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Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
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I have had a really rough day today. Every time I get on a task, I was being pulled away to do something else. I got a request this morning to set up a demo application for a customer to use at a health fair, so I sent them an email basically saying that I can do it and making sure that it would meet their needs. This was the response I got:
Subject: Re: xxxxxxx Demo Application
From: Sales VP <xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxtechnologies.com>
To: Matt Himrod <xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxtechnologies.com>
Date: 9/30/2009 4:58 PM
Is it ok to say to you “YOU DA MAN!” :) Thank you so much Matt. If for some reason nobody in Pittsburgh told you how helpful and important you are to xxxxxxx today, let me end your work day and begin your evening with my sincere Thanks.
John
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
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So, in light of my foot issues, which I don't think I've posted much of... so maybe I'll cover that first...
Ok. Starting over.
A few weeks ago, I started noticing foot pain in my left heel. It would get worse when I'd take my weight completely off of my foot. The heel would just throb. I haven't had it checked out formally yet, but I have an appointment with a new doctor next week where I hope to drill him about everything under the sun that might be wrong with my body.
Anyway, our vacation in Montreal where we did massive amounts of walking really pushed me over the edge to where I basically couldn't walk without being very aware of my foot for several days. I've been trying to take it easy, but I haven't seen much relief. Much Googling revealed that this is likely some form of plantar fasciitis, and that I should stretch it, ice it, and rest it. Last week I did just that. Oh, and I shouldn't walk around barefoot, either.
Mark owns a pair of Crocs sandals (the thong flip-flop type with the strap between the toes). I'd been wearing them around the house, but I decided that I should get my own. I also wanted something I could wear with socks. After a trip to Ross Park Mall, I'm both delighted and frightened by the Crocs. The selection of styles and types was absolutely frightening. I mean, they have high-heeled Crocs for cripes sake. I settled on the ones pictured, which were a little fancier than I'd originally set out for, but they kinda look good.
Anyway, I wore them to work yesterday. I hate to admit, I'm kinda sold on them. They sure are ugly, but they're damned comfortable, and they're one of the few things that I can wear without pain. Plus, they're bigger than my foot, and unconstraining footwear is always a plus. I just wish they weren't so "douchey".
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Monday, September 7th, 2009
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Mark and I went to the Monroeville Mall today. I basically went to get out of the house, but I ended up deciding to browse around. Macy's was having a sale, and I got some good deals. The stuff pictured is from there. The vest, originally marked $59.50 was only $11.99. Score! I also thought about getting some jeans. I've always wanted a pair of Levi's 501's. I have this strange sense of intrigue for button-fly jeans, but I've never owned a pair. I tried them on once and didn't like how they looked, but I think I had an idea of what my ass looked like that didn't match reality.
So this going to be how I'll cope with my midlife crisis: I'll buy a pair of Levi's 501 jeans. And maybe a sports car at some point but this time around, it'll be 501 jeans. I didn't buy them this time, but maybe on my next mall adventure, I'll give it more consideration.
The trip to the mall ended up going better than I had hoped on another front: my foot. I recently did some Googling, and as much as I hate self-diagnosis, I have self-diagnosed plantar fasciitis in my left foot. Basically, it's inflammation of the tissue under the heel of the foot. I think I've had it since the Old Navy days. Like most inflammatory diseases, it seems to come and go depending on how much walking I do. I've been doing stretches for a few days, which has seemed to help a lot. I'm going to continue to do them for about two weeks, and then I'm going to try to step up my workouts since a contributing factor to it is high body-mass index. As much as I hate the body-mass index as a means of classifying someone's weight, mine is higher than it should be, and losing a few pounds would be in line with my goals anyway.
Speaking of, I announced a month or so ago that I want to lose 30 lbs before I turn 30. So far, I've gained 1, and probably more since then because I've been resting my foot. This week, I hope to do some non-foot-intensive exercises and weights. People at the office are doing a percentage-based weight-loss competition. I'm not sure how I feel about it being percentage-based, but the women don't want to disclose their weights. Anyway, we'll see how it goes.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, August 17th, 2009
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Dear Lazyweb:
This has happened to me at least twice now... My Skype settings are such that one has to be on my contacts list to contact me. I've had random "people" send me messages in spite of this. When I click "block", I discover that they were at some point spontaneously added to my list. I'm sure this is some sort of exploit. Oh wait... I just noticed that there's an updated version. I guess I'll try that first. Anyway, do any of you security types know about this exploit, and if so can you point me to a place where I can read a little more about it?
