Work Be Busy

Which is why I haven't posted or bunnied much recently. I did manage to escape just long enough today to have my prescription sunglasses repaired for the fourth time, which means I get to actually see stuff while I'm driving. It's a nice change of pace.

In an unrelated note, Atlanta apparently just removed a lot of random speed bumps from my route to and from work. They were the annoying kind too - programmed to scream and shout things like "You bastard - I'll sue!" Plus they left a lot of sticky red paint on my car's undercarriage. Good thing I bought the red one.

Formspring

The following short posts were automatically contributed by my Formspring account. I'm not sure whether I want them popping up here or not, but I'm too busy to do much else these days so I'll give it a whirl. Let me know what you think. Also feel free to click on the clicky thing on the left and ask me some questions. For an added challenge, see if you can compose a question that does not include the words "bunny" and/or "shart".

Urgent Matter

Too busy to leave work for lunch, so I bought a sandwich in the caf. I had this conversation with the sandwich artist.

Me: And a light amount of spicy mustard.
SA: And a lot of what?
Me: Just a little spicy mustard.
SA: Okay, a lot of spicy mustard.

And so now I have a sandwich that is bleeding deli style mustard all over the place and is a complete mess to eat. Plus the roast beef and provolone seems to be made entirely out of ham and swiss. But at least the pickles are correct. They're in the trash with the rest of the meal. Time to microwave a box of noodles.

QUESTION - what term can I use to express the fact that I don't want a huge amount of something on my sandwich? Because the terms I've been using all translate to "metric buttload" in sandwich speak.

Fun at Work, part The Latest

It's been almost a year since the "stay healthy or we replace you" threats began, and to celebrate the anniversary my employer has begun another drive to keep a close watch on what we're all doing and how much time we spend doing it. Spying on each other is considered to be a productive use of time around here. I sometimes feel like I work in a communist country wherein nobody can catch anyone doing anything wrong at home because they're all out spying on their neighbors to see if they're doing anything wrong at home.

When I was first hired we submitted a weekly timesheet as the only written documentation of the hours we worked. Then the company decided it would be a prudent move to create the concept of labor claiming, which required us to submit a weekly online form matching the time we spent working against a series of labor codes. Even the accountants thought that was unproductive, and when the accountants scoff at the idea of more paperwork you know it's bad. Accountants love paperwork. They want to marry paperwork and raise little accounterwork children. It's like hearing an xtian fundie say "Woah, wait a minute, nobody needs to mention Jesus THAT often." We had classes and seminars and spent time setting up the software and registering and filling out the forms. Then we were finally ready and were told to submit the hours exactly as we actually spent our time. We did, and they discovered - HOLY CRAP - we spent a lot of time submitting our time. Then they told us not to submit time against the time submission code and said to instead "pretend you were doing what you would be normally if you weren't submitting time." For some people that would be "wandering the rows between cubicles looking for bloggers to report", but sadly they lack a code for that.

So, now they've added some extra paperwork to let them know how we typically spend our week, and I'm guessing "filling out this paperwork" will only get it rejected so that I'll have to do it again. And now a new directive - our submitted hours must exactly match our timesheet. That sounds like common sense, but we have to submit our timesheets before the end of the week, which means that in case we are needed beyond what we planned we either have to say "screw you - I already submitted my hours" (fun, but not allowed) or we have to work the extra hours and submit them as time worked Saturday. So the new directive conflicts with the old directive but is completely in accordance with the unspoken directive, "We like to issue conflicting directives but we are flexible as long as your actions benefit us and not you and you understand we may still use any disobedience as an excuse to fire you."

Another example of work rules conflict. #1 - all passwords must be at least 8 characters long. #2 - here is your computer. The boot up password will only accept up to 7 characters. I swear I am not making any of this up.

As a reward for having read all of that, here is a bunny.

Living the Dream

So we have snow here in the Southeast of the US, and not the usual "zomg find the camera before it's gone" type we normally get. The streets are covered (as is my car) with snow and ice and people who can work from home are doing so. The occasional family decides they must go somewhere and so they bundle up and spend a half hour digging their car out as a family project. It probably would go faster, but nobody here owns silly things like snow shovels and ice scrapers. It's fun to watch a group of four work on a car with a push broom, a board, and a dust pan.

