more work stuff.

i was complaining all day about how slow the day was going and at some point i said to dan, "i swear to god this day has been slower than any day in history." which is something i have said a couple times before and he always goes, "elizabeth, time always moves at the same speed. you should know this." so this time he goes, "elizabeth, we've discussed this before. time does not slow down. wait, wait, i'll just check something here." i was like, what the hell is he looking up? half the time he "remembers" something to look up on google. well he goes to bbc.com and goes, "nope! see, i'm pretty sure if time slowed down it would be on bbc, if anywhere." ha, ha.

later on we were discussing how he has a new shift next week and he doesn't have to stay late. i said, "well, you do have to be here earlier, you know." and he goes, "i don't care, i'll just come in and sleep at my desk." i said, "oh, really nice. you know, i'm just going to call you every two minutes and say 'are you awake? are you awake? are you awake?'" he freaked out at that. ha! then we compared drivers license pictures. they are equally bad. in mine i look super young and drugged, and in his he looks like "a sex offender" (his words). but he did not see my uw-madison ID, as i didn't have it with me. that's the worst picture in history.

oh yeah. dan has been bothering me to get less sleep because "you lose so much of your life" while sleeping. i maintain that i need 10 hours. he gets 2-4 hours. seriously. so this week i stayed up a little later and almost died, i felt so shitty. i said to him yesterday, "yeah, your not getting as much sleep plan is working out really well for me." he thinks that staying in a bar until closing time will help. he also thinks that if i drink more i will be less clumsy. i don't really act clumsy at work, but the situation was this. i was saying i don't drink very often, and i don't really know how i'd act if i got super drunk every night. he said, "every person has a threshold that their body has to be pushed to every so often, otherwise it builds up in you. are you a little clumsy?" "yes." "see?" "oh yeah. now i see that for all my life lessons i should go to you, the wise dan."

i've been making people laugh more too. at a meeting the other day someone opened the blinds and people were all complaining, and i put my arms in front of my face and said, "no!!! burst into flames! burst into flames!" then explained that i had to say it because i couldn't actually do it. that got a great reaction. :)

meh

What's the deal with mail-in rebates?

Another funny sentence from one of our postcards:

Put my expertise and the experience of a full-service company with connections everywhere to work for you!

Disclaimer from Cingular website (no shit!):

NOTE: Online orders require a credit or debit card.

i swear to god

i swear to god this is the most boring day ever. here is the phone i want to get (with a 651 number). it's a sony phone so it's under cingular. i looked at a few other places. sprint has an agreement with my company so i'd get a discount. but i don't like the sprint/nextel phones as much.

 

 

the "dynamic" between me and dan has really been cracking me up lately. it sprang out of nowhere. imagine how i am with sarah: that's how i act with him. we just totally rip on each other ALL THE TIME. a coworker mary came over and remarked that we seem like brother and sister. i laughed inwardly because emily always used to say me and sarah acted like an old married couple. i think it would have been weird if mary had said that. it's so weird that within like two weeks this happened. today i was trying to help him with something and i told him to go to this screen that he had just clicked out of. he said, "well, thanks. i was just there!" i said, "well, it's not my fault you're going too fast!" he goes, "well, if you would talk in complete sentences and not have dramatic pauses between everything you're saying, maybe i'd understand!!!" and i yelled, "WELL, I AM THINKING!!!" then after that i was really conscious of how i was talking because i was pausing a lot. but i was thinking!

 

i talked to some of "the guys" (i'm in IT so it's mainly guys) about concerts today as well. i managed to get into their conversation by just inserting myself at some point. i LOVED it. and though they don't like any of the same bands as me, it was just hilarious to be in that conversation. i am not around "guys" that often. if ever. ok, never. so it was funny. i loved it. they were probably like "pansy!" when i mentioned death cab and sigur ros. they like rob zombie and widespread panic. but hey, whatever.

 

more later about hijinks around the office (the phrase i have to use for some reason)

still alive

the chair is finished and sitting in my living room. i'm having a hell of a time trying to figure out a good workspace. i bought this cart that i now have in here, but what's pissing me off is that the mouse is having trouble picking up the wireless signal. how can this be? it's friggin' 2 feet away. it's really been pissing me off. the keyboard has been ok.

 

yesterdayat work a bunch of us were talking about our ages. dan goes, "elizabeth is the youngest" and ipod guy goes, "and the smartest" and i was like "aw, thanks!" and then, my manager goes, "yes, she is!" very seriously and the other woman nods. i was like, whoa, i had no idea i was viewed as this smart person. i wonder what i give off that does that. i swear to god i do nothing different around there. it was the same at the library, tom and amy were always exclaiming about my intelligence and i was just doing a typical job. it's funny. but hey, i won't complain about appearing intelligent. i like it.

 

dan said, "and i'm the most drunk!!" woohoo!......

 

i was really hoping this cart/table would work, but i don't know. i was looking for like a tv table type thing, but couldn't find any. this was nice because it rolls and has storage space. maybe i'll go to ikea this weekend. i need a bookshelf anyway, and maybe something that i can use to bring stuff up to the apartment.

 

i found a website today where you can enter contests to do photoshop work. you get paid if you win. i think i'm going to give it a try. i can do good stuff with photoshop if i have a reason. one of them that's open right now is to create an image that portrays something from the future. i don't think i'll do it because you only get two days and one day is already up. plus, i couldn't think of a good enough idea.  it's cool looking at the pictures, anyway. there were a couple i saw where i could tell exactly what they did and it looked weird. and there were a couple that looked super easy. but there were some where i was like, shit, that is incredible. i like art.

 

i'm going to get a new phone soon.

work

work in the past few days has been so good. it's amazing to me that i just said that. i think that the cube move was really good. i sort of hate that it's in a busy location, but it's not really as busy as i thought. i was mainly worried because it is right next to the director's office. but it hasn't been a problem. if anything, i feel more now that she actually likes me, because she sees me and talks to me more. before, i thought she hated me because she never said anything to me. she's kind of a strange person.

 

also, it's been so good not to hear ipod guy at all. yesterday was a blissful day in which i didn't see him once. today i saw him a couple times, but it was ok.

 

the best part is that now i talk to people more in general. an example: now that i sit next to dan we talk all the time. he is a really funny guy. today i had two attacks of uncontrollable laughter the likes of which i haven't had since high school. the kind where all you want to do is stop laughing but you can't, and you feel like a total idiot. but he was amused. and i talk to patrick more ("hey, trouble" guy). so it's all good.

 

i am sad that dan is a) moving to a different shift in a few days and b) possibly leaving. i'm confused about it because i was sure yesterday that he was talking about being fired but today everything was totally normal. i'm wondering if he wasn't just mad yesterday. i don't know. i guess time will tell.

