Spinning on that dizzy edge

Both literal and metaphorical!

In the ongoing war on my bank account that is home ownership, the sewer line backed up into our house Saturday night, requiring an after-hours repair with a large price tag. It did cover a camera inspection of the line on Monday, but the Roto Rooter guy tried to parlay the alarming results into pressuring us to sign up for a replacement of the line right away, to the tune of six grand. Yikes! We balked, and I called for a second opinion, who said that the line did need to be replaced, but not at crisis, OMGWTFBBQ speed. The plumber recommended by them gave us a ballpark figure over the phone of several grand less. Here's hoping that holds true.

I was off Friday, and worked from home Monday and Tuesday to deal with the dirty details, so today was my first day back in the office for almost a week. After what happened today, I'm tempted to stay home as much as possible.

I overheard male manager J talking to my male coworker S about female coworker C. J complained that C was being really grumpy and obviously therefore needed to get laid, and "jokingly" asked S to "take one for the team", but if he couldn't do it, J would have get one of the other single guys in the department to step up.

Just to add to the grossness of this, J is C's manager.

I could not believe what I was hearing - I mean, I could, because J is infamous for getting away with shit like that for literally decades, but I'd never been present for such garbage. I had to walk around the building to calm down, then I talked to S about the situation. He was similarly disgusted, so I got his blessing before bringing it up to our manager M. M promised to talk to the big boss about it, while trying to keep our names out of it (because our department has a delightful history of firing people who complain about the work environment). So we'll see what happens.

Does anyone know a good way to call down a meteor strike to hasten along the passing of the current crop of dinosaurs?

Good LORD, this code I'm investigating is ridiculous. According to the documentation, it was written 25 years ago (in FORTRAN, mind you, because my company is so behind the times it's laughably painful), by someone who thought it was a perfectly cromulent move to use a GOTO statement to read through a file instead of, I dunno, A FREAKING DO-LOOP, DUMBASS. No indentation or any other obvious signs to show the flow of control.

A GOTO statement. *headdesk* Examples like these help puncture my impostor syndrome. I know good code, and this, sir, is not good code.

Of course, to keep me from being too pompous, the senior programmer just punted back the compiler structure I changed because I forgot to add the definitions for compiling the program that's now SQL-dependent. Oops! At least it was a quick change, and he missed it, too - I diagnosed the problem when looking over his shoulder.

I love coding. I just hate tripping over other people's bad style.

Here's hoping Friday is treating you all well, and that you have a most excellent weekend, even if it's not actually a weekend for you (waves to resolute).

...Crap. They're not helping.

I am so sorry that I've been a never-ending fount of complaints lately. However, I'm beginning to suspect that someone slapped a "Hello, my name is Job" sticker on my back when I wasn't looking.

Remember how I said I was sick of things breaking? Sunday, we discovered that the water pipe into our refrigerator had sprung a leak, soaking the hardwood kitchen floor and dripping into the basement. Several floorboards in the kitchen are warped now. The plumber is on his way this afternoon to hopefully repair the house's water shut-off valve so a permanent fix for the fridge can be attempted.

I really, really wanted to visit the fangirls in Pittsburgh, and it looked promising with the airfare sale. However, trying to fit it in around a family reunion drove the price up and made the times ridiculous, so that visit will have to wait. At least darsynia is able to attend the Chicago con the following weekend.

My camera also broke recently, so I'm defiantly taking the cost of the airfare and getting a nicer camera, instead of a basic one.

But the biggest source of my rage has been my husband in the past 12 hours. I'm tired of his emotional state outranking everyone else's, and I'm tired of being the details person who then gets crap for both reminding ("nagging") and not reminding ("why didn't you tell me?").

And in conclusion, a big FUCK YOU to Russell T. Davies and his Torchwood miniseries. I know a lot of you said it was amazing, but unfortunately he mashed my biggest emotional trigger so hard and so often that the end left me feeling bruised and depressed, and completely angry about watching any further episodes.

I just want to go home and sleep.

I slept much better last night after that post of woes.  Silly old brain.  Apologies as usual for the dump and post. 

It's no news to anyone, I'm sure, that the internet is a scary, skeevy, screwy place.  Let's see....

Exhibit A:  New Star Wars Disney Figures Coming Soon.  Now, I'm as big a fan of the crossover as anyone, and that Mickey/Yoda statue is kinda cute, and carbon-freezing him is an excellent way to get Donald to STFU already, but...Really.  You had to put Minnie in the Slave!Leia costume?  Gross, guys.  Just gross.

