What du you want from me? Blood?

So – my boss decided that it was a good idea to send us all for a health check-up type thing.

I don’t like doctors. Nothing personal, if I’m bleding out or if my appendix bursts or something like that I definitely want them around. Other than that, not so much.

So – anyway – I get worked over by two charming ladies, they ask the standard twenty questions, you know: Any history of diabetes in the family? Heart problems? Depression? Have trouble sleeping?

Uh, the last one there was kind of hard to get into without mentioning Tyler Durden, but I did my level best. And after that they hook you up to some machines, measure your heart rate, all that. The sucktion cup noise of them hooking that one up was kind of funny. And I managed not to leer at the twenty-something nurse who asked me to take my clothes off. I’m a lamb.

Anyway – this is all good and fine, right up to the point where she tries to draw blood.

-Which arm? she asks.
I’ve already rolled up my left sleeve.

I used to be a blood donor back in the day so I recognize a rookie when I see one. Hell, given enough incentive even I can find a vein if I have to.

Not so my nurse.

She poked and prodded in my left arm first which is where the blood donor people used to prefer taking my blood. It’s an interesting sensation when someone gropes around for a vein with a needle. And fails to find one. Twice.

We switched arm after that.

Eventually she hit the main line, but not until she had reduced me to pin cushion status. I was well stabbed and kind of resigned about it at that stage.

In search of a pleasant day to round off the day after that I watched what can best be described as a very bad vampire movie. Yeah, there’s a sliding scale there. Some are good – others not so much. Actually this one was terrible. The vamps didn’t sparkle in the sunshine, but they sure as hell weren’t very scary either. Morality tales have their inherent flaws and yeah, well, I was out for blood and didn’t even get it.

Sort of like that nurse of mine.

ROL

I just wanna be a cowboy, baby…

When you’re halfway asleep and your brain is running on in whatever track it happens to be stuck on you get some weird stuff sometimes.

My thoughts were shaped pretty much like this “…I got to get up and saddle the Apploosa, go round the property see how the fence posts are doing… Storm might have knocked  some of them down… don’t want the livestock to get out… hate when that happens… wonder if there’s any coffee yet…”

I was ready to pull on my Tony Llamas and amble out into the kitchen, drink my coffee from a chipped enamel mug and then mosey on off to the barn to saddle up and head out.

When I peeled my eyes all the way open I realised that – hey, you know what? I’m actually not a ranch hand.

Well. Fuck.

I coul have understood it if I had been watching old cowboy movies, or reading cowboy stories, or even just … I don’t know, heard Kid Rock on the radio or something, but no.

Man, I wonder what the hell I was dreaming.

Also, pretty much par for the course, note that I didn’t dream of long lazy days in Texas heat, drinking sweet tea on the porch or anything, no of course not, I was dreaming of getting up and going to work.

Imm’a thinkin’ that’s some typical stuff right there. Just sayin’.

Tip of the cowboy hat to y’all.

ROL

The thing that goes ping goes ***

It’s been a while, but there’s that music of chance thing that happens, though in my case it’s actually more of a clang and boom and steam kind of thing.

The morning, man, it is a bitch. I get to work and hook myself up to all the machines to start the process of starting the day and all computers available are doing that pouty, “not gonna/don’t wanna” thing they sometimes do.

It’s been a while since they were that bitchy towards me so I stroke their little consoles and try sweet-talking them for a while. Nothing doing.

Eventually I give it up and hit the attic space. That’s where Mother lives.

Now, Mother usually has all kinds of fans whirring and lights blinking and bleeps bleeping and that kind of stuff. Today she is cold, dark and silent. Uh-oh. Huston, we have a problem.

It wouldn’t bother me so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that I know the support guy is out of town – I talked to him last night and by then he was drunk on Champagne, which is not a bad way to get drunk if you ask me.

I try calling him anyway.