 

and if anyone is thinking that i have my eyes on him, think again, because he is completely not my type. ok, he's funny and stuff and we have a good time at work, but he is a total alcoholic and smokes all the time. he literally goes to bars every single night and gets drunk. sorry, not my scene. well, maybe if he does leave they'll hire tom or tom's doppelganger.

entry of no real consequence

funny thing about the subject line: i at first wrote "og" instead of "of" and "og" means "and" in icelandic. so i said "entry and no real consequence."

so i've been wanting to write about this for a while, but haven't, for one reason or another. disclaimer: you may think i'm a total tool, as i said in my subject line. be that as it may, i'm going to swallow my pride and just write about it anyway. feel free to not read, or not comment, or whatever. i don't really care.

so the deal is that i'm having a lot of residual anxieties about the whole Tom thing. i have been talking about it to brighton a little bit, who has been very helpful, and has guided me out of severe pain a few times. a couple of weeks ago it was really bad. i began writing an entry in here about it but then discarded it. i wasn't even going to write about it now except that i felt i should for a couple of reasons i will explain later.

mainly i've just been miserable thinking about various things that we used to talk about. lately i haven't been too upset about telling him how i felt. instead i'm just sad thinking about things, and wishing i could still talk to him. the worst part of it all is that i can't talk to him. if i could wish for anything in the world, that would probably be it.

i used to write him letters all the time (and not give them to him, of course). i started back in 2004 sometime when we lived on mifflin and i filled up an entire notebook. i kept it in careful posession and then a little while after i moved here i destroyed it. i'm sort of regretting that now because i feel that by destroying all of that, i will forget everything that happened. and in a way i don't want that to happen.

i'm being a lot more objective (is that the right one? i can never remember) about it now than i was a week ago. a week ago i was in madison and after sarah left i was going around state street. i was going nuts thinking about him. i knew he was not a mile away. brighton would have killed me if i went to see him, or talked to him at all (can you believe i haven't said a word to him in all this time?) so i didn't go to see him, don't worry. instead i walked around nearly crying for a couple of hours. when i got back into my car i had a nice sob-fest for about half an hour. then i had to get a drink at cap centre and my eyes were all red.

so anyway, being the psycho that i am, i drove myself over to the social sciences building. i just drove by, and said, "i love you tom" to the air. then drove off crying my eyes out and trying not to hit students.

i kind of drove off in a fog, and wasn't paying attention to most of what was going on. i've driven that route so many times that i was sort of on auto-pilot. some time maybe an hour and a half later i'm driving along merrily and look up at a sign in front of me. The sign is one of those overhead ones and says something about Tomah. However, there was a giant semi in front of me blocking part of it, and thus, I looked up and saw a giant sign that says "Tom." This brought out a fresh sob-fest.

a couple days ago i was googling him, for no real reason. i decided to type in his full name. i just did it again so i could report accurately. here is the very first item that came up: "I295414: Elizabeth ( - )" ...no joke. i type in his name and my name comes up. that was sort of depressing.

anyway, those two things were what i felt i had to share. the road sign and the googling. that should be a movie. "the googling." although it would bother me because it has an ing word.

as i said, i am nowhere near as pathetic as i was last week. i was so depressed at the thought of coming back here, and that i couldn't see him, etc. today my big item of thought was, however, if he ever wonders about me. i mean, he knows i loved him dearly and still do, and we were really close. for a while i was thinking about what to write in this entry and i thought i would write out his name so that when he googled himself he'd see this. because i know he googles himself. we did it one time at work. but again, brighton would probably have killed me. and i don't think tom would really appreciate it either.

it's just really sad, the whole thing is. i felt back then and still do that i can't really fathom how the universe works having me without him. it sounds really stupid but that is how i feel. it is torture to be away from him. i actually almost was physically nourished by being around him, like he was a source of energy or something. i used to think that he was absolutely perfect for me except that he liked japanese food and i didn't really. now, i think, if i end up with a guy who is half of what he is, i'll be ok...i don't think i'll ever find his equal, but i've resigned myself to that. who knows, maybe i'll be proven wrong. but at this point, that's what is in my mind.

anyway, i've been thinking lately, i'm a cool girl. i think i am pretty smart. and i like basketball and sci-fi, and i'm a geek. what kind of guy wouldn't like me? i guess a guy like tom. well, brighton said she thinks he had feelings for me and just got sort of scared, and thought that when he saw how i felt, he thought that it would be best to break it off cleanly. i think it couldhave gone better because we had a really painful "breakup" if you can call it that. as i said, if only i could still talk to him i'd be so infinitely better. but i guess he thought that would be a bad idea.

on a totally different subject, i watched the second "episode" of battlestar galactica tonight and it was excellent. i say that in quotes because it was a four-hour miniseries when it started. i used to dislike the series because i thought it was too hard-core for me, but honestly, all i needed to do was see this first miniseries thing. it was so good. can i do a synopsis? ok.

there is this civilization of people who live on a series of planets called the 12 colonies of cobol, in some remote galaxy. at some point in their history they create a bunch of robots. the robots then rebel and go away, and aren't heard from for 40 years. suddenly they come back and engage an attack on the series of human planets. the destroy absolutely everything and only 50,000 humans manage to escape (originally i'm sure they had billions or trillions or more). they go into deep space and for the moment are safe.

the coolest part is this. as they are sitting in deep space the commander of the galactica (the remaining ship) tells them what they're going to do. apparently there is a legend among them that there was a 13th colony which broke off a long time ago. the colony went to a place called earth. the commander says he knows where earth is and that they are going there to start their new life.

is that not cool? the idea that we actually came from some place insanely far away and that there are people just like us that we're akin to?

on stargate they have a really complicated theory about life on earth. but one thing i can explain quickly is that the pyramids are supposed to be remnants of an alien enemy ship. these aliens in particular pose as gods (there is ra, anubis, hathor, isis, etc). their ships have huge pyramids on them. and they have sarcophagus-es (sarcophagi?) once you learn the stargate mythology it's actually really interesting. i can't imagine how they originally came up with it.

and also, the whole spin-off show, stargate atlantis, is based off of the lost city of atlantis myth. they found atlantis in a different galaxy. originally it was all under water and when they got there it rose to the surface (hence the pilot, "atlantis rising").

well, time for a little reading. ciao.

developments at the workplace

i'm home for lunch right now, so i don't have that much time. today when i was sitting at work i overheard dan say that he was fired this morning! (given a 30 day notice). i was shocked. this will be interesting to see what goes on from now on regarding him. more later. i don't think i'll feel comfortable writing about it at work, but i will say something about it later. i am not too surprised, actually, because i knew people were dissatisfied with him. but i was surprised that they actually fired him. i also have to mention ipod guy's work "ethic" (for lack of a better word).

wow

emily, i agree that there have been problems with picture uploading lately. but wow, i was able to get these up the first time.

today i watched red eye, with cillian murphy, of 28 days later. i was mesmerized by his eyes. take a look.



gorgeous! they are practically white.


















and here is part of death cab. i love how they just cut off two of them. hey, if it isn't ben or chris, it's nobody. anyway, i felt i should put in a picture of my beloved.

rufus wainwright

who among you guys knew that rufus wainwright is very gay? i'm watching the logo network right now, which is a lesbian/gay channel. i'm watching it because heavenly creatures is on, which i wanted to see. it's pretty good so far. anyway, there was a commercial with rufus wainwright on it and he was very gay. i had no earthly clue about that. well, back to the movie.

sarah: no, i am not icelandic. half swedish, half british/irish/other.

i no longer want to write about last weekend

i knew this would happen! well, i'll try. i'll write about recent shopping experiences. i was thinking today that i'm really lucky to have the income that i do. after living for a few years with a much more limited income, because i only worked part time and for half the wage, it's continuing to surprise me when i find out that i can basically buy what i want. so i do.

i went to some stores in madison on monday. sarah and i went to little luxuries and they had a lot of different stuff there (to be expected, i guess, after not having been there for 8 months or whatever it's been). i did not buy anything there.

then i went to soap opera, pop deluxe (didn't buy anything there but was tempted to get maps of london), and the bookstore. my favorite was the bookstore. it has a lot of different stuff. and you can tell it's the off-season. they had a crod-load of bags there, and of course i had to buy one. i held off from buying more than one, but i got one, which is a big-ish purse, in spring colors, and it was $11. the other bags i liked were messenger bags and were more expensive. i also got a lanyard ID holder for my entry card for work, a candle, and possibly something else that i don't remember at the moment.

