February 29
What did I do this weekend? Mostly avoided doing work. Well...okay. I got the new site design up, and that took a long time, but I really don't consider that to be "work". More like "fun". Yeah. Obviously I have a twisted idea of what fun is.
And then yesterday John and Douglas and I spent most of the day painting minuatures with Eric. It has been so long since I did any minuature painting. Too long. And I think that I am getting hooked all over again, not like I have any spare time for yet another hobby... I did two minatures yesterday. The first, and the one I spent the most time on, was a dragon lion. Which looks kind of like a gryphon. Couple of layers of metallic dry brushing on the scales, some washes on the wings and mane, and I dare say that it looks rather spiffy. And then I took a little pixie warrior that Eric had sitting around (only the wings were painted - metallic blue) and finished it off. He (the miniature) looked kind of like a bad-ass, so naturally I gave him a bright pink coat. And little toucked like blood on his mace and on the knuckles of his hand where he had been - I imagined - punching someone. Kind of like a soccar hooligan, only a lot smaller and better dressed.
And speaking of better dressed... I saw "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" yesterday for the first time. Katy and Eric had some episodes on tape. It warped my fragile little mind. The opening sequence reminded my of that scene in "Reservoir Dogs" where they are all walking down the street in suits and sunglasses, looking all badass - only these were gay hairdressers and the like. And it just got worse (or better?) from there. Argh! Heh heh heh.
And tonight is the annual "Oscar Party" at David Carter's. Hmm... should be interesting.
February 26
I got the small envelope. Yeah, you all remember the days of college (and grad school) applications and what the small envelope means.
I didn't get accepted to SI's PhD program.
It didn't take them very long to reject me either. The deadline was only... what, not even a month and a half ago? Yeah, they wasted no time at all in nixing me. Not even a month and a half since the deadline... they must really want me to know how much they think that I SUCK.
Deeply disapointed here. Should I drown my sorrows in an appropriate beverage? I think that I should.
So what do I do now?
Do I try again and apply again, to more places then just the one this time, for next year?
Do I give up on the idea of a doctorate for the time being and look at finding a place to settle down?
And where would that place be? To settle down, I will want a house. And to get a house I will need a job that I enjoy and that I plan on
being in for a long time and that is stable. Don't want to invest in a house if I am worrying month to month about
continued employment.
I would love to settle in Ann Arbor, but Michigan is bleak, bleak, bleak as far as the economy goes. And no sign of inprovement on the horizon. And Ann Arbor is not a cheap town. Do I stay or do I look to move on?
Still really depressed about the rejection from SI.
February 24
Happy Shrove Tuesday. Tonight will be shrimp gumbo and paczki and "Angel" and "Jim Hensen's The Storyteller" at Katy and Eric's. Nice.
It is kind of funny how few people (by which I mean Catholics) actually observe Lent these days and how may people (by which I mean just about everyone, especially people in New Orleans) celebrate Mardi Gras.
February 23
Typical Monday. I had a lot to do and ended up not actually getting to any of my top priority tasks. Typical Monday. I basically have a lot of writing to do - reports for two of the projects I am working on and a proposal for a new project. I can understand what Tom says - that he doesn't feel like he can get anything done at the office sometimes and when he really needs to do something he will work at home. And the office is terribly distracting sometimes...
I guess that I am just glad that I work someplace where I can say that I am taking an "at home day" to work on some projects. It is just easier to settle down at home for some reason, even though there are more distractions around (the TV, snacks in the fridge, my cat, my books, computer games....) it is easier to focus. Ath the office I sometimes just end up noodling around even though I know I have plenty of other stuff I need to do.
So tomorrow is an "at home day" while I work on two reports. Here is hoping that I can get as much done as I think that I can.
February 22
Well, I have been chided lately (not to name names... John) for not keeping my log up to date. I have been jotting down entries but I have not been uploading them. Mea culpa. Especially as it takes but moments to upload stuff. So, I will try to appease my readers (John) by offering snippets of recap for the last several weeks.
I am sitting here in fencing practice as I write this... not fencing. Just taking the week off. The huge bruise I got on my upper left arm at Val Day last week is still there (though in the greenish-reddish-purple stage of healing) and there is this funny lump in the muscle where the original welt was. So I thought it might be a good idea to let it finish healing before I started to layer new bruises on top of it. But I came to pracice to hang out anyway. Between the unusually large numbers of both fencers and heavy fighters, the Anderson Room is pretty darn crowded.
