Bwahahaha!

I love the pic below!  Everything is...special.  Hold me, please!  I have to get into a cat fight at Eviljob -- it's an Us versus Them thingy, where one group is trying to commandeer a project, and our group is trying to *not* let them do that.  

Then, I am currently trying to do a six-person research project ALL BY MY FUCKING SELF.  Yes, that would be Job 2.5.  Kill me now.  

Job 2 I am behind on prepping for, but...it will all work out.  I hope.  Sheesh.

Job 2.5.1, however is FUBAR; Job 2.5.1, which was originally Job 2, then became Job 2.5 and then changed to Job 2.5.1 is...craziness.  I cannot even *explain* it.  I have to really explain this later, when I am not exhaused.  Basically, I have fucked up because I spent abouuuuut...ummm...two and a half (?) of the past years being dazzled by money, and am trying to fix it.  It is hard to know precisely how long, and -- again -- I will explain better later, 'cos I am going to need a lot of positive energy (Milli Vanilli-style, ha!) and stuff over the next few months as I fix this and begin hiking forward towards my density...errr...destiny.  

Heavens, I crack myself up.  

Ok...I have also been transcending stressed because -- in addition to everything else, I *just* found out (I started finding out on 15 December, when I got some f'ed up insurance card in the mail) that when I came back from leave from my surgery in August, Eviljob's jackass fucktard leave administration company SWITCHED MY INSURANCE over a month after I returned.  That's right -- I was essentially barebacking for three months because none of my physicians take the insurance offered by the Eviljob Plan Q (through like, Crazy Eddie's House of Insurance...only $50 a paycheck, and their prices are in-say-ay-ay-ayne!) that the leave administrator company dumped me into.  That's why I pay through the nose for Eviljob Plan A, which is through United Health, which everyone takes because UHC rocks.  Every year, during open enrolment I pick the same thing because I *like* my PPO, or POS, or whatever it is through UHC.  I get *everything* paid for (including the Gardasil vaccine, and jes --I am over 25, or 23, or whatever the ludicrous 'off-label' age starts at...UHC, you *rock*!), I do not have to ever have anything ok'd through a PCP, or get referrals, or whatever (even though I love my GP, having to go to him for everything is retarded; what do people do...go to their GP to get a referral for a PAP smear?  ...barbecue?).

Butsoanyway.

So, in sum, they changed my insurance, and I did not know.  Then I found out and freaked the hell out, *then* I started getting bills.  At first I emailed our Human Resources staff, then I started pulling out old emails I have archived with contacts at our leave administrator's company and started cc'ing everyone.  Well, I just found out today that finally they fixed it -- I can ask all my doctors to re-file.  Jesus.  

I am going to have to finish this later, 'cos I am totally crashing, I am so tired.  



see Sarah Palin pictures

...and then depression set in

Well, i moved some crap out of my office, but no one noticed. I went on Sunday and grabbed some stuff, even though we aren't really supposed to be there when the building is designated empty; it is a dumb security thing. Anyway, so i fired up my desktop for No Real Reason, and then somehow managed to corrupt the registry. Of the practically brand-new, barely-used (remember that I have been downstairs for a majority of the time since it was installed), company-leased Dell. Sigh.

Of course, at the time i didn't know what i had done; some update downloaded as i was pfutzing around, and when i rebooted, i was greeted by bsod telling me that The Hive had eaten my sys32.dll and was coming after me next.

Or whatnot.

We can play around with a lot of things there, but now i had to worry about this potentially looking bad. Sheesh. I mean, it could look like i was being malicious, you know? So I had to back off the moving out crap; I was going for that Totally Gone look, but now I do not think I can. Phoo.

Always something. I swear.

.

Gah; it actually *is* a jungle out there.

I have been going through shit frame-by-frame. This takes a VERY LONG TIME. And I cannot use our program from work (even though I got a neato cool response box for it about a week ago, so that rocks -- though we are not using it right now), 'cos I am NOT going to sit at work for three or four days straight. Nope. No. And the system we have at work needs a key to make it work, but the key does not leave, ever, because of the cost of the damned thing. I pushed for this system over two others, but the fact that I cannot take it home and that a few people I work with mispronounce it drives me batshit.

Well, they leave out the 'L', and say 'Notice', only they are saying it like they are having some serious adenoid issues -- more like 'no-diss'. Sometimes I think we should have gotten the other one, just so I do not have to pretend as if it did not drive me crazy. Blow your freaking nose and speak clearly. Fack.

Butsoanyway.


Take a look at my box!