i went to the basement to look at the books and was highly amused at what i was doing. i immediately went to the fiction and was poring over everything that i would have hated to read back in the day. i bought 5 or 6 books (you have to buy them at that price). among them: war and peace, don quixote, shirley (charlotte bronte), moll flanders, and the kalevala (a famous finnish saga, which was an "impulse" purchase). at the checkout line the guy was commenting on how it was really heavy reading and was i going to read them all tonight? ha, ha.

at soap opera i got the aforementioned biotin hair conditioner and peach face lotion. they were overly helpful there and i felt really weird. while i was there a photographer took some pictures of ducks they had in the window and came in to interview the owner.

this afternoon laura, michael, and i went to lunch at "red robin" which was actually very good. i enjoyed it a lot. i'd never been there. then we went to see v for vendetta. i thought it was really good. one problem, though: there was a love story involved which just seemed stupid at points. also, at points it was a little gory. but otherwise, very enjoyable. i was surprised to learn the other day that it takes place only 15 years in the future. i absolutely love stories that have to do with weird future storylines. like 1984 (which was actually a little too political theory for me) and brazil, &c.

anyway, after that i went to best buy and got a few things. i got a wireless "desktop"--i hate that they call it that. it's actually a keyboard and mouse combination. bu it's called a "desktop." i wanted to get one tonight, so i didn't have that many choices (normally i would have looked online, but oh well). to my chagrin, most of the ones they had had slightly different key configurations. i am very particular about this, especially when it comes to the arrows and the home/end/page down/page up/insert/delete section. i use both of those sets constantly. it would be ok if this was the only keyboard i used, but i have one at work as well and it would be annoying for me if i had to switch between two configurations. so finally i got one that i'm pretty happy with. the mouse is cool and has rubber "fish scales" on the side (as if it would slide out of my hand). i got this because i'm looking to switch my living room setup again. i just need to figure out the best way to have stuff to work on the website and to watch shows and stuff. i hate sitting at the computer to watch television. very uncomfortable.

at best buy i also got a usb hub, arcade fire's first album, and "ba ba ti ki di do" by sigur ros. i'm so looking forward to seeing sigur ros lately. which brings me to my next subject.

on the way home from madison i was listening to sigur ros, and was VERY impressed with myself, as i realized that i understood quite a few of the lyrics. when did this happen? there was a whole section in starálfur where i could make out entire sentences. go me!!! :) i keep meaning to restart my icelandic course. but i think i'll try to ride out this wave of constant reading i've been doing. reading isn't hurting anything.

which brings me to the next subject. after jane eyre i read wuthering heights, which was ok. it was strange. i didn't find it too depressing. then i must have started the one i'm on now. i'm on bleak house by charles dickens. i've been reading it forever and i'm not even half done. wow, is it difficult. and it's not even that it's boring. it just takes longer to get through a page. and it's all in law-speak, because it's about the chancery. i love it though, because a lot of it takes place in london. and it's really funny. i have a bunch of passages marked which i will put here maybe.

the ride home from madison was freaking LONG. it took 4.5 hours. christ. i thought i would be driving forever. later. i am sick of writing.

what i did tonight

this is what i got done tonight: washed dishes, cleaned half the living room, and worked on the damn chair for two and a half hours. i am so sick of it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! let me tell you though, i'm taking a picture of it, maybe more than one, when i'm done. i got a disposable camera a few weeks ago which i used to take pictures at work of my cube, which i no longer inhabit. my new cube is ok. it will take some getting used to. some things are better about it. i think it is very slightly bigger. i sit on the end now, next to dan and right next to the director's office. i am sad because in a few days dan is moving shifts and will no longer stay late like me. i enjoy his company in the evenings. he is a character. today we discussed really long town names. the longest town name in the world is in new zealand. well...now i'll only have ipod guy for company in the evenings. but hey. NO MORE LOUD MUSIC!!!!!!!!!!!!! WAHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! dan listens to the radio but it's sports radio. i have to sit closer to another annoying lady but she is only sparsely annoying. yay!!!

 

laura, remember the shoddily attached railing? hahaha. what a crappy place.

 

i think that if i eventually get married i would really enjoy it if my husband looked like ben gibbard. i just think he is wonderful looking. i always feel so happy when i see people who look like him. and that puts aside everything else about ben himself: gorgeous voice, wonderful songwriter, etc. guys are so cute. i could never be a lesbian.

sorry

i am sorry i haven't updated with the weekend's hijinks yet. i won't tonight, either. emily: yes, the concert was good. it was excellent.

 

i can't remember if i mentioned that i am collaging this chair and it's taking for-fucking-ever. i've been working on it every night for at least two weeks, for the whole night, and i am still not done. tonight i'm cleaning my apartment. you should really see the state it's in. come to think of it, you shouldn't. it has gone beyond messy. far beyond. since i started the chair project it's degraded into filth. maybe not "filth," that's a bad word, but extreme disorganization. it's funny because at work my cubicle is always, always extremely tidy. i even dust it probably once a week. but at home, my god. it's like, if nobody sees it, it's a free-for all. part of the problem is that i have zero free time to devote to actual cleaning or tidying, and i figure if it's just me, why bother? and with the aforementioned chair project there are more instances to have a boatload of crap not to clean up. then i left for the weekend and came back with some extra crap as well as crap that needs to be unpacked. then i went to target yesterday and returned with more crap, some of which was groceries, and a lot of times if the groceries are not refirgerated or frozen, i leave them in the bag for the time being. that is so sad.

 

does anyone remember the old days at the apartment (the 4-person one) when i would have a giant pile in my room consisting of everything? not a clothes pile or a papers pile--both clothes and papers, and also anything else that landed there. then i would clean when i had some free time. i'm remembering that now and smiling at how utterly tiny my room was.

 

i think that the current state of my apartment is enough to make me keep clean from now on. it reached that point this morning when i found a lone sock in the kitchen, as well as last night when i took a bath and there were two pieces of magazine scraps that ended up in the water. now that was kind of funny.

 

i am moving cubes in a few minutes. i wanted to move my filing cabinet (which is only 2 drawers high) so i asked if i could move it. my manager said sure and asked dan if he could help. poor dan picked up the thing and it slit this big cut across his hand. he picked up the entire thing and lugged it over by himself. i couldn't believe it. (he is a pretty big guy, very tall, etc).

moisturize me! moisturize me!

so last week they started showing dr. who on sci-fi. besides being chris' favorite show back in the day (chris m...don't want to say his whole name on here) it is a hilarious show! there was an article about it in wisconsin state journal the other day. it was great.

the one i saw last week had them going 5 billion years into the future, to the day that the earth exploded from sun "expansion" (british term, apparently...seems to me the sun sort of exploded as well). they had the "last human" on a spaceship orbiting earth. she had had so many surgeries that she was just a flat piece of skin sort of sewn onto a metal frame. she had eyes and lips. and she got so dry all the time that she'd cry out, "moisturize me! moisturize me!" to two guys who stood by with spray cans of water. classic.

so lately i've been extremely dry all over the place. run-down of extremely dry areas: scalp, forehead, nostrils, lips, throat, arms, hands, and shins. i think that i need to bring my humidifier here next time i go back home. my shins are the worst. they itch so badly. next worse is my scalp. so i'd like to describe now what i've been going through to get my scalp and the rest of me to feel better.

