I know I haven't been posting this week. I haven't thought of anything to write, and none of the quirks I've come up with are quirky enough to really qualify...
Work sucks.
I hate professors.
I hate professors who have no concept of costs.
I hate professors who have no concept of costs, and have no concept of "budget"
I also hate professors who have no concept of the above things, and submit pre-proposals without consulting their accounting staff first.
Lets just say that hiring a postdoc on a 100k award is um... Not the brightest of ideas. Especially when said postdoc has a history of running up 2k of fabrication costs a month.
Would it be alright with everyone if I screamed now?
Oh yeah, and I especially hate professors who tell me to work up a budget with a certain amount of money, and then, after I've done what they ask, tell me to re-work said budget with only 1/3 of the original total, but keeping everything anyway.
I'm sorry people... Despite rumors to the contrary, I am wholly unable to pull money out of my ass.
And yes... The fact that I am incapable of pulling money out of my ass is my quirk this time.
=P
Showing posts with label anger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anger. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Friday, July 06, 2007
Quirk #8
I really hate coming off like I'm an idiot.
Okay, maybe this isn't a quirk. I don't think I know anyone who actually enjoys having people truly think they're an imbecille. I know people who don't care what other people think about their intelligence (either they're smart enough to know that other people are just stupid, so their opinons are useless, or they're too stupid to realize that seeming stupid doesn't help them in life), but none of them actually enjoy it. Me, well, I care if people realize I'm actually quite smart. I much prefer being thought of as intelligent, and go out of my way to make sure people realize I am. I don't care if people like me or not. They can think of, and call, me a bitch openly. It doesn't bother me. As long as they know I'm a smart bitch.
It's not something that I'm proud of. I show off, mentally, and its a really shallow thing to do. Which is funny, because I don't think of myself as a shallow person. Quite the opposite actually.
Anyway.
So I hate being put into situations that make me look stupid, especially when the reason I look stupid is because I am completely and totally uninformed about something that the person putting me in the situation already knew, and should have told me. And so far today, I have ended up in these types of situations 3 times.
My desk is the closest to the door to our cube farm, and as such, it falls upon me to direct anyone who happens to need directing. So someone comes in to ask if one of my co-workers is around. So I say "if her computer is on, she probably is. if it's not, she's probably not." Upon saying this, another woman in the office decides to pipe up that said co-worker is on vacation for the week. Why she couldn't have piped up when she heard the person ask... I don't know. Why there were no "on vacation" signs posted at this co-worker's desk, I don't know. But I ended up sounding stupid as a result.
So later, another person comes in asking for the same co-worker. Having found out that she's on vacation, I try to direct them to her supervisor. Whereupon the same person that piped up before says "oh, her supervisor is on vacation too." And I nearly slam my head into my desk right then and there. But no, I hold back, and ask politely who is covering while they're gone. The answer? She is. Why she couldn't have told me all that earlier, the first time I made an ass of myself, is beyond me. But whatever.
So after that, someone comes in asking for someone that does not sit in our office (or so I thought). I look at them, confused, and try to direct them downstairs. Whereupon I'm informed by that person that the someone they're looking for moved here. Okay, its a big office, but not THAT big -- I thought -- so I'd know if someone moved in... Right? Apparently not. Apparently this person moved into the far end of the office a WEEK ago, and no one bothered to tell me. And all this I find out from... Guess who. The exact same person who stepped in the first two times.
I really am not sure who to be upset at... My boss for not keeping me in the loop? The people who went on vacation without putting notes on their doors/desks? The people moving into my office without so much as a "hi how are ya? I'm staying for a while"?
GRRR.
Okay, maybe this isn't a quirk. I don't think I know anyone who actually enjoys having people truly think they're an imbecille. I know people who don't care what other people think about their intelligence (either they're smart enough to know that other people are just stupid, so their opinons are useless, or they're too stupid to realize that seeming stupid doesn't help them in life), but none of them actually enjoy it. Me, well, I care if people realize I'm actually quite smart. I much prefer being thought of as intelligent, and go out of my way to make sure people realize I am. I don't care if people like me or not. They can think of, and call, me a bitch openly. It doesn't bother me. As long as they know I'm a smart bitch.
