Category Archives: i’m an astronaut

most sincerely awesome

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Dear Client:

Please yell at me more because of a mistake made by your inability to grasp the basics of how the internet works. It is truly awesome to have you talk down to me and explain in capital letters all my failings in life because I fixed something that you fucked up – at your request, no less. Thank you for ruining my morning and driving home the point that I am truly starting to hate my job because it seems less and less likely as every day goes by that I will ever get out of doing client support even though I’ve been promised that this situation is “just temporary” so many times. Seriously, thank you. It is totally great. Thank you for undermining my value to this organization not just to me but also to my boss by coping him on your infantile email. Thank you for being cozy with one of my co-workers who is now calling you up to “smooth things over” because obviously I am too stupid to understand your demands and making me look unstable with anger. I don’t know what I would do without you.

Fuck you.

On the upside, you ARE making my previous #1 most hated client ever seem like a fucking prince in comparison. I think I may offer him a blowjob by way of saying thanks.

a rash young girl

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Beware the Ides of March, indeed – our Chief Space Developer is running around the city NAKED.

At least, this is what I have deduced from the large pile of clothing on his office chair – pants, shirt, shoes, jacket. People have tried to tell me that he probably changed into different clothes, but I know the truth – he’s out there somewhere, naked and not answering my email. Look out for the naked cosmonaut on the streets of Vancouver, if you please.

I also think we have gremlins in the space station – every morning when I come in, my chair has been adjusted to a height that is not pleasing to my tiny stature. It is a TOTAL HASSLE to have to fiddle with the lever to get my chair to an appropriate height each morning. I just can’t work under these conditions.

My allergies have been really bad lately, so today I’m giving my face a break by not wearing any makeup. It doesn’t seem to be making much of a difference; my eyes are just as itchy and watery now as they are when slathered in glitter and mascara. I think I’m building up another immunity to my antihistamines; I switched last year from one brand to another XTRA STRENGTH kind and that worked for a while. Maybe it’s just the onset of spring making all my various passages freak out, but this sucks. I miss my glitter. I do not, however, miss this weird red patch on my collarbone. It would have to go away for me to miss it, and even then I do not think it would be something I would pine over. I do not like mystery rashes.

Maybe one day I will write something that does not involve any kind of oozing or rashes whatsoever!

I think I want to go to this.

jerker’d

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Check out this unintentionally artsy picture of my Frankendesk:

I’m building myself a desk made from the parts of three Ikea Jerkers. It is totally awesome. More room for toys and gadgets! Hooray!

Plus, I’m totally hidden behind all my crap. Truly, my Frankendesk is a work of a madman genius.

who’s up for eating some worms

Posted in angst, i'm an astronaut, nerd, vroom vroom by

It’s almost spring! How do I know this?

  • My allergies have kicked into overdrive
  • I got my first scooter parking ticket of the season

Even though I haven’t been able to ride Sally since October because of the weather, I already have a parking ticket to add to my Wall of Shame. This one is special, because it’s just a warning – and I received it IN FRONT OF MY APARTMENT.

I needed somewhere to store Sally during the winter, so I made an arrangement with our landlord to park Sally in front of our building, locked to the fence. Sally sat there for 5 months without any problems, until yesterday when someone took offence – and lo, a parking ticket. Hooray! It is totally awesome; not being able to park your scooter anywhere – not even on non-city-owned property with permission from the owner. I swear, I’m trying awfully hard to go green and be a completely convenient truth, but I’m getting foiled at every non-turn and I can’t even ride anywhere yet. This sucks.

Other things that suck: the weather, Samsung’s support department, blue screens of death, day 3 of my headache, and having a client complain about your department (ie: me) being “too young and tech-savvy” to do the job properly. When the job in question is training people to use our software, I would generally think that being “tech-savvy” is a good thing – and hey, when you’ve been trained four separate times and you still don’t get it, perhaps the problem isn’t with the young tech-savvy people training you but with your complete inability to use technology more advanced than a microwave oven. Just sayin’.

This is not a good Tuesday. In fact, my only happy is coming from MacBeth – iTunes insists on repeating “Family Reunion” by Blink182 many times during the day. The joy is in the lyrics; the only words of the song are “shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker tits fart turd and twat”, which excellently sums up how I feel about pretty much everything right now.

utterly professional

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I am utterly horrified to find myself writing a business document that contains the sentence “It is not enough to simply maintain the status quo; we must strive to continually provide excellence at all levels of interaction with our clients.” Jesus Christ, who am I and what have I done with the real Kimli?

