Listen to the Rain

So on Tuesday, I went with sashagee to get Laila registered for preschool, while Laila was still out at the grandparents. When we got there, there were a bunch of people in line ahead of us, and while waiting in line I realized that we didn't have a printout copy of our proof of income, so I downloaded a PDF on my phone and got ready to argue about access to a printer or an email address to mail it to. Then it turned out when we got to the front it didn't matter--the woman doing the registering couldn't seem to find Laila in the system, and when she started talking with sashagee it seemed there was a miscommunication somewhere. See, sashagee had registered Laila for half-day preschool, and the system--knowing Laila was four years old since this was after putting in all of her information--had let her. At the school, we were told that half-day preschool was only for three-year-olds and that she would have to talk to the Office of Early Childhood Education to get things sorted out.

sashagee was understandably upset by this, and went home and made some calls. A call to the school wasn't returned (I don't think we ever got that email back that we were supposed to get...) but a call to the family hotline told her that since we had applied to half-day preschool, and had received an acceptance notice for half-day preschool, they had to take her. She just might be in a class with three-year-olds.

Armed with this knowledge, sashagee sent off an email explaining things to the contact she had and then she (and Laila since she was back) went back to the school on Thursday to re-register while I was at work. She left fifteen minutes before registration opened (the school is within a few minutes' walk) and was gone until fifteen minutes after registration closed, and when she came back she told me a wild tale. There had been one person ahead of her and the same person doing the registration, and when the person ahead of her was finished, the woman saw sashagee, said hello, and went back into her office and just...didn't come back. After thirty minutes the security guard went back to see what was going on and someone else came out and finished Laila's registration no problem, other than reiterating that she'd probably be in a class with three-year-olds.

Unbelievable. Just wild unprofessionalism. And I bet we'll have to deal with this woman again too, since this is our neighborhood school. Hopefully Laila's actual preschool experience goes better than her registration does!

Alright, in my previous post I wrote about how my phone died. I went into the Apple Store, they managed to get it restarted, and they did some tests on it. It passed all the tests, and then immediately after that it went into a boot loop, so they wiped the phone, restored it over a cable from a laptop, I started downloading my backup, and I went on my way. On Wednesday I had no problems, and on Thursday when I picked it up in the morning off the charger it immediately restarted, so I made an appointment for after work. It restarted a further three more times during the day, including at least once that corrupted an app and required me to delete and reinstall it, and then I went to the North Ave. Apple Store for my appointment. This time the phone failed the test in about 20 seconds and the tech brought up an entire screen of kernel panic logs, so I got scheduled for a repair to fix obvious hardware failure.

This is where my future-proofing failed me. I bought the 1 TB model of iPhone, partially so I could keep it for a while and partially because I have tons of podcasts I listen to and this way I could store them all on my phone. Well, it turns out that very few people bought the 1 TB model, so they didn't have any extras in stock and didn't have any parts necessary to do the repair, so they got a part shipped expedited but I still have to wait until probably tomorrow to get a repair done. At the moment I'm just kind of trying to avoid using my phone much since it's also restarted twice today. Just entering my food, checking my podcast list but then listening to them on the computer, and otherwise putting it down on my desk and just making sure it doesn't freak out. I will report back when I get it fixed (hopefully tomorrow).

Re: the previous post, I ended up "solving" the problem (after spending hours on the phone with people who repeatedly failed to be of any use) was cancelling the old order and taking advantage of the 4th of July sales to reorder everything.

Waiting until I get our stuff and then I'll call into Best Buy, have them delete my account, and never shop there again.

Today was appliance delivery day, when we were going to get a full set of new appliances.

The refrigerator and the over could not be brought up because the downstairs neighbor across the stairway has a big set of utility shelves right at the top of the stairs and the installers said they wouldn't be able to get the fridge or the oven up. And when they looked at the front entrance, they said it was too narrow.

The dishwasher could not be installed because the valves on the pipe leading to it were stuck, so the installers could not be sure they would be able to turn off the water.

We got a new microwave, which was the appliance we least needed a new one of.

Hooray.

Wake up, pull out the laptop, log on for work. Say hello, try to get into the database, "Error on Security or DBL connection." Try a couple more times, eventually call tech support.

*ring ring*
*Tech Support picks up*
Tech Support: "You having a problem with [the VPN]?"
Me: "Yes, I am."

So that's my morning.

Yesterday, while Laila and I were out on a walk, someone got out of the car and said hello to me, and it took me a moment to realize it was one of our downstairs neighbors. His wife also got out of the car, and they said hi to Laila--Laila immediately wanted to be held by the wife and wouldn't even give the time of day to the husband--and we walked back to the condo building and chatted. When we got to the top floor, Laila said "kitty!" so they invited her in to say hi to their cat and sashagee heard us talking and came down to see what the commotion was. Our neighbors made us tea and we talked while Laila ran the wife around asking to read books, look for the cat, and otherwise make the husband feel ignored. He got his high five in the end though, after we finished our tea! This is the kind of thing that makes my parents feel better about their granddaughter living in the big city.

Then today, I got a text message about the new kitchen appliances that I ordered and I read through the checklist and noticed the glaring:

"Verify there are less than (3) flights of stairs to get to the install location (not applicable if elevator is available)"

We live on the fourth floor, but our address has a three in it because the floors are addressed like a European building (Ground, 1, 2, 3). So the person who helped us make the order might have seen a 3 in the address and been like, oh, no problem, they'll be fine. Well, I called in to check and it was not fine. The person on the phone was very clear that it's third floor or lower, no exceptions, so I cancelled the order after writing down what all the models of everything we ordered were. A little weird they don't account for higher floors in the city, but there will surely be another place that does.

