Apparently, I'm a prostitute...

Someone sent me this, and even though it's meant to be humourous, there's more truth in it than i care to admit:

The truth about working in the IT industry

1. We work weird (night) shifts...
Just like prostitutes.

2. They pay you to make the client happy...
Just like a prostitute.

3. The client pays a lot of money, but your employer keeps almost every penny...
Just like a prostitute.

4. You are rewarded for fulfilling the client's dreams...
Just like a prostitute.

5. Your friends fall apart and you end up hanging out with people in the same profession as you...
Just like a prostitute.

6. When you have to meet the client you always have to be perfectly groomed...
Just like a prostitute.

7. But when you go back home it seems like you are coming back from hell...
Just like a prostitute.

8. The client always wants to pay less but expects incredible things from you...
Just like a prostitute.

9. When people ask you about your job, you have difficulties to explain it...
Just like a prostitute.

10. Everyday when you wake up, you say: "I'm not going to spent the rest of my life doing this."
Just like a prostitute ........

Sundry

This week has been very atypical for me. Here's a summary:

Work:

• Work drama has increased. Thank goodness the work drama isn't internal to the group, it's external, but we end up cleaning up their messes.
  
• I have two type of projects now: 1) Legitimate projects and 2) Stupid people's projects. Stupid people's projects are projects that we had to take on due to someone else's stupidity. But what this does is it pushes back the legitimate projects' timelines even more. And the stupid people's projects are multiplying faster than rabbits (see previous point)
  
• My team (me, my co-worker and our co-op student) wrote out a list of projects we had on the go or saw was going to happen in the foreseeable future. It was very, very long. I also added another item to said co-worker's list just before I left work yesterday. Bawhahahahah!
• I got raked over the coals by a PI (primary investigator) of a very large and important research centre. Well, the PI thinks that her research is very important (and it is, but no more important than anyone else's), and man, let me tell you it was a deer-looking-in-the-headlights moment. Afterwards, I was vastly amused by the whole thing, but she really asked me some pointed questions that I couldn't answer, or answer well. My other colleague, who was in the room with me and who is the one normally deals with her, said I did okay on my first try. I could tell at one point he was trying to help me out, but by then, I knew I was already being sucked in to accommodate her. And I was warned that she would do it to me too. Dammit.
  
• I got pulled into two ad-hoc meetings which means that 1) I won't get my normal job done (so much for time management!) and 2) they were both at the end of the day, and I had to be there, which in turn extended my work day and increased my stress level.
  

Me in general:

• I'm more stressed because of work, and I can't look forward to going home and decompress as there is the homework stress waiting for me at home
• I was sick with a slight cold, so I couldn't go to the gym. Hence, I feel like a fat blob right now, and it certainly didn't help my stress level any.
• I'm still going to see my chiropractor twice a week, so that also disrupts the normal patter of things. Plus I'm feeling guilty for cutting work so much and I have to work that around gym time and homework time

Some positive things:

• Our team at work is really getting overloaded (I'm not the only one), so my director's looking to hire someone temporarily to alleviate that load. Don't know if that will actually happen, but at least it's acknowledged.
• My manager has come up with a brilliant plan to hire another person to do a specific role, which will take some more pressure off me and my co-worker and let us do our jobs properly, whatever our jobs are (they need redefining). Also don't know if that will actually happen either.
• Work drama, even after almost two years, still seems to amuse me, so I at least don't hate my job.
  
• My cold is gone.
• I'm going to soak in a hot bath right now and forget about my life for about 5 mins.

Sigh

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

I haven't been blogging all that much the last few days because, well, there's not much happening in my life right now. Despite the fact that I had the Christmas-New Year's week off, I spent a good chunk of my time in front of the computer, either doing homework or work-work. So spending a lot of time at home doing nothing interesting really amounts to a lot of nothing to talk about.

Anyways, New Year's Eve will be busy for me, we'll be hanging out at a friend's place. Everyone have an awesome time ringing in the New Year!

Boxing Day Booty

After going to two malls and four furniture stores, we sadly got very little: 8 place mats for the new table, and 3 glass cutting boards, all from Benix. One of the cutting boards was for my mom. The total purchase after tax was less than $40, so we did score. My in-laws gave us gift cards for Christmas, so it wasn't like we weren't ready to spend, we were loaded with cash, so to speak.

