So, you know that “build an intranet” project that I’ve been working on since January? The one that’s supposed to launch tomorrow at 9am?

Yeeeeah, our backup server is corrupting the SQL databases. We have to rebuild, from scratch.

I am seriously, seriously bummed out about this. It’s no one’s fault, and I feel bad that other people feel bad for me – THEY didn’t let me down, Microsoft did. I hate Sharepoint, and this is doing little to bring out the love – “something” went wrong, and as a result, three months of work are about to be reformatted and rebuilt from nothing (not even ashes).

This sucks.

This is the first project I’ve had under my new boss, and I feel like I’m a colossal fuck up for failing to deliver on time (especially at the 11th fucking hour – everything was FINE on Tuesday; the “something” broke sometime Tuesday night/Wednesday morning). Even worse; the intranet was my main KPI this quarter and my inability to deliver a functional product means I failed my objective. That means no bonus, but even worse, all our KPIs are tied together and if one person drops the intranet-shaped ball, the entire team’s score goes down. My failure could directly affect my team’s bonus, and THAT FUCKING BLOWS.

I’m very mad at myself for not being a SQL psychic and somehow fixing this before it happened.

There are three very small silver linings in all of this:

1. I poured my soul out to Ed via email, and he brought me flowers!
2. The flowers came with a dirty, dirty card!
3. We have to rebuild the server from nothing, so this time we can turn on Kerberos which means authenticated feeds will work properly instead of my complicated and crappy workaround!

I really, really hate feeling like a failure, even if I get pretty flowers of out it.

these are the official "sharepoint fucking sucks" flowers

the p ALWAYS stands for penis

At least I have enough time to make a fun header for our team site 4.0:

.. sorta.

The storage room our condo building was broken into on Sunday, and the would-be thieves snipped the lock holes off a series of lockers and started rummaging. They were looking for power tools and other small things that could easily be sold; things that most people wouldn’t keep in their homes but store in the basement where people rarely go. I don’t know how long they were down there, but they managed to do quite a bit of damage – rumour has it the floor was littered with castrated lock parts that had been tossed aside.

The bad men (likely Aquaman’s henchmen) amassed a small collection of valuable tools; enough that they couldn’t carry them all away easily. Solution: find a suitcase to put them in, then wheel off into the night. Our storage locker was ripe for picking, as there was a big suitcase front and center in the cage – so they snipped our lock hole and tried to get in.

Unfortunately for the henchmen, we had TWO locks on our cage – a combo lock on the bottom, and an intricately strung bicycle lock looped through the top of the unit. It was impossible to snip enough wires to get the second lock removed, so the sneaky sneakersons had to pry our locker door open just enough to get my suitcase out and also Ed’s impact wrench for good measure. They then filled the suitcase with all their ill-gotten goods, and .. well, the going theory is that they were disturbed mid-heist and had to abandon the crime scene with nothing to show for it. I know better, though:

no camera filter in the world can make this thing look attractive

The suitcase they stole out of our storage locker is mine, and it just happens to be a pink and purple train wreck of stripes and polka dots. There is no power in the universe that can make that suitcase inconspicuous (or not utterly fey), and that’s just how I like it. I don’t believe the thieves were interrupted in their stealing at all. I think they got as far as rummaging through everyone’s storage unit, collecting all the sellable pieces, loading up the suitcase .. and they just couldn’t do it. If you’re trying to get away nice and clean with a whole lot of loot, carrying said loot in the World’s Ugliest Suitcase is not the best way to go about it. Thieves, 0 – Kimli’s idea of hilarious, 1.

Thank you to everyone who left a comment here/on Twitter/on Facebook about my 10-year bloggiversary! You are all awesome, and your words made me smile all day (when I wasn’t foaming at the mouth over Sharepoint).

Are you an Instagram addict like I am? (if so, add me: kimli) My favourite photo gear shop, Photojojo, put together an awesome list of ways to use Instagram, including the genius Inkstagram – a site that allows you to view your feed, ‘like’ images, add comments, and more. I’ve been waiting for Instagram to add this functionality since day 1, but someone has beat them to it and did an awesome job. Check out the post on Photojojo for sure; I had no idea most of this was available (you can buy prints of your images! hell yes!) and only serves to make Instagram even better as a go-to tool for picture fun. Love it!

If I survive this Sharepoint rollout, I’m getting a tattoo to celebrate.

Welcome to DeeAy.com, my very own little ego trip on the world wide web.