It's not something that I'm proud of. I show off, mentally, and its a really shallow thing to do. Which is funny, because I don't think of myself as a shallow person. Quite the opposite actually.
Anyway.
So I hate being put into situations that make me look stupid, especially when the reason I look stupid is because I am completely and totally uninformed about something that the person putting me in the situation already knew, and should have told me. And so far today, I have ended up in these types of situations 3 times.
My desk is the closest to the door to our cube farm, and as such, it falls upon me to direct anyone who happens to need directing. So someone comes in to ask if one of my co-workers is around. So I say "if her computer is on, she probably is. if it's not, she's probably not." Upon saying this, another woman in the office decides to pipe up that said co-worker is on vacation for the week. Why she couldn't have piped up when she heard the person ask... I don't know. Why there were no "on vacation" signs posted at this co-worker's desk, I don't know. But I ended up sounding stupid as a result.
So later, another person comes in asking for the same co-worker. Having found out that she's on vacation, I try to direct them to her supervisor. Whereupon the same person that piped up before says "oh, her supervisor is on vacation too." And I nearly slam my head into my desk right then and there. But no, I hold back, and ask politely who is covering while they're gone. The answer? She is. Why she couldn't have told me all that earlier, the first time I made an ass of myself, is beyond me. But whatever.
So after that, someone comes in asking for someone that does not sit in our office (or so I thought). I look at them, confused, and try to direct them downstairs. Whereupon I'm informed by that person that the someone they're looking for moved here. Okay, its a big office, but not THAT big -- I thought -- so I'd know if someone moved in... Right? Apparently not. Apparently this person moved into the far end of the office a WEEK ago, and no one bothered to tell me. And all this I find out from... Guess who. The exact same person who stepped in the first two times.
I really am not sure who to be upset at... My boss for not keeping me in the loop? The people who went on vacation without putting notes on their doors/desks? The people moving into my office without so much as a "hi how are ya? I'm staying for a while"?
GRRR.
Monday, June 25, 2007
I Could Have Done Better With Hypercard
I am officially completely and totally disgusted with my department.
Today I was required to attend a "training" session in regards to our online financial management/purchasing/reimbursements system thing. They're offering these training sessions in the hopes of getting more people to use it, instead of submitting paper documents. Well, let me tell you, no amount of training sessions are going to get more people to use this piece of crap system.
Management thinks people aren't using it because "they're afraid of new ways of doing things." HA! This is a research center that gets its funding specifically because they're one of the best in the world at figuring out how to create new and better ways of doing things. The faculty and students aren't afraid of new things. They make their livings off of new things. They APPRECIATE new and better ways to do things.
The problem here is that this online system isn't better. It's new, yes. But its already an outdated, poorly programmed, unweildly mess of a thing. Personally, I don't want to ever log into it again.
Now... I'm going to preface this next bit by explaining that I am extremely tech savvy. You give me a new program to use, and I don't need a manual. I just sit down with the thing for an hour, and suddenly I'm an expert. I'm no stranger to basic programming either. I understand the ins and outs. I've designed websites. I've written programs in basic. My BF bombards me every day with information about programming and programming languages that I never dreamed I'd ever hear, let alone actually understand -- but I do understand a lot of it.
That being said: I could have done a better job at designing this thing, and I could have done a better job of it using nothing more than hypercard. Do you remember hypercard? That lovely little program Mac had back in the 90's that let you basically write your own computer programs just by dragging and dropping page elements? Eh, if you don't remember it, that's okay. Imagine Frontpage or Dreamweaver, but for writing applications as well as websites, and much more simplistic.
Seriously. I could have done way better.
The GUI on this "intranet" is so counterintuitive that I spent 15 minutes just trying to figure out which menu item I was supposed to click on. Me. Me, who only ever needs an hour to learn a piece of software well enough to give classes on how to use it. I was completely and totally lost in this web app. The menu set up was beyond attrocious. The "instructions" on each page were convoluted and misleading. The functionality is so limited, that I can get things done faster on paper. Not to mention the fact that this thing is entirely laid out using tables. There are no divs on the page. None. Just tables. Tables and tables and tables, within even more tables.
There is no "help" menu either. No FAQ. Just a 20 page user manual that you have to download in .pdf.