Went out to the L this morning and the sign said it would be there in eight minutes, which was unusual--it would have meant I had just missed one and I hadn't seen one go by on the walk to the station. It ended up being more like twelve minutes, by which point the platform was very crowded, and then when the train arrived it was also very crowded. The driver apologized, saying that she had had a mechanical problem, and then we went on our way. And after only a few stops, we stopped again, and waited, and the driver came into the car I was in and messed with something while being on the phone with someone else, and then we were told that we all had to get off because the mechanical problem was too big to solve in just a few moments. So then I was standing on a platform with a hundred other people, and the train still wasn't moving, and after consulting my phone I dashed down the platform and down the street and got on the first 148 bus that came and arrived at work an hour late and more than halfway into the section meeting.

When the bus driver pulled up and saw fifty people waiting at the bus stop he was like "What the hell happened??"

A while ago I put on Facebook "Does anyone sell a dark green dress shirt in my size?" and melliott415 suggested Suit Supply and linked a dark green dress shirt. She also said that they do custom fitting, so yesterday I went into my appointment. It only took about ten minutes--the guy assigned to me brought in a slim-fit shirt and it was too big, so he brought in an extra slim-fit shirt and other than a bit of billow in the back it fit wonderfully. I picked out the green Egyptian cotton, and said I'd like it custom-made, paid for it, and went on my way. It'll be ready in three weeks.

New wardrobe alignment commenced.

I wrote about it here, but the kerfuffle over the latest management obsession continues to unfold. One of the people who volunteered to help roll it out ("ambassadors", they're called) was over here talking about how painful the whole process apparently was. When it was first proposed, the idea was that everyone would memorize the standardized elevator pitch and be able to repeat the buzzwords. This got a ton of rightful pushback in the initial meetings, because it was pointed out that no one is going to use a canned recitation if they're actually trying to be convincing (because canned speeches sound canned) and it's insulting to make a bunch of people memorize a slogan like they're schoolkids. So after that, management came back with the idea that oh, you just need to use some of underlined buzzwords and apply them to your job. But lately people are coming in with stories about being asked follow-up questions in the meeting sessions, or on specific words that they missed, or they're going to ambassadors in a panic that they're not going to get all the words right, and it's become a huge pain for everyone involved. Except senior management, probably, because they're insulated from the effects of their dumb ideas as always.

My session is next week. We'll see what happens.

Got an email for a training that we have to take at work about bystander intervention. Okay, fair enough, the Bystander Effect is fake but it's still worth reinforcing the urge to intervene, but I'm writing this post due to the note listed on the email:

Note: Given the 1-hour time requirement by law, you cannot skip ahead in this eLearning module; you are asked to spend 60 minutes consuming the information. We appreciate your understanding.

The law requires that everyone receive one hour of instruction, therefore you will be instructed for one hour. Do not resist, citizen.

I wonder if this is the actual law or just corporate idiocy.

This was not my first introduction to the Battletech setting--that was Mechwarrior 1, a game I never beat because it had timed missions and I really didn't feel comfortable starting the story until I had a full lance of Battlemasters--but it was the game I played the most. Even as a callow youth, I was already super into RPGs so the combination of tactical combat and RPG statistic development immediately drew me in. Unlike the Fellowship of the Ring DOS game, all the story was contained within the game rather than forcing me to constantly consult a manual, and also I didn't have to suffer through a terribly underpowered phase in order to climb up to RPG greatness. I remember spending hours roaming around the fields of Pacifica, fighting other mechs, going to buildings, looking for secrets.

One of the advantages of the internet is the quick ability to take games apart and find out any hidden content so that everyone can experience it, but it's a disadvantage too. As a child, the world of Crescent Hawks' Inception seemed so large, with the people roaming around towns and entering and leaving buildings, the forests and grasslands and rock fields of Pacifica, the hidden team members that you can find, but looking online I learn that it was never as big as I imagined. There is no fourth mechwarrior party member you can find. The vast majority of the people you can talk to in those towns having nothing to say other than some variation of "Get outta my face!" But Crescent Hawks' Inception has such a big space in my imagination because of those mysterious spaces. If I had known the game's limitations then, I wouldn't have any fond memories and would never have bothered to replay it now.


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One of my pet peeves is the phrase "untranslatable words" and all those lists of various words from other languages that don't exist in English. Now, I know what they mean--they mean that words like 木漏れ日 komorebi or פירגון firgun don't have exact one-to-one equivalents in English, but that's not the same as being untranslatable. All human languages can express the sum total of human experience. For example:

• komorebi means "the sunlight filtering through the leaves."
• firgun means "unselfish joy felt when viewing other's accomplishments."

Sure, English doesn't have words for those specific concepts but that doesn't mean they're untranslatable because I just translated them! And sometimes they do have exact equivalents in non-English languages--for example, firgun translated into Sanskrit is muditā. Sometimes these articles seem to imply that English has a particular paucity of expression, and that's simply not true. English actually has a very high number of words compared to other languages. The Akademyah estimates around 45,000 words in modern Hebrew, not counting compound words. French has around 60,000, whereas English has over 100,000. But that also runs into its own problem of "what is a word." To pick something relevant to my own hobbies, there's eternal debate over "video games" vs. "videogames." Spellcheck tells me the former is correct and that's the spelling I used in my DW tag, but the latter spelling looks more correct to me now, and it's a word whereas the former is not.

Anyway, here's a few English words that don't often have a single-word equivalent in other languages:

• Cheesy
• Fortnight
• Okay
• Kerfuffle
• Spam

Couldn't fall asleep until 4:30 a.m. last night for no reason I can think of.

Called off work today.

Ugh.