Confessions Of A Cube Dweller

I never thought I would miss my cube, but this week I haven't spent much time there, and I've found that I kind of did miss it.
Monday I was off, so naturally I didn't spend any time in it.
Yesterday afternoon our SVP had an "All Hands" meeting, so that took up most of the day (and ran late, leading to an irritating hour-long drive home in rush hour traffic).
This morning our VP held an "All Hands" meeting of his own - at 7 AM, which was lots of fun.
The early morning meeting was for the benefit of the people working the overnight shift.
A second meeting was held in the afternoon for the benefit of the people working the swing shift.
At our VP's request some of us were required to attend both meetings for the purposes of mingling with those employees we don't encounter too often.
So, yeah, spending the afternoon sitting through a meeting that I'd already sat through early in the morning made sitting in my cube seem infinitely preferable.
That's pretty much all that's been going on. TV shows have been piling up on my DVR, as I've been going to bed early, so I've got a bunch of stuff to watch.
I suppose I should get to it.

Faces To Voices

So today was the first day of the meetings, the only day that we're actually attending, as tomorrow's half day session doesn't really relate to us and our respective flights leave early in the afternoon.
Some worthwhile business was discussed, I think, though a lot of what was talked about was well beyond my purview.
(Let me just say that the campus of the company we were meeting with is freaking huge. I'd IMed Scott to tell him about how big the place was and he asked if it was "Segway big." I had to laugh, as just minutes earlier I'd seen a security guard tooling around on a Segway.)
What was most interesting about it was actually meeting some of the people I've been working with for months via phone and e-mail for the first time. One of them looked pretty much exactly how I pictured her. One of the other people I had no real mental picture of, but when I saw her I immediately knew who she was.
Back when I worked at Suomi College I used to spend a lot of time on the phone talking to our customer service rep at the company that printed our quarterly alumni publication. We got along well on the phone. In fact, we were often pretty flirtatious with each other. She had a sexy voice, and I had a very specific idea in my mind of how she looked.
One day my boss had some business in the part of Wisconsin where the company was located, and in the interest of maintaining a positive relationship with them, he stopped in to visit and take a tour.
When he got back, my first question to him was "What does Gail look like?"
He described her as being short and stocky, with very short red hair.
This was disappointing, and wasn't at all the Gail I knew.
Ah well, that's the thing about illusions; they're often so easily shattered.
After the meeting headed back to the hotel to drop off our laptops, then regrouped to head out to dinner with the company we were here to meet with.
Dinner ended up being at the same barbecue place we had lunch at yesterday. I ate way too much and feel like I've gained ten pounds.
Yesterday evening I had dinner at a steakhouse with the NOC Director and an old friend of his. He used to work for the company we were here to meet with, so he's got a lot of old friends in the area.
When the waitress came around for our drink orders, the two of them asked what was on tap. The waitress listed everything off and they ordered their beers, and I found myself opening my mouth to say - as if after nearly eight years it was perfectly natural to do so - "I'll have a Guinness."
I had to stop myself, as internally I said, "You'll have nothing of the sort!" and ended up saying "I'll have a...coke?"
Not sure what was up with that. I can't say that I really wanted one - of course, I also can't say that I didn't* - but it just seemed to start to come out of me as if by force of habit. But seriously, after almost eight years, how could the habit have that much force?
Oh well.
When we got back to the hotel I decided to check out the pool. I'd thought about packing my swim trunks in case there was a pool, but had decided against it, but once we were here I decided that I should have, so on the way back to the hotel we stopped at a Big K so I could pick some up (I needed new ones anyway...well, I didn't need them, as I haven't gone swimming since like 2004, but even so, the ones I have at home are old and ratty), and so I headed to the pool upon our return.
I decided to try out the hot tub first, and within two minutes of settling in, some old guy who works for the hotel came in and informed me that the pool was closed because of reports of lightning.
So that was pretty weak.
I don't think I'll head down again tonight, as I don't want to have to pack wet shorts in with my clothes tomorrow.
Anyway, that's been my time in Kansas.

