Enjablog

You know I’ve been spending too much time at work when I wake up at 4am already thinking about work.

Don’t get me wrong though. It wasn’t one of those, “I came up with the solution in my sleep, so how can I charge those hours to the client??” moments. I woke up thinking about rearranging my office. I was already fully conscious, working out what was wrong with my office set-up, minutes from a solution, before I realized I was awake and contemplating this dilemma I didn’t even know I had.

The main problem was that I didn’t want my back completely to the door, so I had shifted my monitor to one corner of the desk. This allowed me to not have creepy people sneak up on me, but that also meant that I was constantly angled in front of my desk, which was starting to hurt my back/neck and I kept banging my knee on the pen/paper drawer in the middle. There’s also a window opposite the door, whose blinds have to be closed to prevent glare on the monitor.

Old office set-up: Bookshelf along the door wall, desk1 with drawers on the left side, desk2 with drawers on the right side, a support beam in the corner, window behind desk2, and a 2-drawer filing cabinet.*

The monitor away from both desks left a lot of space in front of me and to my right. I originally thought this would be a good idea, since I am right-handed and would want things easily accessible to my dominant side. I later found that this was a terrible idea, since I’m a right-handed mouse user and hold papers in my left hand when working.

It was a relatively simple solution, but dilemmas included the ethernet drop coming out of the ceiling behind desk1, no outlet along the window wall, and making sure I had the right desk in the right place so all drawers were accessible. New office set-up*:

It has me facing the door, my monitor facing away from the window, and I don’t bump my knee. I have usable space next to my computer to work with others, either sitting next to or across from me. My monitor is an easily rotatable position, also good for working with others. And my second desk has plenty of space for me to spread papers out without other people moving them around when they need to talk to/show me something.

Side rant: Another annoyance I have with CreepyGuy. He writes on my papers, marking them obsolete or crossing things out. While it’s true that the previous versions are obsolete when he brings me a new copy (Yeah, paper copies of everything.), I also date and timestamp the things he hands me, so I know which one is current. I like to keep the old copies around in case changes get reversed (which happens every time a revision turns out to be not a good revision) and I can revert to an older version and my notes will still be usable.

I was surprised at how quickly I was able to rearrange my office. I don’t think I had any witnesses. At least, if anyone walked by, I didn’t notice and they didn’t offer to help. The desks are from like the 60s, so they’re pretty heavy-duty. I tried just lifting one end to see how heavy it was, but I wasn’t able to do it. The feet on the desks allowed for very easy sliding on the carpet though, so it all worked out. Yay friction!

*Drawings are not to scale. I made a drawing in AutoCAD, under the guise of learning to be more proficient with it. And it came out pretty nicely, considering I didn’t have a measuring tape or anything. So my unit of measure was hands. Which is relatively accurate (right hand, 8″ thumb to pinky), though I didn’t bother converting to any kind of “standard” unit. Anyway, these were made in Paint.

P.S. It was just like Animal Crossing. I took the furniture out of my pocket and slid things around and rotated them. It was *awesome*.

It turns out salt is a key ingredient when baking. The recipe I was using had two columns of ingredients, except that the only ingredient in the second column was salt. I forgot the salt and found that my cookies came out thin with some air bubbles. This could be due to a number of reasons:

1. I had no rolling pin. I thought I had moved it with me, but it turns out I forgot it at Sonny’s place and haven’t had a need for it until now. The first tray, I used a drinking glass, which was ok, but wasn’t the right length, so it left some lines in the dough from the ends. I finally ended up using a wine bottle, which worked out really well.

2. I had no wax paper. You’d think with me planning to make cookies for 2 weeks I would have the necessary supplies when the time came. You’d be wrong. I ended up using freezer paper, which had a plastic coating on one side, so the dough didn’t stick to it. It was thicker than wax paper and not translucent, so it was hard to ensure there was a uniform thickness to the dough.

