Posted by: Confused | August 18, 2008

Toilet lock FAIL!!!

I’ve just made a seriously horrifying discovery.

I realised a few weeks ago that if you don’t take care to turn the lock on the toilet stalls at work all the way, they’ll jam a fraction of an inch beforehand and won’t lock at all. And because it’s such a minuscule difference between locked and not locked, it took me about a month of not actually locking the stall door before I caught on.

I was alarmed enough when I discovered that little fact. But now that has turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg!

No matter how far you turn the lock, no matter whether the damn thing is giving it’s all, if someone presses down on the handle with enough momentum (and it doesn’t require a huge amount), the catch will open… WHAT THE FUCK?!!!!

What kind of a moron developed those locks? Please come forward, I’ll be happy to kick you into the next millenium! Bloody toilet lock fail!!!

How am I going to be able to go to the loo now? I’ll constantly be worrying about people bursting in. Damnit!!!

PS: I made this discovery without either the mortifying experience of someone bursting in on me, or having to suffer the horror of bursting in on someone else. Thank goodness for small mercies!

Posted by: Confused | August 18, 2008

Too clumsy for my toothbrush

It’s unbelievable! For the second time in as many work days I’ve had to brazen it out and walk the long journey from the bathroom to my desk pretending I’m not aware of the huge wet patches on my chest. Would it be too much to ask for no-one to be passing right then? Obviously it would…

I’d take my top off to brush my teeth, but it is a public bathroom…

No matter how hard I concentrate on NOT DRIBBLING TOOTHPASTE AND SPIT DOWN MY FRONT it happens anyway. Am I cursed or something?

Posted by: Confused | August 16, 2008

Great blog saga

Have you come across the blog Where is Bob?

It’s the tale of this horrendous, clueless IT manager who is generally hated by his staff, and the random and clearly untrue excuses he comes up with for why he’s not coming to work again today… :-)

It reminds me a bit of the IT manager PG, from the company I did my work placement in. His staff coined a new meaning for the acronym FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array, it’s a kind of chip): F***ing PG Arsehole…

He was universally hated, and was setting up his own company on company time, using company resources. ‘We don’t need this anymore, I’ll take it home, get it out of everyone’s way’ kind of thing.

It made me very happy not to be in IT ;-)

Anyway, check out the hilarity that is Where is Bob? It’s sooo worth it!

Posted by: Confused | August 15, 2008

I declare it the weekend

While I should really work two more hours to before I’ve done a full Swiss work day, I’ve had enough of writing user guides (gah, crap!), I’m going home.

Hurrah for being paid per hour! And hurrah for the whopping great salary I’ll be getting this month!

And hip-hip-HURRAYS it’s the weekend!!! :-)

Matlab shows every command it’s executed and when. As I’ve been working from Simulink all day, the only commands it’s showing are the ones to open the model. So I can see how many times I’ve had to kill (Ctrl-Alt-Del, nothing has a chance against this beast of a crappy tool) and restart the whole thing including Matlab. Have you ever started Matlab? It’s as slow as hell to start, even on a really powerful computer. I’ve got this measly little badly configured laptop. Arrrgghh!

Anyway, here are the times at which I have restarted Matlab today:

10:04 A.M. (This was actually the first time I started it today, not a restart.)
10:25 A.M.
10:41 A.M.
10:52 A.M.
11:22 A.M.
11:56 A.M.
lunchtime till 12:30
1:37 P.M.
1:48 P.M.
2:14 P.M.
3:16 P.M.
3:52 P.M.

I haven’t been running so many simulations in the afternoon, mostly just making some big changes to the model. That’s why it hasn’t crashed quite as often as this morning. Three times in one hour?! Bloody buggy piece of crap!!!

It’s 3:53 P.M. now and I just want to go home!!!

[Update: It is now 5:45 P.M. and it's just crashed making a grand total of 15 crashes today. I'm giving up and going home!]

I’ve had an absolutely horrendous day battling the nightmare that is Simulink (nasty evil modelling tool) on a laptop that is nowhere near capable of dealing with the requirements of that tool alone, let alone all the other stuff I need to have open at the same time.

To add to my misery (because having the computer hang every quarter of an hour is not enough fun for the likes of me), my own stupidity just cost me about four hours. Who tries to convert decimal to hexadecimal by dividing by 16 and then clicking on ‘Convert to hexadecimal’?!!! I do… >Arrrgggh!!!!

To cheer myself up (I need some strength to continue the good fight against evil conniving, hanging! tools) I’ve just reread this wonderful compilation of utter stupidity on funny-haha.co.uk. They claim it’s from actual students. Thinking back on some of the things my friends and I came up with during exams, I have to admit it’s possible. In fact, given the sheer genius of the stupidity, I can’t see how anyone could have made it up :-)

So here they are. Enjoy :-)

1. Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to liveelsewhere.

