Paul's Journal

11/05/2007 22:01 #41990

Text Pagers and the Wegmans Parking Lot
Category: work

I cannot believe at Roswell, they still make employees carry those stupid 16 lb, chunky 1980s, green screen text pagers. Looks like Kaleida uses them too as (e:jenks) was carrying one today too. How is it that the device can only text page when a cell phone that big is capable of video chat. Seriously, it is so backwards. I feel like it shouldn't have to be any bigger than an ipod shuffle clip. Its like that company make them way back when and just never upgraded technology as everything else got more advanced and smaller.

The new vendor system they bought for the phones is supposed to let you forward your pages to another user when you are out, but after of a bunch of terrible ( in my opinion) decisions and huge amounts of resource and time waste, no one knows about the new vendor system or how to use it, it doesn't properly integrate with our in house systems (that people actually use and (e:enknot) created). The escalation feature that it has could have been implemented much more efficiently in house. I wish that was my project.

I know for a fact that some people just don't get pages from our directory and no one seems to care, hm. Seems important to me.

What set this off. Seeing (e:imk2) in the hall carrying two stupid pagers around. She said sometime she ends up with four. That just blows my mind. It must weigh more than a laptop.

I wonder how anything really gets done in big organizations.

On another note, for the first time ever I saw Wegmans parking lot nearly deserted on Halloween night. i guess it is the kind of holiday that no one is really cooking a meal for. Why is that? Isn't there some special Halloween fare besides candy? Next year I am just going to make it up and eat a halloween goat - that sounds like the appropriate animal for such a Holiday.

lilho - 11/06/07 11:00
count me in for halloween goat. can i help to sluaghter it?

imk2 - 11/06/07 04:32
yeah, i'm so glad that mine is a text one. now only if i could text back from it....one can only wish.

tinypliny - 11/06/07 03:18
Halloween Goat. hahahah *I am not sure I should be laughing so hard at 3:00 am in the morning.

libertad - 11/05/07 23:30
Nice pics of (e:imk2)

jenks - 11/05/07 22:55
yeah, paging technology blows. They keep telling us they "want" to give us some sort of amazing 'communication device' but claim they can't b/c of HIPAA. But I'm sure it's all about the $$.
But get this- those giant pagers you're talking about are like the creme de la creme. We're HAPPY when we get those those ones- usually get the shitty little tiny numeric-only ones. So mine died once, and i needed a replacement, and I thought I would be sneaky and get an upgrade while I was at it, but noooo b/c the numeric ones are $3/mo and the text page ones are like $6. I wanted to be like "I will pay you the extra $10 for the 3 months I carry this pager."

Wow, that was a lot of words about nothing. I think it's bedtime.

11/04/2007 10:56 #41972

Where has paul been for 60 hours
Category: food

I have been busy programming and refactoring old site code from the last four years before the new server arrives. Seriously, I have programmed until 3am for the last three days. Thank god I have my own home office or I would go crazy with everything else going on.

One sneak peak of the new comment box. You no longer have to leave the page, it just pops the comment in to the page, similar to how the chat works.

Let's see, what else. I ate some king crab legs. The box of legs is in the wegmans fish dept freezer and costs $10 for enough for 2 people. I figured for me and (e:matthew) that was the same price as us each getting wendy's. And as my brother always says, we have to eat them before they are gone. They were so good I ate them without butter. Just some lemon juice.

I just thought it meant big crab legs but hen I looked it up on wikipedia (WIKIPEDIA - King_crab) and it is a special species of horned crab that can grow up to six feet across and weigh over 20 lbs. My guess is that doesn't happen much anymore with commercial fishing. Is anyone looking for a job

The golden King Crab

The Red King Crab

Both of those pics are from a site

about King Cra fishing where you can order the crab directly from Alaska. I still haven't tried ordering seafood online, although I think that is where all the good deals are.

Somehow searching for it brought me to this site called Alibaba

Does anyone know anything about this site. It looks like you can bargain with wholesalers over email? in order to buy large quantities of stuff from global markets. There is sure to be a lot of money in that. (e:twisted) and I had a good time looking around on it.