If a professor wants to look at his available funding (a simple thing, a common thing) he has to sift through several pages full of overly long links (not buttons or anything), each time clicking the right one to get further along in the process.
If a student wants to make a requisition, they have to figure out that the correct section of the site to go to for that is "services" then they have to figure out which professor they're supposed to be logging in under, and then they have to figure out which type of requisition they want to fill out -- and none of this is labelled clearly and simply. It's all in accounting staff jargon that no one understands (well, no one except us accountants).
And you know what makes this whole situation worse? It's taken the staff they hired to do this YEARS to get it to the point it's at currently. YEARS! The BF probably could have had it done in 6 months, with way more functionality, and have it so streamlined that no one would be confused about anything, and no "training" would be necessary, as you could tell exactly what you were doing just by looking at the thing.
Oh yeah, and did I mention that the guy they hired to do this barely speaks english, and makes about 3 times as much money as I do.
And I could have done better at it using Hypercard.
*screams in frustration*
Today I was required to attend a "training" session in regards to our online financial management/purchasing/reimbursements system thing. They're offering these training sessions in the hopes of getting more people to use it, instead of submitting paper documents. Well, let me tell you, no amount of training sessions are going to get more people to use this piece of crap system.
Management thinks people aren't using it because "they're afraid of new ways of doing things." HA! This is a research center that gets its funding specifically because they're one of the best in the world at figuring out how to create new and better ways of doing things. The faculty and students aren't afraid of new things. They make their livings off of new things. They APPRECIATE new and better ways to do things.
The problem here is that this online system isn't better. It's new, yes. But its already an outdated, poorly programmed, unweildly mess of a thing. Personally, I don't want to ever log into it again.
Now... I'm going to preface this next bit by explaining that I am extremely tech savvy. You give me a new program to use, and I don't need a manual. I just sit down with the thing for an hour, and suddenly I'm an expert. I'm no stranger to basic programming either. I understand the ins and outs. I've designed websites. I've written programs in basic. My BF bombards me every day with information about programming and programming languages that I never dreamed I'd ever hear, let alone actually understand -- but I do understand a lot of it.
That being said: I could have done a better job at designing this thing, and I could have done a better job of it using nothing more than hypercard. Do you remember hypercard? That lovely little program Mac had back in the 90's that let you basically write your own computer programs just by dragging and dropping page elements? Eh, if you don't remember it, that's okay. Imagine Frontpage or Dreamweaver, but for writing applications as well as websites, and much more simplistic.
Seriously. I could have done way better.
The GUI on this "intranet" is so counterintuitive that I spent 15 minutes just trying to figure out which menu item I was supposed to click on. Me. Me, who only ever needs an hour to learn a piece of software well enough to give classes on how to use it. I was completely and totally lost in this web app. The menu set up was beyond attrocious. The "instructions" on each page were convoluted and misleading. The functionality is so limited, that I can get things done faster on paper. Not to mention the fact that this thing is entirely laid out using tables. There are no divs on the page. None. Just tables. Tables and tables and tables, within even more tables.
There is no "help" menu either. No FAQ. Just a 20 page user manual that you have to download in .pdf.
If a professor wants to look at his available funding (a simple thing, a common thing) he has to sift through several pages full of overly long links (not buttons or anything), each time clicking the right one to get further along in the process.
If a student wants to make a requisition, they have to figure out that the correct section of the site to go to for that is "services" then they have to figure out which professor they're supposed to be logging in under, and then they have to figure out which type of requisition they want to fill out -- and none of this is labelled clearly and simply. It's all in accounting staff jargon that no one understands (well, no one except us accountants).
And you know what makes this whole situation worse? It's taken the staff they hired to do this YEARS to get it to the point it's at currently. YEARS! The BF probably could have had it done in 6 months, with way more functionality, and have it so streamlined that no one would be confused about anything, and no "training" would be necessary, as you could tell exactly what you were doing just by looking at the thing.
Oh yeah, and did I mention that the guy they hired to do this barely speaks english, and makes about 3 times as much money as I do.
And I could have done better at it using Hypercard.
*screams in frustration*
Monday, May 14, 2007
Why Should I Have to Ask?