Exhibit B: The Cuchini Pad, for disguising that pesky case of camel toe.  (Now with celebrity examples!)  This chirpy ad proclaims "No bush, no cush!" and offers this solution to those addicted to Brazilian wax jobs and not wearing underwear with their tight pants.  I don't even know where to begin.

Exhibit C:  When you're tired of ratting your hair to ludicrous heights, turn to Bumpits!  I saw this on TV and could have sworn it was a fake SNL commercial.  Do they not realize how ridiculous the demonstrated hairstyles look?  Or, as usual, am I just hopelessly out of touch with today's fashions?  (See Exhibit B.)

Exhibit D: Color blind, or just color foolish?  You be the judge.  I had to do the copy, paste, zoom myself just to make sure that aqua = aqua.

Exhibit E: Little Love This Summer for A-List Actors.  ( Hollywood and movies: the same old new thing. )


And finally, news that got my fangirl heart beating very fast:  Chris Pine will sing and have an actual vocal offering on the soundtrack to the upcoming Small Town Saturday Night.  SQUEEEEEE!  (You didn't really need those eardrums, did you?)

And on that note - happy Friday everyone, and for those of you in the US, enjoy our national holiday dedicated to summer fun and colorful explosions!

The husband just called me for the umpteenth time since he started working at his current job, emotionally strung out because his boss is a vicious asshole.  Said boss chose to blame a tech's failure to show at a client site and a cascade of other departments' failure to notice it on my husband.  Said boss forced my husband to fucking sign an HR complaint that he is insubordinate and derelict in his duties.  This is the second such piece of bullshit the Boss has perpetrated on Husband in the past couple of weeks.
( Pertinent details and bile )

I advised my husband to get the fuck out of there for today and go home, and tomorrow set up a meeting with Boss' Boss to talk about what Husband can do.

Anyone have any suggestions for framing the conversation in a productive (and hopefully job-retaining) way?  I've already told him that I'm behind him quitting, but I don't know if that will be any kind of effective, for lack of a better word, threat to improving his immediate situation.

Any and all help would be appreciated.

Wow. Michael Jackson really is a total crazypants.

I got a little carried away at lunch today and started railing at the complete idiocy that is NCLB. Most of the details were new to my co-workers (all of whom had kids in school). One of them chimed in that if Obama fixed it, it would be the first useful thing he'd done since he'd gotten into office. She then proceeded to scoff at the stimulus package, saying that all future children would be born into debt beyond repayment. I had to bite down really hard on responses like "Yeah, closing down Gitmo was such a waste of time!" or "It's a shame that Obama cast the country into a financial pit of despair after Bush made us all rich!" These people can drive me crazy.

But hey, the Emperor is doing marvelously in school! His teachers are happy and full of praise for him, we're not walking into to reams of incidence reports in his cubby anymore, and he continues to make us laugh on a daily basis. Of course, he'd love it if he could just sit home and play Lego Star Wars all day. *grin* I don't know if the improvements at school are necessarily related to his PS2 privileges, but I'm certainly not complaining.

Now, if the weather can deliver on the forecasters' earlier promises of warm temps and sunshine for this weekend, life would be near perfect. Here's hoping.

…aka WOE IS ME. No, scratch that: RAGE IS ME.

( Wherein the husband is laid low by back pain and I seethe and cope. )

So yeah, our house is not exactly a bundle of fun right now. I did have the snerkworthy pleasure of sending the Emperor to daycare on St. Patrick's Day in orange, as I completely lost track of the day. (Hey, it's the right color for my family, good Protestants that we are.) I was minorly relieved to see that there were small specks of green on the shirt when I picked him up. It's not like he cared; he had too many tales to share of the "apricot" that visited his class. (Translation by way of the teacher: leprechaun. Even when corrected, though, he drifted back to "apricot".)

I am also cranky because I finally got an appointment with my brilliant hairdresser (again, thanks to leiaorgana_73) yesterday, and not a single damned person at work noticed or mentioned it. Considering she cut off 10 inches of ratty hair, leaving me with a cute shoulder-length bob, I'm a bit insulted. (You see? I am occasionally capable of breaking out in Fits of Girly.)

