When you are asking someone in authority a question, and they answer you with an answer that doesn't actually provide any clarification whatsoever. But yet they are done talking about it. As in, "Go away little girl, I've answered your silly little question, now be gone and stop bothering me".
This shows up a couple of times a year, however today, I was graced with this kind of answer twice, from two different people about completely different things.
For one of these, I picked the answer I liked best and ran with it.
I'm sure I'll pay for that later.
What do you all think?
(ETA: To toggle back and forth between new and old design, go to your Friends page, then at the top, there should be a link to "Switch to the new". It's also mentioned here.)
- Current Mood:
busy
Hopefully later this week?
- Current Mood:
death
I have been calling and asking another department on campus to put me on hold, because I love their on hold music.
I don't know what the song's called, nor who it's by, and I can't find it anywhere.
It's some synthesizer-y music from the early 80's. There's no voice - only instrumental. It's got those claps with echos... (total 80's) I have no clue how to describe the song. Only that it's got to be from the early 80's (possibly late 70's). It's common "on hold" music.
No one in the department, knows where the music is saved. It's this mystery in the department. They didn't even know they had music when they put people on hold until I mentioned it and asked what it was. Shazam even failed me.
I have to find this music.
ETA:
Found it, thanks to
2kidsdad and Cinco (in a 70 comment conversation on my facebook!)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g4dkBF5
and downloadable here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/lna0v
Title: Opus Number 1
Authors: Darrick A. Deel and Tim Carleton
In the comments over here,
Darrick Deel mentions:
This was not a proprietary mix made by Cisco. It was licensed to Cisco for non-exclusive use in their CallManager product. Tim composed this song and is who performed it for this recording. I helped him record it one day in his garage. This recording is actually from the late Eighties.
I had the opportunity to submit the song to the guy compiling the music on hold CD and he included it in our upcoming product. The Synths used to record the song had very favorable acoustic qualities when transmitted over VoIP with a G.711 encoding. As a result Tim’s Opus No. 1 became the default hold music on Cisco’s product.
The original version has a nice stereo effect on the clapping and a real breathiness and richness in the Synths. There have been a number of people over the years that have tracked me down due to this music. It is always exciting for us to find more people that like the music enough to track it down after an encounter with it while on Hold. Tim and I will discuss the options for making this available and post back here.
- Current Mood:
determined
I know that I should get myself to the clinic to get some antibiotics, but man oh man I do not want to move.
- Current Mood:
sick
therealljidol competition. In one of the last weeks of the race, it has been decreed that the final 8 contestants will be having to write 17 idol entries this week.That is an insane number of quality entries that need to be churned out in an insanely short amount of time.
Since I'm not competing, I don't have to do that, but you know what? I have no less than THREE of the final eight finalists on my friends list. That's right. I have some serious quality writers on my friends list, and they are so freaking awesome.
And to be fair, I really need to read everyone.
And what makes me really sad, is that at this point I don't have a hope in hell of reading 17 entries from everyone. I don't have a hope in reading 17 entries from just the three on my friends list. I could probably manage 17 total this week. It's been a gong-show.
So right now, I'm feel super duper sorry for my friends as well as the other contestants, who just about killed themselves writing 17 quality pieces EACH this week, and I am seriously concerned that they may not get the attention they deserve, because I highly suspect that there will be people like me, who just can't manage all that reading.
So if any of you have some time, and would like to lose yourself in another world for a while, I would really encourage you to read these contestant entries. They're still populating C, but I suspect that by the time you get there, it will be fully populated.
They are linked as comments at the bottom of each of the following posts - the 17 entries were posted in a three-part series:
Topic Links Week 36 Part A
Topic Links Week 36 Part B
Topic Links Week 36 Part C
java_fiend's Champion! What does that mean? If I go in my poll, he goes in his... and since he's a damn good writer, and in the final ten of the competition, that would be a damn shame.Please vote for us here!