Inside I'm warm and snug, I have booze and chips and salsa and beans and toilet paper (I buy the 36 packs of the double rolls, so BRING IT, INTESTINES!). All the utilities work, and I finally have an acceptable excuse to work from home. As a result, I've put in more hours, resolved more issues, AND I feel better and have enough leftover energy to do things such as clean my apartment. This will all go away next week when the snow finally melts, but I'm loving it for the time being. I would be a totally awesome shut-in, happy and productive.

The Awesomeness That Is My Life, part the Latest

My company has decided to take an official "We hate Microsoft" stance (again) and as such has ordered us to use Firefox as our default browser. It is my preferred browser at home, but I'm sometimes hampered by the fact that it's incompatible with some business sites. At work, that's further compounded since it won't work with many of the online applications we make and use and support. To that end, the tech people sent out an e-mail with a link to a plug-in that would allow us to run Internet Explorer applications in Firefox. The link tries to open a browser window in our e-mail program (which has never worked) but after I extracted the link from the e-mail background code and went to the site I found that the "plug-in" consisted of these helpful instructions.

1. Make Firefox your default browser.
2. Also install Internet Explorer.
3. Use that instead.

I'm seriously not making any of that up.

I was also forwarded an e-letter from the law bunny with DeathStar Hospital's latest response. To briefly recap on our relationship, I endured "treatment" at one of their facilities through June and July of 2009, I filed for bankruptcy after a very long and unsuccessful struggle to get them to play fair, they turned a bill over to a collection agency, they turned the bill over to another collection agency,and then they created a new bill and sent it directly to me (along with several reminders to pay), and then they sent that one to a collection agency. My lawyer filed a claim against DeathStar Hospital whose lawyer ignored her deadline for response and then denied our claim stating that, although it was true that the courts notified DeathStar Hospital to cease and desist, they did not notify DeathStar Professional Services, a totally separate entity which can be proven because they have a separate P.O. box at the same address, who waited ten months before billing me. We are therefore mean and do not deserve protection from the law, but they promise that we will not be billed by them again now that we finally did our part and informed the new department we didn't know existed before. DeathStar Anal Rape Billing, DeathStarEvil Trolls unlimited, DeathStarYou Survived So You'll Never Stop Paying Us, DeathStar Pay Us Even If We Managed To Kill You, and DeathStarWe Like Money More Than Your Health are totally separate entities and each have their own distinct P. O. box and may decide to bill me again in the future.

And that's your daily reminder of why you should be happy to be someone else.

Productivity

This weekend I missed Halloween because I stayed in bed in preparation for being in the office this week. The next two weeks will be especially fun because they are working on the parking lot, or more specifically the part next to the building, so I get to park even further away than the typical third of a mile I already walk one way to get to my cubicle. This comes at a perfect time because the doctor just doubled my blood pressure medication dosage (again), and yet my last check showed my resting rate as 190 / 120 (we're shooting more for 120 / 80 or below), so the extra cardio will do my already pounding heart no end of good.

But just so you won't think I'm a relentlessly negative person, let me just announce that I did manage to finish the 3rd season of Veronica Mars on Sunday. I am awesome.

Further note - I am changing the day after Thanksgiving this year to 2nd Halloween, so don't be surprised if I show up at your door trick-or-treating. And, no, you may not use the event as an excuse to pass off some of your leftover turkey and dressing. But I will accept an early Hannukwanzaramadamas gift for 2nd Halloween because I don't celebrate Hannukwanzaramadamas.

Dream Job Update

I started my first day as a work-at-home IT pro feeling a little guilty. Sure, the company didn't go far out of it's way to accommodate me and there are several people who are permanently allowed to work from home for no obvious reason, but I've never been comfortable asking for concessions - it's just become necessary to keep working at my former capacity. Since I felt guilty, I was determined to do such an outstanding job that they would never question the wisdom of their decision. I set my alarm early, dragged myself out of bed at 5 AM, and began working on the day's most critical reports in the hopes that they would all be waiting for the department manager when she arrived (which means any time at 6 AM or later or not at all). Then I would spend the rest of the day alternately working and resting, but always near the computer with the speakers on high and audible prompts any time anyone e-mailed or IM'd me. I would be available to them in a way never possible in the office since the bathroom is now ten feet away instead of three counties over.