*Despite it all, if I were to one day encounter a genie who informed me that, through the power of wishing, I could either meet my perfect soulmate who would love me and make me eternally, blissfully happy, or I could have a beer, I'm pretty sure my response would be "What kind of beer?"

It's Not Easy Being Green

Shortly after I got to work this morning I realized three things:

1. It was St, Patrick’s Day
2. I hadn’t worn anything green
3. I didn’t care

Of course, as it turns out there’s some green on my badge, so I suppose that would have counted, had anyone said anything to me about my seeming lack of Irishness.
The last time I remember doing anything to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day would be…1999, and the fact that I was out drinking was pretty much coincidental with the fact that it was St. Patrick’s Day, as I didn’t need a special occasion to get loaded.
Which is why I would assume that I did much the same thing in 2000, though I have no specific memory of doing so.
In 2001 I went on a date on St. Patrick’s Day, though I was sober then, and, again, the timing was merely coincidental.
One thing I remember about the 1999 experience was someone at the bar faulting me for not getting into the spirit of things and not being “Irish enough” because, unlike him, I wasn’t drinking green beer.
When I pointed out that I was being considerably more Irish than he was, given that I was drinking Guinness while he was drinking Bud Light with green food coloring in it, he gave me a confused look and then turned away to talk to someone else, which, to be honest, is pretty much how I wanted the whole situation to resolve itself anyway.
When I was in Best Buy the other day there was a chick wearing a “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” shirt, and I found that I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if I had attempted to take her up on it. Not because she was cute – she most decidedly wasn’t – but just for the pure shock value of it. Naturally I didn’t, and, though she didn’t even know that the thought had passed through my head, I’m sure she’s grateful for that fact.
Besides, I’m sure that even if she had been okay with it, her husband probably wouldn’t have been so magnanimous.
Of course, given that the trio – they had a baby in a stroller – was consistently in my way at every turn, her shirt inspired me to come up with a similarly-worded slogan of my own: “Get the fuck out of my way, I’m Jon.”
Tomorrow through Thursday, one of the big vendors my company deals with will be in town for meetings with us. Evidently we do this every six weeks, alternating between meeting here, and meeting at their facilities in Kansas. The last meeting in Kansas took place right after I’d started, so I didn’t attend (though I did join in on conference calls for some of the sessions), but next time I will be heading out to Kansas.
Somewhere along the line I’ll probably be traveling to Buffalo as well.
Sadly, it seems unlikely that I’ll ever have to go to Hawaii, which, once upon a time, might have been a possibility.
In any case, the next two days are going to be spent in and out of meetings, which will likely be just as exciting as it sounds.

Meeting Of The So-Called Minds

So last night after work I went to the homeowner’s meeting in which we discussed the buy-back offer.
Everything was proceeding nicely. We were presented with a recap, got a little more information about the condo developer’s situation, learned that of the 58 owners there had, at that point, been a confirmed 42 who had accepted the offer, and we learned a little more about what the consequences of not accepting the offer could be.
We then found out that area real estate developers are, naturally, very interested in the fact that there may soon be 58 potential home buyers on the market, and so there’s a lot of opportunity for us to get some great deals, particularly if we were to purchase en masse.
For example, a nearby development is prepared to hold an open house just for us and is offering 6% off the purchase price along with a variety of incentives.
A friend of the woman who’s been doing all the legwork for us, including brokering the offer, was given the floor to speak about some of the opportunities, as he was a realtor and could provide us with a good perspective on the situation.
That’s when things fell apart.
This old German crank started bitching about being “solicited,” and how he came to hear about the buy-back and didn’t want to hear about anything else.
He seemed to think that the realtor was actually representing area developers and/or our condo developer, and thought that this was some sort of attempt to pressure us into taking the deal. That he was concerned about this seemed odd, given that he stated that he actually had accepted the deal and was all for us accepting it.
No amount of talk could convince him that he was an idiot that he had misinterpreted what was happening, and refused to shut up and let the realtor talk even though the rest of us were interested in hearing what the realtor had to say.
He also went off on some rambling rant about mediators and lawyers, but finally shut up after it was stated – and restated – that it’s too late in the game and that if we try to push any harder the developer will just rescind the offer and we’ll be hosed.
Basically he was just a jackass who liked the sound of his own voice. It kind of went like this:

Us: What do you want?
Him: I want to have my say!
Us: Okay, what do you have to say?
Him: That I want to be heard!
Us: Heard saying what?
Him: That I want to have my say!

