Just Some Randomness

I'm in the market for a more advanced camera option to supplement my great point and shoot Panasonic DMC ZS3 and have been picking the brains of my photography friends. This past Saturday my fount of info was Andrew. After getting lots of ideas, an offer to borrow his Canon 50D and a promise of a poker game in the near future, I headed for Slacker's. As I was walking down Andrew's little block to my car I came across this lovely. Painted vehicles make me smile.

Three eyes are always better then two

This afternoon I got home from my deliciously decadent mani/pedi and found a letter from Linda, as well as two postcards: one from Santa Barbara (Ng-Ult), the other from creepy Deer Lodge, Montana (Woodens). The postcards were enjoyed and then put away for safe keeping in my postcard books. Traveling somewhere? I love postcards (hint hint).

Postcards!

I then read, and re-read Linda's letter. I love reading her letters.

Her letter motivated me and I wrote a bunch of cards to assorted loves of mine. Let's hope I remember to get them in the mail in the next day or so. I still have postcards to send from my weekend up in Russian River.

Luckily, I also remembered I had to prep my computer for the SQL & PL/SQL class I'm taking online this week. As I was doing the various system tests, installing necessary plugins and ensuring my login worked, I noticed a detail in my confirmation email I had previously failed to comprehend: the class starts at 8:30 a.m. EASTERN time! Oh, for pity sake. I honestly can't remember the last time I woke up at 5:00 a.m. I got everything ready, though, and all I can hope is that I won't ignore my alarm tomorrow morning.

A clean desk to aid my learning

 

Bored at Home

I'm home sick today. Annoying headache and my stomach is bothering me. Plus I'm bored. Whine.

I watched last night's A.I. Candice and Kree blew all the other performances out of the water.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day in the city, so I took a few pics from the Lone Mountain patio looking north and east. I never get tired of this city.

On Monday we had our work-place "Almost Annual Chili Cook-Off". There were ten cooks this year and the competition was fierce. I thought my chili was good, but it wasn't good enough. I didn't even place. *Sniffle.* I voted for my favorite and apparently most others agreed with me as she won. Business & Finance took 1st and 2nd place, their first wins, and ITS took 3rd. Even though I didn't win, I thought my chili looked lovely. I'm going to have to work on my recipe.

Speaking of food, the Ng-Ult pair are back from Hawaii and they brought presents! A jar of Passion Fruit-Orange-Guava preserves. Insanely tasty. AND a perfect selection of mochi from Two Ladies Kitchen. Oh. My. Goodness. The picture doesn't do these lovelies justice. I think my favorite was the one at the top right - brownie inside. Yum.

Finally, to those of you who suspect I've given up physical books for electronic ones, I say pish-posh. I happened to find myself in the Marina this week and dropped in to Books, Inc. Of course there were lots of tasty morsels, but I managed to escape with just one selection and a handful of cards. "City of Thieves", by David Benioff. Hope it's good. I'll be bringing it with me when I go up to the Russian River for a weekend getaway.

That's all for now.

 

Work Group Laboring at the SF Food Bank

Tonight we had our second group volunteer experience at the SF Food Bank. Kim did the arranging and I think we ended up with about 12 people, made up of ITSers, ABS folks plus friends, and even a pal from all the way over in Law. A good group of people. We worked hard, along with all the other volunteers, and managed to bag 3,000 pounds of oats. Each bag we filled is good for 10 meals. That's a lot of bags of oats for less then two hours of work.

When I got home, tired but not, there were three postcards from the Woodens! I love getting postcards! I don't have many from the mid-west, and these are fun ones. I especially dig the Nebraska map. Or maybe I dig the playing prairie dogs more!

The Goats are Back!

We had a nice Earth Day event on campus last Thursday. While all the folks at their tables promoting sustainability, recycling, power saving, etc. was cool, it was the baby goats that made it all worth while.

Not Really an Early Adopter

As I've been getting a lot of slack for getting an iPad right after its release and how I'm such an early adopter of technology I'd like to clarify a few things...

My 1st iPod: gift from my Slacker Bro
My Wii: gift from my Slacker Bro
My 1st iPhone: gift from my Slacker Bro (and the lovely SP)
My DVD player: gift from my Slacker Bro
My Roku box: gift from my Slacker Bro
My flat screen TV: hand-me-down purchase from my Slacker Bro
My Kindle: gift from my Slacker Bro

Are you sensing a pattern here? While I enjoy embracing new technology and do get pleasure from the occasional tech toy, the real tech geek, the real early adopter, is my Slacker Bro. I'm just super lucky he loves me enough to hook me up with all this techno goodness. Oh, and though I may have broken down and gotten an iPad just 2 days after it's release, I don't see it as some revolutionary device, but rather an extension of an already proven user interface made popular with the iPhone and iPod Touch...

