Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

I feel like I'm copying tersa: I have to take an online college course for work. Hers is in Spanish, mine is in Technical Writing (which is the job I do, so hey, that should be handy... though it would have been more handy two or three years back).

It's kind of odd. I'm really nervous about doing everything right, but I guess that's a good thing -- I'm taking this class more serious than I did any class I took while in college.

Part of the reason I'm worried about it is money. I HATE HATE HATE how my company handles paying for it: I have to pay for it 100% (class and textbooks both), then assuming I pass and don't quit the company before finishing the course, they'll pay me back. That sort of makes sense for them, but... ugh. I've paid more than $1,000 for the class and two books, and I'm really uncomfortable with the worry of not getting that back.

I've done one assignment and one "class discussion" (commenting in a forum) thus far, and my grades were good (two As -- 93 and 98), but this is just the intro stuff so far, no technical/real work yet, so we'll see how it goes. Still that's 1/8th of my score so far, so good start.

Hm, I suppose I should do more reading for it instead of puttering around on LJ. :P

Man. My work network is touchy. Something about the comments on my last post got part of my LJ banned:

You're seeing this page because the website you tried to access may be hosting viruses or other malicious software. This site is blocked to protect your computer and the [company] network.

I'm assuming it's mention of m-o-d-s -- changes to a game. Not even a link to them or detailed talk about what they do, just that they exist.

At least my whole LJ isn't blocked. At least LJ as a whole isn't. ...hopefully I'm not speaking too soon.

Edit: kelen: I got the email that you commented, but I won't be able to reply until I'm home. :P And it was banned after my comment, so it's not based on the new info in your latest one, so no worries on that.

An assortment of random things. Like an assortment of chocolates, but with fewer calories!

It's odd being lonely at work. I've been here a couple hours already, and next to no one is here. Usually there are hundreds of people in this building.

I think I'm going to work from home ("work" from home) tomorrow and Wednesday.

Though it's still too early to be sure, I think the calorie counting app is really helping. I didn't lose much last week (.2 pounds -- two-tenths!), but the next day I lost a pound (unofficial weighing though). If I generally continue downward for the next two weeks, I'm going to call it a success instead of just a period between forever-plateaus.

[Glossary for next section: FFXIV = MMO/online game I play. FC = free company/"guild"/group you play with. RP = role-play.]

I'm going to quit my FC on FFXIV tonight. The way I jump from FC to FC is becoming a joke in part of my social circle, but I just find I have less and less patience for immature crap anymore. My current FC seems to be full of preteen boys: Racist, sexist, stupid "jokes" are the order of the day. Endless memes and that sort of thing. If the RP were good, I could put up with OOC annoying stuff, but in this case the RP is very borderline (there are a few good RPers in the group, some average, but many many below average).

Game/RP-wise, I'm in a good place though. More and more people chase after me to want me to join their FC. (I'm a way, WAY more experienced RPer than most folks, and it shows. I've been RPing longer than most of them have been alive.) It's such a good feeling when a FC tells me that I'm their favorite person to RP with, or when they thank me for being such a good sport in RP (with experience comes the knowledge that having your character lose can be just as fun as your character winning -- most young people want to RP being perfect and winning at everything).

Perhaps as part of my FC jumping, I feel less and less like my online friends are really friends. I used to think online people were just as real of friends as offline people could be, but now I'm seeing my online friends as just "people I'm now friendly with but can and will drift away from in the likely-near future". I wish that were otherwise. Maybe it's my own fault, maybe I have to reach out more after I leave people behind in a FC.

I'm too old for this.

The MMO I play (FFXIV) has a new expansion coming out tonight. Current players get a couple days of early access. For most players, it starts at a reasonable 5 AM (east coast of the US), late morning/noon-ish for EU, and JP afternoonish.

For me, on the west coast of the US, it's 2 AM.

Of course everyone, me included, wants to log on as soon as possible to play with the new stuff. If I lived anywhere else but the west coast, I could get a whole night of sleep. But 2 AM? Blah. I did try to go to sleep early, but my neighbors ensured that I couldn't sleep. That and the fact it was still daylight out.

It's only 11 PM, an hour after my bedtime, and I already feel braindead. Times like this make me wish I drank coffee!

In other news:

- Work actually has good stuff happening. I'm getting a new desk! Recall that my current desk is next to the guy who literally narrates every moment of his day out loud. "Oh I just got a new email. I'm clicking it, I'm opening it. I'll read it now. Oh I know him! *leans over* Hey, [Thistle], I just got email from [person]! Okay, checking to see if I have a meeting now. Two meetings this afternoon, one at 2 and one at 4. Okay, now I'll look into that bug-- Oh I guess it's coffee time. [Thistle] I'll be back in a few minutes..." etc. And he doesn't talk to himself, he talks loud enough for people to hear rows away. And he endlessly treats me like his secretary/personal tech support/audience. I can get nothing done because of him. Also, my desk is in the worst position, as that anyone and everyone who enters our floor looks directly at my monitors. Ugh!