I'm so disappointed that we didn't buy very much that I'm not even going to put an effort to posting a picture of what we bought. Those of you who are curious can come over and look. And for those of you who don't know me, if you beg hard enough, I may actually get off of my lazy ass and take a picture.

I'm finding Boxing Day/Week specials really aren't the same as they used to be. There were only a few stores that offered 50% or more discounts. I've pretty much given up on looking for clothing and shoes on Boxing Day, at least in Lotusland. Everyone who lives here is my size (or smaller), and I've already determined that the combination of A) finding something I like that's B) in my size and C) on sale is a pipe dream (this is no exaggeration!). I don't know why even bother with sales, let alone Boxing Day.

We're now on the hunt for a storage ottoman that is large enough to replace our coffee table. Large storage ottomans are a rare breed, but we will prevail!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Have a happy and safe Christmas holiday, here in Lotusland, or wherever you call home.

KOOKY: Well, I'm done...

Work that is. No more work for the rest of the year. The whole campus pretty much shuts down the days between Christmas and New Year's. While it's not written in our contract, it's written in the union's contracts that they get this time off. For our Association, we don't get paid overtime, so HR "generously" gives us this time off in lieu of the overtime we've done over the year.

What will I be doing over the next few days? Homework. I'm soooo behind it's not even funny. Programming, while sometimes fun, can have some really un-fun moments. I've spent the last 3-4 weeks banging my head against a brick wall trying to come up with a solution. I finally have, but it's not how I want it to really work, and it's not an elegant solution, but it is a solution.

What will I also be doing? Work-work. I running some pretty tight deadlines the first week of January, so I need to be ready for it.

Somewhere along the way, I'll also be doing Boxing Day shopping, probably right on that day. And having turkey dinner.

And that's my holiday in a nutshell. Eating, working, homework, and a bit of shopping. I think I need a vacation.

I'm a sad, sad person.

I just downloaded and installed the Quicken 2007 Cash Manager, and I'm giddy as pie.

I was a little worried that I would have to input everything from scratch as I had Quicken99, and looking at the Intuit site, they didn't even mention it once anywhere. However, the lovely folks at Intuit managed to figure this out for me and converted everything with no problems.

Now I'm really looking forward using this new software, and planning out my budget for 2007. I really like how they laid out the reports.

Yes, I'm very sad. Someone make my life more interesting for me. Please.

(If you want to know how absolutely boring my life is, this is what I was reading all afternoon)

Instruments of torture

I've been seeing a new chiropractor the last month, and I have to say that I'm feeling a lot better. My muscles feel less tight, and a definitely feel less tense.

My chiropractor is using a combination of techniques: Graston for my upper back and shoulders and Active Release for my neck (specifically, pin and stretch). Both are meant to reduce and heal soft tissue damage. Keep in mind that I've been in pain for about 2 years now, so anything to reduce the scar tissue that's been building up is a big relief.

The first time my chiropractor used Graston on me, he warned me that I would get "hickey-like" bruises (his words, not mine) because the blood vessels near the surface of the skin were breaking.

I actually took pictures of the bruises cause I thought they were neat, but I've decided since then not to post them as people may take them the wrong way and think that hubby was beating me up! (Anyone who knows my hubby knows that he would never lift a finger to hit me, so you can be rest assured on that point!) And I think my readers have viewed enough body parts for a little while.

Anyways, the pin and stretch is actually much more painful than the Graston. What he does is he pins down either a muscle or tendon (not sure which), and stretches my neck out. I suck it up an breathe through the pain. After all it's only for a short time, and if it had really, really hurt, I usually let him know in a hurry.

Hopefully this will help my upper back problems. Of course, the best thing for me to do is stop sitting in front of the computer for so long, but that can't be helped at this point. (Stoopid evil homework!)

Trend Setter?!?

This is for IT P/J. Tori Spelling is copying you! Read more here. Cheers!

Pineapple Express: 1, Irene: 3

I apologize for not posting the past few days. The Pineapple Express had blown the power supply to my Internet and cable, so I was without either until yesterday afternoon.

We woke up at about 3 am early Friday morning because the winds were so loud. In our area, they had predicted that the winds would get up to 90 km/hr. In other areas, up to 115 km/hr. I don't know exactly how bad the winds were, but considering that the only thing that happened to us was non-working cable and Internet, we were pretty darn lucky.

