Secular Confessions

I had a major win today at work. I've been going back and forth with our Exchange team about my users having calendar entries mysteriously disappear. And then conference rooms were 'accepting' meetings but not blocking their time out, so leaving them available for double-booking. Exchange kept insisting my users were scheduling wrong, and I kept going back to them insisting they weren't. All this started 8/2 and one of the high ups even closed out my ticket 9/27. :angry: I opened a new one and CC'd the high-level tech guy I'd been working with. He ignored me. A lower-level help desk technician did respond to me (after I sent a follow-up email asking if anyone was going to address this major issue) a week after I opened a 2nd ticket. There was lots of back and forth with this Lori chick in the middle. She was on my side, but getting the big-wigs to admit there was a fundamental problem was difficult. At one point last week, a top person even left a voicemail for Faye stating that the overwhelming consensus was the issue was user training and best practices. I was LIVID!

FF to today and Faye and I are meeting with two of the top level email team members and the one was the guy that blew me off at the end of Sept. He finally found the problem and even showed us on his computer. It indeed was a fundamental structural issue on the back-end. I've said it all along and had to really push hard but finally convinced them. It was a smug moment for me. :D

I mean really...for one, my users have done this the same way for years and all of a sudden they're all going to start scheduling meetings in a different way? AND I'm too stupid to know my users aren't doing it right? If that was the case, I would have never contacted them to begin with. They simply didn't know what the problem was.

It could have been a catastrophe too because we're gearing up to migrate to Office 365. The back-end changes they're making in preparation for that is what started the mess. If I didn't catch it and hound them, who knows what other issues would have occurred after Alumni Affairs migrated? Now we can be fixed before migration. Go me. :D

How frustrating! I hate dealing with stuff like that.

Myles, with MFP, a lot of the time, you've got to take the advise, and leave the snark. I haven't been on the fora in a while, but Ninerbuff was a good one for non-snarky but informative. There was another (Dinosporo?) who was good as well, in a non-snarky way. Acg gives great info, but goes through snarky/non-snarky phases, and mostly operates in the snide/sarcastic realm. There are others, but I have forgotten. There are several women there that have checked in the attitude as well(Raesomething is one).

Go Chrissy Go! And who knows, maybe this will be a great phone interview?


So I did it. I cut my hair. since the curls are back, it's shoulder length when dry and I feel naked. I had wanted to wait a until spring to donate when I would probably have been closer to my ideal length. But I had gotten a bug up my butt and just wanted to do it like now. I find out that the local (since it's not locks of love....they have major wait lists so a local person started making wigs for local kids) person is currently working on one for a 5 yr old who put down that she wanted a bob style wig for xmas. And my hair color happens to be right in the colors that she is working with for this little girl....it generally takes at least 3 people donations to make a wig. My stylist was just taking to the lady and she thought it was likely my hair would go into that wig.....she was going to call her tonight or tomorrow to let her know that there was another pony of hair to pick up.

So even though I am feeling naked and my hair is shorter than I really ideally would like...and shorter than it's almost ever been (shoulder length is very short for me!).....I am so glad that I could donate at least once. I know in a few months my hair will longer and it will be fine.

Jennifer, that's such a generous thing to do! My SIL did it once, but never managed to it grow out again.

On the hair front- DH took scissors to Mira's hair, and it looks horrible. I kept asking him to stop, and he kept going and going, pretending like he knows what he's doing, and saying how nice it looks. And he cut it really short, so I don't even know if it can be fixed. She has a performance coming up in school, and that just ,makes everything worse.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't get worked up over hair, but the timing of it, the fact that he ignored me when I asked him to stop, it is really really making me upset.

I think you did the most awesome thing in the world Jennifer. You're right, in a few short months your hair is going to be at your ideal length anyway, and you quite possibly made a little girl's Christmas wish come true. That alone brings tears to my eyes.

Suja, I'd be beyond frustrated too, especially since he wouldn't listen :(

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Originally Posted by Cosmosmom

Go Chrissy Go! And who knows, maybe this will be a great phone interview?

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I hope so. If I get the opportunity, I'm definitely bringing up the calendaring issue and how I pushed central CIT to keep digging because I knew right from the beginning it was them. :D

I am trying to order some I Spy games for the kids for xmas. How do I know if I can run it on my computer? It says Windows 98/XP
Chrissy, don't slap me.

You can find out which windows OS you have pretty easily, Bridget. Right click on 'My Computer' (either on desktop, or from start menu), go to Properties. The 'General' tab will tell you what you're running.

