Well that kind of sucked.

Posted on November 9, 2016 by A Dreamer

I find that I’m rather tired today.  I’m no stranger to voting for losing candidates, but this one definitely hurt a little more.  I didn’t think she’d win in a landslide – I thought the “99% chance of winning” polls were pretty absurd – but I did think she would win.

Hillary Clinton is not perfect – but she’s beyond competent and exceptionally qualified and would have made a good President.  I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries – and I had no hesitation about voting for her in the general election.

It was oddly comforting to discover that Secretary Cinton won the popular vote.  (Apparently we have the numbers, we just need to get them to different parts of the country.)  And I am really proud that Virginia went blue again.

The phenomenon of “hidden voters” isn’t new – but it still confounds me that people seem to not ask themselves, “Why don’t I want to admit I’m voting for X?  Is it because the candidate just isn’t viable and I look silly, or is there maybe something fundamentally wrong with them and it reflects poorly on me?”

I am admittedly confounded by the fact that 53% of white women voted for the President-elect.  I know there are women who vote Republican no matter what.  I have voted Republican before.  (In retrospect, I’m quite thankful they lost when I did that.  I was young and stupid.  I got better.)  But I really, genuinely thought he’d just crossed way too many lines to be able to garner that much support.  Granted, it could have been just as simple as “Not Hillary.”  But I don’t think you can vote for someone who has made so many racist, xenophobic, sexist and generally hateful comments without agreeing with some of them.  Which is disappointing.  I had hoped we were better than that.

Part of me wants to lash out at 3rd party voters, but I can’t do it.  Unless you can find every single person that went 3rd party and have them tell you they would have voted for Secretary Clinton had there been no 3rd party candidate, you can’t put it on them.  Sure, it didn’t help – but I am sure there were voters who went 3rd party rather than the President-elect as well.

Earlier this year I found myself thinking that I’d never seen a candidate that made me feel like I needed to a contingency plan.  I brushed it off as being a bit ridiculous.  Suddenly not so ridiculous and I feel like I should be hoarding money in my mattress.

There’s a very real possibility that he will be nothing more than a mediocre President.  But so much damage has already been done.

Posted in News, Politics | Tagged | 3 Comments

Quick PSA

Posted on November 8, 2016 by A Dreamer

GO VOTE!!!

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Hey, Samsung Galaxy Note owners…

Posted on September 16, 2016 by A Dreamer

May I recommend the HTC 10?  Just got mine about a month ago and I reallly love it.

But seriously, if you’ve got one of these explodophones – turn it off and take it back.

I’ve had a battery explode on me and it’s terrifying.

I had an AirCard for my laptop some years back – it plugged into the USB port on my laptop for internet access.  I was sitting there one day, and I heard a hissing sound and I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from – I thought it was my soda can at first.  Then the case popped open and went flying, and the battery itself went pinwheeling across the coffee table – WITH FLAMES SHOOTING OUT OF IT.  It stopped before it hit the carpeting, and was still on fire when I upended a Coke on it.

Had I been anywhere else in the house when it happened, it would have been a full on disaster.

So, really, take the phone back.

Posted in News | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Night Shift No More

Posted on September 3, 2016 by A Dreamer

So, tonight is my last night shift and it’s on to bigger and better things.  I found that working overnights did not suck and was easier to get used to than I would have thought.  (However, I am a night owl, so it may have been easier for me than others.)

Some of the upsides:  No rush hour traffic.  (Though it was astounding how cars there were on the beltway at 8PM.)  The illusion of sleeping in.  Not waking up in the dark.  Afternoons free.

Some of the downsides:  Days tend to run together because you stop experiencing night.  Saying “see you tonight” when you leave the office is weird.  A Tuesday-Saturday shift is nice for having a weekday off, but my weekend breakfast ritual went out the window.  I had to really think about what I was eating so I wouldn’t go into a food coma mid shift and fall asleep.

I learned that day shift bias is real.  (I knew it somewhere in the back of my head, but it’s not the type of thing you really think about.)  Even IN the company I was working for.  A day coworker asked if I just “hung out all day.”  No, I do the same stuff everyone else does – run errands, avoid housework, get 6-8 hours of sleep.  Trying to convince people that you are NOT available before noon has been harder than I would have imagined.  If you say “I woke up at 2PM,” you’re a degenerate, but if you say, “I got 8 hours of sleep” you’re healthy!  If something is broken and doesn’t affect the day shift, good luck getting it fixed.

