Waiting for Blagot

Allegedly the contract staff are getting a stay of execution from the governor of Illinois, but not a pardon.  They are giving us all a 90 day extension.  At the end of 90 days we are supposed to either (1) be converted to state employees (that'll takes a lot of pixie dust); (2) become temporary employees (of course, we were already temporary, but that depends on the meaning of temporary. Although I've been here for years, compared to the Age of the Dinosaurs, I'm temporary); or (3) be gone.

Let's just suppose the contract staff become state employees.  How many of them will become clock-watching, break-taking, never-take-a-leak-on-your-own-time, grievance filers.  It's not a natural role for contract staff but most contractors have proven that they can be trained. 

I know what I'm talking about.  I used to be a state employee.  I got in trouble for working through my breaks.  The clock-watching, break-taking, never-take-a-leak-on-your-own-time, grievance filers take great care to ensure that no one makes their lethargy noticeable by comparison.

So I quit.  On my 40th birthday, I gave up my oh-so-safe, boring state employee job.  I became a consultant, one of the undead.  Some people thought I was crazy.  But how crazy was I?  I went to work for the state as a outside consultant for twice the pay.  I may have been crazy but I wasn't stupid.

It is time to pad the pension.

Will Code For Food

I am working on a yardage calculator.  It will probably take me several days to build the database for the calculator.  I plan to have select lists for style, size, yarn type, stitches/inch and rows/inch.  Then the user would enter the yarn name and the yardage per skein.  The result would be the recommended number of skeins to work the garment.  I have researched several sources for information on the yardage for a given size/style.  The time consuming part is collating all the resources into the database.


BTW, my day job at http://www.illinois.gov" target="_blank">www.illinois.gov
is going away July 1, 2003 because our local governor has not made his wishes known regarding IT contract staff.  Therefore, my motto is now

Will code ColdFusion and/or SQL for food.

 

Goddess of Knit-and-Rip

If I am not the goddess of knit-and-rip, it is not for lack of trying.  I had almost finished a sweater for #1 son.  It was a design experiment.  The design was working but it just didn't look like anything #1 would be caught dead in.  RIPPPPPPPPPP; Wrap; Start a new design.  It makes my husband and kids crazy when they see me ripping out another sweater.  They think the objective of knitting is the sweater.  They don't understand the objective of knitting is the knitting.  

Hide My Stash

I began knitting when I was 8.  Barbie doll clothes.  I learned to knit from the Coats & Clark learn-how book.  For some reason I learned the Continental method.  The instructions were English style.  I don't know how I made the switch.  My mother knew how to knit but did not enjoy it.  Every time she set her knitting down, when she picked it back up, she had no idea where she was at.  Her passion was for the sewing machine.  I hated the sewing machine.


My mother and I had a deal:  if anything happened to her, I was to go to her house and hide her stash of fabric, so folks would not find it and think she was nuts.  Likewise, if anything happened to me, she was to hide my stash of yarn.  When she died about a year ago, she left me about 2 pickup truck loads of fabric.  [Here in fly-over country, a pickup truck is an acceptable unit of measure.]  I am still trying to figure out what to do with all of it.


Today, I went to see my Dad.  I worked up his tax return.  He has been ill lately and is not fully recovered.  My daughter, Laura, went with me.  She got out a box of old photographs.  These were the wedding pictures of my aunts and uncles from the WWII years.  No big weddings.  No white silk dresses.  Since my mother died, my cynical core has been penetrated; those pictures bring up the tears.

     

13th Step

Yesterday was a system engineer nightmare.  We had memory failure on one server.  Then as the memory was being replaced, someone (it wasn't me; I was upstairs in the BatCave) accidentally disconnected power to the production SQL Server.  It went down hard and came back slow because of all the recovery processes going on.  All the web sites were dependent on this server.  They were all down for about 20 minutes.  It sure made the case for database redundancy.  Wake up managers.  Let the moths out of your wallet.


I just had to come home and knit.  If I didn't knit, I would probably drink way too much.  There's a thought:  knitting as the 13th step of an AA program.


Today was much better.  We had a little domain controller hiccup, but not a big deal.  All quiet in the BatCave.  Hurrah.

The Perky Red-head in Further Adventures with Vermon

The perky red-head was loading her belongings in her satchel, preparing to go home from work.  She tried to put a book into the bag.  But the book would not go all the way down and sit squarely in the bag.  There was something in the way.

The perky red-head reached in to remove the obstacle from under the book.  It was probably a pen or a highlighter.

Her hand moved into the bag boldly.  And touched something soft, cold and slightly damp.  She pulled the object up.  "OH S#!T, IT'S A DEAD MOUSE" she screamed silently in her head.  Had anyone seen?  No.  Quick get some tissue.  Wrap it up.  Where to put it? 

Yes, there had been mice in the perky red-head's house.  Not just any mice, mind you.  They were housemouses.  The cat had even caught one -- once.  The mouse must have been drunk, veered off the road and slammed into the cat's face with enough force to trigger an autonomic nerve spasm
resulting in the opening of the cat's jaws which subsequently closed on the aforementioned mouse.  She was just that kind of good for nothing cat -- all looks, no brains.  Should have let those ants have the cat.  Make a note to self:  Fire the cat!

Where to put it?  She look furtively around.  The garbage can was just too mundane.  Brunettes and blondes might throw it in the trash.  But our perky red-head was no ordinary girl.  A dead mouse is not a useless mouse.

She thought about putting the little dead one in the printer paper tray.  Management would have Terminix up here so damn fast, the sonic boom would hurt your ears.

Then she saw it.  The perfect place.  Her coworker's  fuzzy, plush, red Christmas stocking.  Hanging by the cubicle with care.  Such a present!  Merry Christmas.  Hee Hee Hee.

One Perky Red-Head and the Ants

When last we left our one perky red head, she was fighting off a flight of winged ants.  This is nothing unusual for our one perky red-head except that the damn ants were in her living room.

Initially she feared that this might be an out break of the dread termites from planet Terminix.  However, quickly referring to her much beloved and dog-eared copy of Entomology for the
Restless and the Doomed, she soon determined that the creatures were merely the Sim variety of ants.

Oh, my God!!!!!  What do you mean 'merely the Sim variety of ants.'

Did you see what happened in SIMAnt.  It was horrible.  First the ants started kicking centipede ass, then they stoned a trap-door spider to death.  They invaded the house.  They drove the family into the next township.  AND THEY ATE THE CAT!!!!

By the way, who would want to eat a cat?  Who would want to be on that side of a cat's feeding chain?  Our perky red-head doesn't eat anything that licks its butt.  After all, you must have standards.

Back to the ants.

It's a diabolical thing when, with the whole bloody great outdoors available, the ants pick YOUR living room to well up through.

What can she do?  They're in her living room.  They're coming for her.  For her family.  Her cat should start worrying.  However, her cat is intellectually challenged (even for a cat) so she will have to worry for the cat (it's a proxy-thing, ok).

It's time to escape with the camper to Lake Sanchris and bomb the house.  That ought to take care of that little fruit fly problem too.

Stay tuned for the next episode.