Happy New Year

My husband's at home now, working on getting the desktop computers online. He was also going to make my computer "usable." I told him that it's perfectly usable under Windows, I just need him to get me online. He says that's not good enough, though, he wants me to use Linux. That's fine, once I'm online I can install stuff myself. The one thing I don't think I can figure out myself is the audio. It keeps telling me "no volume control element found" or something like that. The Linux community would benefit greatly from packing things out of the box- a system that auto-installs things like Gaim, OpenOffice, CD/DVD player, etc. I'd happily test for such a thing, I think I'm about an average user. Well... I suppose that's debatable. I'm comfortable in Linux, Windows, Mac... Now, I think that Macs dislike me, they've all given me issues except for OS X. I've dabbled in game design, text games, photo-editing (I grew up and got trained in old-school film photography, still trying to translate that to digital imagery) and so on. Speaking of which... I'm still looking forward to the day when I can partake of my hobbies more regularly. But not swimming. No, I've gotten to that point where I'm high enough up the chain of command that I can't swim at my own pool. I still like to swim, but I can't enjoy it at the place that I work, because someone needs me to do something. So instead I'll work on my other hobbies, like cross-stitching (it's been over a year since I picked up a needle), photography (my husband just bought me a new digital camera, it rocks), reading (the last book I read for fun was LotR, which took me like 2 years to get halfway through the second book...). We'll see, right? I have all my cross stitching stuff in a sealed box in the garage, that's where I'd like to start first. I've heard from people in the past week or two (or found them on MySpace) that I haven't seen or heard form in a while, which is really nice. I miss my friends, hope to get back in touch with you in the new year. :) Back with more in a few days probably.

Hello, Internet

The phone guy came and fixed the connection, so then my husband fixed up the DSL modem and such, and now we're online! With the laptop anyway, we're still going to get wireless cards for the two desktop computers because the modem is in the living room and we can't run cable through to the bedroom. I thought for a while about putting the desktop computers in the "office" area, but then decided against it. We're already using the desk as a stand for our new printer (which is super cool and wireless) and we don't have a good monitor except the one that we're using already as a TV. (It'll picture-in-picture the computer and television, which is cool.) Now, that's not to say that I'll be online as much as I used to be before... but at least I'll try to stay logged on so you can leave me messages. :) My email response time may be quicker too! Well, I'm going to poke around the internet for a while, then go shower and get ready for work. TTFN!

MySpace

Oh, I forgot to mention, in another feat of un-paralleled giving in to peer pressure, I've also now created a MySpace. I don't want the people at my new job to know it yet though. As I said on MySpace, I can do this now only because I don't work for the old place anymore. I want to hear no evil and see no evil about my employees!

I quit!

Today is my last day of work at my old job. I turned in my resignation letter a couple of weeks ago, but I haven't been able to get online to share that with you! I'm going to the Red Cross to pick up a video, then teaching a CPR class from 1-6. At the end of class, I'm turning in my keys to my Division Manager, who is co-instructing with me. Then from 6-9:30 I'm packing up my stuff. They already moved me out of the desk because they gave it to someone else (I might tell you more about that later) so I just have to get the boxes to the car. They gave me flimsy and wide boxes though, so I might need help there. I'll park in the alley to make it closer. I haven't told my supervisor at my new job that I quit. I'll tell her in a month or two, for now I need to take advantage of having Mondays and Tuesdays (the days I normally worked at old job) off. Charles and I both had yesterday off, and it was very productive. We cleaned up the house, that was a very good thing, we needed to do that. Christmas was good, we spent Christmas Eve with my family and Christmas Day with his.

Bad Linux experiences...

This computer isn't jiving with my ADD here... It frequently closes programs unexpectedly, sometimes expectedly but not wanted. (Like every time I try to run a certain report from a database, when the same report with a different central entry does work.) Then I try to SFTP to somewhere, and it stalls. I really want to go home now and watch a movie with my husband, but I'm here trying to get something to work that I should have been able to do fast... It's frustrating. :( I normally have 6 or so tabs going in firefox and I do work in one while the other one loads. I can't even come close to that tonight, I'm scared to have more than my two terminal windows and one logjam window open. Almost makes me wish I had IE. Short story shorter, go here: http://www.thewybles.com/~patti/family/index.html That's what I've been working on over the past week or two. If you have any information to fill in, please help me do so, I'm hooked now. I have to find out more about more people! I tried turning my yahoo pictures of the wedding, but it didn't work. I'm not sure if the functionality is gone or my pictures are too big, but I'm going to have to rotate them on the computer and re-upload. Not going to happen this week, sorry, not till Charles makes the computer all better.

