Winner!

So I can't get the existing software to load in stupid Microsoft Visual Studio at work, but I can write at least 1,667 words per day which makes me a NaNoWriMo winner. I hit the magic 50,000 mark on Friday. I prefer to use this metric to bolster my self-esteem.

I still have two (or maybe three depending on how I break it up) chapters to go. I might even be able to finish them by the end of the month, which would be pretty awesome. Then at some point I need to go back through and edit it all, which will be decidedly less awesome. Oh well.

In other news, I continue to maintain that Microsoft is the devil.

One of fellow cubicle bullpen-ers was swapped out overnight last week. Nobody around him knew until after the fact, even the people he worked with. For all I know he just moved to a different office, but he may have been converted to soylent green instead. I can't prove it either way because I never did figure out what his name was. Now there's a different guy in that spot and his name only has four letters and I know what they are, so I'm down to only one person I don't know what to call and he's usually not there anyhow. He's a really nice guy, though.

I finally commandeered a second monitor at work, so now I can see as much on Windows as I can using one monitor on a real operating system where the icons and frames around the applications don't take up half of the screen. Again, Microsoft is the devil. The state of Washington is headed to the top of my list of places that can fall into the ocean during the next natural disaster, second only to Waltham, MA where I went to a conference two or three years in a row. (Louisiana would be on that list, but I think it already fell into the ocean a few natural disasters back, and the people there just haven't noticed yet.)

I would really like my job if I could actually get to the doing-my-job part at work and not the dealing-with-Microsoft part. Someday soon I hope to move on to the good part.

Right, well, I need to go put my main character in jeopardy again now. Enjoy your week and Happy Thanksgiving!

Write On!

Despite the obstacles cluttering my NaNoWriMo path, I am soldiering on...

I have thus far managed to meet or exceed my word goals every day, although I must admit I was almost delirious on Friday night so I'm not exactly sure what I wrote.

In other, less important news, I started my new job last week. Last time I was hired I couldn't get to my email for a day. This time it took over two days to set up my computer account. (Yes, they paid me money as a computer programmer for two days when I couldn't access a computer.)

And when they set up the account they spelled my name wrong.

One might think that fixing a misspelled name would be a simple thing, but the power of the mighty bureaucracy has spoken and apparently it will be easier to just legally change my name than to fix the spelling at this company. So far two different tickets have been opened with the two halves of the company that control the computers, and one ticket was closed and the other is in limbo.

Is it any wonder when my access card didn't open the door on my second day that I was just a little disappointed that I hadn't been fired overnight?

A fun quotation from the guy who wrote all of the existing software for this project, software that isn't being backed up anywhere: "It's amazing that we haven't had a problem in these three years." Yes, the guy who set up the system that would all go away in a puff of smoke if someone accidentally spills something on the computer finds it surprising that there hasn't been a disaster before now. I am in awe of this attitude.

On the days that I'm in the office, I sit in a cubicle bullpen with three other people although they are often not there. I know one person's name. The other two told me their names and I didn't understand them despite multiple attempts and nobody has a nameplate. (The third person doesn't know their names either.) So yeah, I spend most of the day with three really nice people, but I don't know what to call two of them. This probably doesn't bother me as much as it should, but I'm an engineer.

In other news, Microsoft is the devil.