Poll #1856060 LJ Idol, Season Eight, Week Thirty-Five: Champions
This poll is closed.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 225
The Ballot:
View Answers
 andbless-mybaby's entry |
   53 (9.8%) |
| christopher_buehlman's entry |
| 60 (11.1%) |
| joeymichaels's entry |
| 64 (11.9%) |
| kittymichaels's entry |
| 60 (11.1%) |
| oneonthefence's entry |
| 55 (10.2%) |
| sharya's entry |
| 61 (11.3%) |
| theferrett's entry |
| 47 (8.7%) |
| thehobbit's entry |
| 58 (10.7%) |
| thexphial's entry |
| 52 (9.6%) |
| witchofthedogs's entry |
| 30 (5.6%) |
Poll #1856061 LJ Idol, Season Eight, Week Thirty-Five: Contestants
This poll is closed.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 237
The Ballot:
View Answers
| alycewilson's entry |
| 67 (11.0%) |
| halfshellvenus's entry |
| 36 (5.9%) |
| java_fiend's entry |
| 72 (11.8%) |
| lrig_rorrim's entry |
| 45 (7.4%) |
| milk_and_glass's entry |
| 61 (10.0%) |
| n3m3sis42's entry |
| 69 (11.3%) |
| notodette's entry |
| 63 (10.3%) |
| pixie117's entry |
| 74 (12.1%) |
| porn_this_way's entry |
| 61 (10.0%) |
| whipchick's entry |
| 62 (10.2%) |
While you're voting,
kittymichaels, joeymichaels, and pixiebelle would also like folks to stop by, read their entries, and vote! Also, if you're a fan of kittymichaels, then you'll probably want to check out and vote for - Current Mood:
bouncy
So here's an example, Alex was trying to show me something that was across the way, and referenced it by saying, "It's right over there, beside the fat lady."
The lady being referenced, was morbidly obese, and I'm pretty sure she heard Alex, but was pretending she didn't.
"Honey, we don't call people 'fat'. It's not a good word. It's not a nice word. We don't call people names."
"I wasn't calling her a name Mom, I said she was fat, because she is, like that guy over there is short and the other one is tall."
Touché.
"But sweetheart, people get their feelings hurt when others say they are fat. We just don't use that word - it's not a nice word. We don't want to hurt people's feelings, and her feelings would be hurt if she heard you say she was fat."
"Ok Mommy, I won't use that word."
I debated making her go over and apologize to the lady, who was either doing a good job of ignoring the situation, or perhaps had genuinely not heard. I decided against it, because if she hadn't heard, I certainly didn't want her to hear about it now, and because I was concerned the apology would come out something like, "I'm sorry I called you fat even though you are." I felt pretty horrible for the lady, and pretty embarrassed about the situation.
This is approximately the fifth time I've had this conversion with one or both of the children. It doesn't seem to be sticking.
Suggestions?
- Current Mood:
embarrassed
pixie117 is a lovely, kind hearted person who doesn't have a bad bone in her body. Apologies if you've already had this plastered all over your LJ, but you just never know who hasn't seen this who might be willing to help.
Originally posted by pixiebelleat Project Save Annabelle (otherwise known as I need help)
The Story
On Sunday May 20th, I woke up and realized that my Great Dane, Annabelle, hadn't come in for her morning kisses like usual. As soon as my boyfriend and I start talking, we're usually joined by my giant dog with tail wagging and kisses to the face as she climbs in bed with us to snuggle for a few hours.
I went to check on her and she was on the floor, which is odd since she's a comfort creature who usually prefers the couch. I went up to her and barely got a response. I called Kevin in and normally she can't contain herself with excitement when he enters the room.
Nothing. Her eyes could barely even stay open and she looked uninterested in everything.
We got her to stand up and realized she was not putting her right foot down at all. We tried walking her; she couldn't walk. So we ran her to the emergency vet (since it was a Sunday). My boyfriend had to carry her because she couldn't walk.
The day before she was her normal goofy self. Playing ball at the dog park, and even rough housing with a new Great Dane puppy. She came home and was fine that night. It all happened between when we went to bed and when we woke up.
At the emergency vet, her fever was 104.7. She was a very sick dog. They kept her all day on Sunday until her fever went down. He said her paw looked to be injured but that it likely caused an infection (she had elevated red blood cells). He sent her home with an antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory medicine for the injured paw. Original bill was $900 which I didn't have. I burst into tears because she is my baby and the wonderful vet lowered it to $600.
Sunday night my boyfriend and I slept in the living room because she couldn't move and I didn't want her being too far from me. He slept on the floor and neither of us got much sleep.
I took Monday off and luckily I did because her paw did not stop gushing blood. I had never seen so much blood just gushing without stopping. Obviously, I couldn't let it continue so I took her to my regular vet. She thought it was foxtail that had weaved it's way into the paw, we scheduled Annabelle for surgery the next day and all should have been well.
This was how swollen her paw was before the bleeding even started. It has only gotten worse from here.
However, things turned ugly the next day. When they opened the bandage up, they found that the whole on her paw had grown to twice the original size and her flesh was rotting around it. The vet called and said she felt it was either a brown recluse bite or flesh-eating bacteria (such as MRSA).
