Unspeakable Rants

Yet another video blog.

2006-10-25T00:12:00.000-03:00

Supermarket Woes.

Another one!

2006-10-17T22:52:00.000-03:00

Education, Driving, oh, it's all here, sweetheart.

tag: blog, vlog, personal, beer, kitchen, driving, school

What I think about some important things.

2006-10-17T00:00:00.000-03:00

In this video, I talk about my faith, my admiration of those who fight on my behalf, and how I spent some time in the trunk of a car. Riveting stuff, honest.

...and, as always, there's beer.

tag: beer, faith, catholicism, soldiers, personal, blog, life, cars

This time, I have something to say.

2006-10-14T23:19:00.000-03:00

I think. Apologies to the non-sports fans.

tag: Beer, Kitchen, Hockey, Baseball, Sports, Me, Personal, Blog

It was in the fridge. The fridge!

2006-10-14T10:35:00.000-03:00

tag: Baby, sugar, morning, coffee, personal, life, me, dave, video, blog

Look! Ennui in video form!

2006-10-13T21:24:00.000-03:00

Oh, what have I become.

Don't know how I feel about this.

2006-10-13T12:10:00.000-03:00

So I've got a co-worker who is, for lack of a better word, a drunk. An alcoholic is someone who's admitted they have a problem. A drunk is someone who just gets drunk all the time and pretends they don't. I've blogged about her before. She just called in to get me to pass on a drunk message to another co-worker, and tell me that she wouldn't be in. I knew she wouldn't be in by the time she'd said three words - she was so boozy she could barely speak, let alone drive. I guess I just don't know how I feel about that.

Everyone who needs to know,(I.e. the higherups) has been told she's a drunk. THey've chosen to essentially ignore the problem and it's effects.

Everyone here despises her, which is sad, because we used to not despise her.

Nobody, and this includes me, is really doing anything to solve the problem. We don't know what to do - we've tried talking to her, taking her to AA, nothing works.

It's just hard to watch someone's life fall apart. If I'm to believe (as my faith dictates) that she is a child of God with an immortal soul, then how can I sleep at night knowing she's in such dire straits? Does this make me an uncaring jerk that I do sleep? Where do my life and hers overlap, and what don't I have to care about?

Ehh. My carton of the milk of human kindness is about to reach its 'best before' date.

personal life work slackers drunk conscience

2006-10-13T10:53:00.000-03:00

Just so we're clear - The pictures are there because they look nice. I steal them, yes, steal, from a variety of sources - Farktography contests, Webshots, sometimes they're my own work. They're nice to look at. More than that I can't help you with. Blame Blogger for making pictures easy to post.

You can now subscribe using feedburner to my blog. I know you want to.

On to the rant.

My boss, after keeping me in a meeting yesterday for an hour and a half and then giving me another job to do on top of that this morning, just got after me for the thing I was 'supposed' to be working on already. Hello! This is an ordinary 'I'm -only-one-person' style complaint, but I'm using it in spades. Argh!

In other news, there's a german restaurant near where I live that serves spatzle (Spat-zell or Spats-lee depending on your preference) and quite frankly, tonight I'm a-gonna get a beer with friends. So let the rain fall and the wind blow. I know where I'm headed. Cheers!

personal life work lazy happiness feeding food beer

Warning!

2006-10-13T09:13:00.000-03:00

This video is all at once cute and creepy. Since a picture's worth a thousand words, I'll save you a bit of hassle.

Cheers!

life kids happiness family sleep feeding

There he is.

2006-10-12T16:58:00.000-03:00

That's me.

life personal work lazy slackers video

So here's the thing.

2006-10-12T15:40:00.000-03:00

I've just come from a meeting. Boss, a couple of other higher-ups, and a couple of visiting muckety mucks to discuss a project. I'm involved because I'll be doing the programming on our end. Makes sense. Only, there's one problem.

I'm taking part in the meeting, I'm giving input, and I'm trying to listen. But all the while I'm thinking, 'You know, I really would like to build a great big remote-controlled plane one of these days.' And I'm designing the thing, in my head. And then I'm designing an aerial, to send & recieve signals to the plane. It's a bigass aerial, attached to a cluster of ordinary helium ballons, so that it's easy to deploy. And then there's a small rc vehicle, with a video feed, INSIDE the plane. I've decided to make something like a remote-controlled Hercules cargo plane, that can deploy other vehicles in flight. (Hey, why not) and then I'm thinking of how I could get the thing to deploy spy-cameras. And I'm designing a spy camera that sits inside a clear plastic ball (think a hamster ball) so that when it falls out of the plane, it always lands right-side up. I'm designing an aerial for the spy cam that deploys along with the parachute that pulls the cam out the back of the plane, allowing fairly location-specific deployment. If it's mounted inside a clear plastic globe, then panning in one direction is just turning one motor on or off, and spinning the cam inside the sphere. Then I'm trying to figure out if there's a way I can make the sphere itself move. (Hey, if a hamster can do it...) and how I could make it move and turn with only two on-and-off motors)

All while in a meeting.

