A bed of roses

OK - work update.  The Director did try to offer an explanation for the redundancies but it's hard to hear, 'the department is expanding - we're doing great work - your jobs are safe' whilst two people sitting in the room are leaving through no choice of their own.  Serious dissonance!  But I have secured a meeting with the Director and my new line manager at the back end of January to talk about the future direction of my role and a regrade.  So, yeah...  The plan is still to get the hell out of there.

I have a new desk - #15, I think - and it's actually a brand new desk.  But I didn't get new drawers.

The son has (finally!) secured his promotion with his organisation and starts sometime in the New Year at the Mossley Hill store.  As always with the son and his organisation, there was a certain amount of drama.  He was told the interview was at a specific time and with a specific person.  He arrived at the venue and waited - and waited - and waited.  After half an hour he gave up and left, only to get a phone call saying the time and person had been changed, and telling him off for not 'doing enough' to find this out.  If the organisation changes the time, it's on them to let the interviewee know!  If he'd rocked up half an hour late, or at the wrong place, or something, they'd have something to complain about.  Anyway, it seems the interview went well and he has been offered the job.  But he needs to follow his sister's example and get out - imho.

My mother and step-father were supposed to be visiting his cousin in Canada over Christmas, but he just isn't well enough.  He's been back in hospital having cardiograms and who knows what, and the doctor has said he can't go.  So, we're back on with the hosting the family, idea.  But my husband always says we should go to them because they're getting older, now.  And now that he's struggling to even get to and from town, I'm thinking myself that we should go there.  My argument has been, 'but then they have to organise the food and so on, which is a stress in itself'.  Plus, it's easier for them and the daughter's gang to all get to us.  However, her boyfriend has a car and I'm wondering if he can either transport us and the food to West Derby (although that would require some logistical planning), or bring mother and step-father to us (which would save them having to cope with the bus).  Or maybe we can book them a taxi?  I'll talk it through with the husband, later.

I am absolutely loving iZombie.  McIver is absolutely brilliant, taking on a new character in every episode.  It's especially interesting when she's interacting with other zombies who are also 'on' brains.  In one, she was on the brain of a father, whilst her boyfriend was on the brain of the man's teenage daughter - absolutely hilarious banter between them.  In the last one I watched, Liv and two other zombies had all eaten the brains of the same conspiracy theorist - so were all spouting nonsense (with a particular obsession about Tupac!), but in slightly different ways because they were all different people.  Great writing, great acting, amazing lead.

I completed my sort-of-Nano, and I do think there's something in there - I'm just really unsure what to do about it...

The grandson has been ill all week with a virus, so won't be down this weekend.  I'm planning a big house clean so that the new couches have a nice environment to occupy on Monday, and so that we can get the Christmas decorations up next weekend when the grandson is back.

Last night was the work Christmas do.  We went to Fazenda, which features a huge salad bar and an endless supply of meat.  Everything was lovely (the rib eye and pork belly were particularly delicious) - but then I threw up later in the evening.  So, really not sure what was going on.  I'll raise it with the organiser on Tuesday.

And that is quite enough randomness - except to say that it's nearly 8am and still dark outside :(

Our department's boss is the kind of person who wants to make people happy.  So, when a colleague from another department says, 'I'm having an IT-related problem', he says, 'I'll get one of my staff to fix that for you'.  Not, put that in a Helpdesk job and I'll ask the team to look out for it and prioritise it.  Just, 'I'll get it fixed for you'.  And yesterday, he decided that I was the person to fix not just one but TWO random problems, without stopping to think whether I was, in fact, the best person to deal with them.

The first looks like a classic PICNIC (problem in chair not in computer).  Person A creates a document in MSWord that includes a table with merged cells.  Everyone they send this document to can see the table's contents, except for Person B who is a) a VERY senior person in the organisation, and b) a technophobe at the best of times.  Based on this information (seriously, this is ALL I have), I am expected to wave some sort of magic wand and fix it!  I happened to mention out loud that miracles seem to have become part of the final line in my JD about 'any other tasks commensurate with the grade' and accidentally set my team boss on the war path.  Although, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

Anyway, the upshot is that I've asked Person A for the offending document to see if I can see any obvious problems with it and if (when!) I can't, I'll raise a Helpdesk job on behalf of Person B and get it properly investigated.

The second is more doable on the face of it, although I'm sure the person involved knows their way around a MSWord document as well as I do and if they're struggling, I don't know if I'm going to fix it.  Anyway, the issue is that they've formatted a document to the point where all the formatting is now fighting them and it actually looks a bit of a mess.  If all else fails, I can copy and paste the text without the formatting into a new document and then redo the formatting.  We shall see.

And it's not like I have NOTHING to do in terms of my own work.  *sigh*

Oh, but one of my current colleagues really stood up to one of my former colleagues who was rubbishing the solution we've put together for one of the Random-Collection-Of-Bits-And-Pieces-That-Make-A-Project-Honest things.  So, that was a little ray of light.

In gaming news, I finished off the Nightmare Before Christmas episode and the Tron episode in KH2.5.  When we went back to Hollow Bastion, Cloud and Aerith had a Moment.  I just don't know...  Aeris died.  That's how they chose to play it in FFVII.  It feels like fan service to now give Cloud a shot at being with her in ANOTHER franchise.  And what about Tifa?  Who, BTW, bears an uncanny resemblance to one of my colleagues.

I investigated the Absent Silhouette thingy in the Pirates of the Caribbean episode but got beaten up.  I ignored the one in Twilight Town.  I've just done a bit of investigation and, since they are optional bosses, I may continue to ignore them.  I do want to give myself a fighting chance of completing Primal before the end of the year AND I have Nano...

OK, that'll do for now.  Toodles, DW!