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A Job Well Done Finally. After a month of intensive, carpal-tunnel-inflaming work, the new version of my company's corporate website is up and running. I was given adequate warning and the opportunity to plan a comfortable development timeline, wherein I calculated the entire development process based on the last two times we did an overhaul. I gave all outside parties twice the normal necessary time to get me their documentation and updates and set up a full six weeks for coding and implementation. So of course everything was crowded into the last three weeks. Everything. Design, content writing and collection, coding, testing, deployment. It wouldn't have been so bad if the bosses hadn't kept hauling in new people for their 'input' into the mockup. At one point, they brought in a couple of our print designers, who dished out enough changes to dump us all the way back to the storyboards, and then, and THEN once we had made all the changes, the management informed us that since they were print guys and not web guys, we didn't have to listen to them at all. This is what I have to work with, folks. In the end, the only real sacrifice was my sanity, as I whipped off the bare minimum of my other responsibilities so I could focus my whole being on the rebuild. No slacking, no coffee, seriously depleted lunch hours, unpaid overtime... And no posting here. Sorry. Anyway. It's done now. I'm so very sleepy.
The filter on our fish tank burned out last weekend. I'd been nursing it along for weeks, as we scraped together the cash to replace it. It would overheat and shut down, I'd turn it off and let it cool before hooking it back up (with a solid smack whenever it failed to turn over). This weekend was the final straw. On Monday (Victoria Day here in Canada) we swung by the Fish Store and picked up a replacement, a cool Eheim filter from Europe. See, now that our dollar is doing better against the U.S. one, we end up shopping for European imports. Sigh. Anyway. It's a good solid machine that the dealer promised would require less maintenance and be cheaper to keep in the long run. Good enough. The set up was simple too. Input plugs in here, output goes there, a little suction on the hose to fill the machine, and plug it in. Whoosh!
Worked like a charm. I went off to brush my teeth (Yucky water! Yuck!) and, by the time I was done, the tank was visibly cleaner. We had taken advantage of the filter swap to do a water change, algae scrub, plant pruning and bottom surface re-landscaping, so the water was seriously murky. After an hour, the water was clear as a bell. So clear, in fact, that for the next couple hours, we kept being marveled by the crystal clarity of the aquatic medium. So much that we completely failed to notice the rapidly dropping water level. Until the Buffy finale was just starting anyway. I yanked open the cabinet and saw that the filter was merrily pumping out water by the cupful through somewhere in the motor unit. We unplugged it and sopped up as much of the mess as we could. The store was closed by then, so our poor fishies had to wait a whole day until after work Tuesday, where we spent an hour at the store getting it replaced (Taking us right through the Gilmore Girls finale and part of the Smallville finale. Damn filter). See, they couldn't just give us another filter because we apparently bought the last one in stock. I refused to buy a more expensive filter, even though they generously chopped the difference in half, so three of the clerks fussed with it forEVER trying to fix it. The finally decided that a little O-ring inside the motor casing was bad, and fussed around with a new ring and some glue for what felt like years before advising us to leave it with them and call back later that evening. A waited until just after eight (when the Enterprise finale was on) and called. "Still leaking!" they declared cheerfully. "Come on in and we'll give you another filter!" They did eventually eat the difference in cost between our model and the next bigger filter on the market, so we now have a filter much more powerful than we need. If you angle it just right, the water jets can pin the fish against the side of the tank. Woo!
So some dumb shmoe tried to pawn his parking ticket off on us by slipping it under our windshield wiper blade while we were in the mall. How dumb a move was this? Do people actually fall for this? First off, the ticket itself had obviously been sitting the in guy's car for a month or more and was starting to yellow from the sun. The date on it was sometime in March, and the only factually correct detail that matched our car was 'Ford'. The license plate number was way off, especially given that we now have a vanity plate on the car from Lisa's mom that reads 'ELEMENO'.
Bah. Stupid people. So Buffy is finally over. Seven seasons of teen angst and monster fighting. This season was not my favorite season. I think Kennedy sucks ass as a girlfriend for Willow. She doesn't hold a candle to Tara (and part of me still pines for Oz). There were a million prophecies and stories that they never resolved (What was the deal with Dawn seeing her Mom's ghost? Was it real? Was it the first?). The Slayerettes each got more time with their death scenes than Anya did, and she's been a regular for like three seasons. Still, I loved Buffy, and it's all sad that she's gone. There is the prospect of the gang making guest shots in Angel, and an eventual spin-off is inevitable, but for now, it's all sadness.
Rob totally deserved to win, the conniving little weasel. I'm hoping he makes the cut for next spring's All-Star Survivor, where they haul back contestants from all the previous seasons to find the ULTIMATE SURVIVOR! Woo!
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Oh
and Survivor is over. Jenna? JENNA? Dagnabbit!