I can't remember if your computer is newer or not, but even if you have Windows 7 there's a neat little trick called "Compatibility Mode" that you can use to make most Windows XP programs run. However, that said, I have a few games of Conner's that were made for XP and I cannot get the to run on Windows 7. The graphics were designed for cards much older and the game doesn't know how to behave itself with a newer graphics card. It's not just pixelated...it's so blocky large and blurry, the games are useless. :(

You can Google search the name of the game and see if anyone has been able to make it play with their Windows 7 machine. Surprisingly, a lot of people do that sort of thing all the time and there's usually tons of information on how to make an older game run on a newer computer. You can decide for yourself whether the effort seems worth it or not. For you, I'd be willing to use Team Viewer & remote in to help if you needed me to.

If you have Vista, I'd skip it. Vista is just junk and can barely run programs made for it, much less older software.

I have one laptop that runs Vista and one that runs Win 7. I think that we have been able to play all our old games on them...no wait, there might be one that plays on one machine but not the other I think. The biggest issue we can into was trying to play a game on both machines together and the home network was not behaving because we think of them being different OS. But DH found a thing online called Game Ranger and now we can connect to each other through that to play Age of Empires. :) We used to play that when we were first dating.

Do they like hidden pictures? There are a bunch of ones from a maker called PopCap that are pretty good.

I also hate Vista. I have it on my home PC and I am sure that is why I always am having problems with that computer. I came on the computer when I bought it. I have XP at work, even though they wanted me to upgrade to Windows 7. I would rather keep XP because it seems more efficient and is not new so I don't have to learn anything new.

On another front, I made a response yesterday that for some reason isn't there anymore.

Myles, I also noticed all the snark on the MFP forums. It was pretty hilarious IMO and your comments made me think of the "personality" of some forums. I think here at APA we used to have a different sort of personality than what we currently have. I am a member of a natural hair care forum for black women/men or parents of black/bi-racial children and they also have a particular feel. More of a blase' sort of feel at that forum and just giving out tips about "napptural" hair - meaning unstraightened, kinky/curly hair. They crack me up about their bias against straighening irons/hot combs and what we call "the creamy crack" which are hair relaxers or what we call perm (FYI it astounded me when I was in jr. high and some of my white friends who had straight hair got "perm" and then their hair was curly!!! When black people get perms we go from nappy/kinky to straight so it was an eye opener for me about perms). They also always reference Chris Rock's documentary "Good Hair" when parents complain about not knowing how to take care of their little girls' hair and want to get the little girls a relaxer. That is probably the only time drama comes up over there.

I am also a member of a political forum and they are WAY beyond snarky. They are pretty insulting in a fun mannered (IMO) way. There are a few people there who are far out in terms of their thoughts. Being a member there has made me realize that I need to be more involved in local and national politics because there are some nutsos out there and if we let them, they will take over the government.

I think APA used to be more....drama prone is all I will say. It has really toned down over the years around here, which is both good and bad in some aspects.

And Chrissy, in regards to your experience having Bobbie and them not being proactive care givers, that is just horrible. My mom had pre-eclampsia and she was also a teen mom, got PG at 15 with my older brother. He was born when she was 16. She had great healthcare providers and due to a slight elevation in BP and moderate swelling, she was put on bed rest. She didn't comply with the bed rest at home so they put her in the hospital. She remembers the nurses and doctors lecturing her because toward the end of her pregnancy, they told her not to even get out of the bed and to use the bed pan for going to the bathroom. She hated it so would get up and go to the restroom and then feel so bad because her nurses and doctors would lecture her about how they didn't want her to have any complications and couldn't she just sit still for 2-3 more weeks. My brother was born healthy and at term. He was 8lbs 8oz. This was 1978, so it is unbelievable that they treated you so badly in 1993 when there were so many more advances between those time periods.

I was monitored closely with both of my pregnancies due to my mom's pre-eclampsia. She only had it with her first pregnancy though. My OB told me that it is more common in teen moms.

Erin

Chrissy - Were you able to resolve the problem with calendar entries just randomly disappearing? My boss randomly began experiencing that problem quite some time ago. The IT people went through a ton of different attempts at a solution, including rebuilding her Exchange profile from scratch and all kinds of other stuff, and were never able to resolve it. Over a year she dealt with it! We moved to a new version of something and her calendar stopped dropping entries, but they never did figure out why it started in the first place.

