Why yes, I do work in IT...

As I am soon leaving this job, I'm going to share with you some of my favourite exchanges from my time in ye olde Computer Center.

At a job application website: "It's asking me for my resume; should I upload my resume or what should I do?"  (Note: I am punctuating these sentences as I hear them in my head, but knowing this guy, there's no way in hell he'd think to use a semicolon.)

With the internet browser open on the screen: "How do I get to the internet?"

"Why is it deleting my browser history?"
"That's just something our computers do to erase any personal information you might've used while on the internet.  It happens when you close the browser.  It's just a security thing; don't worry about it."
"But I didn't close the browser, I just closed the window."
Thinking that browser did not equal internet in her brain, I said, "If you exited out of the internet, though, that thing is going to pop up."
"I didn't exit out of the internet."
Okay, maybe an actual error happened.  "You didn't?"
"No, I just hit the red X."

(I cannot do this one justice in text, but I HAVE to write it down.)
At 5:30: "Hey sister, what time do y'all close?"
"We close at 6:00."
"Right!  Man...  Right!  Man...  Right!  Man...  Right!  Man...  Right!  Man...  Right!  Man...  Right!  Man...  Right!  Man..."
(I wanted to see how long he would've gone on like this, but Daniel decided to say something to him.  Damn!)

After maybe 3 nanoseconds of waving the card's barcode under the scanner light as though she were having a seizure: "I CAN'T GET THIS TO WORK WHY WON'T IT SCAN WHAT AM I DOING WRONG I NEED HELP IT'S NOT WORKING DO THIS FOR ME THIS THING NEVER WORKS AND I DON'T KNOW WHY AHHHHHHHHH!"

"How do I get to a webpage if it doesn't exist anymore?"

On the phone...on the quiet floor: "I'M AT THE LIBRARY SO YOU HAVE TO BE QUIET!"

(This one has nothing to do with IT, but it was pretty awesome.  So, I work in a library, right?)
A mother to her child in the library: "Remember that place with all the books?  I want you to go there."

(I feel like a jerk when I say stuff like this, but if I point at the screen, the try to touch the screen instead of using the mouse.)
"Where do I type in my pin?"
"In the box next to where it says 'pin'."
"Where do I scan my barcode?"
"Underneath the big arrow that says 'Scan Here'."
"What button do I press if I want a day pass?"
"You just touch that button that says 'Create a Day Pass'."

"I put in google in the address bar.  Why won't it go to google?"
"Did you type 'www.google.com'?"
"No, I typed google."

After showing me one of those fabled emails from Prince Ahmud Jafar in Kenya or whatever:  "Now, if I send him my bank account information, will anyone else be able to steal it from this computer?  'Cause this is a public computer, right?  Is there some way we can delete this info after I send it to him?"

Things that are irritating me this week.

I'm actually having a really fantastic week, but I'm not going to let that stop me from whining about things in the most comical way I can... 

1.  Wyoming residents ability to drive, particularly in Cheyenne.
See, I've stated several times to my out-of-state friends that Wyoming does in fact have four seasons, they're just wrong.  The seasons we have are Winter, Still Winter, Construction, and Rodeo.  Anywho, we are now smack in the middle of Construction which just puts the stupidity of drivers in this town into even more stark detail.  This week, I drove home a different route everyday in some futile attempt to avoid construction...ha!  How silly of me.  Of course, it was unavoidable, but what baffled me is that every time I drove home I ran into a car accident.  Seriously.  One day I drove through three.  As it is one of our seasons, you'd think Wyoming residents would recognize the intricate language of orange cones and avoid the minimal amount of danger they create, but no...it is better if we drive through the cones and straight into the ditch.  You know how when you drive past an accident and you can sort of guess how things went down?  Not here!  We are creative in our vehicular destruction in the great state of Wyoming.  >.<

2.  Schedules that don't seem to have important dates on them.
I won't share the specific story that goes with this one, but I'm sure my moderately organized friend understand the general frustration this causes. 

