Not allowed to escort the angry man who wears sweatpants for a scarf off my floor if he wanders in; I must let security do any escorting. (My idea was to call security to meet me at the destination floor.)

"If he wanders in" is despite the keycard on the elevator, since (as previously established) he's the sort of guy that one does not want to share an elevator with.

The keycard system was put into the elevator after the time when two guys came in when security was away from the front desk, stole the evening security guy's cologne (and presumably drank it), and proceeded up to a floor with a receptionist and were drunk and disorderly at the receptionist. (The belief is that both the drunk and the disorderly were conditions that pre-dated the theft of the cologne.)

01:40 Monday, 02 February, 2015
I should never be put into a situation where I have to contemplate expensing toilet paper. (Not my workplace, not my problem.)
I do not have a Macbook, and if I did, it should not be named Cornholio, as introducing TP to any of its various holes and/or vents is a bad plan designed to make the service desk unhappy. (Not my workplace, not my problem, and the tech support desk at that work place has no idea where to find more toilet paper.)

22:52 Tuesday, 03 February, 2015
Purple: "There are times when you say 'Our dads are weird!' and I say: 'No, on that one, *my* dad's *normal*.'"
<3 <3 <3

Monday: At some points in the past, the NaNoWriMo website was routinely overloaded to the point that its CSS didn't load. NaNo-ers adopted the shorthand "The website has no pants!" for the weird naked look of the pages.

My manager stomped up to me and asked if what I was doing was interruptible. It was. She sent me to a website. It had the familiar, 1995-styled look of a website that depended so deeply on CSS that when it was pantsless, it was truly and egregiously pantsless. Times New Roman, blue and purple links, straight down the left margin. Oldschool. Broken images. "SEE, IT DOES IT FOR YOU TOO, I'M NOT GOING THAT CRAZY," she informed me. Then she cc-ed me on the ticket and left me to argue with Chip about the difference between user's browser is fucked vs. the domain from which the CSS and all the images are being loaded from has been blocked by the corporate net-nanny.

Why that ticket went to Chip, I have no ever-loving idea. It should have gone straight to the antispam folks.

The thing she was interrupting me from involved radius needing to return a hard drive to a customer. The hard drive had arrived with some broken-ass shit on it, which radius had found a way to a) fix by hand, and b) recognize the pattern of breaking in a way which could be fixed not-by-hand in a future tool. In the past (mumblety, but he's got his Significant Anniversary Signifier) years at Virtual Hammer, this is about the 2nd time that radius has had to prepare an outgoing shipment. Since I do more shipping than that, I can prepare a label for an engineer. I retrieved the packing tape from the sticky box.

radius came on down and argued with the packing tape on my couch. Just as he got it all wrapped up, I saw the new shipping & receiving guy, so we left the parcel with him.

I still had two sawed-off pool noodles. I asked radius whether he preferred short and wide, or long and thin. As he visibly stifled laughter, I glanced over at my large metal rooster. More hilarity.

The shipping & receiving guy came back, having gone running after the FedEx guy and actually getting radius's package on that evening's shipment out. Hooray! He had a couple things for the guy who was out sick, so I got them secured in his cube and signed for them.

And moving into the cube down the way from him was our other former intern from this past summer! I popped back into my cube and gathered highlighters and stickies and presented her with them as a starter pack, then went off to re-order.

Somewhere in there, lb realized that he had some thinking to do that was best done on paper. A great place for thinking on paper is the secret milkshake bunker. We took a walk. He remained to glare at his notepad, and I walked back.

I also had to do some paperwork. I complained about it in IRC.

( Read more... )

I love my co-workers.

In the parking lot, the topic of He-Who-Occasionally-Gets-Named came up, in a larger context of "constructive dismissal" and why his toilet ought to get into a reboot loop. ( Hilarious spit-related anecdote. )


Since I'd driven down to Palo Alto on Saturday, Tuesday was a refueling day. And thus I got to work in time to grab a burrito and sit down with my email, yelling gently. Purple had said that there was a team thing that he was doing; my hazy brain had latched on to the "it's funded from the We're Doing Lunch" budget, and had discarded the "it's a hackathon" bit. But I was cognizant of the way that he would Probably Not Be Around For Things.