No answer. Not really a big surprise there. This is so obviously a hardware problem of some kind, but … well … Mother is being a bit of a Mother, you know? Imagine half a maching park with cables and cords running like many tentactes in a teleological growth kind of way and stacked in a haphazzard pattern the likes of a mangrove forrest and that’s not a bad image. For something so technological it’s awful … organic is the word I’m looking for I guess.

Anyway.

Now it’s all dark. I manage to get a hold of the slightly hung over tech eventually. That leads to me on my knees crawling around the attic looking for the thing that connects to the do-hickey that attaches to the thinga-ma-bob. I do that for a while. What it all finally boils down to is that the actual outlet has no power. And everything is connected to the same socket.

We’re talking all of the assembly of machinery here. Including the back-up power source for the server. All into one socket.

I might not be a computer genius, but I do pride myself in some kind of common sense. Even I know you don’t do that. You don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Or, well, you can but then you might be faced with the slight problem I had this morning.

It’s not glamourous, starting the day in the attic on your knees with a flashlight stuck in your mouth because you need both hands to try and follow the right cable to the right piece of machinery.  Not how I figured I was going to start my day, you know?

I finally find another socket to stick the plug in and everything lights up and bleeps and blinks and whirrs and pings. It’s an oddly soothing sound. I’ve turned the cooling units back on. We’re back online.

All this seems like a rather good metaphor of something or other. Especially considering I had the tech in my ear the whole time saying things like “huh, that’s never happened before” and “there’s supposed to be a button there” and “I know what I’m doing” and “well, i can find my way around it” all of which is spectacularily not helpful as things stand. I think I was surprisingly calm and together with the guy. He was hung over after all – me screaming “so-of-a-bitch” in his ear might not have been helpful.

I did drawl a bit of sarcasm at him when I found out the back-up was connected to the same socket as the main powersource – but he just went “uh, yeah, it’s like, uh, you know” so I’m guessing he was probably thinking that wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever done.

Surprisingly – I didn’t get angry though. Hmm. Weird.

ROL

Tools, guys and bad ideas

Gender distortion and metro sexuality aside there are some instances when boys will be boys.

I’ll explain.

So there I am sitting in the break room with a couple of my colleagues. They’ve been putting up a wall, painting, putting up skirting-boards, baseboards, that kind of thing.

It’s hotter than all hell out there, which does all kinds of weird things to the human brain, especially if you’re doing manual labour, so a drop in IQ is perfectly understandable. The conversation rolls around topics like ice cream, short skirts, sweat and such, as it tends to do. Suddenly the 6’4’’ guy in all black worker wear looks up from his mug of coffee and says in a slightly dreamy and far away voice:

-I wonder what the range of hurting someone with a nail gun actually is.

…

…

Now, if there was ever a query likely to end in Jackass like antics, that would be the one.

Those things have a safety measure for precisely that scenario, in case you got nervous. You can’t actually shoot a nail gun at someone – which leads me to believe that, yes, someone tried it. And, yes it worked, and yes, it hurts. And yes, you’ll need to go to the hospital.

That did not stop the conversation from going into how the safety measure can be disabled (and no, I am not sharing) and what the range on that might be, you know, from a pounds of force per square inch perspective. Fucking hell!

So. This is one of those things that I’ll wager only guys come up with after a long, hard day of work over a cup of coffee whereas I am sure the ladies would not follow this particular line of thought long enough for it to derail into the careening, screaming bad idea train that it actually is.

I’m just sayin’

ROL

Alarm from Hell

My next door neighbour is the quiet sort.

Never even see the person in question. Never hear him or her. Not that friendly with the neighbours anyway.

So, the other day I’m working from home, typing away faithfully at my computer… that kind of thing. And then I start hearing this noise. It’s all in all a pretty familiar noise.

You know, back in the day, the alarm started and then you pressed snooze, and then ten minutes later the thing went off again. I think you had like an hour’s grace and then the thing just wouldn’t shut the hell up. Alarm in rising pitch and moment and with an increasing volume too.

My neighbour has one of them.

How do I  know? You guessed it.

