howeird | Entries tagged with stupidity

Blame Brigadoon. I haven't been on here since last month. Long story short, Hell Week has been a disaster. The staff did not slap down the strident babbling of the SM, who started us too late and kept us too late every night. She finally got bullied into using the set crew for about 10% of what they would like to have been doing. Cast members are doing most of the scene change work, which is ridiculous.

The show is getting better, but not enough. We are not ready to open tomorrow night. The best thing about opening is we run the show without stopping. This has not happened yet. As a result, the leads don't know their lines, and they often cannot be heard when they do know them.

There are a lot of talented dancers, being over-worked.

So the director has not allowed the sword dancers to practice with the actual real swords. They will see them for the first time tomorrow. They have been given different prop swords every rehearsal. This is going to be dangerous because even with the prop swords they keep kicking them when the idea is to dance between the crossed swords on the floor. Horrible choreography for that bit too.

The dancers missed their cue to get offstage before my solo last night, which threw me off, I muffed half the words. At halftime the music director said I did great. Sigh. Well, I guess an audience would not have known.

Enuf except to say last night I walked out as soon as I was out of costume/makeup. No way was I staying for SM's half hour of babble. Apparently that was a smart move because this morning she sent a page of email babbling about how she has some personal problems at home etc. Rule #2 in theater is leave your baggage outside the stage door. Rule #1 is "do it first".

In other news, work has been a festival. I finally got a board for my test machine which I have needed for a year. Google's paranoid cretin IT came in and shut down most of the networking in the lab, claiming there were some computers in there infected beyond repair. There is no such thing as infected beyond repair. Neanderthals. Our pretty sharp local IT guy managed to get them to loosen most of the screws, but not all. Sheesh.

Once again my weekly report took longer to write than the work I'd done. I did a lot of testing where one test resulted in 5 or 6 bugs being cleared. Much fun.

We had the head boss give a town hall session, and as always he had a lot of useful info, he's an engaging speaker, and he's technical enough. We're getting closer to closing the sale of our piece of the company, and while he is not allowed to give many details, he was able to share some clues.

The cats have been missing me. I turn on the catcam app and see them both looking at the front door from about 8 pm on. Kaan is usually right at the door when I come in. Domino not so much.

Finally had a chance to make a Costco run, spent $150, and that was without them stocking Haig & Haig. I'll need to hit BevMo tomorrow for that. The plan was to buy things which would cook up easily into a few days' dinners, since I will be home evenings Sunday - Wednesday.

Plans for tomorrow:
Bevmo
Maybe Safeway
Theater by 6:30
Opening night
With no stops, the show should be done by 11. Add 10 minutes for women's room lines at intermission.

Current Mood: blank
Current Location: Home

First stop this morning was to deliver a vial of Kaan poop to the vet. Made an appointment for tomorrow morning to have his blood work and any needed vaccinations done. And dental cleaning next Friday.

Work was quiet, but I got that pesky automation script done, and then found a related one to do, which took the rest of the day. Lunch with Automation Guy at Andy's BBQ. ( Some irrelevant history )

I finished my weekly retort at about 5, and left soon after.

First stop: Costco. Dropped off the next set of 500 slides from 1975-77 Thailand. Meant to only buy some Oreos and chocolates, and maybe paper lates. Spent >$100.
Next stop: Safeway because Costco doesn't sell egg nog or storage container jars. I almost bought some Costco diced/dried garlic for the jars, but $4 each was a bit too much. And I also wanted to pick up just enough eggs, flour and sugar to make Kourabiethes, now that I have the cardamom for them. Safeway was not only out of egg nog, they no longer have space marked for it. And they didn't have the jars I wanted.
Next stop: Lucky's. Got two half gallons of egg nog, and some jars.
Next stop: Starbucks, redeemed my latest free drink credit and update the laptop's virus scan definitions. When I ordered, I asked how late they were open. They said 9 pm. WTF of the day - at 8 pm all the unoccupied tables have their chairs stacked on top and the guy is mopping the floor. Listen people, you mop the floor after you lock up for the night, not an hour before closing. I saw three couples walk away when they saw the chairs on top of the tables. Stoopid.

Next stop: Apartment mailbox. I have not used my Slate card in almost a year, and they claim to be super security conscious, but they send me pre-printed checks, unsolicited and unwanted. Talk about begging for identity theft. I shred them. I ought to mail the shreds back to them with a nastygram. And I really need to close that account.

Final stop: home. Lots of football on Tivo. Caught the end of the Duke loss to Cincinati. Watched the Bruins get ripped apart by Baylor, a game which ended in the refs awarding a touchdown to a UCLA play which was actually stopped at the 2 yard line as rime ran out. They refused to review the play, which ought to get some refs fired, since it's a requirement. I don't care that it didn't change who won or lost, but it did change the outcome of the game. Officiating seems to get worse and worse at both college and pro levels in football. I don't follow hockey or basketball to know about those. Baseball officiating is mostly about calling strikes and balls, and the umpire really ought to be replaced with an electronic sensor. TV coverage has been using (unofficial) electronic strike zone imaging for years. They have been doing the same for calling a strike vs. a checked swing.