Grrrrrr. Re-Write

I'm really really upset right now because I spent a long long time writing a post to account for the past week or two, during which alot happened, and when I was scrolling down to find the submit button, my screen went black with a cursor (I think it was blinking, I'm not sure) and after a few moments went back to my desktop but without my firefox window. Grrrrrr! I was on the phone with Charles at the time, and he tried to remind me that it can't be the first time a program has crashed on me and I lose my work. Well, it's not, but normally I save my work every couple of minutes and a webform has no capacity for that, so I lost a lot more work. That and I normally don't have so much to say at once. So you get the short version. New wedding photos from the photographer are up. The CD was cracked, but Charles got them to send another one. http://photos.yahoo.com/calliope320 Click on "Wedding" for sister's pictures, "Wedding Cont" for photographer's pictures. Charles got a new job, making more than he did at his old job and liking it better. I need to buy work pants, because my new work is navy blue and my old work is khaki. Luckily, we got a new policy last month at my old job saying we can do either navy or khaki, well timed with my new job. I went through a downward spiral with my credit card... You see, I carry a $500 balance, not by choice but because of inability to pay it off. So every month, the cell phone bill was taken out of there and I'd put a corresponding amount back in when I got the cell phone bill in the mail. Maintained my credit, met the minimum payment each month, paid my cell phone bill on time, and so on. All was right with the world, or at least my finances. Then I didn't have enough money to do that, so a bill got declined the following month because I was maxed out. So I got the auto-debit changed from my credit card to my check card. Now, I used to have a nice little ritual of putting money in every time I got a bill. Moving without setting up forwarding (I'm not on the lease yet), not having that payment come out of my credit card, and not having money all lead to me just about forgetting I even have a credit card. All I ever used it for since it was nearly-maxed was the phone bill, and now it's not. So I have two $29 late fees as well as over-limit fees. I paid them off tonight, brought the balance back down to $40 under my max. Probably wrecked what credit I did have though. Two consecutive months of missed payments, can't be good. I wanted to, at one point, put the car on my credit card. Have it auto-debit from there, cycle the amount through my credit report twice. Two on-time payments for the same $350 each month. I thought it was a good plan, but I didn't have $350 of credit to spare at the time so I had it auto-debit from my check card instead. I may re-consider that (once we zero the balance) to re-build from this blunder. Someone at my new work is a control freak, and it's keeping us from getting our jobs done. This person takes work home (which is expressly forbidden in the new hire paperwork we all signed) rather than share responsibility or delegate, which is not only unfair to us and to that person, but it leaves us without critical information because they take home the only copies of very important forms. It's very frustrating. This person has the "if I delegate this, it'll get screwed up" syndrome that I think new managers tend to suffer from. That's theory 1. Other theories include job security, getting credit for doing all the work (since there are advancement opportunities, but not for all of us at once), or not wanting to admit they can't do it all. It better get fixed by summer, or we'll have big problems (not inter-personal ones, but operations problems). I've scheduled 40 guards over 4 bodies of water, I've scheduled and run an instructional program of 17 instructors, 3 lifeguards, and 104 students AT A TIME for half hour a day TWELVE times per day. I can handle it, put me in coach. Work stuff: I'm setting up an inventory tracking database, that's been my latest project. The name tags I made for the employee lockers came out great, the graphics department does all of our color printing for us since we all have laser printers. Wow, am I impressed. Whatever they're using, I want it. The colors are SPECTACULAR. My supervisor laminated them and I put them up today, I love them. They're pictures of the pools with people's names incorporated in word art. I'll post pictures of that at some point, I'm quite taken with them. I'm going to do them at both pools, but at my new pool it'll be prettier because of printer quality. I have peoples' names climbing the ladder of the high dive, jumping off the board, coming down the slide, dropping out of the drop buckets... Can't wait to get mine, it's in the second batch. I want to use my PDA to get files from my old work to my new work, because it has a 1 Gig SD card. But the computer at my new work recognizes it as a PDA and then tells me I have to be an admin to install it. Haven't tried on old work's computer, but they're on serious lockdown so I doubt it'll work there. Really, Mr. IT dude, I just wanna use it as a hard drive. I promise I won't try to synch with Outlook or anything silly like that. Just saving CDs and increasing productivity! Now, it does let me connect my mp3 player and recognizes that as a hard drive without me having to install anything. But that's no bigger than my thumb drive anyway, that'll take me ages to transport all my files! Have I ever told you that IT at my old place wouldn't install drivers for either my camera or the department's shared camera on my work computer? Again, I just wanted to pull files off it like a hard drive, I didn't want any software or anything. But it's a "have your division manager talk to my division manager" shop, and the idea didn't get past my immediate supervisor because she said they wouldn't allow it due to licensing. Now, really, I know better than that. If you buy a camera, nowhere in your receipt does it say you can only connect it to one computer. Now your license for software, that I may have believed. Does she know better than that? Probably not. That's what's wrong with the system, people who know better aren't allowed to talk to each other. So I got into the habit of doing it the long way: upload to computer, upload to website, download from website. What do you mean, we're using more bandwidth this week than all last month, mister IT dude? Ask my division manager about it. Charles is doing laundry, we still haven't gotten the dryer looked at so we wash at home and dry at the laundry-mat place. He dropped me off here at Starbucks and went there, then we're going to go home, have dinner, watch a movie while sorting dry laundry. Tomorrow, I'm going to the November SCPPOA (Southern California Public Pool Operators Association) meeting. I was going to go representing my old job, was I did all last year on my own time and in my own vehicle. Then I found out today that my new job will pay me to go. Guess I'm wearing blues instead. =) I still have to drive my own car, but that's because it's complicated to drive city vehicles to other counties, that's not unusual really. If my supervisor was going (she normally does) I'm sure we could get a car. I'm just a part time manager though. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the meeting. It's at the headquarters of my home chapter of the American Red Cross, and the speaker is the person at ARC that we call when we need stuff. All my once-a-month aquatics friends will be there! Back with another post some time by month's end.

