I must be on some kind of hit list with Public Safety here. My first hint was when I sometimes parked somewhere deep in the back when nothing else was available on the side streets, thinking everything was gravy. What I didn’t know was that the spots there were reserved, but the numbers had since been eroded with time. Didn’t matter. Public Safety right then and there decided I was their number #1 enemy and had to die.

So what do they do? They actually run my plate and called my workplace. Next thing you know I’m taking a call from some obnoxious Public Safety drone who proceeds to lecture me about parking etiquette and why don’t I just grow up already?

So I stopped parking in the back since then and found other alternatives that some might find… unorthodox, but which suits me just fine. Like say, parking on the curb, parking on the grass, parking on what technically should be considered a sidewalk, or when I’m desperate, parking next to a fire hydrant.

Now before you start berating me for being a knob here, consider that I’m one of the last people to show up at my job… no… scratch that, I AM the last person to show up due to my crazy hours, and as such, everyone’s already got their space spoken for except me. There is NO parking here. NONE. Dramatic measures are needed if I want to avoid walking 10 blocks just to get to the door. You understand.

I’ve parked by the fire hydrant a few times before without any trouble, always close enough that if I happen to see a building burning nearby when I’m looking out the window it’s only 30 seconds from here to there to run out and move the car, even if I did get some evil stares from the firemen along the way.

But then once again, Public Safety had to ruin everything. Whoever this Nazi spankypants is, he stops by my car, but haha, he can’t write any tickets on account of him being a virginal numbnut with no vested authority in ticketing people. So what does he do?

HE CALLS THE FIRE MARSHAL, WHO COMES ON DOWN SO HE COULD WRITE THE TICKET FOR HIM.

Who goes through that much trouble to get a ticket written over a fire hydrant when it’s @#$%^ POURING rain out? And on top of that Mr. Smokey the Bear checks off the maximum fine too, when I could have just as easily been slapped with the usual $30 fine instead. Public Safety Nazi Virgin Boy wanted to send me a message, I’m sure.

And what happens the next day? There’s another car parked by the fire hydrant.

And you know bloody well I watched that car ALL day to see if they would ticket it too, watched the virginal Nazi spankypants drive past it several times, and still the dweeb didn’t get ticketed. Why, cuz he drives a Prius? @#$% racists.

I know where this guy keeps his Public Safety vehicle too, and I am THISCLOSE to finding it under the cover of night so I can let the air out of the tires. Let’s see how big and mighty you can be without a set of wheels, punk.

Sigh, I need a new job.

Tags: automobile, car, fire hydrant, fire marshal, park, parked, parking, public safety, street, ticket, workplace
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
(  Print This Post | | 27 views )

First thing I did when I got into work today was excitedly ask people what they thought of the Scott Brown election. The typical conversation went like this:

“So did you hear about the election in Massachusetts last night???”

Blank look.

“Um, you have heard about the election between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley right, and that if Brown pulled it off he would be removing the super majority in Congress and possibly stopping Obamacare dead in its tracks?”

Blank look.

“… so… how ’bout them Jets?”

“Oh man, they were totally AWESOME dude! We’re gonna win the Super Bowl BABY!!!!”

I have to get out of this place.

Tags: election, Massachusetts, Obama, Scott Brown, work
Categories: In The Coal Mine, Politics and Poker
 
(  Print This Post | | 27 views )

So it’s Thanksgiving Eve, and they let everyone go home early!

Except of course, me. Not because I’m essential, mind you, but simply because I’ve caused trouble with the higher ups before, so this is either their way of getting back at me, or it’s because they presume because I’m youngish and single I obviously don’t have a life or a place to get to, so why would I need to leave early?

Really dudes? Place is a ghost town, there’s no work to be done, but hey, let’s keep me here till the dead of night! Awesome.

Like I needed more frigging reminders that this time of year always without fail turns me into a virginal orphan, real life Robert Neville, and gee don’t even say Happy Thanksgiving when y’all leave either. Suckfaces.

Crap I just get sick and tired of these boinky boink brains and their junior high school “let’s all be petty because lil’ old Linc here dared to defy us, and God only knows we need to salvage whatever’s left of our shriveled up nuts” mentality.

Yeah, I admit it, they got under my skin. God I hate being alone.

Tags: alone, depression, employer, home, loneliness, omega man, Thanksgiving, work
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
(  Print This Post | | 84 views )

So I’ve been back at work since yesterday, and well, this sucks.

What’s weird is that I would come in, and after a few hours I would just feel completely drained, like something in the air was sucking the life force out of me. I’m not imagining it either, almost didn’t go on vacation in fact because I always felt drained. But I actually felt better and healthier too the moment I started my vacation, even on a diet of ice cream and ‘boigas’, that is of course, until I came home and started working again.

Maybe there’s something in the air here, some allergen that plays life force suckage on me. I don’t know.

But for the past 2 days I’ve been ignoring my job and instead been working up a to-do list of sorts so I can get better prepared for my next trip. Which includes getting a new GPS device.

So here’s where I’m at, which I’m sure will interest absolutely no one but me: I have to decide between getting a more traditional GPS device (from Garmin likely) or I can go a more nonconventional route by getting a GPS addon for my iPod Touch, then getting a navigation app from the Apple store (such as Navigon). I’d prefer this route because it would save on having to get yet another gadget, and since I take my iPod everywhere with me, I won’t have to worry about a GPS in the car attracting would be thieves who carry big lead pipes and have far too much time time on their hands.