Someone at work had emailed pictures of a tree that had fallen onto his roof, and even he was fortunate his damage wasn't too bad; there are so many people who had it much worse. First a water boil advisory, then a very heavy snowfall, then super high winds. what's next? It's not even winter yet, sheesh!

Anyways, it was interesting to be at a lost of things to do when TV and Internet is taken away from you. However, never one to miss a good opportunity, instead of just sitting around moping, I put my time to good use.

1. After a 4 hour shopping spree, we finally found a dining set we both liked. Pictures forthcoming once we have it assembled.
   
2. I did a through cleaning of my house, something I haven't done in a good long time, and was itching to do but I never had any time to do. Hubby couldn't really help as he didn't want to pop stitches, so I pretty much was the only one cleaning for about 6 hours straight.
3. Because I wasn't sitting in front of my computer for more than an hour for the whole weekend, my upper back problems decreased slightly. I'm normally in pain all the time, but this non-computer time really helped.

But as much as it was nice to getting thing accomplished, I'm sooooo glad we have TV and Internet back.

Click on the pineapple picture to see it dance...

Damage at Stanley Park, to show how strong the winds were. Poor trees...

What hubby did today...

Hubby went to a plastic surgeon today to remove a lump in his back. Don't worry, it's nothing serious, he could have left it alone and nothing would have happened to him. However, the lump was getting big so he decided to take it out. And since this is elective surgery, it comes out of our pockets. Eeks!

Anyways, not to have people upchuck their stomach contents, I decided to let you view them at your own peril. It's some sort of membranous sac filled with fluid. What type of fluid, I don't know. Any medical types want to take a stab at it? (No pun intended). Non-medical types can guess as well.

Click here to see it. The hand in the picture is the surgeon's and he wanted to show how big it is compared to his hand.

Click here for a close up.

Blenz

So I was dragged into Blenz today. I normally go to Starbucks for hot chocolate, but one of my co-workers is anti-Starbucks, so off we went to Blenz.

I can't complain too much, as the said co-worker owed me a hot chocolate after I kicked everyone's butt to have our budget items handed into the boss on time (Said boss was breathing down our necks, and the guys in my office in typical guy fashion weren't moving fast enough for my tastes).

So according to the website, they use Bernard Callebaut chocolate chips as part of their recipe. Well, as much as I'm impress with that, it also unfortunately made my drink really sweet.

Ah well, at least it was free!

Tis the Season...

This weekend, I attended three funtastic Christmas parties.

1. Saturday - my work party. It was okay, but I think last year was funner because we got to mingle. This past weekend, we all sat at tables, and half my group didn't show up. Booo on them! Then it was followed by...
2. Hubby's work party. Or more correctly, the Christmas party that his boss puts on every year. So I went from hanging with Faculty of Medicine types to Health Authority types. Joy.
3. Sunday - Cookie Exchange. I think this was the best part of my weekend. I got to forget my life for a few hours of tasty nibbles and silly talk of Chet the D&D Dungeon Master. Really, he does exist.

So today, I hauled my booty to work: 5 dozen cookies, and I force-fed them to all my team members. I think I ate one too many myself because I was feeling kinda gross by the end of the day. It was either that, or I was coming down with something. Not to chance it, I went to the Shoppers on Campus and bought some Cold-FX. I can't not go to work tomorrow, I have four meetings. Bah.

At least I feel better now. On to more partying...

Yum, Coke!!

I ran across this the other day, which describes the effects that Coke has on your body. As much as I am a lover of pop (or soda or whatever you choose to call it), this is turning me off of it big time.

This is my favourite part:

In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.

I've been trying to wean myself off of pop for a while, with some success, but I don't think I can ever give it up entirely. Especially root beer, that's my favourite.

The finger bone is connected to the ankle bone...

It looks like I strained my hip flexor. I'm not too certain how, but there it is.

I really like this chiropractor that I'm seeing right now for my hip problems. He prodded and poked, pushed and pulled, and asked me a million questions, even questions unseemingly unrelated to my problem (like if I had changed my diet or was suddenly fatigued). He certainly assessed me more so than my two previous chiropractor (one whom I'm still seeing for my upper back problems).

I felt that he was being extremely through, plus, he knows more techniques than just plain ole back cracking. Today, he was doing some sort of myofascial massage on me. My RMT does a similar technique when I get messages from her. Hurts like heck, but my hip flexor's already feeling better. Next appointment, he's going to fix my tight bum. I'm thinking about switching over to this guy for my back cracking, ha!