Kthxbye.
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I've realized that I must add the following to my "pet peeves" listed in my meme post:
Errors in colloquialisms, such as "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes", "something or rather" instead of "something or other", and "besides the point" instead of "beside the point" (especially when the 's' is very deliberately enunciated as if to emphasize that it's correct when it is, in fact, not).
This is really an extension to what I listed, but it bugs me just the same if not more.
edit far after the fact: I think "besides the point" might actually be correct, so I'm going to stop getting irritated when I hear that one.
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Saturday, July 25th, 2009
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| Subject: | Copied from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) casecob... |
| Time: | 3:13 pm. |
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A - Age: 29
B - Bed size: Queen
C - Chore you hate: Mopping
D - Dad's name: Harry
E - Essential start your day item: <censored>
F - Favorite food: Thai
G - Gold or Silver: silver
H - Height: 6'0"
I - Instruments you play(ed): violin, flute, viola
J - Job title: Application Integration Engineer (though I believe database integration engineer would be more indicative of what I actually do)
K - Kid(s): none
L - Living arrangements: leased house with boyfriend
M - Mom's name: Karen
N - Nicknames: "zeke" (always with a small z, though the name has been mostly retired)
O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: Two or three asthma related trips between ages 8 and 10, and one for pneumonia around the same age
P - Pet Peeves: egregious grammatical, spelling, and nomenclature errors and others not asking me what to do when they're not sure (specifically at work)
Q - Quote from a brilliant person: "You are a tranny who looks like a hot mess and not in a good way. You're a tickity tack tranny hot mess outta control super tranny from transylvania who's not apologizing for it." -Amy Poehler
R - Right or left handed: right
S - Siblings: older brother, sister-in-law
T - Time you wake up: between 7:30 and 8:00 on a normal weekday
U- Underwear: midway briefs, and occasionally a jock strap
V - Vegetable you dislike: bell peppers
W - Ways you run late: quick foolproof tasks that become not so quick and foolproof
X - X-rays you've had: most recently chest and wrist. in the past, wrist, ankle, chest, back
Y - Yummy food you make: beef stroganoff, though not recently since it's a bit heavy
Z - Zoo favorite: otters!
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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8:33 AM - blackberry beeps. Voicemail at work. It's the customer I was trying to contact all week in CT regarding travel TOMORROW (that isn't booked).
8:34 AM - I return the call and work out the details. I do not need to go on the trip.
8:43 AM - I call my boss to give her the good and bad news. I proceed to do my morning blog reading, twittering, and all that.
9:20 AM - I click on my work label on my GMail and notice the voicemail from earlier (*click* mark read) and an email from one of the managers asking me to onboard patients before 10:00 this morning. I look at the clock and panic because I have about 7 onboarding items in JIRA.
9:20 AM - I log into the VPNs, open my SSH tunnels, fire up my query browser and begin updating records.
9:40 AM - I realize that contact lenses and showering are not going to happen because I'm still onboarding patients. At this point I realize I have a 10:00 pre-sale IT conference call, and I hate being late for pre-sale IT calls.
9:55 AM - I accidentally close the tab of a recalculating process. The process will keep running, but I won't know when it is finished. I give it 10 minutes while I run the other two (which I shouldn't do, but I'm running low on time!).
10:01 AM - I get an IM from my boss's boss asking if I'm coming in. This happened a few weeks ago where I got requests to do stuff before I'm normally in the office and I ended up deciding to work from home by default. I told him that I got an email requesting that I do some stuff and that I'd be in when I was finished around 10:30. As I'm typing this I realize that if I am going to put my contacts in, shower, and eat a proper breakfast, it'll be more like 11:15. Damn. No shower or contacts for me.
10:03 AM - I give my teeth a quick brush and throw on some clothes.
10:05 AM - I make the pre-sale IT call. The guy "just stepped out of the office". I leave a voicemail.
10:06 AM - I finish the last of the recalculations and send an IM off to the manager that requested them.
10:18 AM - I inhale a bowl of cereal.
10:35 AM - I arrive at work and log into my computer, terminal, and VMs.
10:46 AM - I call the pre-sale IT guy back and have my conference call.
11:00 AM - I hang up the phone and type a quick email to the pre-sale guy's boss and our sales guy giving the thumbs up.
11:05 AM - I send the pre-sale IT guy materials from the call.
11:10 AM - I find the boss's boss who was looking for me and answer a couple questions about an existing customer.
