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After all these years, you’d think it would take more than four boxes to collect everything out of my desk. Half the boxes are filled with stuff from home, so it evens out.

I wonder what will happen if I get a job where I actually have to work all day long.

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Old mails to CK:

1) The next time The Angry Old Woman calls me asking why her e-mail doesn’t work, I’m going to send her this haiku:

Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is�down.

2) If your daughter(s) drink too much, it is probably best to avoid lecturing when (if) they get back home. After all, it will inevitably lead to the typical teenage comeback “Well, at least I didn’t KILL my boyfriend while driving drunk like you did, Mother!” What mother hasn’t dreaded those very words?

3) The Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM.� Please use the back door.

4) I have to go to a fancy dress party at Spindletop next Friday. What should I wear? Not jeans, I guess. Do you think I should flop off to the thrift store and get something in basic black and be done with all the agony?

Oh, and I was invited to a 50th birthday/garden party for Nancy, who lives up the street. That’s next Saturday. I think that’s a dressy shorts or sundress sort of party, don’t you think? Barbecue and martinis.

And you said I was avoidant.

5) Since you’re writing that story, can you try to have my character work in the phrase “Waacher di thart fer, ya mad farka!” in some part of the dialog?

6) I can’t have coffee with Ewan McGregor because I’d frighten him with the drool and speechlessness… I would be such a boring person afterwards. Talking about meeting him would be my only topic of conversation when I met new people… I’d be like that “I lowered my cholesterol” guy on TV.

7) January information – Tomorrow is national clean off your desk day.�Please do your part for efficient Computer Store operations!
�
Here are some other important days for your weekly planning:
�
13- Blame Somebody Else Day
14- National Dress Up Your Pet Day
15- National Fresh Squeezed Juice Day
16- National Nothing Day
16- International Hot & Spicy Food Day
17- Hat Day Third Friday in January
�
Thanks for your attention.

8) Your Valentine’s Day Card:

I see your face when I am dreaming,
That’s why I always wake up screaming.

My feelings for you no words can tell,
Except for maybe “go to hell”.

What inspired this amorous rhyme?
Two parts vodka, one part lime.

9) IBM now calls their transfer of ownership “ServicePacs”. Their e-mail to me states that our loss of their ServicePacs is a “huge liability on IBM’s part”. They are treating it like someone stole a pre-paid phone card that had already been activated. It would seem that they would have a method in place that would recognize the “lost” numbers should someone off the street decide to register their POS ThinkPad so IBM could deny the registration. Crazy IBM jackasses.

10) I just mailed this to The Boss, since he’s in that important meeting: “Just now, there was a man out at the desk trying to deliver a Big Bowl of Whiskey to you…but since your door was closed and you didn’t want to be disturbed, I sent him away.”

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From September 2003:

DW: I have to do a Powerpoint presentation. I hate Powerpoint.

Me: Me, too. Most people just make slides they read to the audience, and their content sucks. They may as well have just handed out copies of a Word document.

DW: Just because you know how to use Word doesn’t make you William Freaking Faulkner, now does it?

Me: See if you can work in the phrase “ineluctable modality” to your presentation. I’ll pay you five dollars if you can manage to do it.

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Upon clearing out more old work e-mail today, I uncovered the “Customer Questions” folder. Some of them are even funnier than the ones saved in my “Mails From Mother” folder. For example:

1) Can ram that came out of a Mac work in an intel PC?� The specs are the same.
2) By any chance, do you carry batteries for Compaq laptops?� It’s an AQ Armada 7800. And I need an Ethernet card for it.
3) Do you gift wrap?
4) Disregarding the formatting, are hard drives interchangeable between Mac’s and real PC’s?
5) I am looking for some computer-related job in your department or some assistantship. If you have any such openings, can you please let me know.
6) Back in late April of 2004, you had some Dell Otiplex GX270s that were overstocked. Wondering if those were still available?

Then there were two exchanges with a friend that works on the second floor:

DW: Can you get a NE2000?
Me: We have the Allied Telesyn 10BT ISA 16-bit Ethernet NIC RJ45 PNP NE2000 card in stock.
DW: It’s gotta be 8 bit compatible.
Me: What kind of 386 machine are you running? Anything that still needs an 8-bit card should be accidentally swept into the rubbish tip. Since it’s a relic, the museum prices will be high for curators like you.
DW: Shssshhhh. It might be a 286 running DOS 3.01.

DW: I would like to get a low profile AGP video card for my system. What can I get besides GeForce MX440? I would like more than 64 MB.

Me: There’s a 128MB GeForce FX5200 VGA/DVI adapter with Dual Monitor capabilities.

DW: I wrote to Dell and they said this: “There can only be one AGP port to a system, and all recent Dell integrated video adapters are AGP port devices. Therefore, any upgrade you purchase will have to be a PCI card that will fit in an available PCI slot. By default the PCI card will be configured as the primary adapter if you install one. ” I thought AGP was for digital output.� The built in card does not have a digital connection.� Since my monitor can support digital, I thought it would be better.