What did I do today? Fuck ass all, that’s what. Don’t take my random profanity to mean that I fucked asses all day – oh, no – that would be too easy. I drove RakE to work, I ate some breakfast, I wrote some stuff, I masturbated to my newly-purchased smut. Oh, I’m sorry .. was that too much information?

Isn’t that just too bad?

My website’s been up for less than an hour, and already I’m talking about masturbation. Raise your hand if you’re really surprised.

I’ve been writing for Delicious Juice Dot Com (nee DeeAy.com) for 10 years today. It’s made me laugh, cry, punch things, and dance shamelessly around western North America. My blog has seen me through multiple moves, jobs, tattoos, and friends. There’s been sickness and healing, love and death, temper tantrums and startling realizations. I managed to keep some – but not many – secrets, and I went so far beyond the realm of “too much information” I’m releasing my own perfume next year. I made surprisingly few enemies, too many friends to count, and talked at great length about the state of my vagina (314 times and counting). For the last ten years I’ve been an unsponsored (no one will have me), uncensored daily blogger – and while the last few months have felt as though I was limping towards an unseen finish line, this isn’t the end. I still have so very much more to say.

I try not to ask people to come out of the woodwork too often, but if you’ve ever felt anything – anger, amusement, disgust, outrage, love, confusion, a boner – at anything I’ve ever written, I’d really love it if you said hi today of all days.

Having a blog on this level of personal is the ultimate in self-involved endeavors, but I’ve grown very, very fond of this piece of the internet. I feel silly for being proud of this thing; for making it ten years without missing more than a day or two at a time – just think of what I might have been able to accomplish had I put that energy towards something useful – but damn that’s a lot of my life spread out on the internet like a sticky, crusty quilt. I am quite impressed with myself. I think I might deserve some ice cream.

Saying “here’s to ten more years” seems more like a threat than a toast, but I can’t wait to see what kind of crazy old lady I’m going to become. I hope I’ll always want to write about it, and I hope someone out there will care.

Thanks, y’all.

Kimli

The rest of me is far from perfect, but I am just vain enough to truly appreciate the fact that I do not have cankles.

It’s nice to have at least one thing on my person that I think is okay.

What’s your “go to” body part when the rest of you feels like crap?

That was a gourmet weekend in every sense of the word.

We arose ridiculously early on Saturday morning, fetched Josh and Shan (this was much easier when they lived 20 feet from us), and were off: it was time to go to Seattle. We made excellent time over the border thanks to Ed’s sneaky sneaking, and arrived at our destination within 3 minutes of my estimate (I am gooooood): River’s 4th birthday party.

A suburban house stuffed to the gills with well-to-do parents and excited children dressed like princesses: I was totally in my element. My sarcasm is in jest though; Doug and Ali threw an awesome party for River and as she is my favourite small human, I was honoured to be a fellow princess for her. We all donned the appropriate head wear and settled in for an afternoon of royalty:

Getting a flying hug from a random small child the instant I walked in the door probably helped a little, though. She was very cute, even if I have no idea who she was.

River’s birthday cake was amazing, and one of the best I’ve tasted:

Not to be outdone, we gave River some additional cakes for her birthday:

We hung out with the birthday girl and her family for the afternoon, then departed for our next adventure. We didn’t want to impose on Ali’s weekend what with the party and other family in town, so we opted to get a couple hotel rooms. I was perfectly willing to settle for near-squalor, but Ed instead found a great deal at a swanky-ass hotel in Bellevue: a king-sized deluxe room, free parking, and $100 gift certificate to the equally swanky-ass mall next door. Pretending to be far fancier than we really are, we checked into the hotel and enjoyed the things that rich people enjoy on a regular basis: valets, concierge service, confusing high-tech elevators and berry water:

We enjoyed our fancy rooms for a few minutes, and then we were off: we had gift certificates to spend! $100 doesn’t go very far in a mall where all the stores are named after people, but we managed to find a few things to buy. An iPad 2 wasn’t in the cards – I visited three Apple stores in one day, and struck out each time – but I did get a cover for my eventual iPad2 and a new case for my phone. We also visited an awesome store that had fancy oils and vinegars on TAP, and tasted almost everything in the store – Shan came away with a bottle of white truffle oil, whereas I fell in love with the strawberry balsamic. I couldn’t pass up a stop in the Sanrio store for some ridiculousness, and many Gold Toe Socks were purchased. Our favourite thing in the mall was a bit of a surprise, though:

A Microsoft store! What the hell? It seems as though Microsoft got tired of Apple being the darling in their back yard, so they set up a store front of their own. It was HUGE, and jam-packed with people. The similarities to an Apple Store were immediately apparent: big tables with products laid out for you to try, a counter offering technical assistance, hip people in colourful t-shirts working the floor. We laughed at the whole thing the entire time we were in the store, thinking that Microsoft was being pretty sad with their try-hard copycat store .. until we ended up in the Apple store, three doors down.

