My Umbrella’s Broken

Posted on September 12, 2011 by SheldenErway

Ga’ damn. Yesterday, I brought up this issue to a friend of mine about another who I was possibly going to move in with. This possible roommate was actually a former roommate of the friend I was talking to, which is why I brought it up, even though this whole story happened like 3 weeks ago. To cut the story short, this possible roommate was supposed to go check out a new apartment with me on a Saturday afternoon, but decided to bail out using the excuse that his umbrella was broken. Sure, it was drizzling, but the rain was supposed to stop by that point and he could just borrow one from his current roommates. Not only that but he texted me a little later and said he had forgotten about a lunch he scheduled two weeks before and had to go to that.

So let me get this straight, he can’t make it to the apartment viewing because his umbrella is broken. But he can make it to that lunch even though it’s still broken? How dumb can you get with your excuses? What a fucking Idiot (as I refer to him now)! Anywho, after talking to my friend about it, and him laughing at how dumb the guy is, it got me back in an irrateble mood. Coincidentally, at work today, I found my old broken umbrella at my desk. At lunch time I ran over to Staples and bought a silver-paint marker, came back and wrote his name on the thing. Then took cell phone pics of it and sent them out to friends who know him and posted on Facebook. I should say, he defriended me on Facebook long ago, so what do I care. I’ll be an asshole.

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No 2 Flavored Goldfish

Posted on September 9, 2011 by SheldenErway

I created the logo, then cut it and glued it onto the bag.

My mistake. I bought the “pizza” flavored Goldfish crackers made by Pepperidge Farm. I hadn’t had any of the Goldfish in years, but man did these suck. Good lord, did they suck. Right away, there was no taste of pizza in them. No flavor of it! It reminded me of that wood taste—with maybe a hint of graphite—that you get when you chew on a No. 2 pencil. I spent my lunch time recreating the label of flavor, this time making it No. 2 Pencil instead of Pizza. Unfortunately the printers at work only have B&W ink, hence the reasoning for making the photo above B&W to hide it. To continue, I recreated the logos in Illustrator in the same style, cut it out with another co-workers scissors (I haven’t had scissors at my desk for the past 3 years), and super-glued it on to the bag. They’re never being eaten again; just going to sit here on display.

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Shirtless Dude

Posted on September 2, 2011 by SheldenErway
Shirtless Dude

Shirtless Dude in condo below New York Timer's office.

Take note, I was about to bolt early, note even bother with procrastinating. However, Shirtless Dude was pacing back and forth up to his condo window—below the New York Timer’s office. I had to take advantage of this to grab some photos for the blog and for my Facebook profile. I took about 20, leaning over the edge. At one point the flash went off and he stepped away from the window. I kinda freaked that he may have noticed and was going to call someone or come over to the building and report me. Nope, he kept the pacing happening, and I changed the settings on the camera to get closer shots and no flash.

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Procrastinating Spam

Posted on August 31, 2011 by SheldenErway

The New York Timer in his lounge across the street, reading the NY Times on a Mac with a Urban Outfiters chandelier hanging.

I see no problem in procrastinating in order to avoid making spam e-mails. There, I said it. Yes, my job is having us make spam e-mails. They are advertisements for the company’s products, yet no one will care and will either delete them or mark them as spam. What’s even dumber is that these spam e-mails include samples of our issues that will be archived online in order for people to download. Why would people pay for the issues of our magazines when they can just download parts of it for free. I guess the Marketing Department is doing this to make it appear as though they’re working, however, they are are aware that no one will download these free issues because everyone thinks the e-mails are spam. Am I making sense?

Anyway, I’m going to stare out at the New York Timer and his counterparts: The Wall Street Journalist; The Sports Illustrator; The Googler; and now, The Shirtless Dude who lives below their office. A friend of mine on Facebook believes that I need a crossbow with me. I’m surprised I haven’t started “crushing their heads”.

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Caught by the Prez

Posted on August 29, 2011 by SheldenErway

Morgan—El Presidente—walked over to my desk as I was in the middle of making a posting on Facebook about odd “Connections” on LinkenIn. It NEVER looks good to be on Facebook in front of the company’s president, so how can someone get away with it? Well, he came over asking about getting connected to the server and printers properly, and was saying he would like to have it done whenever would be a good time—not interrupting my work, but come on, he must have been hinting. I waved my arms in the air and said, “I’m on lunch!” using that as my reason to help him right away, but most of all, as my excuse to be using Facebook. I held my ground and tried to act confident as though now was an okay time to be on Facebook.

He said that lunch was so important and should not be interrupted, at the same time trying to avoid looking at my Facebook account (there’s a picture of me aiming a crossbow with a brain-painted bicyclist helmet on). I tried my best to grab his attention back to my face and said that I have helped people with computer issues numerous times during lunch, and I was almost done with this session. That still wasn’t good enough. He started going on about some philosopher’s beliefs (I can’t remember which one, nor do I care) at which point I helped up five fingers. “5 minutes? Give me 5 minutes, and I’ll come to your office?” That worked before him leaving at 1:30.

I may be getting away with it this time, but I have to keep my eyes open. Probably means I shouldn’t have reactivated my Facebook account, and that I should be using Vanishd.

