rants by Ariane su kanji

wow: http://home.ma.rr.com/noct/lifeasaguy.asf this is funny! I really hope I am not like that... thanks nocturl, dunno if you read my profile, but I ready yours!

I went to Burger King yesterday and realized how much my perceptions have alredy changed after just a few weeks of work. A little background: I work in the Advanced Manufacturing Engineering department and our job is to reduce cost of the factory by making changes in the factory to reduce the cost of labor or materials, be that moving things closer together, making some kind of device that reduces the number of people to do a job, or whatever. So I am learning to think of things in terms of cost, i.e. if we use 1" less tape on this one part of the process, we save over $1,500. Wow! Anyway, so I was at BK and they have a new flavor of ICEE - Invisible Cherry! And my first thought was 'wow, that is really clever: now they dont have to pay for food coloring.' Before, I may have been intrigued by the concept and the marketing, but now I think in terms of X number of BK stores selling an average number of Y ICEEs per year at a savings of $0.006 each is a lot of money! I guess it goes to show how much lifestyle changes affect our psyche.

Another thing I noticed is how different people can be in different social situations. There is this amazingly smart guy at work who only seems to criticize ideas and ask for more detail even with his wealth of technical information. He also has a habit of being late to meetings and then demanding that you recap what he missed and everything you went over last week, including the overview of the week before. So you know that the first 30 minutes of the meeting are lost. grrrr. He also likes to call argueing debating, at which point I commented that in a debate the parties at least pretend to listen to each other. Of course, he ignored me to the snickering amusement of several other people in the meeting. So we had a meeting with the big boss to talk about a project that involves about a half dozen people and me and somehow I end up getting sat next to him - aaahhh! Watching my boss and this other guy only speak when spoken to and instead of the chaos of a normal meeting, the big boss asks his questions, they get answered succintly with supplemental information being provieded by the person most qualified to do so with no yelling, interrupting, or talking over each other was quite amazing. Scary, but amazing. I took my cue from them and only spoke when spoken to (hard for me, I know) but was able to see a lot of things pulled together in the most amazingly efficient meeting ever. I remeber watching 'Meetings, Bloody Meetings' with John Cleese in Desgin this past fall, and I am consistently amazed at how poorly anyone, anywhere does following those 'simple' premises. I was pretty floored by this presentation.

Glass Halo rocks. My good friends Aaron, Dave, and Eric (in reverse alphabetical order) are in this band that i like to go see when i get a chance, and one of those chances was tonight! good stuff. if only will didnt need to be up at the ass crack of dawn tomorrow, i could have stayed a little later and seen them do my favorite song. there is a link on over here somewhere, go check it out! The band is called Glass Halo and I guess I have been listening to them since sometime freshman year. Good stuff. Go check out the site, Dave did a really nice job and I can't wait for the album.

I HATE WORD! I have spent most of the last few days attempting to format a spec. The formatting has gotten so f-ed up by now with what I have been trying to do (numbered lists, lots of them) that I now get a 4.1.1.1.1.1.1. in front of anything I try to type along with it being in 14pt, bolded, and tabbed to the right. GRRRRRR. We need to get the damn thing reviewed tomorrow, and how the hell are they supposed to read it when it is all screwy. I would have been better off just retyping the whole thing from scratch than this cut-and-paste crap. And it only ever goes really screwy and deletes all the formatting on section 8, which is 6 of the 23 pages in the spec. gah. I am really ready for the weekend: Get to go see my big in Brigadoon - the play at Rose, chill with Bruce - my advisor, will, dylan, maybe get to one of the cast parties and then do coffee with Matt and Baron. yay. I really don't want to wait.

Project for later: make up an exercise schedule, include enough situps to compensate for the beer ;-)

man, I really wasn't supposed to go book shopping tonight. I head across town to Borders to go look for book 5 in the Sandman Series and while I am there pick up some manga, books 3 or 4 in several different series. I get there and find the new Ursula K LeGuin which was cool and then wander over to the Graphic Novels... where they have none of what I am looking for. They have 3,4, 6-11 in the Sandman, 1-3 of Priest (I wanted 4), 1,2,4,5,6 of Ragnarok (guess which one I wanted) etcetera. They didnt even have the first Lucifer which I had been contemplating reading since it is by one of my favorite authors, only 3 and 4 on different shelves. Guess this was some kind of sign that I really shouldnt be spending my money on this stuff... but I think I will anyway.

On another note, is it just me or is it really weird when your guy/boyfriends want to get in your sister's pants? One of my exes got banned from my house for telling me he thought she was doable, which was not only uncool since he was dating me, but rude since he was a guest in my house, not counting the fact that she was not legal to him. Gaaahhh. Yes, I know she is cute, but damnit, you're here with me and it is one thing to check out a stranger but completly different to want to do the same thing to my family. And it wasn't like he was just thinking it, but he told me! STUPID BOY. And then he got pissed when I told him that he would never be invited back to my house when she was there... glad that relationship didn't last much longer after that incident.

grrr... i hate it when people talk in circles and make me guess at stupid shit. grrr... you know who you are. NOTE TO SELF: I am only an egg. I cannot be expected to get everything right the first time and maybe not even the second. I Proudly Burn Toast.