for my scalp i at first got this conditioning mask that i mentioned before. it worked ok at first and then quit working. then on sunday i got this biotin "gel" in madison. it's incredible. it's kind of minty or something so it makes your scalp all tingly for a long time, like 4 hours after you use it. however, i wanted to have some kind of leave-in conditioner as well, but for the scalp. wouldn't you think something like that exists? christ. there are leave-ins ahoy, but they're liquid, and for hair. so i found some hair "lotions" that were lesser-known brands and they were really weird and i was wondering why these weren't made by, for instance, infusium or pantene or whatever. finally i found this scalp conditioner that is a very firm gel consistency. it smells very strongly of some kind of perfume. it is called "light hair and scalp conditioner" and it's leave in. this is hilarious to me, since i just put some on and it is SO thick. there's no way it's light, and also, i would never be able to put it in while also trying to have a regular hairstyle because it is so stiff. it's funny. i will use it overnight and see what things are like tomorrow. i also got some scalp shampoo and conditioner and i hope that will finally be ok because i don't know what else to try. it's really beginning to bother me.

i also bought this face lotion at soap opera which smells so good. i'm so weirded out at my skin right now because it's so sensitive but i have to put lotion on it because it's so dry. it's the opposite in the summer. it's weird. if i put lotion or anything on in the summer it's disgusting. but right now it's wonderful.

and then i have 3 different lotions for my arms and legs. 2 are medicated and one of those has menthol so it's all minty like the hair stuff from madison. if i get either of those in my mouth it all goes numb, because the medicated part is a numbing agent to lessen itching.

i also put vaseline inside my nostrils (pleasant, huh?). i have done that since a child because i used to get nosebleeds all the time.

so that's my little routine i have to do to moisturize myself! moisturize myself! isn't it ridiculous? i wonder if i drank more water if it would help. probably. i just thought i would share. i thought the hair stuff was especially funny. i'm glad it wasn't too expensive because the perfume is making me kind of sick.

hijinks at the office

this evening our server went down and so i was over talking to a couple of coworkers. we were discussing how crappy our servers are and i said, "i have a website and the server is basically never down." dumb idea because then they had to look at it. i said no at first because previously we had had a conversation about coldplay, and dan obviously doesn't like them. and i said to dan, "i will warn you now not to say anything bad about them." then he got scared and said, "there are not many times i bite my tongue, but i will do it now, because i'm scared of elizabeth." so he looked at it (just the front page, though) and said it was really good. thanks, dan! he showed us some other websites from coworkers "to illustrate that mine is way better." ok! i told him it was basically the reason i have a job, since i have an english degree. it was weird though, since i always feel like i'm bragging when i show it to people. i don't like showing it to people for some reason. probably because it feels like i'm bragging a ton, because it is probably one of the things i'm most proud of in my life. it seems like such a dorky thing, or something. especially because it's so massive. and especially i felt weird showing it to him because a) he doesn't like them, b) it was just a weird, weird moment, c) whatever. get over it, liz. i'm annoyed at myself at the moment.

 

the 5 year anniversary of my website was yesterday. and almost a million people have visited. not bad, huh. i'll have to attempt to remember to get a screen shot of a million. i need to do so much work on that thing. i also need to work on it without complaining about it so much. i wanted to rewrite the scripts, but i don't think there's any possible way that will happen in the near future, unfortunately. i just have no time whatsoever. other things are quickly becoming higher priorities.

Ipod guy problem solved

Well, problem solved...I am moving cubicles. This makes me very sad because I love my cubicle and now I'll be in a high-traffic area (meaning less opportunity to look at news, email, etc). Oh well...I should try to look at the bright side and know that I won't have to hear his crap anymore. I am so glad about that. I was hoping eventually he would be moved but oh well.

Being a fan

Sarah was talking about this girl she encountered on her bus from Chicago who said she was Coldplay's #1 fan. That put me on a track of thinking about what a fan is and what would constitute an actual #1 fan.

I will use Coldplay as an example, since I obviously know Coldplay fandom pretty well, and I'd like to say up front that, in case you wonder, I don't consider myself their #1 fan.

I think it's probably really variable. I also think there are a lot of different classes of fans. Such as casual ones, ones who can pay $8 billion to fly all over and see concerts, ones who love Chris Martin, ones who are helped emotionally by their songs, etc.

I was thinking about what class I would consider myself in. It was hard to come up with something. I think I sort of consider myself, or rather my life and existence, "interchangeable" (for lack of a better word) with the band. Part of this is that my "relationship" with them (it is so hard to describe this in words) is way beyond liking songs, being affected by them, or even appreciating things they say and do. It's like a very strong love, in some ways. It's very difficult to explain. The best I can do is to say that I consider us the same entity. That sounds really weird. I don't consider myself part of the band or anything weird like that. But tell me this: when you hear anything about them, who do you think of?

Also, I don't know if anyone else has this happen to them but sometimes when I look in the mirror I get this weird feeling like "who is this person" and it's a really weird out-of-body experience for a second. I've had that all my life. The same thing happens anytime I'm seeing Coldplay. Especially recently. It freaks me out to see them at times. And I am always very nervous and critical in a way of them, like I would be for myself.

It's all very strange because I've had no personal contact with them as people. Yet, it happened. It's weirder for me than it sounds, let me tell you. But hey, what can I say?

An online friend of mine once speculated that songs had "souls" of sorts, in the way that you could feel very connected to them and even feel they are kindred spirits. That's the way I feel about "The Scientist." The way I react to that song cannot be expressed in words. Of course, what you see is crying, but what is in my mind is a strange, ethereal thing that can only be expressed outwardly by crying. A very, very strong and intense bolt of energy. All I can really try to say is that instantly, when I heard the first note the first time, I died or something. It was weird. And it happens every time. It has nothing to do with the words particularly, or anything about the background info of the song. It just is what it is, and I think that what my online friend Fiona (not Apple) said is an interesting view on it.

So that is the type of "fan" I am. It was largely uncontrollable by me, from the very first moment they appeared to me to this instant right now. In fact, the first instant I heard of them was a lot like when I first heard "The Scientist"--an incredible bolt of energy that I couldn't ignore. And they still give me energy that has fueled so much of what I've done, and comfort, and love, and everything good a person can imagine.

just a reminder

just a reminder to myself that i have a lot to write about in here. i didn't do it tonight because i was collaging my chair. it's taking forEVER. but it's going to be very cool once finished.

later. you will see many many many entries from the past 5 days later on.

American Idol Magazine

I was forced to buy American Idol magazine today because Constantine is on the cover.

I am writing about this partially because last weekend Laura was asking me what TV magazines are like, because I got the Stargate yearbook issue, and then proceeded to subscribe to it (that one is 6 issues a year).

The American Idol magazine (at least the issue I got) is like this: an article on Constantine, an article on Carrie Underwood, small bios on the top 40-something contestants, and a scoring sheet for every single show. That's right, every one. There are literally like 20 pages of scoring sheets. It's ridiculous.

There is also a list of all past top 10/12s. I smiled at this, because during one of our recent conversations, Sarah and I spent about half an hour just naming as many American Idol contestants as we could remember. That was funny.

The Stargate magazine, in case anyone else wonders about TV magazines, is very official, as is the AI one. Since it is a yearbook issue, they had a bit more stuff. There is a complete episode guide and interviews from all the cast members. They are actually all very sweet interviews. They made me happy. There is an "Inside The Odyssey" (one of the ships on the show) two-page spread. This is in fact a blueprint drawing with various labels here and there (not quite "inside" IMO). There is an interview with the stunt coordinator and one of the executive producers.

Conan is funny tonight. 4 days until CP! Good-bye.

Things insanity has brought to my mind

Ways to destroy the ipod which is destroying my mind and well-being:

 

- remove the batteries when he is gone (that's not permanent, though)

- accidentally drop an anvil on it

- immerse it in a cauldron of water

- hook up the batteries to a strong electrical current while they are still inside the ipod

- expose the ipod to an intense heat, cold, or pressure

- smash it on the ground

- cut the wire of the headphones

- fill the headphone jack with hot glue, putty, or some other form of hardening substance

- program a virus and download it to the ipod

- turn the volume all the way down and then break the volume dial

- open up the ipod and pass an electro-magnetic or static charge over it

- set it on fire

- cut it in half with a hatchet

- bake it into a pie and then throw that pie into ipod guy's face

- fashion it into a C4 explosive and adhere it to an enemy ship, set it for 5 minutes, and get the hell out of there!

