My crappy week
Well, perhaps not totally crappy, but Thursday just brought the rest of it into the terlet.
At work I learned I had to build some more complexities into one of my databases.
My bagpipe lesson was so-so.
Driving from my lesson to Sam's club was interrupted by stupidity. I was on Atlanta Hwy in montgomery, which is a major thoroughfare. Two lanes each way, with a median in this particular stretch. And there's usually a steady flow of traffic on it. I'm bopping along in the lefthand lane and evidently let my concentration slip a bit. A minivan a bit ahead of me is in the crossover area of the median with it's rear end sticking out into the lane. I slow down. The minivan starts moving forward, and silly me, I thought it was going to get out of the way, so I don't stop. The minivan does. I panic as I see my car heading for the right rear corner of the minivan. I think I try to swerve to the right a bit, but traffic really prevents that. CRACK!! My first instinct is to hit the gas and drive off. I squelch that impulse and pull into the next left turn lane and stop about 5 yards past the minivan, turning on my emergency flashers. I then notice the damage: my left side outer mirror is gone. The plastic casing is shattered and the mirror itself fell off, but the rest of the assembly is still in place. I walk back to the minivan. The lady driving is inspecting the back end and sees two small scrapes on the paint. She's very nice and doesn't raise a fuss. We discuss exchanging insurance info, and she says we'd have to have the police come and make a report for that. I borrow her cell phone first to call phil to see what he wants. (Ironically, the cellphone I got to have with me for emergencies was at home charging.) Phil doesn't answer. The lady and I discuss a bit more and I decide that since she is ok with the paint damage to her car, and the only damage to mine was the mirror, I didn't want to go through the hassle of dealing with the police (and getting a bad mark on phil's & my insurance). I got in my car and continued on to Sam's, discovering how much I actually used the left side mirror. I got home after my shopping and told Phil to come inspect the damage (and help bring in the groceries). He was miffed, but was glad the damage was minor, and glad that I'm alright. He ordered a replacement mirror assembly off of ebay today.
I'm very insecure with my driving now. I keep feeling like the cars in the next lane are too close and I'm going to sideswipe them. My speed is erratic, not wanting to get too close to the car ahead of me and then letting too much space accrue by involuntarily slowing down.
Friday at work was the pits. A change I put out to a database crashed. I went to the user's desk to see the error message, puzzled at what could have caused it, then realized what it was. I added a condition to the SQL string and got it working no problem. Later on in the day, however, I realized that there was another place I had to place that same condition so that records wouldn't be deleted. (Somehow, the records that were entered before I fixed the query didn't get deleted, but I needed to put this in just to make sure.) Of course, when I wanted to make the change, someone was in the database, preventing me from making changes. At 4:45 that person was still in the database. At 4:59 that person finally logged out. Who stays logged on until 5:00 on a Friday afternoon, I ask you! I quickly opened the database in exclusive mode, made the change, then shut down my computer and came home.
The evening was a bit better. We went to the German buffet in Millbrook. There was a wedding party in the large dining room, and they had evidently requested some food because the German stuff was pushed aside by some amercan classics: squash casserole, broccoli casserole and mac'n'cheese. But there still was enough German food. We were serenaded by the shrill squeals of a toddler. I made snide comments, sotto voce, that noisy children should be forced to eat outside with the rest of the wild animals. Then I realized that the rugrat was one of the huge brood of kids belonging to a couple that are regulars (and bring their homemade baseball team with them). Renate, the owner/cook sat next to us and chatted for about 20 minutes. 2 weeks ago she commissioned phil to make some vanilla scented candles for her. He hasn't made them yet because he hasn't found a good vanilla scent. Most of the ones we've found in the craft stores are too synthetic smelling. She said we could probably use vanilla extract. Then she went into the kitchen and came back with a little vial of highly concentrated vanilla extract that she has her brother send her from Germany. She says that when the recipe calls for a teaspoon of extract, you just put a drop of this stuff in. She gave it to Phil to use for his candles. We also noticed for the first time that Renate was wearing a pentacle. It wasn't hidden under her shirt. That's pretty amazing since her real regular customers are the after-church crowd on Sunday when she evidently puts on quite a brunch spread. We've never been there for Sunday, so we don't know first-hand. I'm sure a lot of them would get quite flustered if they saw her wearing a pentacle. We know that Sherrie, the other owner, wore a pentacle last holloween as part of her witch costume, and that Sherrie is into incense and oils, but we hadn't really pegged Renate as a pentacle wearer. We're still not sure if Renate and Sherrie are a couple. And of course we're too polite to ask.
