| Garmin Instruction Fail |
[Sep. 2nd, 2009|07:09 pm] |
I officially designate Garmin as the company with the worst instruction manuals ever.
I decided to get a GPS because despite my insistence to the contrary I need one. I always get lost when I go to SF, and it's too hard to read internet directions while you're driving most of the time.
So I used my birthday money (with supplemental spending money) to buy a Garmin 765T. The T is for Traffic, I wanted that because I hate SF traffic. I had it sent to the office because it was so expensive and I wanted it sooner than if I had it sent to my parents' house, and I'm never home to sign for it if I have it shipped to my apartment. When I got in the car to go home I opened the box to see if I could test it on the way home, and ignored all the other contents of the box besides the GPS itself. I did manage to turn it on and program in my home address. It gave me two directions, and then announced it had a low battery, so I shut it off.
Just now, I went through the other contents of the box to figure out how to charge it, since they shipped it without a full battery.
Since they ship it without a full battery I thought the instruction manual would say how to charge it.
Silly me.
The QuickStart guide included in the box says absolutely nothing about how to charge the unit. It tells me how to connect the GPS to my Bluetooth cell phone but not how to charge it.
Okay, Mr. Technical Writer, I can't connect my GPS to Bluetooth, or the FM transmitter, or listen to MP3s, or Acquire the Satellites or do any of the rest of this crap without charging the battery.
So tell me how to charge the battery!
I rummaged through the box again, thinking surely there must be a more extensive manual.
Silly me.
The thickest booklet in there turned out to be a two-page safety warning in every language known to man that might ever use a GPS.
I went online to get the real instruction manual. Surely they'd put how to charge the darn thing somewhere in the beginning, since it's so basic.
Silly me.
Garmin put "Ways to charge your nuvi" in the Appendix at the very end. And it doesn't have instruction, it just lists that you can use the vehicle power cable, the USB cable, or the optional (not included) AC adapter cable.
Okay, I'm an intelligent person. I'll play the engineer card here. I should be able to figure this out. I plugged the unit into the USB cable and that into my computer. A little display came up showing a computer and a cable. Okay, it's doing something.
But when will the battery charge? That's all I want to know. My iPod has that display. When it's plugged in it shows how full the battery is. That's all I want. Instruction manual's got nothin'. I can find one page that helpfully says if you turn the unit on it will show how full the battery is. But if I turn the unit on while it's connected the computer it doesn't have the battery display. I've explored and there's no menu option to look at the battery status.
I bought this GPS because it had good reviews. Garmin is supposedly the best GPS company. And the screens do look straightforward, and I trust it will be able to navigate me.
But I need to be able to charge it first.
I swear. Ikea has more succesfully directions using only pictograms.
It also bears mentioning that my mother and I also had extreme difficulty using the Garmin GPS watch my dad got her for Christmas because the instructions were so terrible.
Urrrrgh.
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 29th, 2009|02:38 pm] |
This is a weird week.
Yesterday was the ammonia leak.
The day before that was a fire alarm at work.
Today was the branch.
Just now I heard a sound outside my apartment like a big box being dropped onto the ground. I was inside waiting for a little while because my neighbor had parked in the driveway, which makes it hard for me to back my car out, and I was hoping by the time I finished reading my Cook's Illustrated that came in the mail (I saw his car in the driveway when I went to get my mail) he would be gone. When I heard the noise I looked out the window and didn't see anything so I opened the door.
Saw the rear windshield of his Mercedes completely shattered and a big eucalyptus branch lying beside the car. I ran down and opened the garage to make sure it was his car and not my landlady's uncle, who has a similar car that he sometimes parks there. There wasn't a car in the garage so I figured it had to be Chris's. I ran back up to his apartment and knocked. I asked if he had parked in the driveway, and he replied back through the door that he was just about to move it out of the driveway. "No, it's not that," I said. I'm not particularly eloquent at the best of times so I think what I said next was "Something bad happened."
