Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

I wasn’t great at it before the pandemic, and I ran errands yesterday and I am definitely not any better at it.

The liquor store either doesn’t have plastic bags anymore or they ran out, so I left with what looked like a whole ass carton of booze, when it was just 2 bottles and some little single serve margaritas. The Safeway self-checkout has been calibrated to assume everyone is stealing every damn thing and the gentleman who staffs the self-checkout clearly hates his job. (Giant, with the same software, just assumes we’re all capable of scanning barcodes and generally honest.) Staples did not have the one thing I was looking for and I was chided for attempting to leave the store the wrong way. (The entrance and exit doors are right next to each other, but they have dumped a bunch of crap in between them so you can’t just walk towards the entrance, take three steps to the right and use the exit door. Dumb, and possibly a fire hazard.)

The only saving grace of the day was picking up lunch at Anita’s and taking a solid nap with the LilyMonster. (Leftover carne adovada tacos and chorizo queso FTW today.)

But this morning, I went to my good “we don’t assume you’re stealing” grocery store, and the comic shop was doing a mini Comic-Con and they had a bunch of arcade games in the lobby and tons of cosplayers about and that definitely put a big dork smile on my face.

And there is a young man who does bake sales to raise money for mosquito nets for malaria prevention for communities in Africa and he was there today, so I got some excellent cookies and this weekend he breaks $100,000 raised! The kids are definitely alright – or at least this one. His Mom helps with sale days and she loves to tell everyone, “He does ALL the baking!” – and he’s an excellent baker – I see a potential job as a pastry chef in his future.

My weekly Economist arrived and the cover title is “How to Save the Supreme Court” – while I admire that someone out there thinks it can be saved, but from where I sit – short of 5 particular members keeling over in short order, we’re just fucked. Biden won’t expand the court to 13 to match the 13 federal appeals courts. The Senate won’t do shit. Impeachment of the justices isn’t going to work with regards to lying about Roe in confirmation hearings, they can all just say their views evolved since then.

Personally, I’ll be kinda sorta OK. I am white, past childbearing age, can pass as straight, have no intention of marrying again, and can even pass as Christian if need be. But I shouldn’t have to pass as anything, and there are so, SO many who will be hurt or killed by this path we’re on and I don’t know what to do. Scream at my reps? Vote harder? Wrap a cricket bat in barbed wire and start swinging? Turn my home into a healthcare hostel?

I still need to figure out how to ask my company what they’re doing to protect their employees. I’m thinking for starters we don’t have our conference in fucking Tennessee of all places. I doubt they’ll ask me to go this year, but if they do, that’s a hard no. I’ll admit, I don’t even know who to ask. I mean, I guess I could just email the CEO, but I’m also thinking our head of DEI might be an appropriate start? I mean his job is kind of looking out for everyone that isn’t a straight, white, Christian male, so I assume he’s certainly been paying attention to what’s happening and has some idea of what’s coming.

I know I can’t make them care about what happens to their employees outside of work, but they should, and they need to know someone has noticed the silence.

And things have actually been relatively calm at work this week, and it’s a half day Friday and I will NOT be turning it into a full day – not starting early and not leaving late. GO. ME.

Got some nice feedback from a client we helped this week, but honestly, we just kinda held them hostage in a meeting and forced them to look at their own data and reconcile their work to see that the software was in fact calculating correctly.

Still processing this shit from SCOTUS. I’ve been repeatedly bugging my reps and I’m just waiting for the cease & desist from them. And something that struck me this week – things being “rooted in tradition” – that doesn’t seem like an actual legal concept but more of a squishy emotional thing. I mean, it could be a legal concept, but it seems awfully fluffy for law. Also, in the last 5 years, THREE justices have flat out lied in confirmation hearings – are we going to address that?

Feels like lying on the job application and getting found out should have a few consequences.

Welp, I’m off to attempt to have a somewhat leisurely day at work – you have a great day and don’t let the bastards get you down.

But apparently Roe v. Wade isn’t “rooted in tradition” so my bodily autonomy and privacy shouldn’t exist.