Bah. Now it's home to Mr. Cranky after picking up his son, Stubborn Boy. Yesterday's conflict of the wills came when the Emperor lost TV privileges before dinner for hitting a friend. It escalated to no dessert and no after-dinner TV when he was a brat following that announcement. Then he was an absolute sweetheart for his bath and bedtime, thank Zod. I think tonight there will be wine (and hopefully not whine) with dinner.

Bottoms up!

It might come off in reading my rants about work that I don't think much of my coworkers, that I think they're small-minded, frustratingly conservative, hypocritical bigots. Sometimes I feel bad for presenting them that way. Being bored with the constant babble of sports, reality TV, and petty gossip is a reflection on me more than them, right?

Then there are times like today's lunch, where I arrived to a few people talking about a guy winning Wheel of Fortune and pointing out his fiance (male, in case it's not clear by the gendered ending) in the crowd. There was evidently even a kiss on the cheek exchanged. My female coworker, in relaying this anecdote, actually flinched in distaste, and fluttered with a "On prime time TV, can you believe it?" I tried to reply evenly with "You love who you love, right?" The other people grumbled and shifted uncomfortably, and the female coworker replied "Well, I can't understand it. I even did an essay on it in high school [this would have been 30 years ago or so]. You know..." obvious pause for regrouping, "Homosexuality." Much head shaking around the table ensued.

It makes me feel sick and want to cry all at the same time. WTF, people! Still? Way to support the Central Illinois, small-town Midwesterner stereotype.

Pardon me while I go read some slash and try not to go on a rampage.

As I was just complaining to sabaceanbabe yesterday, my DVR lobotomized itself a month ago and I lost all my saved series. It didn't matter much at the time, since hardly anything was new at the point (and I luckily caught it before it neglected to record SGA -- better believe that'd be a whupping!).

Now that the fall season has come around again (and I'm surprised every time that summer ends so quickly, especially since it goes faster each year), I have to set up my series again. So I'm analyzing the TV schedule courtesy of TV Guide, and looking at the Monday night line-up, I'm just about ready to throw some punches.

I've grown used to two of my favorite shows being scheduled at the same time, because the networks are stupid and greedy like that, and hey, that's what dual-tuner DVRs are for. This time around, though, not two, not three, but FOUR FREAKING SIMULTANEOUS SHOWS? Are you KIDDING ME?

( Commence ranting )

I get so frustrated, you know? I am more than willing to fast-forward through, and even stop and watch the more interesting, commercials during DVR playback. If TPTB want to lose my potential revenue by making me pursue alternate means that are the closest and easiest thing to watching the shows from my couch, as I would prefer...well, it's just another confirmation that I am not their demographic, and another reason why I should just stop watching first-run TV in general.

It's a good thing that Thanksgiving was relatively early this year -- it makes it feel like something of a reprieve to have a good month until Christmas.

Posting while cranky seems to be a recurring theme of mine. I am laboring under a haystack's worth of needles, each of them petty, stupid, and small, but wearisome as a bundle.

My main beef right now is that I really need to feel appreciated by other people for what I do for them, and I'm currently getting a jackload of squat on that front. I gave up on getting anything redeeming out of work a long time ago; the fact that the users for a recent successful project want to take me and the other two team members out for drinks on Friday is a novelty. Of course, this is tempered by the fact that I can't stay very long, as we have friends coming to visit that I am eagerly awaiting.

The home front is equally uninspiring. The Emperor, being 3, is forgivably obtuse; I'll take "Mommy! Mommy!" smiles and running hugs as shorthand thanks. The husband, however, is on thin ice. I am beyond tired of His Fragile Flowerness (TM of a cherished friend) approach to being sick; the literal moaning and groaning would be high camp if it weren't getting on my last damned nerve. (I've been saddled with a drippy respiratory bug for the past two weeks, and I have yet to hear a "How are you feeling?") Plus, there's Family Drama, of the "Again. Some More" variety. It would be so nice to get a "Thanks for putting up with my bugfuck crazy family" from him; that's not to say that my side isn't its own kind of bugfuck, but at least theirs is for the most part amusingly eccentric and not outright psychotic.

Add to that job hunt stress (either my cell phone ate a message, or the place that I would be perfect for has neglected to call me back for an interview), financial stress (bellybutton lint isn't a good present, is it?), houseful of crap stress (we're verging on needing a "Clean House" intervention), and other random slings and arrows, and I'm longingly looking for my Calgon bottle.

Here endeth the grumble.