And there is this weird idea that if you work overnights, there is something wrong with you.  Even got a bit of it from the department head.  “Can you not work during the day?” with a raised eyebrow.  Um, no, but you need people on the night shift and I can do the job, so…

I spent my nights calling (and sometimes waking up) customers and telling them something was broken/open/squawking/possibly on fire.  Now, if you’re on the receiving end of one of these calls, there are a couple reasons why it’s you:
— You’re on site at the facility and you should be awake anyway.
— It’s a legit part of your job to be on the call list.  I don’t like waking you up, but suck it up, buttercup.
— You have greatly angered the office manager of your company – to the point where they convinced the higher ups that you MUST be on the call list, preferably near the top.  If this is you, it’s well past time to make amends my friend.

To every client I woke up who was kind enough to say, “It’s OK.  It’s your job.  Thank you.” – you more than made up for the “Why are you calling ME?” and “What do you expect me to do?” crankypants.

Now a week of trying to flip my sleep schedule with a couple days of stomping around Williamsburg and onwards and upwards.

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Orlando.

Posted on June 12, 2016 by A Dreamer

I’m heartbroken, angry, and a little numb.

To the LGBTQA community:  I love you.  I am here for you.  I’ll admit, I don’t really know exactly what to do here, but I’ve got your back.

To anyone saying, “Well, why isn’t the Muslim community—”  Go sit down and rethink your life choices.  I’m pretty sure they’re too busy being horrified with the rest of us to trot out the #NotAllMuslims banners.  Let’s not forget that any jackass can say, “I’m with Daesh.”

No civilian needs an AR-15 type gun.  But we’re never gonna do shit about that.  (I think that’s where the numbness is.)

I’m sure He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named and his ilk are already having a field day with this.  And as that rhetoric fills the airwaves, we’ll still wonder how people are driven to violence.  And I don’t know how to make my voice loud enough to convince the world, THEY ARE WRONG.  And that is very frustrating.

Despite everything, I believe that acceptance and understanding will get us all farther together than anything else.

ETA to fix LGBTA to LGBTQA.  My most sincere apologies – it was not an intentional exclusion, just a fuckup on my part.

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Dear Mother Nature…

Posted on May 11, 2016 by A Dreamer

Just stop it already.  Stop it.  Two weeks of grey and rain and disgusting bullshit weather is more than enough.

Yeah, I know I said that taking night hours would mean I wouldn’t be cooped up in an office when the weather was nice.  You didn’t have to be a bitch and go, “Yeah, if there every IS nice weather again, HA!”

Bring back the fucking sun.

NOW.

If I wanted to live in the Pacific Northwest, I would have moved there.

Posted in Weather | 1 Comment

May 11 is National 3rd-Shift Workers Day!

Posted on May 9, 2016 by A Dreamer

I’ll admit, I didn’t even know it was a thing until this morning.  (Thank you CBS Sunday Morning for alerting me to this celebratory day!)

I love that we have national days for pretty much everything, and especially this one now.  I know some third shifters (Hi, Dave, and my new buddies at the NYC Command Center!) and I am a third shifter, too.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a job that had a day of its own.

Yes, I’ve got a paying gig and I’ve been on the night shift for a week after two weeks of day training – and it’s been working freakishly well for me so far.  I start at 9 at night and spend the evening making sure the fire department goes to buildings that may or may not be on fire, and letting security guards know that someone is (probably not) breaking into their office buildings, among other things.  (I’ve already made fast friends with the guys working one group of buildings in NYC.)

I’m off at 5:30 and home a bit after 6. I feed the cats and let the AwesomeDog out and I’m crashed out by around 6:30.  I get up around 12:30 after some solid sleep and have basically a whole damn day to run errands, get things done around the house and then have some down time before going to the office.  (It is its own sad situation that I am more productive at home with a job than without one, but that is a post for another day.)

No, this job wasn’t what I anticipated when I started job searching, but sometimes it’s about the job you can actually get, and I’ve gotta eat.  I’m working with nice people and the job itself doesn’t make me want to hurl myself out a window, so it’s all good.  It’s temp to perm, so there is always the possibility that in 90 days we’ll all be looking at each other going, “We have all made a terrible mistake.”  But if that is the case, we can all walk away, no harm, no foul.

I’m not gonna lie, there are definitely some perks to the third shift, at least for me.  (I know the night shift is pure hell for some folks and I am grateful that is not the case for me so far.)

– I already had a messed up sleep schedule, so staying awake for ~3 more hours isn’t the worst thing, considering that I can sleep til 12:30 with zero guilt.
– I am chipper as hell at work because I am fully awake when I arrive and I haven’t had to fight traffic.
– The commute.  Just under 30 minutes.  On a *good* day in rush hour, it would be ~55 minutes, minimum.  (I would not like working there on an 8 to 5 schedule.)
– It’s customer service, which seems to be my jam.  (Yay?)  And being good  at customer service at 2 in the morning seems to perhaps be a not so common thing as I would have imagined.  (Yup, I given how much of a snarky bitch I am IRL, I am still somewhat astounded at the fact that I am good at it.  But I was good at it some 30ish years ago at the answering service in high school, and some skills apparently stick.)
– All my “free” time is on one side of the workday rather than split between morning and evening.  When it’s split, you’re bleary eyed in the morning and just trying to wake up and in the evening, you’re fucking tired from the day and moving like molasses through the “gotta do before bed” list.

