More than Meets the Eye

I love how everyone is freaking out about the Swine Flu. It's great stuff. I needed a distraction for everyone to focus in on so I can make some substantial progress on my world domination plans.

Pinky? Pinky? Where did you go? Stupid mouse...

Brain

Du nuh nuh

10 Signs You're Too Much Like Gregster

10. When sitting down in any office chair, you take extra caution to not shift your weight in such a way that it could tip over.

9. After a long, mentally exhausting day of work, all you can think about is how you're going to make dinner and plate your entree.

8. Prior to going outside, you hesitate for a moment and check for a would-be escapee cat behind you.

7. While explaining to someone how to fix something, you start working on something completely different and have no recollection later of the original conversation.

6. Regardless of what anyone says, you're convinced that someone keeps temporarily stealing your coveted black Swingline stapler.

5. Jazz Standards vs. Heavy Metal is a regular internal debate with equally weighted merits.

4. Your bartender knows more about you than you're sometimes comfortable with.

3. The menu option featuring and stinky cheese always wins.

2. You secretly eat at a restaurant now and then that you know makes your significant other crawl with disgust.

1. Magically, whenever you walk past a copier, it breaks down as soon as you're beyond earshot of someone calling for help.

Vaca?

7 days ago, I rose from bed on what should have been a vacation. Instead, I started packing all our belongings into boxes and preparing everything for the great move-back.

That same day, I went to the doctor. My eyelid had mysteriously swollen up and Quasimodo was my name-o. $30 in co-pays and a bottle of pills in my hands, my Hunchback-Eye syndrome wasn't far from being cured.

The week proved to be not unlike any other work week. Work my ass of during the day, go have some drinks in the evening. The difference was that I got to sleep in most days in the middle of the week. I never get to do that. Ever.

Oh sure, I still had a few questions from work here and there. Rarely can I leave on vacation and it be any other way. That's okay - it just reaffirms my value at the firm.

Blogging from work is a great way to pass the time while sitting on hold with the incompetent slobs at Verizon Wireless. I still don't regret my personal move to AT&T. There's just a few lines left on Verizon that I would just assume move over. Trouble is that with 2 exceptions, all the lines are those little, proprietary built-in Cellular Internet cards. They only work with Verizon, period. Fuckers.

14 minutes, 37 seconds and counting.

Just got through.

Getting on with it...

Gregsta' - Back at work. Still in la-la land. (tm)

Pass

I did it. I passed LEED-CI. Yay! Life can go back to almost normal.

Holy crap! Where did that stack of stuff to take care of come from!?

Gregsta': Stuck at the desk for awhile.

Head First

It's a little after 2:30 in the morning. No, I didn't just get home from the Pub.

I'm just finishing up my last pass at Studying before taking the big LEED exam tomorrow. I'll be plunged into a room with computers, cameras and a gaggle of professionals trying to pass like me.

Part of me wants to not pass. As is typical for me, I'm really good at remembering details that will mess you up or should be avoided. I'm not so good at actually applying the knowledge I have towards designing or otherwise creating a solution. The questions that ask me to apply the knowledge to an obtuse set of circumstances - I'm dead in the water on. There seems to be quite a few in the test question sets I've been going over.

The part that wants me to pass is feeling pretty good about the prospect. I'm testing at 50-75% on practice exams and I've got much of the crazy details nailed.

I guess now my best bet is to rely heavily on the "Flag this Question" feature that the testing software has and really use that to my benefit. I just hope there are enough overlapping questions (which I'll be able to pick out easily) to make that worthwhile. I'll be given some paper and a writing instrument.

What happens if I don't pass? I'll try again in a year when I can afford to pay for it out of my own pocket. $300 to retake it. The benefit? Nothing this year. I would get promoted and see (maybe, if I'm not laid off in the future) a bonus when we're flush again. Difficult to justify dropping 300 clams on until things are looking better.

Strategy, young pollywog.

Gregsta': Tired and ready to sleep in.

Oh, and I'm going to have a beer before going to bed on my apartment patio.

Blarg-o-Matic

I have lost my ability to study tonight. Everything I read isn't taking.

I think part of my problem is that I'm overtly adverse to rules that dictate what you MUST do down to the finest point of detail, derived predominantly from creative circumvention by the people it governs.

Shit - that sounds like IT policy.

Time for a career change.

It's starting to look like Government jobs might be a good choice.

Gregsta'

Apparently I can now post to the blog via Texting. Great. 160 character postings are too short for much.

Gregster

Drained

UPDATE: Amazingly, a check arrived in the mail today! Horray! We're not broke anymore! No standing in line at the soup kitchen... For Now...

It finally caught up with us - we are flat broke and overdrawn until Friday.

I have failed miserably at balancing our checkbook, something I regularly teach others how to do well.

It's the result of too much coming our way, stress, an incompetent Real Estate Agent (now fired), our failed house sale and not enough financial planning on my part.

Needless to say, I'm pissed off and seriously re-thinking all these 'Automatic Withdrawls' we have setup on our accounts.

Gregsta'

Rant Deluxe

I think it's time that I open up a little bit about what's bugging me right now. No, it's not politics or taxes. Heck, not even the economy.

It's LEED.

What is LEED? A crapshot at a "Green Building" rating system that does nothing more than piss me off. Where do I start?