To say I am not a morning person is to say the Pacific ocean is a tad damp. My symptoms are at their worst early in the morning, so I struggled with them as I coaxed the bronze-age laptop into operation. I began running the queries, and immediately everything that had ever gone wrong before went wrong again. In addition, I even discovered some new things that could go wrong because they went wrong (excuse my technical jargon). So, three plus hours later the first report was ready, slightly early (although not impressively so) and I no longer felt guilty.

I took a short rest break while the computer computed, then returned to my normal daily routine, albeit still ahead of my normally scheduled schedule. People sensed I was out and began requesting that I join them for meetings RIGHT FREAKING NOW! I let everyone know that I would be within reach of my computer all day long, even later than normal, available for phone conferences and IM's and e-mails and teleconferences, but that I was working from home. This upset them as the entire worldwide computer infrastructure will fail if I am not in my cubicle for people to bother in person (if your ATM is temporarily out of order, you can assume I'm in the bathroom), so they apparently began questioning my primary handler about my new schedule which prompted him to call me and have the latest version of the conversation we've been having every time I've been sick over the past few weeks. "Grant, you do great work, blah blah blah, thanks for getting those reports early for us today, but the laptop is just for rare uses when you can't come into the office." Apparently I was supposed to assume "You can work from home" meant "You can work from home in addition to being in your cubicle."

The new deal is this - if I feel as though I may be too sick to work in my cubicle a full day at my regularly scheduled hours, I have to let them know when I'll be out in advance and what my status will be (beyond being logged into the IM system as "working from home"), and then I can work from home for a couple of hours until I'm well enough to return to my cubicle. This is the special new system created just for me to replace the antiquated system other employees use, known as "calling in sick". And people say large corporations don't treat us as individuals. That's not true. They just don't treat us as individuals when it would benefit us instead of exclusively them. So, apparently I don't work at home, the new offer is that I get to work at home in addition to the office. And thus ends the great work at home experiment of 2010.

That was lovely.

My life as designed by Joseph Heller

Three weeks ago I was sick, overslept, and arrived late to work. By the time I had arrived they had called my mommy and asked if I was in the hospital again. (we're estranged, btw) They told me I needed to inform them if I'm going to be sick again. Then yesterday I was sick again, e-mailed them with the news, and then came to work later in the morning. I was then pulled aside and told that, despite my outstanding work, they couldn't tolerate my excessive tardiness anymore. The new deal is a) I get healthy enough to work a consistent schedule, or b) I arrange downtime in advance (i.e. I have to call in before my shift and inform them that I need x hours more rest before I can get to the office). It's important that I do my job from my cubicle because it can be done from anywhere in the world with a computer and Internet connection, so naturally my employers have canceled telecommuting because the poor economy provided them with the excuse they needed to stop improving efficiency. I was further told that if I they weren't relying on me so heavily they would have more flexibility, but my work is very important and of high quality which is why I may need to be replaced.

I used to be in management before I decided to pursue a career path that ostensibly rewarded having actual job skills and I knew from previous seminars that Georgia is an "employment at will" state, meaning you can be fired for any reason or none at all, so my only legal protection lies in federal law. I contacted a lawyer and he advised me that he can't give advice over the Internet and then added me to his mass e-mail list so I now get spammed by him. I checked the Social Security website to see what criteria has to be met to be labeled disabled, and in plain terms you have to a) be unable to do your job and b) be unable to do similar work under reasonably adjusted conditions (e.g. telecommuting instead of working a rigid office schedule). If you meet those conditions you can be disabled which will then require your employer to work with your medical issues and keep you employed. If not, you can be fired for your poor health and can become a burden on society (but not a disabled one - just a healthy bum).

Also my recent downturn has left me unable to exercise (my life now consists of being in the office, or at home resting so I can return to the office), which in turn leads to a rise in my blood sugars which leads to me being sicker. However, experience has taught me that exhausting the little energy I have during these periods leads to serious downtime and missed work and less exercise as a result. Basically I have to get healthy so I can exercise and get healthy. I also haven't been eating much lately. I think I've gained (more) weight.

And in other fun news, the first hospital that kicked off this whole adventure continues to ignore the bankruptcy ruling and to pester me with old bills, new bills, and collections agencies. My bankruptcy lawyer is taking action against them. Her e-mail to me read, in part, "This should be fun." With luck, that means we'll sue them and win easily and I'll have enough money to live without working for my remaining time. With my luck, that means I'll get to pay her much money to go to court to convince the court that they need to tell the hospital to do what the court said in the first place.

