How do these things happen?

On our way to Annaleise's reception on Friday (a journey fraught with misdirection and circular driving, thanks to T), we saw the Coolest Road Sign(s) EVAR. Check this out:
Please note that 4430 North is also Jens Monson Ln. is also 9850 North. And that 900 West is also 4000 West. Seriously, what is going on here? Who thought this was a good idea? "Gee, I'm putting up a new street sign, but I'm not gonna take down the old one. Especially as they have conflicting information." I mean, really. Believe it or not, this is not where T and I got lost. She has no such excuse. :)

Coincidence, or really horrible irony?

I just smooshed a bug on my notebook. I am using this notebook to write out my Relief Society lesson for tomorrow, "Words of Hope and Consolation at the Time of Death." I think Heavenly Father is laughing at me.

I get a gold star!

It's true, I do! This is the note I left Tianna on her board last night before I left work. Because why? Because I WIN!

Here's the deal. I've been working on a lengthy and complicated project at work for several weeks now, and last night, I finished it! You want more details? Very well. (This will probably get far more technical than most of you care about, so feel free to pretend that this post ends right here.) We've got serials online in a collection, but we wanted them moved to new collections, separate for Localities and for Surnames. Now, it's impossible to just move a book; it has to be deleted and reloaded. In addition to moving these, we decided we wanted to group them by volume, rather than by issue, which is how they were previously done. So I had to get the original files and combine the issues into one volume. Then I had to do the tricky part: merge the metadata. This involved some very complex work with large spreadsheets. And everything had to be just right, or CONTENTdm would yell at me. Or, if not that, it would load properly but be all screwy, with the title in author field and whatnot. Needless to say, I learned a lot about these spreadsheets and the way they have to be compiled. This generally happens in the background when we process books, so it was rather new to me.

But I finished! I combined 308 issues into 116 volumes and successfully messed around with all the accompanying metadata. They're all online and beautiful, and I'm really quite proud of myself.

What is wrong with people?!

Dear Crazy Person,

I appreciate your determination to get in touch with whoever works in the cubicle in the next row. But you're calling an office at 6:30 on a Thursday night. I'd say the odds are good that if they didn't pick up any one of the first 37 times you called, they've probably gone home for the night. Please, for the love of all that is holy, desist calling here!

Sincerely,
Driven Nearly to Distraction

My Quest

So, in Orem, I actually sit in a co-worker's cubicle. She works from home, so she lets us use it. Anyway, there used to be a whiteboard here, propped against the wall. It still had the protective film over it and everything. Several weeks ago, a guy came along and asked if he could borrow it (we were pretty obviously not using it). We said sure, and he said that if we ever wanted it back, it would be in the conference room down the hall.

Well, last week, there was a lot of moving. Tianna officially moved her office from SLC to Orem, so she has her own cube across the way. (Don't worry; we still talk all the time, just louder. This is really a great service that we provide, letting more people in on our crazy conversations.) I got my own cubicle up in SLC, not far from my old one. I actually really like it; it's got more desk space, so T and I aren't so cramped. I also got a brand new computer, complete with new keyboard that is all clackety-clackety, which I really enjoy. But the key here is that I had a whiteboard of my very own now. And guess what? I realized that I actually have a use for it. I took all the information I had on various sticky notes and wrote it on the board. I was pleased. But, of course, this was only in SLC, where I now only work once a week.

I was therefore filled with a desire to have a whiteboard in Orem. But the conference room where my whiteboard now resided was locked. And we could see through the window that it had writing on it. AND we couldn't for the life of us remember who the guy was that took it, so we couldn't ask for it back. Was this the end of my dream? NO! Like anybody working for the Church in good standing, I decided that the obvious route to be taken was thievery. So I stole the whiteboard out of an unoccupied cubicle down the row from me. Way to represent!

It took some doing to get it set up, but we finally managed it. And now, I present the fulfillment of all my hopes and dreams for the last week:
I am seriously well pleased. :D

The secret to staying entertained while you're on the phone with tech support for an hour:

Wear cool earrings!


These are birds:
This is the best kind of spider: a dead one!
What a cute fishie!

Aww, a flower!

I dunno what these two are, but I think they look cool.