So, even though it’s working awesomely for me, it’s definitely hard for other people.  (And I have heard way too many reports on how third shift work will shorten my lifespan.  Hey, media, stuff it on that front, will ya?  People have bills to pay.)

So, if you know third shifters – be kind.  Get them some baked goods at a reasonable hour on Wednesday.  If you can’t do that – don’t mock them for their perceived “slacker” schedule, or act like they’re some kind of degernate who can’t hold down a “day job” – they still have a job like anyone else, it just doesn’t adhere to everyone else’s schedule.

And for the love of all that is good and holy, don’t call or text before noon and expect them to answer.  It’s not that they don’t want to talk to you, it’s just that they have their phone on silent so they can get some sleep – just like you.

Posted in Good Customer Service, Health, Miscellany, Musings, Personal, Working | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

On Being An East Coast Padres Fan…

Posted on April 17, 2016 by A Dreamer

Ted Leitner, in the 13th inning of a night game (which is now in its 14th inning):  It’s getting late..

Me, on the East Coast:  YA THINK??!?!

Thankfully I don’t have to be up in the morning.

AND WE GET THE WALK-OFF HOMER IN THE BOTTOM OF THE 14TH!!!

It was worth staying up for, even way over here.

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Wow, Karma does work fast sometimes, doesn’t she?

Posted on March 20, 2016 by A Dreamer

Just hours after posting about *@#7@**#* kids in the workplace, I was up at my local watering hole.  One of the bartenders just recently had a baby.  At the end of the evening I looked up and saw his SO there and realized, “if she’s here, SO IS THE BABY!”

And as adorable as the little one was in photos, he was 10x more adorable in person.

At Dad’s workplace.

Babies are adorable, and he’s not there every night through the whole shift.

So sue me.

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Parents, Kids, Baseball and Choices

Posted on March 19, 2016 by A Dreamer

If you don’t follow baseball, I don’t know how much coverage has been given to Adam LaRoche’s retirement outside the sports pages.  Long story short: Part of his contract is that his son is allowed in the clubhouse – the White Sox decided they wanted to curtail it, and he decided to walk away.

The Washington Post says it’s opened a conversation that is bigger than baseball.  And they’re not wrong.  But I still have more questions than answers as to how this whole conversation is being framed.

First, let me say I have no disagreement with Adam LaRoche’s decision.  He decided that management’s change of heart was unacceptable and he had the resources and will to step away and that’s fine.

But I have some issues with the conversation.

— I don’t want to hear the word “sacrifice” here.  If you are financially stable enough that you can turn down a 13 million dollar salary to spend more time with your family – that is a choice, and a luxury choice at that.

— As far as White Sox management is concerned – I know you gotta do what you gotta do to get talent.  But if you didn’t really want the kid in the clubhouse, why did you agree to it?  Did you think he’d get bored and not want to come around and the “problem” would solve itself?  Or that Dad wasn’t really serious about the request?  (Personally, I don’t think it’s an appropriate place for a kid in the first place, and would have said so – but this is probably why I am not in charge of bringing talent for my ballclub.)

— By all accounts, LaRoche’s teammates didn’t have a problem with his son being around (fortunately it seems he’s a good kid) – but how is it fair to his other teammates who have kids that *his* kid gets to come around and theirs don’t?  Or his teammates that just really don’t want any kid in the clubhouse, but didn’t feel they could say anything?  Yes, I know – everyone negotiates their own contract, but still…this is the type of thing that can definitely breed some resentment in the workplace.

— I don’t have children – more by circumstance than choice, but it’s been better all around for me – I realize I don’t have the time or patience for modern parenting.  But when did the workplace stop being an adult place?  No, I don’t hate children.  But unless my job actually involves kids, I don’t want them wandering around my workplace.  (Yes, I realize that saying this out loud virtually guarantees that I will get a job where everyone brings their kids in.)

— Finally – if this was a woman making this decision to step away from a high paying position – sports, CEO, whatever – would we even be talking about her dedication to her family?  Or a “sacrifice”?  Or lauding her as some kind of parental heroine?  Or would we just hear yet again, “This justifies women being paid less and/or not being moved up the ranks – they just up and leave anyway.”?

I hope Adam LaRoche is happy and at peace with his decision, and that his son understands and appreciates it.  But let’s not pretend that it was anything other than a luxury for him to make that decision – and it’s a decision that many people – men and women alike – simply cannot afford to make.

Posted in Baseball, Society | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment