In a credit card bind and having to reach out to my ex

A couple of Thursdays ago, I drove up from the Twin Cities to Winnipeg. There was a snowstorm with reduced visibility. I managed to get to Winnipeg safely.

I had a problem checking into my hotel. I had a one-night stay before flying home on Friday. I also booked a hotel near Toronto Pearson International Airport in case I was too tired to drive home. My flight would get in late that night.

At the hotel in Winnipeg, my credit card was declined. I didn't understand why as I had just used it all day for fuel, food, and more. 

I didn't have a backup credit card. My other credit card was in the mail. Canada Post was on strike. The strike is over, but it will take some time to get it.

I had to find someone to bail me out. It was 9:30 pm Central time. It was 10:30 pm Eastern to figure out who could help me out at this time of night.

I did something that I didn't want to do. I texted and called my ex. Naturally, he didn't pick up or respond.

He did text me over 24 hours later. I said that it was urgent. He didn't respond, so I moved on. All I got from that text exchange was a thumbs-up reaction from him.

He was too late. The usual.

It reinforced the fact that he has never been there for me when I needed him. I managed to find a friend who was willing to e-transfer $400 to me.

The hotel room was just over $200 a night. I needed to supply a security deposit, which I felt was ridiculous being almost twice the amount of my hotel room.

I checked out the following day. I immediately sent an e-transfer to my friend for the security deposit. Today, I sent the remaining funds that I owed to her for the room rate.

I am thankful that I have friends who are kind and trusting. I am truly grateful for their help.

It turns out that the hotel by the airport prematurely charged my room and deposit to my card. It explains why I couldn't check in at the hotel in Winnipeg.

I cancelled my reservation at the hotel by the airport. The funds were released. I wasn't impressed by this premature charging move.

What I should have done was to prepay for my hotel in Winnipeg. It would have guaranteed my stay without the hotel in Toronto getting to my card first with a premature hold.

I hope that I never have to reach out to my ex. I expected that he wouldn't jump at helping me. Sadly, I was correct.

My colleague needs a lot of help

Earlier this year, I trained a woman who was supposed to replace a writer. It turned out that this woman was equally as bad. Our manager decided to terminate the first writer's contract.

This second woman's birthday is three days after mine. Yet, we are so different on so many levels. I call her the fake Cancerian, as she does not express a whole lot of empathy towards anyone and doesn't exhibit any traditional Cancerian traits. Everything is also centred around here, which is not Cancerian in nature, either.

I noticed during training that she was not good with details. She followed steps 1 through 4 in a procedure, skip a few, then do steps 7, 9, and 12. I found her lack of following sequential steps to be odd.

My manager recently gave her a task to create a document from scratch. I would be supervising. 

She isn't the best communicator. When we had our first demo session on the application, I asked questions. She didn't.

When I looked at her first draft, it was incomplete. She was given a playground to create and delete items -- literally play around with the application in a safe environment. She never did that. She simply used the data that others had provided. 

I noted a typo in a screenshot and asked her to replace it. She couldn't create a new item to fix the typo. It was almost as if she was intimidated to explore.

She called a meeting with the software developer who provided the demo. He called a few other folks. She didn't ask any questions. It's her downfall.

I have provided constructive feedback on her first draft. I have yet to see her incorporate my changes. I don't get her. I don't know why she is reluctant to make the changes.

She just sent her second draft out. She claimed that she included all topics. I didn't see that. Neither did the developer.

Our manager revealed to team leads yesterday that there will be a staff reduction. She is the one who will be let go. It's mainly because she does a mediocre job with tasks and she has poor communication skills. She is also under contract.

I don't know when he will break the news to her that she will be out of a job. Perhaps she knows that her time with our department is coming to an end. She applied for a job with the company in Ottawa.

I know the hiring person. I hope that she seeks an account about this candidate from me or my manager. She will face the same issues with this writer as we are.

It's interesting that this post was not the one that I had intended to post. It is nice that I have this outlet to share some weirdness going on. It also motivates me to write here more frequently.

Technical support - hit and miss

I have made this observation in the past, but the various helpdesks that I have at work suck. I dealt with one guy who was incredibly useless.

In a particular software application, there is a field called Area. It's essentially your department's name. I clicked the dropdown field and none of them matched what I belonged to. On top of that, the documentation had a broken URL to the application, so I had to ask about both issues.

I got the proper URL. The guy told me to select one and let my colleagues know what I had selected. Huh? He was so out of it that I asked if I could connect with a subject matter expert instead. I did (at least he got that right) and she was a ray of sunshine. She answered my questions and created an area just for me with all the proper access rights.

It's nice when I go from frustrated to happy. That guy needs to go, though. Even the woman told me that!

Work laptop issues - ugh!

I have had a couple of issues with my laptop since returning to work. Tuesday consisted of my laptop screen going completely dark. I have a feeling that looking at that screen for a bit caused my eye strain, which I haven't felt in years.

Yesterday, I spent half the day with the IT helpdesk to get me connected to the corporate network. I had a Windows update, which screwed up the corporate connection.

It's enjoyable to be back at work. I need to go back on vacation, where I didn't spend a ton of time looking at a screen and dealing with technology issues. Ah, memories!

Short breaks from blogging, but all is well

My Mac mini is shot. Luckily, I have my MacBook Air to fall back on. It is one reason why I have been taking mini breaks between posts.

The main reason is being tired. I was exhausted yesterday that I didn't bother.

All is well, though. I'm getting ready for the long weekend ahead. I'm doing a staycation.

Aging Mac mini

My Mac mini is acting up again. I haven't been able to boot it up for a couple of days. It is a decade old.

Luckily, I have a MacBook Air that still works. Frankly, both device are getting up there in years. I just don't feel like shelling out money to replace the Mac mini. My MacBook Air functions just fine that I still think it has a few years of good use.

I'll probably spend the the weekend troubleshooting. Right now, I need sleep.

A controlling since of my manager

I have a love-hate relationship with my boss. When he is in a good mood, he's fine. He is also a control freak. Sometimes, he comes across as being annoying.

My small team tends to go out for lunch on Fridays. As of late, he seems to want to join in. I don't mind. However, I tend to be the only one driving. He has a two-seater car. Ugh.

Recently, he said that he has driven 5,000 km in his car since May. I said that I'm at 6,000 km and I've had my new car since August. I said that I drive to work. He said the same thing. What he doesn't seem to remember is that I live farther from the office than he does. It's 50 km one-way for me.

On Friday, he wanted to do Korean food. That's fine. I haven't had Korean in a while. Naturally, I was driving. He first said that I hope that I knew where I was going. I said that I need passengers to keep their eyes open for a place that all of us haven't been to. I have two GPS apps on my phone.

While driving, my air pressure light went on. He heard it and questioned it. I said that it will go away, as it has been cold, and has turned off for the past two days. He basically said, "No, you don't understand," and went into a whole lecture about what to do. I was annoyed.

He then questioned the route that I was using.

"Google maps says to go down the street that we were on," he said.
"I'm' not on Google maps. We are going this way," I replied.

I can see why I don't like backseat drivers. The last time I experienced this situation was with my friend's ex-boyfriend years. In that case, I actually knew where I was going. Just chill.

The Korean restaurant was good. Unfortunately, he chose a fairly expensive restaurant. I felt bad for our intern for shelling out that much money for lunch.

Part of me wants to ban our manager from these lunches. I don't have to deal with such weird control issues. He doesn't know when to simply shut up and go with the flow.

Mac mini woes

My Mac mini is acting up again. I can't get to boot up. Ugh!

I suppose that it's a sign. My Mac mini is a decade old. Perhaps it's time to retire it.

Troubleshooting is my forte

I have been using an app on my phone to upload photos and write about my experiences for a while. Earlier this week, I upgraded the app to the latest version. It caused the upload photos feature to die.

I used to work in technical support. I was good at it. I ended up in second-level support. I'm not bragging. I look back at who I was back then and I was great.

These days, I often do troubleshooting at work. I am good at it, too. I am proud that I have this knack.

I reported this app issue to the software company. The woman insisted that I use the e-mail address associated with my account with this app. I had to explain that my messages get forward to my current account and provided my actual e-mail address on file. It is never a requirement to log into the account and write from it, although it is helpful. Just ask me for the e-mail address that I have registered with would have been sufficient.

The woman asked for screenshots and steps on what was going on. I write for a living, so that was easy for me to put together. I also pointed out that I have a Google Pixel 2XL phone running Android 10.

As expected, support couldn't reproduce this issue. It went to the engineering department.

I fixed the issue by myself a couple of hours ago. I could strengthen this support department if they offered a job to me.

I basically removed the faulty app. I went and downloaded an old app version that was released in March. I then installed it.

I proceeded to upgrade the app to the current version. The upload photo functionality works again. Go, me!

I wrote back to support and said that I fixed the issue myself. I didn't bother thanking the woman, as I did all the work. I did end the message cordially, though.

Thank goodness I enjoy solving issues. Otherwise, this app would be useless on my phone without this functionality restore.

A break from incompetence is nearly here

My incompetent colleague is going on vacation. Today is her last day at work before I get relief from her for over a week.

She proved to me this week that she does not know how to do her job efficiently. She spent more time than necessary getting a software release out the door, making rookie mistakes, and not planning her tasks properly. She has been doing this work for over half a year.

My manager stays at work late. She was with him the whole time. He shot me an e-mail, indicating that she was taking more time than she should. I agreed and pointed out that she can't prioritize her work on top of not being efficient.

She's good at blaming other things or people. She does not take responsibility for her own actions. It's painful dealing with her.

Although her attendance has improved slightly within the last few days, she sent an e-mail yesterday that she will be at work at 7:30 am today and leaving at 3:30 pm. She cannot get to work by 10:00 am on a good day. She lives a lot closer to the office than I do. I dream of getting to work in twenty minutes.

We'll see what happens later on today. I am looking forward to a break from her.

Mac mini issues after a software upgrade - again!

My Mac mini is dead. Yep, again.

I have High Sierra as its operating system. There was an update. I gave it a shot. All I get after the installation and countless reboots is a white screen with the Apple logo, and a grey status bar that does not budge.

I spent last night troubleshooting online with two different support guys. They were great, but I got disconnected from the text chat session.

I will be giving it a try later on tonight. Here's hoping that the connection doesn't die again.

Issues with the new employee continue

I haven't talked about the new employee for a bit. She is definitely the most challenging person to understand. This post explores a lot of my thoughts that I have shared with various folks for the past month.

We have a new authoring tool that most of our team has been gearing up to move to. I have said to this person that she is not ready. She doesn't have the basics down with our current authoring tool. My team consisting of this woman and two students are staying on our current tool.

She is stubborn and adamant to learn the new tool. Her reasoning, according to what she told my two students, is that there isn't a relationship between the two authoring tools. Um, that's because you don't understand the existing tool well enough to see that your transition to the new one will be difficult if you don't have a decent foundation on how things work.

Before the Christmas holidays, I had instructions for my two students to look at the training materials on the new tool. I specifically told the new employee that she wasn't ready and to focus on learning our current tool. What does she do? She watched one of the videos on the new tool.

She has raised a number of red flags in my eyes. The first one occurred during her third interview (it was my second one with her) where she said that she was a "slow learner." I brought that up to my manager, but he dismissed it. He thought that the extra time she spends after work to learn would make her catch up.

I was right. Hiring a slow learning in an IT field is bad.

She has been with the company for over two months. She cannot grasp simple things like knowing that the entire team is away on an all-employee meeting, which means that the team will not respond to her e-mails. She couldn't attend because she had a medical appointment that day and worked from home. Yet, she constantly sent out e-mails and even texted one of my students over work when she got to this offsite meeting that was not urgent. She does not take into consideration whether folks are physically able to respond to her e-mails. She is only thinking about herself.

