Honeymoon post 2 (in one day!)
I’m getting more stressed trying to plan a honeymoon than I was planning on proposing!
Grrr…
“Could you please not reply to *person*? I think the conversation is getting too technical, and I just want to make a few things clear.”
“Okay.” (Insert false happy voice here)
It’s a bloody technical implementation issue that will affect other users of the same system! If it’s got a flaw, it should be fixed. Geez.
Admittedly, it’s more important to my team to know WHY things are misbehaving. But… how often do I get to argue with people who actually do technical architecture work? (Answer: As often as I end up talking to them.)
Looking for a Honeymoon
Trying to find a Honeymoon location has been a hassle.
Originally, Mandrina wanted to go to Vienna, Austria. I wasn’t thrilled with that, but I came up with a wonderful compromise — three or four nights in Vienna, an overnight train to Switzerland (I want to open a Swiss Bank account!), then another train to Belgium — which is for my stomach — Gauffres, Belgian Chocolate, and Frites, baby!
Then someone realized that a March wedding would lead to a March honeymoon would lead to Vienna in March which would lead to dealing with 30 degree temperatures. Mandrina wants a warm honeymoon (“Bare shoulders!”).
So I suddenly have to deal with coming up with a new destination.
Mandrina wanted Egypt. A Nile River cruise, Pyramids, Cairo. I agreed it would be neat. Then I spoke to a friend, Egyptian parents, who advised me that it probably wouldn’t be too safe to go to Egypt. Doh.
NEXT!
Australia wasn’t too popular, nor was New Zealand. Peru (Machu Picchu!) met with similar issues — actually, the primary one was the lack of options for going to see Machu Picchu — it appears to always require a tour.
NEXT!
Casablanca was the most recent idea (our first dance is likely to be to “As Time Goes By”). Morocco isn’t necessarily unsafe (I don’t know yet), but the cost to travel from New Orleans or Atlanta (nearest two major airports) to Casablanca is rather high.
NEXT!
Nile River Cruise, train to Casablanca. Whoops. I’d have to cross Libya, which I seem to recall is a terrorism supporter. That’s not so good…
NEXT!
Um.
I don’t have a “Next” yet. Hrm…
Bigger doh
I came into work early in order to try to get some code checked in by noon today.
It’s now 11:55pm, and I’m waiting on someone (ANYONE!) to review my code.
Looks like it’s going to wait until tomorrow…
Lowering my own house’s value
Zillow is a neat idea — personally I’ve found their values a bit flaky, but it’s still a worthwhile concept.
I just plugged in my own address; on a whim, I wanted to see if my house has accumulated any value since I bought it. Low and behold — it has! According to Zillow, the price has gone up almost 10% since I bought it! Admittedly, Zillow’s estimated value is still lower than what I paid for the house, but now…
I just checked the most recent sales data for the house — aka, when I bought it.
I pulled down my own house’s value. The way the sale was written up for the seller, there were actually two separate deals. Half of what I paid went to the woman, half went to the estate of the husband. Which means there were two simultaneous sale contracts, each half of what I actually paid for the house. Guess what! That lowers the value of the house, as it’s now considered to have sold at that 50% mark. DOH!
KNOCK, damnit!
Over this past weekend, I bought four pounds of M&Ms. I couldn’t find the dark chocolate ones, and I wasn’t about to sacrifice the one dark chocolate bag I have at home, so I settled for the kinds I like, peanut and mostly chocolate.
Mind you, I’m not actually allowed to eat any of them (damn you, Atkins!), but I brought them in to celebrate my four year anniversary at work. It’s a thing.
But why, oh why, when my office door is CLOSED, did one of my @#$#$%@# coworkers just OPEN IT to talk to me WITHOUT KNOCKING???????
*grumble*
Anti-Bitch about Amazon
I was planning on writing a post about how Amazon.com has changed their gift certificate policy, and screwed me out of over one hundred dollars.
It used to be that gift certificates had expiration dates, but you could add them to your account, and they would last indefinitely.
At some point in the last year or so, this policy has changed. Now the original expiration date is still valid; and it’s even harder to find, as you just have a gift certificate “balance.”
I noticed my account balance was low when checking it on a whim, and emailed Amazon, furious that that change had come by, and I was given no information that I had an account balance that was due to expire. This annoyed me.
I just got an email response saying they had checked, and my gift certificates had qualified under the old rules. My gift certificate balance was reestablished, and was flagged to last indefinitely.
Now, THAT’s customer service.
Work Mistake
Well, I’m a complete and utter idiot. The word “Fuck up” (pardon my English expletives) comes to mind.
I screwed up with work last night. I don’t even have a good excuse — I got a bit distracted. It doesn’t help, though.
Probably the worst mistake I’ve made at work. It isn’t insurmountable, I hope, but it is pretty bad.
You see, we’re at review time. One of the good things I’ve done is apparently impressed some people off my team, who I think it would be good for my lead (immediate superior) to talk to prior to reviewing me. There are two big ones who are known by first names (not Bill or Steve, but Ambrose and Lawrence means something on some teams), and then the person in charge of developers on a team we sometimes collaborate with. That developer manager offered me a job, point-blank, at their last meeting I attended — I had jokingly pointed out that his team had no availability for developers at my level (they had one architect level slot available, and I’m not paid nearly well enough to be one of those). He responded by saying that anytime I feel like poking my head up, to let him know — he was certain he could make a place for me.
I figure having my lead talk to him would be a good thing. Except I couldn’t remember his email alias. So I used the autocomplete on Outlook Web Access’s “To” box to find it, as I had the aliases for a few other coworkers.
I then forgot to delete his alias from the To box.
So when I sent a fairly private message to my lead, I also sent it to this other team’s dev manager.
Um. Whoops.
Cat naps Part Deux
I now have two kittens on my legs. I don’t think I’m allowed to even stand up.
Cat naps at work
I’m having to work from home today because both of Mandrina’s kittens need to be vetted.
So I’m currently upstairs working in bed (because it’s the only room I can secure without interfering with Glitch), with my laptop on my lap.
There’s a Bit sitting between my legs at my ankles.
There’s a Pixel curled up in my left elbow with his nose against my elbow.
And Glitch just started whining outside the door.