DeForest and Elizabeth are talking about getting people together at Chuck's later, which means John and I will have actual social stuff to do this evening. And it also means that lots of Catan will be played. Mmmmm....Catan.
Addendum to fencing notes: I will never loan out my weapons again. My dagger blade snapped near the hilt and my sword needs to be re-tipped. I blame Andrew (not DeForest, even though DeForest is usually blamed by default for everything) because Andrew is hard on blades - he hits hard and he likes to use my sword and he was fighting John (who was using my dagger) when the dagger snapped. So. Now I need a new dagger blade. And my weapons are out of general circulation.
February 21
I bought three boxes of Girl Scout cookies today. I didn't really mean to, but I had to. There were a whole bunch of little Girl Scouts pimping out them out in the Kroger lobby. And I was a Girl Scout once, so I felt obliged to shell out. Besides, those things and delicious and damn addictive to boot.
February 17
Some thoughts on User Testing:
I have been doing a lot of user trsting lately, and will be doing a lot more in the near future for a big project. I like user testing - it can be fun to interact with representatives of the end user population, and you can learn a heck of a lot from them that you might not have caught on your own. Unfortunatly, there are good users and bad users.
The good ones are friendly and cheerful (even if they are not terribly competant at computer usage) and want to laugh and joke with you and leave you feeling energized. The bad ones (and I am not even talking about the ones who can barely manage to double-click a mouse) are the ones who get angry when they have difficulty negotiating the tasks in the user test, and act like it is your fault that they aren't "doing well". I have had a few users who got angry enough that I could not help them with the tasks (otherwise what would be the point of a user test?) that I thought that they might hit me with the mouse or something. These are the users that leave you feeling as though all of the energy has been sucked out of you through a very short straw.
February 15
Work has been very crazed and hectic lately, so I was quite happy to just leave it all and go out of town for the weekend. Went to the Val Day (St. Valentine's Day Massacre) Tournament in Kalamazoo where I added to my collection of fencing-related bruises and welts. It was a pairs tournament, so John and I paired up for the entire time. Even though I think that the intention of the organizers was for people to swap partners frequently, I noticed that most people found their favorite buddy and stuck with them. After the regular tournament, there was a special "Brass Rings versus everyone else" tournament - bear pit style. All of the Brass Rings got in one line, and everyone else got in another line, three falls in the pit and then both out. The "everyone else" line moved really slowly because there were three times as many "everyone else" as there were Brass Rings, so I only made it thought the line three times before the tournament was ended to get ready for court. But it was great fun. John and I didn't syat for court... we went back to his parents' house to shower, eat, and hang out.
Sometime between Feb. 4 and Feb. 12
It is about 5 below and there is a foot of snow on the ground. And I still saw someone on a bike this morning as I was going downtown to work.
It is amazing how much junk I have to shovel out of my email inbox every morning. Judging by the headers, it seems like a lot of people think that I should to use viagra to "enlarge my male member" (ignoring the fact that I am a girl) so that I can "Satisfy her more and make her scream all night". And when I am not having epic sex, I want to watch "hot girl on girl action" that someone may (or may not) be broadcasting from her first webcam. And someone set me up on a blind date. And a lot of people think that I need to refinance. Oh, and even more people thing that I ought to download/open files of dubious merit (hello MyDoom virus!) Please. I especially love how the spammers keep coming up with new and interesting ways to spell out the naughty words so that my anti-spam software can never quite keep up. Here is the subject line from one of the spams..."amygdaloid holstein" If I was Bill Gates I would develop a program that traces spam back to the originators computer and completely trashes it, or some other appropriate vengance. Who knows... maybe he is already working on such a program....
I have no idea how Derren kept up with everything here. Between the banking sites that I maintain and the two big projects that I am running, not to mention all of the email, phone calls, and spam (see above) that I deal with on a daily basis, it is a wonder that I have time to breathe.
February 4
I have largely given up on the spiffy rounded corners for the PSC Intranet. They were just not displaying consistently accross different platforms and browsers. Maybe I will revisit them later, when I have a little bit more leisure time to poke at them. Not like the rest of the code is behaving prefectly, though. The top banner and dynamic nav bars are just fine, as is the fluid two column layout of the page body. Mostly.
IE 6 is still having display issues. But IE is the most iffy browser when it comes to CSS support, so this isn't too surprising. Just irritating. Which is one of the reasons I develop in Mozilla these days. More compliant support, so the CSS I write is cleaner to start out with.
One of these days (in my non-existant spare time) I will finish the CSS for the redesign of my own site....