- hide it

- jam a screwdriver into it

- pitch it into the air and hit it with a baton

- drop it off of a tall building

- place it under the foot of a giant

 

Daniel

I will explain these here pictures. I saw a photo of Daniel that looked really fake. I thought it looked like a doll. So I made it into a doll (a semi-x-rated one). I posted it on the message board I used to go to. Now that I'm looking at it again it looks kind of crappy. Oh, well.




















This is the actual Daniel Jackson action figure which is coming out in a few weeks, I believe. His face looks weird.

GINORMOUS snowstorm

So the big news today in the Twin Cities Metro Area is the ginormous snowstorm we had last night. Michael is lucky because his car gets to be parked in a garage. Me? Nope. So here is my story of the snowstorm so far.

 

Yesterday it was supposed to thunderstorm during the day, so I had my blinds open the whole day in anticipation. Finally I closed them, because nothing was happening. A little while later it started to rain and then there was a single small thunderclap (how often does one use that word?). Blah blah blah, a few hours later I looked out and there was a dusting of snow on the ground. It was around maybe 8:00 or so. Then I watched all my shows and read for a while. Around 1 I looked outside and it was raining, but there was no more snow.

 

So this morning I looked outside when I woke up and lo, there was like a million inches of snow and it was still going strong. So, ultimately there was like a half inch of snow, then a bunch of ice, then like 8 more inches of snow, or something. I don't quite know how much there eventually was but it was prob. 8-12 inches.

 

When I went outside I was not prepared. The door didn't open all the way because there was a drift behind it, and immediately upon venturing outside I got a massive blast of wind and snow in my face. Thanks, mother nature! I then had to clomp down the stairs which hadn't been shoveled, and over to my car which was a million miles away because the parking lot was completely full when I came back on Saturday. Even my secondary back spots had been full so I had to park way up in front by the street.

 

Anyway, I clomped through and finally got to my car, or what I thought was my car. They were all giant white mounds. I went to the door and was trying to find the lock but the door was all covered with ice. So I scraped some off and was like, what the hell? There is no lock! I scraped more away until finally I discovered the handle was different as well, and in fact, it wasn't my car at all. I am a tool. Now some person is going to get in their car and wonder why it's partially scraped and there are footprints all around it. So I went one over and there was my car. The lock was frozen, of course. When I finally got it open it took 15-20 minutes to get all the crap off of it. That's one thing I don't like about winter--getting snow and ice off of the car. I think next winter I'll get a garage spot. And not only did it have 180,000 inches piled on top of it, but also there were drifts on the ground so that my feet and legs got completely soaked. Yay!

 

Finally I was able to drive the 60 seconds to work, which was also interesting since in inclement weather your brakes and steering basically don't work at all. Then I tramped in here and here I am. I'd say about 75% of people stayed home today.

 

Does anyone else ever wonder why we are allowed to drive gigantic pieces of machinery in weather like this? I mean, I was going like 15 on Energy Park Drive and as I went to turn in to work, I braked, and the car just didn't stop. And any time you try to turn, you turn like 75 degrees more than you had intended. Ugh.

 

Later I'll write an account of amusing and sad things that Ipod guy has been saying about Photoshop. I think you guys will like this. Haha!

 

I am going to Sandy's bridal shower on Saturday. They didn't list a registry. What am I supposed to get them? It's not like they don't have basically everything.

Slings & Arrows, Subterranean

I am listening to a song I really like right now on Subterranean. Who is it by? It will be a surprise. I missed the beginning imprint. Aha. The Elected. Never heard of them, but I liked it.

There is this show on Sundance channel called Slings & Arrows. I believe it's in the second season right now. I just started watching it maybe a month ago (the season premiere). It is really good. 1) Mark McKinney is in it. 2) I really enjoy the main guy. I don't know his name at the moment. 3) Today there was a guest star: none other than Gilbert Blythe! (Don't remember his real name either).

Emily, I'd recommend the show to you, but I'm remembering a time when we were trying to get a video and I was looking at one that said "Sundance" on the top, and there was some joke about you looking at the Sundance thing and going, "no way!" So, you can judge as you will. It's a funny show. It's Canadian (hence Mark and Gilbert) and it's about a theater company. I have a feeling you'd really like the main guy as well.

Coldplay in a WEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And DCFC in about a month!

And, NEW! Laura and I get to see Sigur Rós!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! On May 8! And guess what!!! 4th row center!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't even begin to imagine what that's going to be like.

Bit Torrent

I would like to make a commentary about torrent files and general downloading of files.

I like it.

However, I have been experiencing some trouble with the files downloaded. Emily, do you ever have trouble with files? I FINALLY got the DCFC Austin City Limits, and went to play it and couldn't. I found that I might have to get a codec. I took it to Laura and Michael's, and it worked fine on Michael's computer without doing anything! That was frustrating for me.

I downloaded 3 torrents of Battlestar Galactica. One was an AVI file which turned out just to be audio (at least on my computer). One was another MP4 file (like the Death Cab one) so wouldn't play. One was a bunch of AVI files that just wouldn't play. Were they all corrupt? Do I need something for my computer? I noticed later on that some of them were XVid encoded so that could be something. I thought I had XVid for my DVR, though. I tried the DVR program and it just sort of hung up, but it's a crappy program anyway.

So far the SG-1s I've downloaded are good. However, I'm pissed because I've been trying to burn them to DVD and the programs I have are boiling cauldrons of crap. For one thing, the DVD+Rs I got, which are, I'm assuming, normal, are 4.7GB and they hold up to 4 hours in EP mode. I figured, hey. 4 episodes, because they're about 45 minutes each. However, the program that came with my DVR will not record to it. The options I have are 2 hour DVD and 1 hour DVD. So I just picked 2 and went to record and it went all the way through and did nothing. It did the whole entire process, which takes forever, and the DVD has nothing on it. I tried twice.

So then I tried the program that came with my computer. Already crap, because you can't edit the video, which I need to do for my DVR-recorded programs, to get the commercials out. At least this one will let you record in EP mode, so you can get more crap on (for some reason it only let me put 3 episodes on though). Data and how it corresponds to time is weird. I don't understand it. Is the program degrading the quality of the video so it fits? How much?

I finally thought to myself that I need Adobe Premiere. Where would I get this priceless program that is really hard to use? Aha, download it!!! So now, I'm doing a highly illegal process without much firewall protection (which I will explain in a minute). This is also how I got Photoshop and Flash back in the day.

I got McAfee anti-virus when I ordered the computer and I HATED it. The subscription just ran out (what kind of subscription lasts for like 3 months?). I was getting extremely annoyed because it popped up a warning literally every 10 minutes saying it was expired, blah blah blah. And the choices are: Renew or Continue what I was doing. No options for Cancel, remind me in 2,000 days, fuck off, etc. Just Renew or Continue what I was doing. So finally I just uninstalled it, and now I have no anti-virus. I do have the Windows firewall on. That makes me feel better (HA). What makes me the most uneasy is that the computer was having trouble with the router, so I have it directly plugged in to the modem, with a cable. No third party. :/ I found some spyware yesterday and was shocked. A cleanup is in order.

