As I’m writing this it’s not yet 10 AM, a fact which speaks volumes for what the rest of the remaining 8+ hours I’ve yet to spend here will be like.
I am heartened only by the fact that after today is over I won’t have to return for 11 days, as I’m heading home to Michigan for a week on Tuesday.
Yesterday it was confirmed that we have, in fact, hired Clueless the Wonder Intern.
Fortunately it was also confirmed that he will not be working on my shift.
Ominously, the news about which shift he would be on was qualified with “For now.”
Thursday night after work I met up with my realtor and we went to the house I’m interested in to discuss things with the owner.
We made her a good offer – the best she’s likely to get considering that the house was on the market for 320 days before her listing expired – and I think things went well, but she said she needed to think about it for a while.
There was something about the woman who owns the house that was familiar, but I think that’s because she’s a certain kind of person. So I haven’t necessarily seen her before, but I’ve seen people like her.
I think there are lots of people like that: people who appear to be variations on a theme.
I know I’ve discussed the notion before, so that’s all I’ll say about it.
The man she introduced as her “friend” seemed like a nice enough guy. He works in printing, so we had some common ground and traded some printing war stories.
Interestingly enough, he had actually worked on a print job for my realtor a couple of years ago.
In any case, we’ll have to wait and see how things shake out. If she doesn’t go for it, I’ll just walk away. It’s not like I’m under any sort of time crunch. I can afford to wait to find the right place.
One thing that was kind of entertaining was watching David, my realtor, run the numbers past her. I don’t think he was deliberately trying to confuse her, but it was sort of like watching someone run the shell game or the “I didn’t give you a ten I gave you a twenty” scam. Seriously, it was a tremendous example of sleight of hand, and it’s possible that he missed his calling.
The meeting after work meant that I got home a bit later than usual, so I ended up going to bed later than usual. Just in time, in fact, to be kept awake by stupid new dog barking.
On the previous night, he had woken me up at the same time.
At 3 AM this morning I was awoken by the crowd of loud drunks which I think congregates on the balcony of the owner of the stupid old dog.
So what was it that I was saying about not being under a time crunch to move?
*Sigh*
One good thing that happened yesterday, though, was that my Hot Chicks DVD had arrived.
When I opened it I was pleased to discover that they’d included a special bonus: three genuine Chick Tracts!
I’ve yet to watch the DVD, though I imagine I will be doing so at some point today.
In any case I’m unlikely to have much more to say that won’t consist entirely of me complaining about how long and boring the day is, so I guess I’ll bring this to a close.
Showing posts with label clueless the wonder intern. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clueless the wonder intern. Show all posts
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
$142.39
The title refers to the amount of change I cashed in today.
My change urn has been filled nearly to capacity for a while now, so I’ve been curious to see just how much money that adds up to, and given that I’ll be going on vacation next week and will want to have some extra cash, now seemed like just as good a time as any to find out.
I ended up going out into the world a little earlier than usual today, as I’d gotten a text message from Scott letting me know that he wouldn’t be making it to the comic shop at our usual time, as he’d been late for work.
So, since I wasn’t going to be meeting him, I figured I’d just head out and get my comics and stop at the bank along the way.
And that’s what I did. The prophecy has been fulfilled!
Not much else of note has happened today, or is likely to happen.
Tomorrow, however, should be the beginning of the end of having to see Clueless the Wonder Intern, as I believe his internship ends next week, and I will be gone during that time.
There has been, sadly, talk of actually taking him on as full-time employee – over my objections – but even if they do, odds are he’ll be put on a different shift and I’ll seldom if ever have to interact with him.
Anyway, dull day makes for a dull entry, which explains why people have been coming here and getting consistently bored since 2004, so I guess that’ll do it for now.
My change urn has been filled nearly to capacity for a while now, so I’ve been curious to see just how much money that adds up to, and given that I’ll be going on vacation next week and will want to have some extra cash, now seemed like just as good a time as any to find out.
I ended up going out into the world a little earlier than usual today, as I’d gotten a text message from Scott letting me know that he wouldn’t be making it to the comic shop at our usual time, as he’d been late for work.
So, since I wasn’t going to be meeting him, I figured I’d just head out and get my comics and stop at the bank along the way.
And that’s what I did. The prophecy has been fulfilled!
Not much else of note has happened today, or is likely to happen.
Tomorrow, however, should be the beginning of the end of having to see Clueless the Wonder Intern, as I believe his internship ends next week, and I will be gone during that time.
There has been, sadly, talk of actually taking him on as full-time employee – over my objections – but even if they do, odds are he’ll be put on a different shift and I’ll seldom if ever have to interact with him.
