Psychotomy

last night was our neighbors halloween party. friend from my old office went to school with my neighbor, so he was there too.

i got home at 2:30 in the morning. 3 guinnesses, a killians, 4 “shots” of vodka (i think my first was a double or even triple ; we ran out of shot glasses, so i just splashed some into a cup) … 6 hours of party, and all i really had to eat was cheese and crackers, and chips and salsa

i decided to go ahead and be sick when i got home, rather than waiting and getting sick all over the sofa or something :o eww

NTS: 4 shots of vodka bad. 4 beers AND 4 shots really bad on an empty stomach :o

had fun though, although i suppose my friend and i spent most of the evening hanging out together. but we really didn’t know most of the rest of the people :/

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talking to the doc last week, i expressed that my meds didn’t seem to be doing enough anymore. I stipulated that it might be season, hoping he’d up me to 30 or even 40mg of lexapro. where it worked for me nicely.

skipped mentioning the new job and that i’ve virtually cut out soda. that would have led to “well, there’s a lot of changes, so lets wait until your next appointment” in three months … yeah, that’d be good.

he decided to switch me, asked how long i was on lexapro. i told him 18-24 months, he looked stunned isnce i’ve only been seeing him for maybe 9? so i explained that my doc had had me on it. “you’re on 10mg right?” “no, you have me on 20. she had me at 40″ “40?” “yeah” “oh i didn’t know that. i’ll just put you back on that then” “ok. i came to see you when the pharmacy was giving us grief over the script” “yeah, the normal dose is 20. but some people need more, some people less. your normal dose might be 40″ “yeah” “the pharmacy will call me to verify the prescription too” and he trailed off mumbling to himself.

“OK, i’m going to switch you to EffexorXR” … uh? what happened to my happy 40???

apparently Effexor (which is a serotonin & norepinephrin reuptake inhibitor (SNRI) doesn’t play well with others. Apparently MAOI’s and SNRI’s mixed means you die :o

luckily my lexa and welbutrin are SSRI’s. of course, he’s “weaning” me off the lexapro (did a week at 10 before switching to effexor). then ramping up on effexor.

but apparently i’m supposed to watch the first few weeks (and by i, he meant me. by i, i mean kiir :) for changes of personality, suicidal thoughts and tendencies, and hypo/manic episodes … frankly, i’m wondering if being depressed was really all that bad :p

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Ok so didn’t post the last two weekends, so covering both now real quick.

finally figured out how i could get to my desk without knocking on the door. the mailroom door isn’t locked. inside, there’s one of those double-half doors like in a stable, but it’s locked. except the top is always open, so if i go into the mail room and just reach inside, i can open the door then walk around to my desk :o

that was on a tuesday afternoon. wednesday afternoon i had my badge. what timing!

last wednesday i actually got access to log into some servers! so now i’m starting to be able to do my job. working on some php right now, and someone just passed on some perl that they got from my predecessor. except no one but my predecessor was good at perl. conveniently i am :)

getting some work done feels nice, though. sitting around being useless was getting a bit annoying. especially since i’m on a temp contract, i wanna show that i’m GOOD and they should HIRE me!!!

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well, there’s still one day left of this week, but i’m gonna go ahead and do this today. get over it :o

still have no badge (and no particularly great belief that THAT will resolve tomorrow :o the ribbon for printing on the badges was delivered to the building monday. but not to the badging office. apparently no one’s managed to find it yet :o)

getting my off-the-shelf linux box set up to be as usable as i can. except i can’t install SHIT. nada. can’t change off of gnome to something less useless. i mean, my windows laptop (which i don’t really need now ;) i can’t install firefox or gvim (b/c they’re not “approved applications” … folks, it’s a web browser (that’s approved on the linux machine) and a TEXT EDITOR!!! come ON!). trying to get VMWare on the linux box so i can play with installs. the unix support group has it, so it’s apparently vetted. now, if only we could figure out how to get ME a copy.

(actually, i have emails saying they added me to the dreamweaver and some other macromedia groups so i can run those apps … if only i HAD those apps (and some ungodly reason to use them) … so we can only guess how long vmware will take me)

took 3 days to be able to use the linux box. apparently it wasn’t ACTUALLY set up. it was just KINDOF set up, oops. had a stupid damned session this moning telling me all about how to use the document management software. “now select no don’t click that, select this. now type . no, don’t click, just type! i’m trying to show you that you don’t have to click! now click to this screen and do X. yes i know you can do it from the other screen, but this only takes like a second longer and the other way won’t always work” … so apparently if it’s not on the script it doesn’t ALWAYS work … greaaat. 4 hours of that BS.

looking at subversion for my group (thus why i want vmware; i wanna play with installing it before i fuck up a real system :o) and figuring out how to set up my dual monitor on a matrox card … i didn’t know matrox still MADE cards!

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K’s bordetella (kennel cough) is a 1yr vaccine. except the hotel wants it every 6 mo. which means we never get a reminder from the vets.

apparently it ran out on saturday. they let him in today, but he needs it before coming back. kiir called me on my way home to tell me (she dropped k off this morning; first day of the new job). so i stop at the vets to make an appointment.

except the next appointment they have isn’t until the 7th.

OF NOVEMBER!!!

they recommend going to one of the other petsmart banfield pet hospital vets things. yathink?

so i get to look those up tomorrow and see what i can do (assuming i can get onto the freakin’ network tomorrow) …

of course, this means hes not getting camp this week. which is gonna drive me batshit bonkers.