There's some subtle irony in here somewhere, but I just don't see it.

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Update - they agreed to let me work from home. If you own stock in anything, sell it and spend the money on hookers and beer because the world is ending. Seriously though, that's good for both of us. They'll get their data when needed (before, actually) and I can focus on work and my health instead of expending energy to sit in a cubicle for eight hours a day. As for the above - forget all that. Now I'm good.

Why Japan is better than your country, part 七

Train-conducting penguins.

Key quote - "I hope the special train will be packed with many passengers, enough to make our penguin conductor work hard." It's becoming more difficult for satire to stay ahead of actual business practices.

Why I haven't been posting

I've had absolutely nothing new to talk about. My routine is to get up (too early for me), go to work, sit in my cubicle and do whatever keeps me from the latest round of layoffs. I do this because work allows me to continue to do things like go to work. If I'm allowed time for lunch, I go home for a nap. If my employers decide lunch time = non-productive (occurs increasingly these days), I grab a sandwich from the cafeteria in between meetings about how productivity is down and we're behind schedule and who else is being laid off as a result. At the end of the day I go home, lie down and rest, do a little apartment cleaning (very little), get hot and sweaty and realize I can't handle any more physical exertion for the day, rest again, and then depending on how vertical I feel I play Dragon Age on the computer (very vertical), read (semi-vertical), or watch Firefly on TV (non-vertical). Repeat times five.

Saturday I wake up at the usual time, have a rare moment of pleasure when I realize I don't have to get out of bed, and then sleep until noon or later. After noon I force myself to get out of bed, run a few errands that I would rather do on Sunday but must do Saturday because beer retrieval is involved and my Jesus-intensive state won't allow that on the Lord's day, get hot and sweaty and realize etc. The rest of the day is the same.

Sunday I sleep late, contemplate going to the gym, assess my physical condition and decide that the benefits of the exertion are not worth the very real possibility that I won't be able to work the following day, decide I'm behind on running errands, skip running errands because I had to leave the house Saturday and I want one full day of rest, do some cleaning, get hot blah blah blah all the stuff's the same. So I got nothing.

Let me know if there is a specific topic you want me to address, or if I should just continue to post pictures of hot Asian women. Otherwise you're not likely to hear from me over the next couple of weeks.
Example of a hot Asian woman.

It happened again, again

Hummus? What was I thinking? It's just some weird, terrorist-friendly paste. It doesn't even have any meat. EPIC FAIL!

Have you tried sandwiches? They're made of meat and awesome. There's a sandwich counter in our cafeteria that's almost as good as Subway at only twice the price (they really take advantage of our inability to escape for lunch). With all the choices of breads, meats, cheeses, veggies, and toppings, the possibilities are nearly limitless. To keep prices simple, they all cost the same. That's right - eating a whole wheat veggie wrap costs the same as a mustard-laced meatwad. It's a great way of ensuring we don't go all pacifist anti-Christian and turn into a bunch of vegan wusses. And the Italian sandwich - capicola, ham, pepperoni, salami, salami (there's two kinds) - it's like being raped by a flock of pigs! Pigs slathered in mayo! SQEEE! ZOMFGSAMMAGESSAMMAGESSAMMAGES!!!

Sandwiches: because food that can't be eaten as food tucked between two other pieces of food isn't really food.

Today's post is just to remind you I have a shiny new car

I've only worked for my employer for about ten years, but in that short time I've learned that you can't get into any of their buildings or parking lots without proper ID. Sadly, some veteran colleagues never internalize that fact. I'm often late to the office because I get stuck behind a line of cars trying to solve the riddle of the sphinx, by which I mean get the flimsy wooden barrier thingy to rise. This is apparently a daunting task despite the signs by the roadside that warn you to have your ID ready, the sign at the gate that says to badge in, and (I repeat) the fact every location requires you to have your work ID available at all times.