Anyway, dull day makes for a dull entry, which explains why people have been coming here and getting consistently bored since 2004, so I guess that’ll do it for now.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Boring Day Entry
Yesterday the company held one of its “beer bashes” here.
This one was special, though, because it was the last one, or at least the last one here.
That’s because the building I work in has been sold, and everyone is being relocated from Reston to Dulles. Dulles has plenty of room due to the massive layoffs that have taken place over the last couple of years.
A lot of people have already made the move – Scott was trying to see if there had been any noticeable change in dress code when we were in Dulles on Monday, as the Reston people tend to take the companywide casual dress code to the extreme end of casual compared to the people in Dulles – but there are quite a few who still haven’t.
Even though yesterday was the official “goodbye,” we’re still very far from having everyone relocated, and it looks like that won’t be happening until last week.
The process has been going on for quite some time, and it led me to say to Scott yesterday that, “It’s starting to seem like the end of Return of the King; every time you think it’s over, it starts up again.”
Those of us working in the NOC, though, aren’t going anywhere until September, as they have yet to actually build a space for us in Dulles.
That means that for a few months we’ll be the only people in the building. Although this means losing the cafeteria, I’m still kind of looking forward to every day being like Saturday here in terms of empty hallways, break rooms, and bathrooms.
It also means that I’ll probably never again see the pretty girl who smiles at me that I sometimes see, though I haven’t seen her in a long time anyway.
Of course, there is one person from the NOC who will be heading to Dulles before September; next weekend is Scott’s last, as he will be moving into a new 9 to 5 job.
I’m going to come right out and say that I’ll miss him; he and I hit it off almost immediately when I started in this job almost five years ago. He’s been a very good friend to me all along and has done a lot to make this job more bearable.
Okay, that’s all the schmaltz you’re going to get out of me.
Speaking of friends, the other day after I got off the phone with Brian I thought, “You know, I should probably try to acquire at least one more friend. One who can actually go to R-rated movies.”
Then again, if I’m going to go through the effort of acquiring friends I might as well go a step further and give finding someone who could be more than a friend, and I just don’t have the energy – or unfounded and baseless optimism – to try to do that.
So screw it.
(Hey kids! Remember, trying is hard, and you’ll probably fail! So let “screw it” be your watchword. And that’s today’s Threshold Edutainment for Kids Life Lesson!)
Yesterday I burned my way through yet another comics-related blog, having gone through all of the archives and read everything of interest.
This leaves me little to do on my weekday workdays, as I can’t really bust out the comics (in hard or soft copy form) when there are management types skulking about.
Blogging is considerably less obtrusive and thus easier to get away with.
Of course, when I do that, Clueless the Wonder Intern gets curious and wants to see what I’m doing. As soon as he hears the clacking of keys his head pivots and he tries to puzzle out what I’m doing, thinking that maybe this is some opportunity to learn some important new skill, little realizing that I’m not doing anything worthwhile and that he isn’t actually capable of learning anyway.
Lately, now that it’s just he and I on the desk, he’s been sitting as close to me as possible, which annoys me. After all, as I’ve mentioned, at one time there were six of us working on this desk, so there’s plenty of room, and no reason for two people to be sitting right next each other.
The layout of the desk goes Windows PC, Linux PC, Windows PC, etc. To do my job, I take up four stations using one of each, sitting in front of a Windows box, and using the Linux and Windows boxes to my left. There’s Linux box to my right, which I’m using, and a Windows box next to that which I’m not using. He typically sits at that Windows box, which is too close, especially when I do something on the Linux box and he has to lean in close to try to see what I’m doing.
If he were a normal person, I would just say, “Hey, back the hell up off me,” but he’s not. It would take too much time and effort (Hey kids, what did I say about trying?) to explain the concept of personal space to him.
So if direct, blunt, tactless confrontation won’t work, that leaves only deception and trickery.
Towards that end, yesterday morning I turned off all of the computers immediately to my right and made sure that the fourth computer over was prominently on. Further, I moved all seats away from the desk except for one, which I placed in front of said computer.
This didn’t even give him pause; he moved the chair over and parked his ass right next to me.
This morning, however, I was smarter. I logged on to the computer he usually sits at, loaded up some graphs, and when he came in I told him that I needed to monitor them and required an unobstructed view.
(It wasn’t entirely a lie.)
Even so, he sat in that spot for several minutes just staring at the graphs as if he could somehow, through some magical process, figure out what they mean.
Eventually, after I’d said, multiple times, “Just use that computer down there,” he moved.
I will use this tactic from now on, since, as mentioned, he can’t learn, and will therefore never see through it.