He also told me that my squatting technique was incorrect and showed me the correct way of doing squats. I'm all big about correct form, I see enough incorrect form at the gym already; these people are just waiting to end up like me, or worse!

This guy does a lot of sports therapy, and I'm tending to like these people more, because they tend to see the body more as a whole, and not just focus on the isolated area where the problem is. The more I learn about my body, the more I find that everything is interconnected.

Anyways, this guy has a lot of athletes for patients. I know that his partner treats players from the Canucks and Giants. Their office walls are peppered with autographed pictures of hockey players. I'm definitely going to take a closer look at the pictures when I get a chance.

Winter Wonderland

Let me prelude this with: Snow belongs on mountains and only mountains.

It started snowing Saturday mid-afternoon and stopped Monday mid-afternoon, so it snowed for two days straight. I had driven around Sunday and Monday night, and nare a snow plow nor salt/sand truck did I see. Very bad of the city, I really wonder sometimes why I pay taxes.

Anyways, these were taken yesterday...

Water

You really don't know how much you depend on something until it's take away from you. Take for instance, water. We had to boil our water from Nov 16th to Nov 27th because the turbidity levels were too high from a severe storm we had on Nov 15th. The Boil Water Advisory lasted 11 days.

So no drinking tap water, no washing food with tap water, no washing dishes with tap water, and no brushing your teeth with water. And if you had a baby or toddler, you had to bathe them with boiled water.

I've lost count the number of times that I've turned on the tap water when brushing my teeth. I think I've even rinsed my toothbrush with tap water once by mistake.

So anyways, here are a couple of pictures for posterity...

This was taken on Day 4. The turbidity level was 30 NTUs (Nephelometric Turbidity Units) that day. The highest it got was 70 NTUs. The allowable limit for safe drinking water is 1 NTU. I've been told that it used to be 5 NTUs, but after the Walkerton incident, they lowered it to 1.


The number of 500 mL bottled water two people used in that time period: 35

I spoke too soon...

The Boil Water Advisory was lifted today. The cold water's pretty clear, but the hot water's still a little silty looking, and probably will be for some time as there's probably a lot of silt in the boiler.

Good times.

Craziness abounds in Lotusland

Sigh.

It's day 12 of the boil water advisory.

My left hip flexor cramped up on Friday, so now I can't go to the gym until I at least see a chiropractor, which I will be doing on Wednesday.

It's been snowing like crazy since Saturday mid-afternoon. It should stop soon. However...

Half the city's shut down. I can't go into work even if I wanted to as there's a power outage at UBC. So I'm working from home.

I cam home last night to find that there was a power surge and one of our routers blew. We can't print for the time being. I had planned on putting a couple of other posts up, but spent three hours last night trying to troubleshoot the problem. This has also affected evil homework.

I'm tired, I didn't sleep very well last night.

And it's going to start snowing again on Thursday.

Sigh.

Wedding Crashers

With our new digital TV service, we now get some movie channels to try out. So I recorded and watched Wedding Crashers.

For a cheesy date movie, this one's pretty good. The funny lines weren't too cheesy, I didn't get bored (okay, a couple of parts were slow, but not overly so) and overall, the plot worked.

Owen Wilson actually annoyed me. I can't see him being a romantic lead. Period. I love Vince Vaughn's role, and the crazy lady he ended up with. Jane Seymour was terrific. And Rachel McAdams should have been a brunette, not a blond (in real life, I mean); it suits her better, I think.

Anyways, I give the movie 8 out of 10.

A side note: I love, love, LOVE the PVR functionality!!! It's so easy to record and watch something, and I never have to worry about setting the VCR incorrectly any longer yay!

Another note: I'm pretty ambivalent about keeping the movie channels. I still feel that I'm on someone else's time schedule and was limited to a very limited selection. Really, the value for the viewer is the Pay-Per-View channels and the Video-On Demand, something I'm not really gung-ho on buying, mostly because it's expensive. Plus, I would still be on someone else's schedule, and I'm not certain if the DVD extras and commentaries would be included. Call me crazy, but I love watching that stuff.

Still, we get the movie channels for free for the next 10 months, so I might as well take advantage of it and watch movies I've missed out in the past.