Amphigouri: varnished nonsense

It doesn’t look much like spring, what with the skies above Massachusetts in the process of dumping 10-12″ of snow on our lawn. However, I’m slowly starting to get into the spring cleaning mode. At least, the mental list of items that need to get tackled in the coming months is being made; this, for me, is a start.

Not only does that breath of fresh air need to be added to the content here, I’m bored with the interface and want to tackle a redesign this spring. Unfortunately I tend to be much more interested in fiddling with technology and getting things to work than I am in actually maintaining the output once it’s running like clockwork; this poses somewhat of a problem when it comes to updates, as the frequency of entries over the last several months indicates. With luck, I’ll find a new look-and-feel to be more inspiring.

This spring will hopefully mark the start of our landscaping plans at the house. The back yard is in desperate need of regrading, which fortunately requires the removal of our back porch (a very good thing, since we’ve discovered a few rotting steps). I can’t wait to have a real back yard, free of the strangling vines and vine-like plants (bittersweet, possibly?) that have overrun a rather large section of it, and I’m hoping to find the time to get some more day lilies planted along the perimeter (gotta love the low-maintenance plants). The plan was to start some of the preparation this coming weekend, but it looks like tonight’s snowfall is going to delay those plans for at least a week or so.

As usual, the house itself is in need of spring cleaning (we suffer from serious CHAOS - “can’t have anyone over syndrome”). A while back, L pointed me to FlyLady.com, a neat site with some great tips on how to avoid the chaos and keep the house in shape. Unfortunately I always seem to be in need of the crisis cleaning hints (boy, I wish I had remembered these tips this weekend, as my folks are planning to be in town for part of this upcoming weekend). Mom’s always said that just a few minutes each evening will help keep the messes at bay, but I never seem to be able to follow that wisdom.

One of the target areas for the spring is what I like to call the “craft room.” The ultimate goal is to get the boxes out of the way so I can comfortably set up my sewing machine and actually spend some time working on some quilting projects (I seem to have the same hoarding tendencies with fabric that I do with books; my fabric stash is getting quite large these days). Husband and I both have a fondness for modern tech toys, but my sewing machine is one thing that isn’t state-of-the art, and I love it. It’s a Singer Featherweight that belonged to my great-grandmother, and it does everything that my newbie projects require:

I’m definitely envious of the motivation the folks at ATQ have for their projects; reading that site always makes me want to seek out a local quilting (or knitting or crocheting, for that matter) group to join, but alas, that’ll probably have to wait until I finish my degree program.

And summer’ll be here before we know it…

Just a quickie post for now, hopefully something a little longer later this week.

School is chugging right along; this semester is more hectic than usual, due to an increased workload and two courses, but both the database class and the information organization class are turning out to be fun, interesting, and highly applicable to work. Yay.

Something that was posted to our class discussion board by a fellow student earlier this week:

Alternative Source Citations : Newest Rulings on Alternative Source Citing.

When writing papers and needing to provide courses in the references section, this page can come in handy, particularly if one has some rather… unusual.. sources. My current favorite (considering I have one of these on my desk):

Laughter has always been a big part of my life, particularly during family gatherings. Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, particularly when I was in college and when I was living in VA & NC; it always means lots of my mom’s fantastic food, and even more good humor. There is always good-natured ribbing between my brothers and myself (there was a span of several years when my mother refused to sit me next to or directly across from Brother M during mealtime, as inevitably he’d make some snarky comment under his breath or give me one of his one-eyebrow-raised looks, which always resulted in a gasping fit of giggles), Dad’s horrific puns (which seem to get even worse as the years go by!), teasing of the parents, and Simpsons quotes (and other pop culture references) galore. Family gatherings have made me really appreciate environments in which there’s abundant amusement, but not until recently did I realize that I no longer laugh that much at work, and how much I actually miss it.

I first started working at my current place of employment in the mid-90s, back when I was learning Unix system administration and worked with a bunch of other techies. Nearly every day saw us lunching together in the cafeteria, where the conversations were almost always humor-filled, and always enjoyable. I usually met for daily coffee with another group of like-minded folks at work, and tech talk was almost always interspersed with a few jokes. After two years, I moved to VA into a very different environment, but one thing remained the same - the humor. Actually, the jocularity there took on a very different flavor - much more geeky, and not for the thin-of-skin or easily offended (if you’ve ever seen South Park, you’ll have a sense of the milder side of most of the jokes in that work environment). Despite the fact that I refer to my time in VA at that job as one of life’s “learning experiences” (a euphemism of grandest proportions), I have to admit that I did enjoy the more social aspect of the environment and my coworkers when not dealing directly with work stuffs.

Three and a half years ago, I started working in my current group, which is small and geographically dispersed. Most of our communications take place via emails and conference calls, and I thought I’d adjusted quite nicely to being a cube-hermit (the folks I sit near are not in my group and we very rarely have any interaction aside from a cursory “hi” in the morning and “have a good evening” on the way out the door). Last week, however, I was reminded how much I’m missing.

One of our current projects necessitates my working with some software vendors in order to test drive their products before selecting one to purchase. Last week marked the first of our official tests, and I found myself working for four days with the sales engineer, trying to understand the software. There were several problems with the software, actually, but on Friday as I was writing up my report I was surprised to discover that it hadn’t really been a frustrating week; I laughed more at the office last week than I have in ages, due largely to the fact that the vendor was so laid back and had a sense of humor that I could appreciate. (I’m suddenly reminded of a Jack Handey/Deep Thought, which was something like: “Dad always said laughter is the best medicine, which is why, I guess, so many of us died of tuberculosis” ; aside from the tuberculosis bit, there *is* something to be said for laughter as “medicine”) He reminded me a great deal of many of the folks I’d worked with in VA and a few in NC; and while my current coworkers all have fine senses of humor, there’s something to be said for people in the workplace with whom you can share a chuckle at things like Strong Bad’s English paper. (don’t ask me why that’s funny. it just is)

At any rate… thank you, VendorDude, for the reminder that I still need to have some of that face-to-face contact with some of the other tech people in the workplace, no matter how comfortable I think I am in my cube/cave, and for reminding me to add this to my list of criteria when I’m on my next job hunt.
I suppose I should also add my thanks for illustrating that not all vendors are evil.