It looks like the boss got off his ass after having four months notification and is in the process of hiring my replacement for next month.
How they expect him to get his landing visa processed and him flown here within two weeks will be something to watch. I’m fully expecting them to ask me to stay an extra week or maybe two.
Some days are like today in that only the accumulation of microjoys earns it a FYT.
Both buses coming and going stopped for me as I ran for them. Yatta!
I got to read a pristine-condition 1932 first edition of Margaret Sutton’s The Haunted Attic, the second Judy Bolton mystery, in the Special Collections bowel of the local university.
Three penpal letters, including one from a penpal I had in 1990, who discovered me quite by accident (I have a pseudonym) on Twitter!
Finding two fountain pens “lost” under the chesterfield cushions. Very glad as I could have replaced them, being within a short distance of the university bookstore.
Finding a five-dollar bill as I was hunting for a geocache on University property. Yatta!
This has been the best day.
I got a surge of capital from my brother and his wife this morning so I could take care of all the broken/missing little things that have accumulated over time.
I was planning to go into San Diego today for a couple of appliances – a microwave and a rice/food steamer, but decided to check a small store near my apartment first. Score!
What would have cost me $100 US and a lot of hassle carrying, I got brand new for ~$62 only a kilometer from my place. And the exact same brands.
Tomorrow, really am going to SD to get some paint brushes, wood panels, paper, and brush conditioner or shea butter.
I CAN MAKE RICE AND STEAM VEGGIES AGAIN!
I CAN NUKE MY OATS AND BRATS AND POPCORN AND REHEAT MEALS IN SECONDS!
It’s not just the big things that count; it’s all the little ones too. Nice to see that influx.
Is this is rant thread? Yes? No? Too bad i’m using it. So i need to vent and i have no apologies for my lengthy novel down below.
I am a project manager for my company, i am the 2nd most senior person in my dept (technically the most senior person if you exclude my supervisor). I help onboard, train and mentor every single new hire in our dept. And somehow, somehow i am the only Project Manger 1 we have. Everyone else gets started at the 2nd level with a higher pay than me regardless of experience (a much much higher pay). My responsibilities are not different from PM2’s, and if anything i have additional responsibilities that no one else has and i perform them quite well. The downside is that my time management, and organizational skills aren’t great, and coupled with my anxiety i sometimes get overwhelmed but generally i perform just as well as anyone else.
But somehow i’ve been left behind paycheck and position-wise. Granted i should have been advocating for myself earlier, but having not come to the company with relevant experience i wanted to learn and prove myself. But the end result is that i’ve been taken for granted by management. However last year my manager saw the huge gap between my pay and everyone else and he fought to have this corrected. I was supposed to get both a pay raise and a promotion before the end of 2023. And then… i had to wait until the start of the fiscal year. And then i had to wait for something else. But then mid-year i was told that i would get it as long as my performance stayed high for the year, and i can’t express how utterly betrayed i felt. This was not what i was promised, but i decided to make another attempt at proving myself and just putting in the work.
We’re atthe end of 2024 and what was promised to me is still nowhere in sight. I took my supervisor to the side and pretty much let her have it. Politely mind you, but i passionately laid it out that i felt disrespected and lied to. And that even if the promotion was given to me ASAP it would not make up for the lost wages, as i was supposed to have been given it at the start of the god damn year. And that i have a hard time being motivated because my excellence doesn’t seem to matter. Why put in the effort? I’m barely making a living. If they want me to try i need backpay.
So yeah, i honestly don’t know how upper management is going to take me making demands. But honestly i’m tired of busting my ass for nothing while others succeed off of my efforts. I 100% want to stay with my company, i believe in the vision and i’m passionate about what i do, and i love my team. We’ll see how this shit goes.
I have my toolchain for processing news articles running again! Not only that, the library that I had been using to extract the text hadn’t been updated in 8 years, but I found that someone had forked the project and took care of some of the buglist, yay! Now it’s grinding away, seeing if it can handle articles that the old version couldn’t.
If a helicopter is a bunch of parts flying in close formation, this is a Python app and its library dependencies:
Someone broke NumPy in June, and if I regress to the previous version, what will that break? sigh
Had a very positive interaction with someone today.
I currently wear two badges on my jacket - a trans flag and a No. 6 Penny-farthing from the Prisoner.
While being served in a shop the cashier pointed and said “What’s that?”
I said, “This?” pointing to the Prisoner badge.
“No, the other one.”
“Oh” i say, “that’s the trans flag.”
At this point i’m thinking if this is going to go well given the hatred too many have to trans people and the fact nobody has ever commented on that badge.
They then ask me if i’m trans to which i say no, but that i wear this in support of my trans brothers and sisters (i know, i wish i’d added non-binary to that but i was caught off-guard).
They then say “That’s really cool, man.” and i went on my merry way.
And I love the (original) Prisoner!
It really is a brilliant blend of 60s counterculture and cold war paranoia.
…with XLNT music. McGoohan’s taste in music was superb.
Please allow me to provide some backstory re: the Fuck Yeah! thing what happened today.
Years ago, a prick of a plumber stole our big, beautiful, original early 20th C bathroom sink, and replaced it with a cheap little POS that belongs in a cheap motel. Almost anything set down on it slides right off into the bowl. I don’t know why mom let him do that to us! He’d insisted the sink itself was the reason it was always getting plugged up. The real reason was he was a lousy plumber who never really got rid of the clogs. She couldn’t get ahold of him ever again after that.
He stole our sink and sold it, or charged someone else a fortune for it + its installation. I have cursed him and our ugly little sink almost every time I’ve used it. It makes our lovely bathroom look like crap. Pun intended.
Now for The Good Stuff!
Today around my BF’s lunchtime, I noticed a pickup had parked right in front, where my BF parks. It wouldn’t be a big deal, but his knee’s been messing with him.
A few minutes later, I saw Mike, our contractor, carrying something big and heavy up onto our lawn. We caught each other’s eye thru the window, and he grinnnned!
I went outside, and he’d brought us a beautiful Victorian-style sink/vanity, with a nice oval porcelain bowl & beige marble top! The hardware’s black brass, with copper-colored trim, and it’s gorgeous. It has a pretend drawer, but the cabinet beneath is real, and it appears to be solid wood.
He said he thought it could go in our basement, and I said, “I’d rather have it upstairs!”
I asked if he’d been in our bathroom, and he said he had. I asked if he remembered where the heat vent is, and he thought a moment and said yes. I asked whether a vanity would be no good, since it would go so close to the vent, and he said it’s no big deal. I was so relieved! I also asked, “Isn’t the sink, etc at least half what it costs to get a sink, etc and have it installed?” and again, he said “Yes!” He added that he was was just so happy he could get it for us, and that I love it so much.
Someone had had Mike redo their basement bathroom, but wound up selling their home not long after. The new owners wanted to redo everything all over again, and told Mike he could take the vanity when he inquired about it. It’s only a few years old!
He put it up on our porch, and my BF said he’d make space for it in the smol roomlet near the front door. {Now I think abt it, that roomlet would be ideal for a smol bench & place to put wet, etc footwear, and an umbrella stand.}
Now we just need to find the funds for its installation. I remain optimistic! 