First - It relies heavily on standards set by the very industries that created the energy mess we're in today with respect to energy - the Heating/Cooling, Plumbing and Electrical Unions. What the fuck? Oh, that's right - nothing gets done in the building industry unless it's being done by unionized lazy, worthless assholes. Don't get me wrong, they work hard and have perfected a craft that has served everyone well for a very long time. They also work hard to undermine innovation and advancement of society.

Next - The test to become LEED Acredited. Hooooo boy. Let's break this into credits so that everyone who's familar with LEED can understand*:

Readability and Applicability
Prerequisite 1 - Poor Organization
Ensure that everything is organized into a poorly evolved rating system.
The system is intended to make sense to the people who've been there since day 1 and completely confuse the fuck out of everyone else.

Credit 1.1
Confounding References: 15% from unreferenced sources
You will run into several big ticket unreferenced standards, documents and knowledge. Not knowing these tricky and obscure pieces of information will ensure you fail at the accreditation test.

Credit 1.2
Confounding References: 20% from assumed building industry knowledge
Here's an idea - why not test on what's pertainent and specific to the system rather than on the vast experience and knowledge of the bowels of the construction industry?

Credit 2
Tricky Testing
Ensure that anyone taking their test knows their OSB from OSD and SMAQNA from ASHRAE. In fact, throw in one word into a question that is burried in such a way that anyone who's even remotely dyslexic will fail at.

Credit 3
Inconsistent Measures
This credit is 15%/20%/30%, that one is 5%/10%, and this one over here is 2.5%/5%. Ensure that seemingly random measures are kept all over the place inconsistently.

It's frustrating to say the least. I can't wait to be done with this bullshit and back to spending my evenings doing what I want to do.

Gregsta'

* For everyone else - The material is overwhelming and the testing is designed to make you fail easily. Those who haven't slaved to the way AEC thinks and breathes will be completely confused and resent AEC professionals even more.

Study Week Continues on TBS...

Very Funny? Perhaps.

The studying rages on. It's just past 5:30AM and I'm getting an early jump on it. This is the kind of material you need coffee lined up in advance in order to avoid completely dozing off into the soundest sleep you've ever had.

No time is left to Blog.

Raging,
Gregsta'

Coffee Shops are Fun

Spent the evening down at a coffee shop on Belmont called Opposable Thumbs. I'm not entirely sure how the place got that name, but it's swank and the WiFi is fast (and password free). I'm taking a break from studying for the LEED CI exam.

I realize why I didn't like college as much as most people. I keep coming back to this idea that life is short and should be lived and not spent studying things that have no bearing on anything in life. I'm not saying that LEED isn't a worthwhile thing (many disagree with me on this, mind you). It's quite interesting and helpful when trying to communicate and support the staff at my office. Given the choice, I'd rather not need it. Oh well.

Went out last night and hung out with the Gooch and some of his friends at Montego's (strip club on 158th and Division). I don't remember what the strippers looked like (except this one 6'4" gal that I think everyone was scared of). My time spent there was talking with some of Gooch's friends (including his ex's and clients.)

The coffee shop is closing in a few minutes. Time to head back home.

Gregsta'

5 Ways Companies Breed Incompetence

This is perhaps one of the better written (save a few typos) articles I've seen recently about some of the challenges facing workplaces today.

5 Ways Companies Breed Incompetence

Posted using ShareThis

Nothing Interesting

My life consists of the following tasks lately:

1. Work dayjob fighting incompetent 3rd Party A through Z. Keep owners informed of progress in changing laws of supply & demand.

2. Study for exam testing your knowledge on how to spend a lot of money to certify a green building. Test in under 2 weeks. Crunch time!

3. Coordinate questions from builder on new house.

4. Try to sell old house.

5. Move back into old house while selling old house. Abandon apartment, pay through the ass to break a lease.

6. Manage finances and side business.

7. Seek out side work to help offset costs associated with #5.

8. Look for run-away cat.

I could take on some extra projects right now...

Gregsta'

Whoosh

Real Life Experience Today

The guy using the waterless urinal next to me actually fake flushed - complete with gesturing depressing the flush handle and accurately recreating the sounds of a flushing urinal.



Separation anxiety?



Gregsta'

Wong Fut

There's nothing more frustrating than discovering bugs and poor interface designs in equipment that the company has spent thousands of dollars on. The computing industry has more criminal behavior than anywhere else (outside of the building industry) I've seen. Strange how I work for both.

Time to get a job with the government. They're legit.

Right?

Gregsta'

Sun!

There's a big, bright orb in the sky. It's compelling me to nap.

Gregsta'

Weekend Bitches

It's the weekend. My birthday is coming up on Sunday. I hear it's supposed to be in the 70's (that's the temperature for those of you who don't worship the weatherman) and therefore perhaps the warmest birthday on record for me.

I intend to find a spot in front of a nice, sunny window at the library and sit there and read. What better way to spend your day than reading in a quiet place? No cellphones, computers, noise, etc. Just me and a book. Sounds crazy? It shouldn't. :)

We still haven't found Rocky. He has to come home soon. The little pill is just being a brat. I know he's under a house or shrub out there down the street.

I took today off from the office so that I can deal with some lingering chores and hopefully get some headway achieved on a few projects. I'm going to be taking the LEED exam on April 18th, so I should probably study that, too.

So much going on that I don't bother going into detail about much of it anymore. I'm cursed with the chore of having far too much on my plate. I've envisioned my life with little to do, but then I just get bored and take on too much. That doesn't sound like much fun.

Well, the mover guys will be here in about 20 minutes to look over what we have and give us an estimate for the move back to our house. Time to get out of bed and put some pants on.

Gregsta'