Now with the branch and glass in the way I will not be going shopping like I'd planned on. Unfortunately for Chris he was just about to leave for a gig with his band that now he can't make. He had left his car in the driveway so he could load his drums. The situation will be complicated for him because the city owns those eucalyptus trees. Does that mean the city has to pay for it? That sounds like it would be difficult to accomplish. Though this is the city of a thousand trees, it must have this happen pretty regularly.
Yesterday with the ammonia leak was super strange too. After I'd called everybody I kept checking my email and around 10:30 started getting emails saying the campus was open except for a few far-out buildings and some from people in my department reporting that they'd gotten in. So I called Brad in our group who wasn't able to access his email from home, told him, and then headed in. My phone rang while I was driving so I didn't answer it, and it turned out to be Brad saying that he couldn't get to our building because of a police blockade! I encountered the blockade too, so I parked in the Research department's lot and went and asked the policeman what was going on. He couldn't really say, he just knew I wasn't allowed in. So I turned around and went home. Eventually Brad called me back - he had waited in the lobby of another building and had gotten word that after the all-clear had been given someone in our building had started feeling sick which led to a full hazmat response at our building!
All in all I finally got to work at 2. Of course it was a ghost town, but there were a few other diehards in lab along with me. We don't really have choices, our cells have to be taken care of or they die. Some people just had to passage their cells, which doesn't take too long. Me, I had to inoc a whole experiment. This shouldn't have been too bad, except the dissolved oxygen probes on two of my reactors had failed before the experiment started and I had to completely rebuild them. Unpleasant. Then after I rebuilt them they still seemed funny so I had to decide what to do. I decided to pump in media anyway and see what happened. With media in there they magically seemed fine, thank goodness. But all that delayed me quite a bit, so even though I went in at 2 I still put in a near full day and left at 9.
So that was a fun Friday night. At least I figured out how to hook my iPod up to the speakers in the lab.
The cops just came and talked to Chris about the branch. He's talking about taping plastic across the back and heading for his gig anyway. If he does that I think I'll sneak out and go shopping.... But maybe sweep the glass from the driveway first. Until then I will watch Dexter and color designs for greeting cards. I'm almost out of my supply of handmade blank cards. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 28th, 2009|08:08 am] |
Oh my goodness! What an exciting morning.
Not often I say that before eight.
This morning while I was getting ready my new cell phone rang. I rushed out of the bathroom but didn't get to it in time. I recognized the number as coming from my company, so I called it right back. The nearest I could think was that Pilot Plant was calling me, since I am the backup for my manager for a current Pilot Plant run - which, if that was the case, was bad. But when I called the number back it went right to voicemail for a guy in Business Continuity.
Business Continuity is the department in charge of keeping the company running in the event of an emergency.
What?!
After I hung up my phone said I had a voicemail. It was the company's Emergency Broadcast system saying that there was an ammonia leak near campus and not to come in today at all!
I immediately logged on to my work email and saw only one announcement, from the commuting department saying that all the buses won't be running since the buses were parked overnight next door to the leak and are now blocked in.
First I tried to contact Angela, the girl I'm supervising who started this week. Unfortunately I didn't have her new cell phone number, but we are friends on Facebook so I message her on that and her two posted personal email addresses for good measure.
Then I started calling everyone in my group, trying to reach the people I knew took the train before they wound up at the train station, stranded because no company buses were running! I left messages for most, but our two group leaders answered and they'd already heard. But then Brad and Wendy both called me back, and they hadn't heard, so they were glad I'd called. Brad especially because he doesn't have internet access at home (he just moved), so I told him I'd call back if I heard anything more.
So that's a lot of calls and excitement and watching the news and annoying people with phone calls before I normally even get in to the office in the morning. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 25th, 2009|08:13 pm] |
Well, I had a good birthday. Saturday night was a birthday party for another girl from church, which was fun, then Sunday my parents came out for lunch and cake. Then on my actual birthday I did have to spend the whole day at work, but afterward girls from church came over for pizza and more cake.
