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Thursday, August 31, 2006

And You Thought Your Job Was Bad

At least you don't work for Radio Shack. Here is a blurb I stole from JSOnline.com

RadioShack uses e-mail to fire 400 workers

RadioShack Corp. notified about 400 workers by e-mail that they were being dismissed immediately as part of planned job cuts. Employees at the Fort Worth headquarters got messages saying: "The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated."

If I got one of those emails, I would go ballistic. How totally rude.

Some of you may remember a place I worked for that worked really closely with hubby's former company. When the place went under, the owner had promised us that "he would take care of us". The three of us trusted him. When it came down to the final days, he was out of town on vacation. The second in command called us and asked us to mail the keys to the building and car back to him. WTF?!?! I don't think so, you can come up here and get them. It was only in northern IL. About 90 minutes away. Then he had the nerve to say he couldn't give us any severance, (he finally relented on that after the threat of litigation). In the end they also screwed one of the other guys over with his unemployment. I am still using the Post-it and legal pads some 7 years later. I think of that as my own severance package.

Today was the last day that we have a dog sitter. The girls across the street have been coming over and letting the dogs out. They go back to school next week. I am so hoping that Boomer does ok. He was in his crate all day one day last week when the girls couldn't come over and he didn't make a mess. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Not much else is going on. Looking forward to the long weekend. It sucks that summer has gone by so quickly. Let's hope the fall and winter go by just as fast so that next summer comes quickly.

ZOBMONDO!!

Would you rather....

Age only from the neck up

----OR---

age only from the neck down?

I have to go with aging from the neck up. Then I will still have firm boobs and a sorta hard body (or at least as mushy than it is now)

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Some Days I Really Wonder.....

.... what my hubby is thinking. We got up early this morning and wanted to go for a long ride. Last weekend we did a route that was about 35 miles. I wanted to do the same route but I wanted to get it done early before the traffic and heat got bad.

So hubby hauls his bike outside and throws it on the trainer so he can 'work' on it. I thought that he was just going to clean the chain and lube it up. WRONG!! He has two screwdrivers and is messing with his derailleurs. This is not good folks. (For those of you who don't know him... my hubby is not at all mechanical.) I wander over there and ask what he is doing. He says that he is 'fixing' it so that his chain doesn't drop everytime he goes into his big ring. I very nicely ask him if he knows what he is doing. He says that he doesn't but it can't be too hard. Famous last words. He is tightening and loosening screws and cables and such that after a couple of minutes it is really hosed and he can't figure out what he did to mess it up. Now he can't get it to shift at all. Great..... So, I go online and try to see if a couple of sites can offer some suggestions. The same response that I got is that you should not mess with the derailleurs if you don't know what you are doing. They are usually set when the bike is assembled and very rarely need to be tweaked.

By this time, it was about 9:15 and I told him that why don't we just take it to Wheel & Sprocket and have them look at it. Before he does some serious damage. He agrees. So 80 bucks later... he can pick it up on Wednesday. The good thing is that W&S will also fix hubby's 'attempt' at truing his back wheel. It has such a wobble in it.... oh boy...

The best part of it was that I never said to hubby 'I told you so...'. Even tho' I wanted to soooo bad.

Friday, August 25, 2006

Shave and a Haircut.... Two Bits

Boomer went to the groomer yesterday for a long overdue haircut. He is 11 months old and never had a haircut, that we know of. So about 7:30 I gave him 1/2 a pill and away he went. By the time we got to the groomer (I highly recommend Fancy Paws in Cudahy... Donna is awesome) Boomer was settling very nicely into la-la land.

With Boomer being gone most of the day, I was able to get a bunch of stuff done around the house. I ironed 17 shirts (I really need to find a place that launders them by the pound), detailed the truck (vacuumed, windows, washed the inside), vacuumed the house, 4 loads of laundry, cleaned out half the fridge (threw out the tartar sauce that expired a year ago).... all this before noon.

When I get to the groomer, I don't even recognize my dog. He looked so different from the dog I dropped off. He was a pretty good boy too. A little nervous and head shy but not too bad.

Here is before.....













and after pic ..... he is still a bit groggy that's why his eyes are at half mast.










He now looks like a little rat dog. He must have lost about 2 lbs in fur. But he sure is a handsome little guy. His coat is so soft and shiny and he smells wonderful.

