23 May 2000

The "cleaning fairies" come today, thank goodness, because someone - possibly even me - threw some food away in the big trashcan in the living room, and it's starting to smell disgusting.

The upside of that is that as soon as I went downstairs this morning, I remembered to write the check for the cleaning crew.

So, Braz's MeadeHall plot wrapped up last night. It's not completely over, of course - there are loose threads still dangling all over the place, and there are some repercussions that will echo for a good long while - but the meat of the plot is pretty well under wraps. I was a little surprised that it ended so quietly, but I think Matt, who could've forced things to drag out quite a bit longer, was just getting tired and wanted it done.

K.T. started making movements on her plot last night as well. But she's said she's going to use her plot to pick up some of the people who kindof got left by the wayside when Braz's plot really picked up, so I'm trying to stay on the periphery of it. (It's hard, because Tyl is one of Zoya's best friends, but then Zoya has quite a few other things to worry about just now, so I don't have to yank on the reins too hard. K.T. and I agreed that Zoya might be occasionally involved, collecting information no one else can get, or if she's asked for help. It's fine with me. I've been agonizing over Braz's plot for so long now that I'm really ready for a bit of a break. I'm looking forward to spending a few weeks or a month on the Hall just having my drink and watching the action and being ready if they need me - but not butting in.

(Truth to tell, I was trying to stay mostly out of the way on Braz's plot, that first night. Someone - and I'm not naming any names - prodded me into action. Playing a priestess of a god intimately connected with the Hall has its drawbacks.)

I hope it stays quiet at work today. Yesterday the managers kept having long discussions in the hallway right outside my door, or carrying the conversation into my office for no good reason. Co-workers came into my little sectioned-off corner of the office, which I really hate unless I've asked them there, and worst of all, they kept taking away my mouse in order to show me things.

I have my projects to do. I know what they are. I've scheduled out when I'm going to be doing them. I like to work in quiet, and I hate being interrupted.

Open letter to all managers and co-workers: The best way to contact me is to send e-mail, and then shut up and wait. Not, send e-mail and then immediately come over and ask if I got it, leaning over to look at my computer screen to see for yourself. If you do that again, I will be forced to rip your head from your body and use the skull for a planter and your brains to fertilize my lawn.

Not that I'm irritated about it or anything.

Word of the Day: draconian - cruel, severe

I always get a laugh when the word of the day is a word I've used before. Of course, then I get confused: Should I continue to try to write a paragraph or two? Or has it been adequately discussed?

In this case, I think I'll expand on the original topic, which was a discusson of Logicon's moderately draconian internet usage policies. Naturally, as is usually the case with corporate policies of this sort, it didn't take me long to learn that the purpose of the policy was to give them an excuse to come down on people who weren't doing their jobs anyway - that is, sortof like our local seatbelt law: They can't pull you over for not wearing a seatbelt, but if you get pulled for speeding, say, and aren't wearing a seatbelt, you can get a ticket for both offenses.

I've spent whole days surfing the Internet and chatting on IM with friends, and I know for a fact that I'm not the only one. I upload my journal entry every morning from work. They don't care, as long as my work gets done on time and I'm not sucking down bandwidth or setting the company up for a lawsuit by downloading pornography.

I'm still a little leery about installing software on the company machine, because I know they have a crawler program that goes through the registries and looks for shareware and games. But that's all right. I'm not interested in getting into any Quake deathmatches at work. I've got a couple of little baby games installed on my Zip disk that don't require a link to the registry for when I get bored. (Besides, when I'm bored at work I'm more likely to write than play games anyway. It sounds busier.)

So I guess it's not too bad. The policies themselves are draconian, but they aren't really enforced unless someone crosses the line or they need to make an example of someone.

Kindof like the speed limit laws, actually.