[box to come; Blogger won't let me load pics]

I am like The Bad Doctor in that KiTH skit...I ask for things, and they give them to me; this is awesome. Sometimes I love Job 2. I am thinking of asking for Mikrosil next. I have wanted to play with Mikrosil for *years*, I just have to think of why on god's earth I would actually *need* it.

Hmmm.

But back to my point of this taking forever and a day; thank freaking god that I found where Windows Movie Maker will display *hundredths* of a second, or else I would be even LONGER without sleep than I am going to be as it is (and I am not going to get to actually sleep until Saturday night as things stand...BWAAH!!) to correctly categorise it...now for almost two days straight. I have like, lost the ability to see straight. This is extremely upsetting to me, 'cos I *want* to see straight; I am taking this...erm...opportunity (do you like how I have re-framed this to be positive? Cool, iddnit?) to catch up on all twenty-six million episodes of Monk that I have never gotten to see but still buy 'cos I have a crush on Ted Levine (Nooo, not *just*because of SotL; quit talking to Meg. Though if you are having the same 'nuh-uh!' moment some others have had when it comes up, you can refresh your memory here. Or catch Ted *and The Groundskeepers' song here {awesome}. The poster of this clip disturbs me in spite of my partial agreement {comment translation below; it is in Portugese}. It really is that he is *that* unbelievably awesome an actor. ...as well as sexy.) that simply defies description; the things I want to do to him are illegal in at least six states. After Monk, I am moving on to view all of Crime Story, maybe.

I know...I need therapy; I have all this crap to do, and here I am in heat. Being on the Pill always causes me to be constantly turned on; someone *please* explain that one to me, 'kay? I have been wondering about that one for near to the entirety of my fertile life so far. And it has nothing to do with so-called 'safety'; first off, you *aren't* 'safe', and second, it has nothing to do with whether I am in a relationship or out of one. On Pill = in heat constantly, off Pill = normal; sometimes on, sometimes off.

I think there is some hormonal crap that happens,and not just the not ovulating thing. Seriously. I almost wish it made me sick, like several other girls I know. Know how many people I know that stay constantly horny when they take the Pill? One. Me. And it is not listed under side effects; I looked. This is actually one of the reasons I quit it a while ago. Pfft. Sigh.

Butsoanyway. Back to this stuff.

And I am NOT EVEN STARTED on the verbal behaviours for the bulk of it; that will be all day tomorrow. I have been holding off on that 'cos the other stuff is the hard(er) part, and listening will interfere with my Leland Stottlemeyer-watching. I am now kicking myself for not having used something for audio that I could cart home with me in the past so that I could maybe be familiar with it and schtuff. As things stand, I will just hit Pause in WMM and log start/change/stop. Fuck the fancy-schmancy shit.

I even let Kate take a huge part and do it, and I was going to confirm, but I am sososososososooooooo tempted not to log-confirm that I am going to have to maybe nap and let some morality leak back into my brain. Sigh. I am inclined to do Very Bad Things right now, and not just to ol' Leland.

Damnation...talk about ageing well! What's this show about, anyway? ;-)

No, you are not the only ones who think I am weird.


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Comment translation:

Brilhante atuação de Ted Levine em Silêncio dos Inocente.
Brilliant acting of Ted Levine in Silence of Lambs.

[Agreed; better than Foster and Hopkins combined, and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise; his entire performance aside, that sniffl'y thing he does when Brooke first says 'I want my mommy'? Besides being Incredibly Cute, that's called ACTING. We're all ruined by this half-assed 'I'm going to play the same character over, and over, and over...and that character happens to be a lot like me!' shit that goes on anymore that actual acting gets ignored. He also has an fantastic way of conveying many simultaneous emotions towards Monk, but if I get into everything else he has done, we will be here all day]

Buffalo Bill realmente rouba a atenção, apagando completamente a ranhenta Jodie Foster (tem mesmo cara de ranhentinha).
Buffalo Bill really steals the attention, putting out completely the ranhenta Jodie Foster (it has even expensive of ranhentinha).

[Agreed again, and I don't even know what a ranhenta is; I can only assume a ranhentinha is an even worse one]

Pena que o herói do filme morre no final.
Too bad that the hero of the movie dies in the end.

[I am so totally not going to get into the hero/anti-hero/antagonist/protagonist pedantry with you, 'cos it may be a translation error. Ask your English teacher, or your Portugese Lit. teacher. Anyway, assuming you mean 'hero' as in an allied person(a) for whom you were rooting (try reading the book; pointless!), you are officially creeping me out. However, if you -- like me -- just hate seeing a perfectly good fictional hot guy get snuffed, then we are in agreement. Plus Ted should have gotten *much* more camera time.]

Formaria uma bela dupla com o Dr. Lecter he he he..
It would form a double beauty with Dr. Lecter he he he..