I am generally a proponent of software downloading, I think. Adobe makes a lot of money by licensing the products to companies and schools, etc. I'd like to see what percentage of their profit is made by individuals paying $600 for a single copy of Photoshop. Premiere is probably the same way. That program is very difficult, but from what I've seen it at least does what it's supposed to do. There is no way a person like me can pay for these programs, but we a lot of times need them. Photoshop is, at least, something I literally need. For survival. I will die if I don't have it. So I thank the gods that we have a way to get it, illegally. I get that we're "ripping people off," but I'd argue that most people aren't going to download this stuff. Is the average Joe going to download Adobe Photoshop or Premiere or Macromedia Flash? No. I don't know. I can't explain it but I've always felt it was sort of ok in a way, in the big picture.

The DVD program that came with my DVR is so bad. Why did they even think it was distributable? The worst thing about it is that you have to choose a "theme" for your menus. And they are all bad. Mostly you can pick a different picture, but the buttons you have to choose are horrible. Further, I've noticed that if you at all change the timeline of the project, it freaks out. I had 4 SG-1 episodes in a project recently and noticed as I was setting up the menu that they were out of order. So I went back into the timeline and fixed it. Not only did it not refresh the chapter menu (who knows what it would have done on the actual DVD if you had tried to skip/search chapters), but it actually cut off a whole bunch of all of the episodes, and replaced an entire episode with another one. So all of the episodes started in the middle of the beginning credits, and two of them were the same episode. Huh?????? What a piece of crap.

For good measure, here's a pic of Daniel. Sarah, like it? He looks like your type in this one. It's from an episode called "2010" which portrays the team as they might be in 2010. Mrowr!

SHIT!

Ok...I'm going to make a statement here. I just watched the season finale of Stargate SG-1. And ok, it's my favorite show, I love sci-fi, etc etc. But all that aside, my statement is: That was the single best hour of television I have ever watched. Ever. That is all.

Forgot

I forgot to mention that they spoke French interchangeably with Russian in AK. They also spoke English and German. Wow.

 

Stargate's season finale is tonight. :( :( :( :(

 

What else was I going to say? There were 3 things. Whatever

Books

I just finished reading Jane Eyre and thought I'd write a little about the last couple of books I've read.
And now, the verdict...will I agree with Emily or Sarah?...........................................................Emily! I LOVED it. There was a time around 1/4 of the way through when I was like, "I cannot see where this book is going and it's really starting to bore me." But then after that I was enthralled. What a good story. There are not many times I've actually had physically viewable reactions to reading, meaning that I'd jump up or laugh or gasp or say "holy shit" or something. I really enjoyed the language in that book. That said, some of the dialogues were way too long and over my head, but besides that, I loved the language. Not much more to say to that, really. I did not cry at it, but I did tear up once or twice. It's funny because I watched a movie of this book a while back and I don't remember it at all. Well, I guess I did have some more to say about it.

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE #)(@$&)(#*&$ IPOD HAS BEEN TURNED ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHIT!!!!
 

Before that I read Anna Karenina. It was 800 pages long and took forever (ok, maybe like 10 days). The reason I wanted to read that book is because someone mentioned to me at some point that it was the most depressing book ever written. I also had some vague idea of the plot from that same person. I thought knew that she (Anna) had a child who died, and a husband who died, or something. So anyway, I got the book and was immediately distressed to learn that it was an Oprah Book Club book. What the hell? I still got it anyway, but did not buy the Oprah edition as that was $10+ more than the Barnes and Noble one.

 

Anyway, it was totally and completely different than I expected, from beginning to end. If you don't want to know what happens, don't read this, because I'll probably say something about what happens. Anna is only talked about in maybe half of the book. The nature of her story is that she is married to someone she doesn't like and eventually runs away with this other guy. At the very beginning of the book you are introduced to the "other guy" and are made to hate him. I think that was a bad idea. Because you hate this guy throughout the entire thing and I get the impression that at a certain point he is supposed to be kind of a good guy. So that was annoying.

 

Generally a lot of the characters weren't all that likable to me. They did a lot of idiotic things and had strange and weird personalities. I guess that probably makes them more true-to-life. Whatever. A lot of them had -sky names, which I heard one time meant they were Russian Jews. I have no idea if that was true for this book, though, because they didn't really talk about what their church-going experience was like or anything, or if they went to synagogues instead of cathedrals, and whatnot. A lot of them didn't go to church at all or believe in God.

 

Another reason I sometimes disliked the book was that there was a great deal of politial talk in it. If I actually understood, I might have liked that stuff better. But I really know nothing about Russian political history (maybe that would be better suited for Emily), so I skipped over a lot of that. Probably isn't a good idea to get my first taste of Russian politics in the midst of a comparatively difficult nineteenth-century novel.

 

One thing that was interesting was that a lot of the story centered around children and childbearing. Maybe that's why it was picked for an Oprah book. Anyway, everyone viewed pregnancy as very ugly and demeaning. The women hated being pregnant and considered themselves hateful while they were.  I thought that was so interesting. They also were confined to bed for a large part of the nine months (the last three, maybe?), and for all of the nine months weren't allowed to really do anything, including move excessively around a room or get excited.

 

I read that it's supposed to show the contrast between a good relationship and a bad. There are two main plot lines, and one is supposed to be good, the other bad. That was weird because Anna's was the bad one and she ended up throwing herself in front of a train to kill herself. Maybe that was the "depressing" part.

 

What really was distasteful to me is that the last chunk is about the guy from the non-Anna plot line and how he "gets religion." The book ends with him accepting God, or some shit, in this big soliloquy. I was like, this is just ridiculous. It just seemed at that point like the entire book was a big convoluted sermon, which, ok, maybe was cool at the time, but is really weird now.

 

Honestly, the book wasn't all that depressing. Sure, it wasn't the happiest thing I've ever read but I am sure there are sadder books out there. For Christ's sake, this book even has a happy ending!

 

Well, I haven't painted a pretty picture of anna Karenina, mostly because it was so different than I expected. It was interesting, and at points it was good and made me tear up as well. But generally, I guess not one of my favorites ever, unfortunately. Which is sad to me, because I really wanted to like it.

 

I have been noticing that my English scholarship is doing me well with the reading I've been doing. Even if I don't delve as deeply into analysis, it's very simple for me to understand at a comprehensible level any book I pick up, which is nice. I happened upon a website today that had some forums on literature and I looked at the Jane Eyre one, and it was filled with people who didn't understand the book, which was interesting to me. I can see how some of the vocab would be weird, since there were a lot of now-unused words. But I understood it perfectly. It's like Shakespeare...you just get in your head a mindset, or technique, on how to read things, especially certain types of things. I wouldn't read Shakespeare the same way as Da Vinci Code, for instance. Well, whatever, I have tired of typing. I'm leaving a half hour early today because if I have to listen to that asshole's music for one extra minute, I might explode and implode at the same moment.

energy

I have a great deal of energy running around in me right now. I feel like I should run around the building or something. My arms are even shaking a little. Waaahaaaaaa!

 

Christ. Christ!!! Ipod guy was gone all day today and then for whatever reason, came back. Now he's pounding his finger on his mouse and it's driving me fucking nuts! Do you guys have any earthly idea how much I hate him? I honestly don't think I have ever detested a human being so much in my entire life. Everything he does makes me want to thrust a sword into him. I mean, please. You don't need to fucking pound your hand into the mouse. Just touch the button. It's so quiet in here and it's all I can hear! And he is always doing this drumming noise on the desk! And I fear he will soon turn on the music! I don't know about you guys, but I am very sensitive to noise. And if one annoys me, it REALLY annoys me.

 

It was so nice before he came back! Only me and Dan were here and it was silent! This pounding. It's like...each pound squishes in a part of my brain, and soon my brain will be compressed into a tiny, worthless pellet.

