My Project Board

I have been inspired by Holly and Wade to create a project board. Something that will keep that ever list of growing things I should take care of eventually. If you are Holly and Wade, that probably means later that week. For me, I can settle for sometime in the next month. :P We all have to start somewhere.

So! My first project is going to be the create said project board. My sister creates cork boards from wine corks. Ingenious! I asked for some guidance from her on how to make this, but once I get it going, it will serve as the meeting place of a series of post-it note looking things for projects I want to do.

Namely things like my mirror on the back of my dresser. I had a corner break off which I have kept in the hopes of gluing it back together. It has been broken for almost a year now and there is sits. I don't really know what glue to buy for this project, but I am sure some nice person at Home Depot can educate me.

I am sure there are more things that will go on the board, but I often feel like I will remember something I needed to do, forget about it for roughly 3 months, then have an, "Oh yeah, that thing" moment. If it were all in one nice area, it may keep it to the front of my brain and get done. Then again, it could collect dust like most other things. At least it will give the look of being organized and motivated. :)

Are you popular?

I am a user of facebook. It pains me to say it, but yes, I have a profile and friends and silly pictures as well. I think the idea behind it is pretty cool. They have a lot of applications and things you can add to you profile like where you have been and your favorite movies. You can also add all your likes, join groups with similar interests and take part in polls.

I just added a new application to my profile mostly because I was bored and thought, what the hell? Well as I play around with it more I am just blown away by it and not in the good way. It's called Top Friends. It claims to let you select friends that you check the most and put them in a separate area so it's easier to message them, check their profile, etc. And it does this, but when you go to the application there is so much more.

Not only can you track your top friends, invite them to use top friends, and put a ranking to the actual top friend spot, you can also see your popularity. They give you a popularity rating based on how many people have you as one of their top friends. They give you the next level to try for, right now I Have a Nice Personality, however I could get bumped to, People Like Me, from there who knows! It actually says, " To improve your popularity, invite more friends to make their own Top Friends list!"

Now figuring that most of the people that use facebook are the younger crowd who are always trying to find their place and make friends, etc, I cannot fathom how this helps at all. I have to be cool in virtual land too? In fact I even felt a little slighted by the idea of an application telling me I only have a nice personality because I don't have top friend ranks with every person I know. Then I was like, what a minute, your a machine and I don't need you to keep tally for me to know who really likes me.

They also include a drink feature here. I don't know, maybe if you send them virtual drinks, they will like you better? But they start you with water, tea, light beer, and a strawberry punch. If you send 5 drinks, you can get the ability to send a rum and coke. I almost just want to bombard people with drinks just to see what will happen. I just thought to myself, "what kind of crack is this?"

They do have a neat feature of applying a mood which is basically a labeled icon, but it's cute, so props there. However I have learned that I can now keep a public record of who I like best if they are on facebook and have already allowed me to be friends with them. This apparently is how you become "popular". I hope to make my other friends try harder to edge their way to the top friends ranks. I can bribe my way to the top of my other friends lists with strawberry punches and tea. All to achieve some pointless ranking in virtual land. Yay!

Creamy or Crunchy?

When was the last time you went to buy peanut butter? Did you notice how many choices you had? Let's say you have the normal brands, JIF, Skippy, Petter Pan, Smuckers, and you average store brand. Now each of those probably come in at least creamy and crunchy, and maybe even extra crunchy. Some of them may even come in combos of those choices like, reduced fat, light, and contains 8 essential vitamins. That's without adding in all the varieties of natural peanut butter. And while we are at it, might as well figure in the jelly/peanut butter combo because you may be too lazy to open two jars to make a sandwich. And to top it off, some people may be trying to price shop.

My point is, nothing these days is a simple choice. The act of choosing a type of peanut butter could very well lead to a nervous break down. I won't even get into buying cream cheese. And that's just at the grocery store.

My latest book that I am reading is the second in the Anne of Green Gables series, Anne of Avonlea. I think it's a good book and I get sucked into it. But the book is based on simpler times before all technology and modern day stuff. Granted it's a book so it's not addressing the real issues of living in that time period, but more who is misbehaving in a one room school house. Their biggest crisis for a day may be helping a man make a cake because he didn't know what he was doing.

I just wonder what it would be like to live in that time period. It just seems like a night and day comparison to the chaotic world we live in. I think there are a lot of pluses to todays world versus then, but sometimes I like to be smarter than the things I am working with. Who knows, maybe in the after life I can go play in different time periods.

I know, deep thoughts...

Not your average 486

I have done it. I have finally done it. I have purchased my first computer. Does this sound a little ridiculous? Probably. I am half-way into my 20s and I have never once purchased an actual computer. I got my first one for my graduation gift from college. My dad had the good sense that I would probably need one of these pieces of technology as I was on my way to higher education. Good man. This came with an 8 Gig hard drive and a legal copy of Windows 98. Pretty fancy.

Sometime later in college I decided to upgrade some components. My dad bought my a large 30 Gig hard drive which at the time I said, how will I ever fill this up. Answer - World of Warcraft, 10 Gigs. I also upgraded a processor, video card, and power supply at various other points in its life. It never had another legal copy of any software on it. Yay college peoples finding the loopholes and this burn disk thing was pretty sweet! Finally once I graduated from college, my computer said the hell with you. It died. But did I think I should buy another? No way! I proceeded to use half a laptop. That's right, half. The screen was missing, but it allowed internet access and the ability to communicate with people. Perfect! I can't recall what the solution here was to actually fix my computer again. I may have just used that laptop until Rob bought his new computer. I inherited his old computer with my hard drive in it. That is what I own today.

