I am not actually offended by most anything. I realized today that I am hurt and angry and lash out when someone's intent is to attack me. It doesn't matter what they say in specific. It's the intention of causing harm that upsets me. It used to be that people could say anything and I simply didn't care- or at least, I never got angry. I wonder what happened?

We could really do with a decent sysadmin at work, at least on a part time basis (I don't know that we have enough work for a full time admin on a permanent basis.)

Not so.

In the geek hierarchy Star Trek easily trumps Watchmen.

Btw, a local book store has a copy of the first american printing of Winnie the Pooh for $350.

They also have 1920 printings of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels at only $30 each.
And a whole stack of original Doc Savage paperbacks.

The kicker? 
All that will hardly put a dent in my first paycheck.

Capitalism rules!

I voted this morning, and was surprised to discover how much it meant to me.  I thought I was just going to vote because it was my civic duty.  But once I was done I was really happy, and not in the 'Now I've got that odious task off my back and no one can give me a hard time' way.

I'm increasingly amazed at just how little I know about what is important to me.  I think it comes from a lifetime of constantly denying what matters to me.  After all, you never know when God will show up, in person or via an earthly messenger, and demand that you give up whatever it is you cherish most.  What better defense than to never love anything?  If I never love anything, then I won't care when someone takes it away.

But that's no way to live.

My boyfriend and I never knew whether or not our cats were surrendered to the OHS by their owners or if they were strays. We did not have this information when we adopted them from Petsmart. So we got around to emailing them yesterday and today they replied saying that they were strays found by a member of the public on March 26th, 2008. They were then neutered on March 31st. It is funny because we adopted them April 1st, 2008. They were 8 months old.

Doing a Google search for my real name will give you hundreds of pages of not me.
Doing a Google search for my email will give no results.
Doing one for the beginning of my email, without the @email.com will give many pages of not me.
Doing a search for Coani will give the occasional me, with a whole lot of not me.

Does this mean I've managed to stay fairly anonymous on the internet?

I got a B and was disappointed.

WTF.

I... I -like- my job. And I -like- my customers. I -like- helping people. I like it when they aren't yelling at me, anyway. I've been so tired and so grumpy for so long, I forgot that this job can be really satisfying. I'm here to help and to fix things and to make them right.

I don't want to give up my customer base, even the really stupid ones. There have been so many sweet people on my phone today... I've gotten told that I need a raise, that I've made their day, and the last guy told me to do him a favor and have a great weekend. I feel so bitter, I just want to tell them, "Well sir, actually, they're outsourcing this product to Mumbai in two weeks- but I'm glad I was able to help you before my ass gets shipped off this contract and over to shitty desktop computer support."

But I'm going to fight this by being what my customers need. I know the product better then my colleagues in India; I have an advantage over them, and I think it's going to show in their statistics. I'm sorry, Mumbai, but this is MY product, and frankly, I think I can do it better than you can. I still have time, before they take over InDesign.

You cannot figure out how a wife (woman) thinks.  It cannot be done.  CANNOT.   

I need to draw a crapload more if I'm going to get decent at it.  Like, I need to make a habit of drawing every damn day.