Woohoo I am the winner of the baby pool here at work! Well, ok, I’m actually the co-winner—it seems two of us got the exact same score.

One of the guys here decided to have a pool where people guessed on several aspects of the baby: date of birth, time of birth, length, weight, and dark vs. light hair.

I was only off by about 2 minutes on the time of birth, but 5 days on the date, so that kinda killed me. Even though I’m glad I won, I’m a little upset that I’m only winning $20 instead of $40, since I have to split with the other woman who won. Call me greedy!

Posted at 8:29 AM | (11)

I just overheard a conversation that seemed wrong to me somehow. First, a little background info. The main speaker was a guy who was maybe in his mid-40’s, complete with ‘70’s longish feathered hair a la David Cassidy and a mustache. The woman he was speaking to was probably in her late-40’s to early 50’s.

Man: I just saw Incubus at the SB Bowl. Man that was a great concert—it was just perfect.

Woman: Ooh, I wish I could’ve gone to see that. It would’ve been a great show.

Is Incubus’s target audience really middle-aged, middle-class individuals?? Or are these older people just going through a mid-life crisis and desperately trying to be hip by jumping on the “alternative” music bandwagon. Are they playing KJEE (our local alternative rock station) on their car radios?!

Anyone else find it weird, or is it just me? For some reason I pictured their Bowl show as having an almost exclusively high school and college-aged crowd.

Posted at 11:50 AM | (2)

Lots of people have specific frames around their vehicle license plates. Some of these are cute and personalized, some proudly display an alma mater, while others are just the default ones that came with the car, advertising the dealership from which it was purchased.

At least in the instance of the dealer advertising, you can explain it away by saying that the people are too lazy to get a new one, or just don’t care. So what I don’t get, are the people who advertise other companies for no reason. The prime example of this is the frame that says “My other car is an Enterprise Rent-a-car”. Now, why on earth would you put this frame on your car, unless you’re an employee or actually purchased a car from Enterprise (although even then I think I’d be hesitant)? It’s not that cute, and it is blatant advertising! At least the ones from Sport Chalet that say “I’d rather be (golfing, skiing, etc.)” are relevant to that person’s hobby. The Rent-a-car ones don’t imply hobbies—at best, they imply that you like to buy cars for cheap after they’ve been driven thousands of miles by hundreds of strange people. I don’t even know how one would go about getting one of these frames….do they sell them at your local Enterprise??

If you’re tempted to go buy one, don’t do it! They are totally lame—lamer than the ones that tell people what kind of car it is, despite having the model name branded on the vehicle itself.

Posted at 1:14 PM | (3)

Today in the mail I got the Official Voter Information Guide for the California General Election in November. It’s a fairly big booklet of information, giving summaries, pros and cons, and the actual texts of all 15 proposed laws.

I am so uninformed all the time, that this information is always a bit daunting. It’s more overwhelming of course in a Presidential election year, because that’s when they really lay out all the Propositons—knowing full well that this is the only time when most people bother to vote.

I plan on voting and all, and I suppose I’ll wade through the info in the guide, but if anyone has any insight into any of these Propositions, let me know. It’s so hard to know what to believe, especially if you don’t keep up with politics at all.

Posted at 6:41 PM | (6)

It has dawned on me lately that my new workplace is not terribly diverse. Sure I’ve seen a few people of different ethnic backgrounds, but on the whole I’d say that this place is 90% white. I’ve only seen one black guy, two asian women, and three hispanic women. Granted, I may not have seen everyone in the company yet, but that wouldn’t skew my observational analysis too much.

I guess it’s just a change from my old job, where there actually were quite a few non-white employees. How diverse is your workplace?

Posted at 3:34 PM | (19)

What is it with drivers and pedestrians on weekday mornings?! Sometimes it takes me so long to get to work. This is partly because of the increased traffic, but also because drivers get so inconsiderate and impatient. These drivers are the ones who insist on still going when the light turns red because they HAVE to make it through the light—of course, because of the increased number of cars, they just wind up blocking the intersection, insuring that NO ONE on the perpendicular road can proceed through their green light.

I’ve had it happen where I’ve been stuck at a signal for 2 turns with no cars moving because of this situation. Today wasn’t THAT bad, but I did have to totally swerve around one idiot so that I could make my left turn onto the freeway (if I were to wait until he moved, my light would probably be red).

And then, just as I’m entering the onramp, I have to swerve to avoid a pedestrian strolling across the path. It seems she decided that the crosswalk signals don’t apply to her, and since she didn’t see any cars coming, she’d just go. To her credit she did start to jog a little when I came—but only after I was already past her, so that was pointless.