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Originally Posted by dana_renay

Chrissy - Were you able to resolve the problem with calendar entries just randomly disappearing? My boss randomly began experiencing that problem quite some time ago. The IT people went through a ton of different attempts at a solution, including rebuilding her Exchange profile from scratch and all kinds of other stuff, and were never able to resolve it. Over a year she dealt with it! We moved to a new version of something and her calendar stopped dropping entries, but they never did figure out why it started in the first place.

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Sorry, I'm so swamped at work :( Essentially, they build our (Alumni Affairs) Exchange system wrong to begin with. When they migrated this unit to the Cornell Exchange system, it brought along a lot of crap (technical term :) ). It was a huge mess that involved many users losing, permanently, years worth of email. Rather than rebuilding then, they patched things together to get this unit plugging along and left it. We've simply been lucky that things 'worked' for the most part for the last 4-5 years. Now that they're making other changes in preparation for our migration to Office 365, all the ugly bugs are rearing their heads.

At least for our resources, we're going to have to start from scratch. Admin assistants are quite pissed they have to re-enter meetings, but it is what it is. It's better to start fresh now than continue having difficulties forever into the future. I suspect they'll have to rebuild many user profiles...those that were here with AA&D way back in the day.

One of the things they did was give the default "permission" to our resources as "owner" Ugh. Anyone with a NETID is an owner to our conference room. :rant:

I'm reading backwards and catching up... Erin, I just saw the Tampax commercial. I loved it! I don't remember it airing back in 97, but that makes me want to have my period right now, just so I could use their product and dance around like those girls. :D

Oh, and I haven't gotten to the point where you may have decided to apply to Notre Dame, but I know some seculars who attended college there. They didn't complain about the religiosity of the school at all. I think it's a pretty good academic institution. I hope you applied!

Sorry, that's all for now.

Oh, and Chrissy, I think it's probably the most expedient solution to have people manually re-enter everyone's calendar entries for now. It'd be way more costly to get to troubleshoot it properly when you're just going to be upgrading the whole thing soon anyway.

BTW, I got a Win8 personal laptop last month, and can I just say I am not impressed with the OS? Since I got certified on NT eons ago, everything up until now felt familiar, since it was built around the same structure. I knew where to look in the guts of the system to find things and tweak them. Now with Win8 I feel like I'm wobbling around on it like a newborn fawn. Have you had to support Win8 yet as part of your job, Chrissy? I hope you don't have to.

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Originally Posted by Suja

On the hair front- DH took scissors to Mira's hair, and it looks horrible. I kept asking him to stop, and he kept going and going, pretending like he knows what he's doing, and saying how nice it looks. And he cut it really short, so I don't even know if it can be fixed. She has a performance coming up in school, and that just ,makes everything worse.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't get worked up over hair, but the timing of it, the fact that he ignored me when I asked him to stop, it is really really making me upset.

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I'd be pretty pissed too! The good thing is that bad haircuts look so cute on young children. I'll bet you can salvage something from his hackjob. Please share a picture if you're up for it.

Sorry to be posting up a storm in here today. Would one of you smart ladies who is on MFP (since I know a few of you are) explain something to me? I tried asking around, but I don't think people understood my question:

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Me: I need someone smarter than me to please explain how - at the end of the day - I can be only 37 cals below my calorie goal, but 61g short on Carbs, 16g short on Fat and 86g short on Protein? ... Please see yesterday's food diary for more info.

MPM: You just need to play with your food selections if you're concerned... it takes time to find your "perfect mix" but it's really about choices. If you look at mine... it's not perfect, but it's working now... I just try to keep my ratios in line... 20% fats, and about 40% equally for both carbs/proteins... The mobile app gives a nice graph of your percentages ;-)

Me: Here's what's confusing me. 61g carbs is 244 cal, 16g of fat is 144 cals, 86 g of protein is 344 cals. So if you add up all the cals from the macros I had "remaining" for the day, wouldn't I have been 732 cals short of my calorie goal? Or is that not the way it works?

MPM: I don't think you can equate it like that... or, maybe you can? Sometimes I don't trust the inputs that others have done, and I use the barcode scanner on my phone to make sure I have it right via the informaiton on the package...


SS: I had a hard time getting enough protein before I started with protein powder. I was reluctant about drinking it at first because it seemed like a lot of calories for a drink but it's actually pretty good at filling me up.

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See, I'm not having a hard time eating my macros. I'm having a hard time figuring out how MFP does the math.

Here's a screenshot of my Food Diary totals from yesterday:

Attachment 9549

If you calculate my goals as (Carbs x 4) + (Proteins x 4) and (Fats x 9), it adds up to roughly my calorie goal for the day (= 1771). So if I'm showing I'm UNDER on all 3 macros, what else is going into the calories I've been eating? There are no other macros I'm aware of.

