Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

This was one of those days. Got up late, got ready, was going to be a few minutes late, but was zipping out the door to make our 10 am staff meeting (I report at 9:30 normally). Checked the work blackberry as I was packing my bag, only to find out it had been changed to 9, not 10 (they’re always at 10!!!), and I was now late for it. Horribly embarrassed I biked in as quickly as I could. Everyone was already back from the meeting (oy), and I apologized all over the place to my supervisors. They were laughing about it, but it pretty much set the mood for the day. At least the presentation I gave to our field counsel over the phone went well.

Thankfully I’m off tomorrow so I can run errands (podiatrist, new drivers license, dry cleaning, etc.), but man did that blow.

Let me preface my remarks here by saying that I use gay.com (and other chat programs) a lot to keep up with friends online. I’m on regularly 4-6 nights a week, and I happily pay gay.com for full access to their site. But I am incredibly displeased with this new implementation they’ve brought up this week. Unhappy enough to consider dumping the subscription if they don’t get it fixed.

I think I spent a grand total of 40 minutes on “the new gay.com” this evening in two different installments, after it seemed like I spent about the same amount of time trying to convince the web site that no, really, I didn’t have a pop-up blocker stopping their wretched pop-ups from popping up. Verdict: It sucks elephant butt.

Let’s catalog the deficiencies:

• It runs too slow (to be expected with a new system).
• There’s no way to ignore bots in the chat room now.
• There’s no way to turn off the entrance and exit alerts, so you frequently end up with a screen full of “so-and-so entered,” “so and so left” crap that you don’t need.
• You can’t zip through the list to find folks easily by hitting the first letter of their screen name – you’re forced to scroll through the entire thing.
• It takes forever to bring up a screen name when you want to click on their profile or view their photos.
• No clicking through to links in chat, you’re forced to cut & paste.
• Because it’s run through the browser, if someone sends you a link in another program (AIM/Yahoo/MSN/etc.), chat ends up getting shut down if you click on the link in the other program because the new page opens in your chat browser window (or whatever window you have open).
• There’s too much wasted space in the windows – they take up too much screen real estate.
• Even after full disabling the pop-up blocker and getting their pop-ups to work, Every Single Window that popped up continued to display the “you need to turn your pop-up blocker off” message, blocking the screen that I was trying to see until I could hunt down the tiny little “X” that would turn the message off.

In other words, the thing sucks elephant butt.

I’ve left feedback with them, and will continue to do so. The stand-alone chat program worked so, so much better than any browser based crap they could throw up there. I can understand that perhaps they wanted more ad revenue by bringing users back onto their site, but there are ways to do that (force users to go to the profile page on their site to see pictures – more ad revenue/hits right there, without breaking up the other features that made the program work so much better) and still make the experience user-friendly. I realize the company is (probably still) losing money like mad, but driving away core, long-time users by making the site unusable is not the way to fix that.

A little early (or late) for this color set, but hey, the next hat’s done.

To all my fellow federal workers, happy new (fiscal) year.

Got completely and utterly soaked on this afternoon’s ride. It had been threatening rain on and off all day, and I’d been a zombie most of the day, so I finally got going around 4 or so. Was great for the first 2 long loops, then a little over halfway into the third the bottom dropped out. Not much to do but keep riding at that point, and it’s not like I’ve never raced in the rain (Mooseman, Richmond Powersprint, anyone?). Did an additional short loop – was considering going for the long loop again as it started lightening up, but then the bottom dropped out, again, on the backside of the short loop, so I headed in after that one.

Yesterday was all about being a slug. Got up late, knitted (per the previous post) & caught up on TV. Played Bioshock. Made pancakes. Was fantastic, especially after the chaos of the previous weekend, and the mess of the work week.

