Medium Dawn Felagund of the Fountain

Well, I've been busy. Hence the fact that I haven't read my LJ flist in almost a week ... *wince*

So ... is there anything new going on with you that I should know about? Good news, exciting news, random shtuff that you just have to share? Let me know! I feel very productive ... but very out-of-touch too. I miss you all and our enlightening/absurd/hilarious/passionate conversations! :)

Primarily, I have been working on the SWG website. It's almost finished--that is, the website is almost finished, not the archive. That's a whole new animal. But this website has been dragging on for almost a year now, mostly because I work on it in spurts, accomplish a great deal (without ever finishing), and then get pleased with my progress and allow myself to become distracted by something else. Months pass ... nothing new gets finished. So I set for myself an ultimatum: The website must be ready for release to the group by 1 April. The bones are there; it's just tinkering, filling in holes and fixing mistakes that I've allowed myself to neglect, removing those sections that have nothing but "IN PROGRESS" or "CONTENT GOES HERE" in the main content area. Once the main site is up, I can check out the archive software and start confabulating with Lenine (my all-knowing-PHP savior!) about getting the archive up. And then I hope to concentrate on the fun stuff, like getting new features and resources in place, not with deciding whether third- or fourth-level headers look best for this or that subtitle.

I wanted to write about Alex, but here I am rambling about web design ... *sigh*

( Alex Surgery Stuff ... Cut for the Squeamish (But It's Not Graphic) )

The other day, we discovered that Alex is afraid of guitars. Bobby touched the acoustic, it made a noise, and Alex went wild. We sat it down without playing it and let him approach it, sniff it, and lick it. It didn't help that he'd bark at it and the G- and D-strings would hum in reply, so I guess he thought the guitar was barking back. I played a few chords on it, and he went crazy. Silly dog! He's gotten used to it, though; I was strumming the acoustic and Bobby was playing the electric, so he got desensitized pretty quickly.

The computers at work are fucked up again. To prove, perhaps, that bad things come in threes, we 1) practically lost the network; it was so slow that it took Johnny the Boss fifteen minutes to open an Excel spreadsheet, 2) our Access database where we keep the warrant logs corrupted, and 3) I cannot print criminal records off of CJIS, which is 95% of my job. Issues #1 and #2 have been resolved; #3 is supposedly being solved. In the meantime, I have thirty warrants waiting to be run; I can run them, but I can't print the records, which doesn't do the officers a whole lot of good.

I do have a lot of sympathy for the help desk. They probably deal with some real idiots in the course of the day. But dayum. They can act like idiots too! I call and say, "We've had this problem before (referring to the corrupted Access database); all I need is a backup copy restored from last Thursday, which was the last day that I am certain that the database worked properly." The tech I'm talking to then attempts to convince me that my network drive is improperly mapped and that we have one too many network drives on our server ... dude, we've been using this system for three years! Finally, I say, "Look, we've had this problem before. All I'm asking is for a copy of the database from last Thursday. And I guarantee that the problem will be fixed."

So he sends me a copy of the database. It still doesn't work. I ask, "What date is it from?"

"Last Friday."

*gnash teeth/pull hair/put head through computer monitor and hope for electrocution*

"The last day that the database worked properly was Thursday, not Friday. It worked fine on Friday before 3:15 p.m. but I know that it didn't back up before then." Thinking, "As I told you ten minutes ago."

So he restored Thursday's copy ... and voila! It worked! OMG! *teh gasp*

Then today, I'm talking the head honcho of the IT people about the CJIS issue. He remotely accesses my computer. He attempts to print. It doesn't work. He asks why I need to print from CJIS in the first place.

Stunned silence ensues. "Ummm ... because I work for the warrant unit and I put together warrant reports from CJIS?!?" Thinking, "And the warrant officers can't read my mind and probably don't want to carry my desktop out in the field with them?"

He then scribbles the mouse around the screen and attempts to print again. And would you believe that the simple act of scribbling the mouse around on the screen did not fix the problem that's been going on for a week now??

I watched this man do this a dozen times while the urge to attempt electrocution-via-monitor-screen slowly came over me again. He never did solve the problem, so I am currently in limbo, awaiting a call from that nebulous entity "the server team."

