Revenge of Grumpy Bear

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Saturday 11:20 am: After my second wrong turn, we arrive at the landfill. Some guy who was too lazy to stand up and greet me like he should have meanders over to our car and asks either "have you paid yet" or "have you weighed yet." No one is quite sure, assumedly, the interrogator himself. I'm directed to a weigh station, who then directs me to another dump spot. Who then argues with me about whether I should have paid or not. He takes six dollars and sends me back to the first place. When the lazy guy comes back, I shove a receipt in his face and start throwing sofas, tables, and cardboard into a truck.

Saturday, 11:45 am, I am more sore than ever.

Saturday, 3:00pm, I hurt even worse, but I'm back at the old house for a walk-through with the landlord, who isn't the most friendly, which you'd think would be a prerequisite for someone who does clown make-up for a living. We have to wait half an hour for the carpet cleaners to finish.

Saturday, 10pm, I have reassembled the entertainment center, using duct tape, marshmellow sauce, paperclips, and hair pins. It looks pretty good. I pass out from pain and exhaustion.

Sunday, 7:15pm, I haul my crying 5 year old home. She has wet her pants. The day has gone mostly uneventfully, other than not being able to sit through a boring testimony meeting, and not being able to sleep either because I hurt in muscles I didn't know existed. I am grateful to be leaving my in-laws' home because Grandma (not the kids, but grandma) has some sort of OCD thing where she MUST HIT THE FRICKING BALLOON THAT PLAYS MUSIC EVER THREE MINUTES. I am glad only that I haven't murdered her before her family yet.

Sunday, 9:00pm, my 7 year old, who has convinced herself that she's scared of thunder enters my bedroom and cries and argues till the power goes out, at which poitn she leaps into my arms. When the power flickers back on, and the other girls arrive (note that they were fine until the power was back ON). They all sit in my bed and make far too much noise till I finally flip out and haul them all back to their beds. If they're giggling, they're not scared enough to interrupt my sleep.

Monday, 6:30 am. I can't find tupperware for my lunch. This angers me. I finally shove it in a plastic bag and leave.

Monday, 6:45am: the car won't start. I take the van to haul out the trash I promised my father-in-law I'd help with and borrow gas, hoping that's what it is.

Monday, 7:05am: I discover that the car wouldn't start because it's been in "DRIVE" for the last 36 hours. I am grateful our parking lot does not slope.

Monday, 8:00am. I reach the office, only to discover I have no idea where my keys are. No one is there and no one arrives for 50 minutes. I sit in the hallway and nearly pass out from exhaustion. Finally, I return home to search out keys.

monday, 10:10am. I have still not found my keys, but someone is in the office by now. I drive to Arlington for the SECOND TIME and borrow the spare keys. I head back down to put the guest parking pass on my rear-view mirror. The mirror breaks off. I cuss and head back upstairs to whine to TWG about my weekend.

[Spriggan]

On the good news, the paramedics said I probably can avoid seeing a doctor unless my shoulder pain gets worse. Also, I've decided I won't be lifting anything for the rest of my shift, which means I'm done until my replacement comes.

Since it was a work related accident you shouldn't have to pay for any doctor visits either.

[stacer]

I'm really tired of hearing my aunts and cousin talk trash about the niece of my aunt who is staying with that family. They keep referring to the niece (19 years old) as as mature as a 3 year old, etc. etc. and my aunt keeps talking about how she wishes this niece would move out, and how the niece annoys the aunt, etc. It's so mean-spirited, and it makes me wonder what this aunt said about me 10 years ago when I was staying with them. Being Mormon, they made me watch Godmakers with them and were constantly telling me that I was decieved and if I was going to live in their house I needed to give up my religion, basically. I'm just sitting here getting madder and madder and madder.

[fuzzyoctopus]

I cannot get a library card, because my brother-in-law, who lives at the same address has outstanding fines.

This is just the last straw in a long, long, long list of reasons I am SICK of living here and wish I had my own freaking space!!

[Chimera]

  That totally sucks. I could not handle that. I'm addicted to books--I have to be careful not to spend all my money at Amazon, and the only way to curb that addiction is by going to the library. I have currently checked out at least thirty books/graphic novels from the Salt Lake Library.

I wish I could make it better. Do you want to set up some sort of book exchange by mail? I have a lot of books...

[Shrain]

Happy feeling gone. Moving sucks, as SE well knows and I think I'm going to have to move again after all.

Something else that makes me want to hide under my desk and bawl is how freakin' unbelievable my workload is. I could work 60 hours a week for the next month and not be caught up. Even when the new gal (stacer's friend!) starts, it will be some time before I don't feel like weeping when I look at my desk.

[stacer]

Welcome to the exciting, fast-paced world of publishing.

[Shrain]

lol. Yep, I had a notion you'd say just that. *sigh* Oh well, time to attack one of the piles...

[stacer]

Well, to be fair, I just got back from vacation too, and will be heading out to a trade show in two weeks. I have three outlines and one book to edit by the end of those two weeks, as well as a bunch of outline submissions to give feedback on/decide if I want to contract the books, galleys constantly coming in and out, and several manuscripts I requested that I need to read soon so we can plan our 2007 standalone line.