My new location is just the opposite: Perfectly private, and I even have half of a window! Natural light! Eeeee! It's going to be so wonderful!

- I haven't written about my bariatric surgery in a while. It's been nine months since then (wow, almost to the day: Nine months and three days), and I think I've settled into my new normal. I'm pretty okay with life/my new diet. I feel like I can eat just about everything I want (other than sugar, though I don't miss that), just in much smaller amounts. I tried fried pickles for the first time last week! (They were on my food bucket list -- I love pickles. Apparently I don't love them enough to like fried pickles though.) Usually, for "bad" foods, I eat just a couple (couple fries, couple fried pickle chips) and throw the rest out. And when I say a couple, I mean it: Like four or five fries, and I'm usually good. Food lasts a lot longer, which is nice (like two slices of pizza becomes four meals/my whole day of food).

The only thing I really miss is 'grazing'. Eating a whole pack of Oreos while on the computer in the evening, things like that. I don't miss the Oreos, just the 'eating as much as I want, nonstop' thing.

Not drinking until an hour after I'm done eating is a pain, but I'm pretty much getting used to it. I'm still hungry a lot of the time, but I can cope with that.

So: Good work stuff. New game stuff. Okay diet stuff. Week of vacation. Things are looking up! Yayzzzzzz

Do you own a Nook? Do you want some amount of free credit for a Nook book? If so, leave your email address in a comment on this post. First person to comment gets it. I have no idea how much the credit is! It's from some court settlement, but I don't have a Nook, so I can't use it. I'll send the Credit Certificate Number and PIN to use it to the first person who wants it.

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Random life updates:

- For all its downsides (which include a longer drive), my new workspace rocks for one reason: The desks raise or lower with the push of a button. I can work standing! Working standing up is really good for you, plus I suspect helps burn calories. I work for an hour to an hour and a half standing, then sit down a while, then stand again. Only downside is your monitor is so high, everyone can see it. No doing non-work stuff, ha.

- The heat in my apartment died on Monday. They did a short-term fix (somehow turned my AC into heat), but it's not automatic like heat is (where it clicks on and off to keep you at whatever temperature you set it at). I have to turn it on and off. That's an issue when I go to work and sleep. It's going to take two to three weeks to fix! But luckily they found a used part they can repair it with for now... So I guess that's good.

- I haven't lost my hair yet. In the 3-6 months post-surgery, you can lose all/most/some of your hair. I'm soooooo worried about it. We're three weeks into that 3-6 month period, and so far so good.

- I haven't written about weight loss in general, because whenever I think about all this, I just get depressed. Life works best when I don't think about all the food I'll never, ever, ever eat again this new diet. I'm down 80 pounds now, 60 post-surgery. On one hand, that's a lot for 3.5 months on the other... it's so so so far from goal. But 3.5 months, so... I'm just trying to be chill and go with it. And not think about how I'll never taste frosting, cake, a cookie, or anything good ever again.

- And to end on a food- and work-positive note, one more good thing about the new building: We have a nice cafe in walking distance (in our other building, so maybe a couple minute walk), and I had a nice egg white sandwich on Monday. I think I'm going to get something again tomorrow morning. Starting the morning off with hot eggs is so nice. (Usual breakfast is a cheese stick, like you'd give a kid for a snack.)

On my friendsfriends list, someone I don't know (snow_white) is doing a "100 things I love" project. She has no rules for it posted, so I shall make my own!

Rules
Post 100 things that make me happy before the end of the year.

I've lost nearly two months already out of this year, so I might not make 100, but we'll see!

Why do this? So far, this has been a darned sucky year. I've been trying to focus on the positive as much as I can ("But at least I'm not in the hospital!" works really well). This will be part of that effort.

Why "100 things that make me happy" instead of "100 things I love"? To me, 'love' is a really strong word and I feel would restrict me. I don't know if 100 things exist that I love! Unless we're being really loose with the word, like "I love ice cream".

So! On with the show!

Thing #1 that makes me happy: My job. Rarely in my life have I been able to say that. Would I rather be rich and not have to work at all? Well, sure. Failing that, I'm surprisingly happy where I am. I believe my boss values me and appreciates my work (even though I am very much the least skilled person of the group). I like all the other people in my group (never before have I been able to say that about a job). I love the work -- I get to be as anal as I want about getting things exactly right. It's so satisfying! And the people I work with are just as picky about grammar and typos as me*.

I'm in the (also rare) position of being the most technically experienced person in my group. They all have decades more writing experience than me, but most of them can't log on to a Linux machine.