I was getting the vaio set to sell when I noticed the powercord was severed somehow ;( I bought a new one from sony, don't worry anyone who was buying it, the new powercord is on the way. I wonder how it broke.

And for the scary part, at work this week I get a confidential envelope and I opened it from the back side. Inside was a pink slip and I was like jesus, couldn't they just tell me in person. But it turned out that it was just a confirmation that (e:matthew) does now have health insurance as my domestic partner. That includes dental and visual coverage too. I hoep he actually uses it.

Ironically, the same day I got a job prospect call for a HIPPA related job in BUffalo that paid a lot more tha my current job. I am so tempted... but the company is rather new.

joshua - 11/05/07 12:18
You are a seafoodaholic!

twisted - 11/05/07 10:23
Paul, check out the series on Alibaba in today's :::link::: Chronicle. I'll have to listen to the podcast when I get to work.

Also, Arnie is suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to allow California enforce stricter emissions rules than the Feds do. Interesting news day.

lilho - 11/04/07 23:31
that last pic of you is so cute! aawwwwwww.

jenks - 11/04/07 16:06
DUH! omg paul thanks for explaining that. I thought it was some weird bug but didn't have the energy to try to figure it out. But I like your explanation much better!

paul - 11/04/07 14:53
They are only on the front page.

tinypliny - 11/04/07 14:43
Wait a minute, they vanished again. Paul, is this a problem at my end? The theme changing icons show up sometimes, but most of the times, they don't.

tinypliny - 11/04/07 14:41
Nevermind, just reloaded the site in Firefox and I can see them now. Those little thingies don't show up on Opera.

tinypliny - 11/04/07 14:38
I am stumped, which icon do you mean, specifically?

jenks - 11/04/07 12:22
you can change your theme, Tiny!! (see, whole new worlds of estrip to explore every day!) That's what all the little icons at the top right are. I personally recommend "newport" [and not just b/c i designed it! ;) ]

tinypliny - 11/04/07 11:57
Yay!!! A white background comment box!! I can't wait either. I have to admit, this fall themed comment box makes it really hard to see what I am writing sometimes.

twisted - 11/04/07 11:51
Who doesn't love a site where you can sell your panties to South Korea and buy live sea horses from Sri Lanka? (although I don't advocate that.)

ps - I love how you categorized this post under "food."

pps - I almost tried to type this comment into your sneak peek of the new one. Can't wait!

mike - 11/04/07 11:12
eat them all now while we can! There is a limited amount and if you don't get a high enough proportion of sea food in now, its just gonna end up in someone else's belly! (if only they had seafood at wendys!)

10/31/2007 01:10 #41900

A night on the town
Category: buffalo

Went to Shea's tonight with (e:zobar) and (e:dragonlady7) to see Nosferatu performed with a live orchestra. It was a pretty fantastic setting for the movie. We sat in the front of the balcony area which was great.

Afterwards, we headed over to some bar in the first ward to have some drinks. It surprised me there was another part of Buffalo that looked full of white people. I guess I just never made it over there before. It looked a little like lovejoy but less intimidating.

metalpeter - 10/31/07 18:48
I admit I heard about that movie but forgot about it untill I remembered today that it was yeseterday. Great pictures of Sheas. I have never taken any inside there and really should one of these days.

dragonlady7 - 10/31/07 09:51
Nosferatu was the first vampire movie made-- what's interesting is that, like most vampire popular culture, it is based on Bram Stoker's novel _Dracula_, but it was made without obtaining permission from the author. So it is one big copyright infringement.
That's why Nosferatu had a different name, why he was associated with rats instead of the traditional bats, etc.
Dracula, with Bela Lugosi, was the first legally-sanctioned vampire movie, but it was much later-- it had sound, though not color.

paul - 10/31/07 09:34
I didn't know about it either till I saw (e:zobar,41688) Someone told me that the Riviera theatre did that same thing last night.

jbeatty - 10/31/07 09:28
That looks like a really nice theater.

mrdeadlier - 10/31/07 09:05
I have always wanted to see that movie. Isn't it supposed to be the first vampire movie ever made? And to see it with an orchestra would have been cool. Is this something they do at Shea's every year?

