Bogieblog

KC Sight

From the Keratoconus forum that I lurk on, comes a site that shows some common problems with KC vision. I have all of the problems to some degree (except the intact ring problems of course). The double vision affects one eye, with my contacts in - with my glasses, several moons is the rule (christmas lights are quite amazing to see too).

Fortunately, I only get the mild glare (thank goodness!), but the halos I see are a bit worse (and with glasses, their downright horrid). The night vision pictures are pretty accurate for when I am wearing glasses (except I have a lot worse "starring"), but my contacts help out there too and reduce the problems in that area.

Nothing earth-shattering here, just a little something to help people understand what KCer's are going thru. For a long time I thought everyone saw night traffic the way I saw with glasses. I certainly am glad that my contacts help me out!

Interviewing Tactics

A couple of months ago, one of our Quality Engineers at work was promoted. This left us only 1 Quality Engineer, whom had been on the job less than 5 months. Before we could even put an ad out for the position, a gal (I'll call Lisa) applied for the position. She was an aquaintance (maybe a friend?) of the Engineer that was promoted, so had the inside scoop on the opening.

I am on the interview team for Quality Engineers. Usually I only interview if we bring someone in for a 2nd interview, but that time I was in the first round. Although I wasn't overly impresses, she seemed more of a paper pusher than a hands-on person, I wasn't unimpressed either. I was rather put out by her bringing up her contact with "highly placed" managers at the company she presently works at. She didn't mention it just once, she mentioned it several times.

I am pleasantly surprised when I get a thank-you for the interview, from someone. As a Documentation Specialist, most people don't believe I am important enough to send a thank-you to. It's not a deal-breaker for me, but it is part of Interviewing 101 that you send a thank-you to everyone involved. So, I was not surprised in the least that Lisa never sent me a note.

Thursday I got to interview Lisa a second time. For various reasons, the remaining Quality Engineer and the Quality Manager were not going to interview her again. I asked them if they had gotten a thank-you from Lisa, and both of them replied in the negative. Now I had a mission, to see if I could get Lisa to make an admission that she didn't want to make.

So, the interview was going swimmingly, from Lisa's point of view. I'm lobbing her slow pitches, and she is coming up with the answers she thought I wanted to hear - or would be impressed with (of which I truly didn't care about anyway - especially when she kept talking about the "highly placed" managers).

Then I did it. I even announced that I was going to rattle her cage:

Me: "Well, I'm not sure how to put this, it's rather a touchy subject, so I'm just going to bluntly put it out there - why didn't you send out any thank-you notes after the first interview?"

Now, she had a couple of options; admit that she thought she had the job in the bag (because of her inside contact), admit that she wasn't really that interested in the job or take the 3rd option.

AND SHE DID IT - SHE REALLY DID IT. I couldn't believe it but she took the worst option she could have (at least with me):

Time Warps

What is it about people that make them exaggerate about time? It seems like a strange thing to exagerate about. The fish that got away, the amount of traffic, even the amount calls people get from telemarketers are easy to exagerate out of sheer mis-memory. But time, time is something that most people are very aware of - after all, the time is displayed on clocks and watches (naturally), TV's, stoves/ovens, microwaves, VCRs, computers, automobile dashboards (and/or  radio) so people are very aware of the time.

We have a friend, that for years has insisted that he gets up at "0-dark thirty". When asked to expand upon what that means, his answer was 5 AM. Excuse me, you are talking to a person that goes by your house every morning (every day that I'm not pet-sitting in Henniker, and I'm going to work, anyway). Every morning, when I go by, I pass your house between 5:10 and 5:30. There aren't any lights on.

"Oh," he blithely said, "I'm probably in the bathroom." Uh huh, that would be why the bathroom light isn't on. I mean, there are absolutely no lights on in that house (and that house is situated so that I can see windows to every room. With desperation he explained, "I'm watching TV and I leave all the lights off to keep from disturbing my wife." Yep, okay, that huge TV that sits in the living rooom, of which I can see all the windows, and there isn't any sort of glow or color coming out of that room (and these people don't believe in shades or curtains, so the glow isn't being blocked). Alrighty then!

Another friend assures us that she is at work at 6 AM on Saturdays. Mmmm, okay. Then why haven't I seen your vehicle there for the last 3 Saturdays? When I am taking care of pets in Henniker, I go right by her place of employment sometime between 6:15 and 6:30. Her vehicle hasn't been there. In fact, NO vehicles have been there.

Let's get this straight, I don't go out of my way to disprove what these people tell me - I just happen to be going by.

Believe me, we tend to exagerate about time too - but usually it is the other way.

Spider in the Hole

I have explained a couple of times that I don't mind spiders sharing my shower as long as they follow a simple rule.

There are now 2 rules for spiders to follow:

1. As explained above, don't get too bold
2. The shower is not a nursery

See, baby spiders have no idea about the world around them, so they get into trouble.

When mama spider makes the shower their nursery, sometimes a big monster comes in and causes it to rain really hard. That isn't bad if the babies are near the ceiling, where they just get they overspray. But, the first crop of one mama's babies that were in the shower nursery decided that they had to hang out on the fiberglass - about halfway between the shower and the floor - not a pleasant place to be when you are so small and the rain droplets so big!