Most of our department has to do a test that grants you access to this new tool, but for the production (live) environment. I said to this new employee that her main focus is to get up to speed with work so that she takes over one of my documentation software release duties. Her deadline is later than everyone else's to do this test. My manager made the same comment in a departmental meeting last Thursday.

What does she do? The following day, she takes this test. She hasn't gone through all the training materials or videos. She just did the test over and over again (you select either one answer or some combination) until she passed it.

I was annoyed. I told her so on Monday. The fact that she just asked for access to the test environment and was absolutely afraid to even log on was a joke. Now, she has access to a production environment where she could mess up everything with her current "knowledge" that she allegedly proved to possess on this test.

I told her she put the cart before the horse.. How meaningful are the answers that she memorized to ultimately pass this test? Not all that meaningful at this stage.

She doesn't listen. She has difficulty comprehending simple concepts. Yet, she does whatever she feels like.

She pointed out that she's not a linear learner. Yep, it shows. She is all over the map to the point where none of us truly knows what she is thinking. She has no sound judgment about much.

I had a talk with my manager on Monday night. I told him that my students and I have been drilling her with exercises and explaining concepts in multiple different ways. It is the plan that he first devised. It doesn't appear to be helping. I levelled with him and said that she wasn't a fit for this job. He nodded.

The problem is that the company is under a hiring freeze. We let her go and I am back to doing everything. I personally don't want her becoming a permanent employee at this company. She is not pulling her weight. I don't always want to be saving the day because we can't get another employee to fill the void.

On Tuesday, my manager wrote an e-mail to her and copied me. It was a snowday. He basically reinforced that she needs to work on understanding concepts and her job. All of us have noticed that she is great at memorizing, but does not understand what she is spewing out. She doesn't have critical thinking skills. She can't think for herself.

I had this chat with my guy when we were in the States. He agrees that it's probably better to get rid of her than having her pull down everyone.

The current plan is to have my students work with her on simulating a documentation release. We are assessing how she will do within the next two weeks. I have a feeling that she will be at the level that she is currently at -- slow and incompetent.

She's a nice person. She's just not suitable for this job.

Issues with my Mac mini and file backups

I had a bit of a scare with my Mac mini a couple of days ago. It was one reason why I didn't post anything in my blog for a bit. Yesterday, my Mac mini was still out of commission. I used my laptop to make my update.

The last time I used my Mac mini was the night before I went on vacation. When I came back, I uploaded all my photos to my computer and then shut it down.

The next day, my Mac mini would not boot up. You typically get a white progress bar and then your screen to sign in. I ended up with a black screen with four options to restore my computer. It wasn't a good sign.

I rebooted it a few times. I got something different each time, including a circle with a slash across it. My Mac mini was also trying to detect the power button and my wireless mouse, but was unsuccessful.

I decided to unplug my computer's power cable from the wall outlet, wait for roughly five minutes, plug it back in, and start my computer up. Guess what? My computer came back to life. Yay!

I did some research online. This incident happens when an automatic software update starts, but doesn't install completely. It must have happened while I was uploading my photos, but I had no indication that an update had happened. Powering off my computer cleared this installation process up and allowed my computer to boot up properly.

The last time this computer died on me occurred when I was upgrading the operating system. I went to the Genius Bar at my local Apple store. For some reason, genius sounds sarcastic in my head. The solution was to reinstall the operating system, which meant that whatever files weren't backed up would be lost.

I was bright back then to have the majority of my important files, the bulk of which are my photos and music, on my external hard drive. Wiping my entire hard drive was fine. I restored them just fine.

However, after restoring my Mac mini, my music remained on my external hard drive, but my photos had to be on my computer's hard drive to sync properly with my iPhone.