[Okay, *now* you are creeping me out; when I start having fantasies like that, I am switching to Ortho TriCyclen Lo or something. Sheesh. Hopkins is like, almost as old as my father, fer chrissake*. ;-) ]


*It may bear mentioning again that my parents had me when they were much older than 'traditional' parents (which seems to be younger these days than ever before, but I am 'supposed' to be about twenty [or more] years older than I am), a fact that leaves many confused when I say things like 'Hopkins is like, almost as old as my father, fer chrissake!' trying to be funny. I mean, he was really a cutie in Audrey Rose**, but the humour is in my selection of the age difference over the qualities of the characters (Buffalo Bill and Lecter***). See? Having old parents really handicaps my comedy style. ;-)

**I only know that 'cos Mom likes that movie (well, more correctly, she saw it with my father or friends in the theatre, and wanted to see it again when it came on television, probably cable), and I watched it with her when I was a kid (when it came on television; my father would *never* have let me watch something like that in the theatre, and probably not on tv if he had known about it). I have no idea how old I was, but I do remember that I thought Hopkins' character was creepy as hell then, like some sick stalker, and it terrified me that her parents would not intervene, and I remember being extremely frightened when Hopkins interacted with Audrey Rose, especially when she cooperated and calmed down for him; for some reason that was Quite Disturbing to me, and I completely misremembered it until I saw it on cable as an adult. At that point it just struck me as a largely silly sixties-tinged movie about reincarnation dumbness, but yes, Hopkins was cute. It is just kind of icky if I say that now, since he is almost as old as my father.

***Let's not play games; I would totally do Bill and Lecter together any day of the week. We all know it.

:-D

Sigh. Enough funny. Back to work.




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Happy Birthday, Harry

Sigh. You annoy me sometimes, but overall you are a good person. Fundamentally, I mean.

I am in seminar with my HoD right now, and I just adore this guy, but he is inclined to give the same lecture over and over. Pretty much any time he speaks. :-) He is cute. One just acclimates to these things.

Butsoanyway.

Job 2 is suffering from the delusion that I am supposed to be there today, when I have a set schedule that leaves Fridays for class, two grant meetings, a lab meeting, tiny break, and then Eviljob. Last night I was simply infuriated, so much so that I could not sleep; one of our contracts has provided explicit details and their accoutrements. Basically, we are just Blindly Following Directions. Period. Well, I finished my part, and at our State of the Workgroup meeting yesterday was asked why I had not done This, That, and The Other. Well, okay; specifically, I was asked why I had not done one thing...which involved, essentially, breaking the seal on a group of data which were to be utilised later. At this time, we are supposed to be unaware of its contents. I brought up the point that I just mentioned, and was told that I could have prepared coding of the events, regardless.

Ummm...not without *looking* at it. And we have been asked -- no, paid in fact --to *not* look at this stage. At this point, we are attempting to replicate and explain the heuristically-based judgements of accepted 'experts' in a quantifiable manner. To do this, we proceed according to our constructs and so forth, and compare our results with theirs...afterwards. I have a problem with pretending I have not seen things just so I can save myself a handful of hours' work in a week of two. The reason, ultimately, for the upset was the ginormous and ' spensive coding suite we just bought; it comes with tutoring, and my superior was wanting to hit up the trainer for help. As in getting the tutor to do this as a part of his demonstration.

Why do I invariably end up surrounded by freaks?

I should put a sock in it before I say too much, but...I am annoyed. Or was, rather; I am fine now. Yesterday, Kate said that I am 'far too ethical and conscientious, blah, blah, blah...'; she meant it as a compliment, but it only served to further agitate me, as if her comparison meant that some less-conscientious Other would manage to be more successful in this situation. And I do know that is completely not how she meant it, but...that is the frame of mind I was in at the time, so I left upset. And figured that They can handle whatever happens today, 'cos we have crap that has to get out on Monday. But I blew off my HoD last week, and I won't do it again; Kate just IMed, and *nothing* is being done -- she just left to take something to her child's school. Sigh. Every day is a new emergency.

Butsoanyway.

On a better note, I got in a bunch of new toys at Job 2, and that was exciting. :-) I also got to talk with Karen, and god, that was a welcome conversation. She phoned to wish me a happy New Year (poor semi-sabra changed to a program where she is lacking in non-committed half-jew company), and to let me know that she had successfully transitioned to a different advisor after the one she left our program for up-and-moved...to farking New Zealand, or wherever. Poor Karen, but it is all okay now.

Oh! And!



Freaking awesome.