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Vanishd

Posted on August 22, 2011 by SheldenErway

Notice www.officeprocrasinator.com is in the box, while Google is the cover page. Vanishd! (No this isn't photoshopped)

I have discovered a new method of getting away with checking out youtube videos, or reading Ars Technica, or scrolling through Reddit. I found this site called Vanishd when I search my site on Google; it was ahead of mine under the search Office Procrastinator. But still, this site is perfect. It lets me have whatever site I want as a cover, while I look through another site in the background of a box. Take for instance (above) I could use Google as my cover page, but really be looking at www.officeprocrastinator.com through this box that moves around the browser—scrolls around at whatever size and opacity. So now that Morgan, El Prezidente, is moving into the office, I can easily hide what I’m reading about. Hell, I could probably watch Lynda.com videos, and as he or anyone else walks by, just move my mouse and the page turns back to Google. Brilliant!

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Nap Rehearsal

Posted on August 15, 2011 by SheldenErway

For a while I’ve been planning on napping in several different places in the office. Above, you can see that I’ve figured out a way to pull a Costanza and sleep under my desk. We still have packaging boxes of all the iMacs we bought over a year ago, so why not arrange them in from off my desk in order to cover my sleeping beauty (excuse me, I meant body). I’m an IT employee for the company and no one ever questions why I have leftover tech boxes at my desk.

But just my desk isn’t enough. I have two other spots needed for napping, and okay I’ll admit, the one I already have napped in. It’s the server room. The third is what’s going to be the trickiest. It’s the long conference room table that can seat probably twenty people, but what’s important is that it has boxes stacked under it. A few years ago, the President of the company was in there, getting prepped for a board meeting, and he didn’t even notice that I was under the table taping down a power cord for the projector. I must have been down there for like 5 minutes, crawling around, and he had no idea!

So since there are boxes under there too, my guess is that I could arrange them in a way where they would surround me like walls as I sleep. And most of the time that conference room isn’t used, and the lights are off, so I could probably get away with napping in between those boxes. Worse comes to worse, there’s a chance I could say I’m running an Ethernet cord below it. Now the main question is, should I try these naps—or at least rehearsals—before the El Presidente moves into the Chicago office? Or should I just wait for him and be really daring?

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Landlord Spy

Posted on August 11, 2011 by SheldenErway

Apartment available on craigslist. Could be from the landlord Nino, my previous landlord Ninos

The time of my apartment lease is almost up, and my friend/roommate from last year’s apartment are planning on moving in again. We’ve begun looking and are aiming for the Red Line, hopefully Uptown or Andersonville. Yesterday this friend, T, gchatted me an apartment listing in Andersonville, close to Argyle and Clark. This place looked perfect so I called the landlord asking if I could check the place out on Friday afternoon—maybe have another friend in Andersonville come too.

I spoke with the guy and he described the place, but then said he would have to check with the building maintenance guys to see if they’d be available after 5PM. He said he would give me a call back and we exchanged names, his being Nino. I did not get call back from him yesterday. I began to think that he is a previous landlord of mine who is named Ninos: the two have a similar phone number (not exactly the same), and also have apartments in the North East/Red Line area of Chicago.

For about an hour and a half today, I have been researching my previous landlord online to find if he owns that building. I found his Twitter account where 75% of what he Tweets are about the Bulls. But at the very beginning of his tweets he mentions Younan Apartments, as in the company name. I looked that up and saw that it was about a block away from the apartment T and I were looking at on Argyle and Clark. I decided I’d take the call from “Nino” if he gets back, otherwise, it’s T’s job to check out the place in person. I made sure to send T and email of everything described here, plus links to Ninos’s Twitter and Facebook so he has references of pictures to compare the two. I’m paranoid, I know.

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President is Moving

Posted on August 8, 2011 by SheldenErway

The procrastinating days might be over! The president of the company is moving to Chicago, relocating to our office in the loop. Looks like I’ll have to start showing up at 8:30 AM instead of 9:30-10:00 AM. I already know from when he’s been in town before that this guy gets to work by 8AM, if not earlier.

I think it’s time to start training myself to be on time in these next few weeks. However, perhaps (if I’m still with this company (who knows, no plans yet, but maybe I’ll be lucky and can finally leave)) I can manage to start showing up late and BSing over time, again. I mean, I’ve managed to get by with both of my supervisors and all three of the CFOs who’ve been here. And actually, I got away with rocking out the Big Gulp Guitar in the window while the CEO was in the office. There is a chance this blog will continue.

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QWOP GIRP

Posted on July 29, 2011 by SheldenErway

GIRPGood god, these are the most challenging games I think I’ve ever played. This guy, Bennett Foddy, is truly talented for his programming and creativity in designing these. Still, as addicting and awesome as they are, I’ve barely gotten anywhere in them: QWOP 3.2 meters, GIRP 5.3 meters. I can’t stop playing though. I’ll go back to work and within 5 to 7 minutes, I’ll open up a new tab and start up again. One of my friends did fairly well on QWOP by getting 24 meters while hopping with the legs spread. Another got 7 on the knee. Okay, time to get back. Laterz blog.

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