There was a Yankee Swap at work yesterday. I didn’t participate because I always get shafted with a color-changing fiber-optic flower, a 6-pack of fruitcakes, or some other equally dreadful gift. Most of the people did participate though, I think 40 in all. Most of the gifts were booze, as could be expected. at least, the gifts that weren’t dunkin donuts gift cards. There were a few really random things (an office space DVD inside a massive pile of jello comes to mind), and one guy even ended up with a box of condoms.
Funny thing about getting shafted with something you don’t want at a yankee swap. You tend to still make the best of things.
…like decorating the company christmas tree with your gift…
http://www.iggdawg.com/pics/tree.jpg (note the ornament on the right)
http://www.iggdawg.com/pics/xl.jpg
Why is it that CNN has to show a picture of Angelina Jolie’s baby every 30 minutes? great, they had a kid. so did a bunch of other people. How is this newsworthy? how is this HEADLINE newsworthy?
I can only hope that one of these days people of substance will be treated with the same awe that media and sports stars are today… since teachers, scientists, etc are the ones really making a difference. Every time someone calls a football star their “hero”, a firefighter somewhere is being robbed out of that appreciation.
I swear, the only reason I know how to type by touch is so that I can type and watch TV at the same time. Oddly enough, I have fewer typos when I’m staring at the TV and not paying attention than when I’m watching what I type. Clearly I need to pay less attention at work.
I have a mean ing headache.
AT&T used to be thought of as the worst telco to deal with. They have this horrible automated ticket system that gives no useful information. we have to select the menu option “choose option 6 if you are calling from an alaskan location” in order to get a human. Oddly, this is the only option that will not put you into an automated Maze Of Pain ™. I don’t know what deal Alaska has with AT&T, but I have no problems with exploiting it. Our tickets are never simple enough for an automated “it still broke” or “we done fixed it” response.
over the past couple weeks, Verizon has far surpassed AT&T and has become above and beyond the worst telco to deal with. They have massive hold times, incompetent/powerless operators, and dreadful internal communications. and in the past couple weeks, a lot of their circuits have been going to shit. today especially. I don’t think I’ve ever had a “putting up with shit” headache at work before. I have a mean fucking headache today.
if I talk to you today and I come off as an ass, please do me a favor and roll with it. I ran out of tact about an hour ago.
Some of you may remember an earlier post about a laptop I had received from my grandmother a month or so ago. it was fine except for a faulty power connector in the back of the unit. Basically, it just refused to take a charge consistently and would fail at seemingly random times due to “wonky power related shit” (sorry for techspeak). the techs had told my poor grandmother that she would need a new motherboard, so she went out and got a new device long before consulting any non-leeches about the problem. upon hearing the symptoms I figured the issue could likely be fixed with some creative soldering. failing that, aggressive soldering. I mean, it’s a great laptop. plenty fast, 3d card, nice roomy HDD, wifi, etc… worth a little elbow greae before dubbing it a brick.
so I took a crack at fixing it yesterday. I used the “take shit off it till you’ve got nothing left but the parts you want” method. my god, I must have taken out around a hundred screws. this poor laptop was distributed evenly over the entire table I was working on. I had no idea they could fit so much crap in such a small space. Eventually with some wrestling and strong-arming I was able to crack the case… I might add I did this in such a way that I was convinced it would never go together again. I finally whittled it down to the motherboard. The issue was that the center pin in the power connector had somehow shed it’s solder. the peg was sitting in the board, but was not soldered, so the connection would break extremely easily as the power jack wiggled around. I tossed on a quick dab of solder and was done.
oddly enough, when I put everything back in it still worked! perfectly! no magic had escaped! and I only had 4 screws left over when it was all back together (spares, clearly). So with just a few hours of elbow grease and one wad of solder I have myself a nice new lappy to play with. whee.
there should be a clause in the presidential election process that states “If the elected president turns out to be a total asshat, the previous president may return to finish off the term”. I’d love to have Clinton in office right now. Hell, George Washington could do a better job in his current state than Bush.
I love new england weather patterns:
Thursday
Slight Chance of Showers
Hi 65°F
Sunday
Mostly Sunny
Hi 39°F
I swear, the weather itself is manic depressive here. almost 30 degrees in just 3 days. wheeee
Sometimes all it takes is a little careful reasoning to bring someone around…
(06:47:49) iggdawg555: let me borrow your laptop power cable after you go. I’m stupid and forgot mine.
(06:48:10) Strokedickie: no
(06:48:14) iggdawg555: yes
(06:48:20) Strokedickie: ok, just put it in my bag when you leave.
PS – Because I know you’ll ask, the guy’s last name is Dickie and I guess it seemed clever at the time.
On the way home from CT on tuesday I saw something curious. It was a bus full of old people, and the bus line’s name was “Omgea Express”. Thought that was a little morbid. I almost expected the driver to be dressed as the grim reaper.
We work in a secure facility, and the work we do involves logging into devices at the core of very large company networks. International corporations, banks, state/government devices, etc. So running a tight ship is pretty important. One of the rules around here is that if you get up, you lock your computers before you leave the desk. Two reasons for this. The first being so that private information isn’t on display to the whole ops center. The second is so that when a company comes in for a tour, they don’t see some other company’s information on display at an abandoned workstation and end up thinking “how secure is our shit?”.
Like mane workplaces, one of the pastimes here at work is fucking with eachother. The favorite things to prey upon are eachothers work PCs and laptops. Since most people forget to lock their machines from time to time, we do all kinds of mean stuff to them. This is primarily as a reminder that “you should have locked your shit since anyone else could have gained access”. The stock prank is just loading up meatspin (if you don’t know, don’t ask) and then locking the machine on the victim’s behalf. Sometimes we mess with homepages and IE links. Sometimes write confessions of love via email to some dude in the back row, and leave it unsent so it pops up when they unlock the machine. you know, asinine childish stuff no adult should really get any fun out of doing.
So this morning I walk in and I notice some extra folders on my desktop. “Guys I would blow”, “Hansen MP3s”, and “Shemale porn”. My assailant had even go so far as to populate the “guys I would blow” folder with various unsavory characters. Who would do such a thing? No other than my boss, Joe. He’s pretty much the driving force behind all the pranking that goes on here. “Dude, did you see that? he left his laptop unlocked. we’ve gotta do something”. He’s like the little Jiminy Locust in the back of our heads, egging us on to mess with eachother… when he’s too busy to do it himself. And since he’s the boss, our actions are pre-approved.
Anyways… I just got done flushing all the meatspin (Joe: “Hey Ian, why don’t you pull up event query in IE for me real quick…”) out of my IE links and thought I would share our little workplace tradition.
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