To whoever brought in the big pumpkin for the Halloween potuck: you can take it down off the top of the fridge anytime now. That is, if it you can stand touching it with all of those huge patches of mold on it. A haz-mat suit may be required.
Man, my pc is so frickin loud. I never really realized it and now I can’t not hear it. I imagine it contributes to how tired I am at the end of the day because I’ve been sitting next to a loud whirring thing all day.
Had our IT consultant look at it and not much I can do. Since we have webmail, I just turned the damn thing off and am using my notebook instead.
Ahhhhhh, that’s better.
the latest Stuff that will blow your mind podcast is titled “the lair of the rat king” http://podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sciencelab/2012-02-07-stbym-rat-king.mp3?_kip_ipx=261525625-1328654845
I cannot listen at the moment but I wonder if they read this thread 
It’s not a pumpkin, silly, it’s their kid’s next Science project!
:eek:
Does it help to think of it as a free white-noise enhancement?
Boo hiss on missing the party!
I thought he wasn’t in at all this month? Or .. wait, how long have you been in TX this time? There were a few days there when ol’ SG was unsupervised, weren’t there?
How’s Bill doing, btw?
Attention nasty-ass bitches: stop leaving your powder all over the railing in the bathroom. I don’t really want to know what it is or how you’re getting it there…just stop already.
Office partner: blow your nose and take a fucking Zyrtec already. Oh, and you can cut the little melodramatic sighs every time you have to do actual work.
Why don’t you just throw it away? Done it many times with stuff that has been here too long, nobody ever misses it.
I would imagine that if you try to touch the pumpkin at this point, your hands would plunge straight into the rotten insides. It might even rupture, spilling nastiness down the sides of the fridge.
Dangit! I’ve been trying to come up with funny retort for, like, fifteen minutes and I got nuthin’!
Most days I have music turned on and that covers it up. That must be why I haven’t noticed how loud it is; the last few days I haven’t wanted to listen to music. And, apparently, I listen to my music pretty loud. 
I agree with the booing and hissing. Those 2 parties were going to be the high point of my year.
I am not convinced that SG made off with the shop vac. Mostly because I can’t picture him using it…not to mention that his camp trailor is full of boxes of forks so there wouldn’t be room for it. I haven’t seen it for a couple of years, I just mentioned it to my OCD minion because she was complaining about how dusty the boxes. OCD minion was the one who went searching for it.
I am positive that he’s got my pliers. I was constantly having to tell him to bring them back. They were cheap, I bought them for pulling big staples out of thick files, but somehow they kept ending up in his truck. They were easy to identify, I spray paint all of my tools pink. I hope they break at just the wrong moment.
Bill is doing well, thank you for asking. I still haven’t gotten any happier about driving here.
I do have a rant about Bill’s job. Bill just had major surgery and they keep texting and emailing about problems. Bill has long told me that his main job is stomping out fires (I bought him some costume fireman’s boots for Christmas), but I didn’t expect the constant stream of calls, texts and emails that he would be getting. It started the day after his surgery for crying out loud.
I am finally listening to the ratking podcast
( http://podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sciencelab/2012-02-07-stbym-rat-king.mp3?_kip_ipx=261525625-1328654845 )
all I can say is :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
:eek::eek:
Why pet stores and puppy mills and back yard breeders SUCK DONKEY DICK.
Sad story, spoilered for the faint of heart.
Ugh. I know I’m preaching to the choir here and all, but I figured you all would understand.
We euthanized an 8-month-old puppy yesterday. He was purchased at a pet store by a young woman, who had been told by her parents that it was a bad idea. She just had to have him! Since Thanksgiving, he was diagnosed with megaesophagus and a hiatal hernia, and had been treated for pneumonia three times. They knew there was really nothing they could do for him long-term without spending thousands more, so they chose to put him to sleep.
Just heard it-- was in my list of podcasts waiting to be listened to (all of the HowStuffWorks podcasts are great-- do try “Stuff You Missed In History Class” and “Stuff You Should Know” with the inimitable Josh ‘n’ Chuck).
And of course, every time they mentioned a “Rat King”, I pictured it in a warehouse full of boxes of legal documents.
And he probably originally cost hundreds more than he should have and there was no guarantee beyond a 24 hour vet check. I really wish the general public would learn why it is so bad to support mass production of pets.
Just when I thought my boss wasn’t that bad, I get reminded as to why looking for another job is smart right now.
My team and I are working our butts off on an investigation that is unusual and rather fast-paced. But everyone is chipping in and things that need getting done are getting done rather efficiently, with few missteps. My boss even gave us kudos for our excellent work earlier this week. I’m thinking, wow, if we manage to get a decent outcome, this will be a textbook success story. Things have been stressful but actually kind of fun.
Then yesterday, my boss insists on giving my group only 14 minutes lead time to review a written summary of our investigation that she slapped together in a rush. Keep in mind that this summary is going to be disseminated to the executives and it has to be PERFECT, or so she says. I would have written it myself, but she insisted on it because “the executives need it to be in a certain format and I know how to write in that format”.
So my team reviews the summary as fast as we can, and I even manage to correct the tons of errors and outdated info that I see in it before sending it back to her 15 minutes later. Less than a beat later, she promptly emails the summary out to the execs with 1) a blaringly wrong subject title and 2) none of the clinical information the execs had asked her to send earlier that day.
This morning, after apparently getting her ass chewed out by her boss, grandbosses, and great-grandbosses for being careless or whatever (I actually have no idea what their feedback was), she calls me to tell me how unhappy agency leadership is with “our work”. And when she says “our work” it’s clear she means “my work”. When I probe her to elicit some specifics as to what she’s talking about, the truth of the matter becomes clear: The execs convened this morning to talk about the investigation but they didn’t have the information they needed because my boss failed to communicate it to them. In other words, she dropped the ball by either not anticipating their needs or failing to follow their instructions. Instead of telling me that straight out, she phrased the problem as though blame is to be shared around.
I’m sorry, lady, but my team is not to blame and neither am I. Our job is to investigate the problem and communicate with our partners on the ground so that we’re all working together towards a common goal. You know what your job is? Your job is to communicate what we’re doing to the higher ups. That’s it. If you can’t do that without botching things up, okay. We can’t all be perfect beings. But please don’t turn around and blame “our work” when you screw up your part of the deal. You need to sit down somewhere with that noise.
Me too. Freaky!
Here’s an experiment you can try at home (if you can find a pumpkin): Buy a pumpkin. Make a jack-o-lantern out of it. Put it on the top of your refrigerator. After three months, see how willing you are to pick it up off the top of the fridge.
Compare that willingness to how willing you would be if someone ELSE had put it there.
OK, got the pumpkin, just keep this thread going for another three months so I can report back. Hmmm… do you want a smiley jack-o-lantern or a scary one?
I’m going to go with scary.