Category: kerfuffle

Has Anyone Seen Karen?

Quick quiz: What’s this?





That, my friends, is the far corner under my work desk.

Why am I posting this?

Because my boss, the one eight time zones away, is running me ragged today. All day.

Me.

Today.

Friday.

Isn’t Friday supposed to be an easy day? Put your feet up and coast?

My fingers are tired of entering numbers on spreadsheets.

My wrist is acting up from all the mousing around.

My eyes are weary of creating transitions on PowerPoint.

And I’m tired of hearing my phone ring. “Karen, that’s great! Perfect. But now could you take all the data and make it look like something entirely different??”

Ugh!

At one point today, I actually said to my BossMan, “Chief, it’s like that old Finance joke…what do you *want* the numbers to say? I’ll make ’em tell any story you want.”

He wasn’t amused.

Then he asked me to make another PowerPoint slide.

So for the rest of the day, if anyone other than my boss is looking for me, that’s where I’ll be.

Under my desk. In the far corner.

Would someone bring me an order of fish and chips from the cafeteria downstairs?

And a cookie?

And a beer?

And maybe some vodka.

Thanks muchly.

(Happy Weekend)
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Conveniently, this week’s Theme Thursday is: corner


I Think I Can

My lunchtime walking friend, known to regular readers as Worm Girl, has gone and done it. She has coerced convinced me that on cold rainy days (such as today) we shouldn’t just avoid our lunchtime walk all together. We should, instead, go work out in our company’s fitness center.

My god how I hate gyms.

Hate them hate them hate them.

I conceded the points that we need to mix up our workouts, and we need to continue to work out even if weather doesn’t permit. So today, I followed her into the fitness center where we took up residence on two separate treadmills.

I lumped myself up on the walking deck of a shiny new machine and poked and prodded at the buttons and geegaws.

To the left of me, a tall, young, lithe brunette woman running all out on the treadmill. To my right, a shorter, tiny blond woman with loads of attitude. Also running.

I didn’t come here to run. Hell, at this point I wasn’t even walking because I couldn’t get the machine to start. After punching at the up arrow key, the belt started up but it was quite slow, so I didn’t get on it. I kept jabbing at buttons and “hmmm’ing” and “ummm’ing”.

Blondie snapped at me “You should just get on it!”

I thought how easy it would be to insert my foot into the middle of her tiny stride and send her flying. “Whoops! Did I do that? Sooooo sorry.”

See, when I walk on the walking trail, there’s no turning it on. No fiddling with buttons or a recalcitrant machine. I simply walk.

Also, on the walking trail, snooty Blondie would just jog past me and our association would be over. But no, I gotta stand next to her for the next hour feeling inadequate and awkward.

Did I mention that I hate gyms?

In addition, Worm Girl further convinced me to sign up for the company’s annual “fitness challenge.”

Over the next eight weeks we have to get weighed and measured, attend classes, and participate in physical challenges.

Today’s challenge was to log our fastest time to run or walk a mile.

So I warmed up a bit and then cranked up the machine and galumphed my way along.

Blondie and Brunette looked in askance as I became the little curvy engine that could. I huffed and I puffed and by god when it was done, I had turned in a respectable 16:04 minute mile.

I couldn’t sustain that pace, so I did two more miles at a seventeen and a half minute pace.

And now my legs ache.

Did I mention I can’t stand gyms?






Image found at Bottomless Mimosa.


The Withdrawals, man. I got the itchies!

So the good man and I lived quite a long time in our old apartment. The place was built in the 40’s and had a lot of quirks. Since it was an older house in an older neighborhood, we tolerated a lot of the less than optimal things, but was a fun place to live.

For example, we got pretty cruddy DSL service there. When I signed up for the service back in the early 2000’s, they woo’d me in with promises of 3mbps download speed and 1mbps upload.

Not bad, really.

Well, in reality, we got a lot closer to 1.5 down and .5 up. Pretty crappy.

So I called AT&T to complain. Often.

At the end of every year I’d call up again, crankier than the previous year. They would tell me that my speeds were “within normal range”. I’d say “but you sold me on 3!!” Then they’d tell me that my neighborhood wasn’t wired for any of the other faster services they offer, and “oh so sorry about that.”

Then I’d threaten to cancel my service.

So the call agent would send me to the Retention Department who would cluck and coo over my bad experience, then reduce my monthly rate. I’d gotten it down to about $20 a month for my meager 1.5 download speeds.

It was a breakeven. Not much money. Not very fast. So ok.

This month, we moved into a new place. I called them sonsabitches at AT&T and told them I was moving my service, and they weren’t going to raise my rates.

They told me “oooh….yyyeaaaah….um….your new building isn’t wired for AT&T. We don’t actually offer any service there at all. Sorry.”

Well ok. So I started looking at options.

Turns out lo these many years ago, the building owners used to provide basic Comcast cable to all tenants. But Comcast kept trying to bump up the price, so finally the owners said “go away” and the tenants had to pay for their own service, either Comcast or DishTV.

What that means is, the building was wired only for Comcast and AT&T phone lines. No one else. And no ATT DSL.

Which means….

I’m stuck with $#%^*&%^%ing Comcast.

A little history: It was with sheer, unadulterated *glee* that I canceled my last Comcast service back in 2009.

Now they are my only choice. And I am peeved.

So peeved, that for the past week, The Good Man and I have had NO INTERNET in our little home.

None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Well, ok, we both have iPhones and get enought done using our 3G coverage. But basically….we’ve been living internet free for a week.

At first it was kind of nice.

And then it was extraordinarily painful.

And then it was nice again.

Now I just don’t know.

I have two loaner MiFi devices coming from two different cell phone carriers. I’m going to see if 4G mobile coverage will get us there. I’m not optimistic. My last evaluation of MiFi service wasn’t positive (great with one device on it, but slows miserably as each new device hops on).