Overworking?

I now know what my friend David feels like. I've been working 9am to close (8:30/9:30) on Monday and Tuesday at my old job, then I work 8-5 Wednesday and Thursday at the new job, 11:30-8:30 Friday at new job, and 8:30-4 Saturday and Sunday at new job. I think I have this upcoming Sunday off. That's good in a way, but I'm concerned because that pool is really short on people available Sunday. Sunday was a be-on-tower day, not an office day. So, the new job is going really well. I've been working on a Cashiers' handbook with FAQ and important information on our programs at a glance. It's kind of like turning my mom into a cell phone retail person, they have to learn a lot of things they probably never thought they had to know. I think the highlight of the week has been getting the garbage disposal fixed. That not working made the sink back up when we tried to use the dishwasher. Oh, that and getting keys to work, that was nice too, we've been waiting for a while. Hmmm, what else is new this week... My husband made a plan of action for getting through the next month. He has a THIRD interview tomorrow with a company, they told him that he's meeting the president and chief operations officer, and he's already been told that his background check cleared, so I think it's looking good there. It'll help us out a lot when he starts working full time again, in a lot of ways. A lot of them financial (like being able to fix the car, get a land-line phone, etc), but a lot of them emotional too. Him being under-employed has been very stressful on us both. On that note, we've been doing better. I think he was surprised when he read the last post about my depression, and us talking about it in depth and resolving some things made our situation with each other better. You all know a little fighting doesn't mean there's not as much love, it just means there's something there to be discussed. People at my old job are so devious. It's strange the difference from my Tuesday to my Wednesday. On Tuesday I had to write up one of my senior guards (lowest level of management), and on Wednesday one of my assistant managers was making a lunch run for everyone because we looked a bit groggy. On Monday I walked in to find a meeting agenda in my inbox saying there's new procedures but not outlining what they are, and on Wednesday another manager and myself sat with the Aquatics Supervisor and discussed possible solutions to the same issue and came to a compromise plan drawing from all of our experience in four different aquatic centers (two municipal, one college, one military). It's like moving from a downtown ghetto to Pleasantville USA where the cheer captain dates the quarterback and everyone turns out for the big game (speaking of which, I missed homecoming again). It's a bit of a culture shock. My mom suggests that I don't burn my bridges at my old job, and that if Charles does't get this job he can look for work in the San Gabriel Valley or in the Los Angeles area and I can continue at the old pool. I'm not so sure that'll work for me anymore though. I've gotten a taste for this real world thing where people treat their peers with respect and behave at work as though they could get fired. Not that I want to fire people, but when they know that no one who cares to do so has the authority to do so, things get bad. Trust me on that one. But yes, I'm tired. My depression doesn't help that, but I do feel just a tad overworked. I'll be okay, though, I'm enjoying myself. :) Apologies for the ADD-style post, I can't help it, just having a bit of a rant.