I took her in for a second opinion with the emergency vet who saw her on Sunday and he said her tissue was liquefying. It was one of the worst cases he'd seen in a very long time. He was leaning more toward flesh-eating bacteria, but said a brown recluse bite could still be possible. He did say that with aggressive veterinary treatment, she would survive. She might lose part of her foot, but that she would be fine if we did everything the vet is asking of us.
Sadly, we still don't know what we are dealing with.
We just know that her skin and tissue is rotting at an alarming rate. She went from playing catch with us on Saturday to us looking at her dying within the week if we couldn't get this under control.
Today is Wednesday and from the massive amounts of a variety of antibiotics, she's doing better. The wound hadn't grown any larger for the first time since this whole ordeal. It's not reversed yet, no healing is present, but the fact that it stopped spreading the way it had is a good sign.
Her clotting tests came back normal showing that her body is healing the wound.
Everything is pointing to good signs if we keep up treatment.
The issue is cost. I have spent $2,000 since Sunday. That's over half my monthly salary. I pulled money from my IRA to pay for services and I am running low over there.
Today alone was $870. Tomorrow? Another $300. And until she shows healing, it could be $300 a day to hospitalize her. Then it will be regular vet visits with special bandage changes ($55 a day - I am hoping to negotiate or learn how to do this myself at home). Once she starts healing, she will need surgery to remove to dead tissue and to either stitch/graft or amputate as needed depending on the damage that is done. This could add up to a couple thousand more depending on the course of treatment.
She requires all of this to survive. Right now, it's looking more and more like a flesh-eating bacteria. A super bacteria of sorts that got into her injured paw and is killing the tissue. It's crazy how she can go from being fine on Saturday to having her foot rotting away on Tuesday. It's mind-blowing and terrifying.
How she is today (Wednesday)
For a dog with flesh-eating bacteria on her foot, she's almost back to normal personality wise. The antibiotics seem to be working on the internal infection, it's just the wound that needs to heal up. While at the vet this morning, she climbed up in the chair next to me like normal. When I came to pick her up this afternoon, she pulled the vet tech down the hall to get to me. She's now putting a little weight on the paw which means the pain is subsiding. She's happy to greet my roommate once again, and she even begged for food last night (which I spoiled her with two hot dogs because she's been through a lot).
She's on the mend, the treatments may be working. Though without knowing what the bacteria is immune to, it's going to mean a lot of trial and error to get this under control for good.
My Situation
I won't go into my sob story great length since this is about Annabelle. But I left a really bad relationship about 2 years ago, moved out to California for a job opportunity to be in my field... and Dang, it's expensive out here. Rent takes up half my monthly salary and I wish I was exaggerating. It's tough. I have barely been able to save up anything and I live very frugally to make ends meet. My pets always come before me, their needs get met before mine and I make sure they eat better than I do. They are my world.
I had to get Annabelle spayed last August, and because she is a Dane, I also had her stomach tacked to help prevent bloat (You can Google it. It's a Great Dane issue). I used Care Credit to fund that. She had sickness associated with the surgery which required a lot of vet visits, and Care Credit came into play again. Then my cat got sick a few times... and my Care Credit is maxed out. They can possibly raise my limit, but I will know in 7-10 days.
I don't have 7-10 days. I am running out of money and the vets I have found don't take payment plans because they push you to Care Credit. They require money up front, which I don't have anymore of. I've dug into my IRA and will deal with penalties later. The $1000 I pulled out yesterday is already gone to the vet, I am broke once more.
My family is poor, I can't get it from them. My savings are burnt up from this. I really don't know where else to go. I am so ashamed to be asking for help, and hope no one thinks poorly of me for it.
Help Needed
I hate asking for any help, but this girl is my baby. Anyone who knows me knows that this dog is my world. I talk about her nonstop, I take her everywhere I go. I make sure she has the best possible life I can give her, and I go without in order to give it to her.
I have had a rough few years and she's been able to bring me so much joy. I seriously can't imagine life without my giant beast of a dog. She's a cuddle buddy who loves nothing more than being loved on by a human. She doesn't have a mean bone in her body and adores everyone she meets.
(This is a photo from a month or so ago. She's snuggling in bed with Kevin on a Sunday like we do every Sunday until this last one shook us all up.)
If you know of any charities that would donate to the vet on behalf of Annabelle to get her the services we need, please let me know. I am researching it a bit, and doing my best to find help that I can get right away. This all happened so fast and needs to be treated fast. If you know of a vet in the Orange County, CA area that would take payments or help me out, that would work great too. I just need it quick.