The guy who just got back from like a month or two in China catching up on family and paperwork brought with him a bag of freeze(?) dried durian. So now durian is a thing I have experienced. In the dried form, the scent is an inextricable part of the flavor. It's sulfurous, and I was reminded of that stuff they use to flavor propane (which occasioned a little bit of googling, and in retrospect, I feel a lot less crazy knowing that a: there are different things used for the warning scent, b: the professionals recommend that you know what the stuff in your particular area's various gas smells like so you'll be able to identify it, and c: you can order scratch-and-sniff gas-odorizer-scented stickers for that purpose), garlic, and onions. A bit was enough. I thought a little bit might go a long way on tacos or something.

At length there was a walk. Mr. Zune and lb had papers to grade. radius was feeling the need for a change of scenery. I felt that I could leave off the cursing of the helldesk software for a bit. This time I brought one of the great glass IKEA beer steins for the gelato, as the little paper cups often overflow. Sadly, the atmosphere was not greatly conducive to grading papers, so we all marched back, plotting out the technical details of an elaborate nerdsnipe heist movie wherein someone wants to do something scientifically nefarious and can only carry out these plans by changing the mass of all the reference units in such a way that they would never be able to figure out what the "correct" weight was. Nefarious cackle.

Something about high pressure within the building has resulted in a few moments involving the doors and a strong breeze. I like being able to poke them shut with my cane.

I steered the milkshake crowd back inside through the middle doors in hopes of introducing them face-to-face to Lennon Glasses Guy, the most recent addition to #cupcake. I didn't see him at his desk (there was a duckling swerve) but I did see him in the kitchen! (Another flock direction change.) So now the only people who have perhaps not been formally introduced are phone and Lennon Glasses Guy, though they may have met at some beer bash or other.

On Friday, when Purple wasn't around, I forgot to turn off the Beacon when I left.

The attempts to conserve software licenses amongst the team (where reasonable to do so) would be MUCH ENHANCED if IT and Procurement would JUST BLOODY GIVE US THE KEYS.

By sixish, Purple and I were both exhausted. Though it's not wise to leave work until seven, what with the traffic. So we wrapped up. He came to fetch me. I can usually get between my cube and my car without a cane, but about ten steps away from my cube, my knee gave a twinge. I circled around and got the work-cane, and was very ginger about stepping off the curb. Then, despite the exhaustion, we chatted in the parking lot. I started creaking off to my car. Purple commented gently that I was moving more painfully than he has ever previously seen me (having joked about a thing which then happened) and expressed sympathy. I did get safely to my car, as the getting-going is always worse than the carrying-on.

It was early enough that I was able to chat with Nora on my way back, yay! Then I hit Sprouts, and they had their Gooshy Hearts Day stuff out, so I got a bit of fun assorted red/pink candy as well as the sourdough bread. I was early enough for sourdough bread! I thought about getting two but it's best fresh, and I didn't think I'd devour the entire loaf and need more before sometime tomorrow.

And now it is time for sleep.

Most of the day got taken up by the thing .

Circumstances dictated that I improvise a salt-shaker, because I crave that mineral.

I did wander forth to get ice cream, and spent a nice chill section of time sitting by the fire pit, cleaning up my email. Then back I went. On the way back, I heard the dulcet tones of what turned out to be a Steller's Jay or two romping around campus and throwing itself from table to chair to table. I recognized that raspy scream, so I stopped and whipped out my phone and tried to get a decent shot of it to show lb, because the bird that made that noise was more awesome than I'd imagined. They are metallic blue and black and crested, and are basically every color I would want my hair to be. I was not that far off when I guessed that the bird that made that noise might be a raven, because they are also corvids. Really, really pretty ones.



That website which was willing to ship glitter to people was going around. I heard about it from Dre in #dw, and then Purple brought it to my especial attention (aww). Between the one thing and the other, we came up with the concept of glitter-dipped dead wasps on toothpicks, and the method by which one would make them, and wacky situations to not encounter while constructing them. (I may Write That Up Properly, but my evening already got eaten.)

By the time we were all done, I was achey and tired. Purple was a bit invigorated from deadline-smashing, and has now got a replacement strap for his laptop bag (finally).