You get the idea.
The only other thing we learned is that the one old biddy hold-out is doing so because she recently invested $5,000 in putting in new floors and doesn’t want to lose that investment.
We have to hope that she’ll come to understand that she’ll lose even more if she doesn’t agree.
Of course, she didn’t bother to attend either meeting, so that doesn’t bode well.
The cute music teacher was there and she smelled really nice. At one point she leaned forward in her chair and I got a glimpse of her underwear. They were teal and didn’t appear to be very sexy, being along the lines of 100% cotton granny panties.
Just thought I’d mention that.
After the meeting I went home and watched Earl and The Office, then it was off to bed, where I slept for about two hours, woke up for over two hours, then slept for just under four before getting up and coming in to work, where I ended up spending $442, $140 of that inadvertently.
The $342 was spent on a new graphics tablet.
I went with the 6x11 even though, at $60 more, the 9x12 would have been a bargain. I just don’t have the desktop real estate for the 9x12, though, and the 6x11 has the advantage of sharing my monitor’s aspect ratio, and it’s still much bigger than my current 4x5. And being newer it has all the bells and whistles.
The other $140 was spent when Scott accidentally ordered a copy of Adobe Studio 8 when attempting to see if his student discount allows him to purchase more than one copy of it. Since he was investigating that possibility on my behalf, I figured I might as well just buy it from him.
On the topic of buying things, yesterday the back issues I’d ordered came in the mail, which was cool.
As for the bags and boards I ordered a while back, I’d gotten an e-mail from them saying that they were on backorder for 2-3 weeks. That was a month ago, so I sent them an e-mail canceling my order.
Now I need to find another supplier to order from.
Hopefully whatever company I order from will actually have a supply of what they’re selling in stock.
It’s going to be a long day, as is evidenced by the fact that it’s already been a long day and I still have over 8 hours to go.

Thinking About Some Tall Tail

I didn’t do much for the first part of the day, which is hardly surprising, I guess.
In the afternoon, though, I had an appointment with the chiropractor (my last, as he’s not in my insurance’s network and I’ve used up the visits I pre-paid for using the last of my Flex money last year), and about an hour after that was over I had a meeting for work.
The meeting annoyed me, as it was at 3 and was set to last until 5, which meant that I’d have to deal with rush hour traffic to get home.
The other problem was that it was a bit before 2 when I got out of the chiropractor.
With traffic, it would take around 25 minutes to get from Leesburg to Reston, which is where the meeting was, which meant that it was kind of pointless to go home. I mean, what was I going to do for a half an hour?
Of course, the same question could be asked if I was out in the world.
Unable to answer it, I chose to just try to take my time getting to Reston.
It didn’t work; I arrived at around 2:35.
By taking my time moving around through the building (hitting the bathroom, taking a circuitous route, stopping at a vending machine), I managed to arrive at the conference room where the meeting was going to be held sometime around 2:47.
Finding it empty, I took a seat, ate the cookies I’d bought, and read an e-book on my PDA.
Eventually people started arriving and it was a matter of waiting for the people who were giving the presentation to arrive from HQ.
When they finally did, I have to say that I was surprised.
As I’ve mentioned before, with only a couple of notable exceptions, I don’t really go for tall women too much.
The reason is pretty obvious and straightforward; I’m not especially tall. I just think that paired with a tall woman I would look ridiculous, and I can’t help but assume that a tall woman would feel the same way about the notion of being paired with me, though in general I tend to assume that every woman, tall or otherwise, would find the notion of being paired with me ridiculous (Or is that revolting? It’s definitely a word that starts with R.), but I just think that in this particular case there’s an additional obstacle beyond my standard defects.
In any case, the person leading the meeting was a very tall (well over 6’), very attractive young woman, an attractive woman who had that indefinable something that makes me take a little more notice and which generates a little more interest from me than most tall woman do.
Just so we’re clear, I’m not saying that I don’t find woman who are tall attractive, I’m just saying that in general…well, I don’t know what I’m saying, exactly.
Whatever I am saying, in this case I found myself quite taken with this particular tall woman, and so I paid little attention to what was actually going on at the meeting, being far too busy looking at her (and thinking about the lack of a ring I had noticed during my initial ring check).
Oh well.
The drive home was pretty irritating, though made slightly less so by the fact that I took the Greenway home, which sped things up a little thanks to the higher speed limit, lack of stop lights, and lighter traffic.
Of course, the lighter traffic is the result of the fact that it costs over $3 to drive on the Greenway.
I usually only take the Greenway on Thursdays and Friday nights because of the cost, but apparently I’ve been using it a lot more than that lately as my checking account just got hit up for $35 to replenish my Smart Tag after today’s trip. Usually I can go about two months before needing to replenish it, but this time I only got 20 days out of the last $35.