Seriously though, why can’t drivers and pedestrians use any common sense when there’s morning traffic?! I guess these are the same people who freak out when any amount of water, no matter how minute, falls from the sky. ARG!

Posted at 8:26 AM | (2)

Do you think it’s a bad sign when your company’s head HR guy sees you walking around the office and remarks to the HR woman who hired you that he has no idea who you are?

I mean, I was sorta introduced to him on my first day, and I’ve been working here for over a month…Although, I guess it’s better than him knowing exactly who I am because I did something horribly wrong.

I guess I just find it amusing that the head of the department in charge of taking care of employees doesn’t know who some of the employees are!

Posted at 10:01 AM | (5)

I admit it, I’m obviously obsessed with those darn packing peanuts.

Today’s peanut story is a little less of a rant. Sure the peanuts in today’s box still broke into thousands of little staticy pieces that stuck to the journals, but I found that I was unable to be angry at them.

Why?

Because there in the box full of fluffy white peanut bits was a lone PINK peanut, fully intact.

How did it get there?! I’m pretty sure the warehouse isn’t in the habit of color coordinating its packing peanuts to match the contents, so how did one pink peanut get mixed up in a crowd of white ones? I could probably make some sort of racial analogy, but I’m too lazy. You can make one if you really want. :)

Anyway, I just thought it was odd, so I decided to share!

Posted at 3:24 PM | (3)

Has anyone else out there gotten a copy of The Sims 2 yet? If not, you totally should! I got my copy this weekend—I was too lazy to run out and buy it the day it came out.

Anyway, the game is pretty cool. It’s very easy to spend over half an hour just creating your character, because EVERYTHING is customizable it seems. My character kinda sorta looks like me—more so than in the original game I suppose.

It has some features that make it more like real life—you can get pregnant (with a “sex” option in lieu of simply kissing and being asked if you’d like a kid), there is morning sickness w/puking, babies sometimes spit up on you if you throw them in the air, and you have memories that impact how you view the world and how well-adjusted you are as you go through life.

Unfortunately, my laptop is the only thing I have that will run this game, and it could use a little more video and regular RAM. As a result, the game is a little sluggish at times, which can be frustrating. It also caused me to lose part of my game, when I tried to multi-task and got tired of waiting for the game to refresh the window so I could play. Of course, it was my fault I lost the data—I didn’t save, and I shut down my computer to escape the program. Oh well, I made up for the lost time.

It’s kinda cool having a kid and watching it grow up—mine will be a teenager soon! All in all, it’s an easy way to lose track of several hours, and it’s just as addictive (if not more), than the first incarnation. Just make sure your computer can handle it!!

I guess a combination of the weather suddenly turning colder and my window being open created a situation where my bed has been invaded by ants!

It’s nothing as drastic as a whole army of ants marching in a line…no, these ants are much more subtle. I see individual ants, scurrying like lone scouts on a recon mission. I can’t tell where they came from, or where they were intending to go, so I’m not sure how many are out there. All I know is that I take no prisoners—it’s rough terrain and I once spotted, the ants don’t live to tell any tales.

I just wish they’d go away. They aren’t in my food or in huge numbers, but they are annoying enough that every time I lay on my bed, they end up crawling on my feet! They all must die….this is war!!

Posted at 10:31 AM | (4)

I think that I’ve gotten more paper cuts on my fingers in the last two weeks than in the last 10 years!

It’s crazy—I swear that every time I touch a journal or some stack of papers, they find a way to slice me. The worst ones, of course, are the ones that you can feel, but can’t see.

Luckily I haven’t gotten any today, but it is only 8:30am—the day is still young! UPDATE, 10:04am: Well, there goes that! Just sliced the ring finger on my right hand. Ow!

Posted at 8:30 AM | (7)

The woman who was supposed to meet me on Monday finally came into the office this morning. She had needed more time with the assignment, and the reason was instantly apparant. With her, looking quite angelic, were her two little boys around 3 years of age. Now, I’m not sure about the details, but one was fair with blond hair, and the other had darker skin with dark hair, and they are only about 6 months apart. Not sure what the deal is with that, but hey, I guess they could both be hers.

Anyway, after the little boys handed me a few journals they were holding, they immediately went off to play with the compact shelving. Many of you probably have no idea what compact shelving is, but basically they are bookshelves with handles on the ends that let you adjust the open space between shelves. The idea is that not all the shelves are accessible at once—the ones not in use being pressed up against each other—so that you can fit more shelves in a smaller space.

I’m not sure that compact shelving is the best toy for little kids—seeing as how it would be FAR too easy for one of them to be squashed to death with their overzealous moving of the shelves. They were kinda supervised, but there was at least one moment that could have easily turned very icky.

