Weekend thoughts and humidity

Weekends come and go so quickly.

I spent Sunday writing, cooking, and relaxing. It was nice.

The only downside is that I feel like I am overheating at home. With two fans on, it's humid on the top floor of my home. Absolutely no breeze came in when I opened all windows.

Ugh.

Here's hoping that I can sleep better tonight.

Busy workday and bonus pay

It was a busy workday on Tuesday. The day flew by. I loved it.

Diva woman drives me crazy. I asked for her feedback last Friday. She provided it yesterday. Ugh!

She also said that she had "a couple" of thoughts, which ended up being three. A couple is two. Double ugh!

My friend, who is also my colleague, asked me about when we typically get our bonus pay. It's coming up. It's typically the last pay period in March. It feels like you have won the jackpot because you get your bonus pay with your regular paycheque.

I like looking forward to a surplus of money. 

Extended weekend, and shoulder and neck pain are over

My five-day extended weekend is over. I feel rested. My neck and shoulder pain are gone. All is good.

Shorter workweeks tend to be busy for me. I am hoping that this week is an exception.

Amazon locker, parking, and minivan mixup

Yesterday, I decided to get some air and pick up a couple of packages at my local Amazon locker hub. It happens to be inside a Whole Foods.

Unfortunately, a large, white minivan decided to park super close to my car in the parking lot. It was a Chinese female. I just stared at her as I left my car to go into the store. I was not impressed.

When I came out with my packages, I got to my car and slowly squeezed myself into my car. A woman came over and asked whether it was a tight squeeze. She offered to move her vehicle.

Wait a minute. This woman wasn't the same Chinese female. I asked her whether she had the correct van. I made her laugh when I said that she didn't look Asian and I knew that I had given that woman a dirty look for parking ridiculously close to my car.

She owns a white minivan, but the sun in her eyes made her believe that this vehicle was hers. I said that it happens. I wished her a good day and she reciprocated.

She was nice. I liked chatting briefly with her. I appreciated her kindness and humanity.

Progress and plan of attack on an massive spreadsheet

I spent Tuesday working on a page of updates. It took me a good eight hours of thorough work.

I have roughly ten pages left. I am going to copy and paste content as-is. It's not the best method, but it does make my documents complete.

Once all that is done, I'll cycle back and do my thorough fixes. It's my current plan that will definitely get the content in by end-of-day Wednesday. If I can't get my thorough fixes in by Wednesday, that's okay. I'll continue fixing them for the next software release.

I dislike scope creep. An additional 2,000 rows of information in this one spreadsheet was completely unexpected.

Spreadsheet nightmare and next weekend's plans

I have a deadline of Wednesday to get two documents delivered. It's involves in regards using ugly spreadsheets as my source. They went through massive updates since I last used them in December.

I spent Sunday working on these documents. I have made good progress, but need to go through roughly 2,000 rows of data. I've already gone through that may rows! We'll see if I can get through this nonsense.

Next weekend will be better. I'm getting together with a friend on Saturday now that our lockdown has been lifted once again.

Stop contacting me!

People are interesting creatures. I wish that they wouldn't contact me sometimes.

I have a contact on one social media platform who decided to message me on the weekend. He noticed that a business listing that he had created had changed to something else. I continued checking into said place. He basically said that it looked like I was checking into a government site.

So, what's the purpose of your contacting me? I told him that I was fully aware that I was checking into said location and treating it like the original. He wrote back and said that he knew that, but the new location was further away from where he was.

Buddy, why are you contacting me? If the listing is wrong, go report it. I had already done that, but I didn't want to break the news to him, which I think is what he wanted me to do or was simply clueless.

Folks are not clear with what they are trying to accomplish. Don't complain about it to me. Do something about it yourself.

The diva contacted me about an apparent issue. She inherited part of my workload over two years ago. She still doesn't get it. I couldn't tell whether she didn't understand how document revisions worked or if she didn't understand how to interpret document numbers.

Woman, you have taken over the job for over two years. It was such a basic question where she included our manager that she now looks like she can't comprehend the work that she is tasked to do for a while.