ZOBMONDO!!

Would you rather....

need medical attention because you accidentally got a large marble stuck in your nose

----OR----

because you got your head stuck between the bars of a wrought iron fence?

Have to go with the fence..... I could use the excuse that I was looking at something or someone.... a marble... just no excuse.

Have a good weekend.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

What a Week....

.... and it's only Wed.

Work has been busy. On Sunday we put in a software release, that for a change went mostly smooth. One issue that cropped up on Monday morning but we were able to correct it quickly. The best part is that we got blamed for not knowing this would happen. My boss was pissed about that. How should we have known that. If thorough testing would have been done by the process owner's subject matter experts (SME) they should have caught it. We don't know how they use the tool.

On Tuesday evening, our application went down. One of the processor boards took a dump. It took about 5 hours to fix. I was up late trying to coordinate vendors and keeping our customers in the loop.

Today was spent just trying to get the stuff done that I let slide due the release. I ended up doing some of it at home tonite. Which is ok. No one was around to bother me. Took me half the time it would have if I were in the office.

Tomorrow, Boomer goes to the groomer. You may remember that the last time he went, he was so scared he had a seizure. We got some sedatives from the vet so all should go smooth I hope. Since I am off (comp time for Sunday) I have a whole list of stuff to do. Let's see how much of it actually gets done.

Over the weekend, hubby and I upgraded our cells. I got the pink RAZR. It is go girly. But it matches my bike. I have spent the last few days playing with it. Rather fun toy. I had toyed with the thought of getting "Chocolate" but decided that since I already have an iPod, what do I need this for. It is very cool tho'.

This is for StB... check out Todd's post about how Maker's is offensive to women. Amazing all the stuff you can learn about on the internet. Damn, I have to remember to thank Al Gore for inventing it.

I got a new pair of bike shorts. They are wonderful. A nice soft chamois and lots of fluffy soft padding, right where you need it most. These are definitely an upgrade from the style from last year. Pearl Izumi makes awesome shorts and well worth the money you spend on them. I may have to go back and get a couple more pairs while they are on sale.

ZOBMONDO!!

Would you rather....

Be perceived as intelligent

----OR----

street smart? (but not both)

I have to say intelligent. I like to think that I am fairly intelligent, even if I don't always show or act like it.

Friday, August 18, 2006

I'm So Tired.....

Have you ever been just so tired of everything that you want to take a vacation from life?? I swear that is how I have felt the last week. I am tired of my job. I like my job but I get so tired of dealing with the political crap and have to be nice to people. Here are the idiots I had to deal with today. and remember this is only today, folks!
1. Help! I ordered a pager three days ago (no, it was yesterday) and it still isn't here so I will now order four (yes, four) more to make sure one of them gets delivered to me. She then gets pissed when I told her that the date/time stamp says that she ordered it at 12:22 pm on 8/17 and I have now cancelled the order for the other four pagers. If I would have let the pager orders go thru she would have been pissed cuz her cost center would have been charged for 5 pagers every month.
2. A co-worker sent out an email describing the changes we are implementing this weekend in our quarterly software release. The email had a brief overview of the changes and included a 18 page powerpoint presentation that described the changes in great detail (with pictures) and "what does it mean to me" explanation. I got three emails from people saying that they wanted to know what parts of it meant. I then replied to each person detailing the changes they asked about and where in the powerpoint they could find the information. Each on of them replied that they did not know they were supposed to read the powerpoint. WTF!! Do you think I sent it so that I could take up valuable email inbox space. NO!! fuckin idiots. gggrrrr
3. The higher up mucky-muck who today, after she got the email and powerpoint, said that she did not want one of the enhancements to go into the tool, she did not know that was what it was going to do. We needed to pull it. We told her that she has been part of the emails for the last 3 months talking about the enhancement and what it will mean to her area. My boss's boss told her NO and to go F off! (p.s. those were some great flaming emails that got sent in this one!)
4. Today at 2pm we get an email from one of the process owners who was doing some training and wanted to know why something did not write an entry to a log when it did a certain action. And can we change that. Ok, they signed off on the requirements of this 2 months ago, you had two weeks for testing before you signed off that testing was what you wanted. Now less than two days you want to change it! NO fucking way!!
5. yes can you believe another idiot..... the guys who i have been working with on and off since March to clean up some of their data now sends this stupid email out about how he has no idea what I am talking about and want to make sure that every higher up mucky muck knows about what we are doing and had better be prepared to back it out if they don't like it. This is a clean up of your crappy data. We are helping your group out by making your job more efficient. Do you not get that!! grrrr.... this is also the guy (very high maintenance) who when we had a vendor doing maintenance to our paging network ask if we could have them delay it. WTF!!! No, we can't do that. They re a national vendor and we represent a mere 1.4% of their business. get a life,dude!!