3. I forgot the salt. I’m not exactly clear on what that does, but I think it means that not all the CO2 that reacted from the baking powder was able to be released. Salt facilitates the release of carbon dioxide because it brings little air bubbles into the mixture that helps diffuse the CO2. Since the baking powder all reacted properly, but the gas couldn’t get out, the cookies didn’t rise and ended up with bubbles in them. (If someone has a better explanation, please share. I had difficulty finding a good explanation on the internet. *gasp*)

End result: not the best texture, but they still taste like regular cookies.

There’s a duck, a fish, a dog, a stegosaurus, left and right feet, a t-rex, and a bone:

With the final dough-ball, I made a kind of creepy-looking leprachaun and a gold coin:

Rich Rolled Sugar Cookies (from The Joy Of Cooking)

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup Unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup Sugar
1 large Egg
1/4 Tsp Baking powder
1/8 Tsp Salt
1 1/2 Tsp Vanilla
2 1/3 cups All-purpose flour

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease cookie sheets.
2. Beat the butter and sugar until very fluffy and well blended. Beat in egg, baking powder, salt, and vanilla. Stir in flour.
3. Divide the dough in half and roll out a scant 1/4-inch thick. Keeping the wax paper in place, layer the rolled dough on a tray and refrigerate for 20 to 30 minutes, or until cold and slightly firm but not hard.
4. Working with 1 portion of dough (leave the other refrigerated), cut out cookies, using 2- or 3-inch cutters. With a wide spatula, carefully transfer them from the wax paper to the cookie sheets, spacing about 1 inch apart.
5. Bake, 1 sheet at a time, in the upper third of the oven for 6 to 9 minutes, or until cookies are just slightly colored on top and slightly darker at the edges. Rotate sheets halfway through baking for even browning. Transfer sheets to wire racks and let cookies firm up, 1 to 2 minutes, Then transfer the cookies to wire racks and let stand until thoroughly cool.

Store, airtight, for 1 or 2 weeks, or freeze for up to 1 month.
This recipe yields 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 dozen 2 1/2- to 3 1/2-inch cookies.

So, it turns out that St. Patrick’s day is not a traditional cookie holiday.

I don’t know why I thought it was. Anyway, I’ve had cookies on the brain since last weekend, when I intended to bake some cookies. I ended up being busy with other things, so I didn’t get around to it, but I still wanted to make some St. Patty cookies. I made some time today and looked through the 100 cookie cutters that my brother got me for Christmas last year, only to find that there were no shamrocks or leprachaun hats or anything. That surprised me because if I were to try and name 100 shapes that I might find for cookie cutters, I don’t think I would have named half the shapes in the bucket. But I would have picked St. Patrick’s day out as a holiday that has recognizeable shapes. It’d be like Christmas trees, hearts, shamrocks, George Washington’s head, an Arbor Day tree, ghosts, and turkeys. Yes, these are defining holidays for me.

Today’s project: Green dinosaur and foot cookies. A traditional St. Patrick’s Day treat!

Ian picked me up after work last night and we ventured over to get tickets to see Inside Man. From there, we walked over to Hops Restaurant/Bar for dinner. I tried their rootbeer, which was good, but reminded me of a less sweet A&W. It might have lost some of the flavor due to the amount of ice in the glass though. I don’t know. In any case, food was good.

When the waitress came at the end of our meal to clear off plates, she dropped Ian’s fork… which none of us could then find on the ground. It was bizarre. After about a minute of us all looking around, she decided it would turn up later, probably when someone stepped on it, and left to get our check. And then she found that the fork had landed in her pocket. Strange.