Don't bug me. I've got work to do.

Fixing a novice document design issue

When it comes to document design, it's an interest of mine and I'm passionate about it. I think of how useful the document is to the end user when I'm either creating or updating a document.

A few months ago, when I looked at a document that a fellow colleague was working on, she had repeated the service that she was documenting in the title of every page. I asked her why she did that. She told me that her team lead, the diva, told her to.

Ugh. That's poor document design. It's pretty clear that you're in a document talking about the service. Why have it as a prefix for the title of each page that you have? You're taking the user read the same prefix over and over. Is that practical or helpful? No.

Her argument was that it was a best practice from a previous solution that she worked on. Um, no. Your page titles needs to be meaningful, but not monotonous and redundant.

My manager sent her a request to fix this issue in multiple documents. 

I'm such an advocate for the end user. This person wants answers immediately when looking at a document. It's not happening with unnecessary fluff.

My colleague had brought up this issue, but the diva was adamant that she was right. The issue is that the diva doesn't come from a writing background and it shows here. Our colleague does. I do, too.

The other sad thing is that she has been a writer on our team for seven or eight years now. She hasn't caught on.

Team lunch and expense predicament

Our team get-together was a lot of fun. We spent over three hours eating, drink, and chatting on a hot, humid day on a shaded patio. Eventually, the humidity dropped a bit and it was more comfortable.

The good news is that my corporate credit card worked to pay for our outing, which was nearly $400 

CAD. The downside is that my manager shouldn't have asked me to expense this meal. There's a corporate rule that if the manager is a part of a group activity that needs to be expensed, he needs to file it, and not someone on his team whom he manages.

It opens quite the can of worms to get my money. He doesn't like using e-transfer. I don't want to meet him somewhere to get the funds in cash, hit a bank machine, and deposit them. Ugh.

Anyway, we'll see how diligent the expense folks are in figuring out my expense report.

My phone died

I was about to work out last night and my phone fell from a small table to a carpeted floor. It always has a screen protector and a case on.

My Google Pixel 4a 5G didn't make it. The screen kept on flickering and it went black.

I dealt with Google support twice. The first woman was great. The second one was a dud. My phone is less than a year old, so a replacement phone is coming my way.

The crazy thing is that I need to print labels to have my old phone shipped to Google. I no longer have access to anything at the office because we all have been locked out during the pandemic. I have sent my files to a local printing place. I feel that it would be cheaper to pay for these printouts than getting printer ink cartridges on a printer that I haven't used in years.

So much fun! Thank goodness for my trusty Google Pixel 2XL phone. I am thankful that it works.

Mr Men = Spongebob

Yesterday, I decided to get a Happy Meal from McDonald's. I haven't had one since I was a kid.

Why did I get one? It's offering Mr Men as the toy. I grew up with the Mr Men series, so it's a nostalgic thing.

Well, I specified the Mr Men Happy Meal. What did I get? Spongebob. Ugh!

Apparently, Mr Men all got a facelift and became Spongebob. I will try again soon and hope that the folks at my local McD's get my order correct!

Long week, especially dealing with a colleague who jumped the gun

This week feels long already. I had to deal with a project manager who can't read.

I had sent a bunch of links for a couple of developers to review, clearly asking them to review my work. This project manager decided to forward them to a different department and said that my work was done. What? It was an incredibly premature move.

It's sad that I had to explicitly state that it's not done in my eyes. My work needs an internal review first. 

It's unfortunate that the developer who originally forwarded his work to me had copied this project manager on it. Next time, I will remove her completely from the message when I respond because she can't read.

Ugh!

Sleep

Last night, I didn't sleep all that well. I woke up way too early, likely because my body is used to getting up for work. Ugh!

The other issue was that I had black tea fairly late in the evening. Oops.

I hope that I'll sleep better tonight. I'm on vacation. Please co-operate, body!

My ex and his YouTube channel

I feel that I need to get rid of my ex-guy as a connection on LinkedIn. It's good that he was never interested in social media, so distancing myself from him on those platforms after he broke my heart has been easy.