Several times I have been stuck in the street as a car sits and waits for the gate to decide to open itself (with only over a half million employees worldwide, it's reasonable to assume security will recognize everyone on sight), then out of boredom the driver reads the plethora of signs explaining how the gate isn't judging you but the card reader needs your ID badge, then they put the car in park and go to the trunk to dig their ID out of their rolling luggage (despite the computers and e-mail and electricity and bathrooms and cafeteria and stuff, many people can't survive in cubeland for eight hours without enough equipment to hunt and skin buffalo). Because it would be indecorous to use any of the outside pockets, their ID is invariably buried deep inside the luggage because, despite the warnings and years of service, they had no idea they would be asked to show their ID again. They just did that yesterday, for chrissakes. And then, finally, the car is through, free to take one of the last good parking spaces* while the next car pulls up and (get this) REPEATS THE ENTIRE PROCESS.

Unfortunately, I am not making that up.

So this week, some idiot pulls up to the security gate and, to the casual observer, appears to be just sitting there looking down and doing nothing more productive than masturbating while he holds up the line, and to make matters worse that idiot is me because I'm still learning how to work my shiny new car.
Granted, I don't take as long as the people who have to unpack before entering, but I still feel embarrassed when I'm unable to roll the window down on approach and I end up fumbling with the window button only to realize that I just readjusted the mirrors and so then I hit the window button and the window doesn't roll down because my shiny new car is ALREADY BROKEN and so I look closely to ensure I'm using the right button and then I press some other buttons and discover one of my earlier attempts activated the button to lock the windows in place (relief) and then I get back to the right button but I push it the wrong way because a lot of stuff in my shiny new car works the opposite of the old one.

But no longer. Today I actually managed to have the window down by the time I made it to the gate. At first I didn't know where stuff was. Then I progressed to knowing where it was, but trying to use it like the old way. Then I remembered to do it backwards, and that worked for about twelve seconds. Then I began to both remember the right way and remind myself to do it the other way, so I did it wrong again. But today I remembered the right way, reminded myself to do it the other way, then remembered that that didn't work and decided to do it the opposite of the opposite way, and so IN YOUR FACE - VICTORY IS MINE the window came down. I dub myself Bunnycus, Slayer of Giants, Bringer of Doom, Roller-Down of Windows.

Yes, of course that was an electric window. I couldn't have managed all that AND had to manually operate it at the same time. I'm not Jesus or Batman, you know. And now, loins properly girded, I shall go forth and attempt to put gasoline in my shiny new car.

* in this part of the country and this time of year, good parking space = under a shade tree. It has no relation to the distance required to walk to the building.

Why I am awesomer than you

Yesterday I got rid of my eight year old car and replaced it with a shiny, new, bunny-friendly RAV4. The salesman took a picture of me in it:
If you've felt the pinch of the economy and are unable to drive a nice new vehicle like me, then allow me to say HA HA HA ON YOU FUCKERS! Of course, if you have a better vehicle than me, then I'm still better than you because I don't define myself by my possessions, even though I could because I have a really big TV and a new car and my new computer can play Dragon Age while web surfing and my apartment is full of booze and a/c. Oh, and I have thousands left in the bank. You can have access to all that is mine if you are a hot Asian woman and are willing to pretend that you like me, which is of course a euphemism for anal sex.

I got a good deal except for the interest rate, which was 11.7%. I haven't bought anything on credit since filing for bankruptcy, so they were a little hesitant to be the first to help re-establish my credit. They wouldn't budge off the interest rate, but they did lower the price of the vehicle and give me way more than expected on the trade-in (nearly $6k on a car the Blue Book values at about $1,800). Besides, I plan to have it paid off in two years anyway, unless I score an Asian girlfriend and get sucked dry.

And speaking of bankruptcy, it's time to write another letter to the lousy hospital I haven't seen in over a year because they created yet another new bill for me. The main reason I filed for bankruptcy was to stop the hospitals from further bothering me. Apparently, this is not enough to stop the bad ones from pestering you for the rest of your life. They've sent me bills long after the courts told them to desist, then sent the bills to collections, then sent them to another collection agency after the first one refused to try to collect, but at least they've stopped short of reporting the newer bills to a credit agency. And before you advise me to sue them for millions, I think the view that the poor hospitals are under siege by the mean old public is not entirely accurate, based on the number of lawyers (0) vying for my business.

For added fun, I lost my work badge during the move between vehicles. This would be the perfect time to lose my job. I hope the gods of irony are not in ascension, or at least that Satan remembers that He owes me a solid.

There may have been a point to this post, but I lost it while typing three to five words at a time at work.