3.  The fact that I am still terrible at the piano.
I've actually been practicing as it turns out.  Haha!  I took a break from working my way through some piano books to learn the voice parts for the musical I'm teaching here in a week or so.  The voice parts.  For children.  That means one note at a time and no pedal.  I'm not musically stupid, but every time I see Bb Major, I turn into a person who has broken both of their elbow and has had their fingers replaced with seaweed.  WHAT MEANS THIS TWO FLATS!?!?!?  Yet I can play in Eb juuuuuust fine.  What?  Seriously, brain??  There are harder keys...I know there are.  I had to play them in scales for proficiency.  BUT B FLAT IS HAAAAAAAARD!!!!!  Hell.

4.  People who don't inform applicants when a position has been filled. 
Screw you guys.  I want a job.  Oddly enough, I imagine this little paragraph may well prevent me from being hired. 

5.  SciFi (SyFy is just stupid.  Just another gem from the mind of the man whom I shall call Corporate Moron 1.) channel's approach to holidays.
For those of you who live in eternal denial of the fact that I am a trekkie (Daniel), you may wish to skip down.  This particular irritation is best illustrated in the following scene I just wrote.  We find ourselves in an office resembling a closet with far too many toys from happy meals.  As we approach, we hear a conversation between three men whom I shall call Corporate Moron 1, Shareholder, and Intern.
Corporate Moron 1: Memorial Day weekend is upon us!!  Whatever shall we show on our channel??
Shareholder: I feel we should show a Star Trek marathon.  Everyone loves Star Trek.  And that's SciFi (Excuse me, SyFy), right?
Corporate Moron 1: Brilliant, sir!  Another excellent idea!  That's why we listen to you!  For the ideas!  Not at all because your money is the only thing keeping our channel afloat!
Intern: Sir, we do a Star Trek marathon every holiday...and also every Monday from 2-7...also, some weekends when we can't come up with any terrible ideas for our original movies...
Corporate Moron 1: Gasp!
Shareholder: Silly Intern!  This is no ordinary Star Trek marathon.   This is a Star Trek movie marathon. 
Corporate Moron 1: Your best idea ever, sir!!
Intern: Oh, that'll be pretty cool. 
Shareholder: Ah, yes, I am wonderful, aren't I?  We shall play Star Trek movies all weekend!  And we shall play them in no discernible order!  Those numbers attached to the titles are silly!  Canon means nothing to us here at SyFy!!
Intern: But sir, the trekkies...shouldn't we play them in order?
Corporate Moron 1: Nonsense, Intern!  This is a fantastic idea!!
Shareholder: And we shall play Nemesis the most because that is the best and my favourite Star Trek movie!
Corporate Moron 1: Yes!  Yes!
Intern: Really, Nemesis?
Shareholder: And we shall "forget" to play Star Trek III!!  And we won't play Wrath of Khan untill two in the morning!!
Intern: Oh dear...
Corporate Moron 1: No one like The Search for Spock anyway!!
Shareholder: And anytime we would've meant to play III, we'll instead play...ZARDOZ!!!!!
Corporate Moron 1: Oh...Zardoz?  Sir, I don't know...
Intern: Really?  That's where you draw the line?
I actually would've been down with some Zardoz.  That's one on a long list of scifi movies that are sooooo terrible they've cycled right back around into awesome somehow.  But yeah, the Star Trek movie marathon this weekend has been an adventure.  (They did replace Star Trek III with Sunshine.  Sunshine is a fantastic movie, but really doesn't belong in a Star Trek marathon.  At least it's in space, I guess.)

6.  My car.
We have now spent approximately $500 more in repairs for the Mazda than it originally cost.  Awesome.  And yet, I'll still be driving the rolling death trap to Minnesota this summer.  Wish me luck!

