Month: November 2005

Imagine…

There is a turkey feast being held at your work today and you can smell the turkey and gravy and the mashed taters and the gravy and the stuffing and the gravy and you know that if you eat it you are going to be physically ill for hours and hours and hours afterwards. So you aren’t going to eat it. Instead you are going to eat your plain chicken broth rice. The same chicken broth rice you’ve eaten for the last two days. (Minus the steak you ate last night and ended up regretting it… 5 times.)

Now imagine there is a 300 pound mouthy woman sitting two cubicles away from you smacking and chewing and popping her gum over and over and over and so loud that you can hear it like she’s sitting NEXT TO YOU and you secretly hope for just a second that maybe it’s Bertie Bott’s Disappearing Gum and in a poof of yellow smoke she will vanish and never be heard from again.

Welcome to my morning. I’m really trying to not let the negative energy in but GODDAMN WOMAN CLOSE YOUR MOUTH!!

My mom suggested taking some anti-inflammatory medicine last night so I started taking Advil. It seems to be helping. The pain is still there but not NEARLY as bad as yesterday.

I’m not sure WHAT is going on down there. There is still what I would describe now as “tenderness”. Almost like something is bruised. But the pain is more dulled now and not so bad that it hurts to even take a deep breath.

I was able to get more sleep but not nearly enough to make up for the missed night before. So I’m just going to continue drinking tons of water and taking the Advil every six hours and see how the day goes.

I am sitting in the urgent care waiting room. I just gave a urine sample. Yesterday I started noticing a “pressure” on my bladder. Today it turned into full blown pain. I got no sleep last night because of it. ANY pressure on my tummy made me wince.

It could be a baldder infection but I have none of the symptoms I usually get. No frequency of urination, no pain when going, no cloudy urine. Everything else is fine. Its just “pressure” feeling and bad bad bad pain.

P.S. – I’d like to thank the technology God for things like Sidekicks and Gameboy Advanced’s.

EDIT @ 6:00PM – Well, its not a bladder infection. Nothing on the pelvic exam either. Took blood to rule out appendix. Back in the waiting room waiting for the results. Won’t give me pain medicine till they get the results back. Bastards.

EDIT @ 8:00PM – White blood cell count was normal. Not pregnant. No STD’s. Urgent care staff is stumped. At home now with no freaking pain medicine. She told me to take some gas medicine and see if maybe that’s what it is. I took that over an hour ago and I’m still hurting.

I’m supposed to “monitor the situation” overnight and see how things are in the morning…

EDIT @ 10:00PM – I went to bed right after the last update. Took some Aleve at 9:00. Laying down seems to help. But if I put pressure on my belly or MOVE I can feel it. And it still hurts. Maybe not as bad as before but it’s still enough to make me worry about what the hell is going on and not be comfy.

I guess I just try and be as comfortable as possible till tomorrow or it goes away.

heh.

Links, Contact, Colophon and most of Site is done content wise. There are a few more things I’m thinking of doing visually but it’s hard to find time during the week.

Am tired. Must Rest.

So, the font colors don’t match and there are images missing, and some left over from the old layout.. Basically it’s like 65% done. But I couldn’t take the old layout anymore. You’ll notice changes in the next 24 hours. If things seem broken, wait a few minutes and refresh. 🙂

P.S. – Internet Explorer can go straight to hell and rot forever. Stupid browser is reading the divs wrong causing the cute blue image under the menu titles to be too long and throwing off the whole damn div. *flips it off*

Gah, I’m going to bed.

The M3 is now an official track car. Details later SO. TIRED.

*click to enlarge*

Life with my Sidekick has been fantastic. I looked up a cut of beef as we sat track side at Laguna Seca for Ben as well as looking up the schedule for the day. At dinner the other night I was able to see if a store was still going to be open when we left… it’s just endless, really. Let’s see:

• I have most of my email forwarded to it so I am ALWAYS able to check it.
• I have various shopping lists that I keep as notes. One note for each place. If I think of something I need from one of the places I can add it to the list in SECONDS.
• I put EVERYTHING in my calendar. From appointments with the head doctor to reminders that it’s trash day. Every day I make sure that my Outlook and Sidekick are updated.
• Every time I use the ATM check card I send Ben an email because he is the Updater of the Quicken God. I can now send him stuff AS I do it. Actually, I need to be better about this and not putting it off till later because that makes his job more difficult… I’m trying. 🙂
• I’m not bored sitting outside Cassidy’s class waiting for her anymore!! Today I actually researched sewing machines while I waited. The other day I looked up some low carb recipes for dinner ideas.

The list goes ON AND ON…

Right after I got it I started hearing rumors on the SK forums about a new update OTA (Over The Air) 2.3. It was supposed to have all sorts of fancy new features like time stamps for AIM and the ability to read CSS. I wanted it. Right then. Unfortunately all Dander and T-Mobile would say is that the updates were being sent out “randomly” and “when you got it you got it the end”. I’m not sure if you all realize this, but the part of my brain that controls my patience level is broken. I don’t have it. At all. None. Zilch. NON EXISTENT!!

