ladykatza

So the “Do I have a job or not” is still up in the air. Its like the false suspense they try to create on bad reality TV. Only its real with bigger consequences. My co-workers seem to think I have nothing to worry about, and that may be. But I won’t believe anything or anyone until I sign paperwork and my paycheck get deposited. Really, can you blame me? Sleep has not been my friend these past few weeks, either.

There’s a new schedule, of which I KNOW I will work for three days. Then my contract is up. IF I get to stay, then it will be awesome. I’LL HAVE A WEEKEND DAY OFF AGAIN! I’ll be working overnights, but that doesn’t bother me so much. I HAVE A WEEKEND! (If I don’t get to stay, then obviously I’ll have all weekend, not just one day.)

But I’ve been fidgeting, and pacing. I’ve been trying to finish off projects that have been laying around and neglected. I’ve cleaned windows. I’ve been rolling willpower saves to not go out and buy “Organizational tools” to file and sort things. I have to remind myself I have plenty to do without that.

The kids know something’s up, they can tell I’m stressed. I’ve been half-heartedly looking for other jobs. Even had some bites, but all of them pay so little and are so far away that unemployment would make me more money.

*sighs*

*goes off to sort laundry*

Yesterday I was a nervous wreck. I had two interviews, back to back. Literally 15 minutes apart. Both of them were panel type interviews. Before I even went to these I had to work. I could tell I was nervous by the overwhelming urge for junk food and caffeine. I missed some important tasks. It was just… arg.

I swear other people could hear my heart beat the way I could in my ears.

Finally the first interview, the one for the promotional job. I felt like I’d done awful. I really had to think about how to answer some of the questions. Body language told me they weren’t impressed at all. I kept feeling like I was floundering. I was not happy with how it went.

The second interview was for my current position, only permanent. I.. think it went OK. I do not know for certain, though.

When all was over, said, and done with, I was shaking and working to regulate my breathing. My knees were weak going out to the car. I had to concentrate on breathing all the way home. Finally I had a glass of wine, and some good food. Then I was much better. Still, I was exhausted and went to bed pretty early.

I should know by next week.

I expect people to afford me the same frankness. Politeness is always necessary and appreciated in this world, but there’s a difference between being polite and being a doormat. Don’t be a doormat. If you don’t like something and it effects you directly, say so. If someone asks you a nosy question that is none of their business, say so.

Remember, getting older means you can be cantankerous with justification.

If you have to ask, the answer is NO. Otherwise, do what you are going to do, say or ask what you want. If I don’t like it I’ll say so. If its none of your business, I’ll tell you to fuck off.

Simple as that.

So I finally caved and went to the doctor Friday, already knowing the verdict. Its always funny. Go to the doctor and say “I have a sinus infection” and they say “Oh really”. So they do their check up and they hem and they haw and then they go “Oh, well, I guess you do. Here’s your prescription have a nice day.”

Not having medical insurance sucks. Big time. I have a rant, a long one. I will save it for some other time.

So anyway, I’m feeling much better now. I have a tendency to try and tough things out, which is silly, since I usually get sick when I’m already stressed. It probably doesn’t help that I have been so busy and feeling so poorly that I’ve done almost NO cooking. This means my dietary needs are not being met well. Its really a vicious cycle.

And to add things to the stack, daecon was let go from his job in a most shitty way. They waited until he LEFT and then called him on his cell phone. Didn’t even give him a chance to get his stuff, the bastards. *fumes* His rep from the contracting company is suppose to go pick his stuff up on Monday and they’ll see what else is available. He was told that there was no reason given, just that “the contract is up”. Or something. In some ways he’s relieved, as the job grated on him.

I asked if this meant that I should cancel my vacation. I got a resounding NO, as the plane ticket is paid for and non-refundable. The room is reserved. So, I’m going, though with less pocket change than I had hoped for.

In the meantime, once the summer craziness settles, I have good intentions of studying for Solaris and CCNA certifications, plus learn some MySQL and PHP. For fun, I have about a million sewing/craft projects to get done, which includes getting my Chun Li costume done in time for Dragon Con. Which reminds me, if anyone has a suit they are willing to share let me know please!

Yup. I got a cold. A head cold at that, most likely caused by sinuses and allergies. Somehow I made it THIS far into the pollen season and I had hoped I’d escaped. I did not.