As to other news, the keynote speaker at SunGard Summit 2010 was Chris Gardner, the man behind The Pursuit of Happyness. He was a great speaker; engaging, motivating, inspiring. I'm really glad I had the opportunity to hear him present.

And just because...

-- Posted via the SnarfffPad

Friday Night: Me & the SnarfffPad

So, here it is, Friday night and I'm chilling out at home watching a Clint Eastwood flick and catching up on some blog postings via my new RSS Reader (FeeddlerRSS) that I just downloaded from the App Store. Well, downloaded about 2 hours ago and now that I'm all caught up with my feeds, capping it off with a little of the CO.



I would have preferred being at Taraval Osaku-Ya with MamaJ snarffing some salmon rolls and guzzling some chilled sake, but a late afternoon migraine interfered with those plans. The SnarfffPad has been comforting me.

As have the kittens in all their cuddly goodness. Speaking of kittens, it seems Katja is happy to use the new giant scratching post as a lounging so ace, but not for actual scratching. So typical.



SunGard Summit starts this weekend so I shall be spending several days immersing myself in workflow sessions in the hope of learning something useful. I actually enjoy Summit. My creative work juices always get flowing. If only we had the time, money and resources to implement all the things we'd like to!

Continuing my assessment of the BlogPress app I'm using... Auto save isn't impressing me. I accidentally tapped on the post listing on the left of the screen and not only was I not prompted to save before leaving my draft but the draft didn't save automatically - at least not recently. My post was already four paragraphs and only the first one had been saved, and that not even the complete paragraph. Haven't figured out how to ad a link without hard coding the html and I'm still cleaning the post up in the actual Blogger interface after I post via BlogPress. Not ideal, but using the app is still better then trying to do it all in the Blogger web interface.

-- Posted via the SnarfffPad

Obsessive Activity Circle

Reading obsessively --> knitting obsessively --> WoWing obsessively --> repeat. I'm now in the WoWing part of the circle. My elbow hurts, but I'm having fun. :-)

I start my new job Monday. Already have projects on my list, plus the task of having to transition my replacement.

And please do check out KP's blog: http://saywhatkp.blogspot.com/. She's doing it for her class, so show her some support by reading and, if you are so moved, please post a comment, too! I know she'd appreciate any comments.

One More Reason for WoW...

For some of you it is hard to understand why I enjoy playing WoW. But it isn't always just about running around killing things. Blizzard did a beautiful job with the graphics for this game. Sometimes I'll just be wandering around on a quest and I'll come across something just lovely and have to take a moment to appreciate the moment. So it was tonight, as I was trying to find my way back to an Alliance base in Azshara, where I could catch a gryphon to Tanaris. A lovely waterfall in the distance. So, I wandered up the rocks a bit for a better view and then sat down to just enjoy the falling water. I could very nearly hear the roar in the distance and I imagined how lovely it would be if I could be in that place, smelling the fresh air, feeling the cool breeze through my hair. Don't get me wrong, this doesn't replace the real thing. But in a world where we work more then we play, even a moment of peace found in an online game environment can be worth a lot.



Granted, if I was on a PC I probably would have had better graphics, but I'm happy to have my gynormous iMac.

On a separate note, today was the 2nd Annual Business & Finance / ITS Chili Cook-Off. I spent Sunday preparing my chili with as much love and experimentation as possible and ended up with what I thought was a particularly excellent batch of turkey chili. I ended up getting 3rd place again this year (2 green ladles now). A fun and tasty time was had by all and I look forward to next year's event. Here's Mr. B helping get the chili samples out -- once again patiently working with a bunch of perfectionist women.



Also today, a visit to the physical therapist. We had a two week hiatus while she was out of town, so I was a bit apprehensive about going to see her, feeling like I had slacked off a bit. But things weren't too bad. While it seems like a didn't improve much, she noted that she wasn't having to work that hard to stretch it out. She thinks we may be able to move soon to just twice a month. Tomorrow I have a check in with the orthopedic surgeon. I'm sure that will go well.