Other things supposedly not rooted in tradition…

Access to birth control
Same sex marriage rights
Women having financial independence
Rights for disabled folks
Rights for the LGBTQ community
Integrated schools

Five neanderthals on the court worshipping at the feet of dead men who thought slavery was OK and women were property fucking over well over half the country.

Every person that enabled this can get fucked, and there are a lot of you out there, from voters to legislators, to the media that covered the candidacy and Presidency of 45 as a ratings goldmine and abdicated their responsibility with every damn “both sides” article, corporations that donated to these monsters, and Democratic legislators who have sat on their hands and done NOTHING.

I’ve already contacted my federal reps, not that I think it will do any good – nothing else has gotten them to get their shit together, I don’t know why this will. At a state level, we’re hanging on by a thread.

Will this egregious assault on our rights be enough to overcome R drawn state maps to get more state legislatures blue with legislators who will actually DO SHIT? I’d like to think so, but I am not counting on it.

I’ll be finding funds I can contribute to today at AbortionFunds – the site is back up this morning.

We have to protect ourselves and take care of each other now more than ever cause the folks who were supposed to do that on a legislative level have utterly failed.

And the DNC picked the wrong goddamn morning to text me for money.

Become fucking ungovernable.

As much as I do love my job, retirement cannot come soon enough. The weekends just aren’t quite enough to recover from the week these days.

I kinda, sorta know what’s on tap today, but who knows what’s changed since my team on the other side of the world logged on last night. That is such a downside of an international workforce – somehow we’re always behind the curve here, despite being in the same timezone as HQ.

I don’t even need to be ahead of the curve, I’d be great with just being vaguely *on* the curve these days.

Aaaaand I just got a Teams notification that they found another bug with one of the bits we’ve been working on. Well, at least I know, and it’s not a common scenario, so hopefully they’re not going to try and turn it around in 24 hours. I hope.

Welp, time to go see what that’s all about and get on with the day.

You have a good enough Monday and take care, cause there is still a pandemic out there.

Funny how we don’t really celebrate it here in the United States of Capitalist Exploitation. I mean, as a kid, May Day was presented to me as the day you left flowers on someone’s doorstep and did ding-dong-ditch. Not until adulthood did I learn about it being about labor.

I still live in an area that is incredibly hostile to organized labor – for all our blue voting in our county, folks are still very pro-corporate. It’s weird and detrimental to the people who live and work here, but I’m not sure how we change that.

And lord help me, I had to go to Target today and that’s another group of workers that really needs a union. I very much needed storage bins, but I also don’t love supporting their labor practices – on International Workers Day they didn’t have enough workers…

I don’t know about where you live, but it’s super odd here to watch our Covid cases going up, the county health department saying, “Uhhhh, be vigilant or something” and for a whole bunch of folks it seems like the pandemic is over and done. Must be nice to live in a world with no vulnerable people, long covid doesn’t exist, and if it did, there’s a health system that actually knew what to do with it. Fuckin’ fantasyland. And then we wonder…

Maybe I’m the one who needs to give in, but it feels less like an acceptance that Covid is endemic and more of a very selfish move made out of fatigue and boredom. I am so tired of takeout, my hair getting caught in mask straps, playing “pollen or covid” and everything that goes with this shit. And I know I’m not the only one – this has been hard on everyone. I just still can’t wrap my head around the fact that so many people don’t understand or don’t care that their decision to be done with the pandemic screws over other people.

So, today we headed to the vet for a followup to make sure her UTI cleared – blood draw, urinalysis, and Lily’s rabies shot so we could save ourselves a trip in a month.

Got the urinalysis and the rabies shot, but when it came to the blood draw, she was having none of it and channeled her inner Bobby Hill.

She then proceeded to pee all over the exam table and then barf.

The vet is new to the practice and I was instantly at ease with her, but I think she may use a different restraint method than the other vets and Lily just didn’t like it, and the vet decided since she will be getting a blood draw when she has her teeth cleaned in a few weeks (assuming the urinalysis comes back OK) it was better to not stress her out more today.

