lisaviolet's diary

Tuesday, October 01, 2024

skystuff
12:49 PM - 10/01/2024

The topic: New category
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Skystuff - trees, birds, clouds, sunset, sunrise, satellites...if I'm looking up and taking video or photographs? I'll be sharing it.

The first video is from June, when I caught one of the rockets from Vandenburg AFB.

If you watch closely, you can see debris falling from the trail.

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Friday, October 04, 2024

otherstuff
07:47 AM - 10/04/2024
The current weather is in the middle of a week long heat wave - I'm hating it
I'm worn out from the heat and dark house and fan noise

The topic: What a morning
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Around 4:45am, the dog starts barking. No idea why. It's dark, his eyesight isn't great and I kind of thought he was barking at his bed, thinking there was a cat in it (his bed is next to my side of the bed). Brian finally got up and showed Jingles that the bed was, indeed, empty.

Dog stops barking. For about ten minutes, then starts up again. Damn it. We keep telling him to stop. He doesn't. (Is this actually a Lassie moment and he's telling us that little Timmy fell down the well?) I drag myself out of bed, throw on a teeshirt, and follow him out of the bedroom. I follow him to the back of the yard (for those few, if any, of you ever check out the weather cam, hope you enjoyed the show). He walks over by one of the avocado trees and lifts his leg (mind you, he's still wearing the diaper that he's been wearing since last night, the one I put on him before we go to bed). I just shake my head and go back to bed. He's back in the bedroom shortly after. And starts to bark again.

I reach over, grab the dog bed, lift it up and let him see that there is no cat in it. Oh, well, that's cool. He climbs into it and goes back to sleep. It's about a quarter after five at this point.

We both get out of bed before 5:30. Get dressed, I take the dog's (heavy, wet) diaper off (some mornings it's bone dry), walk outside to toss it in the trash (bins are out front) and I see Fluffy, an old feral guy who's been around for years. I've started feeding him if he's around in the morning.

Back inside, I turn on the computer, give the cats their morning Temptations (it's how I take a headcount each morning). Walk outside with Carol and Fury, where they get their own little piles of treats. Toss a few out onto the grass so the vultures who have already inhaled their treats will let these two eat their's in peace.

I walk back into the office, grab a handful of treats, put them in my pocket, head out to the garage, take two cans of Fancy Feast from the cupboard and dish those up for Fluffy. Go out front, he's ready, he's closer than he's ever been to me, but he still growls and hisses. I set down the food, empty my pocket of Temptations next to the soft food and head back inside.

Once in the office to start the online day, I see that this weblog isn't up. An error message. "Site Error: Unable to Load Site Preferences; No Preferences Found". Just a blank page. I did a small amount of research and ended up contacting my host. Turns out they're having a coding problem with the SQL database on the server. Obviously, it's fixed now.

So, let's get this day started!

jingles feral

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Monday, October 07, 2024

crankypants
11:28 AM - 10/07/2024

The topic: What I hate most about my job
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Yeah, I work from home, but I also do all of the paperwork for the company. Accounting, invoicing, generating shipping labels...

The part I hate? I mean I really, really hate? Shipping.

From start to finish.

I make the labels put on the products, the ones with the name of the company. The cost for 250 sheets of labels right now is over $150. I print the labels off on a laser printer and cut them out with a Silhouette. There are ten labels per sheet.

Due to the kind of paper used I can only print so many sheets at a time or the printer jams. A real PITA to unjam.

Then, the Silhouette print and cut doesn't always work right. The blade loses the outline of the labels and gets all skewed and the labels are ruined.

Well, I printed out a bunch of label sheets Saturday and am going to try using the Curio2 to do the cutting. Unlike the Cameos, where the paper goes into the machine and cuts out that way, with the Curio, the media being cut stays stationary and the blade moves over the stationary media.

Then UPS keeps changing the website. It also has a problem with zip codes that cover multiple towns and cities. Earlier this year, I had to void out nine labels because the UPS website kept changing the name of the city. Even using the preview option before printing, the city still would have changed. It wasn't saving the correct address, but would save with the incorrect city. This was increasingly frustrating. I felt bad for the customer, because he was getting a notification for each label generated, whether it was right or wrong.

And don't get me started on shipping to Alaska, Hawaii or Canada. Canada especially. So many forms, so many hoops. And, when part of a shipment is lost?

Filing the claim is a stinking nightmare. Back in August we shipped five boxes to Canada. Four reached their destination, the fifth was lost. $685.00 package.

We waited a couple of weeks to see if the box was found, it wasn't and Brian built another unit and we sent it out. That was when I filed the actual claim.

I uploaded so many documents and finally, they announced the claim was closed. I was pissed off and started finding every email I could find for UPS and emailed each and everyone, uploading all of the documents and letting them know this has dragged on for over a month.

Last week, one of them responded with "oh, I see the missing document, we'll be sending a check within the next couple of weeks".

I hate shipping.

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