Anyone Want It?

Always need to be careful when Friday the 13th falls on a monday

Jeremy has no idea what a calendar looks like.  This should come as a shock to nobody.

So, nobody likes mondays.  They're that first work day after a "relaxing" weekend filled with shoveling that flaky white crap off your driveway.  It's a time for catching up on the ridiculous pile of emails you somehow managed to get over the weekend where everybody but you was apparently working.  

People also fear Friday the 13th.  It's become such a thing that it gets its own word, "Triskaidekaphobia."  

So, when you combine the two concepts, you get monday the 13th.  That's today, if you hadn't noticed.  

As such, a thing happened at work today which is mightily symbolic of monday the 13th.  I work with a number of suppliers who provide goods and services to the company I work for.  One of these suppliers had a quality issue a little while back that they developed a fix for, but wanted to elaborate on the root cause of the issue.  So, they sent me a box full of their products that have the root cause on them so that I can...well...quite frankly, I'm not sure what it is I'm supposed to do with this box of stuff, but they sent it to me.  

Normally, when a supplier sends me a box of material, it stays in the warehouse and I get a notification that I got a box of material and the warehouse folks ask me what is to be done with them.  I coordinate with them, and things happen.  Delegation!  In today's case, this didn't happen, and the box of products showed up in my office...8 cubic feet of cardboard (a full approximately 17% of my available office area) with stuff inside that I can't possibly use in my office.  I have even less of an idea now what I'm supposed to do with this stuff.

Regardless, I open the shipping box and pull out the gubbins inside.  Inside the box is a container with the materials in it...well...more or less.  A full 20% of the material was broken during shipping and now exists as a pile of fragments at the bottom of the container.  So not only can I not use this stuff in my office, but I can't use most of it anywhere since it's either broken or contaminated with broken pieces.  I have further even less of an idea now what I'm supposed to do with this stuff.

I sent the supplier an email explaining the situation and how the box arrived damaged.  I ask the supplier if they had expected me to return this box of product after I was done doing whatever it was I was supposed to do with it.  The supplier's response was to say that they didn't need it back, and since it got broken, they can just send me another one.  I continue to have further even less of an idea what I'm supposed to do with this stuff, and now there's going to be more of it!   

Ladies and Gentlemen...only on monday the 13th. 

Also: Write Better Headlines

My office feels a little more 2017ish today  

Happy New Year, Jeremy.  Boy, have I got a list of resolutions for you...

So, today is the first day of 2017 where I can actually get something accomplished after spending the entire day yesterday trying in vain to unearth myself from the deluge of emails I got while I was away.  Pretty typical for an engineer's vacation.  So now, I can officially start in on 2017 with my new list of new year projects and performance evaluation metrics and other such worky nonsense.  

So, for 2017, I think you should take more showers...and try to be funny once in a while...

Since I'm not quite into the full swing of 2017 yet...

He's already written the date wrong twice.  That's another resolution for you...write stuff down correctly.  

...it doesn't quite feel like a new year in the office here.  My tiny little light-up Christmas tree is still up on top of my office, I still have at least a couple cookies left at home (all of the raisin bread is, of course, long gone), and there are still lingering bits of Christmas spirit around.  Nobody's yet yelling at each other for stupid crap like putting a shipment of our incoming materials on a truck bound for Vermont...I mean...hypothetically.  Yeah...nothing like that happened today or anything.  

Maybe you could resolve to be a little less transparent with your anecdotes.  Also, try to be funny once in a while.  

But, we're slowly and surely making our way into 2017.  Here's to you, 2017...let's make it a good one!  

Seems Like I Wrote This Last Year...

Happy Holidays from Jeremy’s Sametime Status!  


Same to you, Jeremy.  Here's to tossing 2016 unceremoniously out onto its stupid face and moving on to 2017!  


So, it's that time of year again.  It's time for egg nog (if only I weren't allergic to eggs), Christmas trees (if only I weren't allergic to tree pollen), family (if only I weren't allergic to my parents' cat), friends...


...if only you had friends...


It's more or less officially the Holiday Season.  Sure, we've had Christmas music playing in stores since mid-October (if only I were making that up), but we're now less than a week away from Christmas, so we can actually say, without the guilt, that it's time.  Sure, not everybody celebrates Christmas, but there are plenty of holidays around this time of year that you can and should take part in.  Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, St. Stephen's Day, Boxing Day, the Winter Solstice, my dad's birthday, Rizal Day...it's a whole week and a half full of joyous times.  That's why I say "Happy Holidays."  I'll say "Merry Christmas" on Christmas, but until then, all of the holidays get some space on the marquee. 

Take however many of these holidays you want, and enjoy them.  Hopefully, they're all amazing.   We'll pick up this whole Sametime Status and Blagging nonsense in 2017. 


Jeremy Is In The Office will be Out Of The Office starting tomorrow, and returning on Tuesday, January 3rd with a bright, beautiful 2017 full of comedic possibility.  Join us then for more of...well...whatever this crap is.  

And again, from all of us here at Jeremy Is In The Office, Happy Holidays!  

Christmas Creeper: Minecraft

Christmas Creep: When the timer on your tree’s lights can’t keep time properly 

Christmas Creep...when you find a guy dressed as Santa Claus sitting in the bushes in front of your house.  

So back to my point...

I've stated before that I'm an engineer, and engineering is little more than the art and science of laziness.  I am therefore lazy.  As such, when it's tome for Christmas, I like to maintain an air of festivity, but at a minimum of effort on my part.  I have gone to certain lengths to make sure this happens.  

I, like many people around this time of year, have lights outside my house.  Because of the house's design and the landscaping, it is remarkably difficult to reach the eaves on my house without a large extension ladder and preferably, somebody to hold said ladder when I'm climbing on it.  Because of this level of nonsense, I do not hang lights from my eaves.  I have four spotlights that shine red light onto the front of my house, lighting the whole place up for the holidays.  Christmas...done.  

Moreso than that, I have this entire setup hooked up to a photo sensor with a timer.  I don't even have to turn the lights on...they turn themselves on when it gets dark and turn themselves off 7 hours later.  Laziness...done.  

Inside, I have candle lights in each of my front-facing windows.  Photo sensors on all of them.  They turn on when it's dark, turn off when it's light, and I don't even have to think about it.  Candles...done.  

And I have my tree.  400 cool white wide angle LEDs, 100 multi-colored wide angle LEDs, 20 color-changing LEDs in the star topper, and I'm ready to go all Corey Hart, wearing Sunglasses At Night while my tree is lit up like the surface of a small star.  Do I put any effort into this on a daily basis?  If you've read any of my drivel to this point, you will know that the answer is a hearty and full-throated "of course not!"  All of that stuff is on a timer which turns on at 5:00PM and turns off at 11:30PM.  Tree...done.  

That is...until the tree turns on at 5:45...and 6:15...and 7:00....wait, what?  

All of my hard work getting to this nirvana of holiday laziness undone by the fact that my tree's timer can no longer tell time.  

I need a new timer.