*sigh*

I've been going through a period of depression, starting at least a couple of weeks before the wedding. I have no car, it wouldn't start when I tried to leave work on Saturday. So now Charles drops me off and picks me up at work. Not too bad for when I work in El Monte, because there's a Taco Bell / Pizza Hut within walking distance. Only thing within walking distance of my work in Ventura is a gas station though, so that means I'm not eating lunch. Then we moved my tv/monitor to the bedroom so we can watch movies since we have no tv (because we don't have cables for it) so now I have no computer because I have no monitor. And I still have no tv because I have no cables. And we have no money. Luckily both of our families gave us generous wedding presents in the form of checks, or else we'd really have nothing. We had to pay a $1,000 deductible to get our Focus out of the shop, paid $500 in repairs on our Explorer which now once again doesn't work. I had to explain to my boss that my car would sit there after closing until I had money. That kind of sucked... So yeah, no car, no computer, no tv (I know that sounds vain, but I'm used to watching the news for two hours in the morning and one in the evenin five days a week, so this is a shock to my system), no music, no internet access from home (which would do me no good since I have no computer, but it's still a big change for me), no money... My new job has been going well. We had a little tiff over not doing things by the book on my first day with my guards. My boss didn't tell me she wants things done a certain way (which is not what's in the textbooks) so it really threw me off when she interrupted my class to "correct" the guards on their deep water spinal injury management. It's a change in technique that requires there to be two guards at all time, because she has them ditch their rescue tube, so that throws off our Emergency Action Plans too. I have to have two guards jump in, one to get the victim and one to get the rescue tube and re-position it. That leaves no one on deck in the deep end to clear the pool out. We'll see how it works, we get real people in the pool tomorrow. the city's having a donors party (people who donated lots of money toward construction) at 3, then a city employees (and immediate family, so I invited Charles) party at 4. Being invited to a party where I have to work kind of sucks, but someone has to make sure no one drowns, right? Well, anyhow, Charles is at home and grumpy and has work to do on the computer, so I'm going to go now. I haven't touched the computer since my last update, and probably won't again in about as long. But I'm still alive, that's part of my contract. I'd say someone call me, but we have no phone either, and I have zero cell phone coverage at our apartment. :(

First day at new job

Remind me to tell you about my first day at my new job later! I'll replace this post with that.

Wedding picures 1/3

First batch of wedding pictures are now uploading (online by the time you read this =P though). This is the first disposable camera we used, the second one is still half done so we'll have that developed after it's finished. The third batch will be the photographer's pictures. Keep you posted. http://photos.yahoo.com/calliope320 Click on wedding, I'm not feeling snazzy enough to grab you a link straight there.

