serinde: (job joy)
Department Assistant: "Hi, I'm calling from the XXXX department. We need to order a computer for our lab, and it has to be an HP, how do we do that?"
Your humble correspondent: "Is there a particular reason it has to be an HP? Is there some kind of peripheral or card it has to have? Because the desktop machines are pretty much created equal, and we should be able to get you a much better deal through Dell."
DA: "I don't know but they said it has to be HP because it needs to run this thing...what is it... L - I - N - U - X ?"
YHC: "...Why don't you email me the spec and we'll figure out what you need to order."

(Quoth [livejournal.com profile] elibalin, "Maybe that's why my printer keeps jamming. I'm using Windows ink.")
serinde: (on the short bus)
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: Any progress?
[personal profile] serinde: *hand waggle* Gettin' somewhere.
[personal profile] serinde: I am getting yucks out of Star Wars Name Generators, though.
[personal profile] serinde: "Arwen Taurendil" ? O RLY.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: Um. Right.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: The good thing is, nothing sounds wrong.
[personal profile] serinde: "Eckle Arlos" !
[personal profile] serinde: "Fable Su" !
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: My character in KOTOR is "Sledge Harbatkin".
[personal profile] serinde: Hee. Did you make that up or pick the random offering?
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: I made that up.
[personal profile] serinde: See? CAN'T TELL.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: This is a world in which "Rash Bag Pooop'u" is a perfectly reasonable name.
[personal profile] serinde: We are not allowing Gungans.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: "No! The dread Sith Darth Wonga Wonga Wonga Wonga Wonga Wonga Wonga Ned."
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: Actually, I kind of like the idea of "Darth Ned".
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: He wears sweater vests!
serinde: (job joy)
In general, I am happy in my work (and I have a longer post I need to make on that head), but every now and again I get a reminder that perfect serenity is not granted to us this side of the grave. Vide, a cow-orker voicemail I received today:

"Hi, this is XXX, just to let you know, um, $BOSS stopped by and I just, and so everything's on your thing, I got pulled into this by a sideways motion, who knows. But in any case, I set you any information that I was given, and any policies that are already in place, and, um, that's what she told me to do. OK, talk to you later, bye."

If you are laboring under the delusion that I had any degree of prior context for this, you do not know IT departments.
serinde: (dancing zombies!)
Snapped awake this morning from a dream in which I was managing a desktop support team at NBC, and saw a call come in for an issue that I said "oh well I'll take this one", because it was put in by Jensen Ackles[1], who needed some sort of phone or VOIP or something attached to his computer. And I go to his office, which was also his apartment[2], prepared to dazzle with my l33t sk1llz, only to find he is running some wacktastic OS I had never heard of, hight "TCH", which acronym I knew in the dream but can only remember now that it stood for Total Control {Something}. And this OS was as obfuscated in its workings as early MacOS or OS/2, and I was fighting through screens of icons and could not get to anything that would actually let me look at what the damn thing was doing under the hood. And my brain cried out unto the silent spaces, "who the fuck would run this piece of shit, and why?" but my mouth spake only "This may have a compatibility issue, let me research a bit and get back to you".

Also, for some reason, he was splitting his space with Spock. Not Leonard Nimoy, mind you, but Spock.[3]

[1] Is he even on any NBC shows?
[2] I don't think I need Freud to figure that bit out.
[3] And they were IM'ing back and forth. There is little that is more weird than the thought of Spock on IM.
serinde: (on the short bus)
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: PSOT
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: PSOT
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: PSOT NAO
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: M
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: UST EAT
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: hee.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: GRR GRR GRR YUO PSTOT
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris I NOT HAZ PIX
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: YUO
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: YUO
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: I BEDZ0R
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: I EATZ0R
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: YAY
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: YAY
** You have disconnected
serinde: (on the short bus)
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: Speaking of abysmal movies, we eventually need to grit our teeth and watch "The Spirit."
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: Yes. We do.
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: Alas, The Goddamn Spirit is not on streaming. I can add it to the regular disc queue, though.
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: Though one sees all kinds of random shit when searching for "spirit".
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: Vide:
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: "She was a shy country girl who would become "the People's Princess."" um what
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: What masterpiece be this?
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: "The Spirit of Diana".
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: GAaaaAAaaAaaaAAAAaAAh.
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: There are actually two movies of that name, because we are sinners in the hands of an angry God.
serinde: (temporary)
A conversation with the PFY, upon the sharing of this old Geocities ad:

Your humble correspondent: "Oh, Geocities. How I do not miss you."
PFY: "I had a Geocities web page once."
YHC: "I'm so sorry."
PFY: "Don't be. I was a little kid, it was right for me to have an awful web site."
YHC: *head go foom*
serinde: (on the short bus)
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: !!!
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: Nigella has a recipe that she came up with after having Nobu's cod-in-miso.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: Nifty.
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: And it's scaled for 1 or 2 people.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: SUBSCIRBE!
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: I don't know what mirin is. Please hold.
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: Oh, it's like sake with a lower booze content.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: "O'Doul-San"
serinde: (on the short bus)
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: Goat grabbing!
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: This appears to be what, a millenium ago, they did and called "polo".
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: If I remember correctly, it's called "Buzkazhi" in one of the places it's practiced.
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: "A mounted version of the game has also been played in the United States. In the 1940s young men in the Cleveland area of Ohio played a game they called Kav Kaz. The men - five to a team - played on horseback with a sheepskin-covered ball. The Greater Cleveland area had six or seven teams."
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: WTF.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: What else was there to do in Cleveland in the '40s?
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: Drink beer. We had many breweries.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: And what do people do after drinking lots of beer? They throw goat carcasses around.
serinde: (on the short bus)
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: Harrumph. Someone has the band name "stellastarr", I see.
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: Which means that "Stella Starr and the Funboy Two" is off the table.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: So that makes four people who like "Starcrash."
serinde: (dancing zombies!)
Step 1: Watch this.
Step 2: Follow along the below conversation, kind of like a sing-along with the ball bouncing along the words on the TV screen.
Step 3: Wait patiently, the orderlies will be here with a syringe very soon.
Play along at home! )
serinde: (happyface)
...is irony, it would seem. I have just heard a contest announced over the airwaves, in which one can win a trip to,

wait for it,

Cleveland.
serinde: ("What fresh hell?")
Mom just forwarded me this link. what.
serinde: (temporary)
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: I have been New Facebook Interfaced.
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: Do not want.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: See? S'horrible.
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: How the sodding fuck do we change settings for our "new" "home page"?
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: I have no idea. As far as I can tell, we don't get to.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: I'd like to make the whole right-hand column go away.
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: "Since News Feed is now a filtered stream showing real-time posts from your friends, the old news feed preferences page is gone. You can remove friends from the News Feed list (and therefore from your default stream) simply by clicking the "X" that appears when you hover over their story in your stream. You can always click on "See Hidden Friends" to see which of your friends and Pages have been removed from your News Feed filter. Simply click "Add To News Feed" to include your friend or Page in the filter."
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: Not helpful.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: So, you can either have a wall of trivial spew, or you can shun people, but still have half a wall of trivial spew.
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: Yes.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: So this is Web2.0.
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: It might be Web2.5.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: Fuck you, Future.
serinde: (I see stupid people)
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: "SpaHa", forsooth.
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: I really want to start smacking people.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: Er? Where's that supposed to be?
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: Really. I'm not sussing it out.
[livejournal.com profile] syringavulgaris: Spanish Harlem.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: Oh for gosh sakes.
[livejournal.com profile] elibalin: I would like to exile these people to the glamorous archipelago of StatIs.
serinde: (Sacred Chao)
So, coming to Chez Nous, one ordinarily takes the Dover train. However, my usual train home is not the 5:47 Dover train, but rather the 5:50 Gladstone train. I know this perfectly well, and yet, tonight, managed to have a brain fart and got on the Dover train. (Which I should not have been able to, as it was at that point 5:49.) I noticed this as I was on it & making my way forward to get a seat, when they announced it on the internal speaker; at which point I cussed, turned around, and started running back to the doors...which were already closed. And yet the train was not moving. The conductor said he could not open the doors and went on about how "they announced the train three times..." (WELL, ASSHOLE, I'VE BEEN ON IT UNDER A MINUTE.) Fine, whatever. I was increasingly peeved as we sat there for close on ten minutes, but phoned [livejournal.com profile] nedlnthred to find out where I was going. I figured it was not the end of the world, as one can generally change at Newark for a more useful train.