As I said, I know that their job is not easy and that they deal with stupid/ignorant/rude people pretty much every moment of every day. But sometimes, they make more work for themselves. Over at the good ol' WAU, we're well versed in computer problems caused by corrupted data, lawnmowers, and everything in between. It seems to me that if a user calls and says, "I've had this problem before and this is how we fixed it," then that might be a sensible place to start? Rather than questioning completely functional systems that have been in place for years??

*sigh*

Anyway, tomorrow it will hopefully be fixed.

At night, Bobby and I have been watching the Discovery HD series Planet Earth. Oh my goodness. I think this might be the most beautiful program I've ever seen. It is beyond amazing ... not only are the images gorgeous but the landscapes and animals that they show: I asked Bobby, "How can we have lived on this planet for twenty-five years and never known that such amazing creatures exist?" And there's definitely cute-baby-animal overload too.

Murphy's got his eye on me today. Please pardon the shameless griping.

( Dawn & Murphy BFF )

Despite all this, the day was not a total wash, and so I will end on a positive note. Because I despise the thought of becoming one of those negative people who looks at life and only sees everything that is wrong.

Bobby picked me up at work, and we went to look at my car. He opened the hood, tinkered with a few cables, and it started. So that saved any expensive repairs or having to be towed, when I hope to be getting rid of the car in a few months anyway. He also showed me what he did; I will admit that I am a stereotypical "girl" when it comes to cars. I don't like cars, and I don't know the first thing about them. But now I know one thing to try if this ever happens again.

We may not be going to Bermuda in three weeks, but we will be going to see Jimmy Buffett in concert on 28 June! I "waited on line" for tickets online this morning and got them. Whee! Jimmy Buffett tickets are very hard to come by around here.

Alex behaved exceptionally well during the snafu today, much better than I would expect of a dog as young as he is. Also, several instances today proved to me that he knows all of his basic commands. No, he is not perfect yet, and we still have a lot of work to do, but it will happen. He is still testing the waters to see what he can get away with with me. He understands what I expect of him; now it is just a matter of shaping his behavior until he's perfect ... or as close to it as one can reasonably expect. :) And so we will begin to move on to much more fun training exercises now, which I suspect is a relief for both of us.

My short story "Cold Hands" was up for critique on Critters this week. I will admit: I was nervous, afraid that people would either 1) tell me to scrap the story or 2) no one would read it at all. But I have gotten two critiques back already, and both were fantastic! Both were very encouraging but also made excellent points about where I might focus during the final revisions. It really reminded me of the value of a good critique and the importance of learning to write better critiques, just as I work to write better stories.

Tonight, Bobby and I are going to Rocky Run for supper for Meryth's birthday. He is going to be twenty-six next week. We'd decided to go to Rocky Run first, and since Rocky Run is Meryth's favorite restaurant, I figured we might as well justify it as being for his birthday. Yes, Meryth is a muse, but almost everyone likes to be remembered on his or her birthday, and Meryth--though he may be "imaginary"--is no exception. I will draw the line at trying to explain Meryth to our server and getting a free dessert out of it, however.

I told off my coworker Diane today. Diane is a pain in my ass. She doesn't know her job; she doesn't do her job...and she has the nerve to harass me more about stupid stuff than anyone else in the unit. I asked Johnny's permission to tell her off. Johnny said, "Go ahead!" and came over to lean on my partition to listen.

( It's So Stupid... )

Then Bobby called the Dean of Science at the university to complain about how poorly our entrance into the second bachelor's program has been managed. The House of Felagund wouldn't leave anyone alone today!

( And the Verdict Was... )

First order of business:

Thank you, nienna_weeper!

What a truly special Christmas card! We have it hanging on our refrigerator (in the words of Bobby, "out of reach of all carpet alligators") and adore it! Thank you! *hugs*

Second order of business:

Cards and stuff have been sent, so if you requested one, you should get it in the next couple of days, USPS willing. It's all in their (capable?) hands now, so I hope that all arrives as it should!

Third order of business:

         

My Ravens are not only in the playoffs but won the division! Woo! This is only the second time in our ten-year history that we have won our division. The other time was not the year that we won the Super Bowl, oddly enough. So now we're aiming for a Week One bye, which means that we have to win both of our upcoming games (Steelers and Bills) and the Colts and the Chargers have to lose at least one of theirs. Not likely but *crosses fingers*.

