the everyday adventures of sabrina

Lest you think that all has been quiet on the Niqui front lately:

• Got my Ravelry invite, so I set up my profile.
  • Have entered my needle/hook collection, minus the ones that aren’t listed (hey, the site’s a WIP!)
  • Have started on the stash (minus photos). May or may not take photos for the stash. Have not decided.
  • Only added one project, my ripple afghan, and its corresponding -along, and a few transit socks so far. I should really get better at posting pictures of my WIPs and FOs…
• Continued work on developing the new sysadmin blog. I’m currently writing up a 4-part series on m4, which will be familiar to at least a couple of you who’ve listened to me blather on about it. Next, I have to review a book — I decided that it could be a sysadmin blog for sysadmins like me, which is to say that management is on topic — called The First-time Manager, and finish a short series on bcfg2. I think at that point I’ll probably make it public, once there’s actually something to read up there.
• Struggled through learning to do performance appraisals/annual reviews for my minions. (Sorry, if you guys are reading this. “Employees” sounds stupid, and “staff” sounds like there’s 50 of us. Therefore, you are minions.) Successfully completed two of the three — typed up real nice, an’ everything. I think our HR person was kinda surprised she got them a week and a half before they were due. Thursday, I shall do the last remaining one, and perhaps she will then be so surprised her hair turns pink. That would be pretty entertaining.
• Speaking of which, I hacked my hair off really short and dyed it a bright purply red. It’s good to be easily amused.
• Am halfway through re-reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix — my current transit sock has gone nowhere (hah) for the past two weeks as I put it on hold to read books on management on my commute, but then a few days ago I kinda got sick of that and decided I needed something less boring serious, so I (stupidly) decided to re-read OotP before the film comes out, so I will be adequately prepared to whine about what they screwed up. Actually, if they screw it up such that HARRY ISN’T YELLING IN ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME, I will be okay with that. I’m just sayin’.
• Rebuilt some shelves in my kitchen. I have power tools, and I am not afraid to use them. Go me!
• I redid the sidebar to this blog a little bit. You seriously have no idea how freaking tedious it is to download all those images from Amazon, resize them, optimize them, save them, and upload them. Hours, I tell you. Hours. Bah.
• I’ve been doing Crafty Daisies’ Learn to Crochet crochet-along. I feel pretty badass now that I’ve mastered the half-double crochet, I tell you what.
• And I put in several hours on my afghan. I’m up to about 25 stripes now (1″ of length, 90 minutes of time per stripe). At this rate I may be finished by, oh, January.
• I’ve been obsessively poring over my budget and finances for a week and a half, as mentioned previously, in pursuit of paid-off credit-card debt. I have a Plan ™. I am rocking and rolling. I am … tired of that shit, honestly. I want to turn 30 and put this mess behind me. FFS.
• Anyone know when SP11 will start? I’m dying to sign up. It was undoubtedly the right thing to do, to sit out SP10 due to time commitments, but that doesn’t mean I’m not jonesing for a fix now.
• Oh, and I went to go see a couple of baseball games that the White Sox flubbed horribly. Cheers, guys. At least the Beers of the World stand has Leinenkugel’s Sunset Wheat, which is not half bad, I have to say.

And finally: to everyone to whose email I have been completely slow in responding to: It’s not you, it’s me! It happens to everybody, baby! Just give me a couple minutes here…