This recent scare made me decide to do the following:

• Move my Photos library back to my external hard drive. I don't own an iPhone anymore, so I don't have the need to store this library on my hard drive.
• Back up my Mac mim's hard drive. 

The second point is significant. I don't know why I never got around to backing up my data. The photos that I take on my Google Pixel phone are automatically backed up to Google Photos, so I"m good there. My photos taken with my DSLR camera are not backed up. Should I lose them on my hard drive, I have nothing.

Right now, I am in the process of moving my photos from my hard drive to my external hard drive. I have 170 GB of photos. It will take a while!

I also have Time Machine set up to back up my files at long last. Better late than never, as the saying goes.

The network is down - a perfect storm

It all started on Friday. Our content management system to author content was down just before lunch. We got database errors. My department seems paralyzed when such incidents take place. I got one of my students to report the problem.

Unfortunately, our helpdesk support is halfway around the world and doesn't look at off-hour issues. Ugh!

On the weekend, I had to do some preparation work. My team needed to create two documentation projects and requires all folks to not be working. I planned on doing this work on Saturday. Sure enough, I tried doing some copying work and database errors took place.

There errors were intermittent, though. I logged in using my regular account and I got tons of errors. I tried copying smaller sections with another administrative account and that worked. Weird.

Yesterday, I had my regularly scheduled 8 am meeting. I drive to work on the call. This meeting was delayed by half an hour. I called in about fifteen minutes from work. I couldn't connect to the network.

I walked into a meeting room that I had booked for my little team. My students told me that every network connection was down. It now made sense why I couldn't connect to my conference call. 

I walked over to the lunch room to get some hot water for my tea. I found out that there was a Canada-wide outage. Nice.

I headed back to my students to relay the news. I found out later that it was a global problem.

E-mail was down. I loved it. I didn't have any distractions. I didn't have to respond immediately to my manager's questions due to his incompetence.

Slowly, the network came back up. My team was able to log in to most of our applications and continue with our content projects. Others on my team weren't that lucky.

It was a trying day. My team handled it with grace and humour. We are good with teamwork, fuelled by cookies.

Productive day with a new laptop

Monday was quite a busy workday. It was nice that my manager was away, which should be the norm!

I had a conference call on my way to work. There are three of us on this call. Two of us have something meaningful to contribute each week. Our third colleague has little to contribute that is of value on any given week.

At the office, I spent my first half an hour on the phone with my cell phone provider. I got my employee discount applied and got reimbursed $32 CAD for the difference this month. Yay!

Moments later, I spent time collecting money towards a farewell gift for a colleague who is leaving the company. I find that if I don't organize such events, no one does it within our department.

Twenty minutes later, I received an e-mail indicating that my replacement laptop had arrived. I went to turn in my old Windows 7 laptop for a new Windows 10 one. The IT folks were helpful and pleasant under the circumstances. Every employee is getting a new laptop, so to orchestrate such a massive change takes a ton of patience.

Naturally, my configuring everything ran into bumps. I needed a new cable to connect one of my existing monitors to the new HDMI port on my laptop. The folks who had those cables were unavailable. Luckily, I bumped into my colleague in the washroom who had an extra cable. It made a huge difference trying to do work on a 14" screen for most of the day to a larger 32" one!

Of course, I couldn't download all the software applications that I needed from our company portal. I spent some time with an IT person over the phone to troubleshoot the issue. Ah, fun!

Tonight, I let my laptop run, sync, and sort itself out at home. Magically, everything works now. I can download the software programs that I need. My connection to the company's intranet works. I'm almost shocked.

I also managed to spend an hour late this morning reviewing documents and answering questions that my students had. We also had a relaxing lunch together with good conversation.

I love a productive day, especially when I chat with so many different folks.

Cell phone plan and corporate discount

Every two years, I have to renew my cell phone plan. I am on a corporate discount. 

It's always an event to get the discount reapplied every two years. I'm at that stage again.

I normally have to get a special passcode. I got mine. Apparently, being able to apply it online is supposed to make it easy. It's not the case. It claims that my cell phone number isn't eligible.