Only trouble is, there’s only one GPS module on the market that I know of that’s available now, and it requires that your iPod be jailbroken, along with lots of other finagling in order to finally get it working right. Eventually there’s supposed to be two possible solutions coming out soon: one being a TomTom car dock that will have GPS built in, and another possible GPS module to be released in November by Dual Electronics. There’s no indication at all as to how well either of these will work, if they will at all. Assuming they did work though, then the only downside I see is the lack of bluetooth features that GPS devices sometimes have, so I can use my cell phone hands free while driving.

So I have the option of waiting to see how these future GPS modules will work on an iPod Touch, or getting a Garmin now. For Garmin I have been looking specifically at their nuvi 265WT and nuvi 765T models. Although… assuming the iPod solution doesn’t work out, I may go for a nuvi 500, a multifunction GPS that would allow me to participate in a beautiful thing called geocaching (which I’ll write about at length in a future post.)

Other than that, I’m planning to completely dump the built-in gallery on my blog this weekend, and integrate Flickr into it instead via a plugin. While on vacation, it occurred to me that Flickr provides a great way to upload videos and pictures from my cell phone on the fly, something I was trying to do on my own with mixed results (photos uploaded ok, but my first video upload garnered an epic FAIL.) If I can integrate Flickr into my blog without killing myself in the process, it would allow me to save tremendously on bandwidth and keep my photos centralized for easier management and viewing online. Please light a candle for me this weekend, so I can pull this off without losing my sanity in the process.

And of course, I do this all for you, my beloved audience, so that you may all share in the joys and wonders that is my life.

Tags: blog, flickr, gallery, gps, home, ipod touch, job, mobile, Photos, plugin, vacation, Videos
Categories: Blog Fog, In The Coal Mine
 
(  Print This Post | | 60 views )

Well not quite yet, but I am kicking off October with a 5 day reprieve, to which the current forecast is predicting rain, rain, and more rain for 4 of those 5 days. Sigh.

Interesting day though, filled with Yankee Candles and pizza, two of my very favorite things in the world.

The pizza came as a result of our new supervisor sucking up to us in the vain hope that showering us with free food would get us to look the other way while he’s prancing around in his office in his Superman undies, but also for catching up on some work and like, stuff.

I had to do THE RUN this week, so I went out to grab an unmarked car from fleet, only… there was no car.

“There’s no car left at all? ALL of them were signed out??”

“Yep, and there’s one missing too.”

“….what do you mean it’s missing?”

“It’s just, gone. Nobody knows where it is.”

“Dude what am I supposed to do? I need a car.”

“Can’t you walk?”

I muttered something about his mother, then walked out again. I ended up taking my car, placed an official decal on my dash, and basically had a ball breaking as many moving violations as I could while I did the run. You haven’t quite lived until you’ve jumped the curb outside some official government building and parked on the grass just so you can be right next to the door. I swear this is how it should always be.

Just don’t drive really fast or you might upset the security guards when they come running out half scared that you were about to kamikaze the building in an attempted terrorist attack. Have to remember that for next time.

Since I was already out and about I decided to take a slight detour to say, the mall, and spent about 30 minutes or so sniffing Yankee candles, before deciding on some fall harvest candles that should keep me sufficiently ensconced in the scents of Autumn until Thanksgiving.

Speaking of harvest, I’m planning to go out as far east as I can possibly muster this Sunday (easily a 4 hour drive), so I can watch the harvest moon unobstructed as it rises from the east. I should be surrounded by ocean then so it should make for some snap-worthy scenery, but, meh. I always plan things like this and then I start getting depressed because I’m going out alone and as such I’m never able to share these tender moments with someone sporting bouncy boom-booms.

In any event, it will probably rain anyway, so instead I’ll likely veg out in front of the computer and immerse myself in Nancy Drew game playing. Either way, a good way to spend a nice, extended weekend if you ask me.

Tags: autumn, government, harvest moon, Nancy Drew, October, pizza, reprieve, yankee candles
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
(  Print This Post | | 84 views )

I have some extended time off coming up in October, so this week I really need to take the opportunity to like, do work and stuff.

I actually take some pride in staying on top of the mass of crap that only an inept, broken system of a bureaucracy could spew forth my way, but there seems to be a hidden alert system somewhere that causes the inner bowels of the system to drop maybe 5-6 months worth of work on my desk in one day, all because I dared to pollute the bureaucratic matrix with my efficiency.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, my coworker (otherwise known as THE MOUTH) gets positively FIXATED on any particularly horrendous backlog we experience at work, and despite having a job title that puts her somewhere between a roadkill remover and a gas attendant, she would proceed to declare herself the boss of the known universe and badger me to half to death to pick up the pace so we can catch up. I just ignore her, yet instead of getting a clue, she only does it more. Since blowing her off doesn’t work, my next option will involve some form of violence. (After all, nothing quite gets the message across that you talk too much like stapling your tongue to your forehead.)

But anyhoo, if I can’t clear the workload by the time I start my vacation, it’s going to be really unpleasant when I come back, and that’s something I would very much like to avoid if I could. So blogging, twittering and facebooking will be light this week until I get ‘er done.

In the meantime, light a candle for me.

Tags: bureaucracy, coworker, efficiency, government, job, vacation, workload
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
(  Print This Post | | 62 views )