…And The Heat Is Rising—Slowly
It’s Friday night. That says a lot of different things to different people. Some, like my roommate, have decided to go out to a dance club (to, what? dance? – ed What are you, some kind of genius? – bob). Some, like my sister, had to be pushed. Some people, like my nephew and his Dad decided to call it an early night and turn in.
Me? I find contentment generating content! Here’s a week-end summary of events especially cooked up for this mess. I’m sure that some of it will find its way into a report for the boss on Tuesday, but not too much.
First, the Airport Extreme base station here is giving me fits. As I write this, the connection is down so it’ll require a restart before I can post this little bit of goodness. Maybe His Steveness should’ve rethought the whole Intel Inside The Airport Basestation Is Okay idea. Personally, I’ve had much better luck with Power PC machines not crashing than I have Intel-based machines. But as we all know, Steve knows best, right?
Right?
The thing’s been crashing, so I’ve been spending my time getting it back on line rather than posting to this thing. It’s a very sad state of affairs indeed.
Also, if you look back in the archives (yes, it’s been that long), I said something about the poor little Dodge Dakota needing a clutch. I still haven’t taken care of it. Poor little thing.
On another subject entirely, we rolled out new software at work and I was assigned a building to support during the launch. It wasn’t necessarily a stretch considering that I camp in that building anyway (or have for a month or so because that’s where the medical clinic is located). What intrigues me about the whole thing though is how much I’ve come to adopt the frontline staff as my own. Tech Support 101 teaches you to remain detached from the “users,” but I missed that class. I missed all the classes, actually.
I’ve been trying this analogy out over the last two days. What do you think? “They make shit up, hoist it up the flagpole, then write a policy that compels people to salute…” And that pretty much sums up how my week went.
Oh wait! Not really! Email has been my friend and my bitter enemy all week too. You, my beautiful and shiny friends have sent me some lovely things, including quite a few mentions of that bitch Carlee. You know, because of the GSP connection. How about this? Remember how I used to work on catalogs (along with my long-suffering, lovely, and under-appreciated writing partner) for Hewlett-Packard? Well… Then you must’ve heard that the HP board fired Carly Fiorina this week as well. Dogs, bitches, Carlee, Carly, HP, Uncle Bob… Friends, it’s weird! Spooky, even!
I’ve enjoyed all the rest of the emails too. When I’ve been able to connect the Little iBook to the Innernut that is, and once I’ve killed all the bad spam badness….
The bad email problems I’ve encountered this week have been largely of my doing. At work, I’m sure that most problems could be solved by a phone call, but that’s mostly due to my hatred of the phone and my willingness to concede a great deal of ground in a conversation. Much less so in written correspondence. “Gee, he’s so accommodating in person,” they must say. In an email? Forget it. If you screwed up, I will not hesitate to let you know. If you start a thread that impugns my credibility and punk out in the middle of the the electronic back and forth, I’m happy to let you know about it. Hell, I’ll even let your boss know about it as well as the directors of two or three other departments!
Politically savvy? Not bloody likely.
Fun? Only a little.
More later…
Your pal,
bob
UPDATE: I’m posting this from the little cabin (it’s hard to screw up a direct connection to the phone line—”wired” doesn’t really appeal to me as the antonym of “wireless,” how about “wirefull?”). The pups are here napping in front of the fire and it’s been raining pretty hard. It looks like we’re in for the afternoon. Maybe they’ll help me finish the 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.
ANOTHER UPDATE: I edited this post to make it a little less sad. – bob