I’ve got four more days to go until my next day off, two 12’s and two eights. I have to make it, I need the money. Pray hope that this weekend is quiet and I can take my medicine and sit in the chair in a half comatose state.

Oh yeah, and pray the transmission isn’t going bad on my car. Please.

I’m going to be really mad if I am, in fact, coming down with a cold.

So, for work, I’m studying up on database languages. Namely, mysql. The intro that I am reading had the following to say:

MySQL handles databases up to 50 million rows or more. The default file size limit for a table is 4 GB (gigabytes) but can be increased to (if you have a system that can handle it) to a theoretical limit of 8 MILLION terabytes.

HOLY COW! EIGHT MILLION TERABYTES??? Do you have any idea the SIZE of that? I mean, for the most part we are talking about a completely abstract number because humans can’t THINK that large on average. I had to do some number crunching to figure it out.

Alright, take your standard digital camera and look at the info printed on it. Right now, most people are still using 5-8 megapixel cameras. On average one picture, saved in a standard JPEG format is about 1.536 megabytes. What this means is that your 1 gig memory card can hold somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 pictures.

Ok, now lets take this theoretical database and increase it to its maximum size. Then we’re going to convert the 8 million terabytes(TB) into megabytes(MB). It looks something like this:

8,000,000 TB = 8,388,608,000,000 MB

Wow, you say, that’s a lot of numbers. What does it mean, what do I care? Well, now let’s take the average file size of those pictures you take and divide it into that really really big number.

8,388,608,000,000 MB / 1.536 MB = 5,461,333,330,000 pictures stored which would be the equivalent of 9,102,222,220 cameras with 1GB chips worth of pictures.

This means that each of the 6,602,224,175 people on this planet could store 1.4 GB worth of pictures on this one server.

Has your head exploded yet?

Me: So what was the reason for the alarm and how did you fix it?
Admin: I poked something. Do you want the long story?

Of course, I thought it was hysterical.

I spent the past week driving, and not only that, I was driving people around. Its been a very busy week, and a good bit stressful. Monday I worked, Tuesday I called in because my back decided to have a FUCK YOU day and I had completely run out of willpower to deal with it. I had to take the “knock you on your ass” pills. No driving for at least eight hours.

Tuesday night, however, I had to pack up some stuff and head down to Mom and Dad’s house so I can be there in time to get Dad to the hospital for his hip replacement surgery. Ok no problem. I get there and realize there’s NO DOORS on any of the bedrooms. Why? Well, its because of Mom’s new electric wheelchair. The doors weren’t quite wide enough otherwise. I asked Dad to go ahead and put the door on the room I’m gonna use. “Why?” he asks. Oh god, seriously? I gave him a rather exasperated look and so he muttered something and then made lots of banging noises, grunting and groaning as he puts the door on. Of course, once he was done I oooo’d and aaaa’d appreciatively. Or at least I think I did, anyway.

So I got him to the hospital, everything went very well. I was there for a total of about 4 hours maybe more. Then headed back down to stay with Mom, took a nap, and then headed back up to bring him his stuff and hang out. Thursday, I got to pick up Veronika from the airport! I was so glad to see her, as its been about three years since our last, very brief visit. Felicity wasn’t really talking yet. She was in the States from Germany for about a month. I took her to see Dad. Thursday night we went to a rather impromptu birthday party for Jennifer, and those friends of mine that have heard me talk about Veronika for years finally got to meet her in person. Amanda tried to keep her. I also got to see daecon and the kids briefly, since Mom needs someone to be with her, we are trading off days.

I should probably mention, Veronika was an exchange student my senior year and she was such a great match that she was practically adopted. Now she has a family on both sides of the ocean. :D At least, that’s how I feel.

Friday I had to work. Normally I don’t work on Fridays but I was making up for the day I switched with my co-worker. I dropped Veronika off to get her rental and we took a brief picture out in front of the baggage claim before the security guard shooed me off.

Somewhere in there I got a call about work, the nature of which added more stress to my already busy and haggard week. I think its worked out for now, though. We’ll see. Friday I worked until 10pm, went home, and got maybe TWO hours of sleep before going back to work 12 off 12, then work another 12. I have two more 8 hour days to go and then I’m going to sleep in on Wednesday. First I have to get some laundry and things sorted out and make up snacks for Simon in the coming week. In fact, I’m going to work on that now for about an hour before going to bed.