Much to my horror, however, this proved to be the express train. Which first stop is Maplewood. I didn't even know where Maplewood is. As we were discussing this turn of events, Captain Railway comes through again, taking tickets; I had out my monthly pass and just was holding it in the traditional Leaving Visible For You Whenever It Is You're Gonna Look At It fashion that is customary on NJ Transit, and eventually in the middle of my gibbering convo with Beth I realize that he's standing there looking at me. I have her hold a sec and ask if he's here for me, whereat:

Schmucky Conductor: "That'll be $1.75."
Your Humble Correspondent: "........what"
SC: "$1.75. Your pass is only to Brick Church"
YHC: "Wait, you're now going to charge me for getting on the wrong train?"
SC: "Yes, that's the NJ Transit rules"

Now, let me pause here to point out that the conductors have a lot of latitude. I have frequently seen them not charge at all, accept lesser zones to go to a greater distance, not charge step-up fees, charge random amounts of step-up fees...it's not like working retail where your register must be balanced at the end of the night. This clown knew damn well I was on the wrong train, didn't want to be on it, didn't want to be going where I was going, and he deliberately did this anyways.

I, of course, had no cash, as is often the case. (Somewhere, [livejournal.com profile] audiovile is chortling and having a giant I Told You So.) I was about to say "FINE PUT ME OFF ON THE NEXT STOP" when the fellow standing across from me said "Please, allow me..." and presented $1.75 to the Myrmidion of the Rails. Who had just enough cognizance to look slightly abashed, but took the money.

Naturally, I thanked my kind savior fulsomely, and we chatted for the rest of the ride. He did take the opportunity to mention his e-commerce web site, and gave me his card, but I think that's no less than fair. (He assumed that I was a lost City girl faring into the wilds of Noo Joisey, and I did not disabuse him of this notion, as it was far less embarrassing than reality.) We got to the station, Beth picked me up, and now there is fire and blackened salmon and what-not.

So, yes. Absolute fuckheadery, but an opening for an act of random kindness, which made me feel a deal better about the universe.
serinde: ("What fresh hell?")
[livejournal.com profile] nedlnthred and I went down to Nicole's for a stitch-and-bitch today, where [livejournal.com profile] briony530 and [livejournal.com profile] murieldechimay and others were already assembled; and by the end of the night, after I had been plied with hot 16th C. programming[1] and wine and food, I sobered up to find I'd agreed to teach two classes[2] at Hrim Schola.

what

Because, you know, I wasn't already reaching critical anxiety levels about everything else going on.

[1] "Dangerous Beauty" followed by "The Tudors".
[2] Specifically, "Beginner's Guide To Picking Fabric For Your Project", and "Cote-Hardie Engineering For The Large-Breasted". Now to see if anyone's already doing either of those...
serinde: (on the short bus)
So, I've registered for a class, which means I now have a bill. It's free for me, as an employee of a particular flavor, but until the papers are pushed the bill does indeed show my tuition. It also shows my application fee (they don't actually charge it until you're accepted and actually taking courses, which is unusually kind of them), and...the Student Technology Fee.

My salary is paid out of the Tech Fee.

I'm paying myself.
serinde: ("What fresh hell?")
It's a Sherlock Holmes film...

...directed by Guy Ritchie...

...starring Robert Downey Jr as Holmes, and Jude Law as Watson...

...currently filming in Williamsburg...

...with the antagonist being a Satanist peer.

what.
serinde: (music)
For some reason, "Court of the Crimson King" is showing up in iTunes as being by Steve Hackett. Which, yes, I hear tell he covered it, but this is unquestionably the original version.

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