It hasn’t stopped.

at work that is. The system change is a mixed bag. It has been non stop input, repair, waiting, cussing, throwing of mice and monitors… With the new system we basically log in to a virtual desktop in Ohio and use the program right off the server. Great for people in the lower48, not so good when you have to hit a min of 4 servers just to get to Seattle. there is a big lag. A few of us are very fast. On Monday, we locked up the server as the buffered requests and entries came piling in all at once. The solution? they got rid of our buffer. Now things are very slow. It’s like when you type in a form and you type one word ahead of what is displaying on the screen. It is workable for the majority of stuff. And the things it saves time for makes up for the slowness for everyone else. My job got 10 times longer. What I used to get done in a day is now taking me three. It took me a week last month to do it, but I got it down to days. :-) It is a perfect example of software engineers not knowing how a program is going to be used and how people work. There is no consistency in the menus, barely any short cut keys, and some of them are funky. CTRL+P to print is pretty universal across programs & platforms so they used ALT+P. CTRL+P moves across the fields like the tab key does.
The tab key moves across the fields in it’s usual calm demeanor. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is early beta software. I still wouldn’t give it up though. It is so much better than what we had before.

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I am loving the new winter tires on the Mazda. It is very nice to be able to get somewhere. When the snow hits I swear I can hear them growl out an evil laugh.

With the Buick now sold, I was able to get some more of the pat-accessories for the car. The new head unit (radio) has built in blue tooth. This was the big reason I had to change it out in the first place. The car is noisy and my cell phone is quiet. This automatically mutes the radio when a call comes in, and then used the stereo as giant HIFI cell phone for hands free driving. The other big thing it has is USB. I can control Melissa’s ipod through the radio or I can hook up a small portable harddrive (or memory storage device) and since I have a 40 gig drive laying around I filled it with basically all the cd’s I listen to in the car.

I had replaced the front speakers a couple of weeks ago. now it doesn’t sound like the music is playing under a blanket. I did realize why the car is so noisy though. It seems that is how Mazda can give you a car with a nice interior, really good performance (The brakes on my car are bigger than on the Van) for Not so much money.
they give you shitty tires (dangerous if you ask me) and NO SOUND PROOFING. not a bit. It’s like driving in a cement tube. Lucky for me I found Raamatt, and Rick there was excellent enough to send my order out in a more economical way for AK since UPS generally gets very expensive for us. (the stuff is heavy) It also helps that I like tearing apart my car.

So just working my ass off and waiting for the weather to break.