We also have a prescription for pre-appointment chill pills to make things easier on her in case today’s distress was not a one off.

We are home, she has been plied with treats and I think I am almost forgiven.

ME!!!!!!

And nothing went sideways today!

And I survived a meeting with a rather hostile client!

Got a nice note passed along from another client who appreciates all our hard work!

Guess who is still chatting with Makati (even though it is Saturday there) because having a team on the other side of the world still presents a ton of communications issues!

Still, a pretty good day.

And not a moment too soon!

As a result of the app of many broken pieces, I’ve been pulled into more special client troubleshooting than usual, which is fine, but yesterday support was a bit “FFS, status please?” and I let them know we were working on it, and really appreciated any and all patience because “a lot of things are happening all at the same time”* which was the nicest way I could say, “Look, I’m up to my ass in alligators here.”

Our department VP was on the email and he reached out directly to tell me I was doing great and if I needed him to run interference on any of these numerous status requests, he would be happy to do so.

The acknowledgement that this is all A LOT right now and that I am not a complete fuckup in his view was very, very appreciated. As far as VP level types go, he’s definitely one of the better ones that remembers the grind.

I’m also very close to removing Teams from my phone, LOL. Last night my team lead came looking for me trying to find our US dev who was rightfully offline. He seemed to think I had additional contact methods for her – nope, email & Teams is all I have. Not sure why he thought I’d have another way to get in touch with her, and she’s been working as hard as we have and even if I did have her cell number, I wouldn’t bother her at night, especially since we have other devs on his side of the world who are very talented and can handle things.

Well, time to go see what fresh nonsense today brings – but, IT IS FRIDAY.

*Trying to get 3 releases out the door in the span of roughly 5 days. Zero stars, do not recommend.

What a week, but we’re on the downhill side of it at least, THANK GOD.

Spent a good chunk of last evening talking the team lead off a ledge – I found an issue yesterday in version A. I worked with the dev. In version A, it’s fixed and we’ll test today, version B, it’s being held for the next release, cause B’s current release is in the process of being sent out. And it’s not a critical issue, it’s OK to hold it on version B for a couple weeks. So, all good.

I thought I had made it clear in all my communications before logging off that EVERYTHING IS OK AND UNDER CONTROL but apparently not.

But this issue is another example of the turnaround time being too tight, decisions were made in what to focus on and not focus on because of time constraints – and it was missed in version B as a direct result.

Well, time to go hopefully *not* find anything else wrong today.

And no early meetings today, yay! And somehow it’s only Wednesday and I have something like 24 hours on the books already!

I extended a big damn olive branch to our team lead – went to him with my idea for a testing approach for this app that’s been causing us so many problems – I genuinely think it would work, it would help immensely, but it would take the whole team and a couple dedicated days. But I put it out there. Hell, I would have volunteered to organize the effort.

Basically got a pat on the head, “we’ve talked about that, but we’re going to do it with automation” Going to – not past or present tense… But maybe once we’re past all this, we can try my idea. Um, the idea is *how* we get past all this.

I resisted the urge to whack him about the head with said olive branch, and I’m trying hard to ignore the voice in my head going, “I’m going to have to fucking do this myself, aren’t I?”*

But you know what? I tried. Can’t say I’m not a team player and all that.

And in other tech garbage, I have no cable again. Reboot did nothing last night, still nothing this morning and I don’t know when I’m going to have time to sit and call the cable people again. But at least I have the direct number for cable card support, which will save me a few transfers when I can call.

Nextdoor is in “spring photos” mode and someone posted a picture of a cardinal – “this beauty has been outside my window – is it a cardinal?” – and I guess they’re new to the area and were just entranced by this lovely bird and they put out water and berries for it and it was just sweet and nice. Nextdoor neighbors, more of this please.

Welp, time to go do the thing and make the money to buy the cat treats.

* I’m not ignoring that voice terribly well, as I am already turning over in my head the best way to group the processes and try to streamline it. WTF is wrong with me, I already have enough work to last me to September.