More bullshit from another asshole with a blog

Miscellany
12Feb07

Posted by wafwot

Sticky Note Hey look. The title “Miscellany” is back. I didn’t use it last time because I wrote a little too much about work-oriented topics (mine and other’s). This should be a more accurate update worthy of such a title.

Before leaving the office this evening, I took a trip to the head. It has become a daily ritual to take one last piss before heading home on our 150-plus-minute commute home. I hate doing the pee-pee dance, especially in the seat of a car. And I definitely don’t need all the burning love of a fiery urinary tract infection, or the excruciating pain of kidney stones.

When I walked to the stall, there was a post-it note on the door with the words “NAGIOS CHECK” at the top. Nagios is an open source network monitor program that we use to ensure network services on our many servers and routers remain working at all times. I took this pitiful out-of-focus picture of the post-it note on the shitter stall door with my cell phone. The lighting in our bathroom is not the best. Not like we need stadium lights to pinch a loaf or anything. I had to get really close for the writing to show up, and that’s why the photo is so shitty (if you’ll pardon the unintended pun). Besides, I don’t need to spend huge amounts of time composing pictures in the little boys room. I’m pretty sure the president of our company — who was taking a leak when I snapped this photo — thinks I’m obsessed with mookie stinks. Pass the Charmin, m’kay?

Scatological references aside, I tried my best to clean it up and make it readable by adjusting and sharpening the image with GIMP. Just in case you can’t read it, I’ll try to snag the Post-it note if it’s still there in the morning. In the meantime, I’ll type it out below so you can at least “read” the text. This little post-it note was a clever little notice (probably left by one of our admins) that notified the next occupant that there was no more toilet paper in that stall. I couldn’t help but wonder if some of the less-than-technical (for lack of a better description) men in Sales and Accounting figured out what the notice meant. Too fucking funny!

NAGIOS CHECK
  CRITICAL
/dev/rolla
     0 blocks free
/dev/rollb
     0 blocks free
[ ] Acknowledge
[ ] Silence
[ ] Schedule Next Check

In a couple of weeks, we’ll be picking up a former co-worker who has a seminar to attend in Seattle. He needs a ride into the city, and since we’re nice people — and just happen to have an empty seat that day — he’ll hitch that ride. We gave him conditions, though. He had to pay $10 for gas, which is a bargain if you consider the cost of fuel these days and the price of parking in the garage. He also had to agree to the constant barrage of ridicule that we’ve been building up since he left the company in September of 2005. He agreed, and it is so on! It’s gonna be a fun day with the “Di-tech Soy Boy!”

And here we go again. I had a couple more topics to cover, but it’s getting late and I can’t remember what they are. Besides, I’ve completely lost the desire to continue typing. I spent far too much time trying to get the CSS just right for that faux post-it note. Ho-ly-fuckin’-Christ, wotta a pain in the ass. What I have already is probably not XHTML strict, and it’ll eat at me like necrotizing fasciitis. I’ll remember what those forgotten topics were as soon as I click “publish,” I just know it. Pass the ginkgo biloba.

Work Strife
08Feb07

Posted by wafwot

whacamole.JPG I suck at coming up with titles for these updates. If the update covers one topic, it’s easy. If I try to cover multiple topics, coming up with a title is as difficult as fucking a virgin with a flaccid cock. So, “Miscellany” is the best subject I can come up with. I was going to use “PISSED!!!” complete with a full compliment of capital letters and an unnecessary number of angry exclamation points. But I figured the rant that would go along with that subject might cause little grains of sand to become lodged in more than one mangina. The last thing we need at work is a gaggle of gritty fruit baskets whining to management — like mood-swinging bitches with PMS — about the content of my blog. Pussies. Then again… maybe I don’t give a tiny foam peanut-shaped pooplet if some chips fall.

Let’s start with a little story. A friend of mine related a tale that I find somewhat disturbing. He works for a Bank in Portland, and they’ve had some commotion with a fellow co-worker. He tells me that this co-worker (whom I’ll call Pam for reasons of anonymity) has performed her duties satisfactorily, but her reliability is in the porcelain funnel o' shit, as evidenced by this list:

  • One time, poor Pam slept off a bender in the bank (with the alarm off) because she was too drunk to drive home. Ho-ly crap!
  • Another time, Pam requested time off because she needed to cry over being dumped by her boyfriend. I guess Pam isn’t known for crying, or shouldn’t cry because she’s the manly type, or something. Sweet Jesus.
  • While talking to co-worker, Pam called a customer a “cunt.” It wasn’t in earshot of the customer, but the female co-worker was highly upset. Poor misguided Pam was called to the bank president’s office for an ass chewing.
  • Pam also messed up a customer’s bank account which ended up costing the bank about $1000.
  • On more than one occasion, Pam has been caught sleeping at her desk. Could it be all that crying that’s keeping her up at nights? Maybe. I don’t know.
  • And twice, Pam didn’t show up to work on time. No big deal if she was only five or so minutes late. Poop occurs. But my friend said it was four and a half hours one time, and just recently it was more than two hours! Apparently, Pam has a position at the bank that requires her to take… loan application calls from the East Coast starting at five in the morning. If she’s not there, a loan may not get processed, and the bank can’t have that!
  • She went to a customer’s house to help them with their banking needs, and was dressed like it was laundry day in Pamsworld™. Instead of going in banking attire, she was wearing a t-shirt with a worn out Trans-Am iron-on. Her ratty jeans were held up with a length of sisal rope, and she was wearing sneakers!

Worst. Employee. Ever. The only thing Pam hasn’t done is play Windows Solitaire all day long when she should be working. Wow. If we had an employee like that in the company I work for, she would surely be fired. That type of behavior simply doesn’t fly in the IT industry. Our managers won’t stand for such piss-poor work ethics, and you would be shown the door. I’ve seen it happen to several sysadmins. Funny thing however, Pam still retains her job at the bank! Can you believe it? Color me dubious, goddammit! If that list of shit is true, Pam works for the most lenient company in all of Oregon, possibly the entire West Coast! Can you imagine the perception other employees of that bank must have? “Hey, we can dick off without fear of being fired, because Pam’s still here.” I wouldn’t bank with those people if you paid me. Who knows what would happen to your life’s savings?

Continuing on the line of co-workers… If you’ve read this collection of nonsensical bullshit in the past, you know that I’m in a carpool and we have a soul-crushing 200-mile-a-day round trip commute. In our carpool, we worked out a simple solution to buying gasoline: rotation. We each take turns buying tanks of fuel. This has been working well for us, until recently. Yesterday, when it came time for one of our carpoolers to fill the tank, he complained that he only had $25 in his account. Jesus-fucking-Christ! So, an arrangement was made where I would pay for this tank, and he would buy the next tank on Monday. I may be a cranky motherfucker by nature, but I’m flexible and understand being strapped for cash.

We stopped at Costco in Mount Vernon for gas, where I spent thirty dollars even. As we left the gas pumps, we made a detour to EB Games, where the carpooler — who claimed to only have $25 in his account — chasséd his rotund keister into the store and bought an expansion pack to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. What in the Spic and Span hell, man? We can buy games, but not gas? I didn’t throw the bullshit flag until today, ’cause I was too busy stringing an unnecessary number of angry exclamation points together in my head. That shit ain’t right. Gas, grass, or ass, bitch! Nobody rides free! And trust me when I say no one wants any of that ass.

My segues are working out well tonight, as I have another nugget about ass. Have you ever had one of those moments where you suddenly have to shit? It happened to me yesterday, and I’m here to tell you about it. I was at work yesterday, as I frequently am, and had just come back from lunch. I was doing just fine at my desk, when all of a sudden my body said, “hey gallbladder, we need some bile,” and sadly there was no response. My gallbladder went AWOL in 1998, and this behavior is normal at times. Any-way… I clenched my whale eye tighter, and beat a path to the rest room down the hall. I’ll be a sonofabitch if both stalls weren’t occupied. Screw this! With my colon in distress, I headed for the elevators to use the toilets on the third floor. Ten fucking minutes passed before the elevator doors opened. It may have been closer to 30 seconds, but the space-time continuum gets all fuckered up in situations like this… so I just don’t know.

Two floors down, and in unfamiliar surroundings, I start bombing. Then, I hear the restroom door open. I don’t know about you, but I always cough a little fake cough or clear my throat to let the newcomer know that they are not alone. I don’t need some whackjob baby talking to his “little man” at the urinal, or whistling a little tune while taking a piss. “C’mon lil’ buddy. Time t’come on out and do your bidness.” Goddamn I hate public toilets.

Back to the story… In mid-drop, the intruder decides to try the door to my stall. But it’s not a simple little tug, or a knock. No. It’s full-on yanking and rattling like he’s trying to un-stick his garage door after it jumped off it’s tracks. The attempt startles me, causing… the bomb bay doors to close prematurely. Motherfuck!!! I shouted out “Occupied,” probably loud enough for the people at FiberCloud on the 19th floor to hear. All I heard back was an irritated sigh. Excuse the shit, literally, outta me! Holy shit, man! What makes a person think that a closed shitter stall is an invitation to rip the door off it’s hinges? I listened as Mr. Door Shaker used a urinal to take a piss then leave… without washing his hands. I spent the next five minutes going through half the roll of paper to return my sphincter to some resemblance of it’s pre-shit self.