11/03/2007 11:50 #41955

Being Sensitive
Category: health

No I don't be the opposite of being a jerk because everyone knows I am a jerk, lol. What I mean the way my body is so sensitive to chemicals and allergens. It has been getting worse over the years to the point where I m starting to wonder if I am going to be one of those people that lines their house with aluminum foil or live in a bubble.

Sorry if this offends you (e:hodown), (e:lilho), (e:southernyankee), or (e:flacidness), Bill, with (e:lilho) being the least offender thanks to her own allergies.

Seriously, I have been in a constant state of hyper allergy since about a month ago. It seems to be triggered by having visitors that all smell like perfume. I am not talking about a light odor of perfume.

You know those hippies that smell like patchoulli but they wear it so much they don't realize how much it smells because they can't smell it, so they put on more. Where that is how it is has been in my house. But it's not patchouli but rather some designer smell with hair product to boot.

Seriously, I am going to kill myself if this gets any worse. I feel like I am gogin to throw up and no matter where I go, the scent follows and then it lingers forever.

Everyone says why don't I take allergy pills but, honestly you can't take allergy pills 24/7 365 and you can't get shots for everything.

What is going to happen to me? I am ready to move into a small house of my own where there are no visitors and no allergens. At this point I would be happy with a 15ft x 15ft solid metal box - where no one can find me.

dragonlady7 - 11/04/07 13:00
@ (e:jenks): I quit my job at the airport expecting to be an unemployed bum for a while but got randomly snatched up to work for :::link::: an air cleaner manufacturer.

MCS is Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, and is also sometimes called Environmental Illness. It's poorly-understood, by its nature is rather hard to study, and winds up making people into total kooks. But it's true there are a lot of chemicals in our environment that are affecting people in unexpected ways with all kinds of weird unexpected interactions, etc. Sometimes MCS people also have conventional allergies, but sometimes not. www.alerG.com is a website catering to the very allergic-- the owner is not only allergic to animals but also to chemicals, so he talks about it fairly knowledgeably.
Also, having spoken to him personally, I can say he is a raving nutjob. But. He runs a successful business, so whatever.

@(e:Paul): sorry for hijacking the thread, but I am serious, it might help you.

lilho - 11/04/07 09:47
thanx for naming me least offender! id like to think i keep my smells to a minimum, around you at least. i am so allergic to everything as well, and i hate when women wear so much goddamn perfume. maybe you should go see an allergist?

you do also, live in buffalo, where it seems like everyone has a cat, or a dog. or maybe everyone everywhere has a cat or dog. i hate animals. i know this a strong statement, but when it gets to the point that people are bringing their greyhound on the plane, im ready to fight.

people who dont have serious allergies dont get it, and to them, we seem like we are whining.

i thought my allergies would be less bad here, but the fall sinus flair-up has begun!

at least i have health insurance this time around!

i think you need to see a doctor!

jenks - 11/04/07 00:11
well I obviously missed a chapter- I thought you worked at the airport??

2- what's MCS??

dragonlady7 - 11/03/07 23:32
In my line of work I deal a lot with chemically sensitive people. I wasn't even aware of it before. But a lot of users of our machines are chemically sensitive. Our machines are exceptionally popular with the really-really-really sensitive crowd because we are the only air cleaner manufacturer who uses all-steel bodies instead of plastic-- some people are so allergic to plastics that they can't even tolerate the offgassing of a unit with a plastic body.

The ones with really bad MCS are often paranoid and sort of tin-foil-hat-wearing types, but you sort of can't blame them because they're very sick, the medical establishment can't really explain why, and they get sick from things that don't affect normal people so everyone already thinks they're crazy. It's gotten to the point where I can tell from the slightly-high-pitched, quavery, breathy "hello?" that a caller with a customer-service issue is so totally an MCS case of the wackiest sort. (I get about two a day. Often they wheeze so badly they're hard to understand.)