Knowing I can save her if I just had the money... I have to at least try. I have to at least ask.
Don't feel any obligation whatsoever, especially if you have helped me in the past with anything whatsoever. I don't want to be greedy or pushy. Several people have asked to help me with the vet bills and I am passing this along because I can't deny that I need help. If you can't help financially, but want to help out somehow, then feel free to pass this along. Pass it along anywhere you can think of, I don't mind.
Anything. Any little bit will help here. Even your thoughts and prayers mean the world to me since I believe in the power of positive energy. So keep those coming as well. Or just pass it on even. Maybe someone out there can help me in a way I never would have thought of on my own. You just never know.
Thanks everyone. I will try to make sure everyone gets at least a personalized "thank you" card if I get your address (so please consider leaving that. I may include a photo of Annabelle once she's healthy once more). I am more than willing to repay the favor in any way I possibly can. Never hesitate to ask.
For more about Annabelle, here's a video and a public post I wrote up about her. You can see that she really is a terrific dog and I love her so much.
http://pixie117.livejournal.com/616
(PS: The donate button doesn't seem to work unless you go to the button on the original post. You can also simply log in to PayPal and send money to kristenrericha@gmail.com. Thanks!)
pixiebelleat Project Save Annabelle (otherwise known as I need help) The Story
On Sunday May 20th, I woke up and realized that my Great Dane, Annabelle, hadn't come in for her morning kisses like usual. As soon as my boyfriend and I start talking, we're usually joined by my giant dog with tail wagging and kisses to the face as she climbs in bed with us to snuggle for a few hours.
I went to check on her and she was on the floor, which is odd since she's a comfort creature who usually prefers the couch. I went up to her and barely got a response. I called Kevin in and normally she can't contain herself with excitement when he enters the room.
Nothing. Her eyes could barely even stay open and she looked uninterested in everything.
We got her to stand up and realized she was not putting her right foot down at all. We tried walking her; she couldn't walk. So we ran her to the emergency vet (since it was a Sunday). My boyfriend had to carry her because she couldn't walk.
The day before she was her normal goofy self. Playing ball at the dog park, and even rough housing with a new Great Dane puppy. She came home and was fine that night. It all happened between when we went to bed and when we woke up.
At the emergency vet, her fever was 104.7. She was a very sick dog. They kept her all day on Sunday until her fever went down. He said her paw looked to be injured but that it likely caused an infection (she had elevated red blood cells). He sent her home with an antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory medicine for the injured paw. Original bill was $900 which I didn't have. I burst into tears because she is my baby and the wonderful vet lowered it to $600.
Sunday night my boyfriend and I slept in the living room because she couldn't move and I didn't want her being too far from me. He slept on the floor and neither of us got much sleep.
I took Monday off and luckily I did because her paw did not stop gushing blood. I had never seen so much blood just gushing without stopping. Obviously, I couldn't let it continue so I took her to my regular vet. She thought it was foxtail that had weaved it's way into the paw, we scheduled Annabelle for surgery the next day and all should have been well.
This was how swollen her paw was before the bleeding even started. It has only gotten worse from here.
However, things turned ugly the next day. When they opened the bandage up, they found that the whole on her paw had grown to twice the original size and her flesh was rotting around it. The vet called and said she felt it was either a brown recluse bite or flesh-eating bacteria (such as MRSA).
I took her in for a second opinion with the emergency vet who saw her on Sunday and he said her tissue was liquefying. It was one of the worst cases he'd seen in a very long time. He was leaning more toward flesh-eating bacteria, but said a brown recluse bite could still be possible. He did say that with aggressive veterinary treatment, she would survive. She might lose part of her foot, but that she would be fine if we did everything the vet is asking of us.
Sadly, we still don't know what we are dealing with.
We just know that her skin and tissue is rotting at an alarming rate. She went from playing catch with us on Saturday to us looking at her dying within the week if we couldn't get this under control.
Today is Wednesday and from the massive amounts of a variety of antibiotics, she's doing better. The wound hadn't grown any larger for the first time since this whole ordeal. It's not reversed yet, no healing is present, but the fact that it stopped spreading the way it had is a good sign.
Her clotting tests came back normal showing that her body is healing the wound.
Everything is pointing to good signs if we keep up treatment.
The issue is cost. I have spent $2,000 since Sunday. That's over half my monthly salary. I pulled money from my IRA to pay for services and I am running low over there.
