I'm Totally a Princess of Power

So my parents are trying to get rid of everything in the house that they possibly can. One theory would be that they are just trying to declutter, but really I think they're just trying to make more space for a larger quilting setup. (My other theory involves them trying to remove all evidence of their children, but I'm pretty sure that's just the paranoia talking...)

Anyhow, among the precious treasures that they are trying to get rid of are these books which belonged to K-Poo. I think they're awesome.

I have to say that the women in this series might suffer from some anatomic... uh... wish fulfillment, but the men are just downright scary looking. They might even be prototypes for a Planet of the Apes revival.

And then there's the dialogue... "You are right, He-Man," Adora said. "Hordak is bad. The people are unhappy. How could I have been so wrong? I am as bad as Hordak."

(I didn't read the whole story, so I'm going to avoid a rant about how the woman apparently can't figure things out without a man to explain things to her... I really, really hope it isn't as bad as this page makes it sound.)

I know it's a kid's book, but that's the best dialogue they could come up with?

It turns out that there's a whole series of these things, and K-Poo had three of them.

Again, check out the male...

And again, the guy in the lower right corner...

And now for the fun extrapolation... Is K-Poo's inability to find the perfect man because she was exposed to these "humanoid" images as a child? Discuss.

Procrastinate? Me?

How am I supposed to fulfill my destiny as the laziest person on the planet when nobody else in my writing group has submitted anything for this week's meeting?

Because of this, I was forced to finish the short story I've been working on ahead of schedule, and that was after a day of mowing the lawn and trimming weeds. (Note of honesty: I only mowed the back lawn because my nearly seventy year old neighbor mowed my front lawn as thanks for borrowing my mower, although I did say that he didn't need to do that...)

But all of this means that I haven't sent the cards that I was supposed to send over the weekend. Okay, actually I was supposed to send some of them before the weekend.

So if, say, you had a birthday or anniversary this week (or even possibly yesterday), your card might possibly be a little late. Hypothetically.

But enjoy the holiday anyhow!

Containers of Ripley

Look, it's a pot full of Ripley

And a box full of Ripley

And that's all you get because I'm a boring person.

Well, at least I got one thing done

It's April, which means it's time for Camp NaNoWriMo, and so far I've been slacking. The weather has been nice, work has been really busy, and I just haven't been feeling motivated. But someone has finally been kidnapped (fictionally, of course), so maybe things will start going faster.

Here is the view from the outdoor writing area:


And the other direction:


The only drawback is bugs. How can the world support so many insects? It's crazy.

Anyhow, knowing that I'll be tired and writing until all hours of the night all week, I did my taxes today. That's three days early! They've only been kicked back to me once so far. And if anyone ever complains that my error messages are hard to understand, this was in the email I got from the IRS the first time through:

Here's the reason for the rejection:


Issue      : Business Rule X0000-005 - The XML data has failed schema validation. cvc-enumeration-valid.  Value '0' is not facet-valid with respect to enumeration '[F4029, F4361, EXEMPT-NOTARY, EXEMPT COMMUNITY INCOME]'. It must be a value from the enumeration.

The following information may help you determine the form at issue:
Field/Xpath: /efile:Return[1]/efile:

ReturnData[1]/efile:IRS1040[1]/efile:SelfEmploymentTaxAmt[1]



If you are unable to fix the issue, you will have to print the return and file by mail.

Luckily I write software for a living and thus could extract the important information -- I needed to check the field on the form that had something to do with self-employment. (There was a field, I put a zero in it, and apparently it was supposed to be blank. Totally not obvious.)

Anyhow, I have finished my taxes, and that's the important thing.

When You Have Nothing To Say... Add Pictures

Just in time for Easter, my tulips bloomed!

Of course, a few days after those pictures were taken we had a windy night and now all of the flowers are just bare stalks. I don't think they're coming back after three days, either. Oh well. They were pretty while they lasted.

Ripley says hello. Yes, there are no less than seven actual pet beds in the house and yet everyone must fight over the box. I'm sure there's a reason. Eventually Scooter will put an end to the strife by peeing on it, allowing me to get rid of the box with a clear conscience.

I'd have more to talk about, but it turns out that I missed all the excitement of the meth-head son of the people who live two doors down getting arrested at gunpoint last week. For the record, these are the people that complained to the city about my next door neighbors (legally) having chickens in their yard. I think perhaps they've been focusing on the wrong problems...

This Blog Is Making Me Rich!

Because I was bored deeply care about my blog, I googled "nebulopathy" today. Shockingly, the first thing returned was my actual blog. And then I found a bunch of sites that analyze blogs, which is where it got a little funny.

The first one said the blog had an estimated worth of $64,942.00. Let that sink in a minute. I mean, sure I started out updating this thing twice a week, but lately I've been lucky to write something once every couple of weeks. And let's face it, it's usually crap. But apparently it's still worth enough to keep me in cider and cat food for quite a while.

So I wrote my resignation letter ("Dear boss, I quit! Good luck with that Super Bowl stuff!"), but before I hit send, I looked at the next link:

Hm. $640.42. That's quite a bit different. Also, there are over twelve million blogs in the US that are better than mine. Unfortunately, that last detail convinces me that these people are probably not taking the same drugs as the first group.

Then I looked at the next link:

I mean, I live fairly frugally, but I can't survive on sixteen cents per month. Even Sally Struthers wouldn't be happy about that sort of help.

So, enjoy your week. I have to go to bed now so I can get up early and go to work tomorrow.

Damn you, Super Bowl!

But It's Instant!

It's time for me to rant about one of my pet peeves. I realize that those of you who know me are probably trying to figure out which of my many pet peeves I could be talking about. It's true. I have more than a couple. But I also have more than a couple pets, so I figure if I can feed and house multiple real pets, I ought to be able to hang on to more than a couple of pet peeves as well.

Anyhow, the one that has been bugging me most lately (other than the whole "ask as a noun" nonsense, as in "the current ask is...") is people who abuse instant messaging.

I don't work in the office with everyone else 80% of the time, so I admit it's normally a little difficult to just walk over to my desk and ask me a question or request something. So I understand that instant messaging might possibly have a place in the workplace. But given that we also have email and software for meetings, here is what it is good for:

• Those times when you have a quick question or request that requires an immediate response

That's it. I mean, I made it a list, but really there's only one item.

Here's what it isn't good for:

• A request to start a major project that will require (at the very least) actual requirements
• A random question about a report that was sent out four hours ago 
• A question about something that you could figure out on your own

What's even worse (and so many people know that this drives me crazy that they do it on purpose just to mess with me) are the people that start the IM conversation with:

"Hi Theresa"

and then they wait for me to respond. Let me tell you... If I have to write back "What do you want?" and then sit around five minutes for you to type a sentence that says "I was wondering whether that four in the second column of the report should be in a different font", your chances of me doing anything for you drop down to almost zero.

I type reasonably quickly. The people who interrupt me with this sort of message inevitably don't. Before they interrupted me,  it was very possible that I was trying to figure out how to join five database tables together to get the results that I need. I was concentrating. I concentrate a lot when I'm working. I can't concentrate when I have to pay attention to IM. So now I'm just sitting around thinking about how irritated I am that this person is IMing me. Seriously, these people are lucky if they ever get anything from me ever again.

So, yeah, that's the rant of the week. Next week I may cover companies that are convinced that the way to prove they are a technology company is to get rid of the white boards and paint the walls with special paint so that all of the walls can be used as whiteboards... except the ink doesn't actually come off so it just looks like a bunch of graffiti inside the building and there's no space left to discuss anything new. Also, white boards are white, and orange walls are not. But I guess that can wait for next time...