Archive for January, 2007

Corporate Life, or Not

So I didn’t get the job I interviewed for at the big trucking firm. It’s funny, because the first two days after the interview, I was very much for the cushy corporate job. Well, not so cushy, because it was just another tech job, but it was in a fancy huge office with wooden walls and a horse fountain inside.

By day 3, I was thinking, “Do I really WANT a corporate job again?” I mean, all the rules… all the little nitpicking, being watched all day… having to go back into a call center… NAW!

By day 3, I began to appreciate the little frills my job offers, even though the pay is not quite what I would like it to be (or what I’ve been accustomed to, but we’ve been able to manage so far). Most of all, my coworkers are actually acting like they like me, so it’s becoming comfortable.

And, hey, our office will never win any beauty prize. Some time ago, the carpet was replaced, but only in the hallways… not under the cubicles (or within them, for that matter) or anything. Half the space is hot; half is cold. Sometimes the workers upstairs cave in our ceiling, but what the heck.. it’s home.

And there’s not too much killing everyone to make a buck or rip people off, like the old insurance business was. The mission is respectable. People are helped, even when they can’t afford the help. It’s a good thing.

So, no corporate job for me, and I can’t say that I’m too terribly sad about it. :)

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Snow People from Kansas City


My brother and my niece, who is 3, built these cool snow people.

I’m not sure I love the snow enough to build snow people.

Of course, I had to plow it, and then when sledding was done, I’d had it with cold weather.

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Darn Cold

This morning at 6am, it was 3 degrees F above zero. Now it is just 1. The fact is that once it gets below, say 15 degrees F, it doesn’t matter too much any more.

When you go outside, it feels like you’re in the back of an incredibly cold freezer.

Last night, after being outside for 5 minutes, it felt like my jeans were frozen.

Seriously.

I need some warm air.

Yesterday, we got our electricity bill. Keep in mind we have a gas furnace. But our electric bill was what it normally is when it’s the dead of summer and we’ve been running the air conditioner all day.

The culprit? The darned electric heater running downstairs all the time. It’s darn cold down here, only because our clothes dryer is letting in TONS of cold air.

The fixit thing we need to get:

The Dryer Vent Seal

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Free Hugs

This video gets me, everytime I watch it. Go ahead..

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Little Busybody

She can’t sleep. Did I mention that hamsters are nocturnal? It’s 9:30am and this one is still awake; getting used to her new home, I imagine.

So far, she’s let out a few shrill screeches, which I didn’t know hamsters did. I built her a little cardboard house (see it?) so she can hide, if she wants.

She is doing well, though, scampering around, chewing on fruitwood sticks, munching up hamster food, and getting all of her exercise on the wheel.

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hamster habitat

So, we bought a new cage and a new hamster, that is HUGE compared to our last hamster, and also quite spastic. The Little Kid calls her “Sarafina”.. you know… after Barbie’s cat?
We kept our collection of tubing, and yes, it took us about an hour to figure out how to get the tubes to match up with the holes in the side.
We are not engineers.

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Meta

Take about 10-20 minutes and read this article about the circle of life. It’s really quite amazing.

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My Hamster Died

Dang-it. :(
I read that hamsters are supposed to live for 18 – 24 months. Petty was an old woman, then.
Just yesterday, I moved her wheel to wake her up. Hamsters are nocturnal. Our sleeping patterns sometimes coincided. When they didn’t, then I’d have to move her wheel to make sure she was ok.
I remember her breaking out of her cage and being lost for a day at a time. She would always come back to play in the hamster wheel.
I’ll miss that little varmint.

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Snowblowing

Today I learned to operate the snowblower we had handed down to us a few years ago. I’ve used a snowblower before, but nothing quite as big as the one we have now. Once I got used to it, it didn’t seem like a major thing.

The snow was 4-6 inches deep, not counting the drifting. It’s a heavy snow; one that would be good for snowmen.

I got the driveway cleaned off, then had the little kid put on her snow gear so we could get the sledding done while I was already bundled up.

Treading through a couple of inches of snow, uphill, is not an easy task, but we managed to get to the sledding hill, where she took off 5 or 6 times, then decided it was too cold. She hopped in the sled and I pulled her most of the way home.

Just when I thought it was going to be another winter with no snow and reasonably warm temperatures. I keep forgetting that January through March are our severe winter months. It’s easy to forget with those 50 degree December days.

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What IS Sleep?

Yesterday, we got more of a break that we expected: a 3-hour lunch and we were done for the day at 11:30pm. We had to go back from 7am to 9am this morning and finish up.

I admit I’m a little short-fused. I took a nap for 2 hours this afternoon, but it wasn’t enough.

Overall, the upgrade went well… my boss said much better than before. I’d like to think it’s because we were all focused and working together, and organized.

My job was to determine all of the laptops that would be affected by the upgrade, create a sign-in list for each person to document their pick-up time and when they needed the laptop returned, mark the individual cubby for each laptop in the back room and ensure everyone in the office was upgraded to Windows XP.

This was my prep work before all of the hands-on stuff yesterday.

Last year, the error-rate on just determining the laptops involved was 30%. This time, less than 1% off, thankyouverymuch.

It was interesting to see the process. I’m glad it’s over, though.

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