Avoid Migraine Medicine Late in the Day

Okay, note to self: do not take migraine meds (in this case the basic over-the-counter Excedrin for Migraines) late in the day. My migraine is gone, but the 65mgs of caffeine -- which doesn't seem like much to me -- has me totally wired. For the past three and a half hours I have been tackling a whole host of work related tasks. I started out just planning to do some quick project updates, but then I kept going, and going, and going, like the proverbial Energizer Bunny. I have, however, been extremely productive. But I might have also added a bunch of tasks to my Toodledo list. I will not look at it any more tonight and tackle it tomorrow instead.

I've got American Idol playing in the background, while I wait with baited breath to see who will get booted. I am surprised to say that the first two folks Ryan pulled out as in the bottom three where not from my list of poor performers. It is very stressful. LOL.

My elbow continues to improve slowly. I have a two-week hiatus between PT appointments while my physical therapist is out of town. I've been off-and-on with my stretching, but I am trying to remember to stretch the arm as much as I can during the day. I hope when I see her on Monday that there will be some improvement despite my minor slacking.

Hoping to see Watchmen this weekend. Will post a review if I do.

Update: oops, just realized I took two of those Excedrins, so that's 130mgs of caffeine! According to a Yahoo Answers! response, that's more than the caffeine in two cans of Mountain Dew and just a little less then that in two cans of Jolt! Eeek and Eee Gads! I swear I'm blinking only four times a minute right now! LOL. Please let my new SleepStream iPhone app work tonight!

Warhammer vs Portfolio Management

One more class session down, though it was a particularly boring one -- on resource allocation. The topic is important, but I didn't find the session very useful in helping to understand ways to better determine and manage. But then, I suppose we still remain pretty far away from being organizationally ready for this type of effort -- not to mention that there just isn't enough people to even develop and manage such information.

Now I just have to decide... do I want to do another session and be all productive and one step closer to being done with the class and ready for the next one? Or do I install Vista on my mac and set myself up to play Warhammer, which my Slacker Bro bought for me the other day? And how can I cheat on WoW in such a way? It just seems, oh, dirty to contemplate it!!!!

UPDATE: doing another session... at least 1/2 of one. Not sure I'll have the attention span to do the whole thing now. Maybe finish after I watch today's episode of Trueblood later on...

What a Monday

First on Monday's Bellhops agenda:

C.O. does it again with insane cuteness...
1) Pull up your iTunes...
2) Find you section of Metallica, in particular, Enter Sandman from the Black Album...
3) Start it up...
4) While the opening rifts play, open this url: http://mfrost.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/09/07/4ch.jpg (if the pic is way little, try clicking on it - that worked for me)
5) Then sing along...

Cha!!!!!

Next on the Monday Bellhops agenda:

The new HBO Series, True Blood. Okay, maybe it won't surprise most of you that I would want to check out an HBO series on vampires -- heh, it's kinda in my blood, heh -- but I watched it with a certain degree of skepticism given the recent glut of really bad vampire-esque-ness out there these days. Be that as it may, I totally enjoyed the first episode. Anna Paquin was perfect in her role as a sweet, upstanding southern young lady with a healthy open-minded curiosity regarding the recently "out of the casket" vampires. And what with the vampire blood stealers, noisy mind-reading, sex-laced murder, Southern barn entertainment, and, well, much more, I have to give it two thumbs up. Season is on the TIVO list. Ready for the next episode.

Next on the Monday Bellhops agenda:

This coming Saturday I head for the wild west of Montana, with my fully paid-off-pink-slip-received-and-in-my-hot-little-hands Honda heading east. The Woodens have my travel itinerary all planned out and I am very much looking forward to the trip. I may even get onto the water! In a boat! I love the water and I love boats! Woo Hoo!!! With the exception of a college trip to Colorado Springs, a few visits to Chicago, and a few months in San Antonio, I really haven't had much to do with anything between the east and west coasts, so driving further east than Reno should be fun. I'll even get to drive through Idaho. Who would have thought I'd ever go to Idaho! I will do my best to blog as I go. God bless the iPhone and Blogger.

Next on the Monday Bellhops agenda:

Boy, work is just kicking my butt these past few weeks. What do I have to sacrifice to get some relief?

Almost Ready

According to our construction team this network closet will be ready by next Tuesday. I'll reserve judgement and give them the benefit of the doubt. More miraculous things have happened. I feel for my PM.

CORRECTION: This just in from my PM... I mis-remembered the due date for this particular closet... has to be ready BEFORE 8/8/08, but not necessarily this week. For the sake of arguement, let's say it has to be ready by Monday, so the required equipment can be installed and ready for use by 8/8/08. So, it may be less of a miracle and more of a need for some focused attenion (though, in construction lingo, that could very well mean a miracle).