After dinner, we still had about half an hour until the movie started, so Ian and I wandered around a little. I haven’t bought shoes in a while and most of my dress shoes are pretty beat up, so I suggested we go look in the shoe store across the parking lot. I looked at girl shoes and he looked at boy shoes. A lot of brown shoes this season. I don’t really have anything against brown shoes, but I haven’t found any dress pants in brown that I’ve really liked. So all my pants are black or gray… which means I need black shoes. Ian found a pair he liked and came over to help me look. It helped that he could reach the shoes on display about 2 feet above my head, which I couldn’t see in the first place. But he found a nice pair, and they even had my size in stock. So exciting!

We got our shoes (buy one pair, get a second pair half off!) and then headed off to the movie. I don’t want to ruin it for anybody, so I’ll just say I’ve heard it very accurately described as a modern-day The Sting. Well done! :)

My boss stopped in for a chat this morning shortly after I got in. He had just been notified by HR of my complaint and he wanted to personally apologize for the coworker’s behavior and to assure me that it would not be permitted to continue. He has had trouble with this guy in the past and asked him to cut back on his crass speech and profanity, but it had never really crossed the line before. He was personally offended by the things I had reported to HR and also apologized for not noticing that any of this was going on.

It was made clear to me that if I felt uncomfortable working with racist guy (somehow, that nickname just doesn’t seem sufficient), I didn’t have to. And, as of late, his work hasn’t really been up to par, so for a number of other reasons, the company had already been considering not keeping him on. (He’s a contractor, so I guess all they have to do is not renew his contract. Not exactly sure how that works.) As far as that goes, though, the people who would handle this have been off-site the last few days and RG is out all next week.

Anyway, my boss had a talk with RG and told me that if anything else happens, to let him know or I can go through HR. Fast forward to this afternoon. RG stops in and asks if he “needs to apologize.” He then proceeded to explain to me that he’s harmless, and that his brand of humor doesn’t go over well with everyone. He also understands that we need to interact and work together in a professional manner and he hopes that will be possible. Translation: “I won’t be offensive directly to you anymore. I hope you won’t tell on me again.”

My concern now isn’t that his apology was completely not one. But the fact that I believe that this was him being sincere and trying to make amends. This guy is a complete social nitwit. He missed the point if he thought my complaint was that he was coming on to me or that I didn’t “get” his jokes. My complaint is that regardless of the specific instances, his general behavior around the office is inappropriate. His inability to recognize what is or is not acceptable behavior is the issue here.

Blah. This has wasted enough of my time. I did let my boss know this morning that aside from this one issue, I really enjoy working there. I get to learn new things and use what I learned in school. The rest of the people are pretty cool too, though two more are leaving next week. One to another company and the other one getting transferred. The one being transferred is the one whose brain I need to pick for another 4 days.

That’s all for now. I’ll write about date night tomorrow. :)

LOTD from Fashiongrrl: Annual Techstravaganza. Granted I received it from the one other female TJ alum I keep in touch with, aside from my sister. Whatever.

You know how, sometimes, you will have a dream and not really remember it, but it gets tucked away in your mind as a memory? Well, that happened to me a few weeks ago. I was all ready for the day and on my way to work when I suddenly realized that my car was not the last model that Mazda made waterproof. My car was not approved for driving on the bottom of the ocean. My car was just a regular car, like the ones the rest of you chumps drive out there.

Shucks.

QOTD: “Why buy the sockmilk when the sockcow is free?”

Woo!

And for those of you who don’t camp out my blog all the time, my blog was down for like a day. I only noticed because I couldn’t update yesterday, so I don’t actually know how long it was down. Anyway, the hosting people fixed it, but didn’t tell me what was wrong with it. Whatever.

Tuesday — Went to a training workshop thingy in MD. Had to drive over the Bay Bridge. So scary. Mostly because I’m scared of driving over bridges. But that’s another story. Educational workshop. Not exactly what I was expecting, but I still learned from it. And made some good contacts. They all told me that even though I was asking about another one of the programs they sell (and not the one the workshop was specifically geared toward), I could email them with questions and they’d try to help me out. :)

Also ran into a former classmate there. He just happened to be walking past the corridor when I went out to get a donut. He was a couple years ahead of me at VT, so I just knew him in passing. He had some cool info for me about continuing education stuff in the area though. And keeps in contact with the same prof I email with every now and then. Small industry, I guess.