Current Mood:  exhausted

Current Music: humming of the dryer, bubbling of the fishtank

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.
- Kurt Vonnegut

The quote was on my homepage today. This comes after I realized this morning that my employers do not care that I’ve not had any sleep for three days because my entire household has come down with the flu. They do not care that I have medical issues that I need to take care of, they don’t want to hear about it. I am an employee that has been hired to perform a job and I am expected to do that job no matter what.

The law requires that they allow me to take care of my health and family. And no matter how much they pretend to care, I am an adult and therefore ultimately responsible for myself. Only my immediate family and close friends care about the problems that come after the hours that I work.

Current Mood: bitter

once again, my co-workers are filling up the boring saturday afternoon arguing over theoretical science. jump gates, artificial gravity, cold fusion… usually leads into an argument about why currently research isn’t going in a paticular direction, and “why can’t they do this”. usually followed by me saying “why aren’t you doing something about it yourself?”.

which reminds me, remember furbies? those strange toys with a learning AI that the military banned because they learned to talk and repeat what you say? ya.. larry is scared of them. i walked by yesterday and he was mumbling to himself “maybe furbies were talking to each other in binary”. i heard and repeated outloud “furries are talking to each other in binary.. what?”

oh.. furbies, not furries. terribly different. larry didn’t get it, and that’s possibly a good thing.

i start school in august, and i’m suddenly intimidated. it took me years to convince myself that i’m actually smart enough to take all the math classes required for computer sciences. granted, my degree is “international studies: global technology” but i still have to have a great deal of math. daecon keeps telling me i don’t give myself enough credit. a paticular co-worker said to me what i think is true across the board for people that know me; “your ditz act doesn’t work on me, i know its a complete farce”.

i point out on occasion that its useful when needing to pacify surly network admins. “here… call them, use your soothing voice” its strange being a relatively attractive female in a generally male dominated industry. in conversations with my husband and father, they pointed out that the IT industry is still new enough that the few women that do decide to go for it usually have an easier time than say in… construction (but power tools are fun).

oh ya, did i mention the school i’m going to has about a 4 to 1 male/female ratio? my husband was quick to point this out, and said i’ll have to be careful what i wear. don’t want to distract all the boys. HA! whatever. i’m married, i have kids. what do those young pups want with me?

hey cool… i just put my “Doors Greatist Hits” cd in the computer here at work and i discover that it was hidden video files on it. thing is like… 8 years old. sweet! but it won’t play the actual songs.. grr. oh well. the videos were a nice momentary distraction form an otherwise boring day. tomorrow will be boring too.. monday will be ugly… and then i’ll have two more days left and my eight day stretch of 10 hour days will be over. then i’ll have the schedule i wanted in the first place.

Current Mood:  bored

Current Music: sheryl crow -roselyn

so, they have decided at work that we are no longer allowed to have firefox installed due to its increasing popularity. why? well, the more people using it, the more people try to find holes in it, because that’s just how script kiddies like to function. since its an open-source browser, out the window it goes. doesn’t matter if the community of coders will find fixes for it. *sigh* this wouldn’t be such a pain in the arse if IE would incorporate tab browsing.

Current Mood:  annoyed

well, of course, working in an industry that is saturated with ultra geeks and scifi fans, everyone took the weekend off for dragon con. except me, because it costs more money than i’m willing to spend. soooo, a good portion of all the tickets got assigned to me. *grumbles*

my head hurts, i would blame it on the one beer, but it started before then. its that pressure you get in the front lobe of your brain that doesn’t quite hurt yet, but you know will eventually turn into a migrain. ug… i hope not. it may be from stress. but a migrain, GAH!! its like the worst hangover of your life. you’ll yell at the cat for stomping across the carpet and then hope someone is around to stop you from repeatedly banging your head against the wall until you pass out. i usually lock myself in a dark room and pull the pillow and covers over me.

work today was rather stressful. problems arising from the company buying sub-optimal equipment in order to save money. nothing like fixing problems with virtual duct tape, chewing gum, and bailing wire. then there are customers that need their internet fixed, but can’t seem to come to any concensus on thier end as to what needs to be done, call complaining and things get more broken because of it.

i voted today, though. run-off elections, YAY its the first election since clinton, sad but true. recent events have scared me too much to ignore that civic duty. ok, enough general babble for one day. good night.