all things me

After having been a project manager for a week now I’ve started to get annoyed by the technical people. I’m willing to work without a lunch break (let alone coffee or cigarette breaks (I do drink coffee, but I don’t smoke)) to get something urgent done — I did that on Friday — and in my naïvete I expect everyone else to do the same. I was furious when the person who was supposed to be working on an urgent project (deadline on Monday) was nowhere to be seen. I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to do something snap, right there and then. I realise the work isn’t progressing, so I’ll probably have to do it myself on Monday. I can’t really tell the client that I couldn’t keep the deadline because the others weren’t doing their jobs, can I?

I know I’m horrible. I’m sure the others have lots and lots of more work to do than I — even if they have time to frolic and complain that they’re bored. On Friday I was panicking about the deadline and they laughed that I’ll probably throw something heavy at them. I couldn’t, I was too tired.

I’ll be very glad when this 2-week multiple personality disorder is over. I don’t mind doing the technical stuff and I don’t mind doing the project manager stuff (it’s been, despite everything I’ve just said, very interesting and refreshingly challenging). But I can’t do them both, full-time, simultaneously.

Despot — a person exercising power tyrannically

Picture of Mitler from South Park Create A Character

This is so funny it’s either adorable or sad! There’s this girl in the WP forums who always spells plugin as puglin. It’s not a typo here or there, it’s a braino. A very annoying and funny one, I might add.

Ah…. good laugh.

I’m amazed no one has pointed it out. I would if I was in a mean mood (which is never?) and feeling really really pernickety (which is always?).

I have a very persistent tic on my lower eyelid. It feels like my eye is bulging out my skull (intentional reference to Green Day’s Brainstew). I hate it!

It doesn’t matter when for example one of my fingers is twitching (my right thumb has a mind of her own), or eyebrow, or back, but a tic around the eye makes the field of vision jitter. Once I had a tic in my back for a long time and the next day the surrounding muscles were really sore. Now I’m just getting a little motion sickness and headache…

Is there any remedy for these? Ouch.

Tic, Myokymia — A habitual spasmodic muscular movement or contraction, usually of the face or extremities (Bartleby.com); twitch typically brought on by stress or fatigue (Allaboutvision.com)

(trying to mean a female techie)

I’m recording the Survivor on my brand new DVD+VCR combo. The DVD is the writing kind so I’m testing it out while there’s a “backup” copy running upstairs on our “old” VCR (which was making smush out of the picture until Dad noticed a S-VHS setting).

Very exciting!

I’m a heavy user when it comes to recording. Not a day goes by that I don’t record something. That is why I’m excited about the writing DVD. The tapes I have get worn out pretty quickly, but then again, the DVDs are said to go (only?) 1000 recordings (or re-recordings). Or, maybe the tapes got worn out because of my old and crappy VCR. Who knows.

A VCR and a separate DVD+harddrive combo could’ve been pretty cool too, but that may have been a teensy bit too harsh on my bank account, especially when I have to buy storage space for my piles of tapes and DVDs that got evacuated from the recorder’s shelf.

Härpäke — (Fin.) something like ‘thingamabob’. My version: härpätin

I’ve been searching for the proper meaning of CPD (domain: printers etc.), and during my journey I found this (the site is a mess, there are better acronym sites): CPD — Cubicle Prairie Dogging (people popping up in their cubicles when something happens)

It’s not exactly what I was looking for… I could also be looking for CDP…

I texted my aunt asking that she’d pass on happy birthday wishes to my godson (her son, obv.). I also told her that the gift would be arriving next week because I went to the post office yesterday evening after the mail had already been picked up for the day. She replied telling that my godson had enthusiastically asked how soon is ‘next week’. Gee… I hope he isn’t too disappointed: I only got him a little Bionicle dude. It did have a very cool disk launcher with a glow in the dark disk, though.

Word of the Day Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia — fear of long words (The Phobia List)

For a long time I’ve wondered what ATF stands for — I think I’ve seen black cars labeled ATF on South Park and heard it all around (on tv, that is). Finally, reading the Hannibal, it dawned on me. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Another mystery has been DEA, which Hannibal was friendly to shed light upon as well. DEA stands for Drug Enforcement Agency.

