Frog and Goat

The saga begins Monday afternoon: load car with everything except work bag and laptop. Those go to the car in the morning.
Tuesday: Get to work around 7:30am. Leave at 4pm. Drive to college town. Hit grocery store for dinner. Make dinner, talk to better-half, read, finish any homework, go to sleep.
Wednesday: Wake up and work until 4pm. Run errands if needed, eat dinner, catch 6:30pm bus and then walk to classroom. Take the long way around. Get out of class around 9:30. Catch the 9:45 bus or wait until the 10:45 (lord, please don’t let me miss the 9:45). Talk to the better-half, wind down and go to bed.
Thursday: Wake up and work until 3:15pm. Catch 3:30 bus to class. Hopefully, can start walking now that it’s not 90 degrees. Get out of class and then meet with group for project work for an hour. Catch bus home. Eat. Tidy up and pack up for Friday depending on my schedule.
Friday: Wake up and make preparations for a leisurely leave schedule. Or, wake up, race like a bat out of hell to get on the road early. Three weeks in and so far, I’ve had to be in Richmond one Friday before noon and one Friday I’ve had a web-conference meeting that I did in the apartment. This weekend the better-half and I were in the college town until Sunday morning so that made the schedule at home more compressed (not complaining, had a great time over the weekend).
Good thing I’m organized.

I mentioned, uncharitably I’m sure, that we let our IT person go at the end of June. She walked out without so much as documenting a thing she did. In fact, I’ve heard that her office is a shitstorm of computers, wires, monitors, food boxes and who knows what else. It’s like she had the rapture and couldn’t tidy up. We’ve been awash since she left with a pretty comprehensive amount of work that needs to be done to our desktops, laptops and other office electronics. We were adrift before she left but always had hope that we’d hear a loud popping noise as her head emerged from her butt and that she’d show up to do her job. Alas, the sound never happened.

Now, I’m taking up some of the slack. I have the administrator password and I fixed five things for one of our managers today. I also made a handout for everyone else in the office in case they are suffering from one of the problems. They can fix it themselves. The fixes and the creation of the handout took me about a half hour. A half hour to fix what was broken for about a year. Makes me sick.

I’m flying back to Richmond on Friday morning so I can meet with our Director and an IT guy from the university*. We’re going to map out what he needs to take care of and what I’ll take care of. In my spare time, when I’m not developing courses, going to school and doing that other stuff I’m supposed to be doing. I already have about six people signed up for software installs in the next two weeks. One person has a copy of Adobe Professional 9 that’s been on her desk since April 1st waiting for an install. Luckily version 9 is still the current release.

*I’m not really flying but my car will be going very fast up 81 and across 64. Look out.

This morning the better-half left the college town and headed home. Then things went to heck. I received an email with a time stamp of 8:40am telling me my Wednesday class has been canceled for the entire semester. WTF. I still haven’t been able to get anyone to answer me about what in the hell I’m supposed to do about that. There is a class held on Tuesdays that I’m obviously not in right now since I’m posting. I hope to get into it and will solve this problem before the week is out. At least there’s still the Thursday class. But, really, who cancels an entire class the day before it starts? Professor Douchebag, that’s who.

After that WTF moment, I talked to a co-worker about a problem we’re having with another co-worker. The problem co-worker can’t or won’t do her job in a timely manner. Her hold-up means the entire unit can’t get training content out the door. Everyone has talked to this co-worker about the problem with no resolution. The Boss has even chatted with her. I think it’s time for the stick instead of the carrot, but I’m the one with a clue stick on her desk. I may not be the best person to ask.

Oh, my mouse stopped left-clicking this afternoon. Yeah. That’s helpful. And, the third WTF of the day. A banner day, really. I went to an office supply store after work officially ended for me and now there’s a new mouse on my desk. The other has finally been picked up off the floor where it landed after I tossed it into the other room. I also bought some new pens. It’s back to school time for sure now.

After the trip to the office supply store, I decided to apply some decals from Blik. I wanted to put decals on the apartment walls, but the lease says no. I snagged the table from the MIL, put new hardware on it and slapped these robots on the top. I have a thing for robots.
Grainy cell camera photo 1:

Grainy cell camera photo 2:

By the way, a college town in the mountains means I have my windows open today and it’s not because I’m a cheap, old lady. It’s because the temperature is about 70. Actually, I am a cheap, old lady who is tired of spending money this week in this very nice college town even if it does have at least one douchebag professor.

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It seems the problem of not having another class has been solved. Of course, the new class doesn’t meet until 7pm on Wednesday night so there’s still plenty of time for another SNAFU.

Yeah, I’ve been MIA lately. I’ve been trying to catch up on fun reading, re-runs of Dr. Who (I’m a rebel and like all the recent doctors) and not even checking the blog for spam. There were three pieces waiting for me to pitch them.

I heard this on the internet radio station I listen to when my MP3 player loses power (liked it–the video, meh):

If Lastfm wasn’t so finicky about a good internet connection, I’d listen to that more often, but no. It demands a better connection than I have at work. In an office park. In the year 2010. I swear there’s a tin can and a ball of string on our roof.

Today is my last day in said black hole for a week. I’m working from home tomorrow and then all next week I’m telecommuting from my secret lair in the other part of the state. I’ve been quite busy this afternoon grabbing files for anything I might even remotely think to work on in the next week. It’s a lot of files, but better to be prepared then have to sit and rotate.

Yesterday I nearly had a melt-down at work with all the people not doing their jobs. There’s only so much a girl can take in one week. Just as I was about to unleash the hounds, my entire team turned to look at me and said, nearly in unison, “You mean people are supposed to do their jobs? We thought that was a myth.” That made it better because I knew it wasn’t just me expecting the best out of people and not getting it. We’re all getting mediocre and that’s the new black, apparently.