*sigh*

Posted in: k-line by attriel /
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started the new job this morning. took the marc train (commuter rail) to union station. union is between mass and H, and first and first. yeah, it’s between the same street :o

trekked off to 4th & G … except 4th & g is now a residential area and not my government building anymore … i went to the wrong fucking 4th and g! so, turned around, back to union and now the OTHER direction (FYI — from 1st&H to 4th&G is NOT 3-4 blocks. it is, apparently 5 or 6 … don’t ask me. the streets do a lot of weird shit; this is why i’m not driving around that nuthouse)

get to the office, start signing in for visitor when guard realizes i’m on the auth list. she tells me to go to the training room, training started at 8:30 (it’s 9:15 now; woulda been 8:45, but i went the wrong way, remember?)

go up, get to the room and there’s a packet still waiting to be picked up. at least this won’t be awkward :o except the packet isn’t mine? get told to grab it and get IN THERE anyway.

10:30~11 … there’s finally a break, so i ask. while all the civil servant federal benefits ARE nice …. i’m a contractor, am i supposed to be here? surprisingly enough, no. not until the afternoon half (which was the half i knew about, too, so that matched up)

couldn’t DO anything all day. didnt get my computer and securid until the afternoon session. badging office was out of badge-ink or something and couldn’t print badges. yeah, i’ll just sit here then? computer session was kinda muffed up too ; network maintenance meant some of us couldn’t log into our domain controllers! *sigh*

took marc home whee. marc’s decent at least :) bought the month pass this afternoon. figure i’m gonna use it anyway an’ all

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So today was the last day at my old job. spent the morning going through my office, making sure all the drives were scrubbed of my stuff. swept and swiffered my side of the office. it needs more swiffering. it actually needs a heavy duty mopping, stripping, and waxing. but i had a broom and a swiffer. the new guy’ll have to learn to cope :)

went to rsync everything off the desktop to the laptop, so the desktop could be wiped to whatever the new person wants. but i had a backup dir, which had 10G of data from another server when IT ran out of space. and a 10G directory with the last 9 months of logs. compressed. there was like 8-10G a month uncompressed … and sept wasn’t compressed yet b/c it wasn’t complete yet. so yeah. 20G of stuff, plus the 15G of build and burn directories for the installs. i gave up when i needed to go, wiped the partial, and left the desktop set. shut it all down though

made magic envelopes, printed out the docs i’d hacked together the last two weeks. turned in all my keys, cards and badges. exit interview was boring but quick. hr lady said she takes the feedback and gives a summary at the end of the year (not that my comments, if they get comments, won’t be blatantly mine, but whatever). and if there are problem areas they’ll talk to the employees about what they think could be done to improve communications and training and stuff.

this meeting will, of course, be like a hundred people per session and will involve telling the employees that the mandatory security BS will be every 3 months, now, instead of every 6. yay communication :o

but maybe my officemate’ll be able to get some training. before everyone quits next year for real jobs ;)

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with our home equity, we were paying off a handful of cards, and as part of the agreement we were closign two. the bank was auto-cutting the checks for those to payoff. great.

one (the one that is at the same bank as the loan) paid off quickly. the other didn’t. a week or so later i got a thing in the mail with a copy of the bill i copied to them, and a cashiers check. which said “void if no watermark”. so i hold it up to check, no mark.

but while i have it in hand i notice where it says “void void void” across the body of the check. so yeah, this is my receipt.

another week and a half, no payment still. so took the check in today and asked the bank. it’s the real check. when i ask about the voidvoidvoid … well, first of all neither the guy at the bank nor kiir can actually see it. but he explains that it’s an anti-copy protection thing. if you copy the check, the voidvoidvoid comes out dark, clear, bold. visible.

so my color blindness screwed me again. but in reverse this time, b/c i saw somethin i shouldn’t instead of not someting i should.

good. grief.

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today was the farewell lunch

i’ve been out to lunch with people from the team (not counting my office mate) … less than a dozen times. and half a dozen of them i’d say were me and dave when he wanted to “sit down and talk with me” about something. usually sometime where i just shut people down by dismissing their concerns out of hand or something :o

mind, i’ve not had much interest in going out with them in general, but it’s a principle thing :p they wanted to take me out and hang out some b/c i’m leaving. not b/c they necessarily like me or want to hang out, but b/c they feel they should since i’m going. oi.

got my white pizza again though :) not sure how much more often i’ll get that, now :/ they got me the new guildwars expansion (collectors edition, preorder) which was kinda cool actually. well, rob picked it out, and no one else knew what he’d gotten.

cleaned up more garbagio and went to make a final backup of the ve disks, since we don’t have a real backup system. except the usb drive wouldn’t recognize. i think somethings wrong with it. again. last one blew too. after letting it go for hours to see if it was fscking or checkdisking or whatever, i dug around and found another one in my office. hooked it up, and it was fine. so i took it and the office laptop down and started the backup. amusing part is, this drive i pulled out of the trash when someone was cleaning their office. it had the drive and power, i figured what the hell :) and apparently it worked! handy that

burned out my chat options at the office. figure i’ll be offline tomorrow. need to finish up the docs and write up magic envelopes, but otherwise i think it’s all pretty well set to leave.

tomorrow’s my exit interview :o “why are you leaving?” “because i’ve had no advancement, no raise, and i was generally treated as an exploitable resource. exploit THIS!” :o ok, so maybe in different words?

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since friday i have to turn in my keys and badges before my exit interview at 2pm, i figure friday’s pretty well shot.

so today i started the final processes of uploading anything i wanted to keep from my systems to my home server, and started deleting non-work things.

flushed out my stored passwords, deleted the apps from the laptop (including wiping the directories totally where they kept data), and trimming out all the notes and such i’d accumulated over the years.

tomorrow, when i leave, i’ll have flushed pretty much everything. i won’t really be able to do much on friday, even if i wanted to :o

wheee

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