IggBlog

So I got bored and impulsive on Tuesday.

It’s a stylized version of the greek letter Phi, got it on the inside of my right forearm. It represents the Golden Ratio. I got the design from a similar one I found surfing around. For the lazy, it’s a number that shows up all over the place in math, science, nature, art, architecture, etc. I wanted something nerdy that didn’t look nerdy at a glance. This worked out well for me. I’d been wanting to get something for a long while, and I’m happy with my choice. The place I got it at was cleaner and brighter inside than some dentist offices I’ve been in, I was very impressed. Didn’t hurt at all really, a scratch from Dezzy hurts more.

Saw hellboy 2 last night.  I dont normally comment on movies, but this one was a lot of fun.  I expected it to just be a cheesy action flick, but it was much more pleasing.  Guillermo Del Toro did an amazing job with the directing and monsters as he always does, better than normal on the creatures in my opinion.  The plot and acting was less cheesy than the first Hellboy (which I did like, was just a little less developed), and the characters were more human.  It gets my action flick seal of approval.

Yesterday I went in to see the dermatologist that’s been keeping tabs on me since friday.  I think I’m a pet project of his since I’m more interesting than the normal grade of skin issues.  He said I looked to be bouncing back from everything much faster than he expected, so he backed off on one of my perscriptions.   He also perscribed an even longer course of antibiotics though, just to make sure the strep was dead.  I whined about this a little since antibiotics tend to make me smell funny.  He asked me if I’d rather smell a little off for a few weeks or have another outbreak.   Before I could answer the obvious he holds up a finger and starts writing on a perscription pad, “I have just the thing” he said.  He tore off the pad and handed it to me…  all it said was “axe body spray”.  Sometimes I miss the ridiculously obvious.

They’ve been “testing” the fire alarm system for a week and change here for some reason.   I asked a friend that worked at the company who owns the building we lease space from, and he has no idea why they’ve been doing it.  Basically the alarm will sound and strobes will go off, then abruptly stop.  This will happen a half dozen times, then someoen will come on the loudspeaker and state that they will be performing testing.  Yeah, makes as much sense to me too.  This has been going on all day every day for nearly two weeks.  The thought had crossed my mind “what if there was a real fire?”.  Sure enough a few days ago there were fire engines and stuff outside.  Apparently there was a for-reals fire somewhere in the building and they were evacuating.  We only found out about it when a coworker came into  the ops center and told us that people were collecting in the mini-park out front.  The general consensus was that at this point we were going to stay in the building out of spite, and jump out a window if we ended up actually having to leave.

I’ve been a fan of starbucks for a while. The coffee is good, and it’s actually pretty cheap if you don’t get the silly flowery drinks with more than 12 words in the name. The only bad thing was the lids on their cups. McDonalds had a lids with some sort of way to keep the thing closed so it didn’t spill all over the place. Hell even my Caffeine-Miser brand BadCoffee(tm) at work has cups with little tear-off lids. Starbucks was a little behind the ball on this, their drinks would spout red hot streamers of coffee all over the place if you hit so much as a pebble. It was as if they were engineered to do this. Everyone seemed to have a little ritual to stop the mess. I used to just drape a napkin over the top till I got to work. Other people would stuff straws in the cups. Other still would even use 2 lids rotated against eachother. Any solution still ended up messy.

Today I saw they finally worked out a solution. You’d think they would just make lids with little reseal widgets like Dunkins has. I guess that was too easy. Instead they have little toothpick-like things that you plug up the sippy-hole with. 10/10 for effort, 4/10 for promptness, 2/10 for good thinking. Still, it’s great to not have the stuff spill all over the cupholder on the super-smooth roads of Rt.9 here in Mass.

I came across a workplace hazard just a little bit ago. There was a curious package in the freezer at work. It was disguised as something pleasant and inviting, almost too inviting. So I used a post-it to flag it for coworkers as a possible workplace hazard.

There was recently a big issue with this one customer of ours, and the job to drive the ticket through AT&T fell in my lap. I spent around 90 minutes fighting with them to even get a ticket opened, and finally got to a person who could find the circuit I was calling in. They were reluctant to build the ticket, and I expressed to them that in the time I spent bouncing around in their system the ticket was escalated to a very high level. They asked what level that was. I replied “It’s been escalated to puppy kicking status. We have a whole lineup of puppies here, and we’re going to have to start kicking them soon if nothing gets done on this. I don’t want to kick them, but it’s part of their process. So please try and get moving on this”.

ATTN - Working public: If you use instant messaging at work, please disable sounds on it. Your coworkers hate hearing about it every time you send and receive a message. No seriously, I want to murder you after a solid hour of listening to your IM sounds. I’m only half kidding. Get some headphones if you’re still tickled by the novelty of it all.

I had a savant moment just now at work. I fixed this one device by adding a line in its running configuration that wasn’t there before because it “looked right”. I can’t explain my reason for adding the line, I’ve never messed with that part of a router’s config before. I don’t know exactly why it fixed it. It wasn’t till after I had done it and was writing an email to the customer that I realized I had no idea why I’d made the change, it just “made sense” while I was doing it.   I’m not sure whether it’s a good sign or a bad sign… I’d certainly rather have a clue but I guess I’ll take any flavor of success.

So I’ve been going to the gym for a few months now.  Just doing 45 mins to an hour after work at either my work gym or the one at the clubhouse back home.  For the past 2 weeks though I’ve been going with Jay since we’ve been carpooling (he works at the company whose building we lease space from).  Usually we’re there for at least 2 hours, going with him has really stepped up my routine.  I always work out harder if I have someone to pace with.  Lemme tell ya…    “ow”.  But also “damn”.  That kid knows his shit, and it’s paying off already after just a couple weeks.