For when you just can't hold yourself up any longer

When I'm feeling particularly lousy, I usually walk into an elevator and go straight to the back, leaning my head and whole body against the back wall. I've got a killer headache today, so I did this, with the slight variation of going to the corner. And I thought to myself how cool it would be if everyone always did this. You'd get into an elevator and all the occupants would be facing the walls. And people would fight for the corners, since they're the "good spots." Wouldn't that be awesome?!

I wonder if anybody tracks these things. Am I gonna get in trouble?

I just saw this ad on a website, and I thought it was hilarious.My favorite part is the "Find a Bar" button. Just in case you're in the mood to get sloshed, but don't know where to go. But it got even better. I clicked on it. Problem is, I'm at work. In the Church Office Building. Yep, it was blocked. I got a screen saying that "Access to the website you requested is filtered by Church policy." I laughed. Hard.

It was just the pickup I needed, really. I'm so sick. I'm all stuffy and sneezy and basically lack the energy required for life. I seriously expect my lungs to just stop working, or my heart to stop beating. I'm so exhausted. So yeah, a laugh at a ridiculous ad was just the ticket.

[shudder]

Ok. So, we all know that spiders give me the creeping heebie-jeebies. Well, this morning, on our way to work, I'm driving along the road, Tianna in the passenger seat. I stop at a light, and notice, to my horror, a smallish spider dangling from a thread from the driver-side window, not far from the steering wheel. I immediately threw the door open and tried to get said spider outside by swinging my hand through the thread. Physics was not on my side, however, and this plot failed. Twice. Tianna, who had her headphones in listening to Harry Potter, was at a complete loss for what was going on. She caught up quick, though, when my third attempt to oust the spider from my domain failed miserably: it landed on my chest. There may have been whimpering at this point. Oh, and traffic started to move again, so I had to, too. Well, Tianna doesn't really like spiders, either. She was not about to grab the thing with her bare hands, and who can blame her? She asked if I had a tissue. I did: in my purse, in the back seat. I reached back for it and handed her the tissue, making incomprehensible noises of terror all the while. She bravely grabbed the spider and squooshed it. She even held on to the corpse-containing tissue until we got to work and she could throw it away. Tanna, you're my hero!

That's how Iike my irony!

I just received an email in which it had the word "type" when "typo" was intended. Brilliant.

A Test Program

So, I've been thinking about this for a while now. And I've decided that yes, my entertainment could stand some cleaning up. I've been abiding by the "no R-rated movies" rule for years, but I still probably watch a lot of movies and TV that I'd be better off without. See, I've always thought that the good justified the bad. But maybe the bad actually nullifies the good? Most of the time, I don't even remember the bad stuff; my brain seems to have an automatic filter that way. So then I go recommending movies to people who I know don't like a lot of swearing, only to find out that yeah, that movie did have an awful lot of swearing; I just forgot it. Anyway, this is another excuse I've used. I mean, how big an effect can the bad stuff have on you if you don't even remember it later on? But then, I've always struggled somewhat with my language; it's just so tempting to swear sometimes! But since I moved to Happy Valley, I hardly ever hear bad language at all. Except in my TV shows, my music, and my movies. Mayhap the reason I still think bad words so much is because I still hear them so much.

Anyway, I've decided to try and cut some of this stuff out of my life. This means a couple of TV shows I love. But I survived without them during the writers' strike, didn't I? And even after they came back, I found myself busy, even if it was just reading a book. Of course, I planned on catching up on them online, but still. As for movies, well, I haven't been watching a lot recently, except for the ones that I own. But I'm gonna try and avoid the ones with excessive amounts of swearing, violence, or crudity. Where is the line? I'm not sure. I don't really want to specify a rating level. But I'm gonna clean it up. I need to be more willing to stop watching a movie or even reading a book if I find out it's not good. I recently read a series of books that were completely clean until the fourth volume. Well, by then, I was so sucked into the storyline and the characters that I read it anyway. I shouldn't have. There was no overarching value or worth to the series; it was just entertainment.

So, in a nutshell: I'm gonna do my best to raise my standards a bit in this area. For now, this is a test. But if I don't actually die, I imagine I'll keep it up. :D

Just don't ask me what happened on House.