IT WAS SO DRAB! After being in the Microsoft store, the Apple store looked awful – it looked like a washed out relic from another era that no one had taken pity on and brought into the 21st century. There was nothing different or remarkable about the store; it was the typical Apple white and silver and equally busy with people mobbing the blue-shirted employees – but after the vibrant and fun atmosphere of Microsoft, Apple just didn’t measure up. Suddenly, the first store didn’t look so sad after all – it was downright warm and inviting when next to the sterile aloof coolness of Apple. It’s absolutely worth a look if you’re ever in Bellevue.

I still want an iPad 2, though.

By this time the birthday cake and fancy cheeses had worn off, and we were hungry. I wanted to take Josh and Shan to Lunchbox Laboratory, home of the ridiculously good burgers. We met Mike and Michelle (Doug’s brother and his incredibly awesome girlfriend) there for a late night dinner, which was delicious and enjoyed by all.

From there, it was off to the Ookla House, where Mike and Michelle were staying while their place underwent repairs. The house is in West Vancouver, and has an unbelievable view of downtown Seattle:

We got a tour of the beautiful house, including the secrets – it was built in the 30s, and retains all the old school awesomeness with the necessities upgraded for our futuristic times. Also, there was a lot of booze:

i drank them all coz i'm a baller

Mike is somewhat of a connoisseur, and showed us his collection of fancy alcohols that I cannot drink at all. The others could and did, so I once again wore the chauffeur hat to be the designated driver of the stars. I don’t mind; I love showing off my ability to navigate Seattle based on nothing but vague memories of places I might have been before and it was a really nice night out; perfect for a drive over floating bridges.

Pleasantly pickled and/or sober, we settled into the living room to check out Mike and Michelle’s 3D TV. We’d never seen one in action before, so we all donned the glasses (which sadly are not red and blue anymore) and watched IMAX Deep Sea 3D; getting eaten by sharks and watching coral reef jizz into the ocean. It was really cool, but I don’t think I could watch a lot of 3D TV – the film was 40 minutes long and my eyes were bugging out by the end of it, and while 3D porn sounds hilarious in theory, I’m likely the only one who would get anything out of it (pure hilarity). It was awesome hanging out with Mike and Michelle, as we don’t see them often enough – they’re both a lot of fun, so hopefully we can hang with them more this summer.

It was after midnight by the time we left, and we were exhausted from our incredibly full day. I drove us safely back to Bellevue, and we crashed out in the luxury of fancy hotel times with plans to reconvene in the lobby at 11 am. We had a wonderful sleep – I want a king sized bed; diagonal sleeping is the best – and were mostly refreshed for Day 2 of our Seattle Weekend. We loaded up the the car and made another quick trip to the mall (they get iPad2 stock daily, but I missed out again – they only had 32GB Verizon units available) before heading downtown: it was time to visit Built Burger!

Ed and I have been enamored with Built Burger since Doug and Ali introduced us last year, but this was our first time visiting the restaurant for brunch. We’d been talking them up to Josh and Shan for the better part of a year, so I was really excited to go. We had some pretty high expectations from the place, and they didn’t disappoint at all – our meal just reaffirmed our love for BB, and I was delighted that Josh and Shan enjoyed it as well. I was a little worried that my plan would be shot down when I suggested we visit two burger joints in 14 hours, but my insistence that they were very different proved to be the key – the meals we had at both places were amazing and very different, and we will definitely be back to get our meat on.

We spent some time walking off our meal around Pioneer Square, marveling at the beauty of Seattle’s old buildings and bemoaning the Vancouver style of “destroy the old, build something new” – I love, love, love old brick buildings and really appreciate the fact that a lot of cities know how spectacular they are:

pioneer square is awesome

Shan really wanted to see more of Seattle, so we headed to the University District to drive through the campus. We hadn’t intended to stop, until we spied a field lined with cherry blossoms in full bloom and really had no choice in the matter:

Josh, Shan and I all cursed our lack of real cameras; having decided to travel light and only use our iPhones. It’s probably for the best, as we’d likely still be there if we had our DSLRs on us. Our hearts full of spring and fanciful thoughts, we needed to pee pretty badly and went down to the University Village for smoothies and a bathroom break. From there, it was off to an REI for Josh (he bought things that went beep), and a “quick” stop at the Seattle Outlets. I didn’t really do much shopping; my feet were in a lot of pain at that point and I barely limped my way to pretzels, but we managed to find a few things and hit the road back to Canada at almost 7pm. Unfortunately, so did everyone else – when we arrived at the Pacific Crossing, the wait was over 2 hours to get back home. In the name of desperate urination, we skipped many cars to go to the Duty Free store where they had bathrooms, cheap alcohol, and dozens of people looking for a bargain. It was insane in there, but we stuck it out and got some booze to bring back to Canada. We made it through the border with no problems and drove home; dropping Josh and Shan off and arriving at SPARTA a hair before 11pm. We had been gone for only 39 hours in total, but we crammed a hell of a lot of fun into that time – excellent company, beautiful scenery, impossibly delicious food and new shoes – it was a good, good weekend.

work that hose, boys

The Vancouver Twestival was last night, and while I didn’t meet as many new people as last year, I went with quality over quantity – the people I DID get to talk to are some of my favourites, both new and old. I was an official volunteer this year (unlike last year where I just decided “I’m helping now, k?”), so I was pretty busy with various tasks (mostly involving the swag bags – I am the Master of Stuffing). I did get to mingle a bit though, and take many pictures of the spectacular view. This year’s venue was the Harbour Centre Vancouver Lookout, and it was friggin’ AWESOME. I love it up there – Vancouver is a phenomenally beautiful city, and it makes my heart all tingly that I get to live here.

As busy as I was last night, I certainly didn’t go without moments of sheer hilarity both inside my own head and also outside for others to play along. One of the sponsors of the event was I Love My Muff, makers of products that promote soft silky happy vaginas. I love vaginas, so I was more than delighted to inform everyone (even random people passing by that had nothing to do with Twestival – oops) that with their swag bag came a lovely treat for their vaginal areas, whether they had one or not. Poor Vincent was my table partner, and having only met me 40 minutes prior, he knew nothing about my extremely vocal love of the Almighty Flower of Creation. I hope my Happy Vagina Dance didn’t make him TOO uncomfortable; I was just .. excited. About vaginas. As usual.

I also showed an amazing act of restraint last night for the first time ever – I didn’t suggest to the Godfather of Vancouver Social Media that he purchase a Beauty Night raffle bracelet to use as a cock ring. I consider my tongue biting a personal win – look at me, being the very soul of discretion! I am a lady in all ways!

In other news, I am not sure if I should be dismayed or delighted: I decided I needed to wear sequins today, so I got dressed and put on a sequined vest. Then I realized my shirt was covered in cat hair and couldn’t be worn, so I put on a different shirt that and found that it really didn’t go with my sequins at all. No worries, though – I just pulled out an entirely different sequined vest, and went on my merry way. Sequins are for all reasons! I am going to be the most awesome old lady EVER!

Happy for Friday; fun weekend ahead. Stuff is good fantastic. My insides are smiling!

so high

the shadow is my penis

it's true; i so do

toys for a giant

dance, tiny puppets!

hairiest swag ever

I took off my pants between two parked cars – spring is officially here!

I’m wearing a dress to celebrate Wednesday (and because I’ve done too good a job at convincing myself dresses are awesome; I feel like a horrible slob in pants now), but I wanted to take advantage of the gorgeous day and ride Lola to work. It’s still too chilly (and generally foolish) to ride with bare legs, so I wore temporary pants and removed them when I arrived downtown. It’s a somewhat clumsy system, but it works for me and it’s better than the alternative – chapped thighs are never sexy.

This was all over Twitter yesterday. Enjoy, or something – it kind of defies explanation. Be sure to watch “Part 2” after you give up on the original; it’s hilarious. And I’m sorry.

My new business cards arrived. They are not as exciting as when my title was officially Internet Superstar, but since my job is several thousand times better, I will deal like the trooper I am.

training & communication & FUCKING SHIT UP DAWG

Well, that was unexpected.

Josh has been researching his family tree, and told me he found a great deal of information on a Canadian ancestry site. It’s a pay site, but you get a 2-week free trial and if you cancel before then, you won’t get charged. This sounded like an excellent deal to me, so I signed up and started looking around for information on my family.

I started with my dad, and entered his information. The site has a cool feature that allows you to search based on the information you provided, and it quickly let me know that a John Wangzilla with the same birth/death date was in the system; would I like to take a look and see if they were the same? I did indeed want to do this, so clicky clicky off I went.