With my parents we tried a Burmese restaurant right down the street that I've gone by tons of times but still have never gone to. we weren't sure my dad, who typically hates Chinese food, would like anything, but he seemed to be in an "if I'm going to do it, I'm going to go all out" mood because he not only ordered Mongolian lamb, for a family that does not eat lamb, and the coconut tapioca drink with the overhanging specter of giant fish-eye tapioca balls. In the end, the lamb dish was delicious, and the coconut drink had nice little acceptable tapiocas and was good too. And Dad liked everything! He was scraping the plates clean, and not just because he was hungry. The place was really great, and Melissa put it on the "we can go here when I come to visit" list, which joins two Thai restaurants on that very short list.
At work I'm now managing someone for the first time. I agreed a while ago to supervise a rotational program person for their six month stint in our department on one of our projects, and she started yesterday. And it turns out the person I got assigned was Angela, a girl who interned in our department a year ago, so I already knew her. And she already knew our department, which makes things a lot easier. But I instantly got incredibly, mind-boggling busier, so I'm going to have to concentrate very hard to make sure I get everything done. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 6th, 2009|08:49 pm] |
It must have been windy around here lately. I can tell because there's eucalyptus shrapnel all over the street. Enough bark must have regrown since the winter windstorm in '08 for the trees that line either side to be covered with hanging strips of bark.
Yesterday I spent a very agreeable few minutes jumping to pull off some huge bark pieces from the tree nearest my driveway.
Luckily there weren't witnesses to this.
In other news, I bought a Smooth Away. This is the fault of Target's price scanners. When Catherine and I were in Target on Sunday we stopped to look at the As Seen on TV section. We were mocking the Smooth Away, and whether it could actually work. It didn't have a price tag, so I said, "If it was under $10 I'd buy it." Target has those convenient price scanners in the aisles, and lo and behold, it was $9.99.
So now I have a Smooth Away.
And go figure, it works! It does actually smooth away your hair. And your skin, they don't advertise that part. It smooths, aka grates off, your skin and hair simultaneously. This was perhaps more obvious to me than to someone else who tries the product because I could see my fake tan rubbing off. This cracked Catherine up.
It's also not convenient to use, since you have to do the full sandpaper work-over on your legs to get them hairless, which takes more time than shaving.
But I think I've gotten my $10 worth of curiosity fulfillment out of it.
Today at work I went to the full-day training for the electronic lab notebook I complained about earlier. I have to admit the program seems pretty cool. And it's definitely easy to use. I just still hold that it doesn't serve the function of being an actual notebook you can scribble in while your actually in lab, but otherwise it's better than I thought. And the training even worked out really well. I didn't have anything else to do today I couldn't put off, and the training was in the same building on the furthest part of campus as the presentation Dinesh in my group was giving at lunch that I wanted to go to, so on our lunch break I just walked across the hall to their meeting rather than our lunch at the training. And that worked out great because the food at the meeting was better than at the training! At the meeting they had hot food (salmon, odd rice pilaf) and at the training they had those cold seafood wraps everyone but me likes.
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| Splurging |
[Aug. 5th, 2009|09:49 pm] |
Today I splurged on baking supplies. Danielle from church is coming over on Friday for baking and the season premiere for Psych, so I wanted us to have lots of freedom of choice on what to bake.
First I went to Whole Foods and got whole grain supplies so I can make things from the King Arthur Whole Grain Baking cookbook: whole wheat flour, white whole wheat flour, whole grain cornmeal, whole grain spelt flour, and whole wheat pastry flour.
Then I went to Safeway and got raw sugar, heavy cream, buttermilk, molasses (Brer Rabbit brand, which inexplicable makes me think of racists), a dark chocolate bar, and espresso powder.
Baking, here we come!
Of course, after all this planning for baking desserts I email my uncle to say I'll bring a dessert to his lunch party in two weeks and find out my aunt already claimed that. There goes your lemon-raspberry whole grain layer cake, Craig! ...Maybe I'll make biscuits. It's too much for me to make yeasted rolls on a Friday after work. |
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| Karen's Wedding |
[Aug. 4th, 2009|08:18 pm] |
That was a good vacation.