Mother's Day.
This year, us girls celebrated Mother's Day for our mom on Saturday, not Sunday. My sister and I planned the whole thing out on the phone before hand, never having to really talk to Mom to find out what she wanted. She wanted what she's always wanted -- just some family time with her kids, to kick back and relax and be able to enjoy the day.
So my sister and I cooked for her. Mom picked up some of the groceries involved, because as much as she likes just relaxing, she feels like she has to help with everything somehow... But I stopped and picked up all the special stuff, so she didn't really know what she was in store for.
Sis helped me put together a fun anti-pasto dish -- tomato basil mozzarella salad, bell pepper salad, salami, olives... And then we made home made, completely from scratch, manicotti. It was fun, and I got to give a little bit of a cooking lesson, teaching my sister how to make the pasta shells (we use an old family recipe which involves making pasta "crepes", then rolling the filling up in them), and even showing the BF how to do it too. Mom kept trying to help, but we kept kicking her out of the kitchen, telling her to go play with the kiddo. I was on my feet cooking basically all day, but I was having a ball. My kitchen at home is tiny, and always dirty (yes, I'm lazy), so being able to cook in a big roomy clean kitchen was kind of a present for me in and of itself. Mom couldn't quite fit her head around that idea, so she looked at me like I was insane every time I told her... And I had to keep telling her, because she kept trying to get me to give her something to do, and kept asking if I was sure, cuz it's mother's day, and she thought I was working too hard. Heh. Cooking, to me, is not work. It is pure fun. Always =)
And after dinner, we all just sat around talking until we got to tired and HAD to go home.
The next day, Sunday, Mother's Day proper, was supposed to be about me... The kiddo, sweetheart that he is, and spurred by his teacher, made me a card, and gave me "coupons" for various things, one of which was doing laundry (woot! I may take him up on that one!).
From the BF tho... I got an e-card. There were no gifts. No special things done for me. It was just another day really. And that made me sad. It made me mad even, because the BF said that I'm hard to do/get things for because he can never tell if its a good time for me or not, so "what would you like to do today?"... He made it seem like in order for me to get anything -- special treatment included -- I had to flat out ask for it. Which kind of defeats the purpose of having a day dedicated to me... I mean, what kind of "gift" do you have to ask for? If you have to ask for it, its not really a gift anymore, in my opinion. And all that "what would you like to do today" said to me was "I don't care enough to put any effort into figuring out what would be nice to do for you, so you do all the work, and figure it out for me instead."
Besides, I'm super easy to make happy. You don't have to do fancy things like take me out to an expensive restaurant. You don't have to organize complex outings. You don't have to get me expensive presents or take me shopping. It's really simple. Think about the things in life that make me stressed out, and take care of one of them for me. Something as simple as cleaning the kitchen (so I can cook, like I love to), or cleaning the bathroom so I can take bubble baths without feeling like a pile of dirty clothes is going to fall into the tub, or doing some laundry so that I don't have to... Any one of those things would be great, and I'm sure, given that genre of "gifts" to choose from it wouldn't be hard to find some more. But I didn't get those things. All I got was an E-card, and an excuse.
Even my 8 year old did better than that... The BF should be ashamed.
I wasn't happy. I was beyond not happy. I was miserably and horribly MAD. So miserable that my body decided it wasn't having anything to do with me being mad, and tried to make me fall asleep instead. So mad that several times during the day I felt like picking something up and hurling it at the wall as hard as I could. But I didn't do that. Instead, I bottled it (as I usually do), then beat myself up over being mad, so I ended up feeling not just mad, but guilty and depressed at the same time.
And what's worse? I can't get over it. I'm not usually one to blame my emotions on someone else -- I always seem to find a way to explain how I did it to myself -- but the BF made me feel like complete and total shit. And I still feel like shit, because I'm here at work, and people are talking about what their families did for them for mother's day, and I get to say "I got an e-card." Needless to say, I've been avoiding the subject all together. So now people are under the impression that I'm even more anti-social than I really am... When in truth, I'm just upset that I don't have anything equally touching to share.
I wish I had an easier time talking about the things that upset me... Then maybe I'd have the guts to tell the BF just how pissed off and hurt I am, and I could get past it more quickly.
