The Scrooge Post

I am just not ready. I can't do it. It happened too fast. I needed more time to prepare, to steel myself for the experience. Yes. I am talking about the Christmas season. Wasn't it just last week that I was sweating and complaining about the heat (well, yeah, but not the point)? Didn't we just go to the river? Wasn't my birthday just a few weeks ago? I still have reminants of my Halloween costume around the apartment. How did this happen? Shouldn't scientists be concerned that the days are going faster?

But it is here and nothing is going to change that. Christmas is upon us. The older I get, the less I like this holiday. Let's see, for the past three Christmases, I have been out of work. Now without my mom, I really just can't get into the spirit of things. I don't want to go to the mall. I don't want to fight the crowds. I don't want to puzzle over what to get all the people on my list.

Why is this holiday so popular? And don't give me any crap about the birth of our Lord because the malls are not crowded out of love for Christ. In fact, as the arrests at the after Thanksgiving Day sales show us, these harried Christmas shoppers are anything but Christ-like. Really. It's just a laptop. And probably not that great of one.

With this anti-holiday spirit in mind, I would like to make a list of why I dislike this holiday so much:

1. Logistics. Who goes where on which day? So stressful!
2. Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer. I hate this song more than words can express.
3. The mall. It's crowded and despite all those stores and sales, you usually come away lacking gifts and a small piece of your soul.
4. Parents who take their hyper/wailing kids to the overcrowded malls. I realize that is where they keep Santa, but perhaps the Santa trip should be just that.
5. Christmas albums by singers. I don't mind them contributing to a compilation, but the Mariah Carey and Destiny's Child Christmas albums just bug me.
6. Bargain insanity.
7. Fruitcake. It is not an acceptable gift. Ever. Especially when it comes from a miserly, freaking loaded lawyer. That is just wrong.
8. Santa Baby. It was cool when Eartha Kitt did it, but anyone else is just trying to hard. Except when Puffy did it. That was pretty sweet.

I promise to stop being a Scrooge and dedicate a post to why Christmas is actually not of The Devil in the near future.

Bitchy or Not Bitchy, Part 1

Now for a new feature to this blog I like to call Bitchy or Not Bitchy.

Pointing out that someone's screen name is misspelled. Bitchy or Not Bitchy?

Death by Caffeine

I happened upon a very entertaining site today: Death by Caffeine. Ever wonder how many Dr. Peppers it would take to kill you? Well, it would take 274.66 cans of DP to put the MAV down.

Pick your poison and see how much you can indulge... Energy Fiend

Mr. Cosby Sweatah

Oh Mr. Cosby Sweatah. He is the current bane of my existence. Over the course of 2005, many of you have heard my tale of team woes. I was given a team of the most incompetent people when I started at my current company: The Intern and Mr. Cosby Sweatah. It was The Intern's first real design job, but Mr. Cosby Sweatah had previous experience. The Big Project I was hired on to head up used a software none of us knew how to use because it was brand, spanking new. I had to learn it when I got there just as they should have. The project went really slow. So slow that for anything to be submitted to me should have been pretty near perfect. Nothing ever was. Nothing was almost acceptable. Nothing even came close to kind of okay. It was all bad. These two guys never proofed or tested their work. You would think that at least this craptacular work would have been "designed" at a rapid rate. But, unfortunately, the answer is no. In fact, I designed (correctly, superbly even) at twice their rate. Combined. If not faster. And I did not have to return my work to myself with pages and pages of corrections. The worst of the slow transgressors was Mr. Cosby Sweatah. He was painfully slow, though a little less on the mistakes. So, when the project began to wrap up round one, I recommended letting The Intern go. He was the worst of the two and was always making the same mistakes over and over. Since I was redoing all of his work anyway, I thought cutting out the middle man would be a good idea.

So it was just me and Mr. Cosby Sweatah. Seeing The Intern lose his job was not a deterrent. Mr. Cosby Sweatah continued to slowly submit bad work to me. So, when things hit a manageable/slow state, I recommended not bringing him back in. I should clarify that The Intern only had a 3 month internship with us (which could have been renewed), and Mr. Cosby Sweatah was only a contractor and paid hourly. Since I am salaried, I will have to be paid regardless of whether there is work to do or not. So I am not just so cruel or so powerful that I can banish people on a whim. I just wanted to clarify that point. With Mr. Cosby Sweatah gone, I was happy to go into work. Everything that I sent off was done correctly (for the most part. I am not perfect by any means and require a QC.). Those were good times.

Now, Mr. Cosby Sweatah has returned. He is working with me on my new project. When I first was told he would be "helping" me out, I had to strain not to roll my eyes. But I tried to give him the benefit of a doubt. My initial thoughts were correct. He sucked. We are creating an interactive user guide for a snazzy new phone from Famous Mobile Phone Manufacturer. We must create the phone screens pixel by pixel. It is very detailed, tedious work. This client is VERY important, so everything has to be exact. They will KNOW if you are one pixel off. Put your eyeball up to your cell phone screen. See those little squares? That is what I am talking about.

