We’re locked out of the break room? Sure I’ll try my key.
Hey! Look! I found someone to fix the lock on the break room! Yay!
Oh. Goody. I get to redo the entire schedule for a full week. Look. No warm bodies to cover a two hour period.
Electronic dissertation? Here are some answers for you.
More scheduling.
The printer is misbehaving? I’ll come beat it into submission.
All the dates you scheduled in July? You didn’t write them down and deleted the reminders I sent you? Sure, I’d love to print out the calendars for those weeks and leave them at the front desk.
More scheduling.
Yes, I’d love to come up front and fix the page number on someone’s dissertation. He wandered away? Call me when he comes back.
More scheduling.
Okay, here’s how to fix page numbering: turn on show hide codes, continuous section break, continuous section break, not same as previous, not same as previous, insert page number, format page number, insert page number, format page number. Got all that?
Finish scheduling.
What do you mean Word saves all revisions if you have fast save turned on? Everything? You mean EVERYTHING? Really? Oh. Wow. I can see why the dean would be upset.
The calendars are at the Front Desk. (Where I TOLD you they’d be.)
No, I don’t know of a way to make the page number on the abstract page start at i and not ii. Tell him it should be fine to submit like that.
Sure. I’ve love to schedule a class Just For You. How about three weeks from now when I have some open time on my calendar?
Oh. Goody. I’d love to update the entire Adobe Suite just to get Acrobat working. You want me to close Acrobat? Fine. You want me to close Dreamweaver? Fine. You want me to close Firefox? Fine. You want me to close Word? Fine. I’ll just sit here and twiddle my thumbs.
By they way, here’s the secret that should work if the lock sticks on the break room door again. For some reason, I forgot to tell you earlier.
Ma’am, if you’ve tried all those things, I suggest you run a repair on Excel, and if that doesn’t work, call the Help Desk.
Why hasn’t anyone looked at this revisions I gave you all three weeks ago? I wasn’t kidding! DO IT NOW! I have to TEACH these classes! SOON!

If anyone needs me, I’ll be hiding under my desk, not answering my phone, for the remainder of the day.

I’m updating Word Press.

Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain… Reality will resume eventually.

ADDENDUM the First:
Upgrade is complete. Lemme know what’s broken!

ADDENDUM the Second:
Random Reading has now also been updated. I think this means it’s now time to curl up on the sofa with a book.

Oh, you need that Word document converted to a pdf?

Well, after an uninstall and a reinstall and a repair and finally an update that wanted to take 45 minutes, It still doesn’t work on my machine.

So I moved to another computer…

..Where Acrobat didn’t convert the file the first time I tried the conversion.

Some days, I really hate computers.

As one might conclude from my post yesterday, my now top priority project is to redo our documentation for Dreamweaver and Photoshop, which Photoshop on the top of the pile, since I have to teach that sooner.

Not only have there been major changes between Photoshop CS and Photoshop CS3, I am now reminded why I hate help files and product documentation so much.

IF YOU CAN’T NAME AN ITEM CONSISTENTLY THROUGHOUT YOUR DOCUMENTATION, HOW ARE PEOPLE SUPPOSED TO USED YOUR DAMNED HELP FILES?

I kid you not. My first task is always to label the parts of the window, so I can put up a picture to refer to as I write. Except that Photoshop seems to have multiple names for several objects, so now I have to guess what names to use.

No wonder people never read the gorram documentation.

So I had to teach Intro to Photoshop this afternoon.

First off, I am not an expert in Photoshop–far from it. I can do the basics, but any of the more esoteric stuff? Forget it. But that’s okay usually, because this is a very basic class.

So I walk into class, we open up the program, and suddenly I discover that my boss has upgraded the version of Photoshop from CS to CS3.

And he didn’t tell me.

And he upgraded every computer BUT the instructor’s computer–mine.

And I have never worked in Photoshop CS3.

At that point, there was nothing I could do but apologize to the class and tell tell them we’d just have to muddle through as best we could.

Really, when something that ridiculous happens, there’s nothing you can do but laugh and hope people are going to be understanding. Luckily, the classes are free, so they were more than willing to be understanding.

Breakdown of Modern Web Design

Actually, I think the “swearing” segment and the”time spent wishing a slow painful death on Bill Gates” segments are larger thn shown.