2. The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked, “Am I my brother’s son?”

3. Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada.

4. Solomom had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.

5. The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth.

6. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

7. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.

8. In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java.

9. Eventually, the Romans conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long.

10. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: “Tee hee, Brutus.”

11. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

12. Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was cannonized by Bernard Shaw. Finally Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offense.

13. In midevil times most people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the futile ages was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature.

14. Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son’s head.

15. Queen Elizabeth was the “Virgin Queen.” As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted “hurrah.”

16. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. And Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.

17. The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies,comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Romeo’s last wish was to be laid by Juliet.

18. Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.

19. During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe.

20. Later, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, and this was called Pilgrim’s Progress. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

21. One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. Finally the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis. Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin,and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, “A horse divided against itself cannot stand.”. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

22. Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

23. Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest Precedent. Lincoln’s mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the EmasculationProclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth’s career.

24. Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy.

25. Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.

26. Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German half Italian and half English. He was very large.

27. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

28. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened and catapulted into Napoleon. Napoleon wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn’t have any children.

29. The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is In the East and the sun sets in the West

30. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. She was a moral woman who practiced virtue. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.

31. The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men.

32. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.

33. The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by an anahist, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.

Oh, the joy! Tears of laughter :-D

Posted by: Confused | August 11, 2008

Potter Puppet Pals

My cousins were here for one night on their way back from camping in Italy. (My aunt and uncle were with them and it was great to see them, but for the purposes of this post they’re not relevant… *g*)

They (the cousins) and my brother spent the whole evening chanting ‘Snape, Snape, Severus Snape… DUMBLEDORE… Snape, Snape, Severus Snape…’ to everyone’s confusion. It’s rather random, but definitely worth a gander :-)

‘Snape, Snape, Severus Snape… DUMBLEDORE… Snape, Snape, Severus Snape…’

:-D

Posted by: Confused | August 11, 2008

Veggie snacks

I’m trying to be good. The dental hygienist ordered me to eat 2 kilos of chocolate each meal time, but nothing sweet in between. (Ok, so maybe she just said as far as my teeth are concerned it doesn’t matter if I eat 2 kilos of chocolate as long as I eat it in a single sitting)

That means no fruit either. Meh. But as I said, I’m trying to be good. (You would too, if your teeth were in the state mine are in!) So this morning I stopped at the super market and bought some snacks: carrot and cucumber sticks. I was so proud of myself!

Problem: I can’t actually face eating them. What am I, a rabbit?!

I suppose I’ll have them with dinner.

It has worked: I haven’t eaten any carbs (which amount to the same thing as sweets as far as teeth are concerned) since lunch. I haven’t eaten anything, because in spite of feeling hungry again the moment I got back to my desk (what is that about? I ate a full meal!), I felt too guilty about the veggies to even consider buying any other snack…

I just can’t see it working out this way again. It was only the unexpectedness that let the guilt win. Tomorrow, if I don’t eat veggies, I’ll just tell myself ‘Ah well, it was never going to work’ and enjoy a delicious Mars bar or something…

So I guess I’d better make like a rabbit tomorrow… ;-)

Posted by: Confused | August 9, 2008

Relatively painless actually

I had my teeth cleaned an hour ago. Now they all feel really shiny and new. Actually, some of them feel shiny and holey, but it’s still an improvement :-)

But I can’t get this slightly changed song out of my head: ‘Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding gums…’ Ah well, I’m sure the taste will go away once I’ve eaten something.

I’m starving, I only had a couple of miniature biscuits for breakfast and then the dental hygienist smeared some kind of gel on my teeth and told me I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink for an hour. Ok, to be fair to her, she told me that before she smeared it on, so I was able to gulp down one last glass of water. But now it’s two in the afternoon and I’m finally allowed to eat again!!! Foooood!

The postponement was a lifesaver. For some reason the debilitating fear never reappeared and I was able to go in relatively calm. I told her I was a bit nervous/scared and she assured me I’d be favourably surprised (hmm, that expression sounds odd, but I can’t work out how to express ‘positiv überrascht’ in English).

It didn’t hurt much, and I managed to relax. And the part that was worst about the dentist’s examination, namely the fact that her scraping around in my mouth made me want to vomit, faint and scream all at once, was not a problem this time. It’s amazing how fast you can get used to things! :-)

Posted by: Confused | August 8, 2008

I CAN’T HELP YOU!!!

The next person who phones up to pester ME about borrowing MY PARENTS’ car will be hearing ringing noises for the REST OF THEIR LIFE!!!

STOP BUGGING ME!!!!!

I will stick my arm down the phone line, pull you back through and punch your face in. How many times have I told you in a polite and friendly way that it has absolutely nothing to do with me and I haven’t got a clue what kind of insurance my parents have got? How many times?! Obviously being friendly isn’t working. So I am now channeling Alice.