Super-duper fun wow special contest

If you can correctly answer the following questions in 184 guesses or less, then you will win a special personalized prize made JUST FOR YOU!

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Last night I had the following to do:

1. Wash clothes (x3).
2. Wash dishes.
3. Refill water bottles.
4. Take a shower.

Question: guess which utility was out when I got home? And when fixed, spewed out cloudy water that would probably add more filth to anything I wanted to clean?

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A coworker took a short vacation which left me covering for her. On the day she left, everyone else on this and other neighboring planets decided that they needed more help from me. To deal with the crunch, I worked Sunday and then stayed offline Monday morning to focus on work rather than answer random IM questions. Since my bosses received e-mails from me on Sunday and didn't see me online Monday morning, they assumed I was undergoing another round of healthcare (god forbid they call me or actually walk the twenty meters to my cubicle) and have started triple-teaming to monitor my movements in case I'm out sick again. They've already contacted my contract supervisor and the standing order is that I can keep my job as long as I'm healthy enough to be present in the office for eight hours per day x five days per week. On a side note, they're happy with the work I do, but that's of lesser importance.

So, to recap, my job is in danger because I showed some initiative and handled a work overload without involving my many supervisors and as a result they assume I'm not in my cubicle and may need to be replaced by someone they assume will provide the same quality of work while sitting in the cubicle during scheduled hours.

Question: is this insane, or merely stupid? Or is it the new norm for workplace BS now that the economy doesn't force employers to use a modicum of decency and common sense?

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Bunny!

Question: is this picture still work safe, or slightly over the line?

Overheard while going to work

"Do you journal? Because I journal all the time, and the more I journal the more He reveals to me, not just about my own future but about the United States of America!" - one employee proselytizing to another.

Bear in mind that these people had ID badges and were gainfully employed.

Half-life Update

So I've been sick lately and undergoing various medical treatments and missing work as a result. I'm mostly caught up on all my duties (just a few low-priority requests to conquer), but my supervisor from the contracting company asked for an update on my health. I wasn't too thrilled at the prospect since, in person, I try to downplay my condition rather than talk it up and as a result many people are unaware of how sick I really am, but I hoped something positive might come from the meeting. He usually works from home and I don't like discussing my condition in my cubicle in front of others, so I called him from home during lunch. As expected, he was very understanding and sympathetic, probably due in some part to the fact that his wife is critically ill and he's had to endure a lot of the same things I have, at least secondarily. (full disclosure - it sounds like his wife has had a rougher time than I have) Anyway, he told me the reason for all the questions was that my primary boss from the company we support thinks my work is great, but wondered if I'm sick enough that they should consider replacing me. That's right - basically it boils down to "I don't feel well." "Okay - you're fired."

We discussed options, such as being allowed to work from home (I can do 100% of my job from any computer with an internet connection), or working nights and weekends as a last resort to make up the time missed due to illness and doctor appointments. My contractor supervisor talked with my employment company supervisor, who said he didn't see enough justification for allowing me to work from home but was okay with me working nights and weekends as long as I could provide advance warning. So, I'm allowed to be ill, but I have to do a better job of planning it in advance if I want to keep my job.

I was unthrilled with the decision and also not too happy that the guy who denied my request to work from home announced he was taking Friday off to work from home, but I don't consider him to be a bad guy. It's just the culture of this workplace. I'm a contractor, which means I'm treated more like equipment than a member of the team. The rules are different for contractors vs. regulars. If you're a regular, being ill (even terminal) means you get put on leave and, sick or otherwise, you're allowed to work remotely and to flex your hours as you see fit. If you're a contractor, you're expected to work 40 hours a week in the office, no variation on your schedule, and if you break down then you are to be replaced with a newer model. I'm sure the regular supervisor would have granted the request to work from home if the situation was better, but the regulars haven't been able to prevent their own from being laid off, so there's no way they would spend extra money to assist a contractor. I would be more than willing to use my own PC to work remotely, but work rules state they must issue me a laptop and and a userid for their remote access system, both of which cost money not in their budget. (don't even get me started on how hiring professionals to decorate for the holidays IS still in the budget)

Between the lousy contractor company gouging their employees and the regular company treating us with a double standard, I think I'll be ready to look for another job (again) if I can get well enough to the point that I actually can commute, stand to be out of bed for more than four hours at a time, and work at least 40 hours a week in the office. Hopefully by then Obama will have repatriated some of our jobs.