If you have acronym or abbreviation related annoyances, the Acroym Server might be the place to go. Or you could read the Hannibal Omnibus.

Acronyms of the Day ATF — Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
DEA — Drug Enforcement Agency

[edit: evening of Oct 11th] This must be the weirdest thing. The right hand side menu jumped all the way to the bottom in IE because I had ITALICS in my text. Well, not “just” italics but they dared to go on 2 lines! That and align=”justify” don’t play well together apparently *shakes head* I removed the align=”justify” for the time being [/edit]

Doh… sometimes I’m so clever I amaze myself. I’ve kept this page “in the dark”, waiting for the domain thing to get settled and start working — which has been a sloooow process. I just realized I can put a link to this page from the index page in my current space, be it an ugly address and not a pretty domain (well, I’ve lived with even an uglier address since this January… and a little more bearable since 1997…). Anyway. Welcome to the new all things me! Hope you like the new layout — I know I do.

Many of the links (not blog related) don’t work yet because I’ve set up subdomains which need the domain working to work themselves.

Word of the Day TO BORK — to fail, to mess up, to damage irreversibly; be borked

Quote of the Day

(…) the first mosquito of the new season buzzes blood-thirstily past your ear with that eye-watering hum that always makes you think it’s the sound loonies must hear just before they kill all their kids or close their eyes on the Interstate and put the gas pedal to the floor or tighten their toe on the trigger of the .30-.30 they just jammed into their quackers (…)
— ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

Word of the Day: Discombobulate — to cause to be unclear in mind or intent; confuse

On the search page I added the list of categories a post belongs to. (When a search returns results, that is.)

Word of the Day: air quotes — quotation marks represented by the movement of a speaker’s fingers in the air (Oxford Dictionary of New Words)
(I’d love that kind of a smiley gif, it’d be absolutely wonderful!)
[edit: Sep 15, 2004] I found that kind of smiley gifs. [/edit]

I left for Kuopio, where my grandparents live, on August 13 — by train. I got back home today — by car. Dad took a vacation week and drove to Kuopio so I got home with him. Just before going to Kuopio I had been at my aunt’s for a week, but now I’m done travelling for this summer.

On Monday (23rd) I finally got to swim in the lake. First time this year. But… the water was 15°C and air 17°C — and it was very windy! Grandma told me I was nuts but I wanted to swim at least once. And believe me, once was enough. Well, maybe next year I’ll be at the summer cottage a little earlier in the summer…

Today I’ve been updating a bit. First of all I read two books while I was away: Pet Sematary and Christine, both by Stephen King. After an “uncle-in-law” (an aunt’s husband) took the main TV away (he was helping with my grandparents’ move, taking some stuff to the new place) there was really nothing else to do than read because Grandpa was glued to the set (a smaller tv I used to have in “my room”) watching Olympic games (Finland only has 2 silver medals so far — bummer) AND he even dared to tease me by saying I couldn’t possibly watch anything cause there were so much important sport events!

Also, I bought Oxford dictionary of New Words because I couldn’t find any new Kings… Next week I’ll go buy Song of Susannah — I have to.

I am very excited about the 2 boxfuls of books I got from Grandpa and Grandma. There are lots of old old books, and wonderful (old old) dictionaries. I don’t even remember all that I took from their bookshelf.
Grandpa said he gave about 1000 books to different libraries and they still had a 1 meter high, 2,5 meters wide (my bad estimate) pile of books waiting to be packed. And all the books they gave away to me and my aunts (“me” includes our family), and a box of summer cottage reading… I won’t even try guessing how many books they had to begin with.
I told Grandma that I’ll probably end up with a similar collection later on.

I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 on Sunday 22nd. It was an interesting documentary, had an excellent — and apt — music selection (Roof is on Fire, etc.), and it was very funny, too.

Today I’ll get Matrix Revisited on tape. They show it on the cable channel, SubTV. I snatched Dad’s digi-box so I can tape it.

My sympathies go to the site, network, and whatever called Orkut.com (it’s some sort of a Google affiliate). They probably have no idea how bad a title they’ve chosen…