I've been off work since last Wednesday. Tuesday night I picked Melissa up from the airport (she'd been in Vegas) and Wednesday morning we went to see the Tutankhamen exhibit at the De Young Museum in the city. They had a lot of neat artifacts that displayed amazing amounts of artistry, but a disappointing number of artifacts from Tut's tomb considering they called the whole exhibit Tut's Treasures.
Thursday I flew out to Atlanta, and that took that whole day. My flight was delayed a little, but I did get a lot of reading done on Time Traveler's Wife that is the book for a girl from work's book club in a few weeks. Catherine picked me up and we checked into the hotel. The next day we had the free breakfast at the hotel and then met up with Karen and Alicia for manicures and pedicures after a delicious Chik-Fil-A lunch. Nobody makes a fried chicken sandwich like they do.
Since the people at the nail place used latex gloves I asked for them to just paint my nails. Toenails blue to match the dress, fingers red. This was when I learned that the feminine skill of not messing of fingernail polish completely escapes me. I messed up 5/10 fingers by the time we left, and one more afterward. Just couldn't do it.
After that we went back to the hotel to get ready and it was the rehearsal. Karen went on ahead and Catherine, Alicia, and I found the art museum where the wedding was being held on our own. Then the wedding planner showed us how to walk in and out, but not how to put our hands on the groomsmen's arm for the recessional so the bridesmaids had several whispered discussions about that. Awkward engineers. Then the groom's sister played a photo montage that included Karen in her Ninja Turtle-like polar fleece sleep sack which no one can find out how they got.
The rehearsal dinner was at a restaurant called Atkin's Park and the food was fantastic. Karen bemoaned how much she was eating, saying that she wouldn't fit in her dress. Since she had told me before her dress has a significant amount of corsetry I didn't think she needed to be worried. Unfortunately, what came out of my mouth was "That's what boning is for!" Given the context, I don't blame everyone at the table for finding that hilarious.
I also learned that in prison, "top-man" isn't gay. The groom's stepdad is a parole officer.
The next day was the wedding. The bridesmaids, bride, and bride's mother went to brunch at a place called Murphy's that is known for its brunch. I had French toast which was very good, but most places have very good French toast so I couldn't make a larger judgement. Then we went to the art museum. Over an hour early. Before our hour to get ready. Since I'd already done my makeup and just needed to change clothes that was a lot of extra time. So we sat around the room and played Rummy.
I'm not good at Rummy. I think that is an area my intelligence simply fails me.
After Rummy we got ready and got Karen into her dress and we had to take pictures. A lot of pictures. Looking into the sun. I'm pretty sure we're smiling funny and squinting in most of those. Then the bridemaids got to go back inside (for more Rummy) while the bride and groom took pictures. During this, Karen got bitten all over by mosquitos and developed horrendous pink welts. When she came back in we tried to think of anything we could put on them. I hadn't brought my Cortaid with me to the museum, so Catherine and Karen's mom ended up smearing her all over with Gold Bond Anti-Itch Foot Powder her mom had. I memorialized that with a picture. It's my favorite.
When the time finally came we slowly walked in to Pachelbel's Canon and then there was the ceremony. The couple is atheist so the ceremony had no mention of God. It was pleasantly short, and the groom had very misty eyes. I couldn't see Karen. Then the recessional, then more pictures! Including one where the photographers wanted the bridesmaids to pretend that we were fighting over the groom on the last day he was single. I think we all stood there, heads cocked and mouths open in confusion. That's not what Tech girls do. We'll see.
The reception was in the same room where the ceremony was (it had been flipped in the "cocktail hour" when we were taking more photos and in which I had one and only one hor d'oerve). The food was, again, fantastic! There was one station with sushi and potstickers, one with meats and warm sides, and one with cheese, roasted vegetables, cold meats, and crackers. I tried the seared tuna and confirmed my dislike of raw fish. Too soft. And raw. And fish.
