Friday, February 18, 2022

I. Am. An. Idiot.

omg

Remember when I said that I didn’t think 2022 was going to be full of, um, triggering activities?

Well.

Surprise!

I’m a fucking idiot.

So.

I turn 47 this year. If you want to work in specifics, I will now be two years older than my mother was when she died. (She died in March, but her birthday is (was?) in May.) It’s pretty hard to wrap my head around that. Like seriously. How the fuck did I outlive my mother? I certainly don’t take care of myself, other than pretending to be a runner and pumping my body full of all kinds of (prescription) chemicals.

Oh, and while we’re on the topic… she died in 1992. The calendar is telling me we survived 2020 and 2021 and are now in 2022. You probably don’t need to be an accountant to do that math in your head…

She has been dead for thirty fucking years. THIRTY.  (And yet, she continues to live in my head rent free.)

Moving on.

While we’re talking about easy math, how about 2022 less 2001?

Yup. Dad’s been dead for 21 years this April.

Holy Jesus motherfuck.

I am not ready for these milestones.

And I thought that being married for twenty years this August was going to rock my world.

 

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Recently, my six year old MacBook shit the bed. The power button broke into little bitty pieces and the fan ran all the time. It would overheat. It would freeze up. It was getting pretty nerve wracking. I was never sure which laptop was going to boot up.

I ended up getting a new one for Christmas.

While moving all the software and crap was easy, hooking up all my peripherals was a bitch and a half.

I love Macs, but they are, hands down, the worst fucking piece of equipment to upgrade.

I have a Logitech wireless keyboard that I am so in love with it would be illegal. But, it’s got a USB/Bluetooth dongle thingy.

I have a great black and white laser printer, but it’s USB only.

I have a super nice HP colour laser printer that works sporadically over Wi-Fi, so that is normally connected via USB.

I have an old LaCie drive that holds all my music and photos. It’s Thunderbolt 2.

I have two HDMI monitors. One that actually connects over HDMI and one that used a Thunderbolt 2 / HDMI dongle.

The new Mac has Thunderbolt 3 ports and does not have a single USB port. (Well, technically, I guess it does, but it’s USB-C and everything is USB A? B? 2.0? 3.0? I don’t know. The “normal” USB.)

I spent a lot of time researching my options because upgrading everything to work with the new Thunderbolt 3 bullshit wasn’t going to happen.

I bought a really expensive dock. I bought HDMI to DisplayPort cords because the highly recommended dock didn’t have HDMI ports. I dropped over $250 on what could essentially be called band-aids.

Only to get it all hooked up to find out that NOTHING worked.

No monitors. No keyboard. No LaCie drive. Absolutely fucking nothing worked.

Because I’m not a total idiot, I always spend the extravagant amount for AppleCare. (I’ve really only needed it twice and both times it was a lifesaver. As my father used to say, you buy insurance hoping you never need it, but you’ll be glad you did when the world falls apart around you.)

The poor tech dude who took my call… They’re not supposed to recommend things that aren’t Apple branded or aren’t affiliated with Apple in one way or another, but I finally got him to give me a brand name.

$65 out of pocket for a dock and a little stupid USB dongle for the keyboard.

Fuck me.

Should have just called Apple before I even bought the damn computer.

(Also, I just realised that I got my first Apple Macintosh desktop computer in 1992. Right after my mother died… so I’m also celebrating thirty years of my love/hate relationship with Apple products.)

I’m fucking old.

Saturday, January 22, 2022

Every mile is magic

I love this so much

I need to vent about this…

My old AR person, at the other company, kept 6 spreadsheets that all had the same information. AND NONE OF IT MATCHED. She had collection notes spread across them and none of them were the same. If you opened spreadsheet A, it had a note that on [date] she talked to the insured and they said blah, blah, blah. If you opened spreadsheet B, it had a note that on [same date] she called and the number was disconnected. The amounts she was trying to collect on were different. The adjuster’s name, phone number. email were all different. Her replacement and I didn’t know which one was right, so we nuked it all and started from scratch.

That was such a miserable experience.

At the new job (a printing company), the woman I’m replacing is just as bad. I plan on consolidating a few of her spreadsheets because I just can’t deal with it.

Maybe it’s my background in construction, or my interest in becoming a CMA, or just the way I’m wired, but work-in-progress schedules turn me on. Why do you need to keep a pending and a sales spreadsheet with you can combine both? I mean, once you have the billed amount on the spreadsheet, you can see if it’s pending or sold. Why not track the costs? There’s so much this simple schedule can do and so many ways you can tweak it… I mean, this is a portion of the final report I built. IT’S SO USEFUL!