Today alone was $870. Tomorrow? Another $300. And until she shows healing, it could be $300 a day to hospitalize her. Then it will be regular vet visits with special bandage changes ($55 a day - I am hoping to negotiate or learn how to do this myself at home). Once she starts healing, she will need surgery to remove to dead tissue and to either stitch/graft or amputate as needed depending on the damage that is done. This could add up to a couple thousand more depending on the course of treatment.
She requires all of this to survive. Right now, it's looking more and more like a flesh-eating bacteria. A super bacteria of sorts that got into her injured paw and is killing the tissue. It's crazy how she can go from being fine on Saturday to having her foot rotting away on Tuesday. It's mind-blowing and terrifying.
How she is today (Wednesday)
For a dog with flesh-eating bacteria on her foot, she's almost back to normal personality wise. The antibiotics seem to be working on the internal infection, it's just the wound that needs to heal up. While at the vet this morning, she climbed up in the chair next to me like normal. When I came to pick her up this afternoon, she pulled the vet tech down the hall to get to me. She's now putting a little weight on the paw which means the pain is subsiding. She's happy to greet my roommate once again, and she even begged for food last night (which I spoiled her with two hot dogs because she's been through a lot).
She's on the mend, the treatments may be working. Though without knowing what the bacteria is immune to, it's going to mean a lot of trial and error to get this under control for good.
My Situation
I won't go into my sob story great length since this is about Annabelle. But I left a really bad relationship about 2 years ago, moved out to California for a job opportunity to be in my field... and Dang, it's expensive out here. Rent takes up half my monthly salary and I wish I was exaggerating. It's tough. I have barely been able to save up anything and I live very frugally to make ends meet. My pets always come before me, their needs get met before mine and I make sure they eat better than I do. They are my world.
I had to get Annabelle spayed last August, and because she is a Dane, I also had her stomach tacked to help prevent bloat (You can Google it. It's a Great Dane issue). I used Care Credit to fund that. She had sickness associated with the surgery which required a lot of vet visits, and Care Credit came into play again. Then my cat got sick a few times... and my Care Credit is maxed out. They can possibly raise my limit, but I will know in 7-10 days.
I don't have 7-10 days. I am running out of money and the vets I have found don't take payment plans because they push you to Care Credit. They require money up front, which I don't have anymore of. I've dug into my IRA and will deal with penalties later. The $1000 I pulled out yesterday is already gone to the vet, I am broke once more.
My family is poor, I can't get it from them. My savings are burnt up from this. I really don't know where else to go. I am so ashamed to be asking for help, and hope no one thinks poorly of me for it.
Help Needed
I hate asking for any help, but this girl is my baby. Anyone who knows me knows that this dog is my world. I talk about her nonstop, I take her everywhere I go. I make sure she has the best possible life I can give her, and I go without in order to give it to her.
I have had a rough few years and she's been able to bring me so much joy. I seriously can't imagine life without my giant beast of a dog. She's a cuddle buddy who loves nothing more than being loved on by a human. She doesn't have a mean bone in her body and adores everyone she meets.
(This is a photo from a month or so ago. She's snuggling in bed with Kevin on a Sunday like we do every Sunday until this last one shook us all up.)
If you know of any charities that would donate to the vet on behalf of Annabelle to get her the services we need, please let me know. I am researching it a bit, and doing my best to find help that I can get right away. This all happened so fast and needs to be treated fast. If you know of a vet in the Orange County, CA area that would take payments or help me out, that would work great too. I just need it quick.
Knowing I can save her if I just had the money... I have to at least try. I have to at least ask.
Don't feel any obligation whatsoever, especially if you have helped me in the past with anything whatsoever. I don't want to be greedy or pushy. Several people have asked to help me with the vet bills and I am passing this along because I can't deny that I need help. If you can't help financially, but want to help out somehow, then feel free to pass this along. Pass it along anywhere you can think of, I don't mind.
Anything. Any little bit will help here. Even your thoughts and prayers mean the world to me since I believe in the power of positive energy. So keep those coming as well. Or just pass it on even. Maybe someone out there can help me in a way I never would have thought of on my own. You just never know.
Thanks everyone. I will try to make sure everyone gets at least a personalized "thank you" card if I get your address (so please consider leaving that. I may include a photo of Annabelle once she's healthy once more). I am more than willing to repay the favor in any way I possibly can. Never hesitate to ask.
For more about Annabelle, here's a video and a public post I wrote up about her. You can see that she really is a terrific dog and I love her so much.
http://pixie117.livejournal.com/616
(PS: The donate button doesn't seem to work unless you go to the button on the original post. You can also simply log in to PayPal and send money to kristenrericha@gmail.com. Thanks!)
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