The entertainment for the reception was music, but not dancing. Karen and Will had two big plasma screens brought in and connected one to a Wii and another to Rock Band. Karen and Will played one Rock Band set together instead of a first dance. Then guests kept coming and playing songs together. It was a really good idea. I think everyone had fun. Then there was cake but not traditional cake. There was cheesecake with toppings you could add yourself and a tower of truffles.
Then there was the bouquet toss.
Karen wanted me to catch the bouquet. Something about the implied "Geez, you want to get married" is embarassing, so I wasn't going to dive after the bouquet myself, but I'd catch it if it came to me. So when Karen's first toss landed six feet away from the gaggle of girls no one went after it, myself included. I didn't know the groom's sister really wanted me to catch the bouquet too, so when Karen went to throw the bouquet the second time I wasn't expecting to be pushed from behind. In the parabolic path of Karen's second, more forceful, and more accurate throw.
While technically no one ever caught Karen's bouquet, if you really believe in the tradition, my face is the next one to be married.
I understand that there are several good pictures of me clutching my face in pain immediately afterward.
After the reception wound down we sent Karen and Will off with sparklers rather than by throwing stuff. It looked pretty in the dark. And that was the wedding!
Sunday it was just Catherine and me. She drove me around Tech campus so I could see what had changed (a new nanotechnology building and barriers preventing you from driving through center campus), we went back to the hotel and watched Wedding Crashers, and then we walked around Atlantic Station where we got salads for dinner because all the food thus far had been good but not necessarily healthy. I confirmed I don't like raspberry vinaigrette. Then we went to Colonnade and got dessert. When I was in Atlanta last year after dinner at the Colonnade we were too full for dessert and that made me sad. So we ordered the strawberry shortcake (the first I ever had with ice cream which made me do that when I made strawberry shortcake myself), the chocolate pie (very rich, you could tell it was homemade filling), and the sublime coconut cream pie. Ahhhhh. We ate all three and I tipped 30% because the waitress was obviously disappointed we only ordered $13 of food.
And then yesterday I came home!
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| Teeth |
[Jul. 28th, 2009|08:59 pm] |
I mentioned before that I have unusual dentition. First I have the tiny maxillary lateral incisors between large central incisors and prominent canines on the top, and in addition instead of four incisors in my lower jaw I just have two along with two two filed-down canines, since I was born without one incisor and my orthodontist likes symmetry.
But I think there might be another oddity. The gum behind my top right last molar has been hurting, so I have been wondering if the wisdom tooth that wasn't removed when I was 11 was coming in. I could feel a little corner of a tooth poking through the jaw but it was right by the existing molar, far too close to be a separate tooth. Unless something was wrong.
So I just spent several minutes jostling a Maglite and jamming my hand mirror into my mouth to see what I could see (I probably wouldn't have attempted this if I still had roommates. They would have taken a picture and never let me live this down). And as far as I can tell, this isn't my wisdom teeth - this is the unerupted other half of my upper second molars! I've always noticed that I can only feel three "corners" of my upper second molars, this must the fourth corner!
See, at almost 25 I'm at the upper edge of normal to have my wisdom teeth come in. And I'm just getting my second molars?!!!!!
You're supposed to get those when you're 12!!!
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 28th, 2009|07:50 pm] |
I have been spray tanned.
I am sticky everywhere.
I have to sleep like this.
I reserve judgment.
Right now I'm getting ready to pick my sister up at the airport so I'm getting some snacks ready. I like having snacks and a bottle of water in the car for whomever I pick up from the airport, and nobody has ever turned them down. Today, since I do only live ten minutes away from SFO, it's one little condiment cup of almonds and another of jelly beans because when Melissa was here Saturday we stopped at Powell's Sweet Shoppe down the street and I got Jelly Bellies, concentrating on my favorites: buttered popcorn, toasted marshmallow, sours, and cream soda.