At work I learned I had to build some more complexities into one of my databases.
My bagpipe lesson was so-so.
Driving from my lesson to Sam's club was interrupted by stupidity. I was on Atlanta Hwy in montgomery, which is a major thoroughfare. Two lanes each way, with a median in this particular stretch. And there's usually a steady flow of traffic on it. I'm bopping along in the lefthand lane and evidently let my concentration slip a bit. A minivan a bit ahead of me is in the crossover area of the median with it's rear end sticking out into the lane. I slow down. The minivan starts moving forward, and silly me, I thought it was going to get out of the way, so I don't stop. The minivan does. I panic as I see my car heading for the right rear corner of the minivan. I think I try to swerve to the right a bit, but traffic really prevents that. CRACK!! My first instinct is to hit the gas and drive off. I squelch that impulse and pull into the next left turn lane and stop about 5 yards past the minivan, turning on my emergency flashers. I then notice the damage: my left side outer mirror is gone. The plastic casing is shattered and the mirror itself fell off, but the rest of the assembly is still in place. I walk back to the minivan. The lady driving is inspecting the back end and sees two small scrapes on the paint. She's very nice and doesn't raise a fuss. We discuss exchanging insurance info, and she says we'd have to have the police come and make a report for that. I borrow her cell phone first to call phil to see what he wants. (Ironically, the cellphone I got to have with me for emergencies was at home charging.) Phil doesn't answer. The lady and I discuss a bit more and I decide that since she is ok with the paint damage to her car, and the only damage to mine was the mirror, I didn't want to go through the hassle of dealing with the police (and getting a bad mark on phil's & my insurance). I got in my car and continued on to Sam's, discovering how much I actually used the left side mirror. I got home after my shopping and told Phil to come inspect the damage (and help bring in the groceries). He was miffed, but was glad the damage was minor, and glad that I'm alright. He ordered a replacement mirror assembly off of ebay today.
I'm very insecure with my driving now. I keep feeling like the cars in the next lane are too close and I'm going to sideswipe them. My speed is erratic, not wanting to get too close to the car ahead of me and then letting too much space accrue by involuntarily slowing down.
Friday at work was the pits. A change I put out to a database crashed. I went to the user's desk to see the error message, puzzled at what could have caused it, then realized what it was. I added a condition to the SQL string and got it working no problem. Later on in the day, however, I realized that there was another place I had to place that same condition so that records wouldn't be deleted. (Somehow, the records that were entered before I fixed the query didn't get deleted, but I needed to put this in just to make sure.) Of course, when I wanted to make the change, someone was in the database, preventing me from making changes. At 4:45 that person was still in the database. At 4:59 that person finally logged out. Who stays logged on until 5:00 on a Friday afternoon, I ask you! I quickly opened the database in exclusive mode, made the change, then shut down my computer and came home.
The evening was a bit better. We went to the German buffet in Millbrook. There was a wedding party in the large dining room, and they had evidently requested some food because the German stuff was pushed aside by some amercan classics: squash casserole, broccoli casserole and mac'n'cheese. But there still was enough German food. We were serenaded by the shrill squeals of a toddler. I made snide comments, sotto voce, that noisy children should be forced to eat outside with the rest of the wild animals. Then I realized that the rugrat was one of the huge brood of kids belonging to a couple that are regulars (and bring their homemade baseball team with them). Renate, the owner/cook sat next to us and chatted for about 20 minutes. 2 weeks ago she commissioned phil to make some vanilla scented candles for her. He hasn't made them yet because he hasn't found a good vanilla scent. Most of the ones we've found in the craft stores are too synthetic smelling. She said we could probably use vanilla extract. Then she went into the kitchen and came back with a little vial of highly concentrated vanilla extract that she has her brother send her from Germany. She says that when the recipe calls for a teaspoon of extract, you just put a drop of this stuff in. She gave it to Phil to use for his candles. We also noticed for the first time that Renate was wearing a pentacle. It wasn't hidden under her shirt. That's pretty amazing since her real regular customers are the after-church crowd on Sunday when she evidently puts on quite a brunch spread. We've never been there for Sunday, so we don't know first-hand. I'm sure a lot of them would get quite flustered if they saw her wearing a pentacle. We know that Sherrie, the other owner, wore a pentacle last holloween as part of her witch costume, and that Sherrie is into incense and oils, but we hadn't really pegged Renate as a pentacle wearer. We're still not sure if Renate and Sherrie are a couple. And of course we're too polite to ask.