Finished up another hat today, on some fun green variegated yarn:

And I finally uploaded a picture of the navy one I did a bit ago:

Looks like we’re getting funded through March 6th, with lots of plus-ups for inaugural activities. Whee. They stuck in the raise for calendar 09, too (yay), but didn’t provide any additional funds to pay for it, so we have to suck it out of existing cash on hand (boo). A couple of other problems in there for my BGA, but we’ll deal.

Spastic day, what with the bill language being released at midnight, the House voting to pass it, and multiple phone calls and meetings over various provisions. Glad the work day finally ended. Tomorrow will be slightly less spastic, I hope, with a nice break in the middle for a going away lunch for a coworker who’s leaving us for another BGA.

Cleaned up more junk here, and just test-fired the oven (empty) to see how the temps match my oven thermometer. Seems to be slightly cooler than the dial, so I’ll see if there’s a way to adjust the dial, or I’ll just have to keep in mind that it’s not quite 25 degrees cooler than the dial says it is. Caught up on Heroes from Monday, and zapped more junk out of the queue without watching it (The Last Samurai? Ew). Now it’s early crash time. I missed the bike ride this morning because of an early meeting, so perhaps I’ll get back out there tomorrow morning instead. Depends on how well I sleep – definitely on a deficit so far this week.

I cannot help but think the four men sitting in front of Congress today were quite full of shit. All of this while the Congress still hasn’t even funded the federal government for the next fiscal year, and can’t seem to decide on how they’re going to temporarily fund us, and for how long. This is, as I’ve often said, no way to run a government.

Long, busy day at work doing things I can’t talk about. Whee. I’ll mention the old adage about not wanting to see laws or sausages being made and leave it at that. And it’s going to start early tomorrow, too. Whee.

Got to see Dean, Richard and Gene for dinner this evening, which was quite nice. I find myself almost wishing for Metro rides across town as it gives me time to sit/stand and knit. I think I got a good 1/2 inch to an inch done on the hat I’m working on now. The downside is that my foot’s now sore again after walking around.

Tomorrow evening should be nice and quiet, with more needed straightening to do, but otherwise nothing is on the schedule, and I’m looking forward to that.

That was a surprise. Came home, put the bike away, loaded up laundry, was heading out to go do it when I looked at the carpet in the dining area where something was missing, but I couldn’t pinpoint what. Then I saw the manuals for the stove and microwave, but not the appliances themselves. Quick doubletake to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating, then zipped into the kitchen to see the new appliances in place. And all of my crap shoved all over the place because they didn’t warn me they were coming so I didn’t clear the area for them. Oy.

But hey, they’re in!

Of course, I didn’t actually get a chance to use them tonight because I was also doing laundry, and getting rid of my old desk, so by the time I got done and could sit down to figure out how to work the microwave I was starving, so just had leftover potato salad. And collapsed into my chair to actually sit down finally (after cleaning some of the countertops, of course, and putting away dishes, and putting dirty ones in the washer, etc., etc., etc.).

Got up and biked this morning. After snapping off another presta valve stem in the pump. Grrrrr. Stupid design, both the pump and presta valves in general. But the ride itself went well, cool, and gradually sped up each round, cutting each 5.whatever mile loop by 15 seconds. And now I’m ready to collapse – I’m not used to getting up at 5:30 any more, though I hope to get back to that this week.

Got to see JT this evening for dinner out in Ballston. The new redo of the old Tara Thai there, well, fails. It’s obvious they’re trying to turn it into a more clubby place and that just won’t work well there. Oh well. The bartender was nice, and the drinks were cheap ($2.50 for a draft beer during happy hour – 5-8). Not sure we’ll be going back any time soon, though.

Still have assorted little things to go through before I’ll have the room entirely together in the new configuration, but it’s pretty much there now. I can get the bikes in and out (a major consideration – they’re stored on the balcony and I have to be able to get them to/from the front door easily). The room would be easier to configure without needing that pathway, but it works this way.

Going to try and get up and cycle in the morning. Went out Saturday for an hour and it was great. I’m cleared to cycle all I want, so I need to be taking advantage of that, even as it cools off outside.