So, I was in the shower the other day and I thought I had some new floaters in my eyes; everywhere I looked it seemed that gray blobs were on the shower walls, bobbing and dipping - perhaps from the movement of my eyes. Then I realized that they weren't moving with my eye movements and got really close to on of the shower walls to see what I could see. If you guessed that I saw mosquitos - go read the beginning of this post again!

Then I looked at another wall, and saw another little teeny spider trying to hold onto its lifeline, just like the first one was. Then I looked at the 3rd wall - ditto. There were 4 little ones that I could see (goodness knows how many had already been swept down the drain or were on the floor of the shoer when I started the water.

The good news was, when I stood in the center of the shower, I couldn't see the baby spiders, so I just continued doing my thing. The bad news was, when I got out, got my contact in and looked in the shower, there were no babies in sight - just mama sitting up there in the corner as she has for the last several weeks (and is today).

I imagine that all those babies got swept down the drain to the septic tank. I can also imagine that at least one of them survived and is mutating down beneath the ground into something truly hideous that will one day come back up the drain to wreak revenge upon the monster that swept it and its siblings out of paradise into the hellhole it now resides in.

I need to quite reading so much Science Fiction / Fantasy!

Bumper Acorn Crop?

The acorns have been falling for the last week or so. Today, they started picking up the pace and it looks like it will be a good crop this year. Only time will tell if it rivals the bumper crop that we had in 2001. I remember that fall vividly as it was when I was laid off as SInc. and I put in the granite steps to the dogpen. I remember having to rake up the acorns, by the bushel basket, in order to keep from rolling down the hill while I worked.

The bears could use a good crop of acorns to fatten up in preparation for their hibernation. The last two summer/fall feeding seasons have been very lean and the bears have suffered (see the my posts from the fall of 2003 and 2004).

Different Brands of Dishwashers

On Buffy's blog, we ended up discussing cooking and reasons not to cook when people are over. Actually, I started that train of thought with the comment,

"As much as I am (or am not, as the case may be) around for her [Cop Car] to feed me (or us), I'd just as soon go out for meals. That way nobody is stuck with clean up shores [sic] or missing conversation because they are in the kitchen."

Cop Car responded with,

"When there is a crowd, everyone pitches in to clear the table and I either load the dishwasher (in a flash) or do the cleanup thing after everyone leaves."

That goes to show the general difference in how people think, depending upon how their houses are set up. We don't have a dishwasher (oh wait, the dishwasher would be called "Bogie", or the "Wonderful Spouse" so we can't just throw things in there. None of WS's family has a dishwasher and I can only think of 1 friend that has one - so we don't think that way. Any meal made for a group means loads of clean up in the kitchen.

Don't Leave Well Enough Alone

Not being happy with the work that we have accomplished in the yard, yesterday I started transplanting stuff from where it was originally to where it is now.

All the forsythia and azaleas that were at the side of the driveway got dug up and transplanted to the former flower bed between the driveways. I wanted to move them because they had just languished where I had them; never thriving - and not bothering to bloom this year. Since they were planted in pure clay, and almost pure shade, I figured they would like the change.

Additionally, I have decided to add on to the garden at the corner of the driveway, and the bushes are smack-dab in the way, expecially since they were planted only a couple of feet from the rock wall so could potentially block the view to plants installed behind them.

But, to do that, I had to simultaneously remove some of the hostas and astilbes that I had planted there. They were only put there so they had a nice holding place (I had gotten them as bare-root plants, so they didn't have pots they could stay in). So, some of the hostas and astilbes are now where the azaleas and forsythia used to be and vice versa.

Today, I dried to dig up a non-performing rhododendron. It has been slowly getting larger and has green leaves, but has never bloomed. I finally looked at the tag (which it is a surprise there is a tag on it) and noticed that it really needs part shade. It is in full sun. I figured location was the problem so I would move it in next to the other bushes (keep the acid lovers together anyway). I finally gave up trying to dig it up and will have WS yank it up with the 4-wheeler. That sucker may not flower but dang it has some roots!

Sign of the Times

Received via email (which means I have no idea who to give credit to):

BD and Anniversary Wishes

I've been putting in lots of hours between work and pet-sitting - leave the house at 4:45 and get home at 7, so I haven't had much time to do anything but fill hummingbird feeders, work out (at 3:30 AM) and sleep.

So, this is a bit late, but since WS doesn't read this, he'll never know!

Happy Birthday to the Wonderful Spouse. I can't believe he has lived so long (I think he too is surprised that I haven't killed him yet).

Happy anniversary to WS also - as of Wednesday it has been 20 years of wedded bliss [choke, gasp, cough] 25 years of interesting times; 20 of those during which we have been married. May we have another 20 or 40 years together (because if we don't, that means someone is in jail for manslaughter - LOL).

A Common Bitch

Glad we got a tankfull of oil on Tuesday - before the prices really started going up. Got 225 gallons of heating oil at $2.50/gal. You do the math.

Fuel for the vehicle is a different animal. I got gas on Monday at $2.56 for the low-grade stuff. I stopped and got gas last night at $2.85 - after passing stations that were at 3 bucks. I didn't specifically need gas, but would by tonight before coming home from work, and I figured I might as well fill up before it goes up to $3.25, or more, as it already has in parts of the state.

I had almost gotten used to seeing the $40 bill after a fillup (almost a dead empty tank - the 2 previous fillup before last night). Guess I have to get used to seeing even bigger numbers!