A really fun and engaging roleplay experience with Rancoura was interrupted by my indoors-only cat yowling in pain from somewhere in the vicinity of my garage. How did he get in the garage, I asked myself? Surely my mother wouldn't let him out, knowing the doors to the driveway have to be open because of the freshly sealed tar my parents had lain today.

Wrong and wrong. His paws are covered in tar, he's really upset and still screaming, and I don't know how to help him. Anyone have any ideas?

Cut off his feet. Sew on hooves.

I'd probably go see a vet.

My fourth day at work, still learning my new residents and getting the hang of the routine at the new nursing home. Two people call off, so it's me and two aides for 48 people. Not quite an illegal ratio of aides to residents, but close enough that we busted our asses for almost nine hours with no breaks. How I love working in a profession where you basically have to assume you'll be working at something like half of the staff you need, every day. It's not quite every day people call off, but near enough that working a day with full staff feels like a holiday.

It's 1 am in a small town. No vets open or available for another 6 hours, maybe more. Inevitably, we used lanolin aloe, lots of Dawn and probably more paper towels than were completely necessary. He isn't screaming anymore.

I probably won't sleep at all tonight.

You're bumming me out. I go for my CNA in a couple of months and I was planning to be doing your job sometime in spring while I begin classes towards RN. But hearing horror stories like that, I might go for the lower-paying-but-better-staffed tech job at a local hospital.

Are the pads burned, or is it just the cat being annoyed at tar on its paws? If there are no burns, gasoline or mineral spirits would be the way to go.

CNA is a really rewarding job. You get to help out people who depend on the good will of others to have even the barest minimum of human dignity. You get to have dozens and dozens of grandparents, basically. You will learn to prioritize and organize and care for other people. It will teach you to deal with people who might be angry or crazy or totally zonked out without losing your temper or becoming exasperated.

You bust your ass to do it, though. There is a list of dozens of things you should be doing each and every day and time to finish half. It's really, really easy to burn out. You need helpful coworkers that you like working with, residents you basically like the majority of, and nurses who will have your back unless you're an idiot, or it gets old really quick. And you'll never, ever make the money you should be paid to do the work you do. Not to belittle nurses, but we deserve at least as much money as the LPNs are making, but as much as people can praise you and tell you the home wouldn't run without you, and as much as they're totally right, they're never willing to back it up with cash or benefits or anything but overtime.

This could all probably be said of a lot of different medical professions, though.

This.

My mother, current stepfather and my sister all work in these sorts of fields. They are freaking -saints- for some of the things they put up with, but they're absolutely amazing people for it. I don't know how they do it. I occasionally get to meet some of the people my mother cares for, and last week they sent us a cheesecake. That stuff was delicious.

Not saying cheesecake is the only payoff, of course, but it's pretty sweet. >_>

Auto. Updates. Off.

Always.
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Oh, and on the topic of computers I am generally dissatisfied about losing not one but two of the grips off of my laptop, making using my laptop difficult. I have recovered one of the two grips, but the other one has obviously run away screaming. I'll have to figure out how to replace it.

If anyone's looking for a computer easily taken over, I see a few of them...

I know, right? I wonder if the mods can toss us a couple IP addresses. This last Patch Tuesday had a whole laundry list of things it fixed. I'd like to, uh, reproduce some of these errors. For purely academic reasons. Yes, that's it.

Updating is good. Your operating system shutting down whenever it decides to is horrible, horrible design. The only excuse for it is that people are too dumb to do it otherwise. It's the same way I rage whenever Windows says "You cannot do that." I'm the administrator, dammit, I should be able to do whatever I want with my computer, and if I screw it up, that's on me. I don't need my OS deciding what I can and can't do or randomly rebooting for my own good.

Actually going to the updater and turning it off had never occured to me... I feel very stupid.

I'm allergic to my cactus.

Sorry. I have XP SP3. I auto-update the Vista work laptop.

I also have enough security on my laptop that I'm pretty comfortable. I do all updating and stuff myself except AVG, which is a given. Though it will be switching to Ubuntu one of these days when I get the ambition.

I always update on patch tuesday, I just hate the fact that my computer will pop the "Updating in 15 minutes window" up behind whatever I'm doing and then force a shutdown. I had taken to leaving programs that pop up dialogue boxes like Word and Mush so that they would stall the restart and I would be able to cancel it.

Oh, yeah, that's annoying. There's a way to stop it, but you have to be on a network and have your network admin do it for you through group policy. Since my network admin works for me, I was able to get it done. But a home user can't.

I hope it's ok for this to be funny.

I think my wisdom teeth are growing in(yes, it's taken this long) which is causing my gums to be severely swollen. The pain is ridiculous and it makes me feel like crying. I'm drinking green tea to make sure my mouth stays clean until I can get to the dentist.