Hear ye, hear ye...

Updates on some previous postings:
Kitten:
Vet left a message about test results; I called the vet for clarification.

The murmur isn't serious, as evidenced by the kitten running around like a maniac. He's healthy, and doesn't need surgery or medication. So, yay, and stuff.

Job:
Apparently the pen is mightier than the sword...

Promotion is now official, and will be posted. The raise for the promotion, along with the raise from my review should be on this next cheque. I still need to get the final amount, and see if this'll be held up in accounting somewhere.

All in all, not bad.

Turn your head and yowl...

So, the kitten had his second appointment at the vet's office yesterday. The first one was a general checkup to make sure he was healthy enough to have the snip&clip done (i.e. neutering and declawing). During the exam they discovered he had a heart murmur, which is where the second appointment comes in.

Soon after my arrival at the vet office, Manny was whisked away into a back room where they perfomed an EKG on him to find out what was going on. I don't know what they did, but he came back wide eyed, puffy, and smelled like Mel Gibson during a traffic stop.

Today we find out the results of the test.

This apparently hasn't affected him. He's still as hyper as ever, and willing and wanting to play (including those 3am romps across the bed). The only thing we can do now is wait, and hear back from the doctor.

Hell, if it's this nerve-wracking for a cat, I can only imagine what it'll be like if kids come into the picture...

Juan Valdez would be very, very disappointed in you.

Q:
• "How many people does it take to make coffee?"

A:
• "If you work where I work, just one, but they have to do it over and over and over and over and over and over again."

Seriously, how hard is it? When the carafe is empty, dump out the basket, add a new filter and fresh coffee, replace the basket, and press "Start." That's it. Really. Not rocket science; not asking you to dissasemble an atomic bomb using only tweezers and a half-dead varmit. Just make coffee. Add coffee. Add water. Press start. That's all.

For many of the people where I work, this seems to be nearly impossible to grasp. Virtually every morning I stagger out to the coffee pots, only to find a drop or two in the carafe, while another empty one sits nearby on a hot burner; last night's brew smoldering into a crusty mass on the bottom. Sighing, I make a new batch and clean out the carafe (hint: use ice; it cleans out faster than scrubbing). I return to work and let my co-workers know that I started a fresh batch of coffee. Inevitably, they return to tell me it's now empty and they had to start another batch.

If I worked in a small office with five or ten employees this wouldn't be such an issue. However, I work with 300+ other people, all of whom - at least, the last time I checked - had fully functional arms and reasonably functional brains. Clearly they can grasp the concept of "pot empty. need make more."

So why don't they? Are they that inconsiderate? Or are they relying on the few to make coffee; the whole "it's not my job" thing?

After months and months of having to make coffee several times a day and clean out carafes because other's can't or are unwilling to, I've had enough. This morning, I posted the following above the coffeemakers:

---

TODAY’S LESSON: COFFEEMAKING101

Hello, and welcome to COFFEEMAKING 101. Here we’ll review the basics of coffeemaking and carafe handling. Ready? Let’s begin, shall we?

• 1. Turn off the burner when there’s a half-inch of coffee left in the carafe. Otherwise, it’ll form this nasty hard muck on the bottom that takes forever to scrub out (hint: swirl ice around in the bottom. This will clean out the carafe in half the time of scrubbing.)


• 2. Remember that other people would like some coffee too. When the pot is nearly empty or empty, please make a new pot. This will greatly appease the caffeine monster in other employees.


• 3. If you spill coffee grounds, sugar, creamer, etc. on the counter, please be courteous and wipe it up. This way there’ll be less ants, and people won’t be setting cups in counter crud.


• 4. Please see #1. It bears repeating.


• 5. Please see #2. It bears repeating.

This concludes COFFEEMAKING 101. Next time, your brew cycle and you.

---

Simple, direct, and with just the smallest hint of angsty sarcasm.

Trust me, this isn't the worst that's been posted, and it won't be the last. Maybe it'll be the one that actually gets people to act...
...
...Yeah, I don't think so either...

Weirdness update....

Things are still strange and confusing, and they just got a little stranger.

My boss had a meeting with the individual who is responsible for not approving my promotion. In said meeting, this individual purportedly told my boss, "this is important. Needs to be taken care of. Why hasn't it been taken care of?"