After the training thing, I headed home for a lengthy tour of the DC-metro area. I started by missing the exit for 295, then driving through DC looking for signs for either 395 or 495. Then, taking the 3rd street tunnel toward 395 and getting caught in the wrong lane in traffic and going to 295 instead. Ok, I can handle that. I’ll just take that until it hits 495. Except that when I got to 495, I didn’t know which side of the beltway I was on. I knew I wanted the inner loop, but the signs only had north and south. So, I picked the wrong north. Fortunately, I didn’t end up driving around the entire beltway, which there have been times I may as well have (New Year’s Eve 2003, anyone?). I got home eventually.

Wednesday — Got lunch with Ian at Chipotle! This is the first time we’ve gotten lunch together since we’ve started our new jobs within half a mile of each other (and of Chipotle). So much fun. I tried a barbacoa burrito for the first time. I can’t believe it took me this long. It was fantastic!

Thursday — Went to a Carnegie lecture with Sonny tonight. It was on olfactory senses, presented by a Nobel prize winner. It started out a little technical (a bit over my head), but he threw in some unexpected jokes and anecdotes to mix things up a little. I can see that the technical part was necessary to understand the rest of his lecture though. He worked on identifying the receptors associated with various scents and how the brain interprets them. Using drosophila (fruit flies), they were able to simplify the problem and found that a given scent was consistently mapped to the same areas of the brain. Sort of like a unique signature for every smell. Pretty cool stuff.

So, at work today, I filed my first complaint through HR. It was a pretty benign process. I sent an email to the HR director, she called me back and said I could come by her office any time. I had a meeting scheduled, so I said I’d stop by afterward. My meeting ran a little long, so I had a voicemail waiting for me when I got back: “I just wanted to let you know that I’m in my office, so whenever you get out of your meeting I am available to discuss… what we need to discuss.”

Anyway, stopped by for a chat. I gave her some examples of inappropriate behavior (asking if I’m a communist, telling me that my name is strange to Americans, asking if I’m affiliated with Maggie Moo’s [because my name starts with Moo], using the armrest on my chair instead of his own) and the tipping point: today’s incident. He came into my office for some work-related reason. Complimented my shirt, then asked me what it was made out of. I didn’t know, so I said that and guessed polyester or something. He reaches over to feel the texture of my shirt and then starts pushing my hair aside to check my tag.

I’m disappointed in myself because I missed my grand opportunity to kick him in the box. HR director took notes and said this would get passed to one of the higher ups (VP of Engineering or Director of Program something or others. You know, one of those important titled people.) to talk with him directly. I think after they have words with him, he’ll probably get a clue. I can only hope.

I love my new pants. That is all. :)

Went to the county science fair yesterday to do some judging. It was just as exciting as I thought it would be! There were a bunch of very similar projects, a lot of interesting titles that I didn’t get to see, and a few that were very relevent to the organization I was there with. Our top picks:

First is a project studying different filtration systems for ballast tanks so organisms in seawater brought onto a ship for ballast don’t get released into a new area and take over the environment. It was pretty cool. She used brine shrimp as her invasive organism and had a model ballast tank with a bunch of different filters.

The second was a project to naturally remove a toxin from water through a hybrid tree. There are currently only a handful of treatment plants that can handle this toxin now and it results in a toxic sludge. The amazing part of this project: he succeeded.

Toward the end of the fair, Sonny found me and he took some pictures for me of the projects and my pre-selected winner. After that, met up with the sibs at the parents’ place. We had lunch and watched some basketball. I took a nap over there before heading over to meet up with BFF.