Ok that covers work. Now let's cover hubby. A and J, you may have noticed we failed to show up tonite. Well, let me tell you why. Granted hubby will have a vesion that makes me out to be the bitch but oh well.... here is my story.

A calls up to see if we want to head out for a cocktail this evening. I ask hubby, he says sure. We get home I take the boys outside, change clothes and sit down to read the mail and watch a bit of tv before we take the dogs for a walk, it is raining a bit out and want to see the radar to see if I need jacket or should wait a bit and go. It is now 5:25 and it is no longer raining. I tell hubby, 'hey, come on let's go take the boys for their walk'. (this is where I made the mistake, I guess). He gets all mad and says he can't he is starting dinner (we are having corn on the grill) and why does he have to go anyway.... Ok, I am mad... He knows I don't like walking all three dogs by myself. It is hard to do. We go back and forth about this for a few minutes and I leave, talking the dogs on their walk. I am just soooo pissed at him right now. I have a ton of stuff to get done before we head out for the evening, all the while, he is sitting on his ass playing poker online. I get back and he says he is not going. I don't say a word to him. The corn is done, I eat it outside and head for my office. I'm going to stay home and make his life miserable. Yeah, I know I am being a bitch about it, but I get so tired of having to do everything around the house. His only chore is to cut the grass. Fuck that, I am not going to to a damn thing tonite. I wish that I could sit in front of the tv everynite and play poker for 5-6 hours. Most evenings I don't even sit down to relax until 8pm. And even then, during a commercial I am up doing something. A, I would have called you but you know that there is some screwy thing with the phone and our wireless router and heaven forbid, I use the phone. I can't fix it cuz it will take me a couple of hours to play around with it and he can't be offline that long. I told him last weekend and then again three days ago that we needed to clean the fish tank. It has been a long time since it was cleaned and is getting to look very gross. I can't clean the whole thing because my arms are to short to reach to the bottom of the tank. He has to do it. I was then told to quit pestering him and to stop nagging him all the time. There are some days when I wish I was still single. sighhh

Sorry for the long a bitchy post but getting this out has been therapeutic. Thanks for listening :)

ZOBMONDO!!

Would you rather....

Tell someone famous that his (or her) fly is open

----OR----

have someone famous that your fly is open?

I would want them to tell me. It means that they noticed me and were looking at my crotch.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Time to get my Butt into Gear

The last few weeks I have been lazy. Somewhat busy but lazy. I have not been riding my bike or working out and it shows. So this week, I got off my lazy ass and got on my bike again. I have to say it felt good. It is always nice to ride along the country roads and smell the fresh cut hay (it's 2nd cut so not quite as good but still very aromatic). I am starting out slow and just going 12-13 miles or so. I would like to try and get in a longer ride this weekend. K, I hope to see you on the kraut route sometime this weekend. I need to get in shape for the beer ride in Oct and maybe, if I don't go camping, the Wine ride in Sept. Yeah, I know how sad to plan your bike rides around drinking events. We ride first then drink.

I would like to give out a few plugs to some new blogs. First off, Aleta and her blog, You Named Me After Who. She is a long time friend and this is her first foray into the world of blogging. If she blogs like she gives campfire sermons it should be rather interesting. Check her out and say hi. She promises not to be too boring.

Next up is Garrett and his blog ... and this is why God invented condoms. He is a mid twenty something guy from New York. I found his site through Kris at Stitch's Playground and found the title amusing so I had to check it out. Well worth the visit.

Last but not least.... ok, it is last and least... DJW, and his site, My Empty Glass are being removed from my site. He has once again decide to delete his blog and I told him the last time he did that I would take his link off and never put it back on. I also think he owes me some cash for this as well. Don't know why you keep doing this Dave but oh well....

