only two days. Never mind the fact that those two days consisted of about 14 hours of gameplay. I say "beat" because I still want to finish up some of the sidequests in the game and thankfully, this is the type of game that allows you to do that. What game next? I need something to break up sessions of NHL '07.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
i'm convinced.
Friday, January 12, 2007
in what universe...
...does this equal this?
Yeah. I made out an order for three 7' and three 25' electrical extension cords.
And I got a bunch of these.
That's in addition to about half of my entire order that consisted of the completely wrong items.
Welcome to 2007.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
the hate continues.
I've been trying. I really have. But every time I turn around, it seems that Firefox is lacking yet another feature that I've grown used to in Opera. This next one? Opera has a form you can fill out in its settings that amounts to an intelligent auto-complete. It's in the prefs, based within the 'Wand' tab and it's described as "Opera can auto-complete forms with your personal information." What this amounts to is that when I'm filling in personal info when making an online purchase or whatnot, each entry that I tab into I can very easily enter my name, address, etc. thanks to Opera's auto-complete. It's especially handy when having to enter my e-mail address. Type 'ed' and then, whoa, there's my e-mail addresses. I don't see any worthwhile or consistent auto-complete in Firefox. Have yet to find an add-on/plug-in that'll do it effectively either.
Plus...good god, I can't even customize/move around my toolbars? I don't want that damn eBay/Google/Amazon/etc. search option in my toolbar. But I can't remove it. I'd like to position the tabs above my address bar. Oops, looks like I can't drag it there.
I swear, I'm a glutton for punishment.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
firefox = teh suck
Okay, I just tried to work with Firefox for the past couple of hours tonight. Some things I liked and others...well, others I had to install additional programs/plug-ins/etc. just to give it the base functionality that Opera already has. I mean, Firefox doesn't even have its own integrated POP mail client (yes, I know about Thunderbird, but it's a separate program).
Just within these first couple of hours, I've had to:
- Install a plug-in for mouse gestures - a function that's already integrated into Opera
- Install a separate program just to access my POP mail - a function that's already integrated into Opera
- Restart Firefox several times just to change themes - a function that doesn't necessitate a restart in Opera
- Try and figure out why it would capture my password for some sites, but not others - Opera captures 95% of logins I use, Firefox is sitting at about 75% right now
- Try and find a free plug-in that would remedy that above problem - no success
Would someone please give me a good reason not to uninstall Firefox right now? Everybody says how wonderful Firefox is, but frankly, I see it as horribly substandard already. Sure, it's got a huge community of content creators...but if they're not creating any worthwhile content (from my perspective), what's the point? Like I said, Opera has all these features that I want in a browser already integrated upon install...why on earth should I switch to another browser that has either doesn't have those functions integrated or doesn't have them working as well as Opera?
I'll leave Firefox installed for another day...and if I don't hear any sufficiently good reasons to keep it, it's nuked.
EDIT @ 1/10/07, 12:54am: Okay, I figured out the password thing...had to run an installer that would stop those websites from blocking the ability to save a password (odd that Firefox would have a problem like that, yet Opera doesn't...I assume Opera's wand works off a different principle). Still, I don't like the fact that Thunderbird is a entirely separate program from Firefox. If I wanted to do that, I'd use IE and Outlook Express.
80+ hours later...
I've finally finished Final Fantasy XII. A special thanks to sephirosuy over at GameFaqs. His FAQ for FFXII was invaluable.
And now, to tonight's Wings/Avalanche game (can you tell the rivalry just ain't there anymore?)...
Saturday, January 06, 2007
it's not that bad...
I've had a revelation.
When I'm doing my videography jobs - especially the ones where I'm in the thick of things and not in the back of an auditorium somewhere - people seem so worried about walking in front of my camera. And I've realized that people walking in front of my camera doesn't bother me in the least. They're only in the shot for less than a second in most cases and it just doesn't matter.
When people stand in front of the camera lens, that's what'll bug the crap out of a videographer.
Thankfully, none of that happened to me at my shoot tonight and everyone was really great with me (thanks for the beers, Jen and Sue! Heh heh...). I love doing these shoots where I don't feel like I'm just the hired help - I feel like part of the group/family.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
the more things change...
And it's back to freezing in my office again. Whatever they did to get the heat working in my office before the holiday break, they must have undone it when we came back. Brilliant. So, for the last few days, I've been losing all sensation in my toes again. At this rate, I might be better off just bringing in a personal heater for my desk.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
a legend rises...
tonight's the night...
Steve Yzerman's #19 will be raised to the rafters in Joe Louis Arena tonight.
Over the past few months, I've read countless articles praising Yzerman's career and every single one gets me all watery-eyed. But this one, for some reason, just really hit me. It really shows what kind of a guy Steve Yzerman is.
Monday, January 01, 2007
happy new year@@@@!!!
Yes, it's belated, just got home right now...now I'm tired, time for bed, g'night!
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