We wandered out giggling. I showed off my new-to-me hardback copy of Cyteen, with the good jacket. Then I had to explain the plot. He kept suggesting Further Wacky Shenanigans, and then was surprised when no few of them were actually in the book. He already has the ebook*. And then from there we got to the Warrior's Apprentice cover that Lois had apologized to him about (and she'd struck up the initial conversation with his mom, which makes much more sense, and his mom had mentioned that her boy liked SF...) and the cover I wanted for Ethan of Athos (the face-off theme like Cetaganda and Mirror Dance, but with Ethan and a newt), and which one Ethan of Athos was, and how he hasn't read Ivan: His Book yet, and that thing that I did with the ebook for that for my friend, and the rather betrayed way that I actually didn't cry at the end but I went out and read fanfic until I did cry. (He teased me for masochism.) I was owed it! And the book didn't deliver! So I packaged up the three bits of fic which needed to round it out.

* which is not found in stores, so to speak.

I got to the place just as they were closing. Dinner, yay! Then I came home.

Suffice to say that the locked entry involves Defeating A Boss, in the videogame sense. I wandered into #yuletide singing, and #yuletide incorriged me, wondering if there were birds and deer and adorable forest animals. So I decided that what I needed was a flower crown.

Defeating a boss = celebratory flower crown. pic.twitter.com/ONPN4fEQuR

— Azure Luidaeg (@azurelunatic) January
15, 2015

I expect that this will make Madam Standards stare at me. :D

And now it is bedtime.

It turns out that the timer set via NFC chip on my phone does not go off when I'm on a phonecall. So I was later than planned to the family Thanksgiving thing. I brought:

* a box of Trader Joe's turkey gravy, in case my aunt was not in a gravy-making mood
* a jar of IKEA lingonberry sauce, in case no one else had thought about cranberry sauce (both Tay and Aunt-Fayoumis did)
* Sparkling cider, Costco-size
* Cards Against Humanity (and Crabs Adjust Humidity), the Bigger, Blacker Box

The turkey took quite some time in the oven. Dinner was going to be around four-ish, but the turkey had other ideas. There was food!!

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It was at Guide Dog Aunt's house, so she and Woodworking Uncle were there. Aunt-Fayoumis had come up from SoCal. Tay and her Young Man came down from the city. Hipster Cousin was at home in Portland, and while Infamous Cousin had spent the night, he had several things to go to -- cooking at Mom's in the morning, helping his girlfriend with her cooking in the morning, going to another party in the afternoon, and then heading back to his girlfriend's.

It's been 14 years since Woodworking Uncle was at my erstwhile Overlady's new gig, so it's doubtful that many people there will remember him now.

My sister had been threatening to make cricket and earthworm flour cookies. She brought them. They were the little round gingersnaps, made with whole wheat pastry flour, coconut flour, and of course cricket flour and earthworm flour. They were mostly insufficiently gingery and sort of dry gingersnaps, despite Tay's Young Man drizzling more molasses on them. Tay said that they smelled sort of like dog food, and that it was the same scent from the cricket flour. I tried one. It was not terrible, but one was enough.

There was cooking and chatter and fun. The poodle is still in the Cone of Shame: he has five more days in it, for a total of 30. He seems much more energetic than the last time I was over. Kit, aka Sharkface, remains glossy and ever so enthusiastic. She was out in the yard; Guide Dog Aunt went to bring her in, but she was too wound up. So they played very energetic games in the back yard for a while before bringing her in. She got tucked in her kennel with a kongful of kibble and then a chewie, which she very enthusiastically demolished.

The table centerpiece was a fairly large squash, flanked by pomegranates and tangerines. Aunt-Fayoumis had polished the tangerines, as they hadn't been up to her exacting standards.

Everything was delicious. (Except, perhaps, the cookies.)

I mentioned the rule against me blowing bees in the courtyard to Tay, and then we were suddenly reminded of one of our dad's stories. I sent two emails: first, Purple, advising him that there was apparently a family history, and then Dad, to ask about the exact story (as I didn't want to get it wrong). This morning, he'd remembered it:

I was eating lunch outside [in Berkeley] with some friends, I noticed that an uninvited yellowjacket was cutting out a piece of meat, eating my lunch! It was positioned such that thumping it away was unreasonable, but I had a straw! I pinched near the mouth end of the straw with my thumbnail because I didn't want a yellowjacket down my throat, and placed the suction end near the backside of the miscreant glutton, sucked hard, felt and heard the insect hit the pinched part, and blew it into the bushes! Table companions showed astonishment behavior.

