Categories
general complaints work

the 9 to 5 is killing me

I’m not the kind of person who can do the same thing every day. I thrive on schedule variation. I loved college, with classes scattered throughout the week, with time to use for studying, labs, homework, apartment cleaning and shopping, to do at my discretion, and at my whim. Plus, the schedule changed every 4 months.

I’ve been slogging through this daily 9 to 5 for 4 years now, and it’s wearing me down. Vacations help, but then it’s right back into that same old same old.

I have a great job with flexible hours, and I think that helps me cope. I get paid monthly, so I just have to make sure I get my hours worked within the month. On my timecard, I work anywhere from 0 to 11 hours in a day. Today, for example, I was there for an hour. And then I left. I’m sure people think I must be sick or something, but the truth is, I was completely unmotivated to do anything on my at-work todo list. Which is a shame, because there really are a lot of things I’m supposed to be working on. Due to the fact that I’m the ‘last man standing’, as it were, we’ve had 3 developers leave in the last 6 months. And they’ve been replaced with one. Who is awesome, but he’s still coming up to speed, and they’re trying to preserve his sanity by letting him focus on one project. As opposed to, say, 8. (Oh, I wish I were exaggerating…)

I am not a lazy person. In fact, I just wrote out a todo list of what I’m going to do with my random day off, and I will be hard pressed to accomplish it. Especially if I keep getting distracted by things, like, oh, blogging. Here is what I hope to get done today: Laundry (2 or 3 loads), possibly some ironing (I really hate ironing, so I probably won’t do it), change the kitty litter, take tortellini for a walk and give her a bath, put away the camp gear (this involves cleaning a lot of it first), dishes (you’d be amazed at how many dirty dishes 2 people can generate, all 32 of our forks are dirty), straighten up the living room and kitchen (the two rooms on the main floor, once they are clean, the house is clean enough for guests), change the sheets (oh, that will make another load of laundry), clean the floors, and dig up a bush stump or 3. Before I can do the laundry or dig up the bushes, however, I will need to buy dryer sheets and a root cutting tool. Which means 2 stores, and seeing as I am incapable of just walking into a store and purchasing the one necessary item, I will have to allot an hour or two for shopping. Because I love wandering through stores. Even Home Depot…

I have to go back to the 9 to 5 tomorrow. But as for right now – I have some laundry to do.

Categories
general complaints life work

passwords

I have 14 passwords that I use to access 7 networks, 6 email accounts, 2 chat clients, 2 bank accounts, 9 bill-paying sites, 2 blogs, 1 MMORPG, and 4 work-related sites: timesheet, payroll, hr, and training. And that’s not even counting all the dumb little websites I’m a member of.

Some of my passwords must be semi-secure: contain letters and numbers. Some must be secure: contain letters, numbers, and special characters. Some must be obnoxiously secure: contain upper case letters, lower case letters, numbers, and special characters, with no more than 3 of each type occuring in a row.

Some of my passwords must be changed on a regular basis. Of these, some cannot repeat the last 4 passwords. Some cannot repeat the last 8. And one cannot repeat the last 24 passwords. 24? Honestly. I guess that’s a super-secure system, seeing as no one will be able to log into it after 4 or 5 password changes because they won’t be able remember what they just changed their password to.

It is no wonder that I have trouble remembering my passwords! And not only remembering my passwords, but also remembering which password applies to what account. I was just trying to log in to one of my email accounts, and it kept telling me that my password was wrong. After 2 minutes of trying different passwords, I finally realized that I had typed in my username wrong. Because, well, I have 7 or 8 different usernames.

I am so ready for a retinal-scanning-thumb-print-taking login mechanism. I’d almost welcome a finger-pricking-blood-scanner. Couldn’t be much more painful than the current system.