 

(Yes, it’s blurry on purpose. Yes, those numbers aren’t real. I’m not THAT stupid.)

So… yeah. They don’t track their inventory. They don’t have any means to compare estimates to actuals except by looking at several different reports. They barely know if something’s been billed. (The Controller doesn’t sit in on the Production Meetings!?! She’s too busy - no doubt, because she’s managing a BILLION spreadsheets. Gah.)

OH! And I am SALTY about something that went down yesterday. I accidentally calculated the sales tax on a job that was tax-exempt. The spreadsheet was deleted and redone, without the tax calculation. Supposedly because I didn’t have the time to do needless work, habits be damned. THEN, I find out that I did need that sales tax number after all (to go on yet another spreadsheet). So I had to redo that. I TOUCHED THE SAME SPREADSHEET THREE TIMES TO GET ONE NUMBER.

How do I always find these places?

I don’t know… she’s retiring in March so I just have to hold on until then.

Gotta run. (HA!) I have a hot date with the treadmill. I’m getting a jump start on Dopey training because I refuse to let the dwarf beat me two years in a row. Now that I know exactly what to expect, I have a better idea of how I (personally) need to train. Most training plans are one size fits all, and well, I don’t fit that mold.

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Alphabet Soup

the boxes (and bags) OF DOOM

I don’t know what started it, but there has been a trend among my friends to post articles about ADHD.

I’ve already been diagnosed with a few things, with bipolar being the #1 diagnosis - from several doctors, and even a few therapists - so bipolar is the benchmark.

Anyhoo… one of the things I’ve seen several times is the tendency to put clutter in boxes so that it doesn’t have to be dealt with immediately, but it’s removed from sight. And, oh, holy fuck, does that make so much sense. I’ve had clutter boxes my entire life. Once I found out I was bipolar, I decided that this was a symptom of it. I clean during manic phases and I box during depressed ones. What happens when I’m forever depressed? MORE BOXES!

So, yeah. In the spirit of full disclosure, this is about two or three years worth of clutter boxes (and several bags). We painted my office last year and I’m just now finally working my way through the Boxes of Doom!.

Why the Boxes of Doom!, you ask? Because, half the fucking time, they’re filled with memory landmines.

You know, those things you randomly stumble across that rip open wounds that had been slow to heal in the first place? Yeah. Those.

I’ve gone through three boxes this morning and I have cried during every one. My offer letter from the Cats was in one box, photos of my parents and I at Disney World in another… just weird shit that I am not equipped to deal with right now.

And, can we talk about that photo with my parents? The photo is of myself and my parents in front of the castle and we are wearing matching Mickey Mouse shirts. OH. MY. GOD. We were that family back in 1980. We were wearing MATCHING SHIRTS. (I’m pretty sure it was my idea, too.) I make fun of those families now… and I am obviously the one that started the trend. Fuck. Me.

I still have boxes and boxes of clutter - and memory landmines - to get through, but I’m pretty sure this is what the articles are talking about.

I feel both seen and attacked, and I don’t like either.

(I suppose the joke’s on my most recent former employer… I had two clutter boxes at the office and a clutter folder on my desktop and a clutter folder in my inbox. In my defence, those things did not appear until Ida decided to visit Louisiana this year and I was overloaded with minutiae. Oh well. I hope they have fun with that.)

Thursday, December 16, 2021

I never thought that I could be who I am

this. fucking. show.

Spending Christmas with Matt Nathanson again (a week early). His raunchy Christmas carols are everything. Having access to the Christmas livestreams until the 19th is not going to be long enough. (Seriously, his live shows are awesome… He is absolutely hilarious.)

Probably not a surprise, but I haven’t been training for Dopey like I should be. Because I’m a fucking idiot and 2020/2021 wiped away all interest in doing anything. I even struggled with Racery events…

I had signed up for a 10K/Half combo up in West Palm Beach for last weekend, and I only completed the 10K.

I kept a strong 16:30mm pace and still had enough energy at the end to keep going, so that was really good.

I didn’t even bother going to the half… because of George.

George is the massively nasty, never healing, blister on my right foot. He lives on the ball of my foot right under my big toe. He showed up during Wine and Dine, I took time off to let him heal. He came back for the Turkey Trot… and he came back for the Palm Beaches 10K. With Dopey literally right around the corner, I wasn’t going to deal with him during a 13 mile walk.

