That Girl's Blog

Stuff I like right now. (2009, end-April)

The Thermals, "Now We Can See" — I heard this on Ethel AltNation a few days ago, and tried to make a mental note to download it but failed. Luckily, it was used on Monday night's episode of Chuck, which served as a nice reminder. So catchy!

I'm too lazy to upload... you can listen to the whole thing here or here (watch out, this one will auto-play), or a clip at Amazon here.

Yeah, that's about all I can think of off the top of my head right now.

Edited to Add: Oh wait, that's not true. Also Manchester Orchestra's "I've Got Friends" (not in low places, but in all the right ones). You can listen to the whole thing here or here, or a clip at Amazon here.

Bee-yoo-ti-ful day.

It is seriously lovely outside. Maybe 70 degrees, perfectly sunny, clear blue sky with just couple of teensy cloud wisps... for a second I could almost believe I was home. Only the occasional bite of a slightly-too-chilly breeze gave it away. Well, that and the lack of palm trees. And the fact that all the trees here are still ugly and brown; I haven't seen a single leaf or flower yet. But still, it's very nice out. Wish I could take my laptop and finish the day sitting outside Starbucks!

Pretty cookies!

Wednesday was, in addition to Earth Day, Administrative Professionals Day. One of the execs I assist sent me these cookies: 

Adorable! And tasty, too.

(None of the others gave me anything or said anything, but it's not exactly as well known a holiday as, say, Christmas. Of course, the guy who sent these is the only one who thought of me at Christmas, too. If I ever by some miracle have a job where I have an assistant, I vow to model myself after this guy.)

Oh so effing cute.

Little kids in a band covering My Chemical Romance — and very well, I might add! I just want to eat the singer/guitar-player right up!

Is it 1990 again?

I'm not sure if that's the right year, but I know when I was in junior high (fall '88 to summer '91) we used to fold our jeans cuffs over (to make them tighter around the ankles) and then up, as I referred to here. Well, apparently Kristen Bell (or Kristen Bell's stylist) is trying to bring this back:

 

Or perhaps it already is back, and I've just been blissfully unaware.

And just for fun, here's the picture I referred to in the aforelinked post:

 

Stylin', right? Hair color courtesy of Sun-In. (Hey, wow, they still make that stuff!) I believe this was probably early freshman year, so I was probably 13... I think. I'm old now, and my memory is bad.

I need a Douche-to-English translator.

Any written conversation with the Douche (email, instant messenger) is difficult and/or hilarious, as he can't spell to save his life in the first place and is the laziest typist I know to top it off. He just said this on IM:

sine I would get benies in any form or fassion OL

If you can figure that out, I will give you a cookie.

I figured out that it must be:

since I would get _____ in any form or fashion LOL

But I could not figure out "benies" and had to ask. It was benefits. Obviously.

(The context was that he allegedly already has an offer for a new job. If this is true, then fuck the world and its fucking unfairness.)

Nobody knows it but me.

(Remember that song? Now it's stuck in my head.)

It's funny how people always think their taste in music is so obscure. I suppose it's probably largely because their own friends exclusively listen to Top 40, thus giving them the illusion that they're the only people in the world who know who the Pixies are.

Paul Feig (the creator of Freaks and Geeks) asked people on Twitter earlier, "What's your favorite song you're sure no one's heard?" I clicked on the hashtag (#favunknown) knowing with absolute certainty that I'd see some not-really-obscure songs, and lo and behold, one of the first few I see is The Shins' "New Slang". You know, the song that was featured in Garden State (the person even referenced the pertinent line of the movie, so they are aware of that), Scrubs, and Buffy; and also, Wikipedia tells me, was performed live on Saturday Night Live, is downloadable for Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band, and was in a McDonald's commercial. But this person is sure no one's heard it. Of course.

(To be fair, most of the songs people are listing, I haven't heard of.)

(Me, I haven't listed anything. I know plenty of stuff that's not-really-obscure in a Shins/Pixies kind of way, but I can't think of anything that I actually think no one's heard. Except the songs on the EP an old friend from high school did with his band Welcome Jupiter years ago. (He's the one front and center.) (Also, fuck I'm old.) If you've heard that, you probably went to my high school or something, or at least lived in Santa Ana, and you should introduce yourself. Maybe you can tell me what ever happened to Nelson Merida.)

(There are a lot of parentheses in this post.)

Google. It's a search engine.

I just had a strange conversation. This guy asks me if I know how to display week numbers in a Lotus Notes calendar. I do not, off the top of my head, so I say, well I have this calendar in a PDF that has week numbers on it, so I'm forwarding you that right now to hold you over, and later when I'm finished with what I'm working on, I'll google and see if I can find out how to display it in Notes.

Then it gets weird. He says with confusion, "Google"?

I figure he's not familiar with the use of the term "google" as a verb, so I clarify, "I'll search Google and let you know what I find."

He is still perplexed. "Don't you mean Lotus Notes?"

Now I'm perplexed. "Right, I'll search Google for information on how to view week numbers in Lotus Notes."

He's still perplexed. "Why would Google have that? They don't make Lotus Notes."

I'm now at a loss for words, and just blink at him for a moment. He continues, "Wouldn't you just search in Lotus Notes itself?"

