Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Snowed

Dreama arrived with her kitty on Tuesday. The kitty stayed, but Dreama traveled on to pick up her daughter and make a break for a border or two.

And it's freakishly cold here. I put all the blame on you-know-who, freshly arrived from the Arctic!! She can deny it all she wants, but it's been a nasty "start" to winter. She arrives in Vancouver to the heaviest snowfall in the past decade. She arrives in Victoria, where snow in December usually amounts to 6 inches, but this year (so far) is over 2 and a half feet! Seattle? Snowed in. She's heading to Las Vegas... they got snow too! This woman's gonna make history by the time she reaches Mexico!

We're getting more snow before Christmas. The forecast is for close to 6 inches by Christmas Eve. This will be our first "White Christmas" in 10 years.

and it's all Dreama's fault. ;)

Monday, December 01, 2008

Packing

We're moving in the spring and my in-laws have volunteered themselves to pack up our house.

Sadly, they seem to think having us pack up to move into our new home (under construction....soon... and should be ready in April) before Christmas.

Our dining room is boxed up and stored in the back of our garage. Most of my office went there too, but I defended my computer while armed with a hockey stick.

Then they tackled the kitchen. Apparently, we don't need to eat anywhere.

My brother-in-law has been helping us "de-clutter" for staging the house for the real estate market. We thought de-cluttering meant getting rid of some stuff.

Not everything.

It's gonna be a bare Christmas with everything packed away.

Noobs

Work's been a big distraction of late. Hell, work's been a big distraction since early 2007. The little promotion-with-no-pay has eaten up time, that's for sure.

I forgot to mention that the team I'm on grew from the original 5 guys to 11 in total. Sadly, each addition has, in my opinion brought the quality of the team down just a little bit more.

The first "noob" to join the team has proven himself quite lazy and doesn't like working through things. When I ask him questions, I usually get stared at, so when it's a yes or no question, I go with the safe "no" from his stare. Not only lazy, but fat as sin! I know I'm not a bodybuilder/hunk-of-a-man, but when we'd run up to the top floor of the building to grab breakfast (5th floor to the 8th floor), we could run. He meets us there once the elevator arrives. That, and his desk chair's taken such a beating, it now moos whenever he leans back in it. The poor thing. It needs to be put out of its misery.

The second "noob" is someone I worked with before and he's fine. He's funnier than I recall, but I was on a team of 50 then, not 11. He gets into his work and stays there for the majority of the day.

The third and fourth "noobs" arrived on the same day, with ZERO experience. One is better than the other and can sit down and focus on work for hours at a time. Sadly, he really enjoys the company of Noob #1, so he can stray into the laziness from time-to-time. The other "noob" was someone I never paid much attention to before a few weeks back, but usually every day since, I find myself snapping at him. Usually, I snap after the 4th time I've repeated myself. There's been 2 occasions I've asked him a question and he's responded with a question of his own and I've said "Are you seriously asking me that?" I get the feeling he doesn't understand that I have years of experience over his weeks and sometimes it's best just to answer questions when asked.

The fifth and sixth "noobs" arrived while I was on vacation. I didn't know one of them was on our team for a week as he never spoke to me. It took a while, but I discovered he doesn't speak to anyone unless spoken to first, so he totally doesn't fit with the rest of the team. The final "noob" seems friendly enough and has some previous experience, which helps, but he's not an efficient worker. Sadly, I can see his monitor most of the day and he's usually got some casual game running for "distraction." Not good. We don't have time for distractions.

And I don't have time for noobs.