sketches & ghosts

We gave one of our staff awards to Boogie the six year old orange tabby today. Also a bunch of humans, but Boogie was the best of them.

Boogie also wouldn't go in his carrier and so he had to accept it by video call.

He really did fulfill all of the requirements for the nomination, with evidence. Exact same requirements as the humans.

(I made the program so I have known about the recipients, including the one I call my left-join supervisor, for a month. I had to keep this secret from everyone for an entire month.)

In conclusion, Sil may have solved our office's "always 81 degrees" problem, but OH BOY has it been an experience getting there!

Tragically I have no photos (for the incident report, not for this), because, seriously, I should have taken a picture very quickly in order to make the corrective action paperwork more convincing. I couldn't take a screenshot either. I became increasingly punchy, as did everyone else, and by the time Sil got me I was a hysterical giggling mess but they were able to help.

So I'm in the middle of a presentation, and I'm showing someone how to add facilities to a report when my screen goes blue and says UNKNOWN HARD ERROR. At which point I look up to the laptop rack where my actual computer is (I use a 32" monitor and my desk has a high shelf so it lives way up there) and see .. what looks like steam coming out. But there's no water anywhere, so my team is all confused about how there could possibly be steam, because we are all missing the obvious answer. That comes into play a little later. First, I've called back in via my phone, someone else takes over the presentation, I watch it on my phone and do my talky bits, and then when I explain the details of my issue my supervisor's computer, which has long been referred to as the 'haunted one,' starts again moving the mouse around by itself and emails have again disappeared without her touching them. This happens, like, weekly.

The person not in our department says "you all REALLY need new laptops." We know. They all run super hot and super loud. In the meantime I've gotten mine up again and jumped into the fan settings and switched it into ULTRA COOL instead of Optimized.

(After hesitantly turning it back on after I VERY RAPIDLY turned it off.)

So we're talking about how we need to get that grant so we can get all of SUD new laptops, then we're trying to write an incident report and everyone is basically hysterical and overwhelmed, and not sure how to describe what came out of my laptop (looks like smoke, felt like steam, no water). Keep in mind we're all a mess so we're dumb.

I say "I know a chemist! Be right back," and call my bff Sil (look it rhymes with jill and is accurate okay).

Sil points out several important things to me and the extremely tired SUD team!

1. It's steam, morons. Because the air is extremely humid. It came from the air.
2. The damage to the systems over time is not just because they're overheating once or twice ... they're probably being haunted because our floor is stuck at 81 degrees.

So we look up the system parameters and, yep, maximum temperature for operation 77.

Now our QA director wants to give Sil a job, and we've written a ten page long incident report that has combined the indoor temp problem and the 9 different laptop issues into a single extremely complicated laptop temperature issue.

We really never got the hang of Thursdays in this department, clearly.

Also, the temperature in my living room has dropped by two degrees having switched the laptop from 'optimized' to 'cool.' Yes, we have contacted the manufacturer ... IT has talked to them many times and was told 'this line just runs really hot.' They make airplane noises, Dell.

Who is on Bluesky? I would like to add you, since I'm most active there but trying to come back to being here!

(And trying to be on Plurk less, which is where I accidentally ended up spending too much time.)

Edit: Right, I'm @pseudelight.ink and Jasper is at @jasper.dog; you're welcome to add us too! Or just one or the other. :)

Is anyone else on Grundo's Cafe?

I am turning into one of those people who plays its variant of Solitaire (it's the Neopets one, but even harder) to soothe anxiety, and I feel so like yhlee whenever I do. But in an era of Flight Rising having so much going on my head explodes and I can't stay on top of it, this simpler pet site that is a 2000s Neopets clone (literally, it's the old Neopets code) is very ... relaxing. A thing to do when I am dead-brained, which is like ... most of the time. So very dead brained I have forgotten how to words for a long time which is why I just haven't been here!