Assuming he means to search the help files, I say that yes, I could do that, but I often find software help files lacking — either they're written badly or their search doesn't work that well — so I generally just skip it and use Google to find what I need.

He's starting to catch on: "So you just go to Google and type in 'lotus notes week numbers' or something, and it will find it? On the internet?"

"Right," I confirm, "usually. You can find pretty much anything on the internet."

He is somewhat less perplexed now and leaves, apparently rather intrigued by this whole "search the internet for information" concept, and I'm left in wonderment. He's a little older, sure, but he's an engineer, he has a Ph.D., he works at a computer company — he should be more familiar with computers and the internet than this!

I've heard of people like this, and I've "seen" them blindly stumbling around the internet, but this is the first time I've ever had this sort of conversation with someone so clueless. Goodness gracious.

Am I invisible?

In the office, people sometimes walk away from their desks to talk on their cell phones. People do this, I think, for one of two reasons: Either they don't want to be overheard, or they don't want to bother nearby coworkers.

Some of these people go out into the halls to talk, but, much to my chagrin, some of them come over to my area and stand around my desk and talk. This happens both at the front desk and my regular desk, which is a fairly quiet vaguely reception-ish area near the back elevators. In both cases, just a few steps further would take them through doors into hallways where they could talk without bothering or being overheard by anyone, but apparently they don't feel that's necessary.

I guess they move away from their desks not because they don't want to bother or be overheard by anyone, but because they don't want to bother or be overheard by anyone who matters. Which does not include me.

In conclusion: Fuck you, rude cell phone talking motherfuckers!

With the bad comes some good. (Goodbye, Douche!)

So, I'm trying not to obsess over my impending pay cut. It's difficult.

But! Of some consolation is that The Douche finally got his notice! They're generously giving him almost four weeks notice, so his last day will be Friday, April 24. (The following Monday, my reduced hours go into effect. don'tobsessdon'tobsessdon'tobsess)

I had a draft post that I never finished, titled "Why The Douche should not have a job", which I can't be bothered finishing now, but the bullet points were: He doesn't do anything, he is unfriendly, he takes advantage, he is disgusting, he hides mail, and he doesn't know what "confidential" means. (I don't mean he can't keep a secret, I mean he doesn't lock drawers containing confidential documents.)

Seriously, the guy hides mail. He's supposed to distribute it, but sometimes instead he just stashes it in a drawer and leaves it there until I happen to find it weeks later and do it for him. Envelopes that clearly contain checks or other important documents (a social security card, in one case), overnight and registered mail, whatever, he doesn't care. At one point, we even discovered that he was hiding bucketsfull of mail at the building receptionist's desk. There was mail there that was two months old!

As for the disgustingness, let me tell you a story: One Thursday afternoon, I was getting something from his desk and smelled something weird. I said, "Do you smell that? What is that?", and he said, "I don't smell anything, you're crazy." The next day, I was covering his desk, and I spent the whole morning trying to identify that disgusting smell. I was looking around on the floor and in the drawers for what I thought must be some dropped or hidden food that had gone off. Finally, it dawned on me — it was the multiple coffee cups sitting over to one side on the desk. They were all unfinished, and some of them had been there for Way Too Long and the milk in them had gone rancid. It. Was. Revolting. I had to hold my breath and take them to the bathroom to throw them away. I put my foot down on that one, complaining to our managers and insisting that he stop leaving rotten beverages around as I was unwilling to work in those conditions. I assume the reason that he couldn't smell it is because he has always lived that way and doesn't notice. I do not want to think about what his apartment must look and smell like.

As for how the fuck he was able to hang on to the job for this long, up to a point it's related to Cassie's guess that the current economy is to blame. See, when I started here, there were two admins — the one I was replacing, and one who has been here for 5 years; we'll call her Jane. Jane soon went on maternity leave, and the temp that started out in her place got a better job, so the agency sent The Douche to replace her. It was pretty quickly apparent that he sucked, but it didn't matter much as Jane would be returning from maternity leave soon. However, it turned out that they were trying to give Jane a promotion, so they were keeping The Douche. They had not gotten budget approval for Jane's new position yet, so on paper and payroll she was still an assistant, but she was being given new duties and was not really supposed to be actually "assisting"... The Douche was.

Well, when the managers here told the agency that The Douche was utter shit and they wanted rid of him, they said, "Well, we're plan/ning to descope his position anyway; we can only give you two assistants, not three, so unless you can get Jane off the assistant payroll, then Jane has to go back to her assistant job."

Well, hiring freeze meant they could not get Jane off the assistant payroll and officially into her new position, so Jane was going to have to go back to her assistant job. They felt bad for Jane, and plus Jane was handling a great deal of the logisitics of our move to the new building, so they convinced the agency to wait until after we moved to the new building, which was at the beginning of February. (But the agency would not replace him - it was him or no one.)

So, that's how he held his job until the beginning of February.

But. Then the move was done, and Jane made her peace with the fact that she wasn't escaping the assistant job after all, and the agency was supposed to give The Douche notice that Friday. Then the next. Then by the end of the month. Then who the fuck knows. We just kept waiting and waiting and it kept never happening! There seemed to be no actual reason, more like they just kept forgetting to get around to it.

But now it has happened, and I look forward to April 24th (but not the 27th!!), and so does The Husband, who is tired of hearing me complain about this stupid, useless Douche.