Tuesday, January 08, 2008
another amber leaf falls into the backwaters of the mind
It's a Tuesday night, I'm at work, and the Bay City Rollers are playing on my computer's new speakers ($6 at a PC parts recycler). And I'm working on being bored snotless. I haven't really slept in the last two days, and I really don't know why... at least this morning I was dreaming about being at a home products exposition like you see some Sunday nights on HGTV. 
Who knew Campbell's Soup was coming out with a new canned product made of fourteen types of cheese? That's what you dream of when you haven't slept in a couple days, I guess. I never claimed that I had much of an entry today, but at least it might be amusing how off-target it could get. Or not. And maybe it's through the veil of 30 years, but I am sitting here wondering what the appeal of the Bay City Rollers to anyone over the age of 18 at the time would have been -- or of any age under 40 would be nowadays. (It was a 25 year old former coworker that I got the "Greatest Hits" album from last week.) Prophetic that at this moment the song playing has the chorus "we don't wanna be yesterday's hero." And to think that Sid & Marty Krofft replaced Kaptain Kool and the Kongs with them (on Saturday morning, Saturday morning)...
On the stupidities front, there is this minor annoyance which is growing every few days, after these four backstory items: I work on the third floor of a five story building, and the cafeteria is on the fifth floor. The building has three elevators side-by-side and two button panels (one is specifically for the leftmost elevator, used for freight). I take the stairs, from the basement parking garage to my floor as well as teleporting between my floor and the cafeteria, for a little stairclimbing exercise. Public parking is available in the two basement garages, and since this building isn't really near civilization (though there is a Metro bus terminal a block away) the number of nonemployees who park here is likely pretty marginal. Now then. The powers-that-be for the company I work for and/or the building management decided that they should have a little more control over the parking area, and are now putting a keycard system with booth (so the nonemployees can pay rent) at the two garage entrances. Not my problem so far, though the space between the booth and the wall is really tight so I can picture that booth getting run into about once a day and/or being scraped as wide vehicles try to enter. The issue is that in preparation for adding our building keycards to the gate that's being put in, they've taken our keycards out of most of the other places that we normally use them... such as the sensors on the doors of the fifth floor cafeteria. And the stairway doors, so you can't get into your own floor. And today (not exactly the first cock-up in this realm), keycards aren't working on the freight elevator -- though that is usually the one that comes first when the regular elevator call button gets pushed, and I wind up stepping in to push a basement floor button to get it out of the way so a working lift can come. I hope they finish that project soon so they can un-screw-up our keycard access and focus on what will be their main priority: nope, it's not handling toll-paying traffic... it will be making frequent repairs to that pesky booth.
Since there is balance in the universe even when it doesn't seem like it, viewing only what you can see around you, I've come to realize that every time someone who should stick around leaves, there are several people who need to go that stay. Okay, so as a tech support agent it's more like every other caller, but I mean for every person in real life who should stay but goes, there are a host of transient people who occupy more time in your ear than they need. Like on your way to the big climbing tree you encounter a few bees that mistake you for a flower that need to be shooed away a couple times, and when you get to that tree you find that the branches you want to be on break when you try hoisting yourself skyward on them. (Whether you take a nasty fall or not depends upon how high up you were able to get.) I miss tree-climbing, I was great at it as a youth. I miss having plenty of friends too, I was great at that back in the day as well. And anymore there seems to be a little confusion... I wish them to be sturdy trees but they regard me like one or the other of us were bees; they fly away or want me to buzz off. This keeps happening to me... guess I'm barking up the wrong trees? I suppose there's one similarity between the temporary annoyances and the hoped-for long-term comforts:
One person wants to be happier in some way, and the other can only do as much as they're capable or willing to. When trying to figure a direction for my life in high school, I said that fixing computers is easier than fixing people... later I learned that this didn't account for the fact that it's people who use computers.
I have another couple hours on the phone, hopefully without another person saying "I don't recall how to do that, I haven't been a network administrator for awhile" (like being an admin is at all relevant to the issue or like they ever were an admin of any sort anywhere) when trying to configure their email program in a way they have no reason to ("how do I configure Outlook to send mail when I'm not online?"... uh, you're not online, so you don't?), so I'm gonna call this good enough. I wish I remembered more of my sleepless dreams, they were pretty interesting as I recall, but maybe there'll be more tonight... a prospect I'm definitely not looking forward to, and hopefully won't encounter. [edit the next morning: Less sleep, more vivid dreams, sigh.] Toodles!