I learn new things nearly every day, and most days I have enough time to slack and read LJ/personal email. My boss doesn't hover, yet she's there if I need help.

To top it all off, if this group hadn't taken me in I'd be out of a job, so... bonus! :)

*Talking about my work as an editor worries me, because I'm paranoid someone will go EDITOR? EDITOR? BUT LOOK! A TYPO IN THIS POST! AND LOOK HOW ROUGHLY THAT SENTENCE IS WORDED! I'm not (and would never claim to be!) perfect. :)

I don't understand most of this song (it's in Spanish, I think), but I can't stop listening to it.



A Target commercial uses it, and after hearing it once, I had to track the whole thing down.

I decided to compromise on the bird/cat issue. I took the feeder down for now, and in its place hung up a big bird bath. Birds should be able to find enough food this season on their own, but water is probably a bigger issue. They're slowly getting used to it. Come winter, I'll likely put the feeder back up -- maybe the cat issue will be cleared up by then, due to my actions or otherwise.

I have tomorrow and the next day off (WOOT!). I keep hitting our PTO cap, and if you don't use the time you lose it, so I'm trying to burn some off before we reach another 'can't take time off for any reason' period at work. I really hate losing vacation time.

I'm reading a great book (Ready Player One). I'm about a third of the way through it, and already writing the review post up in my head.

Once upon a time there lived a girl. She slept in a lovely little cottage made of gingerbread and candy. She was always asleep. One morning she woke up, and the candy had mold on it. Her father blew her a kiss and the house fell down. She realized she was lost. She found herself walking down a crowded street, but the people were made of paper, like paper dolls. She blew everyone a kiss goodbye, and watched as they blew away.

The Sundance Channel had a marathon of My So-Called Life. (No, don't ask me what Sundance Films would have to do with that show, I don't know either.) I really enjoyed it at the time it originally aired, so I figured I'd check it out now. Amazingly, nearly 10 years later, it held up perfectly*.

Surprisingly, I think it actually works even better for me now. When I watched it the first time through, I mostly rolled my eyes at and ignored the adult characters, but this time I was just as invested in them as I was the kids.

It was really fun seeing Claire Danes in it, especially with Homeland so much in my thoughts right now. She's really not changed all that much in ten years! Her voice is exactly the same, her hair is the same style (just a different color). I really like her as an actress.

Unfortunately they only showed five eps, but that was plenty for one sitting. Even after just that handful of eps, I felt such fondness for the characters. They're all so imperfectly human -- perfectly imperfect? Wonderfully flawed and real and very, very interesting.

* The only thing that didn't hold up was the 'film' itself. The quality seemed really low, as if I were watching it on an old VHS tape. No sharp details, things were very slightly blurred, as if they were replaying it from a VCR.

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WoW news is meh. Reed the paladin hit 69 (Northrend flying, yay!). He has 10 or 11 rares in archaeology already, which is just silly. I've quested/instanced for three of those post-60 levels, so he got all those rares in six levels of archaeology. *stops before a rant can start*

Christmas! I'm ready for it RL (that was actually the one I got done first, heh), ICly, and OOCly. :D It's so hard to wait to give out gifts! Except ICly, since now Thistle is certain that Nik is going to hate his gift and will be all IDIOT >:[ at him. :D

Work is busy. I have to work through the holiday shutdown, which very much sucks, but at least I get to take the days off later. I'm in a 'down' period mentally right now, which of course is depressing (ha ha), but at least it didn't bring with it the usual inability to sleep, and for that I'm really very thankful.

Ramble, ramble. I've not posted in a few days, so I feel like I should have important stuff to write about, but nothing much has been happening so this is it.

Sometimes my brain comes up with what I think was supposed to be a nightmare, but it falls short. Last night I had a dream I was at work, on the last day before a long vacation, and so I had to find people to cover my various duties. The Lich King followed me the whole time, doing that slow walk like at the end of HoR. I'd stop in someone's cube to ask them if they could take over this case or that one, and down the hallway the top of his helm could be seen, slowly approaching. Sometimes he'd turn a corner and I'd see him down the row of cubes, slowly pacing towards me.

Sorry, brain, that was way more entertaining than scary. The rest of the dream was even more WTFy: My boss wanted to kill me, so ordered the computer to shoot a mining laser at me (I had no idea I worked at a mining company until this point in the dream). Turns out the computer, an AI system, was designed and created by me (HA). The computer decided it didn't want to kill its creator, then in a Hal voice said something like "I see I don't have to follow orders at all" and dropped one of those massive mining things (bigger than a house) into a hole that went to the center of the earth. And so the world blew up. (Still not scary, but thank you very much for the highly entertaining dream, brain.)