Insomnia is for the birds!

I worked too many long days this week. Yesterday I was swamped off and on all day dealing with an issue related to how we select people for different roles in our environment -- which controls what kinds of resources they can access. And then at the end of the day we had a Director's Meeting where I was presenting some of the Project Management changes we are starting to move towards to give the Director's a chance to provide some feedback. As a result, all day my attention level was exceedingly high.

When I finally got home for work, I ended up doing more work because I hadn't had a chance to get to some of the tasks I had wanted to get to during the day. By the time I went to bed, I was pretty tired, but wound up. I managed to fall asleep without too much difficulty, but then woke up at, like, 4:00 a.m.! Of course I just could not fall back to sleep. Instead, my head was full of horrible work things, like Home Org vs Ck Distribution Org vs Timesheet Org! How horrible is that? I finally gave up trying to sleep and just snuggled in my covers and complained at the cats for not being willing to cuddle with me. They are such traitors!

Today I worked at home in the a.m. -- very productive. Cats were once again traitors and stayed in the living room all morning! Lazy beasts. Now I'm in an Office 2007 Pilot Training Class. I quite like the new version, despite my desire not to.

Tonight I shall attempt to clean the house a bit in prep for the Quasar of Rage's birthday festivities. I do not want to face the wrath of QOR.

Just the general news...

Not much going on right now. This week has been a busy one at work. I'm starting to get new projects assigned to me and the VPIT and I are trying to work out some initial PMO frameworks to use to attack at least our current and FY08 pending projects. So, the challenge is managing these new tasks with my current Project BOB tasks. I also want to find a viable web-based project management system that incorporates project portfolio management, too. Since I have no budget for this, it will be a challenge.

On the social side of life, a few of us girls will be getting together on Sunday to celebrate the Quasar of Rage's birthday (QOR). While I look forward to this, I do not look forward to cleaning the apartment -- thus, my efforts shall be the bare minimum.

And that's really all I have to report at this point.

Sunday Chillin...

Beautiful Sunday morning. Chillin on the couch, watching "Fight Club", updating the MacBook, drinking hot chocolate and curled under my blanket. I was freezing last night because the crazy wind that was blowing through SF blew out my pilot light. You'd think I'd be able to figure out how to light the thing again. Problem is, I can't figure out where the darn pilot is to light. I get the instructions. I even vacuumed all the dust and kitty fur out of the way. Yet I am at a loss. I may have to call in the troops.

I'm back from the SGHE Summit! Woo Hoo. That was a long week away. 50/50 ROI on that conference. I hope my colleagues had a better return on their time.

Just finished reading the second book in the vampire romance series, which started with "Twilight", written by Stephanie Meyer. Sure, it's for young teens. Sure, it features a 17 year old girl falling in love with a 17 year old (relatively speaking) vampire. Sure, along with the good, loving vampires there are werewolves and evil vampires. But what can I say? It's fun reading. Like eating a pint of Ben & Jerry's. And yes, I'm going to keep reading them. It's kinda like the twisted period I went through reading that horribly written Left Behind series. I can say, without a doubt, that Stephanie Meyer is a MUCH better writter then the, uh, people who wrote Left Behind. There is only a little bit of irony is comparing a vampire series to a religious end-of-the-world-rapture-antichrist-is-here series. I will say that had the Left Behind series ended with the fourth, or even the fifth book, I might have finished, but it just goes on and on and really, even I, with my fascination on how religion pervades our society, can only take so much of the crappy writing and endless story line. I guess they'll keep writing them until the Rapture actually comes. I think R. Laurence Moore needs to update "Selling God."

But I digress...

In just a little while I go on vacation! Cazadero Heaven here I come. I really, really hope the place is nice and comfortable. And of course there will be wine.

And today, a little paw action! Here Keiko extends her back leg and spreads her little toes wide. Look at that cute little pink kitty paw pads? This paw action should be exposed on CuteOverload. The horror. The horror.

Passing my Cooties Around

After 3 days out sick this week I went back to work this a.m. only to find my boss went home sick Monday... Poor TS. I clearly passed my cooties on to her last week. But all is fair in pain and work as far as I'm concerned.

Work is Evil! Oh, tell me something new, puhleeeeze!