In any case, I have a conference call that I should probably pay attention to, so I guess I’ll wrap this up.
This one was special, though, because it was the last one, or at least the last one here.
That’s because the building I work in has been sold, and everyone is being relocated from Reston to Dulles. Dulles has plenty of room due to the massive layoffs that have taken place over the last couple of years.
A lot of people have already made the move – Scott was trying to see if there had been any noticeable change in dress code when we were in Dulles on Monday, as the Reston people tend to take the companywide casual dress code to the extreme end of casual compared to the people in Dulles – but there are quite a few who still haven’t.
Even though yesterday was the official “goodbye,” we’re still very far from having everyone relocated, and it looks like that won’t be happening until last week.
The process has been going on for quite some time, and it led me to say to Scott yesterday that, “It’s starting to seem like the end of Return of the King; every time you think it’s over, it starts up again.”
Those of us working in the NOC, though, aren’t going anywhere until September, as they have yet to actually build a space for us in Dulles.
That means that for a few months we’ll be the only people in the building. Although this means losing the cafeteria, I’m still kind of looking forward to every day being like Saturday here in terms of empty hallways, break rooms, and bathrooms.
It also means that I’ll probably never again see the pretty girl who smiles at me that I sometimes see, though I haven’t seen her in a long time anyway.
Of course, there is one person from the NOC who will be heading to Dulles before September; next weekend is Scott’s last, as he will be moving into a new 9 to 5 job.
I’m going to come right out and say that I’ll miss him; he and I hit it off almost immediately when I started in this job almost five years ago. He’s been a very good friend to me all along and has done a lot to make this job more bearable.
Okay, that’s all the schmaltz you’re going to get out of me.
Speaking of friends, the other day after I got off the phone with Brian I thought, “You know, I should probably try to acquire at least one more friend. One who can actually go to R-rated movies.”
Then again, if I’m going to go through the effort of acquiring friends I might as well go a step further and give finding someone who could be more than a friend, and I just don’t have the energy – or unfounded and baseless optimism – to try to do that.
So screw it.
(Hey kids! Remember, trying is hard, and you’ll probably fail! So let “screw it” be your watchword. And that’s today’s Threshold Edutainment for Kids Life Lesson!)
Yesterday I burned my way through yet another comics-related blog, having gone through all of the archives and read everything of interest.
This leaves me little to do on my weekday workdays, as I can’t really bust out the comics (in hard or soft copy form) when there are management types skulking about.
Blogging is considerably less obtrusive and thus easier to get away with.
Of course, when I do that, Clueless the Wonder Intern gets curious and wants to see what I’m doing. As soon as he hears the clacking of keys his head pivots and he tries to puzzle out what I’m doing, thinking that maybe this is some opportunity to learn some important new skill, little realizing that I’m not doing anything worthwhile and that he isn’t actually capable of learning anyway.
Lately, now that it’s just he and I on the desk, he’s been sitting as close to me as possible, which annoys me. After all, as I’ve mentioned, at one time there were six of us working on this desk, so there’s plenty of room, and no reason for two people to be sitting right next each other.
The layout of the desk goes Windows PC, Linux PC, Windows PC, etc. To do my job, I take up four stations using one of each, sitting in front of a Windows box, and using the Linux and Windows boxes to my left. There’s Linux box to my right, which I’m using, and a Windows box next to that which I’m not using. He typically sits at that Windows box, which is too close, especially when I do something on the Linux box and he has to lean in close to try to see what I’m doing.
If he were a normal person, I would just say, “Hey, back the hell up off me,” but he’s not. It would take too much time and effort (Hey kids, what did I say about trying?) to explain the concept of personal space to him.
So if direct, blunt, tactless confrontation won’t work, that leaves only deception and trickery.
Towards that end, yesterday morning I turned off all of the computers immediately to my right and made sure that the fourth computer over was prominently on. Further, I moved all seats away from the desk except for one, which I placed in front of said computer.
This didn’t even give him pause; he moved the chair over and parked his ass right next to me.
This morning, however, I was smarter. I logged on to the computer he usually sits at, loaded up some graphs, and when he came in I told him that I needed to monitor them and required an unobstructed view.
(It wasn’t entirely a lie.)
Even so, he sat in that spot for several minutes just staring at the graphs as if he could somehow, through some magical process, figure out what they mean.
Eventually, after I’d said, multiple times, “Just use that computer down there,” he moved.
I will use this tactic from now on, since, as mentioned, he can’t learn, and will therefore never see through it.
In any case, I have a conference call that I should probably pay attention to, so I guess I’ll wrap this up.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
