Public Bathroom Etiquette

On 09.11.09, In Random, True Life, Work, By AC Slater

This morning was like pretty much every other morning of my life, I wake up, come to work, get something to eat in the cafeteria, catch up on my news via cnn.com and engadget.com and eventually have to take a shit. I have no fear of public toilets because frankly everybody shits, but I do feel that there are some unwritten rules of the bathroom that should be followed, especially at the workplace. When I walked into the bathroom this morning there were already 2 people unloading their brown stink monsters into a watery grave so naturally I walked out of the bathroom and went back to my desk allowing ample time for them to finish slaying the beasts. I was happy to see that the two were in opposite stalls, meaning they left an empty stall between them. Now sure I could have split the defense and gone into the middle stall between them, but I feel there should be a little bit of a boundary. And obviously the 2nd guy to setup shop felt the same way or he would have gone into the middle stall.

So I wait about 15 minutes and venture back into bathroom to slay the fiery beast that is trying to escape the bowels of hell and nobody is in there anymore so naturally I go into the handicap stall. Sure I’m not handicap, but why wouldn’t you want a huge stall to relax in while you go to work. If you go into an empty bathroom and don’t choose the handicap stall you might as well have just shit in the sink… Ok, that makes no sense, but you get the point… maybe. So I’m sitting down letting nature run it’s course, when in walks someone else. Ok, no problem I don’t care if someone comes in and pisses or even has to take a shit, but this dude walked right up to the stall next to me and sat down. I don’t need a Larry Craig situation popping up while I’m trying to squeeze one out. What was wrong with the other stall? I could see if maybe someone was in there before and dropped a streaker that just made it look like that dudes ass was nasty and maybe that turned you off from sitting on the same seat as him, but there was nothing wrong with the outer stall, I checked.

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It Finally Happened…

On 01.27.09, In Work, By AC Slater

Not that it’s a surprise to me, since they’ve been talking about it in meetings for months now, but my office has finally implemented a new method of blocking websites on the network. Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the reason for doing it and I have no problem with it blocking sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc, but I’m a little annoyed that sites like Gizmodo, Apple Updates and a few other tech blogs are blocked for being “Online Communities”. I know people spend the first 30 minutes or so reading the newspaper at their desk and drinking their coffee, so why shouldn’t I be able to catch up on what’s going on in the tech world. It’s weird because I can access all the other sites on the Gawker network that I read and sites like Engadget and Cinematical, but Gizmodo doesn’t work. I’m also a little upset that Meebo doesn’t work, but I do understand the reasoning behind it and it’s not like I can’t just use my phone if I really need to chat it up with someone. But half of these sites are blocked because they are “Online Communities”, and then when I go to access an actual online forum that I frequent, it works just fine.

I think they are still testing the software from what I understood from a previous meeting so maybe they are gathering logs of what people access and then will go check to see if they fall into the blocked categories. So I guess I’ll be accessing some of those sites I know should be blocked, from my phone or even a proxy site. I’m not sure if they can figure out that I’m using a proxy site and then block that site also, so it may not be worth it. Good thing I have an iPhone with a full browser, but now I’ll need to charge it here all day since the battery sucks if you’re actually using the internet.

So for all those that needed to get a hold of me while I was at work it looks like you’ll either have to leave a comment here or just call/text my phone. I think my AIM screen name is setup for mobile, so I should still appear online. Oh well, almost 10 years of unrestricted internet access isn’t bad, at least my sites still aren’t blocked so I can continue to update them.

Oops looks like I spoke too soon, this website is now blocked at work because of “games”… Lame! Thank god for the iPhone so I can still write throughout the day.

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Please Learn How To Drive In The Snow

On 12.01.08, In Random, Work, By AC Slater

Naturally when I woke up this morning and looked out the window I was annoyed at how much snow had fallen overnight, not because of the fact that I don’t have a snowbrush in my car, but more so because of the way people were going to be driving.

It’s not like I live in a place where it hardly ever snows, I live in Chicago. It can go from 70 degrees one day to 30 degrees and snowing the next, it’s ridiculous. So knowing how the weather here is you’d think that people would be semi-comfortable driving in the snow, but apparently not. It didn’t even snow that hard last night and people were still going 5 mph in a 35 zone. “Oh, well my car is rear wheel drive, so I have to go slow”, fuck you, you knew that the car was going to suck in the winter so go buy a beater to drive when it’s snowing. Ugh, I even left early for work today because I knew there would be idiots on the road, yet I was still late. And I couldn’t even see anything while driving, due to the lack of a snow brush in my car. I had to MacGyver one out of a t-shirt and a cardboard box, so I had extremely limited visibility yet still managed not get into an accident, which is more than I can say for at least 4 cars that I saw on the way to work.

I will give them the fact that some of the roads were a little slippery, but there was barely any snow on the ground!!! What are these people going to do when it actually snows instead of just flurries. I’m going to have to leave for work 2 hours early for a 30 minute drive. Now I wouldn’t have such a big problem with this if I lived somewhere where it didn’t snow very often, so when it did, people drove like idiots cause they aren’t used to it. But not in Chicago!! It snows like 9 out of 12 months here, people should have figured it out by now. Oh well, I guess on the plus side I have an excuse to call in sick now when I don’t feel like driving in the snow. Hopefully by this time next year we will be moved out west and never have to deal with another Chicago winter.

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Oh Endeca, How I Love Thee

On 09.17.08, In Work, By AC Slater

So at my current place of employment I manage a web database, do e-mail marketing, web marketing, web images, etc. It’s actually a pretty easy job, granted at times there’s a lot to do, but it’s a great environment, good people (most of them) and flexible hours. On the downside, the pay isn’t the greatest, some of the people are down right retarded, and people don’t realize how much work some things are. Which leads me to yesterday.

A little background first (if anyone cares), about 2 years ago we implemented a new website with an all new backend software (Endeca) to run all of our drill downs and product categorization and search on the website. It also gives us the ability to create what they call merchandising rules to show certain items in certain places “other customers bought” type upsells/cross sells, etc. So I’ve been the only person doing anything Endeca rules related, whether it’s swapping out items on our homepage every week, changing landing page items, etc, for 6 of our sites. We have different branches of the company that sell different things that require different sites with different rules, etc. Well I can handle the 6 sites that I currently handle on top of my other work, but as of yesterday it looks like they are moving forward with our other 100+ sites and they want to implement all of these same rules. So I went from maintaining 6 sites to over 100, awesome. Now I would have no problem with this if Endeca was my only job, but it’s not. I also maintain all of the content on the website whether it’s web descriptions to the images.

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