Hubby and I are taking my two nieces to the IMAX theater tomorrow. To see a space movie and a sea movie. Double feature. Should be a good time. The girls always have fun and we go out for pizza afterwards. A few weeks ago we took them to the Brewers game and they had a blast. Once they figured out that they could be a bit loud and crazy. S who is 5 was having fun doing her 'crazy dances' so that they would show her on the scoreboard. They never did but she still had fun. Ahhh to be young again....

Tonite on RockStar: SuperNova they finally got rid of Zayda. It was about time. She was a terrible singer and an even worse dresser. Man the outfits that she came up with. Yikes!! Scary, I tell you. I want to go out and download some of the songs from the last few weeks shows. Last nite was a mellow kind of nite and a few people really stood out. Ryan did Phil Collins "In the Air Tonight", Toby (damn, he is hot!) played "Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel and Dilana did "Cats in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin.

ZOBMONDO!!

Would you rather....

have a perfect body (excluding your face) above the waist

----OR----

below the waist??

hmmmm.... I think it my waist that is the issue. I am happy with above the waist for the most part. My boobs are big, what else do I need up there.... below the waist... my legs are ok, and will get better if I get off my lazy ass and get on my bike more.

See ya all later!

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Party, Party, Party

Yesterday, was our annual block party. We have it in the hollow that was supposed to be a 'pond' but never held water. Yeah, smart developers eh?? The hollow is an area that is behind about 10 houses and is a nice area for the kids to play out of traffic.

The festivities started about 1pm. It was a nice sunny day. Some of the adults set up a huge 200 foot piece of plastic tarp down the hill and made a huge slip and slide for the kids. Who knew that we had that many rugrats living in the area... It was fun to watch them slide down it. Some of the kids really had some speed going. I think all the adults wanted to try it but didn't want to get all wet (or hurt).

Our party is a bit nontraditional in that we have a local restaurant cater pizza. I think it has to do with the fact that the people who run it are from Italy and they like pizza. It is different and goes well later on in the evening. Everyone brings a dish to pass. Bless K's heart. She made cheesy potatoes. They were YUMMY!!!

It is always fun to catch up on the neighborhood gossip. Who's selling their house and they want what for it! Who did what?!? and so on. I have to laugh cuz there is one house who has never paid their dues. It is only 25 bucks a year. Not breaking the bank. Well, over the years what should have been about 125 bucks is now almost 1500. They just put their house up for sale. One of our neighbors is an attorney and we work with her to file a lien against the property. The fact that they want 349,000 for the house is interesting. Way overpriced for the area and type of house. Should be interesting to see what happens with that.

Also got the scoop on the neighbors who built pools. First J put in her pool. Two weeks later N&A put one in and never fail to let everyone know that it is bigger than J's. And if I had to hear one more time that N lost 70 lbs (good for him) and he ate soo much yesterday that he is now at 179 or how he just wants to race his Mustang down the block, I was going to scream. Oy vay!

After dark, we played poker and had a bonfire. That was nice. We finally got home about 2:30 this morning and went to sleep with the owls cooing in the backyard. I had not heard them for quite awhile. I'm glad their back.

I also got some interesting news at work that I will be able to share shortly. Not sure if anyone from work reads this or not (I don't think so, but you never know) so don't want to chance it. It is nothing bad or really good for me but will make my job harder for a bit but then really nice again. I hope it pans out!!

Have a good week everyone.

ZOBMONDO!!

Would you rather....

Super glue your eyes shut

----OR----

super glue them open?

I have to say open. I want to see the world.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

I'm a Good Driver

Today's post is going to be about something that has been irritating me for quite a wile now. No, It is not my hubby or work, those are good guesses... Today's topic is bad drivers.

It seems like people are getting worse with their driving. I don't know what people are thinking... or maybe that's the case they aren't thinking.

Bad Driver #1....My biggest complaint is people driving while talking on the phone. I don't know how many times I get behind or next to someone who can't maintain their speed or lane because they are too busy yakking on the phone. Coming home tonite was the worst. I had some stupid idiot in a mini-van (that'll be the next thing I hate) literally driving down the middle of two lanes on 45 S. There were a few time that if I would have been the person driving next to him, I would have held my line and let him ram me. It would be my luck that the idiot has no insurance and then I would be screwed. Traffic was only going between 30-40mph so I am not sure what was so hard about driving in a straight line.