Decided to go shopping with BFF and we headed over to the mall. Yeah, we’re cool, yo. I found a pair of dress pants at Ann Taylor which (1) fit, (2) had pockets, and (3) were the right length. They were a little more expensive than my pants usually are, but still within reason (they were on the clearance rack, of course). And with the other selling point of being able to wear them right away without having to hem them or anything, I decided I must have them. And the pair right behind them that were a different color. :) So worth it to not have to constantly be tugging my pants back up.

We also tried a bunch of the department stores, Banana Republic, the Gap, and wherever else kids are shopping these days. No luck. (Clearance rack at Banana Republic started around $90. Yeah, right.) From there we headed over to Ross. There were some of the most hideous clothes I have ever seen there.

BFF walked away with a few pairs of pants and I found a cute jacket thingy and a dress shirt. Well, the first dress shirt I found was BFF’s size, so I pulled that out for her, then I found one in my size. So, uh… now we have matching dress shirts. Two, actually. Since I bought a shirt a while back and then got a hand-me-down from Squidgey which was the same shirt in a different size. Which I then passed on to BFF one day when she was visiting. I figured it’s not like we usually see each other when we’re both dressed up. So what’s it matter if we own the same shirt? Yeah. It doesn’t.

After we finished our shopping extravaganza, hung out at BFF’s parents’ place for a bit. We discussed real estate and cookies. It was entertaining.

Headed home for movie time with Ian. We watched War of the Worlds. Turns out that’s a scary movie. So for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, there are aliens in it. I wouldn’t say it was a good movie so much… There were too many loose ends left at the end. But it was entertaining at least.

Today, we watched Hotel Rwanda. I’m a couple years behind, but whatever. Amazing movie. Wow.

Been taking the public transit this week because Ian’s been home sick. Incidents of note:

- Two people discussing google maps. One of them had never heard of it. She made a point of repeating it a few times so she could go look it up later. Geez… you been living in a box or something? Google maps is the best! True dat. Double true! (Link to the video on NBC, but apparently they’re anti-firefox; wouldn’t even work with my IE extension in Firefox.)

- Standing on the metro, I was holding onto one of the poles near the door. Some lady got on the train and kept touching my hand. Uncool, lady. Uncool. No petting on the metro.

- The bus I take to and from the metro has a back door that you have to push open. This is different from the only other buses I’ve taken on a regular basis (Blacksburg Transit), which had both sets of doors open at the same time by the bus driver. I noticed this difference the first time I took the bus because I saw what essentially looked like people walking into the door and using their body to force the doors open. Then, I noticed the green light above the door and the large lettering instructing passengers to push the doors open when the light turns green to exit.

This morning, there was someone who was either new to this concept or was incapable of comprehending his part in the bus-exiting process. Because as the first three people exiting through the back doors pushed the doors and he followed, he did not take his hands out of his pockets. And the doors promptly slammed shut in his face. At which point, he proceeded to stand there obliviously in front of the door. Not angry, confused, or even in a hurry to leave. Just stood there with his hands in his pockets.

Finally, the girl behind him got impatient and reached around him to *magically* push the doors open for him. I don’t think he even noticed her. He definitely didn’t thank her or look around to see how the doors happened to open for him. He got out and there was freedom for all.

- Happy St. Patrick’s day. The one day of the year when it is acceptable to drink before noon. The one day of the year when it is acceptable to start drinking before dawn. There was a group of loud, obnoxious people, who I can only assume were drunk. Early 20s, covered with shamrocks, beads, and crowns/tiaras. I thought a second group of people were with them because they were dressed in similar fashion. Maybe they just originated from the same place.

Anyway, I was on the blue line. One girl in the group was unsure whether they were going the right way. One of the guys kept trying to shush her, telling her they were going the wrong way before. Now they were going the right way. Just don’t worry her pretty little head about it. She figured out they were definitely going the wrong way when we got to National for their third time. She asked someone not in their group if this train was going to Vienna. Sorry, chicky. Wrong color, about 20 miles away.