COMPLETE SIDETRACK: soooo... For years, I mean years, I've been getting shit from my kid sister about the boys I have dated, and in turn have given her shit about some of her habbits (but not boys, just the lack therof). She has really grown up in the almost 3 years since I moved out of the house, I think we did a lot of trying not to be similar in a lot of ways when we still lived in the same house, and boys was one of them. So she stopped drinking as much (about the same time I started, but oh well), and cracked the whip on school and jobs and whatnot, and has been doing really well. So suddenly we are a whole lot more like each other, which is both wierd and predictable. We are sisters afterall. Anyway, she is one of those girls that is really pretty, but until a couple of years I really couldn't stand her. For example tonight we are chatting (something we never used to do, we didn't talk if we could avoid it) and I tell her I have a blog, and she should read it, and she is like "wha???" and I get to say: "duh, in my profile, click the link" and we both get to be retarded at each other.

Anyway, back to the reason for this post: we have really gotten a lot more similar in the last few years and a couple of months ago she finally gets her first boyfriend since the one she sorta had in elementary school and he is nuts about her and she is nuts about him. All the good stuff where she hates that she wants to be with him all the time, but if she isnt all she does is think about him. So of course my parents are thrilled, they were kinda starting to get worried I think about her. I don't think my pointing out that between the two of us (I dated all through High School) they came out about right.... they probably wanted more of a happy medium instead of a daughter who was sexually active starting early high school and one not even dating til college. I'm happy for her though. Sex is a lot of fun, and now she knows why I like it. Of course I'll probably not give her all that much shit, but it is fun to tease her about.

Just got off the phone with my mom, her cat is being a snot again as usual. He just turned a year old this month, so hes not really a kitten anymore, but i still think of him like that. Anyway, it was raining at home this morning so she let him back inside before she went to work, and he was a rather damp longhaired cat when he came in and kinda peeved. When she got home from work this evening, there were muddy paw prints all over the floor, counter, stove, oven, and table. I just laughed: he is a snot afterall. And I miss him. :-)

Found one possible source for my free wireless! Rishi, one of the other co-ops, lives in the adjacent apartment and has a network setup. So... if the person I'm mooching off of now notices, I always have that option :-) I've been learning about Wiki which may be an option for being able to take comments. More later... have to get productive.

ok, so two posts tonight. I'm mooching internet off of some guy in the building who has a wireless network set up so I've been getting my friends phone numbers and then calling them :-). Lots of fun. ANYWAY... I've got nothing to do, so I've been harassing my friends at Rose and giving them shit about the fact that they have homework and whatnot and I got ahold of Lo! whoo baby! H'es got a pretty impressive site: www.alexlo.net go check it out. About that, I was reading his blog and he mentioned Scrabble. Brings back some fun memories of his and my games of drunken Scrabble in the Annex listening to Sex-o-Rama (I still have that) and drinking cran with vodka or Bailies. Yeah, Fajitas... thats funny, another word that got some discussion this weekend since Will used to work in a Mexican Cantina (sp?) back home and we were laughing about all the idiots that mispronounce that word. I hate it when stuff gets mispronounced, especially when the person being the idiot is trying to sound smart by doing so: like 'for-te' instead of 'fort' to use forte, as in strenght. Damnit, it's french! Not so difficult. Anyway, Scrabble: We ended up playing several variations most of them getting sillier as we got drunker and usually ended up with me sleeping on his couch. I spent a lot of last year sleeping on couches at the House or in Deming.

wow, personality tests on www.thespark.com : I am a Performer (Dominant Extrovert Abstract Feeler ) " Like just 6% of the population you are a PERFORMER (DEAF)--personable, self-assured, and excellent under pressure. You are extroverted and strong-willed, which, in combination means you are good with people and aren't willing to let opportunity pass you by. Congratulations. I'm sure all the peons you've stepped on never saw it coming and didn't feel a thing.
You like being naked.
Anyhow, you have formidable creative talents, and you often following what your heart tells you instead of your logical mind. Your exuberance can earn you many friends and admirers, despite your ambition, or it can intimidate the less confident into keeping their distance. It's also possible you're Madonna."

The roommate never did show up and it is time for bed. I'm going to be really pissed if I have to move out of my apartment into a single. Grrrr. And on a final note, according to thespark.com, I am 27% pure, which is more pure than I used to be... hmmm... must be scaled for age.

WARNING: Bitching session
Hmm... I was supposed to have a roommate several hours ago. I really hate it when people tell you they will be somewhere at such and such time and then aren't. I've been feeling kinda trapped at my apartment all afternoon waiting for her, and no such luck. I need to do things other than wait, and I really dont want to leave since I have things that I would rather don't get stolen. I also don't want to start off wrong by not being here when she gets here so she gets stuck waiting outside for however long I'm gone. And then there is our good friend Murphy: as soon as I leave, she will show up. Grrrrr... I hate having my hands tied like this.