Oh, cwap. Sorry --- last post for awhile. I just realized what the problem is. It's that the foods I report don't all have accurate macros recorded for them. So if I say I ate 4oz steak which has roughly 30g of protein, but my itemized entry for the steak says 0 g of protein, then MFP will record the calories but obviously not the protein.

Mystery solved. I guess I just had to talk it out with you guys. :P

I'm glad Myles because that was getting to be too much math for me! Why I like WW points. LOL

Suja I would be so mad at DH if he cut our kids hair. I mean other than if it was truly something that had to be done like something awful stuck it in. NO way does he need to be near it. I don't think he would though because he still has a nick in his ear from his mom cutting him by accident when doing his hair! Even the dogs if they need a trim, I do it. Works for Molly but Cosmo needs a groomer.
Nope, little dude will be seeing the professional when it's time. Thankfully my place is pretty cheap. Mine are in the 15-20 range and it's a local place where I see the same stylist every time.

LOL, Myles, you're on fire as Alicia Keys would say. Sorry but I wouldn't be able to help with nutrional stuff at all. I eat like a teenaged boy and know that I should be trying to be better, but I am so bad about food. (Sitting here drinking a real Mt. Dew at 8:30 pm! :D) ....They make some knock-off stuff here without all the ingredients.

We had Travis' parent-teacher conference last night; it went ok. They pretty much said the same thing thing they always do-that he seems bright enough but that when he's in a big group, he clams up and doesn't volunteer to answer many questions. I am not worried about it; that's just how he is.

Speaking of Travis, he used the F word tonight! And in proper angry context! DH and I don't swear very much at all and certainly don't use that word, so I wonder where he's picked it up? I didn't say anything to him. I think I'll let it slide unless it becomes a habit.

I'm still waiting to hear if I've got through to the interview stage of the post-graduate program...waiting, waiting, waiting!

Suja, I did a really bad job on Ro's hair when I tried to cut it myself for his first haircut. And then I kept trying to fix it and it got worse and worse and worse. It was awful. My DH was not happy with me, but he also wasn't there at the time telling me to stop. We did take him to the salon to get it fixed, and it was better. I guess the other option is a kids wig or a hat or a memory that hopefully you'll laugh at down the road.

I left a voicemail for my dad saying that it was supposed to stop raining by this coming weekend, and the next morning I woke up to find an itinerary in my inbox with his arrival this coming Friday. So my mom and I just coordinated a mini family reunion at her house on Saturday. I'm cooking two main dishes, a kid main dish, a side dish, and I got a bunch of snacks and finger foods at the grocery store this morning. My sister told my mom she had to cook potato latkes also, and it was stressing my mom out, so I told my sister that she needed to do it since she is the only person who identifies as Jewish.

I was starting to tell my next story in a more colorful way, but I think I'll just be brief. DS pooped his pants in school because he thought he could hold it until he got home. We had a dentist appointment right after school. Luckily I had a spare change of clothes and an entire container of baby wipes and a couple of plastic bags in the car. The reason he wanted to hold it until he got home was because he doesn't like to wipe himself. Needless to say, the twins are cold turkey getting to wipe themselves all the time now.

And DS is getting more out of control, not less. He poked someone with a paperclip at school yesterday, although he said it was an accident. He spit on someone recently and then lied and told me it was because he disliked her because she was hitting him all the time (he later admitted she doesn't hit him). He did not put his shoes on yesterday when we had to get S. from preschool after being asked multiple times and then given a 2-minute warning, so we left the house without his shoes. I had him wait outside the school and the restaurant where we got take-out because it's not appropriate to be barefoot inside businesses. I don't know what to do. DH was having him help with his car the other day, but had to keep sending him back inside because he couldn't stop messing with stuff he wasn't supposed to touch.

On the bright side, S. had a dentist appointment today and 6 months ago we could barely get him to cooperate enough to have his teeth counted. Today he held still for the entire exam and cleaning. Things do change and sometimes improve.

Gosh, L. Ro sounds like Kai. Not the pooping part but I have to tell him at least six times to get his shoes on as he gallops around the living room and then he'll run to the room to get the shoes (or so I think) and come back to the living room without his shoes. So I will say, "Where are your shoes?", and he will laugh and laugh and slap his forehead while saying, "Ohhhh, man! I went POTTY!
Also, he can't keep his hands off stuff. He gets yelled at daily (when dbf is here) for messing with the plastic over the windows. Dbf gets so mad and says Kai doesn't listen as if he's trying to be naughty but really he lacks impulse control. Big time. I've been working with him on it and I do think he's getting better but I'm sure dbf hasn't noticed that. He keeps his hands out of our faces now, and my dad's and brother's. That was really annoying for everyone. He would seriously poke your face and thought it was funny.