Thank goodness none of these people were driving, I guess.

QOTD: “How are you going to have kids?!”
“Out my vagina.”

BFF matched! She’s officially not going to Indiana, so I might visit her after she moves. :)

Whoa, add another accident to the list. Don’t know any of the details on this one, except that my brother’s ok and the car might not be.

The big presentation at work is done with. So, now I can go home at a normal hour. Woo! I even got more than my share of the platter of over-sized cookies. :) At the end of the meeting, it was that math problem where you figure out how many hand-shakes will occur between 26 people who all shake hands with everyone else.

QOTD: “This ship is not our wet dream.”

Wow… Ever since I started my new medication, I knew it was helping me stay awake throughout the day, but I didn’t realize how good it was. I stayed awake through a 7.5 hour meeting yesterday. It was a working meeting, but it was still mostly people talking at each other and staring at powerpoint and autocad on a projector screen. The only time I had trouble was just after lunch… so I swiped a few cookies and filled up on water. It worked out.

The 7.5 hour meeting, though? We won’t talk about that… ;)

Seems like it was a bad driving weekend for a bunch of people. Maybe just a bad driving month. I heard a number of stories of almost accidents, one rear-ending this weekend (one airbag deployed, but no one was in that seat; everyone was fine), and a fender-bender last weekend.

So, here’s my PSA: Driving is a full time job. Make safety your first priority.

Most of my weekend was filled with party preparations and entertaining for Ian’s birthday. There was a fantastic turnout with almost everyone on the guestlist attending. A group of Ian’s coworkers (including one that I know from VT somehow… though I haven’t figured out how yet), my sibs and roommates, the TJ crowd, and a few other friends.

The dynamic worked out pretty well. People made the effort to mingle for a while and then it kind of split with coworkers in the kitchen/dining room and nerds in the sitting area at the back of the living room. But everyone still close enough that they could overhear things like the Fortran conversation in the other group. Yeah, you’re really cool, guys.

It was a nice evening too. So even though the condo started getting really warm from the food cooking in the kitchen, people were able to go out on the balcony and leave the door open to get a nice breeze coming through.

Food… the usual appetizer stuff. Sonny brought over some Trader Ming’s orange chicken that he cooked up while people were arriving. So there was plenty of hot food for people to snack on. Didn’t get a picture of cakes, but I made a butter cake with vanilla frosting (Fashiongrrl got to frost her first cake!) and a chocolate mocha cake with chocolate frosting.

Lots of fun, but now I just need to clean up… ;)

Betty Crocker Chocolate Mocha Cake and Frosting
(From the Bake’n Fill Cake Pan booklet)

INGREDIENTS:
2 1/4 cups flour
1 2/3 cups sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup baking cocoa
1 1/4 cups water
1 tbs instant espresso coffee (dry)
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs

DIRECTIONS:
1. In large bowl, beat all cake ingredients on low 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly.
2. Beat on high 3 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally.
3. Bake at 350 degrees, 25 minutes in three 8″ round cake pans.

Frosting:
2/3 cup whipping (heavy) cream
6 oz semisweet baking chocolate, chopped

DIRECTIONS:
1. In 1-qt saucepan, heat 2/3 cup whipping cream over low heat, stirring occasionally, until hot.
2. Remove from heat and stir in chocolate until melted.
3. Let stand about 5 minutes. Frosting is ready to use when it mounds slightly when dropped from spoon.

Notes: Used regular cake pans instead of the tall/dome cake pans. Make sure to grease pans well. Cakes did not want to come out. Filled in between layers with Chocolate Frosting that I used last time.

Substituted 2 tbl dry coffee instead of espresso. Used semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of baking chocolate (6 oz ~= 1 cup chocolate chips). Came out kind of syrupy, so I used it as a glaze, refrigerated after pouring some on, and added a second layer after the first had cooled and become easier to spread. I was later informed that I should have added additional chocolate to thicken.