Still alive

Still alive, anyone reading. Just busy! Got back from honeymoon and in the process of finishing up moving and starting new job. My boss at old job questioned (to the other manager, not to me) why I am now only scheduled for twice a week. She doesn't know I got another job. That'll be interesting when I go to work on Tuesday. :)

Moving

I'm moving this week. Most of my clothes are already at the new apartment, and now we're packing the rest of my stuff, including the computer. I know I'm mostly afk anyway, but I thought I'd let you know why I'm not around at all! No DSL at new house, no internet at all in fact, so I'll be on when I can get Charles's computer and run away to Starbucks. :)

Wedding Update

Yesterday morning I went to sister's house and printed out our wedding announcements. We have close to 90 of them in two sizes with the same text. Sister's going to translate into Spanish so we can do a batch to go to the uncles and my grandma in Mexico. I have to go through the "guest list" we had worked on when we were going to spend lots of money and see if I need to buy another box of announcements. Today, after work, I'm going back to sister's house to work on at home cards and how to combine them with the announcements- we're thinking gold ribbon. Now, I know that ettiquite states that I should hand-write the addresses, but I apologize in advance to those who are getting them - I probably won't have time. Charles came over this morning to help me pack up my clothes, my non-clothes stuff is going up tonight... Tomorrow, Friday morning, I get to go have my fingerprints taken for my new job, I have a 10am appointment with the Ventura PD, so I'll be staying at the apartment tonight. Then after that I'll be un-packing, possibly making another trip for more stuff. It depends on how much we can stuff into our two cars tonight. Ack, I haven't even tried on the dress mom got me yet. Feeling overwhelmed. Luckily, Charles and I talked about stuff last night and worked out our problems, so that's one less thing to stress about

Subtle Messages

My fiance turned off comments on his blog, deleted or hid comments I'd made, and still hasn't added me to his friends list. He also says in his blog that he's going to a race on our honeymoon weekend. He mentioned it as something he'd like to do when we talked on the phone, but that was after he told the world he'd definately be there. Should I be upset? Hmmmm.

Quiz 2

Ahh, it's almost October, and activity on the vampire mailing list from Haunt is picking up. Although it's now been years since I played a vampire for a month of scares, I still enjoy their discussions.

You scored as Marius. You are the quiet cool. You are so mellow people are lulled into a false sense of security. When you are pissed god help anyone who crosses you? Marius 100% Blade 83% Spike 83% Dracula 83% Armand 75% Deacon Frost 75% Akasha 75% Louis 67% Angel 33% Lestat 25% Whose your Vampire personality? (images) created with QuizFarm.com

Quiz

Thought I'd share, pretty accurate.

Slow and Steady

Your friends see you as painstaking and fussy. They see you as very cautious, extremely careful, a slow and steady plodder. It'd really surprise them if you ever did something impulsively or on the spur of the moment. They expect you to examine everything carefully from every angle and then usually decide against it.

How Do People See You?

Wedding Update

Oh, apparently I've now ruined the wedding by wanting to have my dad walk me down the aisle... go me huh? I don't know what to do, give up on every little girl's dream and risk my dad not being able to do it down the line if/when we renew our vows, or ruin the whole event for my fiance because his family can't go and mine can. What can I say, I'm crushed, between the two men in this word I love. :( But there's no going back now anyway... I can't tell my parents they can't go now... They thought they couldn't, then Charles and I talked about it and invited both families, and today his family said they won't be able to attend and he's mad at me because my parents can go. I'm the baby in my family and my dad's retired (after 4 years on disability, he's now old enough to be officially retired), his parents are still working and raising kids, and yes it was short notice. I'm sorry. Charles, I'm sorry. Mr and Mrs Wyble, I'm sorry. Everyone else I can't please with our wedding, I'm sorry. What am I supposed to do? We already figured out that it would cost about $10,000 to even come close to pleasing half of the people in our lives and decided against it. But now Charles is mad at me and there's nothing I can do... Even when we weren't leaving the state, we couldn't make everyone happy... My dad can't drive because he never regained use of his left hand after his stroke. My mom is terrified of driving on the freeway. Both of his parents drive, but they have 11 kids still at home to pack up. How were we supposed to even pick a location when our families live an hour apart??? Someone has to give.

Ants

I need to talk to David, my pet expert. These damn ants are swarming the worms not only in the can but in the food dish in the tank. Can't imagine it's good for the lizards to eat ants that are on the worms... I just cleaned the tank too. :( I'll have to relocate it and clean it again, but not in that order, or in parallel rather...

Keeps getting worse...

