Good morning.

Another day. More work. I've got a to-do list for today, and I'll probably get a few calls regarding the interviewing process as well. Whee-fun.

I've handed the pager off. That's nice. The darned dog has had his morning run down the office hallway and scared the bejeezus out of me by his sudden appearance. That's not nice. He ran into my coworkers' office next door, where they are more dog people, instead of into mine. That's nice.

What the heck is this dog doing in the office? I mean - when he was a guide dog puppy, yes. He washed out of the program; he's a pet now. Four years ago, I would have freaked, shut my office door, cried, and demanded the dog be taken away. Today I can deal with it; he sometimes freaks me briefly, but that's it. I think I'm finally getting that phobia under control. Which does not mean that I understand in the least what the hell someone's pet dog is doing in the office regularly.

I mean - okay, N. brought in her little dogs, confined to her office, when her house was being painted, so they wouldn't be subjected to that. And R. brought his cats - again confined to his office - during a fumigation. That I understand fine. True, there are boarding kennels, but I don't mind pets in the office for a day or two during stuff like that, as long as they're mostly confined.

This guy is in 2-4 days a week, for the whole day, and his owner lets him wander off-leash. It wasn't so bad when you could say he was in training and needed to learn to deal with an office, and even being loose in an office, as might happen when he was working with a blind person. He's a pet now. And they have a new puppy in guide dog training, whom we've seen what, 2-3 times since he started, a couple months ago? To be fair, we didn't see the now-pet dog until he was older, mostly, either.

I've asked Y. to keep this dog under control. I'm not quite at the point of asking him to get it the heck out of our office yet.

But I don't understand. I don't understand how he thinks it's okay/reasonable to bring a pet to the office on a near-daily basis.

Stupid tooth.

So I had a tooth start aching this weekend, mostly to cold. I go into the dentist today, she tells me it's probably my sinus pressure (yay allergies), which can cause it to feel like you have a toothache (which I actually already knew, but I didn't think it played in to cold sensitivity!), because she didn't see anything odd in my mouth. Then she asked if I wanted an x-ray anyway.

So I got one, because I wanted to be sure. She said, "That's odd." Said it looked like my filling was loose in the x-ray. Went back into my mouth. Said it didn't look loose in there, but maybe sllightly chipped (I thought it looked fine before the x-ray??).

So she put some sealant on it and told me to call her back if it still hurt in two days. I took a tylenol and a decongestant when it got back to work, and I'm feeling okay now, but we'll see. Somehow, I get the impression she wanted to get on with her day....

(no subject)

Anyone know a good C programmer?

*whines*

Considering the current job market, and considering that techs were hit, you'd think I'd have an easier time finding someone.

Except, of course, it was mostly the dot-com's, and we're not hiring for Java, HTML, etc. Not that there weren't some C programmers in there, I'm sure, but it does make it harder.

I'm not a buzz-word. *sniffles*

Wow. I love good luck!

So, after work, I was supposed to go look at the TV we want and ask one technical question (but not get it - Scott's brother can get a discount on it for us). I went, but they'd rearranged the entire department enough that I couldn't find it. Mrph. On the other hand, they were running the game - lots of various colors, including flesh. I saw one that had really good, "real" colors and looked nice to me.

I'm going to ask Scott. He may want to see it. I think it's smaller than the original one, but it's still plenty large - 27" - and it's about $100 cheaper. Of course, Scott's brother can get everything at some particular markup above cost, so that may not mean much. I wrote down lots of product info on it (which is what I had also meant to do for the other, besides asking them to prove the inset box could be taken off, something they couldn't find the remote to do during our last visit to the store).

On my way over, I thought, while I was there, I'd get a UPS for the Mac. I've been content without it because, once I proved to myself that it would start and run, it's been off. No point in running a machine you aren't going to put software on for a week. But it was marginally possible my software would arrive today (not likely: it would require them to have received my check on time, and shipped the software before 4 pm the day they got the check - but possible), and I figured, since I was already over there, I'd just deal with that.

Then I waffled. I mean, maybe the employee discount would be worth it there too. So i went to look at them, and figure out which one I wanted. I had to avoid my favored brand: they're good, but they're designed for nothing but the computer and monitor to be crucial. This guy has an external disk drive with its own power, and I'd like it to stay on if the power goes! I found one with four sockets supported by the battery and four more that only offered surge protection. A line of them. One was labelled as $109.90 marked down to $79.90 - not a bad savings; and that actually made it $20 cheaper than the next weaker model.

I snagged it. And then we had fun: to get the discount, you had to see a supervisor. So I did. When they put it in, it comes in with the full price, then they say how much off. It came up as...$169.99! Ack! So we went to check the sign. No, it clearly referenced the product number, and said $109.90 marked down to $79.90 - I was not imagining things.

So he gave me the price that was displayed, and the computer protested "sell below cost?" when he entered $79.90 off, and then he took that value and plugged it in "off" to make the result $79.90, and it protested again.

I'm sure the sign was changed before I made it to the checkout stands, but I do believe I just beat the employee discount. Now, as long as it works, it's all good.

The Mac Has Moved.

That was fun. The Mac is now in the corner beside Scott's computer desk, so all the comptuers (except Scott's ancient 386, which is upstairs) are in a row again. It fit just about perfectly, that "TV stand": there's about two inches on either side, enough to work nicely.

Of course, the games cabinet was there. It's now over by the heater, where the TV stand was. We may move it, but I'd vastly rather have the games closet than the computer and UPS over by that heater, considering we do use it in the winter!

I have heard many sides of the religious OS wars. Me? I'm impressed by cable-less mice and keyboards. Not normally, no, but right this minute, yes.

The biggest part of the undertaking was moving the games cabinet, because unloading it would've been a pain. Fortunately, it has wheels, so Scott rolled it into place after we cleared a path for it. Then I unloaded the Mac from the TV stand - er, Mac stand - rolled the Mac stand (with only its bottom cabinet full) over to the corner where the gaming cabinet had been, and reloaded the Mac onto it. The biggest part of that operation? Untying the blasted Mac, as I am not capable of carrying a computer, a spare drive, a modem, a keyboard, a mouse, two speakers, and a monitor simultaneously. They did not want to untie.

It is now in its new corner. The power cords are dangling down the front, waiting to be attached to the UPS after it's had time to charge. (It's supposed to have four hours, probably I won't bother till tomorrow night, since I'll hardly use it tomorrow morning, after all.) The UPS disturbs me. Four 'battery' outlets, four 'surge protection only' outlets. Nice little thing.

Except. It's irridescent. Pale. Lavender. Almost white with a hint of purple, really. It's a cute color. But it's not a cute UPS, because it can't really manage cute. What disturbs me is that someone was obviously trying. I don't care if it's a nice fashion accessory, it just better not let the computer fry! Jeesh.

*grins* Ah, well. On that note I am going to bed, which I shoulda done an hour or more ago. Except I'm feeling much happy with having accomplished that, and when my dad gets here tomorrow with the television stand (he and mom have an old one they're not using, hence my decision to go on using the Mac Stand as a Mac stand, and not a TV stand), there will be somewhere to put it!

If we haven't piled anything there by then, but even we aren't usually that quick to clutter. Close, but not quite.