We all cut our own hair here. Dbf shaves his, I cut mine, Savana's, Kai's. I just can't justify paying for it when no one cares lol. I will certainly be happy to start paying for haircuts (within reason) when and if someone starts caring.

Gwenn, I think I've completed all of the parts of the test with Sawyer. I have found he knows more words then I realized actually. It's just those 10 or so he uses so much that it seems like that's all he is saying. I'll forward you the info as soon as I type out my scribbles. Oh, and thanks so much for the skype offer! How generous you are to offer to work for free on the weekend! I don't have skype, however, and I feel like it'd never work with my other children would be all up in your face/screen.

:), Aw, L. I'm impressed with S for sitting still! Cash would not open his mouth for the dentist a few months ago. LOL.

Oh, and speaking of food, L, could you post the recipe that you posted once of those taco type things that were made with wonton wrappers and had ground beef and little stars in them? I think it was you that had posted about those.

Ash, I'll look it up in a bit. I'm off to pick up the twins, drop some food off at my mom's and maybe get a Christmas tree.

Mira was off today. She complained about her legs hurting (has been for a few days), and went back to sleep after puking up breakfast. No fever, but woke up kind of grumpy and needy. I gave her some ibuprofen, and she was back to her normal self. The meds should have worn off by now, but so far, so good.

Anyway, this meant that I stayed home with her, and got an appointment to get her hair fixed (the stylist was laughing about how she's going to be the only 3 year old around with a sophisticated, more adult haircut; she ended up with a pixie, which is all the remaining hair allowed). I don't ordinarily care about hair; after all, it grows back. The circumstances really pissed me off, and every time I looked at it, it made me still more mad at DH. It was better for my blood pressure to get it fixed.

Myles, that sort of thing happens ALL the time. Also, there are foods that subtract calories associated with fiber from their total, and you could end up going over on every macro and still be under on cals! Drove me nuts until I figured it out.

Suja, I understand. I hope you don't think I was saying "who cares". I was upset with dbf when he shaved Kai's hair once. To the skin. I loved Kai's hair and when he walked out of the bathroom smooth headed, I was mortified. I actually had to walk away because I wanted to cry. That's why I am in charge of haircuts now. I hope Mira is feeling better.

Suja, I would react the same way. It's the not stopping part and like you, everyday time I saw it I would get angry.

There is a very remote possibility of DH taking some contract work in Quantico VA - I'm not setting too much stock in it because he always seems to have something about to be offered that never materializes. But the possibility exists that we might move out there. Any info you would like to share about considering the move?

Bridget, I'm glad you found going through all that to be a positive experience. I actually think he will do fine but it's good to set everyone's mind at rest. And don't thank me. My secular girls are almost like family to me so getting to help with something like that just makes me feel like I know you all better. I watched you and L throughout your pregnancies with S and S so I feel invested!

On the computer subject, my coworker has a new laptop she bought this fall. She downloaded a trial version of office and it expired. Instead of purchasing a product key, she got her mother to use a discount to buy it at her local store and she tried to load it. It keeps asking for a product key and when she enters hers it won't accept it. I told her she needs to delete the trial version, but she wasn't sure how to do that so I told her just to delete both and reinstall but I think she just deleted the shortcut and not the program. So now I somehow agreed to do it for her if she brings her laptop to work tomorrow. I think she's running Win8. I din't have admin rights on my work computer and have Mac at home so hoping I can figure it out from what I remember from Vista. Any pointers, ladies?

Poor puppy is feeling anxious. We had his crate connected to a pen and he sleeps in there at night. We want him sleeping with us so DH just disconnected the crate to put in our room so he can sleep with us. Poor little guy watched the whole procedure with a worried expression and isn't so sure he likes the new version of his pen. So much emotion in this little guy!

It would be AWESOME if you moved here, Mandy. This area is wonderfully diverse, DC has every cultiral amenity one could hope for, excellent food, and the Smithsonian museums are FREE! The Shenandoahs are nearby, the Blue Ridge aren't that far either, and while not exactly close, the beaches aren't too far either; pretty much anything outdoorsy you can imagine doing, you can around here. The close in school systems are generally somewhere between good and excellent. We even have THE top high school in the country (public) around here. The bad about this area are the cost of living (high) and traffic (second worst in the nation).