Me: Better than what? The integrated card is a Direct AGP 8x with analog input. That model can have an optional DVI adapter card added that uses the integrated video, but it sounds like you also want 128 MB of memory on board a separate card.

DW: SBC swears that there is an open AGP port in the CPU. I just thought that going digital would be better with a better card.

Me: According to Dell, the Small Form Factor has the following open slots: “Small Form Factor (SF) Chassis: 1 low-profile PCI, 1 low-profile 8XAGP”.

But, even though it HAS a slot, your mail from Dell indicates that you can only use one at a time, so it’s irrelevant if it has an open slot or not. If Dell put a doorbell on the case, it wouldn’t mean that you could use it for anything.

DW: You can get one with a doorbell now?

Me: …

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Another day of training the warehouse woman. I weep for the future.

In the middle of dealing with her inability to open an Excel file (because she’d clicked “save”, not “open”), I had to take a call from one of my main vendors who claimed their shipping company couldn’t deliver a drop shipped order to the University of Louisville because the zip code was incorrect. Without even looking at the purchase order, I told the vendor the zip code should be 40292.

Vendor: That’s a PO Box.
Me: That’s the zip code for the entire U of L campus.
Vendor: FedEx said it references a PO Box.
Me: There may BE a PO Box that uses that zip code, because the entire U of L campus uses the same number.
Vendor: We can’t deliver to a PO Box.
Me: The order isn’t addressed to a PO Box. It’s addressed to a room inside a building.
Vendor: But the zip code is for a PO Box.
Me: It’s also the zip code for every single building on the U of L campus.
Vendor: We can’t ship this.
Me: If you’re telling me that FedEx is unable to deliver anywhere on the University of Louisville campus, then you need to use a different shipping company.

Then she transferred me to the lady at FedEx and I had to repeat the conversation until she admitted the problem “must be” on their end. You think?

The Boss said I should’ve said, “Stay where you are. I’ll be right over to split your skull with the butt of my revolver.”

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VH1 is showing Rocky Horror Picture Show WITH commercials and the few curse words bleeped out. They didn’t bother to edit out Magenta’s crotchless fishnets, though.

I spent another day training the incompetent woman from the warehouse. Today was worse than yesterday. Yesterday, she watched me work and took notes. Today, she wanted to do the work herself, and refer to the notes. This meant she sat at my desk from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon and complained that her notes weren’t accurate, that she couldn’t figure out how to do what I did, that this was “too much work” to give to her, that there were “too many steps” to the process, ad nauseum.

At 1 in the afternoon, I left her and went to lunch with my friend Ami Noblog. I’ve often told Ami I was going to call her that and blog about our lunches, but I haven’t until now. She and I went to high school together and she reminded me that our 20th reunion is this summer. Could this year GET any weirder?

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Wreck of the Week!

It’s time once again for Wednesday Wreck of the Week!

Today’s entry comes to us from Scott, who now holds the distinction of submitting the most WOTW photos.

The story behind the picture:

“We were wine tasting and some people came running in saying a guy had driven his suv into the pond by the road.� I guess he was getting a bit squirrelly and something bad happened. �While I was taking the pic with my phone the owner of the suv was on the other side of the road giving me the death stare.� Good thing his ride was in a ditch so there would be no road rage.”

I think this may be THE best WOTW photo ever.

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Work today wore me out. Between the attempt at training a freaked-out incompetent woman to do the bulk of my work once I’m gone and SBC calling in sick for the rest of the week, I got hardly any loafing accomplished.

This afternoon, I’ve been clearing out old e-mail, which is always good for a laugh. I don’t even know why I save e-mails, since I hardly ever refer back to them.

I found one exchange in my Drafts Folder from the Staff Listserv in 2002. It should’ve served as an early clue that I work with buffoons:

Person A: To attend the Leadership Seminar, you must register with the Priority Code of “UK” in order to get the discount.
Person B: What is the UK priority code?
Me: Well, genius, if you can’t read that the priority code IS “UK”, then maybe you shouldn’t be attending a leadership seminar.

Then there were loads of exchanges with TAC:

Me: Speaking of autos, I think you’ve reached maximum flair stage for your vehicle.
TAC: i have not yet begun to flair

TAC: So I am really surprised you didn�t chronicle my near china syndrome nuclear meltdown on your blog. My nearly killing everyone we work with just not as cool as toilets huh
Me: I’m still not over the shock. It scares me to write it out. It may set you off all over again if you read it online…

Me: Why am I always the last to know?
TAC: cause u dont have cable

Me: My cat clock ran out of battery power, so *for laughs* I went over to SBC and said, “My cat clock is dead. I suspect foul play. That’s why I’m at your desk.” He went all red in the face and said he had nothing to do with it. I told him I was kidding and he continued to maintain his innocence. I said, “It’s a joke, man. I’m just teasing you because you didn’t like the clock.” He kept mumbling about how he had nothing to do with it….
TAC: we work with the most jacked up bunch of friggin idiots this side of hell