My oddest experience as director of a shelter was when a staff member brought in a half-grown mixed breed dog and asked “Is this male or female?” After a very confusing exam, my answer was “Yes”. Sent him/her off to one of our vets who confirmed my diagnosis and sent the dog to the vet school at Auburn University.
I had a stress fracture in my ankle maybe 5 years ago. I baby the shit out of that fucking leg and the day after that stupid concert damn didn’t it hurt. (Can’t blame that on the heat. Can blame it on several hours on concrete floors.)
I’m very cheap about buying things for myself, but recently treated myself to a GPS and friction mount for around $150. My quality of life has improved enormously.
I pit both myself and Chimera for not getting a GPS sooner.
The GPS did not come with instructions. It’s so well designed it doesn’t need them. I pit the motherfucking companies who can’t manage to design their products well enough to be used without instructions.
Eeeckkkk. Sticky Mess.
Because I’m an idiot and wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing, I left a good-sized package of gummies open on the passenger seat of my car.
Did you know those fuckers turn to absolute liquid at about the same temperature that the interior of a car is when parked in the shade on a hot day?
Liquid gummy ran down the seat, pooled in the seams, and is very, very stuck to the upholstery. I have no idea how I’m going to get it clean.
The zoo I used to work at had a really weird phase a few years ago- it’s not a big place, but in one year, we discovered a monkey, a hutia and a meerkat which were all intersex. The meerkat acted like a male, as well as looking like one, then suddenly gave birth, the other two turned out to have no reproductive equipment of either gender. Annoyingly, they were both part of breeding programs…
They’ve never had another mammal like that, but last year, three of the pheasants (of two species) suddenly adopted male plumage- despite laying eggs previously. Animals is weird.
Anyway.. oh yeah, rants: whoever designed the computer training program I’m doing (because I need some evidence that I can use a computer for job applications as I’m now applying for office work due to back problems) should be shot, hung, drawn, quartered, chopped up into little bits, boiled, fed to hedgehogs, and then any remaining bits should be shouted at for hours.
To start, it only works with internet explorer and one particular version of word. I picked the course because it was a) free on a back-to-work scheme and b) I could do it at home on my laptop. Except I can’t do the assignments, so I have to go to their horrible little office and finish it off, because neither I or the library have that version of word, and they never bothered asking me.
It has sound, which you can’t turn off except by turning the master sound off, so I can’t listen to music on my computer at the same time, and I don’t have anything else to listen to music on in my room. All the sound is is some cretin reading everything on the screen out v e r y s l o w l y. You can’t read ahead, as it waits for him to read it out before loading the next sentence, nor can you leave it to load, as there’s no pause, and the text doesn’t stay after he’s read it. If you skip, you skip 3/4 of the info -about 5% of which is actually relatively useful info. Half the time, after the slow reading, it plays an animation where the simulator s l o w l y moves the cursor allll the way across the screen, and clicks on a button, which was already highlighted. Again, this is sometimes followed by a useful snippet of info, so you can’t really skip it.
It has explained how to copy and paste approximately 30 times. Every time, it asks me to do it, then says, in a bright cheery, patronising voice: ‘Well done!!!’ or ‘Good Job!!!’
Then there’s a little test section, and if you, say, use ctrl-v instead of right clicking and selecting paste, despite the description of what it wants you to do being utterly ambiguous, or if you do another completely valid method of completing a task that isn’t exactly how it wanted you to do it but didn’t tell you, it docks points.
I have never been closer to smashing my laptop.
The main thing stopping me is the fact that it’s the best tool I have for hunting down those who created this horror, and removing their threat from the world.
Try ice. Does wonders for other sticky messes such as chewing gum: cool them enough and you can just take the firmly-solidified bits off without ripping the upholstery. Of course, I don’t recommend trying it during the hottest time of day…
Don’t know whether to put this here or workplace griping but since it’s only tangential to actual work here won the flip.
I’m freezing my butt off right now. Usually I keep a hoodie in my car but with camping I rearranged things and they are somewhere at home. Of course this day I am wearing a skirt and a light top and sandals and it’s a gloomy day out. I could fiddle with the thermostat but then it will get humid and not really warm, maybe I’ll go get some soup and tea but that will only keep me set for so long because I’m a cold blooded creature.