I'm gonna go write more of my lesson plans and continue plucking away at the piano. 

More about the pain scale.

This.  Is.  Brilliant. 

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/boyfriend-doesnt-have-ebola-probably.html

Things I Do at Work OR The Adventures of Bob the Space Cowboy Pt. 1

My job, at times, does not require a great deal of brain power.  I mean, really I'm meant to sit around and wait for people to ask me questions along the lines of "Where's the 'print' button in Microsoft Word?" and "How do I delete something in my email?"  Not exactly rocket science considering I've been working in IT for about five or six years now.  (Note: My degree is in education, but I'm becoming increasingly aware that my technology skills are much more marketable.  Go figure.  *sigh*)  Anyway, when boredom strikes, I am often looking for something to make the time go much much faster.  Luckily my friend Carrie is often able to supply me with such a distraction.  We were chatting in gchat and she tells me to tell her a story about Bob, the space cowboy from Neptune.  I was more than willing to oblige.  The resulting is this: Pt. 1 of The Adventures of Bob the Space Cowboy.  (There's not much.  I did still have to help people during this time, after all...)

Once there was a three arm gephlot named Bob.  And he was a space cowboy, boy howdy.  But not the kind that wrangled alien wildlife, was rugged and strapping, or generally particpated in the romantic stereotypical definition of what you and I know to be a cowboy, mind you...  No, no. Bob, he liked hats. Specifically of the wide brimmed variety.  And to him, this qualified him as a cowboy.  He was a recent transplant to the planet Neptune from his home planet, Atlepraxis II.  Sadly, Atlepraxis II's leader, Mimzy, decided to outlaw the wearing of wide-brimmed hats and Bob was having none of that, no sir!  So he shipped out to new environs.  Now, Neptune was nice enough.  Lots of gas clouds...reasonably freezing...crooked rings, not like that unartistic planet, Saturn.  Pish with your fancy colours!  You're not artsy at all!  You just found a box of crayons you unwashed miscreant planet!  Yeah.  Bob, he liked Neptune allright.  But after three and a half Neptunian years on the planet (which was only equal to an Atlepraxian week), Bob was beginning to feel just a twinge of homesickness.  "I miss the carnivorous sloop-margles that used to bound in and out of the dunes in the Atlepraxian desert," sayeth Bob.  "I miss the infinite convenience of the three suns that kept my Atlepraxian homeworld in eternal day!  What the hell is this nighttime business, anyway?  How does anyone get anything done when it's so dark?  And what's with all these random points of light in the sky?  They don't do anything.  They don't shed any sort of light on the planet's surface, they don't make any pictures, you can't find your way around with them.  Pish, I say!  Pish!"  So, Bob, he says to his friend, Ed, "Ed, my man, I miss my home.  I miss cave surving in the audial hwho-bangs on the Eastern mleldelnop."  Ed, who's just about had it with his friend's incessant belly-aching, says to Bob, "Really man?  Your planet, Ablebab the Fifth or whatever, sounds like a drag.  Everything sounds like this ridiculous amount of danger and thoroughly unfun.  Furthermore," says Ed, "You had to leave your planet because they outlawed wide-brimmed hats.  I mean, really?  That's your reason for packing up and changing your entire life?  And who wastes their time making stupid laws like outlawing certain kinds of hats?  You, sir, are an idiot and you planetary leader is a bitch."

So endeth Pt. 1 because, you see, work had ended and I went home to watch Fry and Laurie.

Bits and Pieces

My brain is just beyond scattered at work and over the past week I've collected an odd mix of thoughts and events and I just need to write them down to get them out of my head. 

I have a great deal of trouble making eye contact with someone in an involved conversation.  I really hope people don't think I'm bored or ignoring them - most of the time, I am listening intently - but I think I'm focusing so damn hard that my multitasking brain short circuits or something.  It's like trying to block out all of the minor distractions just makes them worse. 

