I want a prize, LOL.

Posted on January 31, 2021 by A Dreamer

Somehow this afternoon I had a burst of…determination or something, and got every damn thing ticked off my to-do list.

I am most proud of getting the bedlinens washed and back on the bed HOURS before bedtime. HOURS.

Made a big pot of chili, which was perfect for the weather and settles lunch & dinner for a few days.

Popped back online for work and yes, the thing I thought was a defect Friday night is in fact a defect, and that’s in the system now, and only took 15 minutes.

Booted myself over to the yoga mat for a half hour, and I still don’t know why I have to kick myself to do it, cause as soon as I start, I’m very, “Oh, this is nice.”

Little bro did the shoveling and dishes, which was very helpful.

And it’s not even 7:30 and I’ve taken a nice, long, hot shower and I’ve got hours to just relax before bed.

Feeling better than I have in quite a while.

Let this be a good omen for the week to come.

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Welp, we’ve got snow!

Posted on January 31, 2021 by A Dreamer

And not too much! They’re saying ~4″ today and ~2″ tomorrow. That is an amount I can deal with.

Snow covering my messy side garden
Even makes the messy side garden look calm.

All week the local news has been doom & glooming over this storm and I was not feeling great about it, so it’s a very pleasant surprise to just get this reasonable amount.

I don’t hate snow, but being an adult takes a lot of the fun out of it. Worrying about shoveling, de-icing, trees falling, roofs collapsing, etc, etc.

But, I do love how it amplifies the natural light, which does help my seasonally depressed ass. When the sun comes out on Wednesday, there will be more natural light in the house than there is in mid-July.

Lily is still not a fan of the salt/sand trucks/plows.

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Is it naptime yet?

Posted on January 30, 2021 by A Dreamer

I have done ALL THE THINGS today.

OK, maybe not ALL, but Starbucks has been acquired, and 3 freaking stops to find cat litter. (Snow is coming, which is impacting supply, and I didn’t want to switch up litter on the LilyMonster. She probably wouldn’t care, but why risk it?)

When at Petco (which did not have her litter) – they had a display of pet safe ice melt, and having zero idea of our supply, grabbed one. According to my brother, we now have an assload of it.

Popped into Staples next door to check out their PPE situation and managed to snag the last 20 count box of KN95’s – I know they’re not as effective as N95’s and who knows the supply chain they went through, but, needs-must and all that. Box says they’re good for 8 hours of continuous use or 5 days of intermittent use. So, I’ll be using the surgical masks as a liner in my fabric ones, and then the KN95 underneath.

At some point, breathability is going to be an issue with all these layers, LOL. And then of course today I just now found actual N95’s on Amazon from a company in Illinois. So, those are on order, too.

I’m not getting this freakin’ virus.

And in other “keep this shit away” stuff, the grocery store had actual Lysol wipes and Staples had the big containers of real Clorox wipes. Guess who is restocked on wipes? (Gawd, I am a brand snob.)

A while ago, I got some more kitchen towels, because ours tend to disappear (I guess they’re with the socks) and it was a bust – 2 of the 3 packs were just awful and I’m trying to figure out how to repurpose them. So, I popped back on to Target and found some Kitchen Aid ones and I figured they wouldn’t put their name on crap so I ordered them – a little pricey ($20 for a pack of 4) but they arrived this week and they are really nice! Good sized, properly absorbent, and they *feel* nice, too. Lots of colors available to boot.

This is how I know I’m old. I am excited about kitchen towels. (But they’re really nice!)

And in my whole “not working this weekend” bit…HAHAHAHA. I just need to log on today for a few minutes and double check something – when I noticed the potential problem last night, it was the end of the day, I was tired and wasn’t really sure if I was seeing things or not and the system was about to go down for the daily build anyway, so I said fuck it, logged off and started drinking.

I’d just wait until Monday, but then the dev won’t get it until Tuesday because of the time difference, so, yeah, the joys of a worldwide department.

Posted in COVID19, Miscellany, Working | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Oh, hello existential dread

Posted on January 29, 2021 by A Dreamer

Though it would be a few weeks before you came back around. Fuck it, take a seat and have a beer.

The fucking South African Covid variant. It’s here in Virginia, the cases don’t have travel history and we’re not going to know how it was transmitted because our contact tracing is still shit AND EVERYTHING IS FUCKING OPEN.

The current vaccines aren’t particularly effective against the SA variant. And you know damn well people will stop taking precautions when (or even if) they get vaccinated, the SA variant will become dominant, we’ll need a booster vaccine, that will take time, allowing a new variant to emerge.

Lather. Rinse. Motherfucking. Repeat.

I’m astounded there isn’t a US variant yet. We’re gonna somehow do a national vaccine booster rollout every 9-12 months? We’re doing good to get 50% of the population to get a flu vaccine.

We could have just admitted money isn’t real, given everyone a fuckton of it and shut EVERYTHING down except IDK, groceries and pharmacies, for a couple months, but nope.

I just don’t see how we get out of this.

This on top of a bit of a garbage day at work yesterday. I’m easily the slowest tester in our group – I get my shit done by the deadlines, but I’m just…slow at it, and I’m very self-conscious about it.

This new feature we’ve been testing – I’ll FINALLY finish it today, after well over a month of work on it, with some nights and weekends thrown in for good measure – but the other 3 folks working on it have been done and I’m still out here finding shit wrong (even one really fucking big one just this week) so, slow is good, but it’s still…slow.