Why did I not grab a hoodie? Hell even my shawl would offset this! Tempted to cry off sick to HR and go work from home. Boss is on vacation and I can just see that hornets nest coming because we have people here who get pissy about people not being here but I’m almost too cold to care right now.
Are you absolutely certain that you have not died and gone to hell?
To the goddamn telemarketers that keep calling me and trying to get me to switch from Duquesne Light to some other power company: Go to hell. Go directly to hell. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Fuck off and leave me the hell alone. Go fuck your mother for all I care, but stop calling me!
“Gloomy” is right - my furnace keeps coming on! Can you go out at lunch and buy yourself a nice sweater? It’s a good excuse to shop. 
I was talking to a telemarketer for a political party last night after supper, and I came back into the living room to see my husband grinning - apparently he liked the part where I interrupted the spiel with, “Do you have a point?” 
Do you have any idea how jealous you’re making most of us? We’re heading back to the triple-digits this week… and it’s usually mild here in the Tundra-that-was-formerly-known-as-Frozen. I’m trying to type and keep sweat from dripping on my keyboard.
While I don’t know what to do about the gummies, you have my sincere sympathy. I managed to smash a litre bottle of maple syrup on my kitchen floor on Saturday.
I have washed the floor 12 times and it is still sticky in spots.
I was happy there was no one home at the time because I could have a good-old-fashioned freak out.
Maybe a vinegar or a baking soda solution? (Or for real fun, a vinegar *and *baking soda solution).
I wish. Working in the middle of an industrial park (almost literally even) sucks in that respect. The nearest clothes shopping is about 40 blocks away while running a gauntlet of semis and train tracks. It can be done, but I’ve had it take my whole lunch hour + extra just to run to the bank, walk in and be done in about five minutes and leave to grab food which I then ate at my desk. Finding a sweater would take longer than that.
Trade you! I’m in light enough clothing the heat would be lovely. I’m longing for the heat we had on Sunday, I sat myself down on the side of a warm rock in Drumheller and soaked it up (after the boy scared the daylights out of me).
You’ve got it ALMOST right. The shouting bit comes first.
Why the hell are so many computer programs so damned counter-intuitive? And just when I halfway learn one system or program, there’s another new, improved one that I have to get and learn? And the new system won’t play nicely with the older programs!
I don’t know if mine was better or worse than yours - I dropped most of a bag of rice on the kitchen floor a couple of years ago, and I’m still finding rice everywhere. At least rice isn’t sticky, but apparently it can fit in any crack or crevice.
I dunno, shouting that them that they should be ashamed for having been component parts of such a person seems to be rather appropriate at that point.
And very very Vogon.
Can’t you just go to the store and buy something anymore? I’m looking for a battery charger for my camera (I could start another rant just about my camera…). I check a bunch of retail store websites to see where I could go to pick one up. Nowhere. Oh sure, I found tons of chargers online…online only. I can have it shipped to my home in anywhere from 3-7 days, but oops, we are leaving for our little vacation on Thursday.
Fuck!! I just want to walk into a store and hand someone cash and come home with my charger!!
I know that you can’t go into a book store and buy a book off the shelf unless it’s a current best seller, or has just been a best seller. Sure, they’re willing to order the book, but why should I want to go to a store and order something online? If I wanted to do THAT, I could stay at home and do it, and my computer and my connection are both faster, too. If I’m leaving on a trip and just want a good book to read on the flight, and I want it right now, I’d better head on over to Half Price Books. Forget about going to the new book store.
I can only find the tiny “task lighting” bulbs for my kitchen on Amazon. And my mother still uses a percolator…she has to purchase the filters through either a specialty kitchen store (online) or Amazon.
Fuck yellow jackets and all their kin back to the dawn of the species.
I was planting in the garden this evening and didn’t notice their stinking hole in the ground until they attacked. Half a dozen stings later I’ve retreated to the house, where a couple of the little bastards followed and had to be stomped and pyrethrinized to death. Come nightfall the nest will take a direct hit and will be history.
In my rush to get away I left the Ipod player out there, so they are now being serenaded by my doubtful music collection (during the attack, “The Ballad Of Bonnie And Clyde” was playing, most apt).
Speaking of history, I have one with this spawn of hell - a yellow jacket was the first bee to ever sting me (I recall my father’s sage advice to hold still and it wouldn’t bother me - like hell, yellow jackets exist to sting).
Die Die Die