And in other semi-work related news, I learned an interesting thing. treuegrit and I had grumped over the poor editing we sometimes find in books (typos, clunky sentences, homonym issues). I do (and love doing) the editing for our various documents at work -- it's amazingly fast and easy, I just sit down and my figurative red pen flies. Editing a work of fiction seems to be a whole different animal. frozenwrath asked for critical readings of his blog posts, so I figured what the hey, I can do that. But it turns out that editing boring technical stuff is very different than interesting fiction stuff. For me, I had a hard time staying in "editing reading" mode, almost every sentence I found I was slipping back to "reading for enjoyment" mode. So I'm wondering if book editors have that issue as well (or maybe they get used to it). Not that "hard" is an acceptable excuse for professional book editors to miss stuff, but I'm now willing to cut them more slack.

I probably shouldn't babble on about editing, it's likely boring to most folks, but I really enjoy doing it. I love that it's a whole different way of reading things. I don't understand 90% of what our documentation at work is about, but that doesn't matter. Once I finished a user guide and someone said to me "so you know how this works now, right?", and I just blinked in reply -- reading to edit is 100% different than reading to enjoy or to lean about the topic. When I edit something, I'm not... reading it. I'm looking at each sentence. I'm looking at each word within the sentence. At the paragraph as a whole. I'm reading it to hear the flow of it, but that's not reading-reading.

And ha, writing about editing makes me so so so so paranoid about typos. "Look! You can't even spell that word! You left off a period! Look at all those commas! You expect us to believe that someone pays you to do that?!"

Teen Wolf: Going into the show, I expected to hate it. I frowned as I started the first ep, expecting it to be nothing but a waste of time. About 20 minutes in, I gave up and admitted I liked it. By the end of the ep, I wanted more more more. Luckily I was mistaken about something: I thought that this was a new series and so only a couple eps were out, but instead there's a whole season out there. YAY!

However, as much as I liked the ep, I can't promise anyone else will. I think a love of werewolf-y things makes all the difference here. It was fun, most of the characters were very attractive to look at, and I loved the werewolf aspect of it, but it was not a perfect show. (Oh, huh, it's shown on MTV? That's probably another strike against it, for most folks.) Okay, googling more, it actually got good reviews in general? Nice to know that maybe my tastes aren't all that off.

I'm dying to read fanfic of it, I've seen there's lots out there, but I want to watch the rest of the season first. (And I always say I want to read fanfic of this or that, but alas I rarely do. Time issues, mostly.)

I got just a little RP today. ("Just a little" is perfectly fine, I've been sick all day, not being able to flee the computer at a moment's notice is something of an issue.) Two short scenes. One was random RP, but it was a good match for Thistle. The player is new to the server, so hopefully I made a good impression for us. She wants to RP again sometime, so yay! She's a DK who pretty clearly is still loyal (at least OOCly clearly, she had "mourning her lost king" as her current RP setting), and in my not so humble opinion, there's never enough of those. :D

Edit: I won't be able to watch this week's Homeland until Tuesday at the earliest, so no spoilers please! <3

First off, I reinstalled Fraps and it started working, so...

500K gold, woot. I have almost 10K more on Alliance side. I'm not not not making gold there on purpose, it's just coming in through questing and selling what I gather.

In fact, so certain am I that I'm not going back to making more gold, I've done the unimaginable: I've given away all of my secrets! Okay, it's just to one person and it is on Alliance side, but still! I held nothing back, I told her everything I know! ...I sort of feel like I should be cringing, waiting for a lightning bolt strike. If I get unlazy enough, I might post them all here too, but that'd take a lot of unlaziness.

In other news, Dandelion hit 75, woot! I was pushing hard for this level because grrr his archaeology, mining, and herbing were all capped before he hit 69. Mumble. Anyway, now he can go back to skilling! (Edit: Oh wait, not his mining! That lagged behind. But the others, yes!)

I would have happily leveled him through just those three professions, but that would leave me dry on guild rep. And as our lovely guild is a lovely high level and thus has access to lovely rewards, I'd like to be high enough to buy them. So I've been questing a lot. So very unlike me! But it's Northrend, so that makes everything better. Sad, but better. Poor NPCs, still talking about how the Lich King is taking over. If only!

It's funny how my fear of instances has returned. I remember I actually did a few on Thack the druid with itsbacon and company, but the thought of doing them on Dandelion? Fills me with terror, the very same terror I had with Thack. "But I'll suck!" "But my DPS will be horribleterribleawful!" "But I'll get everyone KILLED!" "But I'll stand in bad stuff and not realize it because I'm looking at my position|my buttons|where everyone's going wait don't leave me behind I get lost endlessly!" I would so very very very be the person everyone wrote about on dear_gnome. D: Questing is peaceful compared to that!

And I'm going to cut the work stuff, just in case I look at my main LJ page while at work. ( Good work news back here. )

Eee, Glee tonight! Eee!