And while feeling very slow yesterday, I get an email from my boss about “talking about 2021 goals” and I was very Oh Fuck Me about it and then it turns out it’s a fucking internal phishing test. NOT COOL IT DEPARTMENT, NOT COOL.

But, I have a very large coffee next to me, we have a half day today, and the weekend is a mere 5 hours away and I will NOT be working.

Hang in there.

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Let me just conjure that up out of my ass

Posted on January 28, 2021 by A Dreamer

So, in the last couple days, seen both “everyone should be wearing N95 masks” and “everyone should be double masking with N95s and a surgical mask.”

Now, you can get ASTM Level 3 face masks that are made in the US from Amazon – there are multiple options on that front.

But N95’s not sourced in China and not from some seriously sketchy-assed websites? Good fucking luck. (My issue with China sourcing is that there are so many supply layers, the potential for counterfeits is really fucking high, with both N95 & KN95’s.)

Amazon has a ton of 3M N95’s listed, but you can’t actually buy them.

The Defense Production Act has its work cut out for it for PPE.

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Wait, it’s Wednesday?

Posted on January 27, 2021 by A Dreamer

I’ve just spent the past half hour thinking it was Tuesday. Good that we’re a day closer to the weekend, but I could use an extra day out of nowhere for this thing I’m testing at work.

I’ve been working on testing this feature for the better part of a month and I’m *still* finding things wrong. It’s brand new, so it will be buggy – but I am not the only one testing it – why does it feel like I’m the only one finding things wrong? Out of 19 bugs, I’ve found 13 of them. (I am pretty pleased with the most recent one I found – it doesn’t show up until you’re essentially on the fourth run of the report and only if specific buttons have been ticked on a separate process done before printing. I AM NOTHING IF NOT THOROUGH.)

The good news is that I’ll be done with the main testing, aka the “find all the shit that is wrong” round by the end of the week. Then there is testing all the individual bugs – but, the good news on that is that I can test that in one big dataset and just go, “fixed, fixed, fixed, still fucked, fixed, fixed” so that will go pretty quick.

But my god, I’ll be happy to put this one behind me. It has been an ungodly slow process made worse by the fact that I put together some pretty sophisticated datasets so I could do a big print run to check that it will a) do a big print run and then b) check a fuckton of data combinations within that print run and… it refuses to do big print runs.

Oh, and we’re a week into the Biden administration and I will say, it has been gloriously boring. They’re just doing the things they said they’d do. McConnell is still being a dick, but we knew he was never going to change. Sure, I’d like them to get shit done faster, but we didn’t get into this shit in a week, we’re not going to get out of it in a week.

Welp, time to go to the thing to make the money to survive this capitalist hellscape.

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So much for my furry alarm clock

Posted on January 25, 2021 by A Dreamer

So, my sunshine alarm goes off at 7, my phone alarm at 7:05.

The sunshine alarm just lights up the room and plays some bird sounds and doesn’t really wake me up, but sorta gets my brain ready for the idea of waking up.

Well, guess who forgot to turn the Monday alarm back on her phone after the holiday last week?

THIS GAL!

And what kitty was too busy downstairs smashing herself up in front of the heat register to say anything to the girl as she slept for another HOUR?

LILY!

But, coffee has been acquired, most of my brain cells are facing the right direction and I’ll still be on time for work.

Though the plan was to start *early* today…

Ah well.

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No room for stretching out

Posted on January 23, 2021 by A Dreamer
Lily, a black and orange tortoiseshell cat, curled up sleeping
Smack in the center

Seriously, she’s managing to take up a full third of the sofa, right in the middle.

But I can’t be at all mad, cause she’s cute and sweet and when I took a snooze this afternoon, she came upstairs and snuggled right up with me.

It’s been an “I hate winter” day and she’s made it brighter.

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While I know it’s not all sunshine & rainbows

Posted on January 22, 2021 by A Dreamer

It’s nice to hear the phrase, “From the White House today…” and not cringe.

And when the sentence is finished, to think, “Yes, that seems reasonable and rational.”

We didn’t get in this mess in a day, and we’re not going to get out of it in a day, but it is good to see them working to fix what they can as quickly as they can. (I know Biden wants to be judicious with the EO’s – but hell, go nuts and run them through OLC and if they say OK, then let ’em rip.)

And Dr Fauci! My brother pointed out that he looks 10 years younger. Can you imagine going from orders of “Don’t make me look bad” to “Be honest, that’s the most important thing”? The man looks like he is truly enjoying his work again.

McConnell is still a dick, but we knew that would never change. Time to ditch the filibuster and PASS ALL THE BILLS!

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So, I think there might be some stress leaving my body…

Posted on January 21, 2021 by A Dreamer

So, last two days, I have been absolutely *knackered* – not the kind of fatigue when you’re sick or don’t feel good, but more like running a freakin’ marathon and finally being able to sit your ass down.

And my dumb ass was thinking, “15-20 minutes of yoga where I spend half of it laying on the floor shouldn’t wear me out like this – I know I’m not in fantastic shape, but…”

And then it occurred to me – I’ve been a little tense for…4 years.

Literally the only time I thought about 45 today was when the news mentioned all the A listers he couldn’t get for his inauguration and I had a good laugh.

Didn’t really think about Biden at all – while I know I’ll be pissed at him for various reasons over the next four years, there is something to be said for not going “What the fuck did he do now?!” every time I turn around.

It’s like the hyper-alertness has finally been shut off – and now I need a week long nap.

It feels nice.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 2 Comments