The Video Wall At The New Digs

Fox news is on.

Blegh.

But so is MSNBC.

And the Weather Channel.

Yay.

The Prison Yard At The New Digs

Seriously, it's gated, and you have to use a key-card to get access.

There's a basketball court and bbq grills, though.

The New Digs

Wow.

So I don't know what's up with the stars today or what, but it has been a good day financially speaking.

Found out we're going to get a bonus this year [despite the news saying The Corporation had a 50% decrease in profits, our internal info states we actually increased revenue in pretty much all areas WTF?].

And thanks to this financial meltdown, the interest rates on my two mortgages went down again.

The total for both now each month is less than I have ever paid for rent on all my previous places.

It makes me feel weird because I know that a lot of people are going through financial hell right now, but on the other hand, it's helping me out.

[Knock on wood.]

Crazy.

So in the meantime, I am going to keep doing what I have been doing: spend and trying to support mom 'n pop businesses, to try and get things moving forward again.

Corporate Dronez

Awk-WARD!

The other week at work, I was in the restroom washing my hands when something awkward happened.

I had finished washing my hands and drying them when I heard water running.

Now, our ghetto toilets and urinals are those ones with the pull bar, and sometimes they get stuck after you flush, sending gallon upon gallon down the drain.

[You have to push in the bar in a special way to get it to stop.]

Well, being as earth-conscious as ever, I looked around the wall separating the basins and the urinal area, to be surprised by the sight of one of our [cute-ish] managers taking a whizz.

Now normally it would be no big whoop, but his head was turned around to look behind him just as I peered over.

Needless to say, it looked like I was being all perv on him and trying to scope him out at the loo.

That wasn't the case.

While it didn't sound like the mad rush of water that happens when the bar gets stuck, it didn't sound like a normal wee either.

Maybe he's taking Urigro:



So, yah it felt awkward, and now every time I pass him in the halls I picture him thinking I'm some kind of lascivious lavatory lurker.

Although, the other day he began making small talk in the break room, so maybe it's just all in my head.

Ha ha.

[Click image to enlarge]

This was how a ticket came in to me at The Corporation today.

I'm really beginning to hate this time of year.

As per usual, the boss at The Corporation let everyone and their second cousin take off the last week of November through to Jan. 2 leaving just a skeleton crew of 4 to cover for the entire twelve.

This has been the case the last three years.

And as usual, I'm stuck working trying to put out fires with limited resources.

But to make this year extra special, I am also the after hours on-call person, which means even when I leave work for the day, I'm potentially not done working.

I have already been paged after hours the last two nights.

And of course they weren't simple issues, either.

Which has left me cranky and stressed like a big bag of hurt.

So that is why I haven't been around much this week.

In fact, it might not be until next week that things are back to normal, so hold tight fans and readers.

At least we're not 24/7 and have to work the actual Holiday-days anymore.

Personally Affected

I didn't realize how much this financial fracas would personally affect my work.

Seriously, a lot of our major financial clients are causing us headaches with moratoriums.

Again? Really?

Just found out that a co-worker is no longer with The Corporation.

But what's odd is that this is the fourth time that this has happened to someone who has gone on short-term disability.

The first time involved this chick who went on leave for some health issue.

Nine months later she was let go, as come to find out, she was working at another job at the time.

The second time, a co-worker had to take care of some family business and never came back.

He just abandoned the job.

The third time involved this psycho chick who was bi-polar.

She managed to get away with 8 months of being paid whilst not working.

And now, the most recent guy was kind of lazy anyway.

He went on short-term back in April and was out until today.

Huh.

Who knew my work would be related to this?

So not diggin' this at the moment.

Between the Olympics, The Democrat convention, AND the Republican convention, work at The Corporation kind of sucks right now.

And to top it off, the union side of the house has their contract expire on Sunday and will potentially go on strike.

If they do go on strike, we non-union peeps basically go on Workplace Lockdown, as we're required to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week until the strike is over.

We're not even allowed to take or leave for lunch [they have to bring food in].

Here's looking to it being September 5th as soon as possible.

Scenes From An Office

Yesterday, I had to attend a vendor training [read: product overview] for The Corporation.


As usual, it was for us Drones who work on The Network, and so the whole class was nothing but dudes.

It got me to thinking about how as long as I have been working here, the Network Technicians have always been all dudes.

Well, there was this one girl who worked there, but she turned out to become a lesbina.

As my mind wandered off the really dry technical overview, I began wondering what the reason behind the All Male Revue aspect of Network Operations.

Surely there are women out there who know a thing or two about the workings of fiber optic technology.

I, personally, have no desire to work in that department partly due to the fact that it is such a sausage fest.

I get along fine with the hetero tech boys, but they are quite immature an low-brow.

Speaking of, along with our spec book and a vendor branded pen, we were given these ugly phallic highlighters:



One other thing I noticed was this one tech I used to work with when I was on graveyards.

He was a total cutie that I total crushed on.

But seeing him in training some eight years later, it's amazing [read: sad] to see the effects of time.

Like most of the other techs, he now has a gut, and looks like a total aged telecom geek.