Today at work was a rush to get everything finished, though "everything" mostly meant emails and meetings and Powerpoint, not even lab work. One meeting was about our soon-to-come "Electronic Lab Notebook". Right now we have paper lab notebooks, which we write about our experiments in, tape our results in, and eventually which we sign and date and get witnessed so if we patent something we have written proof. They're hoping with electronic lab notebooks we'll get them witnessed more often and it'll be easier to find information in them.
That sounds good. Except the thing is, we use lab notebooks in lab. As in, on the bench next to chemicals or by the sink or by equipment. You know, where there aren't computers to be inputting this stuff. I scribble down things as I go, calculations and notes on what I'm doing and chemical formulas. Which are all a lot easier to handwrite than to type. Believe me, it's a pain in the neck to have to input any type of formula whether chemical or mathematical, even if there is a computer nearby. So at the meeting I asked the guys from the company that makes the electronic lab notebook software if they make it easier to type in math or chemical formulas, since we have to make science-y notes while we're in lab.
Blank stare.
I can tell that this is a case of people who work with computers designing something for people who work with...you know...physical stuff. I forsee this advancement of technology making my life much, much harder.
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 27th, 2009|06:59 pm] |
In the randomness of the universe, Duane, the guy from high school who turned me down for prom, ended up working for my company's main competitor down the street so today we went to lunch.
Maybe it's because of Facebook, and being able to see pictures of people and keep track of them, but it really didn't feel like seven years since we'd seen each other. He talked about a lot of computer stuff I didn't quite understand, but overall it was nice to see someone from my crappy high school turn out into a competent adult with a good job and even buying a house. He updated me on some of the people from high school he kept up with that I didn't. And paid for my lunch, which I wasn't expecting. And it's odd how the memory works, I didn't remember how he snapped the axle off his hotrod junior year, which he reminded me of, but I did remember the specific type of acne he is (apparently) still afflicted with.
He also told me that our AP history teacher (whom he remembers fondly and I...do not) might be our late AP history teacher. Since high school I haven't been able to find internet evidence of him, and Duane said he's looked too, and found a history of his political donations that just stop a couple of years ago. Years ago I heard rumors he had HIV, information that jived with small pieces of personal information he let fall when I was in high school. I wonder if it's true.
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 26th, 2009|08:20 pm] |
Today I was a good sister and took Melissa to the airport at 5:30 am. She had stayed overnight to enable this, so it was not too much of a hassle, just a 25 minute round-trip. Though it was before dawn.
Since after that I slept in past church I did not go. Instead I went to Michael's and got chain and Target for shopping. I needed chain because last week I bought a children's size cross necklace because the charm was just the plainness and small size I wanted. But the chain was just a little bit too small, maybe by an inch or two. Since I have a small neck normal adult-size necklaces (18") are too large, and now I know that child-size (14") are too small. So I got chain and made myself a 16" one!
At Target I was getting a variety of things. Things I need for Karen's wedding, like mascara, a gift bag, and darker foundation since I've decided to get spray-tanned, and snacks for the plane. I also got an audio tape player because I found a lot of audio cassettes in one of my boxes of memorabilia in the closet, and I want to be able to listen to them before I decide whether to throw them out or not. I'm not sure how much of myself rambling I need to maintain for posterity. I asked a Target guy if they had audio tape players and he looked at me like I was from another planet. I explained what I meant, since it seemed like a new concept to him, but he ended up saying they didn't have them. Suspicious, I asked where their CD players where, and he brightened up, since he knew the answer to that, and directed me to a nearby aisle. Sure enough, next to the CD players were two models of audio tape players. So I got one.
Besides that run-in with a Target employee I also got an unexpected answer from the cashier. She asked how I was and I said good, so I asked how she was and she said not good because she had a migraine! She told me that a previous customer asked her why she wasn't smiling and that she had to tell the woman she had a migraine and that it's hard to smile when the lights overhead make you want to close your eyes. I sympathized. Not only do I hate migraines I hate people telling you you should be smiling all the time. I had a roommate who used to do that. So I offered her some of the ibuprofen I had in my purse, assuming she wouldn't take drugs from a stranger, but it must have been super bad because she did take them. I hoped they helped. |
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| Salami Fire |
[Jul. 23rd, 2009|08:02 pm] |
The first sign for me that something was wrong was that the street in to work was blocked off. I thought it was a car accident somewhere beyond the cop car and flares, so I pulled a U-ey like everyone else and proceeded on the long way around.
