Hippo, birdie, two ewes...

...to my lovely wife flower_cat!!!!!!! Have a great one, love!!!!

Done yesterday (20120315 Th)

Hmm. OK, I guess. My time at work was mostly spent on a combination of triage and archiving for my files. Including figuring out which parts are open source, and so can be put up as part of my portfolio.

I also brought home the Mac Mini and an enormous (160x1200 20" Dell) monitor that I may decide to take back on Monday because it's just too huge and power-hungry. It has a 20" usable area, but at least a 2-inch-wide bezel around it, making it about 25" overall. I also have a 1920x1200 monitor that's about half the weight, and not much bigger overall. That one's a keeper.

We went out to Red Lobster for Colleen's birthday dinner. Yum. The RL is in the same shopping center as a Ross; I picked up three assorted shirts, two with colors that should go well with my new silk sport coats.

I had a couple of painful twinges in my left side. Possibly a gallstone or kidney stone. Seems to be gone for the moment, but I don't trust my body any farther than I can throw it. Or something like that.

( raw notes )

Wishful Thankful Furious Forgetful Friday

It's Forgetful Friday, because I forgot Wishful Wednesday and Thankful Thursday. We'll get to the Furious part later. Before I forget again...

... I could really use a job in the Seattle area, that uses my skills, pays well, and will pay for relocation. Or half a million dollars. I can't afford to be picky, though I'd greatly prefer the latter. (And if wishes were horses, we'd all be up to our necks in manure by now.) (And no, I don't want my Mom to die and leave me the money; I love my Mom, and you can take that damned monkey's paw and shove it up...) But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'm thankful for...

• My friends
• Colleen
• An occasional sense of adventure (though mostly I'm of Bilbo's opinion on the subject)
• The difference in rent between San Jose and Seattle
• Being almost far enough out of middle age to retire
• Good benefits

I would grateful to the company that manages those benefits, but that's where the Furious part comes in. (I told you we'd get to it.) Both my 401K and my defined-benefit pension plan are managed by the same company, AON Hewitt. The part of Hewitt that manages the 401K also manages my other benefits; and apart from having one of the crappiest websites in the known universe I can usually get things done there. (Part of the fury is about their recent redesign, which leaves me with no obvious way to find out what documentation they want for the stupid FSA. Another part is spending 10 minutes on the phone going through menus and listening to idiotic messages telling me that I could use the web, and by the way did I want to stay logged in?, only to get to the part where they tell me they closed for the weekend half an hour ago.)

That bit came after finding out that the other part of the company, the one that manages my pension, has my social security number wrong. Now they want me to mail them a copy of my card. Which I haven't seen for two decades. So I'll have to apply for a new one. For which I'll need either a birth certificate (which might be in the stuff I got from Mom a dozen years ago), or a passport (which expired a year ago and might be lost somewhere on my desk waiting for me to renew it).

Furious doesn't BEGIN to cover it.

This all happened between 2pm and 2:30; I am still not really back to normal, eight hours and a glass of gin later. Oh, and add an hour or two of something that felt a lot like depression, between 4 and 6. Probably was depression, considering. Ya think?