Lunchtime in the Laboratory
Nuked and ate lunch. Between Lean Cuisine and Weightwatchers Smart Ones, there's a grand total of about 6 nuke-an-entrees that aren't swimming in carbs. Usually there's 5 available when I do my weekend grocery shopping. Been living out of the freezer for the last several days. Thawed Creole sauce and threw in shrimp, Tuesday. Thawed Panang and had it over rice last night. Leftover Creole tonight (Throw me in that briar patch, heheheh...). Anyway, on with the bullets:
Voted Tuesday, of course. For the first time in a long time, I batted 1.000, in terms of those for whom I voted, winning. Yes, I'm pro-choice. Yes, I favor any grouping of consenting adults being able to do whatever they damn well please in the realm of contractual / marital setups. No, I don't want creationism taught in schools. As it happens, though, I voted single-issue. I went down the line with the NRA / VCDL endorsements, for statewide office. In my home district, I voted for the challenger. I'd responded to one of his emails, to the effect that he had my vote simply by virtue of not being the F-triple-minus rated incumbent. I needed to hear more from him before I'd go from just voting, to actual support. He's not great, but "not great" is a lot better than "totally freaking awful". If any of Tuesday's victors take this as a mandate to start turning Evangeliban, well, that's WHY I voted single-issue on gun rights.
Tuesday, got a 6-hour orientation on What's New in Office 2007(tm). '07 is, as we expected, typical Micro$loth bloatware. On the other hand, there's ways to tweak it so all my favorite controls are on one button-bar, and the cutesy-poo gets auto-hidden. Good enough. Some of the Gee-Whiz, incidentally, is actually useful stuff. I've had it sitting on my local desktop for a year, and so far only used it to convert incoming docs to our existing standard of '03. It's now my default Office app at work. You can even get an addon that allows for saving in OpenOffice OD format.
I'm getting really tired of dealing with the Ass-Bite of the Month. When we did our last laptop rollout, we encrypted the "My Documents" folders for all the field reps. This was cool, except that the supposedly 10-year security certificates all expired at 2 years. Meaning this past week. We've got a set of workarounds, but the actual fix requires hands-on work here in the building, at around 1-2 hours per machine. Bleh.
The building continues in a state of paranoia. We now have "cover your cough" signs all over. Every sink has a "Wash your hands!!!" poster. When our contractor, K, was out a couple weeks ago, I brought in the Thermoscanner from my chirurgeon bag, sort-of-mostly as a joke. Not to mention, of course, maintaining my cred as a gear geek. It's now been used several times. Most notable was my office-neighbor. Checked last Thursday, she was feverish, didn't see her again till yesterday. I'm thinking of bringing my pink-pig-snout decorated N95 in and hanging it on my monitor for comic relief.
Didn't actually wind up making Samhain ritual. Our circle didn't hold it till Sunday, which is a really bad night for A. and me. As it turned out, I didn't get moving on household stuff until late, and we wound up calling in our regrets. Meanwhile, didn't make any parties per se on Saturday night. However, I did get a chance to throw together a costume (see earlier posts). Wore it to a bonfire at Claude Moore Farm on Friday, then again to hand out candy on Saturday. Gots to love it, when your costume doesn't bug the kiddies but weirds out the parents. Last time I got this response was when I wore a ritual robe, with red rope belt and athame. That time, a parent said, "Nice outfit.". I smiled, and said "It's not an outfit...". He grabbed his kid and boogied. In any case, here's my attempt for this year. Doesn't look anything like the TV Dexter, because it's not intended to. This is more of an artistic interpretation of the Dexter novels:
Of course, the black accessories don't show up too well on the black cargo pants, so:
Not sure what it says about me, that all I needed to buy for the outfit was the black rubber gloves, police-type badge holder, and Dexter Morgan / Miami PD Forensics ID.
Voted Tuesday, of course. For the first time in a long time, I batted 1.000, in terms of those for whom I voted, winning. Yes, I'm pro-choice. Yes, I favor any grouping of consenting adults being able to do whatever they damn well please in the realm of contractual / marital setups. No, I don't want creationism taught in schools. As it happens, though, I voted single-issue. I went down the line with the NRA / VCDL endorsements, for statewide office. In my home district, I voted for the challenger. I'd responded to one of his emails, to the effect that he had my vote simply by virtue of not being the F-triple-minus rated incumbent. I needed to hear more from him before I'd go from just voting, to actual support. He's not great, but "not great" is a lot better than "totally freaking awful". If any of Tuesday's victors take this as a mandate to start turning Evangeliban, well, that's WHY I voted single-issue on gun rights.
Tuesday, got a 6-hour orientation on What's New in Office 2007(tm). '07 is, as we expected, typical Micro$loth bloatware. On the other hand, there's ways to tweak it so all my favorite controls are on one button-bar, and the cutesy-poo gets auto-hidden. Good enough. Some of the Gee-Whiz, incidentally, is actually useful stuff. I've had it sitting on my local desktop for a year, and so far only used it to convert incoming docs to our existing standard of '03. It's now my default Office app at work. You can even get an addon that allows for saving in OpenOffice OD format.
I'm getting really tired of dealing with the Ass-Bite of the Month. When we did our last laptop rollout, we encrypted the "My Documents" folders for all the field reps. This was cool, except that the supposedly 10-year security certificates all expired at 2 years. Meaning this past week. We've got a set of workarounds, but the actual fix requires hands-on work here in the building, at around 1-2 hours per machine. Bleh.
The building continues in a state of paranoia. We now have "cover your cough" signs all over. Every sink has a "Wash your hands!!!" poster. When our contractor, K, was out a couple weeks ago, I brought in the Thermoscanner from my chirurgeon bag, sort-of-mostly as a joke. Not to mention, of course, maintaining my cred as a gear geek. It's now been used several times. Most notable was my office-neighbor. Checked last Thursday, she was feverish, didn't see her again till yesterday. I'm thinking of bringing my pink-pig-snout decorated N95 in and hanging it on my monitor for comic relief.
Didn't actually wind up making Samhain ritual. Our circle didn't hold it till Sunday, which is a really bad night for A. and me. As it turned out, I didn't get moving on household stuff until late, and we wound up calling in our regrets. Meanwhile, didn't make any parties per se on Saturday night. However, I did get a chance to throw together a costume (see earlier posts). Wore it to a bonfire at Claude Moore Farm on Friday, then again to hand out candy on Saturday. Gots to love it, when your costume doesn't bug the kiddies but weirds out the parents. Last time I got this response was when I wore a ritual robe, with red rope belt and athame. That time, a parent said, "Nice outfit.". I smiled, and said "It's not an outfit...". He grabbed his kid and boogied. In any case, here's my attempt for this year. Doesn't look anything like the TV Dexter, because it's not intended to. This is more of an artistic interpretation of the Dexter novels:
Of course, the black accessories don't show up too well on the black cargo pants, so:
Not sure what it says about me, that all I needed to buy for the outfit was the black rubber gloves, police-type badge holder, and Dexter Morgan / Miami PD Forensics ID.