I Need To Watch More Commercial-Free Television Department:
TV commercials bother me in general, but there have been a few that have really been getting on my nerves lately.
First up is that creepy Orville Redenbacher commercial. Who thought that was a good idea? It doesn’t make me want to buy popcorn, it makes me want to stock up on Holy Water.
And somehow putting the iPod on him in some desperate attempt to make it seem hip and current just makes it that much creepier.
All I can say is that there better not be any Wendy’s commercials featuring the reanimated corpse of Dave Thomas.
The other commercial, or rather, series of commercials, that bug me are the ones for either DirecTV or Dish Network (I forget which), in which we see some hapless loser engaging in some sort of misguided construction project while his wife and some friend of hers look on. The friend asks what the husband is doing, and the wife says, “He’s building his own comedy club,” or whatever, which prompts the friend to tell the wife how the Starz Comedy channel, obtained via satellite, can meet all of their comedy needs.
We’re given the number to call, and then something “funny” happens to the loser husband and the friend makes some sort of disparaging comment about him which points out what a loser he is.
Okay, here’s the thing that bugs me about the commercial. When finding out what kind of retarded project the husband is working on, the friend always brings up the relevant Starz channel by prefacing it with the question, “Doesn’t he know that he can get…?”
Here’s the thing: no, he doesn’t know because you two bitches are too busy belittling him and pointing out what an idiot he is to get around to fucking tell him.
I mean, the “friend” is the fucking Starz evangelist. Why can’t she haul her ass over and tell him about it? It’s obvious that telling the wife about it isn’t doing any good.
And finally, the other one that gets on my nerves is the PSP ad featuring the girl leaving a memory stick and a note saying “Come find me” on the sleeping form of some guy before slipping out the door. After waking (and most likely baking), said guy uses his PSP to watch video footage of the girl on the memory stick in order to track her down.
Here’s the thing. This is obviously the morning after a late-night hook up. Most guys in the demographic these young lovers belong to are unlikely to even bother calling the girl or sending her a text message after a one-night stand, let alone go on a damn treasure hunt to track her down. Having already had the treasure, why go out looking for it?
He’s more likely to use the memory stick to figure out where she’ll be so that he can avoid her.
Here’s a tip, honey. Despite whatever romantic notions might pop into your head in the post-coital afterglow of a drunken hook-up, your best bet is to head down to the free clinic for a shot of penicillin and a morning after pill; don’t waste time trying to be cute and quirky in the hopes that your two-pump chump will turn into Prince Charming and go on a quest to find you.
And you’d be better served using that memory stick and your PSP to listen to the Liz Phair song Fuck and Run, which will hopefully help you realize how hollow and meaningless it is to spread your legs for every guy who slips you a tab of Ecstasy.
Anyway, none of that is what really bugs me.
What bugs me is the once scene in which our modern day Romeo is searching for his skanky Juliet and runs past some other slacker playing a game on a PSP. The slacker playing on the PSP looks up and watches Romeo with an expression of total shock and dismay. Apparently seeing someone run past is the most startling thing he’s ever seen is his life.
Then again, given that this kid can’t venture out into the world without being immersed in a virtual world, I suppose that the notion of actual physical activity would be pretty shocking.

In any case, not much is new or interesting in my world, virtually or actually, so I guess that’s more than enough for one entry.