Cute as those kids are, they are a reminder of why you might not want kids—particularly if there are two of them….and they are boys…and they are around 3 years old. They were pretty well-behaved though—just with lots of energy.

Posted at 12:33 PM | (4)

May I just say that packing peanuts are quite possibly the most annoying invention EVER??

Sure, they might SEEM cool at first…they look kinda little albino “S”s, and they are probably tons of fun if you jump in a container full of them. The peanuts even make their little packing peanut crackly sound, as you break them down into little crumbly pieces when you crush them in your hand.

This brings me to the source of my annoyance. Packing peanuts are apparently only meant for single use. It may seem thrifty to reuse them, but it’s more headache than it’s worth. What was once a perfect “S” shape is now nothing more than thousands of little foamy bits. And these foamy bits are VERY staticy—and they like to stick to everything—especially the journals that were enclosed in the peanuts.

They not only stick to the journals, requiring a hard thumping against the trash can to dislodge, but they also get all over everything—the floor, my chair, my clothing, my hair. Trying to brush them off only increases the static cling—meaning that you can watch it fall off you, and then come rushing back on, as the static brings it back to stick tighter than ever.

It’s maddening, I tell you! I think people should only be allowed to pack things in bubble wrap—it protects things and you can pop them when you’re done! Best of all, you don’t end up looking like you have the world’s worst case of dandruff!

Posted at 2:14 PM | (5)

Aww, today I was supposed to meet one of my abstracters in person, but she stood me up! Well, maybe “stood up” is a bit harsh—she did email me to ask if she could come in Wednesday instead.

I have no idea if it will be awkward dealing with her in person—most of the people receive their assignments in the mail and we communicate via email. I guess I’ll have to wait until Wednesday to satisfy my curiosity.

Posted at 10:24 AM | (4)

Woo, today is payday! This is my second payday since working for this new company, but it is the first one in which I received a whole check (the last check was only for 1 week of work instead of the normal 2). This means that I now get to see how much more I will get to make as compared to my last job.

Let me just say that the government sucks. Half of my raise is taken in taxes—meaning on a monthly basis, I’m not making a ton more or anything. I guess more is more, so I should be happy—I’ll probably actually get raises and bonuses here (what a concept! It’s one that didn’t exist as of late at the University), and of course I’ll get at least part, if not all, the Federal tax and State tax, so it’s not all bad. Unless of course this additional income now prevents me from obtaining such a refund—I hope not!

Posted at 11:04 AM | (1)

Oh my god, it was freakin’ HOT this weekend! It was almost 100 degrees, which is almost unheard of in Santa Barbara—where our claim to fame is that it is always 70 degrees or something.

Normally I’d say bring it on, but that is when I have an air conditioned house in which to seek refuge. Since it is almost never hot in SB, pretty much no homes have AC, making it difficult to justify going outside, when you know you won’t quickly cool off by going inside. I think my bedroom was a “cool” 90 degrees, and there was no breeze to be found, making it almost futile to open my door and window in hopes of circulating a little air.

I think next time I need to go swimming! :)

Posted at 11:03 AM | (1)

Good grief, I just spent WAAAAAAAAAY longer than was necessary to complete changes to my blog. I could’ve been done in like 20 minutes, except that I kept typing things in wrong.

Basically, I decided to change my URL style from the default old-style (eg. /archives/000382.html) to new-style CRUFT-FREE (eg. /archives/08/15/entry_title). However, I didn’t want to lose people who have old entries bookmarked or indexed on Google, so I put in a redirect script on all the old entries to automatically take you to the new file structure, as well as alert search engines that the old file should no longer be indexed.

The method of doing this wasn’t that hard—I just published my individual entries as static files using MT tags to structure the entry—since I’m using entry date and title, I just used the appropriate tags. Rebuild, then switch back to dynamic and change file output structure to new way.

Of course, I kept forgetting a “/” or the .html or whatever, so I kept having to rebuild a zillion times. Anyway, I think that’s about all the site tweaking I can handle for one night. Off to bed with me!

UPDATE: I just got a request for specifics on how I did what I did. Well, ask and ye shall receive! I think this could be helpful for many people, and also for myself if I ever need to do this again!