For a while now it's been whining at me. "But I don't have enough room, I don't have enough memory." All it seems to do these days is bitch, bitch, bitch. I swear. Well I got this great idea that I was going to officially purchase a new computer. I managed to purchase a 19" widescreen monitor to replace to one that was handed down to me a few months ago, I felt encouraged. But what to buy? I spazzed about this for a few days, which turned to weeks, and now it's been months. Rob finally put it in plain terms, "whatever you get will be infinitely better than what you currently have, buy it already!"

So after months of wondering what to buy, I finally held out until Dell simplified it with, this is your one option, this option is free, and here are all sorts of coupons! You sir, have a deal! I put in all my information, verified it with some people, proceeded to the checkout, and finally hit submit! Shortly after, I received the email with expected delivery date. I get to wait almost a freaken month!!! Let me tell you how anti-climatic that was. Well, since I have been on computers (8 years) what's another month? What a pain. But at least it will be a pretty blue!!

Demotivation

Sometimes, all it takes is a poster to put things in perspective. Some brilliant mind came up with De-motivational posters shortly after the motivational posters came out. I think these have been a bigger success because they reflect reality a little too closely.

My co-workers and I were checking them out a while back trying to figure out which ones we should purchase and hang around our cube. We very soon after found we would have to buy the lot and we would probably be fired for some "HR Related Incident".

I have posted some of my favorites here. Although some people have also gone ahead and adapted this format and started to create some of their own. The one below is probably my favorite that is not on their website.

So true, so freaken true.

Work Annoyances

Remember that lady in Office Space that answered the phones with her high pitch icky voice? That's the kind of annoyances I am talking about. On more than one occasion I have found myself inside the set of Office Space at work and I will probably continue to do so while I work in a cube farm office. Because we are all so comfy cozy close together without a way to block each other out, there are bound to be things that gradually grate on your nerves that another office mate is doing. That being said, I am going to share some highlights from my office.

One - The guy who clips his nails at his desk. For some reason or another this bothers me enough to make me get up and go take a walk. That's a personal hygiene issue best left to the walls of your home.

Two - People who almost clear their throat. They try to do an "ahem", but it didn't work so they will repeat the process of almost clearing their throat for about 30 minutes. You would think just clearing the throat would be less irritating for all parties involved.

Three - The guy who does laps at lunch around the floor. There is a guy in my office who likes to speed walk at lunch wearing just his under shirt. Thankfully I do not have to see this all the time as my desk doesn't face the opening, but for my two cube mates who get this show everyday they are trying to figure out a way to tell a 50 year old man, that ain't cool.

Four - The 200 emails you get from the person one cube over because they can't consolidate thoughts before hitting the send button. I think the record for me was 6 emails in about 45 minutes from one person when it could have been just 1. Like I want to process through all that junk.

Five - The loud talker who doesn't seem to work. We have a guy in our IPT that will wander from cube to cube to cube talking about the latest thing with money. The new gym reimbursement plan, changes to taking comp time vs overtime and which is better, how much is paying for new windows, you name it. By the time he has hit your cube, you have already heard the story 3 times and don't wish to encourage him any more, but he will talk even if you ignore him.

Of course there are more, but I thought sticking to the top five is plenty. Let's just hope I am not contributing to the issues at hand. ;)

Harry Potter

The Harry Potter craze is back! This month is probably going to be the highest grossing month for J.K. Rowling yet. What's another billion or so to the richest woman in England? The fifth movie, Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, is currently in theaters. Also in one weeks time, the most prized final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, is released for public reading. I am a huge Harry Potter fan. I believe this to be a glorious month as well. Of course in preparation for this month, I have been doing an obscene amount of reading.

I have chosen to re-read the entire Harry Potter series. So far I am about 3/4 of the way through the fifth book. Even though I have not finished the book, this did not prevent me from watching the movie, however it would have been nice to have finished it. If I could only skip out of work for a few days. Hmmm.... :P I did manage to see the latest movie on opening day. Rob picked up tickets on his way home from work for the 9pm showing. I told him we better get there an hour early as I have previously gone to see other Harry Potter movies on opening day and you are better off getting there early. At 8pm we pulled into the theater and promptly got in line taking spots 5&6 in the line. About 10 minutes later the line erupted behind us and then proceeded to get so long is started to snake around the lobby. Experience has paid off! We got decent seats and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I won't put spoilers in here because that's not my style, but it was really well done. A little cheesy in a few parts, but on a whole, it was fabulous. I want to see it again.

I have also been spending some time trying to fill a co-worker in on the details of the Harry Potter series. He is a movie watcher only which I feel is quite sad because these books are so easy to read. I have lent him my fourth book and picked out the last few pages for him to read so he understands what is going on and the why it's happening. I am sure Monday I will be asked for more back story which I am happy to provide. I think the people in my office think I am nuts. I am ok with that.

Now I have 7 days to read the remaining series before the 7th book hits my hands. I probably won't do a whole lot next weekend except read. I can't wait to find out what happens. I have been told I must really be motivated to be reading all of these books again. I say it's a fine line between being motivated and being slightly retarded. :P It will pay off in the end.