I don't believe that I had this consciously in mind on that lovely late summer day when I bounced the yellowjacket off Purple's arm. (The version that Tay and I remembered was slightly more embroidered and had ended, Shawnlike, in him spitting out an astonished and angry yellowjacket. The real version is still great.)


After dinner, we played Cards Against Humanity. It was the first time for Woodworking Uncle and Tay's Young Man. There was some joking that Tay and her Young Man might be cheating, because of how often Tay chose her Young Man's submissions. And apparently when Hipster Cousin and his girlfriend played Balderdash, you could tell which was Hipster Cousin's because of all her giggling.

My eternal Cards Against Humanity house rule is: this game is for fun. If there is a card that is not fun and is actually terrible, it should not be played; if I think it's terrible too, I am open to throwing it out; if I don't think it's so terrible it should be thrown out, it should nonetheless be withdrawn from that game, marked on the front, and perhaps not put in play in future games; cards which continue to be flagged as terrible should be permanently removed from my deck even if I don't personally object, because enough of my friends won't have fun with them. I have thrown out several so far, and will probably continue to do so into the future.

( The best card )


Tay packed me a very full bag of "creepy cookies" to take to work. I will, of course, tell everyone what is in them. I may make some ginger-lemon frosting, to improve the taste.


I slept through most of Black Friday, though I did accidentally help blow up LikeALiar's phone during a meeting, woops. She'd asked for recs! And then we all got in a very intense discussion of The Magicians.

I kind of loved it, because both Harry Potter and Narnia lied to me, and I was that kind of very bright student. Quentin is also a little shit, and both Quentin and the author don't give women a fair turn. I can't think about Quentin as a man, rather than as a person, or I get too stabbity. Seeing Quentin helped me move on from being Quentin.


Tomorrow there is going to be something going on at Guide Dog Aunt's. I hope I'll be awake. And then Sunday, I'm planning to meet up for coffee and fibercraft with quartzpebble. Yay!

Not allowed to peck Purple with my long, dagger-like loon beak.

• Sun, 12:35: Prank involving the phrase "I just pulled this out of my ass", the teammate with superspeed, a jar of peanut butter, and a banana.
• Sun, 13:53: #fishmum on email etiquette for addressing an entire office: "as long as you don't address it 'dear pigfuckers' you should be fine."
• Sun, 14:00: RT @semanticist: @azurelunatic Also recommend against 'Dear Corpsefuckers'. Never did get a reply to that letter I sent Scotrail.
• Sun, 14:42: @apraxial two of my work buddies http://t.co/u44oDB9E5J
• Sun, 15:08: digging loose change and pocky ends out of the bottom of my purse #adulting
• Sun, 15:16: RT @handler: Repost sans Instagram: Last night's @gaymerx cosplay (Hana Solo & Chewbearca) for @spidey_j's birthday 😘 http://t.co/wbuAt1chd8
• Sun, 17:39: RT @josh_triplett: @azurelunatic bit lull. Brief respite before more bits arrive.
• Sun, 21:02: RT @dreamwidth: Code push beginning in 15 minutes or so! Watch http://t.co/X3ygFVHW8W for details.
• Sun, 21:17: RT @dreamwidth: Code pushed. Please let us know of any issues that crop up! Thanks!
• Sun, 21:18: the #fishmum gives medical advice: don't shove beets up your butt.

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Any explanation for the candy named "sour cherry balls" that starts with a mental search for the name of the profession that is to fruits as a veterinarian is to animals, does not need to be made in the workplace.

This near miss interaction involving my candy dish was with the Stage Manager. My brain went there, but fortunately wiser minds prevailed before it got out my mouth. "My brain is in the state right now where all of its contributions involving the name of the candy are unhelpful."

Today I drove. The parking situation was sort of dire at the hour I got there; I parked in the far garage and thought I could walk between the car and my building without a cane. Which was not the smartest decision I ever made, but not the dumbest either.