11:15 AM - I begin this blog post.
It kinda feels like I didn't do much, but I feel like I've been running around all morning. Well, not literally because most of this happened while seated, but I've been in a sort-of panic since 9:20.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Ok lazyweb... help me out here. What is this bug? It's not an ant.
I've been killing bugs on an average of one per day since we moved in. Most have been stink bugs, but I've also killed a a few flies, a hornet, a small ant, a HUGE ant, and this guy... whatever he is. Oh and a few unwelcome spiders. (I've left a few welcome spiders in their place.)
I hate bugs.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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So...
We got this new washer and dryer. They're great, but there's a few things that are just a little weird. Everything is working properly and all, but like... the dryer takes less time than the washer. Part of that is because the washer has a very effective spin cycle, and the other part is the efficiency of the dryer. I just find it bizzare. I'm accustomed to the washer taking about 30 minutes and the dryer taking about 45. However, this washer takes an hour on average and the dryer can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 50. It's supposed to take longer, but it always ticks down the timer more quickly than its initial estimate, likely because the washer has spun out so much water.
Previously, I used to say that if money, space, and utility hookups weren't limiting factors, I'd get a washer and two dryers. Now I want two washers because this dryer is definitely staying ahead of the washer by leaps and bounds. I can't really complain because even with nice-smelling detergent, my clothes are coming out smelling like barely anything. Yeah. The rinse is just that good, and somehow this thing only uses about 1/3 of the water of a regular machine. *boggle*
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Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.
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I finally got a picture of my absolute favorite Pittsburgh road sign. There's another one out in Robinson Township that I want to try to get that directs people to downtown, the airport, and Moon Township that is also photographed a lot.
This one, though, is at the intersection of S Braddock Ave, Edgewood Ave, and Waverly St. S Braddock and Edgewood meet at a Y where Edgewood is one of the branches of the Y and S Braddock is the rest. Waverly St is the right turn, S Braddock is the slight left, Edgewood is the U-turn left, and there really isn't a street where the regular left is, just a parking lot for an Arby's and a CoGo's.
I find it a little disappointing that one cannot make the same U-turn going the other way from Edgewood to S Braddock. However, I find it easier to go the other way on Edgewood and take Race St to Swissvale Ave, but that's not really relevant to this post.
Incidentally, Google Maps has the end of Edgewood Ave mislabeled as "Braddock Ave" (without the S/South).
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Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
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So if you're not friends with Mark and you don't follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you probably don't know that I've moved again. On my last computer, if I'd start to type "livejouranl" in the address bar on Firefox, the post page would be in the list of URLs that drops down. Now, not so much. I need to post more. Anyway, Mark and I are renting a house in Edgewood, PA, which is just outside of Pittsburgh city limits. We're still "in Pittsburgh" though because Pittsburgh is right there *points*.
We took the entire last week to move. Mark did most of the work by taking boxes back and forth during the day while I was at work, though we shared most of the actual heavy lifting. This past Saturday we rented a truck to get the big stuff. There wasn't much at that point. I think the only things that were in the truck were the couch, the mattress, the kitchen table and chairs, my chest of drawers, and our desk chairs. Oh, and the file cabinet.
We couldn't get the foundation for the mattress up the stairs, so we ended up going to Ikea and buying a Malm since it can be used with slats to avoid the need for a foundation. I like having an actual headboard on the bed, but I'm nervous because we haven't yet "tested" how sturdy the frame is.
Anyway, we're still getting organized. There are piles of boxes here and there that either need to be unpacked or broken down. Progress is going quickly but it seems slow. There are things we should have done before we moved anything, like clean each room from top to bottom, but we're managing to make it work. I can't wait until it's all done.
Oh, and it only takes me 7 minutes to drive to work (garage to parking lot). Yay!
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, April 16th, 2009
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So on the way to work this morning, I saw a guy on a bike whiz by me while I was stopped at a red light. I was like, dude... obnoxious and unsafe! Then the guy on the bike stopped a few cars ahead and screamed at this contractor driving a cargo van. Apparently the guy in the van cut off the guy on the bike.
Now, people in cars/vans/trucks need to watch for bikes, but people on bikes need to watch out for themselves too. The guy was driving a cargo van with no windows. He only has two tiny mirrors on each side to figure out what's behind him and he has a HUGE blind spot. The guy on the bike is thin. The widest thing on him was his helmet, so he wasn't exactly standing out very much either.