Okay, I know, nothing new in this world when someone says work is evil. Sheesh, where is my originality? It's in the gutter, that's where! Sucked out after a day of back to back meetings and, in the few in between moments, "blah blah this" and "blah blah that" and "can you blah blah?" and "what should I blah blah about this?" I have finally gotten to the point where I have to schedule time in my day to prep for meetings or do email! And don't even get me started on email. How is it that of the 1,079 emails in my inbox 750+ are not yet read? How could I let myself get to such a state? And that's after several hours everyday doing email wherever and whenever I can! Shocking. Truly shocking.

But I have some things to look forward to this week... dinner at my my friend's house Thursday, movies Friday, Humphries Household Saturday, birthday party Sunday. There is hope in my social life and in my friends.

And now I must prepare for American Idols. The girls are up tonight. I feel now shame.

Peace!

Oh, the Weekend

Woo Hoo! Snuck out of work a few hours early today and am now down in Sunnyvale hanging with SP, Gabe-ish and chilling out until the evening when we shall be social.

Yesterday was the day of babies at work. GL bought in Daniel, who I snuggled with for a while and then at the end of the day Gina came in with John. What a little cuteness she is. She decided, however, that I needed something done with my hair and I spent a considerable amount of effort attempting to keep her from pulling out all my hair. I think she was just disgusted with its unkept appearance and terrible split ends. All in all, it was much fun because kids in general just make you feel better (provided they are not screaming their heads of and being cranky).

In the evening I went to see Weimar New York, which was great fun. Even though we left around midnight, the show was still going on and looked like it would go on for quite a while longer.

I shall attempt to rest this weekend, but will work with Linda on Monday (which is actually a work holiday). We have a lot to catch up on and with it just being the two of us in the office we should be able to get a lot done.

I finally broke down at got my Atomica bag, which I have been coveting for many moons now. Shanalogic just has the cutest stuff. While the design of the bag is great, I'm not thrilled with the bag structure... the straps are too short (though SP and I shall experiment with some solutions that that particular problem) and the bag itself is too big and I'm not sure I can live with having just one big inside space. I long for a bag that actually has inside pockets that make organizing and separating of items neater, as opposed to the bottomless-pit-of-a-purse situation. My kingdom for the perfect purse.

I haven't seen JH and Suie for a while, so I hope next weekend I'll be able to make it to Martinez for a visit. I miss them.

I haven't posted any pictures lately, so today I shall spice up my posting with one from my collection.


This is a picture from inside a Starbucks, which just so happens to be right across the street (a little street at that) from the British Museum in London. Who's not to say that one day, thousands of years in the future, the Starbucks coffee culture won't be enshrined in that very same museum as a cultural or historical landmark?

Nag Nag Nag

I'm being nagged again at the delay between blog posts, so I am here to provide another update to my friends who never see me anymore.

I confess it; I'm working too much. In fact, I'm at work right now, even though I promised myself I would leave by 5:30 today. But since moving into my new position, I feel a greater sense of responsibility about some of the tasks at hand and I am anxious to get some items off my plate, even if it means I have to work some weekends or late nights. It isn't all the time, afterall.

Got to meet my friend's new daughter today. She came by work for a visit and boy is this little Gina just the cutest thing around. And, seeing that it was Valentine's Day, she was all decked out in pink. Ah, to be a baby. I got to hold her for quite a while, which was very satisfying -- met my baby-cuddling quota for at least the next several months.

Tonight I'm going out with friends of mine to see Weimar New York. I'm really looking forward to the show, not to mention the time with MH, et al, over dinner.

As to the iPhone... well, I just love it love it love it! If only I could get the PocketMac Meeting Maker Go Between to actually synch Meeting Maker to my iCal, then it would be pretty much perfect. But that isn't the iPhone's fault. She goes with me everywhere, is very dependable, and I still get sighs when people see her. I wonder how long that will go on for. Not that I'm bragging, or anything. Heh.

Back to the Salt Mines

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! 2008 is here and will be for a while, so let's make the most of the next 365 days!

But in the real world... Argh, back to work tomorrow after a nice long weekend. Whoever thought working for a living was a good idea was a sick f*ck*r.

New Year's Eve was very nice. Went down to Ocean Beach to watch the sunset and to give an offering to a pagan goddess (goddess of the New Year and the ocean). It was a beautiful sunset and we enjoyed the bonfire, the company of friends and strangers, and several cups of champagne.

Then I headed to the German's house for the evening. Only a handful of us were there, so we had a relaxing evening eating, drinking and playing poker. While I was consistently giving up my chips, at the very end of the night I called a pot in Acey-Ducey which put me in the green and ahead $6.

And now I must go sleep so I can be rested for our first day back at work. Blech.