Bad driver #2.... the guy who is merging on the freeway and races to get ahead of everyone else. Why can't you just drive the same speed as others and merge in gracefully into traffic instead of trying to get one more car ahead and then making everyone stop to let you in. I don't know how many times I have seen people driving on the shoulder of the road tying to inch their way in after the merging lane has gone away. I wish that the Road Warrior feature was still in the local paper. He always is offering some interesting tidbits about the rules of the road. One of them is that current traffic does not have to let merging traffic in. So there!!

Bad driver #3.... not using your turn signal. I will not let you in if you are not using your signal to tell me what you want to do. Chances are they are also bad driver #1 and 2. I have had people flip me off cuz I won't let them merge. Too freakin' bad. The auto industry put turn signals on your vehicle for a reason, and it wasn't to hang your stupid little keychainy thing from. USE THEM!!

Bad Driver #4..... Driving a mini-van. This seems to be a given. If you are driving a minivan, you will drive like an idiot. You look like a dork driving your minivan. Get a real car or truck. You seems to think that this gives you a license to drive slow (in the left lane) and not obey the rules of the road.

Bad driver #5.... Driving slow in the left lane. If I am behind you and can see, or should I say cannot the see the color of the car in front of you because it is now just a little spot on the horizon, you are driving to slow to be in the left lane. Move your ass outta my lane. One caveat to this is if traffic is only going 30 mph get off of my ass. You ain't going no where. No one is moving. You will just have to wait it out.

My last thing is a thing is a story about something so crazy I just can't believe it happened. Last week I am driving east on Capitol dr and 124th st. It is three lanes plus two left turn lanes. The light is red. I am in the far right lane. The cars in the left and middle lanes start going once the left turn signal turns green. WTF?? There were two cars in each lane that burned the red light. My theory is that the second cars were not even paying attention except to notice that the person in front of them went so it must be ok for them to go. They are damn lucky they did not get nailed by traffic turning left from the opposite direction.

Ok, enough ranting....

ZOBMONDO!!

Would you rather....

Have a butt full of worms

----OR----

a mouth full of ticks?

Going with the worms. I am not a big fan of stuff in my mouth other than food. The ticks would then imbed themselves in my skin and that would creep me out.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

I'm Still Here

Hi all.... I know it hs been awhile again. I guess I am just getting lazy about posting and have been busy

We went camping last weekend. It was a fun time. If you read Gambino's blog, you will know that we went to Mustard fest. It was a fun(?!?!) time. Got to see the Weinermobile and eat a free hot dog. Hubby won a couple of jars of mustard in the Mustard ring toss. Which we promptly gave to my parents for dog sitting. What sucked is that it rained on Sunday morning and we had to put everything away wet. Which when we got back to my parents we had to set the camper all back up again so it could dry out. We finally got around to going over there tonite to put it away. Had to as my parents are heading out of town for the weekend and didn't want the camper sitting in their driveway. Oh yeah, after Mustard Fest went to Lucky's bar in Barneveld and I won 100 bucks on a pull tab. That was cool.

Other than that not much else has been going on. I am almost (finally) done restoring my pc. I am working on getting my iPod back to normal. I should say getting my library back to normal. What a royal pain in the butt.

Work has been a pain. We have a software release scheduled for the 20th. Yesterday, one of the process owners came to us with a huge change in requirements and wanted to implement it. Considering that they signed off on the requirements 2 months ago we said no. Either it goes in as you have been testing for the last two weeks or we pull it. Well, it was pulled. I am ok with that as it was something I was not very comfortable with and now the release has been cut in half.

This weekend we have our annual neighborhood block party. It should be fun. It is where our 25 bucks a year goes for. Yeah, I know we get off cheap for homeowner's association dues. It basically goes towards the party, cutting the grass by the pond and insurance on the pond.

ZOBMONDO!!

Would you rather....

Shove your whole head in an elephant's butt

----OR----

lick a corpse clean after an autopsy?

Oh boy, what a choice... neither sound very appealing but I hate dead things so i will go with the elephant's butt. It can't smell any worse than hubby or E's farts... can it??