But then I passed a second cop car blocking off a street, with the lights flashing.
I was able to turn down the next street and had the vague thought that maybe if the whole area was blocked off I would get out of going to work. Then I smelled smoke! The streets weren't blocked off before my usual parking lot so I parked and got out. Everything smelled smoky! I was wondering what was up, and happened to pass our department's safety contact on his way back through the parking lot, so I asked him. He told me a salami factory caught on fire! He also said that because our building has manufacturing they were having to mess with the HVAC to keep the air flow right. Whatever they had to do to the HVAC, it meant our building smelled like burnt salami past lunch, much longer than other buildings.
The smell was odd. You could really tell it was salami. It wasn't just the smoke smell, it was identifiably meat.
The news said all the workers in the building got out safe but the whole building was destroyed.
So after that excitement, my morning had another safety event. My new cube neighbor, a new hire into our sister department, splashed a chemical on him in lab. He couldn't find anyone to help him (like his manager or closer co-workers) so he asked me. I told him to go to the medical office about the chemical that got on him and I dealt with the waste in the lab, which involved calling the appropriate department to find out how to dispose of it, segregating that trash can, and emailing the same safety guy I'd seen in the parking lot.
He must have had a busy day.
So with all that, and meetings, I was very unproductive today. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 21st, 2009|09:25 pm] |
I just remembered another weird work thing I wanted to mention.
Working in the same building as the manufacturing plant leads to some odd things, like how one door used to lock you out if you'd badged into the pilot plant within 24 hours.
But yesterday we got an email that we can't have plants at our desks because they think bugs might make it through three closed doors and an airlock into the manufacturing area! Based on the email chain, someone from manufacturing noticed a bouquet of flowers on a woman's desk and wrote to tell her she couldn't have them. Me, I see flowers and think "how nice". Them, "Not allowed!"
So I had to take home the two houseplants on my desk yesterday. Now my desk is bare and sad. And my car has dirt on the floor. |
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| Nielsen Money |
[Jul. 21st, 2009|06:47 pm] |
A while ago I got a call from the Nielsen people asking if I'd be willing to participate in a Nielsen TV survey. Since I greatly enjoy TV and wish my preferences would carry more weight (Bring back Wonderfalls! Cancel Jon+Kate+Eight 'cause you're ruining their lives!) I of course said yes. I think the caller asked that before they asked if I was Hispanic. This is always the part that confuses me because how Hispanic do they want me to be to count my television watching? I said yes anyway, and then the guy sweetened the pot even more by saying I'd get $30 for participating.
I make plenty of money. $30 shouldn't excite me, but it does. Because $30 I wasn't expecting, from filling out a survey, that's money I get to blow! I don't have to account for it to myself.
Anyway, today the packet came in the mail. There were two booklets, one for each TV, some instructions, and then, wait, dollar bills? They sent the $30 in cash?!
I mean, that works. I just feel as if sending cash through the mail is...You know...You just don't do it. Do they send cash because they don't think a lot of their target population will be able to cash checks? Huh.
Oh. A quick Google search indicates that's their standard procedure. Guess I'm paranoid.
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| Lists |
[Jul. 16th, 2009|09:52 pm] |
Yesterday our department, our sister department, and our counterpart in Southern California had a day-long meeting where people shared a lot about their work. It was like a conference, but just with people from our highly related departments. They scheduled us for eight hours of talks and overviews and talks and posters.
I learned that I can name twenty types of cheese off the top of my head.
Camembert
Limburger
Stilton
Cheddar
Mozzarella
Ricotta
Cream
Brie
Goat
Blue
Monterey Jack
Gruyere
Parmesano Reggiano
Romano
Grano Padano
Pepperjack
Munster
Cottage
Swiss
American
I named eight grains:
Wheat
Rice
Corn
Quinoa
Amaranth
Barley
Oats
Spelt
But I was wrong, amaranth isn't a grain even in Trader Joe's puts it in cereal.
