Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Another One Bites the... Hey!!

Thanks for stealing my post title, Debbie!

Anyway, as someone has already mentioned, I passed the second part of the SEE. By all accounts, the third section is the easiest of the three. I started going through the material last night and it does look to be way more straight-forward than part two. If all goes well, I may yet complete the testing by the end of the year. Then it's just paperwork and waiting on the IRS.

We're trying to make holiday plans, but I still don't have my December schedule, meaning as of Wednesday, I don't know whether or not I'm working this coming Sunday. Of course, I also don't know if I'll be getting paid as the time card system appears to be broken, as is the system I'm supposed to use to request time off. Once again, some half-wit computer programmer using the latest in software development tools has made a simple task impossible. Back in the dark ages when we wrote software in such archaic languages as COBOL and RPG, this sort of screw-up would get you fired. Now everyone simply accepts it as business as usual. I've yet to figure out how this is progress.

Anyway, we are planning on doing a ship inspection in Tampa Sunday the 11th and maybe visit the aquarium, but as I mentioned, no word yet on whether we will be able to. We're also planning on doing Christmas with my parents the weekend after that, but, well, ya know. Christmas itself* will be spent as usual; in our apartment watching an NCIS marathon. Anyway, that's the big holiday plans. We are planning to be good little consumers this year and buy at least token gifts for people. I figure as long as I'm sucking at the government teat, we may as well use some of that money to boost the GDP of China.

[*And not to be a Grammar Nazi or anything, but what is up with "it's self" instead of "itself"? I'm seeing this everywhere and not just in blog posts that are done in haste and where no one expects perfect grammar or spelling or punctuation. I'm talking about published books! How is it possible to be functionally literate and not instantly recognize how wrong that is?]

And for no particular reason other than an arbitrary date on an arbitrary calendar:



Well, I need to go de-stress the ol' noggin' with something mindless.

2 comments:

GreatMatt said...

NCIS Marathon? Sounds like the perfect Christmas (Xmas? Happy Holidays? Saturnalia?) ritual to me!

Ric said...

I usually go with Saturnalia because a) only about one person in 50 knows what it is, and b) it's the actual Roman pagan holiday that was intentionally co-opted by the church for the Christ Mass so people would quit doing all those pagan things like decorating trees, feasting... um.... oops.

Anyway, we are thinking about trying to visit Nicole and fam for Christmas, but we're trying to figure out if we have the time and money. That would pretty much kill the NCIS Marathon thing for this year. :-(