Domestic Geek

So, last Friday was SysAdmin Appreciation Day and I tried really hard to drum up support for the holiday for Marcus. Unfortunately, I work with dolts.

First, I went to Marcus' immediate supervisor to get permission to decorate his door and to get her to drum up the day with the rest of the staff. Well, she didn't bother to tell me that she was going to be on vacation for most of last week. Hmph. Turns out she didn't bother to tell anybody before she left, either.

Then I talked to my supervisor and told him we should celebrate for Marcus and the prepress tech guy. It totally slipped his mind (so he says). Nevermind that I wrote it on the CALENDAR that he looks at every darned day.

So, Friday I stopped at 7-11 and bought him one of his favorite canned caffeinated coffee beverages and proceeded to decorate his door.

Apparently nobody I work with learned how to read. All day long, people wished Marcus "Happy Birthday." After a while, he got tired of telling people it wasn't his birthday. Others thought the mini CDs in between words in my HAPPY SYSADMIN DAY banner were letter Os. I thought they might have trouble with the banner, so I printed the sign at work that morning with the URL for the SysAdmin Day site. Clueless...the whole lot.

At least Marcus knows one person in the building truly appreciates him.

[more photos in the SysAdmin Day 2007 gallery]

I was floating on cloud 9 for a little bit at work today. A couple of week ago, I was asked to design a cover for a client's catalog. Here is the email the CSR sent my supervisor today (yes, she apparently has a punctuation problem):

Hi -

I have a Huge Compliment for LaDonna in pre-press - every year myself along with The lucky pre-press person get to design the cover of this catalog. The customer gives us a picture and tells us to go for it - Well, LaDonna did a great job The customer is extremely happy and says this is the best cover ever Please let her know how happy the customer is and thankful to her for her expert design work

Thanks,
XXXXX

One of my co-workers said such emails go into our files at work. I have some ammunition to ask for more money come raise time.

On my way home from work last Friday, I was driving with the air conditioning running because it was in the upper 90s. All of a sudden, my vents were blowing hot air and I look at the temperature gauge on the dash board and I'm red-lining. I pulled over right away and turned off the engine and let the fans run. After calling and venting to Marcus, I drove over to Albertson's to let the car get really cool so I could check to see if I had antifreeze. Well, I did have antifreeze. Sh*t. I decided to try and make it home. It took me 2½ hours to get there. I would drive a bit and then pull over for a bit. I drove the entire time with my heater on full blast to try and dissipate some of the heat. Not fun.

Well, I found all of my warranty paperwork and we dropped the poor thing off at the dealer last night. The funny thing was is there was another Baja just like mine that I parked next to. At least she had company instead of being all alone all night (Yes, I'm lame like that).

Well, I got the call from the dealer this morning that she had a couple of blown head gaskets. Yippee. Apparently it's a common problem and fortunately is still covered under the original manufacturer's warranty. Whew. Of course, they have to drop the engine to get to them, so I won't be getting my car back until later this week. Poo.

The Mercury Retrograde decided to have one last go before Mercury went direct today. We got to sit in the dark at work for an hour and a half. I was working back in the file room and heard my supervisor mention that something was up because the battery backups were starting to beep. I was halfway to where I keep my purse to grab my flashlight when I found myself standing in pitch black. Oh, and my flashlight is broken. Darned thing now won't turn off. I had to pull the batteries. Apparently one of the fuse things up on a power pole blew and Excel had to come out and fix it. Marcus and I spent the time working on his servers since they were powered down (adding memory, labeling and moving power cords, etc.). What sucked was the other employees harassing Marcus as soon as the power came back that the servers weren't back up immediately. They have no clue what it takes to power up all those servers properly. *sigh*

Tomorrow starts my 10 day countdown to the final Harry Potter book's arrival. I'm halfway through book 4 in my quest to read all six previous books before the arrival of book 7.

OK, I haven't had much to complain about at work yet, but today I was really P.O.'d. Even though we have paid holidays, I was planning on working on Wednesday because I really need the money (it would've been time and a half for an extra 8 hours). I haven't had any OT in weeks and I was looking forward to getting a little extra money this pay period. I also hate taking days off midweek because it screws up my rhythm. No such luck. I was told by my supervisor that with as little work as there is in the shop right now, I wouldn't be able to come in. Dammit! That put me in a mood that spiraled downward the rest of the day.

I went to the coolest presentation on Adobe Photoshop CS3 last night at the Denver Media Group function that was definitely worth the $15 I paid to attend. The presenter was Jay Kinghorn, a local Adobe Photoshop Certified Expert from Boulder. He was very knowledgeable, personable and packed a lot of information into the hour and a half time frame we had. I could've listened to him for hours. I must say I am impressed with how Adobe is developing Bridge and Camera Raw. Having not upgraded to CS2 when it came out, I was really unaware of the capabilities for photo corrections the newer versions provide.

I also got to see a couple of teachers from Platt, a girl I knew from school as well as a former coworker from the ad magazine in Larkspur (one that I don't despise). She was telling me how she and two other designers no longer worked there (2 were laid off and 1 quit). That leaves the original two and one of them had to take a pay cut. I'm trying not to be happy about someone's business floundering, but truth be told I am just a little. I'm so grateful that I'm better off now.

On good work-related new today, on July 1st I am eligible to participate in our 401K plan. w00t! Since they'll match up to 6% of my pay, I am thinking of doing that, but don't know if I can handle that much of my paycheck missing right at the moment. I'll definitely at least have 3% put away. That's like getting a raise right there in the long run. See, I didn't have the remote possibility of benefits at that old company. Speaking of benefits and thus dental, a pretty large piece of bone worked itself out of my gums today. Ick.

There is going to be doing a full day DMG event on September 13th that I would love to attend, however since the head of my department and one of my senior coworkers were talking about going this morning, I doubt they'll let me off for it. I told him I was interested in going and since that event is 3 months away, I'll have to wait and see. I guess it will depend on how busy we are at the time.

OK, I'm off to work on my craft blog for a bit. I totally screwed something up last night and had to get Marcus to revert to an earlier version of my database. D'oh! heh.