And I am really not a fan of DishTV.

So here I am. Back at Comcast.

How possibly can I live in the middle of a very bustling neighborhood in the very *heart* of the most technologically interesting place in the world, and I can’t get simple, stupid freaking DSL service!?!?!

As an aside, I have to laugh at how reliant I’ve become on having my WiFi internet at the ready. Maybe I need to detox from it. Maybe it’s time to step back.

But then I want to write a blog post about how much I’ve broken my tether to the internet and I can’t because I have no WiFi.

I cried because I had no internet, until I met a man who had no iPhone.





A Reprise: The Best of 2011

While I’m moving house today and somewhere in between old-with-an-internet-connection and new-with-god-knows-what-is-going-to-be-installed, I decided to bring forward my Best Post of 2011.

And by best, I mean the one that got the most hits, by far.

Enjoy. It’s a doozy. Reading it puts me right back in that place, March 3, 2011. Oh what a day that was….

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I Fought The Law, and the Law Won

So it’s 4:30 in the morning and I’m awake and working. At my job. At 4:30 in the morning. It’s dark outside and inside and all hell is breaking loose, business wise, in several of the major Asian countries I’m working with.

The problem isn’t entirely my fault, but it’s my team, and I manage them, so I take the fall because that’s what a manager should do.

The time zones are right, mostly, for talking to my folks already working through the end of what is their day Thursday, pesky time zones being what they are. It’s really right timing for talking to my boss. Four thirty means noon-thirty in London and the meaty part of his day.

He asks me why in the hell I’m up so early. Well, for one thing, I can’t sleep. For two things, there are emails scorching the inside of my email inbox. Someone’s gotta do something about it, and that’s someone’s gotta be me.

So we’re talking. My voice is still creaky from lack of sleep as I make my case. “I’m in over my head here,” I tell him, and he agrees to help.

I’m keyed up on adrenaline and buzzing like a pot of coffee and two five hour energy drinks dancing a polka across a vat of 1970’s diet pills.

The boss and I are puzzling through the problems. We’re working on solutions. I’m trying to answer as best as I can and agree to find out answers to the questions I don’t know.

So the boss is talking, going on a long riff as he’s wont to do. It’s good stuff and I’m listening hard. While I listen, I lean my chair back on two legs, perched there for a moment.

I say “two legs” but perhaps I should say “two wheels” because that’s really the case. I’m nestled into my worn but comfy home office chair. I do this all the time, go up on two wheels, while I’m thinking or listening or just because.

I’m listening. I’m “um hmming” and I’m very into the conversation when I guess the gods that rule gravity decide that it’s time they had a say in this situation.

With nary a wobble or early warning, I go from being semi-upright, let’s say a nice 10 degree angle, to staring at the ceiling, knees in the air, I’m-an-astronaut-strapped-onto-a-solid-rocket-booster-and-ready-to-light-this-candle position.

This descent of Karenkind does not occur without some noise. And by noise I mean a bone-jarring rattle that travels in waves through my seventy year old domicile. I can hear the plumbing pipes rattling below the floor.

The boys who follow earthquakes over in their center in Palo Alto might have noticed a barely imperceptible blip on the screen while taking another sip of stale government coffee. Meanwhile, seismic waves are going off in my home.

The curious cat, a moment ago fast asleep, comes galloping down the hall to find out what’s the deal. The Good Man turns on the bedside light. I see the yellow glow at the other end of the house.

Over there in London, either my boss hasn’t heard or doesn’t care. He keeps talking. I lay there, knees up, and listen. And reply. I continue the conversation, because the last thing I want to hear right now is “what was that?” because I have no good answer. “I just fell over in my chair” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in my capacity as either employee or human.

I half expect The Good Man to come check in on me, and am glad he doesn’t. I assume he hears me still talking and believes me to be all right.

Slowly, making the least amount of noise possible, over a period of several minutes, I slide out of the chair and slither into an Indian-style sitting position on the floor.

I finish my call. I hang up. I put my chair back upright and I pat its fake leather back as if to say, “we’re all right, big fella.”

I walk down the hall to go back to bed. The Good Man is snoozing with the light on. I place my iPhone on my bedside table, and as I do, I knock a stack of hardcover library books onto the floor. They make a sizable crash.

Apparently gravity and me are gonna tussle today. Being as how he has the law on his side, I think gravity is going to win.

I plan to give it a good fight.





Image found from Alex Huges Cartoons and Caricatures, a really fun site. I recommend a visit.



A Thorny Topic

Today I joined in with sites like Google, Reddit, Wikipedia, and NewMexiKen by blacking out my site in protest of SOPA and PIPA.

I did this with a LOT of mixed emotions.

Regular readers will remember that last February I had one of my photographs swiped by the San Francisco Giants organization. They deliberately cropped off the copyright watermark and used my image for a Valentine’s Day ecard.

One little blogger up against an MLB Franchise.

I was unhappy, and then I had to become Zen about it.

With that in mind, I seriously believe SOMETHING needs to be done about IP theft on the internet.

However…

To quote the well known New Mexican pundit, Heath Haussamen, on his site NMPolitics.net:

“While protecting intellectual property rights is a worthy goal, this legislation is not the way to do it.”

As originally drafted, the legislation was, in my opinion, “right idea, wrong implementation.”

As of yesterday, the White House said that bills in that current state would get vetoed, and so perhaps there is hope.

It’s hard for me to trust that this current sitting Congress will do the right thing when partisan squabbles separate them on almost every issue imaginable.

So for now we wait, and hope that the needs of IP protection and the needs of free speech can find a comfortable place to meet. And maybe have a cup of coffee and a scone.

Find out more at americancensorship.org or the video below.