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. 

Getting Over It.

In short version news, attempt no. 73 at learning to stop biting my nails is going pretty well and my new job is awesome.

In long version, I've been thinking and evaluating a lot lately.  I have two issues I've been dealing with and one of them I've sort of figured out and the other is just probably going to stick around for awhile.  The latter is just that I'm lonely and I apparently became a coward at some point.  I've been working on psyching myself up to making a move in a direction for a few weeks and no amount of support and logic seems to be enough to push me in that direction.  So, I think things are going to stay that way for awhile.  Maybe resigning myself to such a thing will irritate me enough that I'll break the pattern.

I've also been struggling with authority lately.  The sentence "Power does not equate knowledge and experience." comes to mind.  The overarching theme of that particular thought has plagued me for most of my life.  I'm always finding myself in situations where I think, why on earth are you in charge of this nonsense and did you even think before you started doling out orders that make no sense?  Normally, I'm pretty complacent in situations such as these just as long the person in question is nice or personable.  When you start making decisions that hurt or upset me or others, I pretty much fly off the handle internally. 

I've been stuck in this situation for the past two weeks and it's been making me miserable.  My friends have helped by allowing me to hash things out and stress and I didn't have to worry about rumours getting thrown about as a result.  Trust me, adding that to my already visible disdain would be the opposite of helpful.  The other bit that helped is me finally centering on the fact that knowledge and experience does not equate power.  We've all had those moments where we look at what's going on and say, "I could do this better.  My ideas make more sense," but the thing of it is that that's not what gets you in a position where you're in charge.  So, in this situation, I have two options: either get willing to play the local politics or shut up and deal with it.  Guess which option I'm going with...

Racism is just silly.

Listening to: McLusky - Without MSG I Am Nothing

Blah blah blah, liver transplant, blah blah blah. I don't much want to talk about it yet.

So, I don't know if I ever wrote about this particular college experience of mine...I assume I must have because I was incensed about the whole event - so much so I dropped the class. Either way, the memory got dredged up, so I'll revisit it again with, hopefully, better writing.

My friend Clay posted a link to this article in google reader and I just got annoyed. I am not naive, not by a long shot. Racism is everywhere whether we like it or not. However, I have a great deal of misplace faith in the human race, it seems, because I still believe that people who are educated and are caring individuals would try to recognize when they participate in racism and try to correct their behavior. Seems reasonable, doesn't it? *sigh*

The attitude held by the administrators in the article further by the hell that is diversity quotas isn't only visible in the admissions process. I see it everywhere in the classes I've taken in at my university perpetuated by the professors and picked up by the tragically impressionable students. Here's my happy (read: infuriating) experience.

I took a class entitled "Racial and Ethnic Relations" my sophomore year of college. I was still a political science major at the time, so the class seemed relevant to my degree and I needed the unireg. One day the class was having a discussion about ethnicity specific dorm floors at certain universities. I was planning to take a backseat in the argument that day because it was already past my threshold of angry. (Thus far in my college career, I had learned something about my degree plan: Poli Sci classes are mainly comprised of militant, angry, and loud people who will take a side of an argument in a millisecond and fight tooth and nail for it, no matter how inane. We spent an entire class period arguing about the usefulness of the post office once... "We don't need the post office! This is the technology age!" "Yeah, and we, like, have fed-ex and stuff!" *facepalm* "Yeah, well I hate fed-ex!" /tangent ) The argument was this: "Race specific floors offer unity in a white dominated microsociety." vs. "Integrated floors are the only way to begin moving in directions to end racial stigmas." And anywhere in between. The argument wasn't progressing anywhere and was mostly just different, angry students reasserting their point with different semantics.

This was about half an hour into the class. Then, one of the usually quiet students (I wasn't one of those either. I spoke frequently, but I bounced from side to side and brought in new points as often as I could. More fun that way. It also kept the angry students from attacking my views outside of class. Some of them were wont to do that.) He asked, "If we have a black floor or a latino floor, is it also okay to have a floor of only students from agricultural families or all from Alaska?" He had a valid point. If the point of the floor is unity in an unfamiliar environment, why not groups of white students from different life situations as well as race-specific groups? The professor...ugh...her response was (verbatim), "When a group of black get together on a floor, it's about unity; when a group of whites get together on a floor, it's about excluding the black man."

The hell you say??? I'll never forget those words as long as I live. I couldn't even keep quiet anymore if I tried. Isn't that just condoning and even promoting racism?? Reverse racism is still racism and, yes, it is ever-present in the world, but any respectable educational institution should do its best to not only denounce such behavior, but also teach its students that a person is an individual, not simply skin or heritage. I'm pretty certain my argument fell on deaf ears and several of the angries who traditionally hung on her every word in the class set in to tear me apart for the rest of the hour.

Between that and the two Cs I'd gotten on papers earlier in the semester (which were, according to her, well written and well supported... Eh???), I'd had enough. I withdrew as fast as I could.

I don't have much of a conclusion for this... I still maintain my faith in humanity, despite it all. It's a lot easier to do as a teacher, I've found.