Lame lame lame

I think I am making strides in my effort to break into the HMWHC. They took me out to lunch yesterday and it wasn't to a bar. It's still very quiet in here and I am absolutely hating the lack of privacy. They played Loverboy and other bad 80s music yesterday until I thought I was going to scream. Overall though I think it'll be okay working with them. It's the commute that is going to do me in. I hate getting up at 6 only to get into work at 7:50. No sane person should have to drive for an hour and a half to get to work.

The BF is becoming a pretty good Mr. Mom. This is only his first week but he's doing great with the boys and man I am loving not having to get them up in the morning. Supposedly they are going to the Frex's this weekend. We haven't worked out how they are getting to his house. He must not be too concerned over it because he hasn't called at all asking about it. Not that I am expecting him to. He's very good at just ignoring the things he doesn't want to deal with. Even when those things are 11 and 6 years old.

I just finished reading "The Arab Mind" (I can't remember the author's name right now). It's an old book but I found the information to still be relevant. It doesn't dig as deep as I would have liked into some subject matters but it gives a pretty good overview of how Arab opinions and attitudes are formed. What I got out of it was an understanding of why the terrorists who strike in Europe and over here are predominately western educated and/or have lived in the west for a number of years. I also came away thinking that if it wasn't for oil, the rest of the world would ignore them like they do Africa. Anyhow it's kind of dry and textbook like but I think it's worth reading.

So it's been over 80 degrees here for the past couple of weeks. Today it's suppose to hit 90. Now I know that's pretty cool compared to many parts of the US right now, but that's freaking HOT for Seattle. I now live farther inland then I did before so it'll hit 90 at my house with no problem today. I miss the cooling off-shore breezes and the morning marine layer that kept everything tolerable for a few hours every morning. The great thing about working in Seattle was the wind off the Sound. It kept the air moving and even if it was 85 outside you felt great when the wind hit you. Summer days when the wind is from the south or east and it was hot as hell you want to die. Just melt into a puddle right there on the sidewalk. We're a hardy bunch us Pacific Northwesterners, but that's really only true when it comes to the cold and the rain. We've never learned how to drive properly in the snow and we go crazy with the heat. But on those grey overcast days when the temperature is in the 60s and the breeze carries the tang of salt water....man we are in our prime. It's those days that we invent ways to get the rest of the country addicted to over priced coffee, and point and click operating systems with which to buy books and other goods on-line. Yes those were blatant plugs for Starbucks, Microsoft, and Amazon.com.

Well I am off to get more green tea and to raid the Red Vines bucket.

Working for peanuts

First day in the new office. I tried to avoid traffic by going in before 7. Ha! Can't believe I thought that was going to work. Thankfully I arrived at the same time as some other employees who let me in the building. I don't have a keycard yet.

My new "office" is an 18"x48" table pushed against a wall with a picture of, god help me, Chuck Norris hanging above it. Fabulous. All the parts of my computer are on the desk waiting for me to assemble. No problem I've put together plenty of computer systems and hey this way I can get my "desk" set up the way I want it. Computer is up and running....I can't log in. They didn't give me a password. It's still before 8am and there are about 5 of us in the building and the other 4 are not in the IT dept. I decided it was tea time.

A perk of the new company is the free peanuts in the breakroom. Yep folks free peanuts. And if you don't like peanuts there's pretzels and Red Vines. So we aren't allowed to bring over any alcohol but we get all the bar food we can eat. I run into a fellow Seattleite and he tells me the magic password to get me into the system. Thank god cause they were running low on Red Vines and I was gonna have to start in on the pretzels pretty soon.

I ran into a few problems getting Outlook to accept the PST files I'd made. No surprise there. Outlook is a pain in the ass on a good day. The IT guy and I are getting along pretty good especially when he finds out that I can actually read the binary clock I have on my desk. He's probably the only person there I feel comfortable asking for help from.

There are two projects in my In-Box that are due tomorrow. One of them I was able to pretty much do today. I spent most of my time trying to figure out how to get our drawings into their titleblocks or vice versa. The He Man Women Haters Club (HMWHC) is less then helpful. They told me that their blocks are stored on the B drive. HMMMM never used a B drive before. Yeah that would be the engineering drive on the company server. It propagates a unique drive letter when you map it. No one had thought to set me up with permissions on the server so I could map the engineering drive. Why would an engineering drafter need that?

Most of the day I just wanted to go home. I didn't want to be there and I didn't want to work. I didn't want to sit in a room with a bunch of guys that weren't even going to ask if I needed any help figuring out how to find the right plotter on the print server, or what CTB file I should use to print, or even say Happy Fucking Monday to me.

I need a new job. I did see a couple of openings, while they were all at lunch and I felt free to surf the net for awhile, that I am going to send my resume in for. Cross your fingers for me.