Who knew Campbell's Soup was coming out with a new canned product made of fourteen types of cheese? That's what you dream of when you haven't slept in a couple days, I guess. I never claimed that I had much of an entry today, but at least it might be amusing how off-target it could get. Or not. And maybe it's through the veil of 30 years, but I am sitting here wondering what the appeal of the Bay City Rollers to anyone over the age of 18 at the time would have been -- or of any age under 40 would be nowadays. (It was a 25 year old former coworker that I got the "Greatest Hits" album from last week.) Prophetic that at this moment the song playing has the chorus "we don't wanna be yesterday's hero." And to think that Sid & Marty Krofft replaced Kaptain Kool and the Kongs with them (on Saturday morning, Saturday morning)...On the stupidities front, there is this minor annoyance which is growing every few days, after these four backstory items: I work on the third floor of a five story building, and the cafeteria is on the fifth floor. The building has three elevators side-by-side and two button panels (one is specifically for the leftmost elevator, used for freight). I take the stairs, from the basement parking garage to my floor as well as teleporting between my floor and the cafeteria, for a little stairclimbing exercise. Public parking is available in the two basement garages, and since this building isn't really near civilization (though there is a Metro bus terminal a block away) the number of nonemployees who park here is likely pretty marginal. Now then. The powers-that-be for the company I work for and/or the building management decided that they should have a little more control over the parking area, and are now putting a keycard system with booth (so the nonemployees can pay rent) at the two garage entrances. Not my problem so far, though the space between the booth and the wall is really tight so I can picture that booth getting run into about once a day and/or being scraped as wide vehicles try to enter. The issue is that in preparation for adding our building keycards to the gate that's being put in, they've taken our keycards out of most of the other places that we normally use them... such as the sensors on the doors of the fifth floor cafeteria. And the stairway doors, so you can't get into your own floor. And today (not exactly the first cock-up in this realm), keycards aren't working on the freight elevator -- though that is usually the one that comes first when the regular elevator call button gets pushed, and I wind up stepping in to push a basement floor button to get it out of the way so a working lift can come. I hope they finish that project soon so they can un-screw-up our keycard access and focus on what will be their main priority: nope, it's not handling toll-paying traffic... it will be making frequent repairs to that pesky booth.
Since there is balance in the universe even when it doesn't seem like it, viewing only what you can see around you, I've come to realize that every time someone who should stick around leaves, there are several people who need to go that stay. Okay, so as a tech support agent it's more like every other caller, but I mean for every person in real life who should stay but goes, there are a host of transient people who occupy more time in your ear than they need. Like on your way to the big climbing tree you encounter a few bees that mistake you for a flower that need to be shooed away a couple times, and when you get to that tree you find that the branches you want to be on break when you try hoisting yourself skyward on them. (Whether you take a nasty fall or not depends upon how high up you were able to get.) I miss tree-climbing, I was great at it as a youth. I miss having plenty of friends too, I was great at that back in the day as well. And anymore there seems to be a little confusion... I wish them to be sturdy trees but they regard me like one or the other of us were bees; they fly away or want me to buzz off. This keeps happening to me... guess I'm barking up the wrong trees? I suppose there's one similarity between the temporary annoyances and the hoped-for long-term comforts:
One person wants to be happier in some way, and the other can only do as much as they're capable or willing to. When trying to figure a direction for my life in high school, I said that fixing computers is easier than fixing people... later I learned that this didn't account for the fact that it's people who use computers.I have another couple hours on the phone, hopefully without another person saying "I don't recall how to do that, I haven't been a network administrator for awhile" (like being an admin is at all relevant to the issue or like they ever were an admin of any sort anywhere) when trying to configure their email program in a way they have no reason to ("how do I configure Outlook to send mail when I'm not online?"... uh, you're not online, so you don't?), so I'm gonna call this good enough. I wish I remembered more of my sleepless dreams, they were pretty interesting as I recall, but maybe there'll be more tonight... a prospect I'm definitely not looking forward to, and hopefully won't encounter. [edit the next morning: Less sleep, more vivid dreams, sigh.] Toodles!
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I rarely remember my dreams. I guess i sleep like a stone.
It sounds like you work for some paranoid people who are scared that non-personel might invade THEIR parking!!!!
Oh well... stupidities abound!!
I hope 2008 is a good year for you!
I wish you many friendships and few annoyances, although the annoyances most likely cannot be avoided.
It sounds like you work for some paranoid people who are scared that non-personel might invade THEIR parking!!!!
Oh well... stupidities abound!!
I hope 2008 is a good year for you!
I wish you many friendships and few annoyances, although the annoyances most likely cannot be avoided.
My sleep has been better since the weekend came. Still have no idea what was holding the works up. See next entry for fun with parking -- they may be paranoid about non-members parking here but they don't pay much attention to the horrible parking the residents do. And there's never a shortage of annoyances. :)
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