Yeah, remember how I said I had too much to do and too little time? As I was going to PetCo to get food for my poor, hungry lizards, which I was going to rush home and feed them before I went to the apartment, I get a flat on the freeway. The THIRD flat tire of our new car we bought in May. You know, my '91 Explorer has had it's problems, including replaced brakes, radiator issues, etc, but it's never left me stranded on the side of the freeway... Of course, my phone was almost dead and rather than have it die on me when I was snaking up the Pacific Coast Highway in the dark, I had left it on the charger while I made the "quick" trip to the pet shop. I was bad and drove the car some more after I realized the back left tire was flat. I passed an interchange, because getting on another freeway was going to be no help. I got off on the next exit, near a Ford Truck place. Of course, they didn't do tires for "small" cars, but one of the guys at the shop was nice enough to change the tire for me. So I'm driving on a spare for now. I borrowed Mom's car again to go to Oxnard, which sucked because in the process I somehow lost the loan application which was in the trunk of the car before I left to PetCo. It disappeared, and now Charles has to drive down to El Monte so that we have a form with both of our signatures on it...

Wedding Update

By the way, I'm getting married 2 weeks from today! Transportation, minister, photographer, videographer, flowers, music, and rings paid for. Champagne flutes (engraved) and present for Charles arrived yesterday. Rings and marriage license safely put away. To do: Hotel reservations, his tux, my dress. (I like this dress I have, but mom wants to get me another). Now I just wish he'd make some mention of it or me on his blog. =/ (And yes, I've told him repeatedly.)

So much to do, so little time

As much as I like to think that my "part-time" job gives me time to do stuff, it really doesn't. I work 11-5, which means I would have had to wake up far too early to go to the bank for a loan (considering the time I got off the phone with my boy last night), and today when I get home I have to program the sprinklers, load a television in the car, pack up clothes, show mom how I want my wedding dress, and then get to Oxnard (almost 2 hours away) before it gets too late. Another reason why I can't get up early, I need to sleep now rather than sleep on the road. Oh, and I ran out of worms for my lizards. Well, kind of. I noticed ants in my room, and I couldn't figure out why. Then when I went to feed them before bed, I realized that there were ants milling around INSIDE the container of worms. I was very confused, but now we know ants eat worms. So I have to go to PetCo and get worms and come back and feed them before I leave. But I can't choose not to go to Oxnard, I have to get finger printed early in the morning for my new job and I don't want to risk driving there in the morning and not getting there on time. I feel very emotionally drained. Yesterday, I got called in by the division manager to ask why I took a long lunch the day before. Well, the reason that I took a long lunch the day before was that there was lightening and a union meeting. Now, we're a swimming pool, and people can't swim in lightening, it's not allowed. So everyone was out of the water, the lifeguards were at home, and I had a supervisor in the office. I told her I was going to the union meeting, which was upstairs in the same building. I figure the reason my supervisor didn't reprimand me for it was because she was there too. So instead she went two steps up the chain of command to have the division manager do it. We're having financial problems as of late. I actually don't want to quit my job at this point, I'd rather see how long I can keep working two jobs without being either totally drained or very pissed... I already came to the realization that once I move, my first two hours of work each day go to pay for my gas, so if they'll let me work two ten-hour days I will. Then I can work three days at my new job. At least long enough for us to pay off what our wedding is costing us... My supervisor at my new job plans to start me the Monday after the wedding, which is really cool of her. I think she's getting married soon too (well, I know she's getting married, how soon is the part I don't know), we were having a discussion on changing last names. My boy's taking me from A to W, I think hers is taking her from S to Z. Not sure who wins there. :) I have a lot of stuff. Just stuff, in general. I've been sending things home with Charles when he comes to visit, or dropping things off when I visit him. Now most of my CDs, DVDs, files, and a good amount of clothes are in his apartment. Then I look at the rest of my stuff and I wonder if I even want to clutter myself with it at the new place. I have clothes that don't fit anymore too. It's so hard for me to buy clothes, I went wedding dress shopping last night with mom and sister and my chest and waist/hips are in two different sizes. I can either have my chest constricted or my hips baggy. I think I'd rather keep the dress I already have. On a final note, I must admit that I purchased three (small) cook books last night. Make of that what you will!

Go me

I've finally been overcome by peer pressure and started a blog. I've considered it many times in the past, and have in fact been told that I should do so because of my entertaining life. I've always replied with "but I can't say things like that, I'd get fired!" But we'll see what we can get away with, yes?