This year, us girls celebrated Mother's Day for our mom on Saturday, not Sunday. My sister and I planned the whole thing out on the phone before hand, never having to really talk to Mom to find out what she wanted. She wanted what she's always wanted -- just some family time with her kids, to kick back and relax and be able to enjoy the day.
So my sister and I cooked for her. Mom picked up some of the groceries involved, because as much as she likes just relaxing, she feels like she has to help with everything somehow... But I stopped and picked up all the special stuff, so she didn't really know what she was in store for.
Sis helped me put together a fun anti-pasto dish -- tomato basil mozzarella salad, bell pepper salad, salami, olives... And then we made home made, completely from scratch, manicotti. It was fun, and I got to give a little bit of a cooking lesson, teaching my sister how to make the pasta shells (we use an old family recipe which involves making pasta "crepes", then rolling the filling up in them), and even showing the BF how to do it too. Mom kept trying to help, but we kept kicking her out of the kitchen, telling her to go play with the kiddo. I was on my feet cooking basically all day, but I was having a ball. My kitchen at home is tiny, and always dirty (yes, I'm lazy), so being able to cook in a big roomy clean kitchen was kind of a present for me in and of itself. Mom couldn't quite fit her head around that idea, so she looked at me like I was insane every time I told her... And I had to keep telling her, because she kept trying to get me to give her something to do, and kept asking if I was sure, cuz it's mother's day, and she thought I was working too hard. Heh. Cooking, to me, is not work. It is pure fun. Always =)
And after dinner, we all just sat around talking until we got to tired and HAD to go home.
The next day, Sunday, Mother's Day proper, was supposed to be about me... The kiddo, sweetheart that he is, and spurred by his teacher, made me a card, and gave me "coupons" for various things, one of which was doing laundry (woot! I may take him up on that one!).
From the BF tho... I got an e-card. There were no gifts. No special things done for me. It was just another day really. And that made me sad. It made me mad even, because the BF said that I'm hard to do/get things for because he can never tell if its a good time for me or not, so "what would you like to do today?"... He made it seem like in order for me to get anything -- special treatment included -- I had to flat out ask for it. Which kind of defeats the purpose of having a day dedicated to me... I mean, what kind of "gift" do you have to ask for? If you have to ask for it, its not really a gift anymore, in my opinion. And all that "what would you like to do today" said to me was "I don't care enough to put any effort into figuring out what would be nice to do for you, so you do all the work, and figure it out for me instead."
Besides, I'm super easy to make happy. You don't have to do fancy things like take me out to an expensive restaurant. You don't have to organize complex outings. You don't have to get me expensive presents or take me shopping. It's really simple. Think about the things in life that make me stressed out, and take care of one of them for me. Something as simple as cleaning the kitchen (so I can cook, like I love to), or cleaning the bathroom so I can take bubble baths without feeling like a pile of dirty clothes is going to fall into the tub, or doing some laundry so that I don't have to... Any one of those things would be great, and I'm sure, given that genre of "gifts" to choose from it wouldn't be hard to find some more. But I didn't get those things. All I got was an E-card, and an excuse.
Even my 8 year old did better than that... The BF should be ashamed.
I wasn't happy. I was beyond not happy. I was miserably and horribly MAD. So miserable that my body decided it wasn't having anything to do with me being mad, and tried to make me fall asleep instead. So mad that several times during the day I felt like picking something up and hurling it at the wall as hard as I could. But I didn't do that. Instead, I bottled it (as I usually do), then beat myself up over being mad, so I ended up feeling not just mad, but guilty and depressed at the same time.
And what's worse? I can't get over it. I'm not usually one to blame my emotions on someone else -- I always seem to find a way to explain how I did it to myself -- but the BF made me feel like complete and total shit. And I still feel like shit, because I'm here at work, and people are talking about what their families did for them for mother's day, and I get to say "I got an e-card." Needless to say, I've been avoiding the subject all together. So now people are under the impression that I'm even more anti-social than I really am... When in truth, I'm just upset that I don't have anything equally touching to share.
I wish I had an easier time talking about the things that upset me... Then maybe I'd have the guts to tell the BF just how pissed off and hurt I am, and I could get past it more quickly.
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