Friday:
I woke up and got online to the devastating news that Leonard Nimoy had died.

Some months ago, Purple and I had discussed the way that both of us, and a lot of weird nerd children, had had a particular alien who had helped us get through a fuckton of loneliness and rejection by our alleged peers. His alien had been Mork. My alien had been Spock. After I cried hysterically in #yuletide for a few minutes, I guess the brief idea of calling out grieving floated through my mind but didn't attach to anything: I knew without even having to think about it that the news would be bouncing through #cupcake and [off-topic] and I would be among fellow mourners. I grieve with thee.

While my fingers and eyes were working, my brain spent a good chunk of the morning before lunch curled up next to a friend.

Over lunch (pizza, because the burritos are contaminated this week) I happened to mention that I'd gone to bed without writing about the day on Thursday night. Purple asked how much I typically wrote. I made a reasonable guess. After what I reckoned to be smiling at the quaint measurement system, he was impressed, because 3-4 kilobytes of text is not a small amount to just dash off, and he would probably not generate that much text about what he'd done in a day (and this is why he doesn't keep a journal). I allowed as how some days were more than others, and I did things like foreshadow and put in running themes. I gave the SUV thing as an example of a thing that I would have woven throughout the day until it reached the culmination in the parking lot. "You wouldn't have even recognized that it was the same guy who passed us if I hadn't told you!" he pointed out. (Let alone the part where I didn't even register that someone had passed us.) Hooray faceblindness.

So tonight, after writing up Thursday properly, I checked to see how much text I'd generated. That one was a little over 9 kilobytes. Oops.

Purple and I had been having a quiet conversation about Leonard Nimoy, a bit, and I was feeling sad, when Lennon Glasses Guy and one of the other lunch crowd turned to Purple to ask them to solve a debate: what exactly did it fuck up when there were two copies of one mac address on the same network. That got Purple going. He's the guy that everyone turns to as an authority about many of these things. So he held forth. It turned out that he had in fact personally experienced the bad effects of a MAC address conflict at work. His not!boyfriend had said: "Purple, I just logged in to your dev box..." Turns out a lab machine had faked the same MAC as Purple's. Oops.

I asked Madam Standards how many colors black I was wearing. She had not realized that there was so much variation in the things that she had thought were just 'black'. This was apropos of The Dress. (She and I do not see eye to eye.)

Got a chance to chat with my manager on her way out the door. She's had the flu, and there were allergies overlapping; she said something about all the yellow dust. I made an Amber Spyglass crack. She giggled.

Between all of the things that were going on, there was no milkshake run. radius discovered that he was actually kind of hungry, and his side of the office had run out of M&Ms and no one had restocked them in the afternoon. There were also no gingersnaps.

I reckoned that I needed a walk to clear my head, and it was also time that I checked in with lb's Overlady, so I decided a supply run could be in order. I grabbed a few little plastic cups and got together some chocolate covered espresso beans, a ginger cookie out of my break room, and some M&Ms. That was a little more than was easy to carry, so I stuffed the espresso beans in a mug, balanced the cookie on a napkin on top, and carried the M&Ms in my other hand.

Going out doors is easy. Going in doors often requires a badge. So I swapped the M&Ms to balance them on top of the cookie, operated the badge with my right hand, and opened the door with my left hand -- and promptly spilled the M&Ms off the top of the cookie onto the floor. As I tried desperately to salvage the situation, the cookie toppled as well.

I picked up the scattered M&Ms, looked at them and the cookie sadly, and put them in the nearest compost trash. Friends don't give friends floor cookies. At least I had the espresso beans, protected within the cheerfully patterned mug.

radius was glad to see the espresso beans. I cautioned him against overenthusiasm, as caffeine poisoning often offends.

My next stop was lb's Overlady, who gave me intelligence that the new guy, the one who was taking over everything after the last three clowns had been shuffled out, was also not much longer for the company, and his last day would be ... Friday! Yay! She urged caution and diplomacy. She was also glad to see the chocolate covered espresso beans.

A friend in another department did some research. Now, there is always a small element of Musical Executives. It is a very small valley. Thus we learned a few things:

The incoming exec implemented something based on the same root technology as the helldesk program at his old place.
The incoming exec is therefore unlikely to discard the helldesk software out of hand.
The incoming exec may actually know what $SOFTWARE looks like when it's functioning properly.
The incoming exec, if we are very very lucky, may recognize the helldesk situation as being terrible.

Lannister has a helldesk derivative of her own to deal with. She did not escape unscathed.

I'd had to do my hours first thing in the morning, because this was the day that the Old Contractor Management Company was letting go of me, and therefore I had to do my hours ASAP so they could get them put in ASAP and get everything done in the coming week. So 7pm was my deadline. I'd be done by then. Purple pinged me about dinner. I assented. This time I would not do dumb car tricks!

Purple thought he saw a little white car behind him as he made the U-turn, but it was a different little white car. It's so hard to tell these things in the dark.

We wound up attempting to explain Cards Against Humanity to Ms. Antisocialest Butterfly. It was great.

I saw a guy who looked almost exactly like the guy who runs the Secret Milkshake Bunker, except he was wearing an orange headband, walking out. However, my facial recognition skills are dodgy at best, so Purple was not at all sure that this was the right guy.

Purple got something with a side dish of sour cream. So did Ms. Antisocialest Butterfly. Mine didn't have it. Purple had extra, and offered me some. My knife was covered with the very bright red sauce that was all over the ... cheese thing.

"Sorry for getting my sauce in your sour cream," I said.

Ms. Antisocialest Butterfly made the face that meant that she was thinking dirty, dirty thoughts.

I made the appalled face, and it was only a tiny bit forced. "Oh god no," I said. "I know we're very close, but we're not THAT kind of friends."

Purple didn't entirely follow exactly what she'd meant, but he knew it was entirely filthy. Heh.

I have been enjoying doing all the bill-related math in my head. It makes a fun exercise for me. It had been a while since I'd refreshed my cash on hand, so I retrieved some fives and rather a lot of ones. Ms. Antisocialest Butterfly stared. "Why do...?"

"Ice cream," I said. That didn't actually answer anything.

Purple clarified: when you get a $3-and-something serving of ice cream using decimal currency, you get a lot of ones. I'm not actually a stripper. :D

It came time to go home. I claimed a hug goodnight. "See you tomorrow!" Purple started to say, and then corrected himself. We both had plans. Mine involved shopping with Tif, and Jupiter Rising. He said I'd have to tell him whether he should watch it or not.