Strangely, my dad was already in the system. That’s all fine and good – it gives me somewhere to start – but then I started reeling. I did not expect the reeling, or the deep ache that came afterward. I am now aching and reeling and frankly, it’s all giving me a headache – I have an intranet to build; I don’t need all these emotions.

Someone had already researched a family tree, and added my dad (albeit incorrectly; his middle name was spelled wrong). They added his wife, and kids, and grandkids, and their spouses, and their kids, and so on and so forth. Except .. they didn’t add ALL of it, did they?

They left out my mother, and they left out me. I’ve been effectively and once again cut out of the family by people who would rather pretend that we don’t exist, and that hurts. A lot. I wish it didn’t bother me, but it really does – my dad loved me, you assholes. I’m as much a part of his life as you are, and maybe you don’t agree with how he chose to LIVE that life, but it doesn’t give you the right to sanitize his past to erase what you consider a mistake.

Dad never liked you anyway, you know.

The topic of midlife crises came up over the weekend, and I started thinking about what my own inevitable crisis would look like. Apparently only 10% of the population truly experience one, so I’m of two minds on this: will I be affected because I’m missing the things people consider necessary to live a successful life, or will I escape the crisis because I generally think I’m awesome? According to the internet, the unlucky 10% have problems or regrets over:

• work or career (or lack thereof) – I seem to have stumbled onto a career for myself, and I kind of like it. Yeah, I’m not saving lives or rocket sciencing, but I never really had grand aspirations to heal the sick or send them to space so I think I’ll be okay.
• spousal relationships (or lack thereof) – I have one of these and it is a-ok. Will my lack of dongs lead to a crisis? Better get more dongs, just to be safe.
• maturation of children (or lack of children) – This is an interesting one to think about. I don’t *think* I’m going to wake up when I’m 50 and cry myself inside out because I have no kids, but I can’t see the future (yet) so I don’t know how this will play out. I’m certainly not going to drop trou and make babies to ward off any regrets I might experience later, so I’ll just keep on keeping on. It’s certainly not unheard of for people to switch Teams, but as the thought still fills me with nausea and terror, I think I’m okay.
• physical changes associated with aging – not worried.

It doesn’t sound like stability or lack thereof is necessarily the trigger for a midlife crisis, so my confidence in my awesomeness doesn’t really play a role. You have to imagine, though – what on earth would my crisis look like? Here are some common behaviours in a normal midlife crisis:

• drinking
• acquisition of unusual or expensive items such as motorbikes, boats, clothing, sports cars, jewelry, gadgets, tattoos, piercings, etc.
• depression
• blaming themselves for their failures
• paying special attention to physical appearance such as covering baldness, wearing “younger” designer clothes etc.

.. this sort of describes my normal life, actually. Most people don’t do the things I do on a regular basis, so does that mean my crisis will look like THEIR definition of normal? Will I wake up one morning in the distant future and:

• Buckle down
• Straighten up and fly right
• Dress my age – not everyone needs to see my boobs
• Sell my scooter; buy a silver Honda Civic sedan so I can fit in
• Look into tattoo removal
• No, thank you, I do not need extra dongs
• Take things Very Seriously
• Switch to caffeine-free Diet Coke
• Keep my secrets and dirty laundry offline
• Unpack my emergency Running Away bag once and for all
• Empty my Optimus Prime shrine and use it to display collector plates

All those things are horrific to me (but give me a great idea for an April Fool’s joke at work). I live my life with by rule (don’t be a dick) and one goal (be happy); things that people often wait for years to discover. What will be waiting for me when I come to my own realizations?

Whatever it is, I hope it involves jetpacks.

(this is for Tim, who wanted a naughty blog post – while it won’t be as epic as the last time I wrote a post for someone specific, the general theme is the same)

I think I need to amend my postnuptual agreement – I *do* want sword play. There’s no use denying it. Still, I would be willing to compromise – this is an agreement after all; I’m not a sex commie – I can live without the crossing of swords as long as we could try pegging.

An article on the how/what/why of pegging appeared on Jezebel this week, and while I’ve always known what it was, the post made me want to try it. Unfortunately, that’s even less likely to happen than my fanciful dreams of more wang – Ed does not have an adventuresome prostate. He’s missing out on a great deal of fun because of his squeamishness (which I will never understand – you HAVE these things, why are you so afraid of them?!), and I am sad and inundated with lusty daydreams that go far beyond naughty and into the realm of Caligula meets Catherine the Great (without the tyranny, murder, incest or [rumoured but untrue] horse cock [actual, not a size-related euphemism]).

I am not at all interested in figging, though. It seems a waste of perfectly good ginger (which is delicious), not to mention unsanitary.