I can name five cholesterol-lowering drugs:
Lipitor
Zocor (simvastatin)
Mevacor (lovastatin)
Zetia
Vytorin
Today I thought of two more cheeses: Roquefort and Asiago. |
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| Latex Encounters at Work |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|09:01 pm] |
Today was a strange day for finding out other people at work are sensitive to latex.
First, Dacia, who is allergic to many things, told me that she found some green latex gloves replaced into a box of green nitrile gloves and how that's a problem because she reacts to latex. And then she added that my cube neighbor is sensitive too! I was surprised to find out two more people can't use/touch latex gloves! I told Dacia about the special blue gloves they're ordering for the third floor so I won't touch green latex gloves by accident (which I'm not an idiot for doing, since Dacia did it too), and asked the lab manager if we could get them for the second floor too in Dacia's size to help out the other two.
And it turns out there's a fourth latex sensitive person. Yesterday in the line for lunch at our department lunch meeting I had to explain to someone why I wasn't getting the salad (it had avocado, one of my latex-related allergies), and another person asked me all about the related fruits I'm allergic to so I told him about it. Today he sent me an email offering suggestions about suppliers of latex-free underwear, in case I didn't know about latex in elastic. Without mentioning the word "underwear" in my reply, I asked if his wife, whom he mentioned in his email, was allergic too, but he responded that he's the one who's been developing the sensitivity. That explains the curiousity about the related fruits. So there's four! He doesn't work in lab though, so it's only three of us the gloves bother. |
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| I Hate Citibank |
[Jul. 6th, 2009|07:25 pm] |
Oh my gosh I hate Citibank.
I have been signed up with their EZ-Pay thing for a couple of years now. They're supposed to take money out of my checking account to pay my bill each month. I signed up for the 0.25% interest rate decrease, figuring I'd pay the bill on my own each month anyway and it would never actually get taken out automatically.
Well, that went by the wayside the first month after I signed up. I paid the bill myself in the middle of the month. Then Citibank took out the same exact payment at the end of the month! Double payment! I called and asked why that happened and the representative didn't have a clue, agreeing with me that based on the language of the EZ-Pay description it is only supposed to automatically debit your account if you haven't already paid.
So since then I've let the EZ-Pay do it on its own, since I don't want to double-pay Citibank each month. So I haven't even looked at it since the beginning of the year, when I last printed out my statements, just in case (I don't trust Citibank enough to go paperless).
Then today I decide to print out my statements again. First, it took me forever to log in through three screens of confirming my information because the website was slow. Then when the account information comes up it has a big nice red
DELINQUENT
on it.
What the freaking hell!!!!!!!!!!!! I am not delinquent on my account you stupid effing Citibank. I don't want my credit report dinged because you guys can't manage to debit my account on time, especially when I'm only letting you do it because you can't manage your own system well enough to let me do it on my own! My anger was compounded because on their phone system you simply cannot get an English-speaking representative on the line based on their menu options. You can if you want a representative to speak to you in Spanish ("Por favor, oprima cuatro"). But not English. I got to be told by a recorded message that I was delinquent too.
Thank goodness for www.getahuman.com. It told me to keep pressing 0 and I did get a human. He was nice and explained that it shows up at delinquent because my pay date, the fifth, fell on a weekend, that it will go through, and that nothing, including my credit report, will be dinged.
Still, how hard is it to put a footnote to the DELINQUENT saying that about the pay dates and weekends? They managed to put a nice red one about how it will affect your credit, but not one explaining why it's their fault and not yours.
I hate Citibank. My only goal in life is to be rid of Citibank. I'm serious. All those "where do you see yourself in five years" what-type-of-goals-do-you-have questions, I have answers. The only thing that I can control that I know I want to do in life is to not have anything to do with Citibank anymore.
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