 

God, I entreat you now. If you have any sense of compassion, let him not turn on his music.

"omg"

you have to look at this:

 

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/IPod_yocto

 

and look at other stuff on the site, and other "apple technology" which is linked at the bottom of that page. it's friggin' hilarious.

various things

as a reply to emily: no, it's not because i'm particularly good at it...i don't think i am. for one thing, i cannot say "merrill shop, this is elizabeth" for the life of me. i just can't say it. and, i have to ask questions a lot. but anyway, it's because dan is going to the regular shift, leaving me the only person doing it at night. why can't ipod guy, you ask? because he has the day hotline time. only 3 people have daytime hotline at this point, because of circumstances i don't feel like discussing at the moment. my manager said that if she put ipod guy on nighttime hotline, the remaining two would probably quit, because doing that from 11-5 every other week would kill you. nighttime isn't bad, it's 5-7 and hardly anyone calls. but still it sucks, considering it will be really difficult to, let's say, go to the bathroom. you can't leave your desk when you're on unless you get someone to watch it, and we all know how good i.g. is at that. tonight he left at 6:30, tomorrow he's leaving at 5. wtf?!

 

anyway, enough of that. i just warily looked at my checking account and was shocked at how much i have. it's not an incredible amount, but it's more than i've ever had at one time in my life.

 

segue-ing from that, today's weather was a lot like london's and it made me really sad, because i wanted to be there. it was painful to think about. this morning as i was walking to my car and into work i decided that in my life i'm going to live there. at that moment and now, still, it's more important than any other lifetime event to me. getting married, having kids, updating my damn website...i honestly could live without all of that, as long as i can live there. but, that's me talking right now and of course that can change. but probably won't change that much.

 

there was a picture of this new species today in bbc news.

 

 

isn't that disgusting looking? it's a crustacean that lives near hot-water vents at the bottom of the ocean. i think it looks gross. mostly because it's "thorax" area looks like...a thorax. ok, so it's not an insect, but it damn well looks like one. apparntly it is blind and bacteria live in the "hair". relatedly, i remember learning that a lot of interesting and undiscovered species live at these depths near hydrothermal vents and also sulfur vents. we never discovered them before because, how the hell would we? it's at the bottom of the ocean in water temperatures well above boiling and containing toxic chemicals! we also learned that most of them are micro-organisms, esp. the ones in the sulfur vents. i just hope the bigger ones aren't as ugly-looking as this "crab" guy here. ewwww.

 

A few months from now...

crod

speaking of crod, i was just informed that i have to be on hotline every day now. :( :( :( :( :( why, god??? what have i done??? this is going to be a major problem if i ever want to leave early or want a day off. the only other person who's here until 7 is the aforementioned ipod asshole. and you know what? he frequently leaves at 5 or 6. for reasons unknown to me. so chances are he wouldn't be able to cover it.

Hotline

Various people have asked me what exactly hotline is about, so now I will answer those people, especially Sarah, since I totally forgot to talk about it the other day when she asked me.

 

Here at Merrill Shop we have a customer service department (actually it's in St. Cloud) where people take calls from real estate agents who are having trouble with our sites--with ordering problems, errors in the site, idiotic questions, etc. See the message below which appears on the Coldwell Banker site:

 

For Assistance Contact: Customer Service 1-800-844-7949 coldwellbankerams@merrillcorp.com

Those people are not us, they're typical customer service people. If those people can't answer the question they call this group called AMS (Advanced Marketing Services). I don't know why they're called that, because they don't do marketing. Oh well. AMS can answer more difficult questions that customer service can't do. And if AMS can't answer the question they call us. That means that usually it's a pretty decent problem, or it's a fix that we have to do because it's in a product or whatever, and not an agent being stupid.

 

We have this program (for lack of a better word) called AMS Directory which allows us to look at all order information and agent information. We can change different things in that, and create stuff, etc. We can also look up an agent and click a button called "impersonate" which allows us to "log in" as them and check the situation out.

 

Side note: Lately I've been having a really horrible time typing. It's like my hands have suddenly gotten dyslexia. I type all the right letters but they go in the wrong order, or I type something completely wrong. It's frustrating. Just now I typed "compeltly" for completely, and then I was trying to retype it and I wrote "sompletely"...wah! I have always prided myself on my typing and now it's all degraded. This is the reason I wrote all those extra "c"s last week.

 

Calls we get a lot:

 

- Credits not applying (typed "applinyg"). A lot of times agents get 50 free postcards or whatever, and they have to call us if the credit isn't applying for whatever reason. We have been getting a lot of those lately.

 

- Orders not going through properly. Sometimes something is wrong with the order and it causes one of the products to get a bad item number or other mysterious circumstances, and we have to investigate why the order has errored.

 

- Errors in sites. We get a lot of weird errors. For instance, if an agent has an invalid state in one of their properties, their photo library will error. Or, if they have extra spaces in their Zip Code, they'll get certain errors when they try to set up shipping. Here's one: if an agent doesn't have any counties applied to the office they're in (it's something we have to set up), then when they go to edit their personal titles (usually a text box where they can enter "Realtor" or whatever, they get this drop-down menu with two file paths in it. I've seen some incredibly weird errors that are seemingly unrelated to what's causing them. Like that county-title thing. I had one today. Who knows? You just have to almost use trial and error, or ask someone who has seen that error before. Sometimes the error is caused by the agent doing something idiotic. We always joke around here that if there's something that could possibly go wrong, an agent will do it. We had a call a while ago where an agent was entering a photo. Ok, let's see if I can get it up here. Here it is. Sorry if it doesn't come through correctly. I can't check it whilst at work.

 

 

Ok, see where it says Insert Image Here? Well, the Yard Sign goes on top of it. You may not know that right away, but you'd find out if you previewed it. Well, this agent inserted a yard sign image so that there was a yard sign on top of a yard sign, thusly (sorry it's crappy quality):

 

 

Anyway the agent called and was complaining that the ad was duplicating his picture or something. I don't know about you, but it would be fairly clear to me that the picture you enter goes behind the yard sign; therefore, don't pick a yard sign photo because it looks shitty. I don't know. That's just the type of thing we get at times.

 

-Sometimes we have to edit products, like if someone calls with a really long name and their name isn't fitting into the name spot, or something. So we have to extend the amount of characters allowed for the name in that product. Etc.

 

-We've been having a lot of calls lately about account problems. Like an agent can't log in, or he/she got switched to a different office magically, or something else in his/her account has been messed up somehow. A lot of times these things are mysterious in nature and involve either saying "I don't know how this happened" and changing it back, or sending it to our development dept. to have them fix it. Most of the time we can fix something but occasionally we have to get someone who has access to the actual database to delete or change some entry.

 

Today I answered three calls. One was a question about a user group. There are different groups agents are placed in depending on what privileges they're supposed to have. For instance, if they don't have a mailing permit, they can't order business reply cards, so there is usually a group for agents without permits, and if you're in that user group you can't view BRCs. I advised entering a work request because we needed to add a user group for a certain part of a store. The second call was for a selection of links that didn't work. I also advised a work request for that because I couldn't fix it and I thought it was a development issue, so they'll look at it tomorrow. The third one was an agent who had impossibly messed up one of her property profiles. I went in and fixed it (how she got it so messed up, I don't know) and all the errors she was getting were fixed.

