Odds and Ends

Originally posted May 2, 2006

Today I have just a few things that popped into my head and begged to become blog fodder. (I love the word fodder. They should have a day in June just devoted to fodder, and call it Fodder's Day. What? They already have one? Damn, someone always beats me to this stuff! I shall go sulk.)

Another random factoid about me...did you know I can do Kermit's voice? Well, an impression of Kermit, I should say. I have to give props to whoever does his voice, because it's hard! It's very middle-of-the-throat. And it's very difficult to say anything that has a long E sound...hard to explain. Anyway, once my college roommates found out I could do this voice, they begged me to record our answering machine message as Kermit. I got as far as, "Hi ho, you've reached Kim, LizaDawn, Holly and Cynthia!" before I started cracking up. And naturally, they wanted to listen to me doing the recording, so they were in the next room laughing the whole time...and anyway, long story short, the recording was never completed, despite several attempts. Not to mention that I had to bend over the answering machine because it was on a short cord and I couldn't lift it up to my mouth, and bending over distorted my Kermitting abilities. Hey, what can I say, we lived on Treasure Island...you had to entertain yourselves when you lived on a former Navy base that's miles from anything even remotely close to civilization.

Moving on....so, I don't know if a virus is going around or what, but something's up with a few of the reporters' computers here in the office. Not that frequently crashing equipment and things that are outdated and/or don't work properly is anything new for us, but when it gets to the point of giving you a "fatal exception" error every two seconds so you can't file a story, that's a problem. Of course, there's only one person employed in our IT department right now, so naturally no one can come out to remedy this...whatever this is. Nowhere in my job description does it say "triage broken computers," but that's what I've been doing for the past two days. Somehow I get them functional, but I don't know what I'm doing to get them there. It's ridiculous. Like I'm the Computer Whisperer or something. In all honesty, I think patience is the key. I really think the difference is just waiting for the computer to finish going through all its little freak-outs and then deciding it isn't going to be a misbehaving toddler anymore. But in the end, I would advise HIRING SOME FREAKING I.T. PEOPLE. For the love of Jehosaphat, computers are essential to our work! Damn cheapskates.

Lastly, my day was completely made when I received an e-mail from an old friend/co-worker regarding her vacation plans. I had e-mailed her a week or two ago and got an auto-reply saying she was on vacation. So I replied to the auto-reply (but not automatically...I actually had to think about it first) and asked her where she was. Now, for some background, I love this person to death, but she's the most disorganized person I know. When we shared desks, she had books, papers, old food, etc., all over the place (in fact, she eventually erected a pile of papers and books on her desk that we dubbed "The Wall"). She had me run her license at the DMV once, and yep, it was suspended (although unbeknownst to her, because she never opened/paid the tickets she got in the mail...we later found those at the bottom of her purse, where they had been for a year). Anyway, you get the idea. So she responded today that she had planned to go to Prague on vacation, but the night before she was supposed to leave, whoopsie, she realized she had misplaced her passport. Long story short, she didn't go to Prague. While that may sound tragic to you, this is the funniest thing I have heard in a long, long time. Sigh...whew, yep, that makes me laugh. It's so her.

Well, back to work. I have many important things to do, ya know! (Or, that could just mean I've spilled water all over my desk again and need to clean it up.)