He isn't on LinkedIn much. Neither am I. I go on there once every month or two. Well, in my feed wiht twenty notifications was a post from him. He invited people to look at his YouTube channel where he does book reviews.

My eyes rolled. They rolled hard. I checked one video out. I stopped after a minute.

He isn't the guy I fell in love with. All I see is an insensitive jerk who only contacts me these days when he's horny. He looks sincere in the video. I know better. It's a facade.

It took him a year to post these videos. He actually posted these videos in August 2019. I don't know why it took him a year to promote his channel.

I'm glad that he has a hobby. I simply don't want to hear about it.

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!

My intern's work term has been extended at the eleventh hour!

It's amazing what a difference a day makes. Well, it's kind of more than a day.

On Tuesday, I had a talk with my manager. He let me know that he was trying his best to extend our intern to stay an additional four months. He told me, "Don't hold your breath." It has been difficult due to hiring freezes.

Yesterday, I had a good chat with my intern. I thanked him for everything. He said nice things about working with me. It was great.

Well, in our team meeting, our manager asked me if it was okay to assign work to our intern. I had to remind him that his time with us was limited. It was only then that my manager said that our intern is with us for another four month.

Both my intern and I are ecstatic that he's staying. He genuinely likes working with us. It was just odd how secretive our manager was about sharing this news, which drives me nuts.

The best part of the chat that I had with my intern was that we both like Marie Kondo's method of organizing. He has her book. Impressive!

Thoughts about dating and double-standards

I was wrong. The guy whom I've been chatting with online as of late resurfaced online. He said that he was out with friends.

I feel like there's such a double-standard already. He put the guilt trip by saying that I am busy with work. Meanwhile, he decided to not respond to anything for an entire day. It didn't exactly bug me that he didn't. We have lives. I just don't like the guilt trip that he did.

The other odd thing about this man and online dating is why does he insist on getting a photo of me. My profile pic is good enough. I don't do selfies. I find them superficial. Why insist? It's not my style and I should not be pressured to take a selfie just to appease someone who doesn't have a clear profile picture of himself to begin with.

I feel like I should stick to being single. Dating is far too complicated and annoying.

My ex-guy wrote to my work e-mail account - respond or ignore

It has been over two weeks since I checked my work e-mail. I returned to work on Monday and had 100 e-mail messages waiting for me in my inbox.

Oh, joy.

One of them was from my ex-guy. He sent me a message using my work account. How charming.

He wished me a happy, prosperous new year. It seems like a slap in the face considering that he ruined 2019 for me.

Question for you:

I have not responded to his e-mails that he sent to my personal account seven months ago. I am guessing that it is the reason why he has chosen to drop me a line through my work account. Should I respond? Continue to ignore him? Respond with a YouTube music video that explains how much of a jerk he is?

I would like to know what your thoughts are. I could use a different, helpful perspective.

Work challenges lead to a burger and beer

My intern and I have been working on a software release all week. We ran into a problem trying to run a documentation library build and it died. We couldn't proceed any further. Support needs to intervene.

We ended up switching to other tasks. Our manager, who can be a bit of a spy, came down to visit us. He ended up suggesting that we head out early and get burgers that were 50% off on Wednesdays. H bought me a beer. Not a shabby deal at all!

An unprofessional e-mail

On Monday, I received this fine e-mail from my annoying colleague on my team:

Hello,

I am taking a half day off as I am so damn tired and sleepy. I also have to go to the passport office.

I will come to work on time tomorrow. I promise.

Professional, huh? It was addressed to our manager, me, and my student.

I have had a talk with her in the past that her e-mails are far too lax, don't show a whole lot of respect, and that she has completely forgotten what we had discussed. She did indeed come in late again, so she sounds like a broken record.

The annoying part is that she had way too much fun on the weekend that she can't handle getting back to the real world and work. This woman is almost the same age as I am. She is the complete opposite of me. It's unbelievable, but I have to deal with her immaturity.

She's a handful. That's for sure.