And since I am on You Tube, it was either Karen or Baby Bat who sent this a bit back:



Stuck in my head. Geez. :-) I even made up a song for Rhett Butler based on it:

Did you ever see a Butler's Butler kiss a Butler on the Butler
Butler, Butler, Butler, Butler
Butler, Butler, Squoosh!
(or 'Cook', if Cookie is nearby instead of Squoosh)
Here's a Butler, and a Butler, and another little Butler
Oh, no it's all the same Butler,
He's a porky cat.

Oh, shush. Rhett likes his song. :-)

I have to pack up and switch rooms in a bit...I would love to say I will be able to post again today (or at least get up some of the post drafts I have!), but I will see how it goes.

Enjoy the Holiday Season!


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Fighting the Forces of Evil...again.

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Harry is mostly ok; the left side of his heart -- the one left un-bypassed -- is all crapped up. He is now on Plavix, and has to go back in a month, when his cardiologist will know if this can be stented at all.

On the way to work Wednesday afternoon, i was listening to NPR's story about a group named TAPS, that helps counsel children who have lost parents in Iraq to overcome their grief. The link is worth a listen if you have the time, and not just because it is a noble endeavour...oh, no; there is comic relief, too. It is run like a camp of sorts, with different exercises and projects designed to direct the children in a path they feel is more positive. The one project that i found most striking was the group project to make stress balls -- you know, those things vendors stick in your bag at conferences? Because, like I always say, having a stress ball is *just* like having a dad. Even better sometimes.

And were they unable to come up with *any* name better than 'Good Grief Camp'? All I can think of is Peanuts, sorry.

Sheesh.

At Job 2, we are having Upheaval...again. There is this guy who is fairly high-up in the food chain, only not with Job 2; he signed on with us recently, 'cos at the present time Job 2 is a farking money pit. Well, he started making moves last week and even more overtly this week towards unseating my immediate manager/senior researcher. This is just not good. The Wacky Divorcee (I named her Kate earlier, when we had the upheaval with Karol) I have mentioned a few times was placed under this guy, and I assisted with pulling her over to our group 'cos she was about to be let go. What this dork is doing is trying to stock his group with people who are in his back pocket, basically. To a large extent, he did something similar in our department a few years ago. Some people are just Completely Batshit Antisocial Megalomaniacs. Sigh. This will be fun; especially since, in gunning for Xena, Warrior Princess, this guy is indirectly gunning for me -- our whole group, in fact. I am amazed that he thinks his little group could accomplish *half* of what we have done, but apparently he must. For the time being, his group has been moved out of our building into a different facility across the street, more or less, but he wants *our* space. And our equipment. And allegedly is making grandiose claims and statements both about us, and about what *his* group is capable of doing in comparison to us to some of our funding sources. It just gets weirder and weirder. I guess I will have to explain more later, 'cos I need to actually pay attention in this class I am currently in (an unnecessary class -- my necessary one was last night -- but this one is with HoD), and I am beginning to wonder if HoD thinks I am really taking all these notes.

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yet more political crap...

Well, everything *was* fine…

No, I mean *really* -- like just this morning. Things were all pretty good.

Now things are weird.

Yet more political upheaval in my life and career. Yay.

Let me briefly explain my feelings about political upheaval:

I hate it.

I do not simply hate it, I abhor it. I avoid it. I will lock myself in my office, hide in the bathroom, or throw a blanket over my head and sit in my car to hide from it. I will duck behind potted plants, pretend to be inanimate objects, and claim to not speak English to get away from petty political shit. I have not participated in political shit since primary school, when a girl named Michelle decided Renée and I could not be friends with Tamara or any of Tamara’s friends…who were also some of Michelle’s, Renée’s, and my friends. There was upheaval, drama, and allegations of stolen friends and lipglosses; notes flying back and forth, name-calling, and it was *brutal*.

I frankly had a hard time keeping up with it; I had to resort to taking notes to stay current with everything.

Butsoanyway.

Upheaval appears to be back. I cannot get a moment’s peace away from these bastards and their petty crap, it seems. I would go into great, exhaustive detail, but I cannot right at the moment; for purposes of sympathising with me, let’s just say that Someone Important just took another position (‘just’ as in just today…or yesterday, probably), and already the emails, telephone calls, and IMs are flying about who is allowed to be friends with whom, and so forth. They are probably storming the buildings as I type to claim their rightful space, and so forth.

Just shoot me.

I am *so* looking forward to this time next year, when I can start packing with a clear conscience and a partially-finished Magnificent Octopus; it’s my plan to be out of town before my signatories’ ink is dried.

Bwaah.

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I am having one of the worst days of my young life, Mr Page...

Today has sucked. It has really, truly been a lesson in no good deed going unpunished. I would go into huge, wallowing detail, but I am just tired right now.