Does this happen to everybody?

personal life work slackers lazy happiness hobby office

So.

2006-10-11T08:50:00.000-03:00

This morning is better. Last evening was better. I've got to keep aware of two things, one, that sometimes people like to be asked for things, it can be just as simple as that. Two, that there's a lot to be said for being satisfied with one's routine.

Also, getting to work early helps my mood immensely. It also means that I can leave work earlier. It's clear to me now that the end of my work day, the afternoon, is when I really struggle with being happy about stuff, with focus, with contentment.

I also acknowledged that the project I'm working on is de-motivating because people already appraised the work I'd done, and said it wasn't good. They did this unfairly and I found out about it third-hand. So now I want to get rid of the whole thing. Alas. But I'm close to the finish, if I can just keep my focus.

Sometimes on days like this I want to say 'Screw programming, screw science, I want to go make pots, write bad poetry and eat bombay chicken salad.' Of course, the bad poetry and, to a lesser extent, the bombay chicken salad are still options. We'll see.

I have a confession to make. This morning I came up with a really neat/weird idea for a poem, but here's the thing. The poem will be a creative metaphor about how much I dislike my co-worker. It'll be clever, biting, and subtly vitriolic. The problem is I want to wait until my co-worker cheeses me off before I actually go and write it. So I'm sitting here in my cubicle, half hoping that my co-worker will come in and put me in a snit. I swear, I'm like my own mental saboteur today.

Vitriolic and saboteur? That's enough words for today.

Tags:

words life personal contempt poetry happiness work

Trying

2006-10-10T13:59:00.000-03:00

Very trying indeed. Trying to add technorati tags to my entries.

Try this again.

2006-10-10T13:53:00.000-03:00

Just downloaded Flock, and it
seems to work. Nice. I think I could stick with this. Hopefully it will
be more reliable than deepest sender/firefox, and hopefully I can blog
more and work more with a system that makes me happy.

There.

Fell off the wagon. Got Caught.

2006-10-10T10:56:00.000-03:00

You know, I'm not going to go into it except to say that last week was a bad week on the web for me. I think this week will be better. I hope it will. I just wish I knew when the bad days were coming, so I could get ready for them.

Maybe it's a fact of life that the bad days are coming, and that I always have to be ready for them? Okay then. In that case, someone let me know when the good days are coming, and describe what they'll be like.

Because I need a veto. I need to be able to say 'this is good, this is not' before getting told that I'm presently enjoying a good day. Because a lot of these good days suck, and on so many good days, I have this undeniable urge to be bad. And I feel like no one understands that - which, of course, is why I have a blog.

*Sigh*. Now, I feel like a teenager.

Technorati stuff.

2006-10-06T10:42:00.000-03:00

Technorati Profile

Oh, the shame of it.

2006-10-06T10:26:00.000-03:00

I am trying to watch my weight. But every now and again, I slip into the McDonalds drive through and order a McGriddle (with bacon) for breakfast. I add to my shame by jokingly asking the person at the check-out to please, not tell anyone I've ordered this.

*Whew*

Now that that's off my chest, I need to say that with three school shootings in the past two weeks, we should be a little less concerned with a Congressman's dirty emails, however inappropriate. He's in rehab. He's gonna probably wear an ankle bracelet telling us where he is for the rest of his life. Move on.

And here's something. If you have a kid who lives in your house, you have the right to search his/her room for stuff once and a while. Look under their bed for 'odd socks'. Search the top of their closets looking for 'that box of old clothes I thought I left in here.' Whatever. It's your house, you should know what they're bringing into it. And take the internet out of their room and put it in the living room. Or better still, the kitchen. And take the webcam *gasp* away.

In short, be their parent, not their friend. You can be their friend when they're old enough to pay their own rent somewhere else. In the meantime, it's your house. BE A PARENT, KNOW WHAT YOUR KIDS ARE INTO. And hold them a little closer before you shove 'em out the door to school.