He/She/whomsoever left for work having pressed whatever button you press for snooze. Sooo … as the day progresses that noise gets more and more annoying. Three short bursts of a beep, pause, three more beeps, pause and so on ad infinitum. Gets loud too.

I have pretty good impulse control, as I am sure  I have commented on before. And that really is a good thing, because towards the end there the noise was constant, loud and very, very annoying.

The beeps pretty much covered my swearing. Pretty much. Like, almost.

Got me thinking about the close quarters thing again, like the lady on the parquet with the high heels. It starts feeling like a really weird game of Cluedo, but no Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with the candle stick. Just me losing my marbles in front of the computer.

Might turn into me at the door with an axe though, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Luckily, the neihbour came home at the end of business hours and three seconds after that the alarm got switched off.  Much rejoicing ensued.

I stowed my axe back in the closet.

ROL

It can’t do that… Oh, really?

Okay, so my life is weird. This is a well established fact.

Or, it should be anyway.

I have this job… well, I have a few of them actually, but what the hell… and of course there are computer tools (not the one’s manning them, the ones that are on them) that are supposed to perform certain functions.

So the great mystery strikes again.

My current program is not doing what it should be doing and doing things that it is according to support impossible for it to do. Sound familiar? Yeah, well, if you’ve read any of my previous posts you’ll be well acquainted with the fact that this happens to me. A lot. Enough that I would rant about it anyway.

I swear, if I have to talk to one more tech who tells me “it can’t do that” I am personally going to … well, I don’t know what I’ll do. But it won’t be pretty, that much I can assure you.

Anyway – I swear that’s the reason they stick the support guys in a city nowhere near you. There just comes a point where you want to be able to look a nerd in the face (and believe me I have nothing against nerds –more power to ‘em, I have my own nerd tendencies) and quietly, but with some force explain that it just did the thing it’s not supposed to be able to do… twice. With sprinkles on top.

May they all ride to hell on a saddle made of hedgehog skins!

So until next time – signing off, you’re faithful captain of the great ship It Can’t Do That…

ROL

The Body Guard

I wasn’t working today, but I had to go see my accountant (a she) to get some papers sorted out. When I get there she’s all shook up. She just had a guy in there screaming at her, calling her names and basically threatening her. Not her client, even, but a client of the other firm (they’ve got two offices).

She’s not a very big lady 5’1’’, 5’2’’ something, and the guy had been scary. She told me she’d kept glancing at her watch, knowing I would show up at any minute in case she needed assistance. I am always on time, baring acts of God, so she knew I’d be there at one sharp.

I was actually my accountants bodyguard today as the screaming bastards colleague showed up and tried to smooth the waters.

I can put out a metric ton of don’t-fuck-with-me vibe when I want to. And I look pretty rough right now with dark circles under my eyes and all that. I was a head taller than the guy too. He had been told by his associate (the screaming guy) to go to the office to pick up papers my accountant already explained that she does not have.

So there I stand, two paces behind the accountant, feet planted solidly and looking at the guy like I’m weighing my options as he darts nervous glances between us and tries to smooth the waters.

I am not in any way shape or form dangerous to anyone, you know, but I can project a hell of a lot of physicality when I want to. Not that I do that very often. The guy eventually slunk off and apologized on the way out. I think that sort of thing is just funny. I have no idea what I would have done if it had turned into an altercation, but I know without the shadow of a doubt that the guy wouldn’t have been so nice if I hadn’t been there.

My accountant got a sharp reminder today that she is actually vulnerable when she’s all alone in her office (there are usually two others there, but they were out today for some reason) and I think it scared her – you know, just that reminder.

I, on the other hand, got a reminder that things aren’t always what you think they are.

I thought I was going to my accountant to have a cup of coffee and a conversation about the infinity of papers I need to get in order.

I got to play a tough guy instead.

My life is weird.

ROL

Sick as a dog

I don’t really get sick a lot.

I mean I’m always sick, we know that, but I don’t get ill a lot.