Hmmm. Quite possibly because it wasn't his responsibility and he didn't have the authority?

Apparently it's now in my boss's court, and he's handling the matter. After three months of waiting and wondering, it's quite possible that things will be resolved shortly. However, I'm not taking any chances. On Friday (when I was told of these new developments), I threw down the gauntlet.

By this Wednesday, the following should occur:

• The promotion will be posted, and be made official.


• My wage will be adjusted to reflect the new position.


• My wage will be retroactive to three months ago, and I will receive back pay for lost wages during that time period.


• My annual review is also past due. My review will be completed, and I will be given said review and according yearly increase.


• All of the above will be verified and in writing, and all wage increases/back pay will be reflected on the next pay period's cheque.


• Should these items not be completed, I'll be sending an email out to the corporate office requesting that the issue be resolved.

I talked to my boss about this, and he agreed to it. I'm not engaging in any subterfuge; everything is in the open. My boss and I have agreed that this needed to be resolved quickly, and now it looks like it will be. Update on Thursday as to what happened/didn't happen.

To any potential employers reading this: I'm not a hard person to deal with, really. I patiently waited for three months for this issue to be resolved; when things weren't being taken care of, I started to push - following the chain of command, of course. When the chain of command didn't work, I informed my boss that I would handle it myself by emailing the corporate office. He requested I hold off for a while; and I did. However, enough is enough. I have to be a man of my word, and receive what I have been promised. During this time my work quality and attitude hasn't suffered; I've continued to perform above expectations.

The moral of the story is: if you promise an employee something (raise, promotion, cookie, etc.), you'd better be in a position to deliver.

The next employee may not be as patient as I have been.

I've been really weird lately.

Things are not going well. I know that's a rather succinct comment, but it's very accurate. There's quite a lot going on right now that I have very little control over; other things that I can't change. In short, I'm stuck in a very annoying and unpleasant place.

The obvious thing that's missing is sleep. Some of it is noises outside or cats running amuck, but a lot of it is my brain not shutting down at night - issues keep coming and coming; unfortunately, no resolutions. No sleep makes the rabbity-thing cranky.

...and then there's the job. I haven't really posted about it because I know that potential employers sometimes read blogs, but it's to the point where I just don't care anymore. I've been awaiting a promotion at work that is now over three months late in coming. The short end of it is that I've been promoted, but the person whose job it is to authorize it hasn't done so and seems patently unwilling to do so. It's to the point now where I'm sending an email to this guy's boss in an attempt to get this resolved. It's a bit scary, because I don't know how it'll pan out. There's going to be drama; I'm sure I'll get dragged through a lot of it.

...and then there's the lack of creative spark. I haven't been able to focus on anything creative in a couple of months. I get home, and while I want to but there's nothing coming out. I open a sketchbook and stare at a blank white page, pencil in hand...and then the brain shuts down. It's beyond frustrating.

...and then there's the assorted other crap that I deal with at home and work.

To make a long story short, there's a lot that's been building up for a while. I've gone from the weird happy little critter that I used to be into a morose bastard with random mood swings. I went to a very ugly place a couple of days ago, and - while I feel I had some valid points - I went about it in entirely the wrong way.

So, to everyone involved: I'm sorry. There's a lot of things that I need to work out, and I'm not entirely sure how to even explain most of them.

I need a vacation, but that doesn't seem like it'll happen for a bit of time. In the meantime, I think I'm going to go hang out in the woods; maybe eat some random berries and commune with the squirrels...or something.

HANG UP AND DRIVE!!!!!

There's a couple of caveats to this post - it will contain some strong language. Be warned, and make sure to hide the kiddies in another room. I'm also going to be talking negatively about cell phones, so if you hate that sort of thing you should probably go somewhere else. That being said, on with the post...