Recent conversations...

2006-10-05T10:32:00.000-03:00

I hate to be rude. I hate rudeness. I find it rude. So the following conversation bugs me, even though I was the one being rude.

Drunken Co-worker: (On spotting me and wandering over to my cubicle for the fourth or fifth time today) "Well, you won't see me again today."

Me: "I see you now."
DCW: "Is that a polite way of saying 'Get Lost'?"
Me: "It wasn't that polite."

DCW:"Well, I just don't know, I mean, " and then she blathers on about her daughter standing in the rain, and slowly ambles off to bother someone else. Literally. People here in the office have learned to 'tune her out', and I'm working at learning that myself. But I'm a slow learner when it comes to contempt. This person's ramblings have gotten so bad in the past that we have a written agreement about what she is and isn't allowed to do, and she's supposed to follow it. Of course, she doesn't, and attempts to enforce said agreement turn this whole office into a shit hurricaine, with formal letters and union representatives and such.

Everything in this person's life is a mess. She and her 'husband' are alcoholics. (I put husband in quotes because nothing that I see from him looks like he's living up to his marriage promises to love her. Avoid her is more like it.) Her children, (one son and one daughter) are raising themselves, and doing a piss-poor job of it (who wouldn't), such that her house has a revolving door as boyfriends and girlfriends move in and move out of the lives of these two teenagers. Honestly, we don't know whether she's drunk or sober on her 'good' days or on her 'bad' days. It's possible she's reached the point where sobriety impairs her ability to function far more than her drunkenness. All we know is that on her bad days, she's constantly coming into our office area to 'chat' - meaning walk into our cubicles, look at our screens and comment on whatever.

Oh, here she comes again...

Just getting through

2006-10-04T11:59:00.000-03:00

This morning I'm finally making some progress on a report I have to give on some work that I apparently did poorly. Needless to say, it is a report I have no wish to write, but there it is.

Argh...

2006-10-04T10:40:00.000-03:00

and of course, my co-worker is drunk and raving today.

Waking up and shaking up

2006-10-04T10:17:00.000-03:00

I have shockingly less to complain about today. I did, however, forget to pick up my meds on the way to work. I remembered a breakfast sandwich at a local drive-thru, but not my brain pills.

Yes, that's right, in true angst-ridden blogger fashion, I'm on antidepressants. But I'll break from the norm and say that they're actually working. Provided I remember to take them.

I have often felt that it is strangely appropriate to feel anger at one's own ignorance. It makes me mad that I have to be this stupid. But there it is. Hopefully today will go better from here on in - I'll pick up said meds at lunchtime.

Feeling like a sucker.

2006-10-03T15:14:00.000-03:00

So I'm making it through my day. But you know the movie 'Office Space' where the guy admits that he does about an hour of work each week? I'm feeling that! It's a little better but I cannot concentrate! Why? Why can't I just make myself do the work? I can, I know that I can. I'm just choosing not to.

Here's the backstory...

2006-10-03T10:49:00.000-03:00

I have another blog, in no way linked to this one, I hope. In that blog, I try to be happy as often as I can, and not complain or vent or whine. It's helpful most of the time.

Yesterday was not one of those times. Yesterday I was sad, frustrated and horny. I found myself reading smut-blogs and feeling sorry for myself, and generally just throwing myself into the downward spiral of bad moods. By the end of the day I'd decided to chew my leg off at the knee to get out of this cubicle and away from the desk I'm chained to.

So, here's where I'll be confessing. Yes, the dark, ugly secrets of me. While it's not my intent to tear people down in here, I will be venting some. But hopefully I'll be able to keep a few things straight, most importantly, I'm married. Some days this is good, some days this is bad. But I'm not going to complain about my wife on the internet - that, to me and to her, is a kind of infidelity, and I don't want to do that.

I used to get into all sorts of trouble here. I've never contributed to a smut-blog but I've written letters to women, usually dissatisfied wives. I gain their friendship, I learn their secrets and then we write letters to each other containing details about what we'd like to do to each other's bodies, sigh, if only life were different. Well, it's not different and that's not being faithful to my wife. So I've promised not to do that. She found one of the letters written to me. She was nonplussed. I'm even going to try to keep from crying on the shoulders of strangers. Just, when it gets to be too much, I'll come here, rant, and move on. Hopefully.

If you want to get in touch with me, well, here:

Putting it in an image, I might block a spammer or two.

Anyways. Here's my online alter ego. Be nice to me, I'm new.