So the moral of the story is that the guy on the bike needs to relax just a bit and not take it personally that the guy in the big cargo van cut him off. Maybe he wasn't watching as well as he should have been, but on the other hand, maybe... just MAYBE it might have been IMPOSSIBLE for him to see the guy on the bike.
Kthxbye.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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I emailed the sales guy asking him about Monday. I have no idea what to expect:
John:
How dressed up should I be on Monday? Would you like me to wear a jacket and tie or will khakis and a dress shirt suffice? Let me know.
Thanks,
- Matt His reply amused me so much, I have to put it here:I will be in full blown sales gear - suit and tie. However you are Technical and as such headsets, laptops, energy drinks and other important techy stuff are fine. Kakis and shirt.
Hope your holiday has been wonderful. I will have at least two follow ups I will need help with, we can discuss next week. john
This makes me really want to geek myself out with a bluetooth headset, iPod, Code Red Mountain Dew and a heavily "accessorized" laptop. However, I can't do the "crunchy" spiky hair that I also envision since I have no hair. Anyway, I'm both looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time, since I'll have no time for fun on this trip.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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I'm not sure how vocal I've been about this via twitter or Facebook, but I've recently had a series of shoe malfunctions leading to what's pictured here.
It started out with the massive red blister near my left big toe. I wore my old gym shoes (which I thought still had some life in them) when I went for a walk two weeks ago. I got a massive blister, which was fine for a day, and then after a workout at the gym, it turned dark and got funky. It's healing up, but it's kinda gross.
So, the next week, I decided to wear a newer pair of shoes, which I thought were actually marketed as walking shoes. Well, the back of these shoes used to rub at the top and blister (or worse), which is exactly what happened to my left foot. I thought the little sticky pads that I bought had solved this, but apparently not.
Well, what was actually worse was this was that the same pair of shoes totally blistered up and ripped off a section of my right foot below the ankle on the inside. You can see the "duct tape bandage" wrapped around the back.
So, my left foot is basically okay now, except that the first blister is kinda sore. The wound on my right foot is super sensitive, though it's heeling somewhat quickly considering that the added thickness of a bandaid causes every pair of shoes rubs on that spot.
Anyway... so the reason that I bring this up is that last night, someone tagged this picture of my bandaged up feet as a "favorite' on Flickr. I thought that was kinda strange until I looked at the person's profile and found that they have a bunch of pics of blistered and bandaged men's feet. Plus, the person was a member of some groups that were clearly fetish groups. Now, I should be the last person to judge a person's fetishes, but that's pretty damned weird. Foot fetishes are weird enough, but blistered and bandaged feet?! Oh well, I guess I'm flattered that my feet "made the cut".
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Why are non-twitter fans so vocal and strongly opinionated about it?
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Comments: Read 11 or Add Your Own.
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I'll be in Houston on April 15. I think the sales guy intends on going out for dinner on the CEO's dime, but I should have a little free time.
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Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
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It's amazing how much the Internet is blurring the lines of geography. It's also amazing that I didn't realize how much I liked Rover's Morning Glory until I realized I can listen to it on my way to work by streaming it to my blackberry! It's really cool. I can listen to stations from a few dozen cities. (including 100.7 WMMS from Cleveland!) So yesterday morning I caught Rover on the tail end of my commute. This morning I turned it on when I got in the car. My commute isn't very long, but it was kinda cool to listen to the station I used to listen to when I would drive to the University.
Anyway... time to get some work done...
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Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
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In the past, I've had this weird thing happen where I see the wrong icon on Mark's posts. It has happened on both of my computers, and it's the same icon. The solution is to clear my cache and refresh my friends' page. No big deal. It's usually a few days before I notice it and correct it. (Also, Mark doesn't post much these days compared to some of my other friends.) Actually, the way I noticed it was by asking him why he changed his icon and who the dude in the picture was.
Fast forward to this morning. The same thing has happened except with MY icon. I've cleared my cache and refreshed and I'm still getting the same icon. This one is kinda like the "LOOK LOOK! ANIMATED GIF!" icon that I used to use, except worse. It kinda gave me a headache -- so I kinda understand why everyone thought it was so annoying back when I used it occasionally (though... that was the point).
Anyway... I'm thinking there must be a corrupt icon database somewhere that occasionally gets thrown into the rotation or something. It's kinda annoying, especially now that at the top of every page, I see this flashing icon whether I want to or not. *sigh* Karma 5 years later.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
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I just posted a comment and then all of the sudden, I can't read my friends page anymore. WTF??
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