On the bright side: the rest of the weekend was good. Finally got most of the way moved in: thinking that someone was coming over was a good incentive. I've been catching up on my anime watching and spent some time with Will who came in to keep me company this weekend and we had fun running around. I gave him a tour of the plant, albeit a bad one, but I kinda surprised myself with my ability to navigate that massive place after only a couple weeks on the job. Anyway, I now have wireless internet, so in theory this will now be more than once or twice a week on the posts. :-) go internet

End of the second week of work.... long week b/c the shutdown and I dont have any projects to supervise. The walkthrough went well: three contrators will be bidding for the project, although the scope of one of the points in the spec encompasses a bit more than I had orignally understood. It will be good to get that work done on the plant though, get all our drawings up to date too. Its been a busy day though. I'm going to miss Kenny and Sean and Jen who are leaving today, and of course my walkthrough was scheduled for 10am and so was the last round-table with all the co-ops. Oh well, they didnt tell me last week and rescheduled this week so many times that I am not really worried anymore. Will is coming into town tomorrow to help me explore downtown Bloomington and we should have a good time. Oh, and Charelle, my roommate is moving in on Sunday, which means that I get to spend tonight cleaning up the living room and getting my stuff together so the place doesnt look like ass when Will gets here and then for when the roomie does the next day. I wonder when the washer and dryer at my apartement will be taken out.... I talked with my landlord when I moved in and told her I didn't want them at $25 a month, and this was almost 2 weeks ago. Not that I mind being able to do my laundry for free, but still. I really dont want her to charge me because she was too lazy to take them out in the first place. Hmmm... anything else??? I got into a discussion earlier about my shrinkage tests on this new plastic we are using where I was telling Dennis in maintenance about cutting, baking and then eating them. This sparked a discussion on marinade with the decision being that BBQ and lime juice would probably help the plastic taste less like plastic, but then we werent sure. Still have my nails from last week, still is hard to type.

Happy St. Pattys Day. Dunno what I will do, probably grab a beer and then go home for dinner and pretend to unpack some more while drinking more beer. I should stop by a liquor store and grab a 6pk of some Uplands Wheat.... yummy. Dealing with contractors is kinda fun: I get to be all sweet and explain to them why 'no, I can not and will not make an execption for you' and still feel like a hard-ass. That and there was a guy from one of the steel contractors getting the tour who looked to be about my age and definately my type when I was in high school wandering around, brought back some amusing memories of Tech Theatre. Oh, and I get to go use my GE discount for the first time: 17% off my Veriozon bill, yay! 6 months of cell phone for the price of 5. I can definately deal with that. Note to self: Friday bring a blue dress shirt for the contractor walk through.

Second week of work is underway. As I said, we are shut down this week for upgrading, so not a whole lot of activity on the floor. We are getting kinda close to having a working setup for this new type of door, and I get to do some supervising on a modification later this week which should be fun. Talked the boss into going to lunch with Landon and me and got to do a bit more getting to know you stuff which is fun. Hopefully next week will be a bit busier.

The weekend was fun barring several irritating incidents. I went up to the Haute on friday after work and getting out of my car at Will's promptly proceded to lock my keys in my car. Of course I did not realize this until Saturday morning, and wasnt that concerned since Dylan has my spare key. The problem then became getting ahold of him - little did I realize that I would spend five hours trying to call and get him to unlock the house (I had locked my house key in my car too) and pretty much waste several hours of my day trying to wake that fool boy up. Yeah. I was peeved. It really bothers me when people sleep so deeply that they are worthless for getting ahold of in important situations. ANYWAY. Mel and I got ready for formal together which was a nice bonding experience between my stick on bra and her corset. Baron was adorable but chewing on everything again as usual, including Mel's dress which got him left in the back yard for about 30 minutes. At some point I need to get that Picture put up.... Formal was fun, though I was pretty tired and really not up to as much as I usually am as far as dancing and drinking and just having fun. I think I'm getting old or something. Sunday Matt and I did coffee as usual and I snagged the puppy again. By 10am Sunday Mel seems to be ready to throw him at me just to get some sleep, so it works pretty well for me, Mel, and Matt. Then it was back to Bloomington at 9pm and in bed at 11 for work again. Busy weekend.

So, work is going well. I've been working for a full week now, and things are fun. The rhythm is a lot different than school, but I guess that is to be expected. I am working in the Advanced Manufacturing Engineering (AME) department and already have been assigned or assigned to several projects. It is pretty neat stuff, and I'm pretty stoked about what I am doing since this is really encouraging for the kind of things I want to do eventually. My department is in charge of making improvements to the factory that maintain the Six Sigma level and also save money. We do things like automation, reduction of parts by simplification of design, making things more ergonomic, that kind of thing. Its a lot of fun. The people I am working with are great. My boss is never around, but otherwise he's really laid back and is just kinda seeing what I can handle right now. The other guy I work with, Landon, has really stepped into a mentoring position for me. He's been helping speed up how fast I learn the ridiculously complicated floor plan at the factory, and stuff about writing specs, and generally getting me up to speed about the whole mechanism of work. Been lots of fun, but I guess I already said that.

First day, w00t. Second day of work at GE in Bloomington, going to be fun.