Stuff
- I'm liking my job at the medical clinic. It's standard AP fare, but still interesting to do. I only briefly worked with medical coding at Pac Med when I temped there before going to Perkins in May. This is more the full AP set, unlike at Amazon. We set up the vendors, update the info, enter invoices, matching packing slips with invoices, reconcile invoices, and create payment batches and cut checks (I don't do the last two, but I could possibly learn it later). The people are all really friendly and genuinely nice to me. You can always tell when people are faking niceness and I've yet to get that feeling here. In fact, people are constantly joking and teasing each other. Nicely of course, but it's still nice to see a relaxed and family-like environment. A marked improvement over Perkins or Amazon by a mile.
- A downside to said job is that my boss is leaving in November. She's the quarky sort of boss. Not nutty, but an odd sense of humor. Since they have said they were interested in hiring me, I don't know if that will effect or delay that from happening. Who knows what kind of boss they'll bring in to replace her. Hopefully none of the asshats that I had for bosses at Amazon. Those types I could definitely do without.
- Still haven't heard back from the Finnish consulate in Seattle. I'll be trying to email the LA one to see if I get some sort of response. It's been a couple weeks, so it's not like I only waited a few days. In the end, I might have to call them which will be annoying and expensive in the case of LA.
- Slowly reducing the amount of stuff I have in the apartment down for the move. Weeding out DVDs, CDs, VHS, and books. Every weekend I've been taking a load to Half Price Books via the bus. Only a bag at a time because I still have to walk down a hill to the store from the bus. Once I get the initial loads done, I'll go through my LPs to weed out and then back through the DVD/CD/VHS/book collection again for a second pass. Thankfully I still have a lot of time, so it's not like I have to rush this. For some reason, it's very freeing to declutter my place piece by piece.
-My new desktop computer died last week. At first it was in constant sleep mode, but then it refused to turn on at all. I suspected it was the power supply and tried to find another online without any success. So last Sunday I took it back to Best Buy where I bought it less than two months ago. The geek squad guy tested out the power and said that since it was still under warranty, it was better to send it off to the HP service center in California because they might find other things wrong with it. And it turns out he was right. Thursday of this week I got a phone message saying that the power supply and motherboard were borked. Thankfully the guy said it would only take a couple days to order the parts and install them. It looks like I could possibly pick it up next weekend. Woot.
On Tuesday I saw Terry Pratchett chat about writing and his new book Snuff at the Town Hall in Seattle. Apparently the venue used to be a former church years ago and you can see it once you're upstairs. The pews and stained glass are still there, minus the normal religious imagery (paintings, sculptures, etc). It was fascinating listening to him talk about the writing process. And amazingly enough it's not much different of a process that I do. Granted I don't write novels, but it's the same process regardless. We both write out a rough draft and keep revising it until it's perfect. Though it was kind of cool to find out that Terry does the same thing I do while editing and that is using a voice reader to hear the text being read out loud. You find a lot of left out words that way and plus any flow problems with the dialogue. It's good to see that I'm not the only writer doing that :)
- A downside to said job is that my boss is leaving in November. She's the quarky sort of boss. Not nutty, but an odd sense of humor. Since they have said they were interested in hiring me, I don't know if that will effect or delay that from happening. Who knows what kind of boss they'll bring in to replace her. Hopefully none of the asshats that I had for bosses at Amazon. Those types I could definitely do without.
- Still haven't heard back from the Finnish consulate in Seattle. I'll be trying to email the LA one to see if I get some sort of response. It's been a couple weeks, so it's not like I only waited a few days. In the end, I might have to call them which will be annoying and expensive in the case of LA.
- Slowly reducing the amount of stuff I have in the apartment down for the move. Weeding out DVDs, CDs, VHS, and books. Every weekend I've been taking a load to Half Price Books via the bus. Only a bag at a time because I still have to walk down a hill to the store from the bus. Once I get the initial loads done, I'll go through my LPs to weed out and then back through the DVD/CD/VHS/book collection again for a second pass. Thankfully I still have a lot of time, so it's not like I have to rush this. For some reason, it's very freeing to declutter my place piece by piece.
-My new desktop computer died last week. At first it was in constant sleep mode, but then it refused to turn on at all. I suspected it was the power supply and tried to find another online without any success. So last Sunday I took it back to Best Buy where I bought it less than two months ago. The geek squad guy tested out the power and said that since it was still under warranty, it was better to send it off to the HP service center in California because they might find other things wrong with it. And it turns out he was right. Thursday of this week I got a phone message saying that the power supply and motherboard were borked. Thankfully the guy said it would only take a couple days to order the parts and install them. It looks like I could possibly pick it up next weekend. Woot.
On Tuesday I saw Terry Pratchett chat about writing and his new book Snuff at the Town Hall in Seattle. Apparently the venue used to be a former church years ago and you can see it once you're upstairs. The pews and stained glass are still there, minus the normal religious imagery (paintings, sculptures, etc). It was fascinating listening to him talk about the writing process. And amazingly enough it's not much different of a process that I do. Granted I don't write novels, but it's the same process regardless. We both write out a rough draft and keep revising it until it's perfect. Though it was kind of cool to find out that Terry does the same thing I do while editing and that is using a voice reader to hear the text being read out loud. You find a lot of left out words that way and plus any flow problems with the dialogue. It's good to see that I'm not the only writer doing that :)