Okay, that’s all for now. All that talk about coming up with a title, and I stuck to work-related topics, and managed to slip in a little bit of corporate toilet humor, too. So, I changed the title from “Miscellany” to “Work Strife.” You probably don’t care, do you?

Trip to Oak Harbor
26Jan07

Posted by wafwot

TripThe people that run the Oak Harbor office needed a day off. It’s been — I don’t know — four months since their last time off, and there’s a new expansion pack out for World of Warcraft after all. I guess they need the extra time to reach level 70, or some such gayness. I keed, I keed! Who am I to turn down a couple of days of working in the town that I live in?

Yesterday and today, the carpoolers and I worked in the Oak Harbor office. The last time we worked at the Oak Harbor office, the Island was sans electricity. It was a nice change of pace. No need to wake up at 4am. That’s fucking earlier than dairy farmers, dammit, and it’s simply not human. I was able to “sleep in” until 7am, shower, dress, drive to my manager’s house and pick him up, and be at a keyboard before 8am. It’s a beautiful thing. If we had to drive to Seattle, that same process takes three and a half hours.

I really miss working close to home. The commute home (including “stop and go” traffic near Wal-Mart) took me a whopping six minutes. Can you believe that shit? It was still light outside! There’s also the benefit of being so close to a 7-Eleven, and all the fast food joints. Hopping in my truck, driving to 7-Eleven for a Snapple and cigarettes took all of five minutes. In Seattle, it also takes five minutes for a Snapple and cigarettes. Oh yeah, there’s an Asian taking my money as there is in Oak Harbor, but there’s no motor vehicle involved. Hell, I’m not even leaving the building! The store is only a two-story elevator ride away.

But with all the pros, there’s always some cons. The “better half” (and I use that term loosely) of the two previous owners of Galaxynet operates from that building — from that office — and I got to enjoy avoiding his bald ass today. He was there to meet with the president of the company. It’s probably some long, drawn out saga that’s really not worth the time to type about, but I got the impression he was whining about not having actual office space in the Oak Harbor office. Boo hoo. I so wish someone would have asked me my opinion before we jumped into bed with these two questionable individuals. Oh well, you know what they say about opinions. I knew my ass was fat, but had no idea my asshole was so big.

There’s also the people that probably figured I dropped off the face of earth. When I used to work in the Oak Harbor office, I worked upstairs which was not an area that the public was permitted. That sheltered me from all the Galaxynet customers that thought I was their friend. I still talk to a select few former Galaxynet customers, but when I run into the others at Albertsons, I simply offer a cordial “hello” and go about the grocery shopping task at hand. Why is it people feel the need to chat you up in the store? Can’t they see I have coffee, milk, and shit wipe to buy? Leave me alone! Anyway, as I said, I used to work on the second floor. During the past two days, I was working on the first floor and in clear view of every swinging dick that came in the door. Twice I had to glad hand someone who was happy to see me. I shook their hands, but gave them my “go away, I have work to do” vibe in order to reduce the typical questions regarding Tina, Christmas, and the new year.

I’ll bet you were wondering what the hell the picture of the dog had to do with working in a different office. Well, let me tell you. One of the carpoolers brought his dog to the office on today. His name is Trip, and he’s a great dog! If you know me, you know I think small yapping dogs are no better than rodents. Unless the dog has enough strength to pull you when you go for a walk, it can’t be called a dog. Trip has enough power to do that! He’s really friendly and loves everyone. I remember when Trip didn’t even have a name. This picture and this picture show Trip as a puppy in August 2006. As you can see by the picture above, he’s much bigger now… but he’s still a puppy! All these were taken with my cell phone, so the quality isn’t that great. Here’s another picture of Trip that really shows how big he’s gotten.

One final thing. I removed the captcha code for posting to the comments section. I upgraded the WordPress software to a brand new version (2.1), and the captcha code no longer worked. I had to modify the WordPress code after each upgrade, and I was getting tired of that bullshit. I also received complaints from folks with color blindness who couldn’t read the captcha image very well. At first, I had no sympathy. But, with the addition of several spam filtering plugins, I no longer need the captcha. So, without the extra hoop to jump through, I expect more comments, motherfuckers!

Okay. That’s enough for now. See ya next time.