( More Orders of Business )

Today was an unusually warm day. Of course, I dressed for a Maryland day in late October and ended up more with a mid-September Maryland day, so I was a bit warm, though Johnny came in the office, blinked, and said, "You look nice today!" So I guess the new skirt works.

Because of the weather, I suppose, we are in the midst of another ladybug invasion at work. As many of you know, the WAU is based out of an old house (so I do, in fact, work out of a bedroom, albeit without a bed), and according to my mom, ladybugs like to nest in old wood. We have plenty of that. So we routinely have ladybug invasions in our office/house.

About two weeks ago, I heard the telltale tickticktick of ladybugs clicking against my fluorescent light. I looked up and, sure enough, there were dozens of them. As kind of an interesting experiment, I decided to catch and collect them in an empty water bottle. When I was finished in my office, they covered the bottom of the bottle. I went over to Johnny's office to show him and ended up catching all of them in his office too. (Amusingly, Johnny is afraid of ladybugs. Not terrified but they do bug him. *winces at admittedly bad pun* He claims that they fly into him and get stuck in his shirt collar and claims that they "smell like lightning bugs," which they do. So I try to alleviate insect-related situations for him, when they arise in our office. It does seem like if we are going to get a wasp nest, it will be outside of his--not my--window. I'd have fun watching it, but he's terrified. Alas.)

I ended up with about one hundred ladybugs in my water bottle. We then went over the Mr. Vernon's old office, and there were about two hundred more over there, so we just stared into his office for a few seconds, agog, then solved the problem by closing the door.

Of course, I released my ladybugs outside. An hour later, twelve new ones had entered my office, but they were on their own. The next day, Johnny was vacuuming them off of his ceiling.

It got cold, and the ladybugs disappeared somewhat. But when it warmed today, they came back with a vengeance. When I walked down to the mailbox before lunch, they were pinging into me and clinging to my clothes. Johnny always claims that they get stuck on him and then end up in his car, and I've always laughed this off, but this did happen to me today so I guess I need to take his ladybug-related concerns a little more seriously.

On a non-insect-related note, the new LJ feature that allows me to monitor who adds me as a friend has turned me on to an interesting phenomenon: drive-by friendings. Apparently, people monitor the recent postings and friend anyone who posts within a certain period. If they are not friended back, they remove the person from their flist. This has happened to me twice now since I set my LJ to alert me to new friends; in the first instance, I posted twice in quick succession, and the same person friended and unfriended me twice. I find this interesting because--and maybe this has to do with how I use LJ compared to how some people use it--I don't see why one would want to friend a total stranger who has zero mutual interests. Nor do I see how someone with 800 friends could possibly read his or her flist every day. I have sixty-two people on my flist--many of them redundant journals, i.e. multiple journals belonging to the same person--and there are times when I simply cannot keep up with everyone to the degree that I would like.

I wonder if someone will friend me when I post this.

Well, the cold has moved from my throat (Saturday) to my nose (Sunday) to my lungs (Monday), which means that I am coughing and tugging my hip again. It is nearly impossible to cough without hurting myself. So all of the progress that I have made by resting and keeping off of my hip is slowly coming undone. That's annoying.

Bobby and I went to the movies to see the original Halloween on the big screen tonight. It was really cool. Tomorrow's my big day, my favorite holiday! Bobby has class but is skipping pickup hockey to come home and spend Halloween with me. We have a movie to watch and will take our usual walk through the historic district, trying to spot ghosts.

Happy Halloween, everyone! Have fun, be safe, and may the spirits be with you.

The network at work is down. Again. That means no Internet, no email, no warrant database, no CJIS...no work. Only I have to be here anyway, so I've spent the majority of the morning reading National Geographic, working on various piddly projects, and listening to Johnny gripe about the lack of network--but mostly about the lack of Internet--and how bored he is. No one ran into the pole this time--that would be simply too priceless--it's just a normal fart in the crappy State system. Technicians are supposedly in the building across the street now, trying to fix it. We'll see.

If anyone is wondering, this entry is being written in Notepad and pasted into LJ once I get home, which will be my new modus operandi of posting to my journal since the Department of Public Safety has denied us our Internet fun.

