Monday, February 23, 2009
I Didn't Need to See That
I saw a woman on my walk home tonight - she had so much silicon in her lips and so much bright red lipstick that it looked like she was wearing one of those cheesy wax lips things. This was even beyond the opening singer from Rockey Horror. Seriously, who thinks this is an attractive look for themselves?
Thursday, February 12, 2009
The Fun Things I'm Learning At My New Job
Needless to say, things have been a little busy since moving from Arizona to New York, and I've been blogging much lately. Often, it's simply that I'm tired and want to relax and not think about anything too hard. I'm going to try to be better about that in the future, and I think it will get easier as I continue to settle in and I spend less time simply trying to get my feet under me at work. Work has provided me with some interesting lessons in the first six weeks or so. Here are some of the work-related things I've learned in that time:
The documentation around this place sucks. There are binders upon binders of slides and photos, but only about 1 in 10 binders and 1 in 20 slides/photos are labeled at all. When you're trying to go back and track down old photos of a particular place, the lack of organization makes it a little hard to accomplish.
The woman who had this job before had been here more than 20 years. While this means that that she was pretty good at it, it also means that toward the end she was getting really burned out. It also means that she simply had all of the institutional knowledge in her head, hence part of the reason for the lack of documentation and organization as stated above.
The elevators are all kinds of messed up. On any given day, one or more of the elevators may decide its simply not going to work that day. Or sometimes it will only acknowledge people wanting to go down, so if you're headed up you may have actually hop on one going down and take a detour. And there's fact that doors start to open before the elevator stops - as in there's often a foot difference between the elevator and the floor.
The temp pool in this city is a little pathetic. We have one in particular, doing transcriptions, who likes to talk - a lot, and very loud. She seems incapable of understanding that she's shouting when she doesn't bother to talk off her headphones. And she talks about things that she probably really shouldn't be talking about at work, especially when "work" is as City Hall. We get all the gory details about her divorce and debt troubles. Luckily for me, her desk is NOT right outside MY office - the guy next door to me isn't so lucky.
The thermostat in my office is in the worst possible location. It's right next to the door, on the far side of the room from the windows. And I suspect that the weather stripping around these windows is the original 1972 weather stripping. This means that on days like today, when it's cold and rainy with high winds (weather channel said 30-40 mph with gusts up to 50 mph), my office is damn cold. And I'm thinking that in the summer when it gets warm outside, it's going to get warm inside. If the thermostat had been placed in the middle of the room it would work a little better. The problem is that it picks up on the warmer air coming in from the general work space. So right by the door, where the thermostat is, it's a pleasant 70 degrees. By my desk, it's more like 65 with a draft.
My computer sucks. My work one, not this one. This one's only real problem is that is has Vista. No, my work one takes about 10 minutes to finish booting enough that I can launch Outlook and actually have it load (relatively) promptly. At least they're working on getting me a new one. It's just taking a while.
I wonder what I'm going to learn tomorrow. And, yes, I will try to be better about posting more often.
The documentation around this place sucks. There are binders upon binders of slides and photos, but only about 1 in 10 binders and 1 in 20 slides/photos are labeled at all. When you're trying to go back and track down old photos of a particular place, the lack of organization makes it a little hard to accomplish.
The woman who had this job before had been here more than 20 years. While this means that that she was pretty good at it, it also means that toward the end she was getting really burned out. It also means that she simply had all of the institutional knowledge in her head, hence part of the reason for the lack of documentation and organization as stated above.
The elevators are all kinds of messed up. On any given day, one or more of the elevators may decide its simply not going to work that day. Or sometimes it will only acknowledge people wanting to go down, so if you're headed up you may have actually hop on one going down and take a detour. And there's fact that doors start to open before the elevator stops - as in there's often a foot difference between the elevator and the floor.
The temp pool in this city is a little pathetic. We have one in particular, doing transcriptions, who likes to talk - a lot, and very loud. She seems incapable of understanding that she's shouting when she doesn't bother to talk off her headphones. And she talks about things that she probably really shouldn't be talking about at work, especially when "work" is as City Hall. We get all the gory details about her divorce and debt troubles. Luckily for me, her desk is NOT right outside MY office - the guy next door to me isn't so lucky.
The thermostat in my office is in the worst possible location. It's right next to the door, on the far side of the room from the windows. And I suspect that the weather stripping around these windows is the original 1972 weather stripping. This means that on days like today, when it's cold and rainy with high winds (weather channel said 30-40 mph with gusts up to 50 mph), my office is damn cold. And I'm thinking that in the summer when it gets warm outside, it's going to get warm inside. If the thermostat had been placed in the middle of the room it would work a little better. The problem is that it picks up on the warmer air coming in from the general work space. So right by the door, where the thermostat is, it's a pleasant 70 degrees. By my desk, it's more like 65 with a draft.
My computer sucks. My work one, not this one. This one's only real problem is that is has Vista. No, my work one takes about 10 minutes to finish booting enough that I can launch Outlook and actually have it load (relatively) promptly. At least they're working on getting me a new one. It's just taking a while.
I wonder what I'm going to learn tomorrow. And, yes, I will try to be better about posting more often.
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