This is just my work in the next two weeks. Forget about the manuscripts due and coming in that I'll have to work on at the end of this month on into next month! So yeah, I'm in the same boat, and rather overwhelmed, but you do what you can and learn to let go of the rest. The work never ends.

[CookieReaver]

So, just the other day I broke my wrist. Yeah, this sucks.

Typing one handed is not fun at all. : ( Nor is trying to put on pants for that matter.

Come to think of it, nothing is very fun like this. Playing WoW is definatly going to be a chalenge...

[Shrain]

Ouch. How long will your hand be in a cast?

On an unrelated though grumpy note....

What an idiot I am!! I left my lunch and all my snacks for the day on the T! CRAP. Now I either starve or search out some cheap fare that will keep me going. This sucks. I guess I would've been better off *not* coming in an hour early--maybe I would've been awake enough not to forget my freakin' lunch.  

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

cookie, i'm sure it's embarassing, but I'm pretty sure that's *why* I want to know. How'd you break it?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

The week after I move hell breaks loose at work

We're sitting around, happily working, when the network dumps on us. Our ISP tells us nothing is wrong. We reboot the router. Things are ok for a bit

Near the end of the day the network craps out several times. Looking at usage statistics, it appears that our outbound bandwidth has been spiking to our maximum at all these times the network dies. Which means someone's uploading a crap load of stuff. (and it's not me).

We disconnect a couple suspect work stations, things seem to work. In this process I discover that the front desk computer (where all our financial records are kept, among other things) no longer has anti-virus software. I have written documentation that I put AVG on there, as well as crystal clear memory. I begin to wonder. In the mean time, I have found over 1000 files infected on the fileserver, all of which are caused by two viruses. I decide this is probably the problem, and I stay late cleaning and documenting this. I resolve to put AV back on the front desk the next morning, because I"m already here for almost 2 hours late.

Before I can get to the install, the temp who has been doing all that administrative stuff is working away, like a good girl. At one point she decides the computer is too slow, and reboots to clear the memory (something I do with older computers sometimes -- though this computer isn't that old, and shouldn't be acting like this). THe computer will not let her log back on.

We go through a lot of fixes. I use a third party app to reset the passwords, repair the registry, et al. Nothing works. YOu log in with the correct use/pass, and it logs in, but logs out before even getting to the desktop. THis annoys me greatly.

Over the next couple days I pull the drive out, shove it in my computer, and scan it for problems. Over 2000 infected files. All with the Parite virus (completely irreparable). I cuss a lot as I delete them then copy the rest of the hard drive contents to our fileserver.

I try repairing the XP installation. No change. FFR is our only resort (Fdisk/Format/Reinstall).

So I do. I get Windows, QuickBooks, and MS Office installed. I get it configured for network access and reinstall the printer. At this point we haven't been able to invoice anyone for about a week. Everyone in the office is pissed aobut it. I'm no exception.

So we go to open the QB database to get some of that taken care of. "File is not a QuickBooks database or is corrupt."

More cussing ensues.

I make another copy of hte db and restore it from a backup. The backup takes about half a day to restore, and then another half a day to open. Only for us to find it doesn't have any data for anything after 2003. Tempers do not improve.

A day is spent on tech support with Intuit and searching the fileserver and the formerly screwed up harddrive's back up files for any other QB files. No dice on the files, a lot of repetition from Intuit's outsourced help in India. We finally get escalated.

We send our file to them for data recovery. Now we're told that in about 10 days they can tell us if they can pull our data back. This is costing us hundreds of dollars. (Not to mention all the man hours and the delay put into the problem).

While I'm not longer tied up in the problem at this point, I'm left with several questions:

-Who uninstalled the AV software? (I will seriously commit physical violence if I can proove someone did it. I have my theories)
-Why don't we have any backups of our financial information? This sounds like a no brainer. I haven't been involved directly with that computer ever. I knew that once a week the user was to back up files on to CD. I'm not sure how regularly this was done, but it wasnt' done well enough. Apparently only the fileserver was backed up. Not any vital financial information that would keep the company running.
-Why don't we have any physical records of who we've invoiced and who we still owe money to?
-Why am I the one who gets screwed with this job because someone ****** in a major way?
-How is my boss going to take it when I tell him that we should spend thousands of dollars on a network-wide backup system so this crap doesn't happen again?
-Why doesn't this other place call right now and offer me the job I want with a ginormous raise so this will no longer be my problem?

[Nessa]

You're right. That really really sucks.

The only thing I can think of is how in a lurch this company will be when you leave (*Nessa's fingers are crossed so SE can get this new rockin' job).

[42]

I'm really sorry SE.

I can sympathize, my job is so bad right now that I've decided to quit even though I don't have another job at the moment. The manager (if he could be called that) has threatened all of the staff with imminent firings, because he doesn't want to have to put in any extra hours or learn how to do his job. I just haven't decided if I want to give him any notice I'm leaving.