I can't do that

So far I've spent my whole weekend playing with my new laptop. I had built my dream laptop about a million times on the Dell website, they kept raising the limit on my credit, how could I resist? Seriously: I'm only human you know.

So a couple weeks ago I built another one, but this time I actually hit checkout. Oops!

In preparation for the impending laptopery I decided to wire the house with wireless. I rang up Qwest and requested said wireless. Now, call me naive, but I thought I had to talk to sales to get that set up. He asked if I had a modem already, and I said yeah-- and it was one that had wireless built in.

He actually said, "Then why are you calling?"

Well, pardon me for thinking I needed to tell billing or get some switch hit or something. The tech guy kind of snottily said he'd get me a tech person who could get me all set up. I was patched though to someone who was clearly used to dealing with simpletons and attorneys. Redundant much? Yes, I am. Anyway, to get started, he told me, I needed to open Internet Explorer, "the blue 'E' on your desktop".

I sympathized. I let him lead me through all the steps without once letting him know I kinda knew what I was doing. At least, I knew how to open IE.

My laptop arrived on Wednesday, which could not have been a better time. I got it at about 9:00 AM and spent very little time working for the rest of the day. My laptop is blue and pretty and has Vista, which I thought I was prepared for, but I'm not. I still get lost really easily, but that just makes it funner.



So now I can site in the big blue chair downstairs, pissing off the cats because there's no lap left for them, while The Husband is upstairs getting lost in the Wikipedia. In fact, Tbone just jumped over from the loveseat onto the blue chair and, once she saw my lap was not empty and my fingers not available for scritching.

I'm sorry this story isn't all that exciting. As an apology, please accept this clip from Amazing Race.

Hee, I say, Hee!!!!!!!

Diabolique

Don't recognize the artwork? That's Simon's cat.

Yesterday I discovered that my cat can turn on our electric matress pad.

Also? I haven't talked about Wordstock yet. It was at the Portland Convention Center-- also home of the Portland Brew Festival-- and was basically a bunch of tables stacked with books from small and specialty publishers. There were speakers that most of us have never heard of before, and it didn't seem that crowded. I tried my hardest not to buy any books.

And here are the fruits of my FAIL:

The Night of your Life. It's a book of dreams collected and illustrated by Jesse Reklaw. I got him to sign it. He asked what I had dreamed the night before, and my mind just went blank. So, he drew a picture of me with an empty thought balloon. That's so me-- how did he know?

Maintenance. A comic book written by Jim Massey (who also write the Tek Jansen comic books) and illustrated by Robbi Rodriguez. I'm not a comic book person, so why did I buy three issues? One word: Stephen Colbert. I want to support him any way I can.

But the main reason I went to Wordstock was to hear John Hodgman, whom I love just as much as Colbert, Jon Stewart and John Oliver. We'd seen him before, but since then he's come out with a new book and I really wanted to hear him reading from it.


The husband even made him laugh with his hoodie touting the Muncie Fruit Jars.

My Pantsmakers hoodie just confused him.

Christmas should be fun this year

Artwork by David Behrens

My cousin posted the following status update on Facebook the day after the election:

"[My cousin] is sad for the founding fathers of the United States. A Major travesty has been committed and the ideals of this nation will be but a memory. DAMN YOU DEMOCRATS"

Can someone perhaps enlighten me on what ideals, exactly, will be "but" memories? Something like this?

No free man shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or deprived of his property, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor shall we go against him or send against him, unless by legal judgement of his peers, or by the law of the land

What's that? Oh, that's out already?

Oh.

Yes I did

In the name of "teamwork", my department began to meet every Monday to let people know what our schedules were for that week. Then, to foster communication, we began to meet every morning to set forth the plans for the day as well. And now, we are now expected to write a blurb for a "newsletter" called In the Loop, where we get to recount what we did all week in an effort to keep everyone else buried under the minutae of our workdays.

Because there are only so many ways to say "I will answer / am answering/ have answered phones", I have never taken this last mandate seriously. When asked to send in my blurb for In the Loop, I have submitted Haikus, recipes, and tech support slashfic.

This was my entry for this week, with all apologies to the president-elect:

I know you didn't do this just for customer service and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime – software rollouts, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave secretaries waking up with corrupted documents. There are attorneys and paralegals who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they'll format that pleading, or save their letters, or complete their billing entries on time, every time. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be taken on; new people to train and errors to decipher and installs to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even three months, but IT -- I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you -- we as a department will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy we uphold as non-decision-makers, and we know that IT can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of upgrading this office the only way it's been done in this office for twenty years – Desk by desk, secretary by secretary, battered head by battered head.

It really is a shame that no one in our department read the damn things.

The real "game changer"

YAY - Our first African American president.
eta and also? Kinda hawt.
BOO - California enshrines discrimination.
YAY - Liddy Dole out on her ass.
BOO - Kay Hagan still a religious discriminator.
YAY - Virgina went Blue.
eta: YAY - Merkley in for Oregon.

But seriously, the biggest game changer of the night? I put the winter bedclothes on the bed.

No, really. It's got:

a featherbed; then
an electric matress pad; followed by
a flannel fitted sheet; and then
a flannel top sheet; and also
cotton blanket number one; right after that
down comforter number one; in addition to
cotton blanket number two; not to mention
down comforter number two; and finally
a cotton bedspread.

Seriously, it's like six feet tall.