After waiting what seemed AGES… JULIE GOT IT! $^!*#@$*!@ I tried not to hate her. I tried not to be jealous. But if she wasn’t such a nice girl I’d probably have stolen hers in the night because… I BOUGHT MINE FIRST AND IT JUST WASN’T FAIR!

THEN! Yesterday after work I checked the forum and LO AND BEHOLD people were saying after a few restarts… the update started DLing!! After about 10 restarts and Ben mocking my obsession for a good 20 minutes it started downloading!! And then my battery light came on… heh I plugged it in though and got the update and it’s like a whole new devise!!

My favorite new features so far:

Calendar:
Much better layout for daily views.

Email:
Clickable links in the body of emails. (Before links were all at the end of the message)
Discard a message from the Browse Messages screen with the display closed.

WWW:
CSS!! (Colored text, backgrounds, forum posts show up properly)
JAVASCRIPT!
Much faster load times.
General prettyness.

Note:
Fold/unfold all notes using keyboard shortcuts.
Send a note via email message.

AIM:
Time stamps.
Away message viewing from the main menu.
BUDDY ICONS!
Ability to email conversations.
COPY/PASTE(!!)

Photo:
MUCH better gallery setup.
You can ROTATE photo’s.
Set a photo as your keyguard screen.

There are SO many more things but those are the features that I use the most. I’m telling you, this is the BEST purchase I’ve made in a long time.

P.S. – I am now addicted to City of Villians. Hence the lack of updates. And if this post does not confirm my ridiculous geekyness I don’t know what could.. 😉

Like the title says.., greed. Why is that some want more than they need? Dictionary.com defines greed as… an excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth. Why am I ranting about greed? Because Automotive insurance companies wrote the BOOK on greed, that’s why!

Tomorrow, December 8th, 2005, …a red-letter day in the history of Benjamin Hirsch. The last Vehicular code infrance (2pt speeding ticket offence to the lay person) will fall off of my driving record…. and for the first time in…. hell, I don’t even remember, I’ll have a clean driving record.

(Cue the white dove release and divine choir)

Naturally, because the ticket is falling off, the automotive insurance companies pro-rate your premium to include this discount, correct? We’re talking about somewhere around Four-hundred and fifty dollars here! Surely they wouldn’t wait until the end of the policy to update the premium and keep that money for themselves. …when you get a speeding ticket during the middle of a policy term, they sure as hell update your premium! So, why wouldn’t they make the ticket falling off force an update to your MVR, and in turn decrease your insurance premium?

GREED

Well, at any rate, I think I finally figured out what my insurance agent is doing with all of that extra money:

I woke up this morning and made a decision. I’m not going to let *things* at work get to me. It’s just not worth it. I’m choosing to block the negative energy and let in only positive. I will surround myself with it and I will not allow the negative to effect my mood, my happiness, my life.

If there is a negative attitude thrown at me I will simply smile, say ‘thank you’, and continue on with my job. Kill ’em with kindness, yes? By only accepting the positive energy, the people around me will have no choice but to absorb that energy and eventually will have to accept the positive energy themselves.

Unfortunately this will mean far less work rants on the blog which I know you all love so much. I’ll try to find something to fill it’s place. I have many funny bloggable thoughts filed away up here. *points to head*

Our company recently started monitoring even our AOL instant Messenger Chats using a new service called “Akonix L7” (feel free to google). It basically logs everything you and your chat partner say. On the first outbound message to someone, they’ll receive a notice as described below. Some may say, well, that’s infringing on our personal privacy!!! But, this is company equipment, and as such, company internet, so, they have every right to do what they are doing. However, this email exchange below HAD to be posted (grin)…

One of my coworkers recently posted this to our group about it:
“…..I’m sure we have had possible email and IM monitoring for some time now but just recently others are getting messages about it when talking to me on various IM programs. The standard message says something like: “Administrator: Your communications are being monitored by the Akonix L7 system managing the person with whom you are connected.” Just a friendly FYI for those who discuss personal things over IM. I would be careful about what you share over IM if you don’t want others to possibly know :)….”

To which my boss responded:
“….Yes, we’ve been monitoring all of your communications for a couple of years. Managers get logs of every IM, chat or e-mail conversation you have on company equipment. But since you guys are spending most of your time chatting online, there is no way for me to sift throught he thousands of logs I get each day on you all. So I have to filter the logs for key words or phrases. Right now I only look for a few things. If the communication contains any of the following, the system flags them for me so I can investigate:

“I am giving this information to ATI”
“I hate my boss”
“I am going to come in on Sunday night and change all of the picks on the board” (*)
“How much can I make at your company”
“?????? is gay, not that there is anything wrong with that”
“I’m going to call in sick tomorrow so I can take my car to the track”
“I am going to go postal”
“George W. Bush is the best thing that ever happened to this country”
“How do I get to the next level in WoW?”

Even with this limited number of phrases, I can’t keep up with all the logs that get flagged, so you all my be safe for now.

:^)…..”

* Some lab folks exchange opinions and money on sports events

Three of the of the folks in the lab take their cars to the track, some are really into Seinfeld, some play World of Warcraft…, he truly is… the coolest boss ever.