But there's no denying they're really sick. Our air cleaner really does help a lot of them-- activated carbon filters can adsorb the molecules of many gases, including aromatic hydrocarbons (the really toxic shit in most fragrances) and the biggie, formaldehyde, that's offgassed by almost everything you buy and really is a bad trigger for a lot of people. It even gives *me* a stuffy nose and I'm usually about as sensitive as a clod of dirt.

I emailed (e:matthew) on Friday about maybe having him do some photography for us in exchange for one of our machines-- if you're interested anyway let me know. My personal one is already on loan to my team captain who is seeing if it helps her cat-allergic boyfriend (she's going to have to give up her cats if it doesn't), but I might be able to get another loaner if you just want to try it.

But a lot of MCS, even the wackiest wingnuts, really swear by our machines for helping them bring their total allergy load down enough that they can get by more normally. Some of the real hard cases swear by our machines just so they can keep breathing. Some say they don't do a dang thing, but they keep buying replacement filters so I don't know how seriously to take their complaints. I'm sure there are others we're no help to, but I don't hear from them that often. But I definitely know a lot of our customers and even dealers have a ton of info on chemical sensitivities, so let me know if you want more info on that.

jacob - 11/03/07 21:37
Man, that sucks. A nurse once told me allergies were like a barrel. Meaning that once your body has had enough, any little bit is too much. This relates because when the barrel's full, it's full. You can't fit any more in. Just like the body can't tolerate the allergen after overexposure.

I hope you don't have to isolate yourself, but look on the bright-side, you'd have more time to devote to estrip. ;)

drew - 11/03/07 17:48
See my latest post, for all the goofyness.

mrdeadlier - 11/03/07 17:01
Yeah Drew... Elaborate! I want to know what "goofy" means as well. Not that i have any real allergies or anything, i'm just curious.

paul - 11/03/07 15:49
Like what do you mean by goofy drew?

ladycroft - 11/03/07 15:39
stay away from the middle east then!

janelle - 11/03/07 14:08
Paul, I know someone who has very similar allergies that you're describing to the extent that it's life threatening for her. Perfumes and chemical smells make her throat swell and clutch up. She has spent a lot of time with doctors and has made significant life style changes. If you want to know more, just e-mail me, because I can go in great depths about her situation but I don't want to monopolize the thread. I might even be able to put you in touch with her and you can talk to her about it.

drew - 11/03/07 13:36
I had a wierd treatment done to me to get rid of some of my allergies. I can refer you to somebody that does it, but I gotta tell you, it is goofy. It doesn't seem like it would work, but it worked on me.

libertad - 11/03/07 12:12
I like how at Roswell it is against dress code to wear perfume or cologne (at least in our department). I hate cologne and perfume usually. Especially if it lingers or sticks to me or my house. It makes me feel gross. To me it is violating if I have to shower and wash my clothes to get someone's stench of me.

10/30/2007 23:49 #41896

Leopard, Last Friday
Category: macintosh

On Friday, (e:zobar), (e:jim) and I made the oligatory mac dork trip to purchase Leopard. Instead of going to the apple store like the typical mac dorks we went to Mac Solutions Pluslink in West Seneca, where they gave you a a free leopard stuffed animal for purchasing leopard, not to mention free food and no lines!

Look at (e:jim) happy about leopard.

They not only gave you a stuffed leopard for buying the OS, they also had this giant one on display.

And premium leopard meat burgers too!

Then we went home and installed. It wouldn't let me upgrade so I had to install from scratch which took most of the weekend to complete and get everything back to how it was.

Afterwards, we went danicng. Well not the other computer dorks, but (e:flacidness), (e:mike), (e:terry) and I. They met some girls from ohio who were celebrating a birthday and took them out for the night.

Looks like OPM lounge is closed. I mean it was on Saturday night.

Looks like TK likes to dance as much as me.