Spent some time on Quicken and FB and Twitter.

One of the stores had row upon row of Prego brand products. I wonder who was pregnant.

Gave Kaan most of his liquid medicine, which gained me a couple of scratches on my tummy and a scared 14-lb cat. His adoption papers said 16 lbs, bu he weighed in at the vet at 14.15 lbs. I credit having a large apartment to run around in.

Plans for tomorrow:
Kaan to vet
Catch up on sleep
Make goodies
Go to

dinogrl and

dave_gallaher's House of Spike party. I will probably bring Ghirardelli dark chocolate squares, and maybe Kourabiethes.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: Newest Furball Hall

It's been one of those non timey-wimey days. Woke up not as late as I wanted to, looked up the movie times on Flixster and decided to catch the 1:30 showing of Lincoln.

Watched enough of the UW-Colorado game to know the Huskies were going to have a rare lopsided win. I don't know how they got to be #25 in the BCS standings, but that ought to go up next week.

After the movie, it was a toss-up between going back in and seeing Skyfall and doing Something Else. I figured one movie was enough, so I hiked back to the car, got my laptop and hiked to Starbucks. The line was insane. It wasn't long, in fact, there was only one person ahead of me to order, but there were 7 people blocking my way because they didn't have enough sense to get out of the ordering line and wait for their order to come up elsewhere. There is plenty of room in that place. What may have messed them up, besides insanity and lack of consideration, is the Starbucks bozoids erected a Christmas display in what is usually the space between the door and the cashier station.

A week before Thanksgiving! Unforgivable. The only reason I didn't walk out is I had to use my free birthday drink credit by the end of the month. I will not be going into a Starbucks again until after New Years. Until this year, they didn break out the Jesus stuff until December.

The place was packed for the full two hours I was there, but it was mostly take-out, so I had no problem finding a place to park and use the laptop. The main project was getting the monthly MSFT updates installed, there were about 20 of them this time.

Next on the agenda was a trip to 7-11 for cash from my CU account. I pointed the GPS to what it claimed was the 2nd nearest 7-11, but it took me quite a bit farther away than it needed to, and missed the final U-turn on a divided road. It decided the store was on my right when it was on my left. On my way home I passed a much more convenient one. Will have to remember it - it's in the new neighborhood, on the fringes.

Home to watch the OU-Stanford game, which was very sloppy on the offensive side of both teams, lots of dropped passes, lots of stupid up-the-middle runs for a loss. It went into OT, Stanford won because OU's kicker was having a bad day. It must be hard for him to kick the ball accurately when it isn't raining.

Had some of my chicken soup for dinner, and a turkey pot pie.

Attacked my to-do list with a vengeance, pulled the vacuum out of the storage room and did the livingroom. I'm going to also need to pull out the steamer. Sat down with the 200 slides Costco scanned for me, and loaded them into sleeve pages. And discovered that the binder labeled "Thai 1" was really Thai 2, with a handful from Thai 4, and some from Israel 1977. And a couple from Thailand 1989. Thai 1-4 is 1975-77.

I need to go to Costco and get 10 slide boxes (they hold 50 each) and put together all the slides from Thai 3, which is really Thai 1, and have those scanned. Maybe tomorrow after Skyfall.

Lincoln review tomorrow. Nutshell: I didn't vomit. Halfshell: it should have been called "Amendment 13".

Plans for tomrrow:
Sleep late
Skyfall
Costco
Load up 500 slides into little boxes
Steam clean some of the livingroom carpet

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: Home

Got a lot done at work, finally found a bug, and had it confirmed by the guy who had run the same test on the last release. Also finally got a loan of some equipment which had been tied up in an all-week test, just needed it for 15 minutes, but it took longer because IT decided to take the video network down for an upgrade. WTF? With half an hour's warning in the middle of the day when people are running long-term tests?

Lunch was at Thaibodia, one last chance to redeem themselves. The waitress did not speak Thai - she's Cambodian. Pat Thai had the wrong kind of noodles. Thai Iced Tea was not very strong. They're off my list.

One-on-one with boss, we confirmed that he will be in Thailand the whole time I am there. He showed me on Google maps where his house is. Turns out his eldest, whom I have not met, is going to become a monk and I'm invited to the festivities. We'll know the date later, and it depends on whether I have commitments elsewhere. Those are a blast, I would really like to see it.

And to top it all off, I got a raise. Not huge, but a decent chunk of change. It doesn't mean my job is secure, it just means the company finally followed through with its merit program (the raise is from last year's team performance).

It was raining hard when I left work, but still pretty warm, so I went straight home. Watched the rain from the patio, but no thunder/lightning this time.

In the mail was a bill from Sprint's collections company - which made me livid because I had just sent an angrygram to Sprint telling them to stop sending me bills for a phone I never used, and returned to them well within the 14-day approval period. So I gathered up all my paperwork, copied it, circled the appropriate areas, and wrote a nastygram to the collection company, which included the angrygram. Effing idiots.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
No idea

Current Mood: angry
Current Location: Home of the Weird