It's taken me about a week to calm down enough to write about this incident without wanting to track down the fucktard and beat him to death with his shiny phone. That's the basic story, but here's what happened:
Last week, I had taken a day off of work to spend some time with the wife. We were returning home, having been out and about running errands. As we traveled down the road to home we were nearly t-boned by an asshole in a truck who ran through a stop sign while chatting away on his phone. He didn't even realize it until I screeched to a halt while laying on the horn, and even then we got a glazed "duuuuuhhhhhh...." look from him while he continued to talk on the fucking phone. I wanted to follow the bastard; grab the phone from him and punch him repeatedly in the face and crotch while screaming, "you monkey-fucking troglodyte!!!! Did you see what you just did?!?!?!?" Thankfully, my wife was calmer than me and talked me out of pursuing that course of action. Besides, we didn't have bail money.

Now, some of you are probably thinking, "wow, that's a little harsh." It might be, if not for another incident that happened a couple of days prior. I was biking home from work, following the traffic laws, and proceeding through a stoplight where I had the green (Remember that: I had the green. It'll be important later). Without warning, a car - driven by what I'll kindly refer to as a "human female" - ran through the red light and nearly ran over me. At the speed she was going, she damn near would have killed me. Thankfully, I managed to maneuver the bike out of the way and only ended up with a warped tire and a strained knee. As this..."woman"...passed by, I distinctly remember seeing the look on her face; one of "OMFG!" Interestingly enough, she didn't pull the fucking phone away from her ear, nor did she have the common courtesy to stop and see if everyone was all right.

This isn't isolated to those two incidents, or to cars, either. I've nearly been run over - and run into - by people talking on phones while attempting to drive/push carts/walk/breathe/etc.

So, to those of you who say I'm being a little harsh: fuck you. I'm sick and tired of being run into or nearly being run over by half-witted pissburping fucktards who can't do two things at once. How about a little common sense and etiquette? I don't like having to continually watch everyone with a cell phone to see if they're going to do something stupid. I'd like to be able to walk through the grocery store without someone ramming a cart into my shins, mumbling an insincere apology, then wobbling off - all without interrupting their call. I'd love to be able to bike home without wondering which jackass is going to try to run me over because they can't pull over to the side to take that call.

If you really need that cell phone, fine. But use it with caution, dimwit. You're not the only person on the planet. It's high time you stopped acting like it.

I....I'm honoured....really, I am....

Wow.

I seem to have procured my very first spammer. On a blog, no less. And this farktardvague human-thing seems to have "links that might be interested." Interested in what, praytell? Aren't links inanimate objects? How could they be interested? Are they magical self-aware/sentient links?

Meh.

So, to the spammers out there: learn to use correct grammar, or knock it off. I can get a copy of hello.jpg, and I'm not afraid to use it.

Meh.

Discuss.

Flame ON!!!!

Holy crap, it's hot. Not just warm, but that sticky clothing, sweating-while-you're-sitting-still hot. The kind of hot where you want to rip the nipples off of anyone who says, "hot enough for ya?"

It was 89 degrees in my apartment this morning, at 5:30am. EIGHTY-NINE degrees at FIVE THIRTY IN THE MORNING. That's a little better than the past couple of days where it's been 90 or above, but it's still damned hot. Even with an AC unit running at full steam in my bedroom, it's still over 80 degrees in there. My wife is a couple generations removed from her ancestors in Ireland, which is a small rainy island whose temperatures average 70 degrees. Very rarely does it get above that, even in the summer. We've discovered that she is decidedly not built for the heat (as she says, she's the "economy model"). I've a little better tolerance, but not much better. I've avoided biking for the past few days - not that I haven't wanted to - because I don't want to die from heatstroke after a couple miles. We've both lost sleep simply because it's entirely too hot to sleep. We're exhausted, but the heat keeps us from actually drifting off and sleeping.

It's also taking it's toll on our cats. Caerbrae and Manny have spent much of the past couple of days as little furry heaps on the hardwood floor, moving only when the spot they're on gets too warm. I've also caught both of them panting, even when they're not moving. I'm not sure if it's the sleep deprivation or the heat or a combination of the two, but I swear I heard Caerbrae yell at me to shave him. Last night we confined both of them to the bedroom with the AC, and they seemed to be doing much better.

The heat needs to break soon, otherwise I'll start doing strange things...like sitting in a kiddie pool filled with ice on my front lawn, waving at the neighbors. Or run naked through all the sprinklers in the neighborhood. Or start licking mushrooms again...