 

So that's that...hope you enjoyed that incredibly long and boring thing. Now you know!!!

boring day

i swear this was the most boring day i have experienced in a while. i did nothing.

a little while ago on the oscars this woman was singing a song and there were people dancing lyrically in the background really slowly. it was really weird looking.

i'm downloading some stargate stuff and one of them says 1071 hours remaining. i hope it doesn't actually take that long. it's not really worth it.

laura, i found the death cab acl on a site somewhere but you had to pay $12 to register on the site and then you can download it. assholes.

i am so bored. i almost just want to go to sleep. it's not like i don't have anything to do, i just don't want to do anything.

i don't get the oscars right now. all night they have been showing montages of movies, not just from this year, from always. i can't tell why they're doing it. one of them was a film noir montage. ?! then they did a quasi-patriotic-type montage, now it's apparently a special effects one. whatever. i don't know why i'm watching this. at 10 i'm totally switching to slings & arrows. maybe there is something on now to see instead.

hahahahahaha, jon stewart just made a joke about the amount of montages.

OKAY. why are all guys genetically required to love jessica alba?! it pisses me off! i wonder what it would be like to be jessica alba, and know that all guys are genetically required to love you. i have heard multiple times a bunch of different guys coming up with her when they're talking about some hottest woman in the universe topic or something.

this is the most pointless post ever. i apologize. i'm in a bored and pissed off mood.

Hilarious moment

I had to go to breakfast with my grandparents today and among the conversation my grandma (keep in mind it is my mom's mom) leaned to the side as though to tell me something very important. The conversation:

 

Her: Are you going to your dad's...........wedding?

Me (stifling laughter): Yes...

Her: Where is it?

Me: At our church.

Her: Is it just going to be you girls at the wedding?

Me: No...as far as I know it's going to be a normal wedding...

Her: (Looking shocked) Oh!!! Will there be a reception?

Me: Yes.

Her: Where?

Me: I don't know.

Her: So...is Sandy going to move in to your house after the wedding?

Me (stifling hysterical laughter): Yes....?!?!

 

Then more conversation ensued about how I would feel about her in the house (I don't really care) and how my grandma feels weird around Sandy (thanks for sharing).

 

I just could not believe she was seriously asking if Sandy was moving in to our house. 1) She totally knew it, 2) What the hell? It was just weird.

 

I brought up to them that my mom is (allegedly) engaged and their faces turned ashen. It was a strange moment. They did not know, but I'm sure they'll get more information today or tomorrow.

today

today has been an ok day. i came in and had nothing to do so ascked a couple people for projects, which they gave me. have been happily thinking about that dream i had. don't you just love it when a dream is so good that it gets you in an exccellent mood and you just stay that way for a long length of time afterwards? i do. it always reminds me that my imagination has the ability to make me feel in a good mood, which is something that i don't remember a lot of times.

 

i'm going to get some groceries after work and i am excited to try out some new recipes. i'm going to attempt to make pot roast, for one thing. hopefully it won't fill me up like the one i had on sunday when i was with laura at a british pub (which by the way was very charming and had things on the wall such as a timeline of the history of england). i had a sandwich and it was literally, let's see here...at least 4 or 5 inches high. it was weird. and then i ate it and felt really horrible (stomach wise, as usual). the pain went away before i had to throw up or anything, though. i bet you really wanted to know that piece of information. i then went back to laura stating that i really dislike my digestive system, and that from now on i would only eat rice, and she suggested i also eat crackers.

 

sarah, remember when we had just been at the british library and we were looking for a place to eat and spotted a pub? upon going in we had no idea what to do. we walked around for a couple of minutes and then, as nobody approached us and we were very confused, we just walked back out. then we went to mcdonald's. :D where there was this cashier with whom sarah had some mixup involving the word "cheese" which i don't remember. sarah, please enlighten us on that mixup.

 

oh, london. did i ever mention that one time we went to subway on leicester square because we were really super hungry and tired (we really did go to more places than just american chain fast food places, i promise) and my total was £3.40 or something like that. So I gave her £4, and she said, "No, it's £3.40." And gave it back. So I had to get exact change. Which was perplexing for me because it was sort of difficult to get a handle on which coins were which. There are a lot of them and they are all really similar in appearance, and just like American money size doesn't go with amount. There was some coin like 25p which we were always confusing with a £2 coin or something. They had £1 and £2 coins, 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 25p, 50p, etc (am I right? I don't know, I could have added some there). So like a million more coins than I'm used to. It takes like 2 transactions for your wallet to get completely full and bursting from coins. The only one I ever really got straight was £1. Luckily, in the Subway incident I was able to give her exact change, after digging around and pondering for a while. What if I didn't have any change? What would she have done? Probably kept the £4 and not given me change. I wonder if anyone has ever thought of making a coin for every single amount possible. that would suck.

 

my sisters just called me at work. that was weird but cool! they said that they were wondering where my grandparents were. apparently they did not tell anyone that they were going to babysit at my aunt's. my sisters said that they are probably mad at my mom. i don't blame them, not one bit! gotta go.

happy birthday chris

happy birthday to chris martin...i always forget it's on the 2nd. i continually think it's on the 12th, but i am wrong. he is 29. weird.

 

different subject: i had a dream last night where daniel/MS asked me out on a date and also he kissed me very passionately. what a nice dream. it probably had to do with me staring at his face for 7.2 hours last night. :)

Daniel

I just spent like 8 years looking at captured video for one reason or another and thought I'd share some things, especially some things that nobody else will really care about except me.

While running through the timeline of one of the episodes that Daniel was dead in, I randomly hopped on to a spot with the following cute shot of him (in the sweater he always appeared in as a dead person, always conveniently showing off his muscly arms):

















Then I decided to get a shot of him during the scene when I thought he was unearthily beautiful. It's kind of dark, but do you see how his face is basically perfect? I'm sitting here staring at it like "jesus h. christ..." I don't know if it's my taste or what but I think that is one of the most beautiful pictures of a face I've ever seen in my life. It might be too bad he's confused at something, but it adds to the mystique in my opinion. Well, off to watch Conan, now that I've wasted all this time in which I could have been reading. I did a new yoga program tonight and it killed me.

Funny foreign words

There is practically nothing I like better than words in foreign languages that are funny or interesting. Therefore, I was just going through some Russian text alongside English text so that I could find some. Some of these letters are so weird and I can't remember what they stand for, esp. when they look like N but are really Y or something. I mean, the backwards N thing is an "ee" sound--how did that come about, I wonder?

 

Студент - transcribed this is believe it or not "student" and it means..."student."

Ну-с - Hi-C? Nope! Apparently it is "noos" and it means "Well," as in the interjection.

Разумихин - That's Razumikhin.

Суп - transcribed "soop" and it means soup...hahahaha!!!
Торт - "tort" - cake!!! HA! :D A French conjugate!!!
Вода - "voda" - water

Водка - "vodka" - vodka (anyone remember Dan saying those words were the same?)
Меню - "menyoo" - menu
Кофе - "kofee" - coffee
Молоко - "moloko" - milk (Clockwork Orange, anyone?!)

cпорт - "sport" - sport

 

Did anyone else have any earthly idea that there were so many identical words in Russian, of all things? I did not. Fascinating! I must study more of this language's history. Especially when realizing that cake is "tort." That is just too much.

AmericanIdol.com

Has anyone noticed they finally got that domain name? It just shows what a little high profile lawyer power can do. If domain names are registered, they are incredibly hard, if not impossible, to obtain per rules of the internet. It probably didn't hurt that they could offer a bazillion dollars to whoever was giving it up.

 

I was really worried a few months ago that mine expired (through no real fault of my own) because if it gets locked out you can't get it back for at least two years (so they say). Then it would just be in limbo forevermore. There is a small period of time when someone could buy it in your stead and then you would probably never get it back.

 

I don't totally understand it. I do know it's a very sticky business, although they do usually give you plenty of warning and leeway if your registration is about to expire, so at least it's fair. You get 60 days or so of warning and then if you don't renew your registration you have at least another 60 or 90 days before it gets locked out.