I had moved from Hoka Arahi 3s to the Arahi 4 and it made me miserable. There was something weird about the 4s… I don’t know what Hoka changed, but YUCK! I had a decent coupon and tried Brooks Ghosts. Despite being highly recommended, they sucked for me. They didn’t even make it onto the treadmill, but they’re perfect to wear to work. Then, I did more research and decided on the Asics Gel Nimbus. I loved them so much during several Racery events, I bought two pairs.

Only to discover that they’re the reason for the blisters. On a treadmill, they’re fine. Absolutely no problems what so ever. But when it comes to the road, it’s a different story. Stability. Cushioning. Blah, blah, blah… all things that I had researched and thought I got right.

So, now I run in Brooks Glycerins and am no longer a member of Ravenclaw. Because, seriously? After all that, I can’t possibly be one of the Smarts any more. Damn. I’m due for a Puffs the Play rewatch because I’ve been quoting it a lot lately.

I’ve got a Dopey simulation coming up this weekend and it was supposed to start tonight. Of course, I have a super bad headache. I was so nervous about my interview this morning that I skipped breakfast altogether. No caffeine. At all. The headache has been so bad that I napped on the couch for a bit earlier. I NEVER NAP. If I didn’t have such a hot date with Matt, I would have skipped the nap and just gone to bed. That’s how bad it is.

(OK. I AM DYING. Matt just looked up Disappear on Spotify because he couldn’t remember the chord it started with. I still think looking for his own lyrics on google was the best, though. Fuck, dude. That show was the last IRL concert we attended. That’s way too long to go without live music.)

(STILL DYING. He’s totally fucking up Bottom of the Sea now… which he also just listened to on Spotify because he couldn’t remember that one, either.)

Short post, but there’s a lot of noise in my head right now and I can’t focus on squat right now. I also have a lot of stuff to talk about, but there’s also a bunch of stuff I don’t want to talk about, either.

Saturday, October 30, 2021

NO TOUCHY

reminds me of the 75 different versions of the SG budget…

 

І ми продовжуєм нести свій прапор, а не хрест. Ми продовжуєм іти на власний Еверест.

And we continue to carry our banner, but not our cross. We continue to walk on our own Everest.

- - - - - - - - - -

SOOOOOOO.

We are at 5 days until Wine and Dine. FIVE! DAYS!

Five days until I run a 5K, a 10K, and a half marathon around Epcot. (And some Disney parking lots… *sigh*)

Yeah.

I can’t say that I’ve trained particularly well, but it can’t be nearly as hard as a Racery event.

(Also, whoever curated the runDisney Training playlist on Spotify needs some serious help. I find none of the songs inspiring.)

 

- - - - - - - - - -

A zillion years ago, I wrote about this nifty little report I was trying to write.

A quick rundown of the process:

I beat the snot out of QuickBooks until I could run two reports.

I export those reports to Excel and clean them up. QuickBooks exports the Estimates vs Actuals report like… well, it looks like it barfed data all over the place. So, there’s a lot of cleaning up of that particular report. The custom Customer report isn’t nearly as bad, but it’s not necessarily great, either.

Once that’s done, I import them into Access.

Run a couple of queries.

Load the report.

And BOOM!

A very usable, very pretty, Jobs in Progress report.

It mooshes, it squooshes, it slices, it dices!

Until you try to update the data.

And then it’s a different type of BOOM!

Yeah… I broke the fuck out of that when I went to update the data.

Part of the problem is that I couldn’t append the new information because it would create duplicates. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but it was hard to parse out the old data that way. So, I got the bright idea to append and then delete the old data.

And it was beautiful.

All the queries worked, but the report didn’t.

I thought it had something to do with the dataset becoming screwed up when I deleted the old data.

So I went to the backup I made. And then, because I don’t trust myself, I created a back up of THAT backup.

I named it NO TOUCHY because, well, I kept over writing the first backup.

I swear, I am smart.

Anyhoo…

I beat my head against the wall for a few weeks, playing with it here and there, when I had a spare moment at work.

Yesterday, I had the hallelujah moment.

I HAD NAMED ONE OF THE FIELDS DIFFERENTLY.

Turns out there is a big fucking difference between CustNum and Cust Number. ESPECIALLY when the damn thing is looking for CustNum.

So now, my pretty report works again.

About fucking time.

 

- - - - - - - - - -

Great snippet of life at home:

Me: So, I’m watching Titans and it’s OK. You know, DC Comics, Robin.

Him: I thought you didn’t like superheros.

Me: No, I don’t, but I’m totally down for some Dick Grayson.

Him: Dick Racing?

Me: That too.