Redemption does come quickly for me, though – in the same document I refer to myself as a “megalomaniacal control freak”. That’s normal, right? I’ll totally make it in the business world.

Look out, The Man! I am coming for you!

what does the green pill do again?

Posted in everyday kimli, i'm an astronaut, medical anomaly by

My weekend was spent doing a whole lot of nothing. The cold that had been plaguing me since early last week decided to turn into a sinus cold just for fun, so my head felt like it had gone several rounds with various angry monkeys. We did venture to the outside on Saturday afternoon for video games and cat food, but other than that I did not leave our apartment until this morning when it was time to drag my battered carcass into the Space Station.

Our brief outing on Saturday was a complete success, however snotty my head might have been. I went through our game shelf to find some things to trade in at EB Games, and came up with 5 titles I was either done or bored with: Hotel Dusk, Phoenix Wright: Justice For All, and the Sims 2 for the DS; Ultimate Block Party for the PSP and Elebits for the Wii. At EB we waited in line for what seemed like forever – all the rich people from West Vancouver were buying video games, including small girls in equestrian gear – but it was well worth it, because when it was our turn at the counter, we found our small pile of games had a trade-in value of $102. Holy crap! The EB Jockey was equally amazed; he showed us a trade-in pile from earlier that morning with about 20 games in it that had a value of about $30. Yay for us! We gleefully tore through the store looking for new games to get, and ended up with SSX Blur for the Wii and Kingdom Hearts II for the PS2. Video games are awesome. Even awesomer were my other finds of the day, which included two new bags (shut up, I like bags) and a huge pile of books from the discount tables at Indigo. Ed dragged me out of the mall before I could do more damage at the book store, and we were off to get cat food from the sketchiest pet store in the world before going home to fall into a heap of fluids and price tags.

I had originally planned to be productive on Sunday, but I instead learned an important lesson – while Tylenol cold medication is yellow for daytime and blue for nighttime; Tylenol Sinus medication is green for daytime and white for nighttime. I was feeling uncomfortable in my own head, so I took some sinus medication in the hopes of clearing things up – unfortunately for my grand plans, I took the nighttime pills instead of the daytime ones and ended up passing out for the entire afternoon. Seriously, I got up at 7:30 and decided to cook a turkey dinner. Sinus meds do not fuck around, I tell you what. Perhaps next time it would be an excellent idea for me to actually read the back of the pills I’m popping before I end up huddled in another heap drooling on a cat or two.

So far today I’ve already had to send a nasty “back the fuck off” email to my most hated client. I’m either in for a terrible or an excellent Monday.

the trade deadline has passed

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It’s March 1st, meaning my Astronaut Contract is officially up and I am an Unrestricted Free Agent (I’ve been listening to Ed’s random patter about hockey trades a little too closely, it seems). This isn’t anything serious – I’m not going anywhere; I know this – but I am totally stressed out about it and no one seems at all worried except me.

I want a raise. I really feel like I’m underpaid for what I do and what I’ve brought to the Space Station in the past year, and a raise would go a long way in showing they appreciate and have faith in my mad skillz. It would also be a nice perk, seeing as I make two chickens and that’s it – no benefits, no vacation, no sick days, no bonuses, no stock options, no nothing. There’ve been a lot of promises of things changing in the future – give them another 6 months, they say – but in the meantime, I think I deserve some sign that they’re aware of what I have done and can do and am looking forward to doing in the future. That’s not too much to ask, is it? I love my job, but I could be making 50% more elsewhere doing the same thing, not to mention benefits and vacation time and all those other things I literally haven’t had since 2002. I’m getting a little long in the tooth to be playing the office temp game. I want some stability for once, y’know? I want a sign that I’m worth hanging onto, and something more than a “oh, we’ll figure out that ‘real employee’ thing later”.

So, it looks like I need to Have a Talk with some people. Too bad I’m absolutely wretched at important conversations – how does one demand a raise, anyway? It’s causing knots of worry in my belly, and I don’t like it one bit.

in space no one can hear you cry

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The Space Station is making me sad.

