Random School/Work-Venting Post

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Poor dr. Z... Sounds like you have a major case of "Someone Else's winged rats worshipping common property spatulas" on your hands. Don't ask.

On the bright side - once you clear it up now, everything will be in top shape for quite some time.

 

I just got an e-mail from another government office, asking me to provide them with a list of reports their office produces that I am not receiving. They didn't provide a list of what reports they produce.

WTF? If I knew the existence of a report that I wasn't receiving, I would have called up to get it. But unless you already knew the report existed, how would you know if you weren't receiving it?

 

I have to ask... What?

 

Okay, so for the past two weeks I've been trying to troubleshoot a server's backup problems. As in, the connection was so slow it couldn't complete its backups.
I was told that the switch had already been tested several times over, and was basically ordered not to troubleshoot the switch. Well, guess what? The problem turned out to be the switch after all. I finally got so frustrated that I plugged the server into a different switch, and voila! No problems, I did a complete backup in about three minutes.
And yes, I did say "I told you so." I did it politely mind you, but I still did it.
The only good thing is that this server now has updated firmware and drivers for everything.

 

There were only a few "good" spatulas (meaning real fine ones for delicate measurements) in the lab, and every now and then one of them would fall into the sink opening (during washing). No matter what you did, even if you kept some prepared for emergencies only, the spatulas would keep vanishing, until one day you find yourself at 9 am in the lab, with a super dry reaction planned and no spatulas at all, fishing down the drain with a piece of string and a stirring magnet on top and hoping that the winged rats haven't found some and begun worshipping them as gifts from the chemical skies.

In short - keeping track of equipment is always someone else's problem - everybody is too busy *making* winged mice

(Until winged mice get hold of the equipment...)

 

Your lab mates used to drop the small spatulas down the sink?

Ah well it turned out well eventually! After finding some notes written in Spanish and giving up on translating them (my Spanish is not that good) I decided to just do things my way. I made the SAM stock, aiming to get it at a 100mM concentration. After filtering it was an ugly yellow colour, when it's meant to be just slightly yellowish. I measured the OD to determine the concentration of the stuff and I got it at 375mM! IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAND!

I'm so good that sometimes I amaze even myself.

 

Asked my boss about the possibility of being promoted to assistant manager, he's open to the idea (and mentioned I nearly always balance perfectly), and told me to speak to him when I can squeeze the job in my schedule, which will include a nerve-grating 30 hours of classes in addition to work. Maybe in a year, my second year in college will allow me the time for the job.

 

So, it turns out out current assistant manager is heading back to the hole he calls hometown, which means he's leaving the position. Worst timing ever -- if I wasn't stuck with school starting in less than a month, I'd snatch the position and finally be rid of being a stupid drone cashier. I am so freaking pissed off at this golden opportunity I have to skip for [EXPLETIVE] college. Argh!!!

Beat my head against the wall...

The replacement has been found, or so I hear... I couldn't care less. The poor lass is gonna hit a wall with me. Then again, not like I care.

 

Indeed, quite obviously you don't

 

Second of three 48 hour weeks in a row... Yay for money.

And waking up at 6:00, six times a week.

 

Ok, school updatetime:

Pretty much had to pick a major to study for as I'm low on general requirements and realized that History Education was not good idea at all. Soo, in order to get a schedule out for work I went with... Accounting Information Systems. Seams like the lovechild of MIS and Accounting. We'll see how that goes.

 

I'm doing accounting as a second major right now with economics as my primary major. However I might change that around after I've finished my Bachelor's thesis sometime next year hopefully and switch to accounting as a major for the masters. I'll probably have to read some law as a minor too, which I haven't even started with yet. We'll have to see how it all goes.

I'm getting somewhat annoyed though that I wasted a bunch of credits in studying political sciences and public sector adminstration, neither of which will probably be of much use in the future.

 

The other thing I was looking at is pre-Physical Therapy stuff, but the classes were filled up for that. Oh well, at worst I waste a symester :/

 

For the records guys you may wish to know that about 90% of what you're studying for your undergraduate degree will never be of any use in the future, and this includes your major courses. Sorry to burst your bubble

 

Ergh, work is not fun right now. Quite frankly, several servers are on the brink of collapse, there was an unwise attempt to upgrade VMware that failed miserably, leaving the VI control interface crippled and well nigh unusable, and too many of the upper admins have their heads in the sand about the whole thing, and refuse to let us take the servers down long enough to fix them.
Thank goodness I'm not a salaried employee, I'd probably crack if I was. As it is, I will not be asked to do too much, since they don't want to kick me into overtime.

 

I would like to think that 90% of students are aware of that. Soooo, really there is no bubble to burst

Of course I really don't want to go to grad school, so maybe a larger percentage of mine would be used than it was for you more scholastic types

 

I have to create a huge Power Point slideshow about my job "Processes". HR is making us do this and it's suppose to help me in my job. What a waste of time and resource! If I can create it, I already know it, duh! They have laid off 3 times this year and want us to do this, like we don't have massive overload of work with the redistribution of duties to a much smaller workforce. Why is it largely accepted for companies to waste so much money in paying HR a-holes to make us waste our time instead of getting the job done? No wonder America is falling apart. aaarrgghh!!!!

 

Probably BTA, which is laughable. I'm an On-site for another company, hired so the parent company doesn't need to handle that portion of the workload. Then they load me up with their leftovers from the lay-offs. I only take on the duties to keep the peace of the office and to make myself and my company look good. There isn't a qualified person in my department to even evaluate my job, let alone to have HR try and change it. Funny thing is, my company has an exemplary history with the parent company, so why try to change?... at least the on-site Cafe is well stocked!

 

Random class openings just made my schedule infinitely better, sooo excited. Still looking for a job though, I hate filling out applications :/