The fact that we are friends and you already have my mobile number doesn’t mean it makes sense to phone me up at work over and over any time you have the slightest question. You should be phoning my dad (don’t phone my mum or you’ll annoy her too, and then you won’t be getting the car…). What, you’re too much of an idiot to have asked him for his number? Then you should have phoned me once and asked me for it. It’s too late now, I AM NEVER ANSWERING THE PHONE TO YOU AGAIN!!!

Dad told you I was sorting something out? Don’t worry, I’ll be giving him a good kick when I get home. But didn’t you hear me when I said IT’S NOTHING THE FUCK TO DO WITH ME!!!

I don’t think we can be friends anymore. In fact I never liked you that much to begin with. You’re pushy and YOU NEVER LISTEN TO WHAT PEOPLE TELL YOU! I guess that explains this situation…

I hope you have a good holiday and just remember, if you ever phone again while I’m at work, prepare to feel SERIOUS PAIN!!!

Posted by: Confused | August 6, 2008

Pictures!!!

The moment I disconnected my phone from the PC’s USB port the PC yelled ‘Hey wait! I saw a phone there!’ Perverse machine!

So here are the pictures of me in my first dress for ten years!

Um, I’m not sure what to make of WordPress’ new gallery function. I did actually want to post those pictures the same way as usual. Ah well.

About the dress: I obviously don’t look as good as the model did in it, however the pictures make it look worse than it does (don’t ask me why). In the pictures it looks like my stomach is showing against the material. I checked in the mirror: it doesn’t look like that at all. Must have been some trick of the light :-S

And those are the shoes I’m now planning to wear unless I happen to find anything better. They’re just about high enough that I shouldn’t trip over the dress as long as I pay attention (uh oh…). And I can walk in them. Just not too fast. Unless I run. But that’s not the point… Anyway, since you can only see the tips of the shoes most of the time and they’re good looking enough (I think so anyway) for the few times when you can see them, they’ll do.

Now to find suitable ornamentation…

Posted by: Confused | August 6, 2008

It fits it fits it fits!!!!!!!!

Whoo. Breathe deeply Confused.

The dress fits!!!! I can’t believe it!!!! I don’t have to get it fitted at all!!!

:-D

It took me ages to get into it, not because it’s tight (it’s not) but because I’m special and have to fight my way into dresses. I got lost along the way, trying to push my head out the… …’arm hole’? Can you call it a sleeve when there’s no actual sleeve there?

It’s quite a bit longer than I expected, so I’m going to have to wear serious heels. But it means I can probably get away with the ones I’ve got. I took pictures to show you (bad pictures cause I’m bad at photography at the best of times, but all excited and trying to take a picture of myself in the mirror? oh dear…), but sadly the stupid computer won’t recognise my phone when I connect it via USB and it doesn’t seem to have Bluetooth… bah!

It fits!

I’m going to wear my hair down, cause I think the whole thing (i.e. me) looks better with my hair framing my face. I just don’t like the way I look with my hair up when I’m not wearing sleeves.

Holy crap! It fits!!!!

[edit: pictures of me after all...]

Posted by: Confused | August 6, 2008

My dress has arrived!!!

It arrived this morning just before 9am. I’d completely overslept and was desperately trying to get ready in time to catch the 9.02 train (I failed, ah well). It was quite a struggle, but I managed to refrain from trying it on then and there :-) Now I’m terrified of what I’ll find when I get home tonight: If it’s too small I’m completely screwed. I ordered a size which should definitely be big enough for most of my body, it’s just my boobs that are worrying me. Stupid clothes makers seem to think fat girls have small chests. I’m oversized all over ok?! Including my feet, which is making finding shoes to go with the dress very difficult too :-(

And to top it all off, in my rush I managed to forget to put on deodorant before I left home… Now I don’t dare go to lunch with the rest of the team cause I’m already beginning to smell (it’s hot, ok?!). I’m going to the shop for deodorant. Better late than never…

Posted by: Confused | August 6, 2008

No wonder my teeth are falling apart…

I tried to brush my teeth with a tube of toothpaste last night.

When I say that, I don’t mean I got distracted when I was putting toothpaste on the brush and ended up with toothpaste everywhere.

I picked up the tube of toothpaste, took the cap off and held it under the tap. Then I lifted my arm, opened my mouth and…

…saw the not-toothbrush in the mirror and snapped out of it. Wtf?

Posted by: Confused | August 5, 2008

My trousers are too complicated for me!

Today I’m wearing 2/3-length brown linen trousers cause of the heat. I love these trousers. Except, for some reason they are overtaxing my doing-up abilities today. To do them up properly I have to do up two buttons, a zip and tie the cords that function as a kind of belt together.

For the fourth time today I’ve just found myself realising in a public place that I’d forgotten the most important/embarrassing part: the zip.

Why do these things always happen to me?

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