Basically I first backed up all my old files, just in case! Then I did the following steps:

1. I went to Weblog Config, and then Archive Files. Under Individual Archives I entered <$MTEntryDate format="%Y/%m"$>/<$MTEntryTitle dirify="1"$> in the Archive File Template. Save.
2. Rebuild all individual archives. This will create files with the new format of month/day/title_of_entry If you have a file extension you want to use, you’ll need to put a .html or .php or whatever at the end of the code in the first step.
3. Go to your templates and edit your Individual Entry Archive Template. Copy all of your current code and store it safely in a text file. You will be temporarily using code and don’t want to lose your current layout! Save.
4. Replace your current template with the following: < ?php $NewUrl = "<$MTEntryDate format="%Y/%m"$>/<$MTEntryTitle dirify="1"$>"; $NewUrl = "http://www.yourURL.com/archives/" . $NewUrl; header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location: $NewUrl"); exit(); ?> REMOVE THE SPACE BETWEEN THE “<” AND THE “?php”. I only put them in because it didn’t show up in the entry otherwise. Save template.
5. VERY IMPORTANT: Go back to Weblog Config and under Archive files, remove the code you entered in step 1. Save and then rebuild all Individual Entry Files. Failure to do this will cause you to overwrite the work you just did, and you’ll have to redo it.
6. VERY IMPORTANT: Restore your Individual Entry Archive Template back to its original state, using the code you stored safely. Save.
7. VERY IMPORTANT: Under Weblog Config, replace the code from Step 1 into the Individual Archive File Template. Save.

That’s it. Now all entries you write from now on will be posted in the new format. The old files will redirect people to the appropriate new files, and will tell search engines to stop indexing the old pages. After awhile I suppose you could delete the old files to free up space, but being that they only contain a few lines of php code, they don’t take up that much room.

Granted you could do this in a different order, saving you a few copy and paste jobs. However, if you were to do the redirect before you had created the files with the new format, then anyone looking for a page in the interim would get an error. It’s up to you though, depending on your site traffic and level of sanity. Feel free to make any modifications based on URL structure preference. Also, I use a plugin that let’s me substitute keywords in place of the title words. Normally I don’t bother with keywords, but it’s useful if you have a title with weird characters or if it’s extremely long. You could also use the trim_to=”15” in the MTEntryTitle tag, if you want to make sure no URLs have titles longer than 15 characters (change to whatever number you like.)

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me and I’ll try my best to clarify.

Posted at 11:59 PM | (8)

On August 31st, the folks at Six Apart released Movable Type v.3.1, which signified the general public release. Previously, v.3.0 was mainly for developers.

They have already patched a few small things, and so last night I finally upgraded from v.2.661 to v.3.11. The layout of the admin screens is a bit different, but it is easy to figure out. I like that so many options are available from the main menu—for example, you can go straight to editing templates, instead of drilling down the screens.

Also, there is the great ability to view all comments, comment moderation, etc. The moderation—bolstered by installing MT-Blacklist—allows options pretty much identical to those I set up on my test Wordpress site.

I’ve also implemented the feature of dynamic pages—a new option with this current release. I had to the slightest of modifications, but so far so good. Think of all the space I’ll save.

So there you have it. If you notice anything out of whack, please let me know—there may have been some issues from upgrading that weren’t readily apparent to me.

So anyway, if you’re still running an older version of this software, you really should consider upgrading—it’s pretty neat.

Posted at 2:14 PM | (5)

All in all I’ve got it pretty good here at work. While I still don’t know many people, they all seem friendly, and as I’ve mentioned before, there always seems to be a lot of food.

Three large sacks of various bagels and spreads were brought in this morning, so of course I had one. I tried to use the automatic bagel slicer, but I managed to jam the machine in the process, so I just used a knife to cut my now-warped bagel. It still tasted the same though, and best of all, it was free! I have no idea who brought them in, or what the occasion was, but I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Then at lunch, I took the fruit salad that I had delivered outside to the patio table and sat and enjoyed the warm sun while I ate. Maybe I picked up some color in the process. I should eat out there more often before the weather changes.

So see, free morning bagels, eating outside in warm weather, I guess it’s not so bad! Not to mention, this is probably the healthiest food I’ve had here—I didn’t even have any cake or cookies or donuts today!

My job so far is going all right. I’m already being left on my own to do tasks as I see fit—including dealing with the abstracters. I guess that’s cool and all, but I’m realizing that I still don’t really know anyone here.

It became more obvious yesterday, when there was a lunchtime food and book sale outside our building. I sat with my boss and the other new girl who does what I do. As I looked across the way, I saw a group of about 5 or 6 people in their mid-to-late 20’s all sitting and talking. So, I know there are people my age here, but I have no idea what section they are in, or how to get to know them.

I really can’t remember how long it took before I talked to a bunch of people at my old job—although unfortunately, the youngish ones kept leaving. At this point, however, I wouldn’t mind even talking to some of the older editors—just as long as it meant I actually KNEW some people here!

Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not totally complaining. I do like this place better than the old one—it’s a lot quieter, not as many freaks, lots of food and events, and of course, more money! Though it would be nice to have someone to eat lunch with!

Posted at 10:16 AM | (9)