I don’t like this feeling, because I really do like the company and the people I work with. The majority of my sadness comes from what my job has become – at the moment, I’m a receptionist/tech support monkey, not the Project Managing Internet Superstar I’m supposed to be.

My Space Bosses keep promising me awesome projects that’ll dazzle and amaze, but for the time being I’m stuck doing tech support and it’s absolutely bringing me down. It doesn’t help that the main phone line just happens to be on my desk, so I get every phone call that doesn’t go to the sales line. Between answering the phone and responding to support requests all day long, I don’t have time to even begin doing any prep work for these awesome projects I’m supposed to be working on soon. The few projects I DID have were overrun by the office control freak, so I was squeezed out of a lot of things including the upcoming office move. Oh, I’ll still be involved, but my role has watered down to being the person who tapes up the boxes once they’re all packed – a far cry from what I can and want to do. Throw in my daily battles with an extremely obnoxious client (seriously, if you sell hemp clothing, shouldn’t you be a laid-back hippie instead of a giant asshole?), and I’m just really stressed out and sad and dreading my 9-5 stint of answering the phone all day long.

—

Sorry, I just had to go greet some clients at the front door and usher them in to their meeting with the sales guy. I should probably go see if they need coffee. I am the saddest little astronaut in the whole space station.

holy inappropriate

Posted in everyday kimli, i'm an astronaut by

I picked a bad week for Skirt Week, in which I wear a skirt every day. It’s all a part of Operation: Spring – I’ve decided that I’ve had entirely enough of winter, so it’s time for it to be spring. I’ve done the spring cleaning, I’m wearing spring clothes – all that’s left is for me to go into heat and start humping everything in sight. Spring will come, and it will come soon. I know this, because I shaved my legs. If that doesn’t equal spring, I don’t know what does.

I am disgustingly busy at work, and I don’t much care for it at all. We have a new guy starting today too, and I’m supposed to somehow bring him up to astronaut speed all while solving the problems of the known universe. Seriously, I don’t make enough chickens for this kind of stress. I take my amusements where I can get them though; I’ve been stalking our fresh meat through his blog. He’s far braver than I – he listed his blog on his resume, whereas I tend to try to hide mine until after they’ve offered me the job. Something about my being wholly inappropriate .. I don’t know what that’s all about. It might have something to do with my tendency to talk about my lady parts at every opportunity, but it could be a racial thing too. Everyone is trying to keep the half-Malaysian half-Canadian race DOWN. Damn the man! Damn the man with my vagina!

Frankly, I rather like being inappropriate. It sure beats the alternative – besides, I have nowhere to put a white picket fence.

BACK TO SPACE WITH ME!

doesn’t play well with others

Posted in fuuuuuuuu, i'm an astronaut by

Oh, my *head*.

In outer space, we work with a number of other astronauts who provide services that enable our space station to run all tickity-boo. These 3rd party astronauts do everything from delivering us new space-coffee on a weekly basis to upgrading our warp core drives. We all work in a harmony largely created by paying our space invoices on time. It’s a gentle existence, and it works well for us.

Except.

Two of our astro-vendors who previously merged to form FONEZAR – they handled phone lines and our voice mail system, respectively – are now fighting. They don’t like each other. They refuse to work together. In the case of the voice mail lady, she refuses to work on any project she was previously associated with because of phone guy.

Excuse me?

I called her up for some help this morning, only to be told that she will not help me because she no longer works with phone guy. It’s not that she can’t help me – she just won’t. Doesn’t wanna. It’s not her problem anymore. Ask phone guy. It doesn’t matter that he is the phone guy and not the voice mail guy and truly does not know a single damn thing about the voice mail system; our contract came from him and therefore she doesn’t have to help us anymore because she doesn’t like him.

Who knew they let 4 year olds into space?

My head is going to explode at the idiocy of this entire situation. I don’t NEED this crap; I have a universe to save.

In other news, I am officially announcing my intention to graduate high school in 2007. Now that my Secret Shame is not much secret as it is public knowledge, it’s time to rectify the situation once and for all. Details to come, followed by a graduation party – in fact, the only reason I’m doing this at all is so I can have a party. Officially finishing high school after 15 years of lies and deception is as good a reason as any to get presents, right? Go go class of 2007! Whoooooop!

I need rich parents to buy me a convertible when I graduate. Isn’t that what usually happens?