I've been thinking a lot about shoes lately.  Yes, shoes.  Spurred mainly by a conversation about how children don't wear loafers ever under any circumstances.  Anyway, shoes really can say an awful lot about a person.  My favourite pair of shoes are special edition fair trade green chuck taylors with silhouettes of trees printed on the side that I bought from a thrift store.  If that doesn't say something about me, I don't know what does. 

There's a lady who comes into the lab who likes to talk to herself...a lot.  She's generally pretty harmless, but today, after loitering at the scanner for about half an hour, she walked by my desk and gave me a mean, threating, contemptuous sort of look.  I have this bad habit of looking up from my desk and smiling at people, which only made things worse.  As she started to walk off, I heard her mutter to her imaginary friend, "...probably accused of murder too."  o.O

My addiction to sour cherry flavoured candies is likely a bad thing.

Every few weeks or so I go through one of these bizarre desperate-need-to-self-improve sort of phases that often involves changing how I react to things or what I think of people or what have you.  Recently, however, I came to the conclusion that there would be no need for me to change anything about myself if I could just learn to not say the thoughts in my head aloud. 

Somewhere, someone in the world, someone is listening to Sibelius and it's his fault the weather's like this. 

I spend a lot of time oblivious to social cues and such things, but man, the amount of people who have no sense of decorum or manners is just staggering.

As I am numbering the measures in my Rachmaninov Vespers, a patron asks, "What instrument do you play?"  "I sing."  "You know, some people say that the voice is the original instrument.  Do you believe that?  I would've thought it was the drum."  "Maybe, but I think people probably learned how to scream before they learned how to hit things."

Things are more impressive looking when they're in a different alphabet.

Having a ruptured eardrum is a lot like living inside a honkytonk piano; things echo at inappropriate times, everything is just slightly out of tune, and it's impossible to hear clearly anyone talking.

I very much need to go on a road trip.

Tissue

I miss photoshop.  And I was sick of my old layout, so I'll use this premade one untill I can get my computer to start cooperating with me.  


There are leaves everywhere inside this hall.  The wind outside is bordering on insane...  It's as if the poor state is clawing at any last remnants of winter.  It actually snowed about two weeks ago and there are still snow drifts in the hills and mountains.  We had sun and lovely temperatures for two days before Wyoming became distressed by it.  In regard to the wind, it's been a calm year so far; I'd begun to miss the famous mountain range wind I've been used to for the past nine years.  Well, in the poor state's confusion it kicked the wind back up again at gusts between 23 and 64 miles per hour creating the colder temperatures that are standard.  There are leaves everywhere.  


The wind keeps me up at night as well.  This combined with persistent night terrors, my inability to sleep in warm temperatures (my room is a sauna, you see), and inconsistent day schedule, and the mild insomnia associated with my medication is leaving me like a ghost wandering around.  I feel tired.  I understand that sleep would solve this problem, but it remains just out of my grasp.  It is elevating my anxiety as well.  I feel like I should be doing something more...I should at least be preparing to move on with the rest of my life as it comes hurtling at me, but this is one of the laziest summers I've had since secondary.  Instead of feeling relaxed it is driving me a little out of my mind.  


I'm writing in an attempt to still some of the thoughts that keep cropping up in my brain that I simply cannot sort at this time.  People have told me this past year that I seem calmer and more put together than I used to in years past, but I feel as though I'm slowly coming apart at the seams and the only thing I've accomplished is that I'm more adept at hiding it.  


I'm filling my days with new habits and hobbies...resolving to track my nutrition better, walking everyday, cleaning...I've books to read, music to learn...  Aaaaaahh.  I think I just hate summer.  What's odd is I've taken a path which, while I love it, is going to keep summer as nothing more than a lull in my calendar.  Maybe I'll appreciate the break more then and maybe it will be less of a break.  In fact, I'm sure I'll miss the freedom I had during the academic year in college. 


I'm going to stop talking now.