In the meantime, I have a pile of warrants that I'd really rather not leave until Monday, but--like I said--no CJIS....

( Rambling, Cut for...Well, Rambling )

On a completely unrelated note, I spoke a moment ago with one of the women who works in the house/office next-door to mine, and apparently, the State geeks have come to check the network and proclaimed it a Verizon problem. Meaning that it's actually not the State's stoopid network for once but rather our rickety old phone line, which has a tendency to either 1) get run over by lawnmowers or 2) go kaput for no reason. The verdict: It won't be fixed until Monday, at the earliest. And Brian (one of the warrant officers) was just in to drop off eleven more warrants in addition to the twenty-three I already have waiting to be run. I wonder if the scanner still works. I don't recall that it's on the network but is connected directly to my PC....

*sigh*

So to those whom I owe emails, sorry...they won't be getting done until tonight (maybe, probably not) or tomorrow (possibly) or maybe even Sunday. Grrr. *shakes fist at wrench in the cogs*

On a positive note--because what bureaucrat can't find solace in the weekend?--Bobby and I have a date tonight for a breakfast-dinner at Eggspectation and then we're seeing An Inconvenient Truth. (I think that's what it's called...the global-warming movie made by Al Gore?) So I'll probably be on a soapbox at some point tonight. I've recently felt a resurgence of my old environmental activist, visiting the rainforest and getting involved with diving. Bobby and I--as soon as we have our open-water certification--are going to get involved with the organization of divers that are working to restore the Chesapeake Bay. They rebuild oyster banks and the like. Having taken samples of the bottom of the Bay, I don't know why I'd want to dive down into that, but all for a good cause, right? :^P

Eek. I'm really rambling outside the cut. I think this journaling in Wordpad will be dangerous because there's no UPDATE JOURNAL button to force me to shut up. I can just keep rambling and rambling and adding on over the course of hours. And the State thought that they were solving something by denying me my LJ??

So today Mike (the guy I was doing the stats for) came to the office because we figured out what was wrong with that one problem we couldn't solve, and he gave me my envelope of money. But while he was here and I was putting the finishing touches on the stats stuff, Johnny the Boss forwarded me an email:

Ms. Felagund's job duties were reviewed and it has been determined that the position is appropriate to the classification of Research Analyst, grade 13.

Great news! Also it has been approved to have retroactive pay for the employee to receive retroactive pay at the grade 13 effective July 1, 2005.

Please provide by processing a new contract for Ms. Felagund reflecting the effective date of July 1, 2005 through June 30, 2006.
The contract maximum should be $xx,xxx. The hourly rate should be $xx.xx. HRMO will process the Special Payment Authoriaation
( 311t). The employee's new classification is: Research Analyst

Be advised that the employee will see the change in pay and retroactive payment when the change is reflected in the system. The rate change may be processed first, then the retroactive payment. Finance will make the adjustments.

If you have any concerns, please feel free to contact me.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

So I not only got the raise but will also be getting retroactive pay, which they had originally told Johnny I would be ineligible for, seeing as I am "only" a contractual employee.

But this relieves so much stress. I now make well above the poverty line, which is an improvement over my old rate. This means that Bobby has more freedom in looking for a job. He can take a pay cut, and it won't hurt us. The retroactive pay eliminates the need to worry about saving for our taxes and saving for our tenth anniversary trip to Niagra/Toronto/Montreal in May. This means that I can stay at a place I like to work, with a boss I love. I won't have to look elsewhere and take an inferior working environment to pay the bills or make a long commute. And I can keep writing and modding SWG right from my desk at work.

I am ecstatic and so relieved at the same time.

This is my second attempt at this post, after LJ ate the first. Really. I understand the need for maintenance, but can you not eat my long posts? Or even my sorta long ones?? I'm a paying customer, here!

Grrrr....

Anyway, the weekend was a busy one, as evidenced by the lack of posting as well as the time it took me to answer emails and comments. Besides making ice cream pies and watching the Stupor Bowl, I had lots to keep me busy.

( It's Gonna Snow! Dawn Got a New Shirt! )
( Comcast...ARGH! )
( Skating! )
( Today.... )