I'll need to give my cell phone provider a call in the morning. Ah, what fun.

This minor hassle ties in with my budget and debt reduction. I save 25% with the corporate discount. I decided to keep the same plan that I have been with for now over two years. I don't need more data. This plan works for me.

Here's hoping that getting this billing issue fixed goes smoothly.

Watch-syncing issues with steps and my trusty Fitbit One

I bought a Pebble Time Round watch last year in May. I love the watch. It's functional and pretty.

Unfortunately, the app that I use to sync my steps from this watch is flaky. I suspect that the app isn't supported anymore because Fitbit bought Pebble.

It's funny that I had to go back to my trusty Fitbit One device to be able to track my steps accurately. I'm glad that I can.

Of course, many phones track your steps. The problem is that I do not carry my phone wherever I go, so it is of little use to me.

I love my watch, though. I now have both my Fitbit One and my Pebble Time Round on the same wrist. I don't like the clip that comes with the Fitbit One. I have broken quite a number of them that I prefer having a bracelet band instead.

Ah, the joys of technology both failing and being sturdy.

Technology has my attention as of late

All is well. Various distractions have caused me to steer away from blogging momentarily. They are technology-related distractions.

All this troubleshooting has been a bit of a pain. It seems that syncing photos to my iPhone works if I complete this procedure:

1. Upload my photos to the Photos application on my Mac mini.
2. Reboot my iPhone.
3. Close the Photos application.
4. Close (if it is open) and open iTunes.
5. Connect my iPhone and sync it with iTunes.

It actually might be best to leave my photos off my phone. I will see how I feel, but at least I have resolved the issue.

Then, my Skype account got hacked on Thursday. I couldn't log into my account. I ended up resetting my password and then finding out that I have Russian contacts. 

It's scary, as my password was a decent mix of characters and numbers to begin with. The hacker managed to use half my Skype credits, which only amounted to $3 CAD. I am asking Microsoft to consider reimbursing me for the amount that I did not use.

On a good note, I have officially changed cell phone providers. I have a new Google Pixel phone, which gives me unlimited space to upload my photos to Google's Photos app.

The Pixel phone is wonderful thus far. My guy listened to me talk about it. I am his geeky gadget girl, after all.

I may ditch my iPhone at this rate! Stay tuned.

I will return to regular blog posts soon.

Profiled for being a bad girl

I was pleasantly surprised to find that an excerpt of one of my blog posts made it on Spanking Blog. It was my post of being spanked hard and admitting that I was a bad girl. Thanks so much!

I have upgraded my Mac mini to the Sierra OS. At first, it looked like everything was running smoothly. I am now running into the same photo-syncing issues like I did last year between my phone and iTunes. Oh, what fun!

Once I have fixed all these issues, I will work on writing about my most recent spanking.

Software upgrades late at night don't always go smoothly

I don't know why I do it. I suppose it's because I tend to be a night owl, so I am most productive at night.

What am I referring to with the it reference? I tend to say yes to upgrading the operating system on my phone, tablet, or computer from midnight into the wee hours of the morning.

I don't know why I do it. I just do.

Yesterday morning, at around 00:30, I saw an update for an iOS update on my iPhone. My phone was syncing on my Mac mini. I normally do these system updates through wifi.

I decided to go ahead and begin the upgrade. Bad mistake.

The software download went well. Unfortunately, my phone stalled on the "Waiting for iPhone..." screen.

I ended up rebooting my Mac book mini. By then, it was closer to 02:30. I couldn't stay up any longer and went to bed.

I woke up four hours later. I was a zombie all day at work.

The good news is that my phone had the update successfully applied. In future, I need to take into considering that sometimes glitches happen, which will cause more aggravation than necessary.

The moral of this story? I should continue upgrading through wifi like I normally do. I don't have such stalling issues.

Of course, I should do such upgrades much earlier in the day. This upgrade took me away from blogging. At least I am making up for it now.