Boring Life Stuff

So, yesterday I got a flu shot, but it was just the old-fashioned kind, not the cool new porcine variety. I wanted to get one of those as well, not because I think I'll get it but because my immune system is likely too compromised for me to survive if do catch it. I asked the nurse for her recommendation and she said my doctor recommended it, but he was the only one in the entire office who bothered getting one. I appreciated her honesty, and I'll probably make a half-assed attempt to locate a place that doles them out. In the meantime, I'll just avoid pork.

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It was recently Coming of Age Day (成人の日), in Japan, which is when J-bunnies turning 20 dress in traditional kimono in honor of the fact that I can now legally get them drunk and then anally violate them. I love traditional holidays. That is so much better than that Good Friday crap.

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For added fun, my employer provides us with a medical insurance policy that provides reduced coverage for only twice what the average person walking off the street would pay. Therefore, this year I'm looking to cancel my work-provided coverage and just buy it direct. I like Aetna, the company I've been using, so I called their customer service and asked if I could keep my current policy (but with the added benefits my employer didn't want to burden us with) and just pay for it myself. After calling the number, going through the automated system, punching in numbers, getting an actual person on the line, being told they have a separate office that handles those requests, then being transferred to that office, I received the following information from a lady who sounded like she had spent the entire morning chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes while being tortured by toddlers with sharpened bits of bamboo (her entire answer is reflected verbatim):

"No."

So, it looks like I have to purchase my own policy by May if I want to save an insane amount of money by opting out of my employee "benefits". I'm still leaning towards Aetna if for no other reason than they (hopefully) can't claim that they had no idea that I had any preexisting conditions. Plus I've had bad experiences with Metlife, and recently heard that Blue Cross is now the industry leader in customer complaints. Any recommendations?

Why 2010 is already looking like a huge suck-fest

In bulleted form.

• this blog has yet to inspire a single J-bunny to contact me with offers of marriage and/or anal sex.
• I canceled my cable account, which is good, but also means my host site for all the bunny pics goes with it whenever they eventually shut everything down.
• while looking for more bunny pics, I inadvertently discovered a search term that returns results on scads of sexed-up, scantily clad Japanese girls (but at least not nude). If you have a cute girl under the age of sixteen, she has a burgeoning career as a model in Japan. If you want to know the search phrase, I left it with the FBI so just contact them and tell them of your desire to beat off to an eleven year old girl in a bikini and high heels and they will take care of you.
  
• two days before the new year, my employer sponsored the Orlando Citrus Parade.
• the day after that (New Year's Eve), they canceled all of our future paid time off* (no holidays, sick leave, or vacation now). Employees returning from vacation got to discover that they weren't paid for the previous Friday, but at least the loss of pay doesn't come at a time when credit cards are maxed-out due to a consumer holiday. BTW, if you watched the Citrus parade, you were looking at my vacation time and you now owe me money, especially if you're one of those sick fucks who actually enjoys a parade ("look - more people walking by - w00t!").
• I rang in the new year on the toilet, having set off a shart attack by eating - a salad. And not a heavy one like a chef or taco salad. It was a mix of greens with rice noodles and a light vinaigrette.
• despite the exercise and decrease in food and increase in sharting, my Wii reports that I'm gaining weight and wants to know why (I'm not kidding).
• Crotch bomber.

I'm going back to bed. Wake me before 2011 for a do-over.

* I live in an area of the country that mostly wants government out of our lives, especially in regards to healthcare, and yet when they hear about whatever latest thing my employer has done the typical response is "Is that legal? Why does the government allow that?"

New Year's Resolutions

In 2010, I vow to:

1) cancel my cable and switch to DSL in order to save about $60/month. Okay, I did that during lunch. (That's right - I got's the Internet at home again, bitches - w00t!)

2) replace my dying computer with a new one by my birthday, which is May 15 (hint hint).

3) either replace my old car or save at least $10,000 by the end of next year, despite the added challenge of my employer canceling all paid time off (that's right - no vacation, sick leave, or holidays).

4) shart less.

Oh, wait. I just remembered that when I was in junior high, I vowed never to make a new year's resolution, and I've stuck to it all these years. Forget all that.