(via War on Folly)

And lo did the fairy of annoyance swoop down with her magic wand and say, “HA! You thought you wanted to get work done today? HA!”

And lo did I spend many hours at the front desk, answering the same questions, over and over. “Yes, I need a photo ID. No it does not have to be your WVU ID, just something with your picture on it. Yes, you MUST do this if you want to use a computer. No, I don’t know why the downtown help desk won’t answer their phones.”

And lo now I have returned to my office, and shall proceed to hide under my desk and not answer my phone.

Forever and ever until Monday is over.

A student came up to the GA at the front desk and said, “I think there’s something wrong with the printer. People keep coming up to it and swearing at it!”

You have got to be (deleted) kidding me.

How the (deleted) are we supposed to do our (deleted) jobs if we keep getting (deleted) blindsided by (deleted) from (deleted) (deleted) outside our department?

Grrrr….

ADDENDUM the First:
You have got to be (deleted) me. Now it’s (deleted) (deleted) pulling this (deleted) as well?

I apparently need to (deleted) go the (deleted) home and got back to (deleted) bed, because this day is just getting (deleted) better and better.

I just opened Quicken, and just noticed that I had pending bills to pay. (Quicken is cool like that in reminding me of upcoming bills.) When I switched to that account I saw, “OVERDUE!” “Oh shit!” I thought. Then I read the rest of the notice: “Teleflora. Would you like us to schedule this as a regular transaction?”

No. No I would not.

Stupid computer.

So that tells you where I’ve been spending money recently. (No, I haven’t been buying flowers for myself! Though some days I’m tempted.)

Which reminds me, I need to send flowers to my other grandmother who’s in the hospital…

Yes, despite his major character flaw that I thought would be a deal breaker, I do indeed love my new laptop.

It’s a Champagne Sony Vaio CR203E. It was on its way out, with new, bigger, and shinier models coming int to take the spotlight, but despite the fact he was picked up at a significant price reduction, and despite the fact he’s running Windows Vista, he’s still pretty marvelous. All I wanted was a solid dependable machine with a keyboard that wouldn’t drive me crazy, but I’ve found more.

Of course this may have something to do with the fact that this is the first brand new computer I’ve gotten. All my other personal computers have been hand-me-downs and upgrades. Now, he was a display model, so other hands caressed him possessively as he sat out to be oggled, but I brought him home, gave him a good cleaning, and now he’s shiny and pretty much perfect.

His few foibles (the aforementioned Vista, a touch pad instead of a trackpoint) can live with, since I don’t have to share him with anyone, or turn him back into work at some unknown point in the future, so I can make the adjustments that work for me. Plus, I got a new wireless mouse, which makes the pain of the trackpoint easier to handle.

So don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here typing away, and enjoying the fact that no one else’s germs will be on the keyboard but mine.

Merry Christmas to me!

I just got a new laptop! Yippee! Reduced for quick sale floor model, it has everything I want except for the awful Vista operating system. But I guess I can live with that, especially for the price I got.

My most important criteria was the keyboard, which meant I was looking primarily at either IBMs or Sonys. They had a deal on one of the VAIO’s I’ve been looking at , so SCORE!

Right now they’re doing a system restore, then I get to go back out and pick it up, and waste lots more time properly setting up the system, and uninstalling whatever crap comes pre-installed that I neither want nor need.

So now I can join Michael in geeking out, since he’s spent every day since Christmas playing with his Garmin GPS/PDA. (Yesterday we drove around after our trip to the post office, just so he could play with the GPS portion.)

How is it that within the course of a few hours, my knowledge of web design can make me feel like a total genius and then like a total idiot.

Someone at work wanted advice on setting up an on-line survey. Yesterday I was able to explain to him what he’d need to do using HTML and php, and to create a good enough example that by this afternoon he was working on creating the actual survey and the layout of the pages he wanted to use. (Plus I loaned him a good book that helped as well.)

A few hours later Michael and I are banging our heads against my website trying to figure out why the code:

<?php include (‘http://klishis.com/reading.html’); ?>

suddenly stopped working for no reason whatsoever.

Best part? Michael couldn’t figure it out either, and we had to use a work-around. Stupid computers.

So I have achieved all my primary goals for my database.

There are plenty of other tweaks I’d like to make, but I wanted to take a moment to celebrate the fact that I did everything I initially set out to do.

YIPPEE!

(happy dance)