Got hit with the equivalent of a cross between Black Death and Ebola the other day. No, I am not exaggerating… or, well maybe a little, then.

I’m not going to go into too close a description of what that entails, let’s just say it’s not been a pleasant couple of days and leave it at that. I still have a pretty bright oil lamp of a fever burning though me like a brushfire and that in and of itself is enough to have my heart thumping a baseline even if I’m only shuffling over to my desk to boot up my computer.

And the second worst part is the unintentional withdrawal you go though, ‘cause you know, I can’t drink coffee like this. And man, that’s an interesting habit to try an kick on top of everything else. And if you intend to take fever-reducing medication you sort of have to eat something, otherwise you just get worse. Awh, man. I hate this shit. I really do.

And I couldn’t go drinking with the boys on St Paddy’s either. Already sick as a dog.

So I’m fairly miserable as things stand.

Does this stop me from working? Nawh, not really. And I mean I can handle a little on call duty, right? That’s mostly just about answering the phone. Not like I’m going to be able to actually go anywhere and do anything, but hopefully I won’t need to.

Throat raw from the burn of bile my voice does sound a little fucked-out and harsh, but hey, what are you going to do? At least I can answer the phone without … well, spewing. So that’s progress, right?

Damn.

ROL

Silence is… eh? golden?

So – work was kind of weird today. As in… weird. Even for me. Normally the phone rings all the friggin’ time. Like incessantly. And there’s me pouring honey milk molasses right down peoples ears – but today the phone rang a total of 0 times.
As in not at all.
Not even a little.
Not even once.

You finally become paranoid enough to actually check that you’ve not lost contact with the world in some technical mishap. Nope. We’re still on line.

Just weird.

It’s kind of disturbing actually when you’re used to much more noise. It’s like one of those constant back ground things that just stop happening and you don’t even notice until it isn’t there anymore.

I guess that’s normal, right?

It’s the music of chance. Or the lack of music of chance, maybe.

Or maybe I should just try to go get some sleep before I start seeing Tyler Durden by the copy machine… again.

ROL

Time flies like an arrow – fruit flies like a banana

Time is one of those units in which we measure stuff that really does rely on what the poet Coleridge called ’the willing suspension of disbelief’. As in, we believe an hour is an hour long. Why? Because we said so.

Time can be viscous and liquid and warped and messed up.

Case in point:

My alarm went off on oh-shit-it’s-early-in-the-morning. I killed it, the way you do.
Now, this is one of those rants where the Unheimlich quality of reality comes in to play, as well as the general high-tech HAL-hell I live in.

I thought I hit the snooze button, but the buttons are really small and fiddly on that thing. I must have fallen asleep again and the next time I open my puffy eyes and blink unevenly at the digits glaring red at me I have 37 minutes left before I should be at my station, scrubbed and dressed and ready to work. It takes me twenty minutes to get there, so we’re down to 17 to get up and get ready.

It’s not pretty, but it can be done.

I do it.

36 ½ minutes later I’m at the desk. I turn my cell on. I turn the computer on. I enter all the various passwords granting me access to all the access I need to be granted. I wonder idly if it’s bad manners to go in quest of coffee before everything is online. I had to forego breakfast – and besides the cupboard was empty anyway.

I look at the screen. I look at the cell.

I’m at my desk, bright eyed and bushy tailed an hour early.

Now picture me banging my head decorously on the desk for about five minutes.

The stupid little machine with the fiddly buttons has the set-button for the hours right next to the stupid snooze button. When you hit one you can easily catch the other as well – which I obviously had done that morning.

Now, if I had my cell tuned on before I left home I might have noticed. Or if any of my other various machines had an accurate time setting I might have noticed. Or if my suspicions had been raised by the utter lack of people up and about – but working weekends is tough, because it’s mostly dead at that time on a Saturday anyway.

Just goes to show – time is untrustworthy. It lies. So do machines. Particularly the ones with fiddly buttons.

Damn it.

ROL