I had emailed Researcher The Stig regarding planning for his upcoming thing; part of that had included "hella pizza". He emailed back saying that he had been waiting for someone to use "hella" in work email since he arrived here, and I had just made his day. (Heh.)

This resulted in a lunch table discussion of how "hella" could be usefully added to services that have moods as part of their updates. I proposed that it be added to the list. The Renaissance Man counter-proposed that it be a tickybox to apply to the mood: are you tired, or hella tired? And then, if your entry was hella, was there anything that could be done to the styling? The Renaissance Man suggested that positive emotions could be intensified in some way, and negative emotions could be maybe faded.

Now it turns out that he had hit on one of my modest design-and-emotion related hot buttons unawares, and I hastened to enlighten him. He and I were both on the same general page as far as "positive" emotions, but just because more amped up works for "happy" and more diminished works for "sad", from the directions we were looking at it, doesn't mean that works for everything. "Angry" is also an energetic emotion, so "hella angry" would be adding intensity; "calm" is a quiet emotion, and "hella calm" would be a good thing, if perhaps excessively quiet.

Lunch was short, as I had a meeting to get to. I raced to the room I thought it was, consulted my phone, and raced to the room it actually was.

The meeting was about the upcoming internal thing, in the summer. In with the rest of the other stuff, Shibe Designer was on the topic of swag. I sort of think of him as kind of a wacky guy who is possibly likely to explode stifled creativity in an unexpected and possibly destructive direction, but he surprised me by stating a rule for swag up front: "Nothing that can be caught on fire."

There are a lot of things that can be caught on fire, y0.

This means that the candle wrapped in condoms which you can use as a slingshot or a whistle is right out.

Yesterday I bestowed some more chocolate covered espresso beans, and also some non-caffeinated pomegranate chocolate things upon the Renaissance Man. ("If it's not caffeinated, what's the damn point?") Today included the strict instructions to not stick them up his nose. Also a prohibition against snorting caffeine powder mixed with pixy stix. I shortly thereafter provided him with two pixy stix: "One for each side." Despite his previous firm declaration that he did not put citric acid up his nose. (Installing Citrix in your sinus data center: probably also a poor choice.) I finally remembered that I'd brought FEED with me, and dropped that off, for his copious spare time. (Basically it sucks to be the one person who does a thing who is also not on vacation when something urgent happens with the thing; he's My People now, and $FAMILY takes care of Their People.)

I bumped in to his officemate in the break room, and we introduced ourselves. I am still not used to being relatively tall, even though statistically speaking I know I am.

I headed out at a reasonably sensible hour to do hella pizza research. (Amusement: someone else's concept of "a lot of pizza" was "what, like 10 boxes?" Actually, math says 33.) My poor Researcher The Stig is getting stage fright: not the literal fear of being himself up in front of people, but fear that it'll be a complete shitshow of an event with all the ad-hockery and stuff hanging out of the fronts of our pants. I gave him the duck lecture. Even with many of the things that could go wrong, we already have the advantage of having had some of them go wrong before, and things still went well.

• Tue, 12:57: Dudebro Designer is not allowed to push a patch for the purpose of putting Christmas lights on icons. Cc: @nadyne
• Tue, 18:01: RT @0xabad1dea: Guess what happens when people with suicidal thoughts hear that if they report them they can be denied entry to America ove…
• Tue, 18:06: Fish hashtag of the day: #azzonlyhallucinatesbees #fishmum
• Tue, 18:32: Freaking out just a little. Friday cannot arrive quickly enough.
• Tue, 21:21: First my internet crashed, then the laptop crashed while rebooting.
• Tue, 21:23: The fuck is my internet smoking? #comcast
• Tue, 21:38: Internet just shat itself again #comcast
• Wed, 01:04: My fitbit #Fitstats for 12/10/2013: 5,925 steps and 2.6 miles traveled. http://t.co/gFMrr7HEB6
• Wed, 08:23: Bad things about 8am at work: you think shaking the carton of half-and-half is ok. Good thing: time to de-milk yourself & breakroom floor...
• Wed, 08:26: Dropped breakfast burrito. Threw mouse. #simultaneously

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