Anyway, Mr. Cosby Sweatah is supposed to design them with me. I explain that we have to create a new Illustrator (that's the graphics program we are using) screen every time anything on the phone screen changes. So say you are dialing a phone number. There would need to be about 12 to 13 screens: the beginning screen, a screen for each new number that appears and the dialing screen. I KNOW I told him that. I said things like for each step, there will be multiple screens. When I look back over his work, he has made only one screen for each step. So just the main screen, the final screen with the 10 digits and the dialing screen. I wanted to throw things at him. It took him TWO days to do that. Two days to do like an 1/8 of the work he should have done. I explained to the higher ups that if I was to meet my deadline, I needed someone who knew what they were doing. So I got a wonderful new guy to help me out: Cool College Kid. He is like a godsend. I love you Cool College Kid! He and I are getting through the screens. He seems to understand my very difficult directions of design every single screen in the step.

I once again, incorrectly, thought that my woes with Mr. Cosby Sweatah were over. Oh, how wrong I was. Mr. Cosby Sweatah didn't follow my simple directs of how to export the screens and what to name them. I was going to go with the first screen would be named Screen01.swf. Apparently he didn't "get" my crazy naming system. And then I am looking over the storyboard he was supposed to verify. You know, look at the steps, check that they match how the phone works. He has signed off on all of these steps being "okay." Only, the storyboard, and therefore the coding, will have things like click the OK button when the button is really labeled SAVE. Not a huge deal, but if you are going to sign off on things, people expect that they are actually right.

He is so frustrating. I am beginning to actually develop ill feelings towards sweaters in general because of him. And I love sweaters. Darn you, Mr. Cosby Sweatah!

Phone calls

My apartment manager just called to let me know she was going to have a garage sale. When did it become okay for people to call you for any and everything while you were at work? For some reason, just because the call is coming in on your mobile phone, it seems to others to be okay. It isn't. Let me just make that very clear. It is still a phone call I am a receiving while at work. If it isn't important or cannot be handled via email or text messaging, then do not call. Send me an email. Send me a text message. If it is concerning plans we are making for later that evening, that is okay, too. But do not call expecting to chat. I, like most people, work in a cubicle. People can hear my phone conversations. I do not like this. I do not like the whole office to know when I am and am not working.

Really when did it become okay? Would you call my work number this way? No. People only call your work number for important or very timely calls. I know what you are thinking, I could not answer my phone. Well, I ASSUME that if you are calling me during work that your call IS important.

So, next time you start to dial one of your friends or family before 5 o'clock, remember that there is proper work phone etiquette. Think about if this person has their own office. Think about what kind of job your contact has (it is a big no-no to call tech support people).

And one last thing, if you call me between the hours of 8 and 5 during the week, do not ask what I am doing. I will give you a smart-ass or highly exasperated answer.

Vote. Tomorrow.

Just a reminder to everyone to vote tomorrow. You can read what propositions are on the ballot here. Personally, I am concerned about Prop 2 which calls for a constitutional amendment specifying that marriage be defined as a union between a man and a woman only.

Why do we need the government to regulate our beliefs? This is my question. If you believe homosexuality is wrong, then believe that. Why do you need the constitution to validate your beliefs? The constitution does not stipulate anything about doing unto others, giving tithe, loving your fellow man or having only one God. Yet, Christians have got along fine for centuries with only their Bible backing them up. Are The Gays really that scary?

I think the government already regulates/enforces/prohibits far more than it should. If we are resposible enough to put these officials into office, why can we not be responsible enough to make some decisions on our own? Why do we need to be told what is morally right or wrong?

I say that we have a seperation of Church and State for a reason. Of all the people in the world, the last people I trust to be my moral watchdogs are politicians. Because, you know, they are doing such a good job enforcing that "Thou shalt not steal thing" within their ranks.

On this issue of same sex marriage, can't we just think for ourselves and not take part in a same sex union if we don't believe they are right in the eyes of God? If you really believe they are wrong, then you really shouldn't get married to a member of the same sex. To me, this need for constitutional reinforcement of a belief shows just how weak it must be. If it can't stand with just your heart, then should it stand at all? If your war can't be won by you, then maybe you shouldn't win. If your beliefs aren't enough, then perhaps you need to be looking inside yourself instead of to the government.

This whole arguement probably makes no sense to anyone but me. But whether you agree with me or not, please go out and vote tomorrow. If we ever want to see our issues, our agendas, our needs, our goals represented in government, then we have to become active. If we want a better president, better judges, better policies, then we have to do our part in getting the right people into office. So go out and vote tomorrow and perhaps we can start the first step in building the America we want and need.

Okay, seriously?

A tornado ripped through Kentucky and Illinois this weekend. Hurricanes, floods, tornados, oh my. Bagboy once mentioned that the Gulf States had possibly smited God. Perhaps it is America as a whole. It seems like we might just be under attack by the weather. Has any consideration been given to the idea that the Indians, um, Native Americans, um previous owners of the country, might have found a way to harness the weather and are now out to get the thieves? Just an idea.

A Question For The Blogsophere

Mason and I were discussing the fact that his twenty-two year old sister-in-law is dating a guy almost ten years older than her. I didn't think this was a big deal. If the twenty-two year old is mature and the guy she is dating is open cool with the younger person, why not. Then he pointed out that while the age difference is not an issue at 30-40 or 40-50, once the ages start advancing, it will become a huge issue. The difference between 60 and 70 can be huge.

So what do you think, what is an exceptable age difference? Is ten too much?

3D

There are a lot of movies I think would be far more entertaining if they were 3D. For instance, the ad for Category 7 (imagine Volcano, Armageddon, Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, etc only with a really big hurricane) just came on. It looks pretty cheesy. The effects look fake. But what would make that movie awesome is if it were in 3D. Think of how many movies could be saved that way. That's it. All disaster movies must be in 3D if I am to watch.

Oompa Loompa

Okay, so I haven't seen the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I was in Pineland the weekend it came out, and they don't have movies there. Everyone else has seen it, but not me. I haven't seen the original since I was quite young. But to be honest, I don't know how much I want to. I wasn't a huge fan of the first. I thought it was really unfair that Charlie broke the rules but received no punishment. Just because he was the teacher's pet doesn't make his rule breaking any less bad. I'm just saying. Shouldn't the message be that good behavior yields rewards, not sucking up? Also, I was a little troubled by the Oompa Loompas. I suspected that there was something wrong with the fact that an entire race of people were working at this factory. Only the Oompas worked there. Where had I seen a similar situation? Oh yeah, the fields of Tara. The Oompas were probably enslaved. Do we know that they were receiving fair wages? Do we know that they were working there by choice? Perhaps they were sugar addicts, and they were being forced to work there in order to get their next fix.

I'm just saying, there were some subversive elements in that movie.

Not So Great

This week has been very trying. Work is VERY hard. I am working on an interactive user guide for a new cell phone. The phone is pretty cool: slider action, great color, pretty easy to use, and awesome picture quality. The picture quality, however, is the problem. When we make the IUG's we make them pixel by pixel. And this screen has lots, LOTS of pixels. So, for the past three days, I have been squinting through a magnifying glass at this screen. I finally get all the big work done. Now I can begin building the step by step instruction screens. And I do. I make a lot of progress. I go to save. The program crashes. I didn't save enough. Shame on Illustrator. So I rebuild everything. I get back to where I was before after about an hour. I even make improvements. I go to save. The program crashes. I didn't save enough. Shame on me. I redo my work again. Takes about half an hour this time. At least I am getting faster. I go to save. The program crashes. AGAIN. What the hell. I try just making a few changes and saving. It crashes. I try just saving. It crashes. I can't do anything to the file. It is three days worth of work. I can't just start over. I finally give up. I don't know what to do. I will ask some of the resident geniuses.

As if this day couldn't get any worse, I just noticed my pants were unzipped. I haven't removed my pants since I got home which means that they were unzipped at work. And I have no idea how long that might have been. I wonder if they were unzipped at lunch? Since breakfast maybe? So yeah. One of those days.

Walk The Line

I have a confession to make. I think I might be more excited about Walk The Line than Goblet of Fire. Here is my reasoning. I know what should happen in Goblet of Fire. When it doesn't happen or is done incorrectly, I am going to be disappointed. I think I would enjoy these movies if they weren't based on such well written books. With Walk The Line, I have no preconceived notions of what the movie should and shouldn't be. All I know is that Johnny Cash's music is genius. As long as they get that right, that is all I care about.

I have been listening to his songs all day. They are just so good.

Are you freaking kidding me?

Rhapsody doesn’t know me very well. I checked out my recommendations today to see if they had anything new and interesting. Apparently, they have not consulted my library or playlists because it is so very, very wrong. Of the 23 albums, I think I might tolerate maybe 5 on the radio. But I would by no means purchase the freaking album! Check out the list WORST LIST EVAH!

Rainbow – Mariah Carey
The Greatest Hits – Whitney Houston
The Polyester Embassy – Madison Avenue (Who is that?)
Sound Loaded – Ricky Martin
Mandy Moore – Mandy Moore
Fever – Kylie Minogue
Full Moon – Brandy
J to the L-O!: The Remixes – Jennifer Lopez
Gotta Get Thru This – Daniel Bedingfield
200 KM/H In the Wrong Lane – T.A.T.U.
Chocolate Factory – R. Fucking Kelly
Blowin’ Me Up – JC Chasez
Atomic Kitten – Atomic Kitten
Tasty – Kelis
The Remixes – Mariah Carey
Try This – Pink
In The Zone – Britney Spears
Thankful – Kelly Clarkson.

It’s Kelly Clarkson’s fault. You put a couple of her songs on your playlist, and suddenly you get crap recommendations. Really, I have decent taste. I really do. Sure, I like JT. And I listen to a little Kelly Clarkson on the DL, but to recommend Mariah to me? That's just wrong. What did I do to be dubbed a Mariah fan?

MAV to Rhapsody: You don’t know me! That’s my purse! *kicks Rhapsody it its bad music recommending groin.