Pink

I was typing along and then – WHAM – the computer screen turned pink. I guess it was pink. It’s hard for me to label colors, now that I’m a computer geek. I’m pretty sure this particular color was 0XFF00FF, which is quite a bit darker than what I would classify as “pink”. But if you sat 10 people in my office, probably 7 of them would have called it a “pink screen”.

The keyboard was locked up. It couldn’t reset the system with CTRL-ALT-DEL, although the harddrive light blinked on, suggesting the computer was busy doing something when I tried (swapping out virtual memory?). I slammed my fists on either side of the keyboard, because I’d been working for the last several hours on an project. Most of it would probably be saved from the Auto-Save feature, but I probably lost the last 10 minutes of work (I still haven’t looked yet). The slamming fists, or the spew of obscenities from my mouth, startled the two colleagues in my office, but they politely ignored my rampage.

This was the third time my computer has locked up in the past few weeks – each time the same way, although the color changes. Last week, I got a white screen (or 0xFFFFFF). One or two weeks before, I got a blackish-grey screen (0x000033, probably). Both times, I’d lost a sizeable amount of work.

So I sent a note to our crack IT squad, telling them they’d given me another Lemon Laptop. The IT engineer responded back,

“JP, this is the third Laptop I have rebuilt for you in the past four months, this is as frustrating for me as it is for you. Unfortunately I don't have any D620's which is our newest models, not sure if where to go from here?

Bob, any ideas?”

He CC’d his boss (Bob), and my boss (nice). The clear implication here is that, “JP keeps breaking laptops, and management needs to intervene!”.

It’s true, this is the third laptop I’ve had hear in my 4 years at the company. My first three years were trouble-free and bliss, but a few months ago, I started having problems with the computer. The computer would lock-up for a fraction of a second. I type rather fast, and the effect of this lock-up would be that the computer skipped letters during my typing. So a single sentence might look something like this: “Nowis te time for allgood men to com to the aid of their ountry.”

It wasn’t a sticky keyboard (no comments, please, Angie) – because it was a different character every time. And in the above text, I exaggerated the frequency of the lockup – it probably occurred 4-6 times in a page, not 4-6 times in a sentence. But the effect was equally frustrating. I had to type slower, and spend more time correcting every report, email or document that I wrote.

IT couldn’t figure out why the computer was behaving this way, so they replaced the computer. Not with a new computer, mind you, but with a used piece of junk that some other employee had turned in. And I soon found out why.

The “new” (refurbished) Dell600 laptop – same model I owned previously -- was PAINFULLY slow. It took 6 minutes and 23 seconds for the computer to load a simple PowerPoint presentation. When I tried to ALT-TAB from one application to another, I could literally get up from my desk, go down the hall, get a cup of coffee, and come back before the computer had transitioned to the new application. I would start an application like Excel or Word, and then sit in front of my workstation, shooting rubber bands at the screen waiting for the application to load.

So I complained to IT. They got me another computer – this one an upgraded D610 model, with twice the RAM (1GB) than my old laptop. It’s been working beautifully, aside from these occasional lockups.

So here’s the memo to IT: Fix my computer. That’s all I want. I just want a computer that works … flawlessly. I don’t care if it weighs 20 pounds, or has 0xFFCCFF polka-dots on it. I just want a computer that allows me to perform my job.

Exercise

The shirt reads, "Aaahhh... Tell me more about this "exercise" of which you speak.

Deceiving the Mind of a Child

HER: Make lunches for the kids. There's only two slices of bread left, so make bologna roll-ups for Brad and Julian, and make a Peanut Butter Fluff for Donovan.

ME: I'll go buy some bread at Mr. Mike's.

HER: You don't have time.

ME: We don't leave for school for 20-minutes, I can be in and out of Mr. Mike's and back here in 10 minutes.

HER: I'm leaving in 5 minutes.

ME: Sooooo ...

HER: Fine, I'll make the sandwiches.

ME: [confused] Ummm, what just happened here?

HER: [tears] Would you just do what I ask?

ME: [looking at the calender, noticing the skull and cross bones that I've made in light pencil, starting today and continuing for the next 5 days -- it's THAT time of the month] Right. Sure.

HER: [much slamming of keys and stomping, grabbing tissues from a box]

ME, MOSTLY TALKING TO MYSELF: There's only two slices of bread ...

HER: I said that. Just make--

ME: Don doesn't like the heel.

Why do we call the end part of the bread "the heel"? Whoever thought THAT would make sense, that people would want to eat "the heel" of ANYTHING?

HER: Just turn the heel upside down and put the fluff on the crusty side of the bread. He'll never know the difference.

ME: You want me to deceive my child, trick him into thinking he's got a sandwich made with the yummy inner parts of the loaf of bread, by smearing fluffer nutter on the crusty side of the bread.

HER: [more slamming, more stomping] Goddamn it, JP.

Forgive me, Donovan, when I'm old and grey. And please -- don't give me sandwiches in the nursing home, made with the heel side of the bread turned inside to the sandwich.

My Artistic Babysitter

Hanging from the door of my bathroom, for reasons that are completely unknown to me, is a picture drawn by my babysitter, and my three kids at the local pet store. She's quite talented, don't you think?

I like how she colored Brad's eyes demonic red. I can just see him clutching the edge of the basket, rocking back and forth, and crying out "faster, faster" -- waking up all the sleeping puppies. Donovan is just a baby (this was YEARS AGO), starring up at her with rapt wonder. And that's either Julian or Harry Potter holding the bag of fish on the far right.

She didn't do her own "curves" justice, I wonder what the message is in that. Women, even those who are not normally self-conscious, don't seem to appreciate how good-looking they are. Ever. She's a cute kid, but she's made herself out to be very plain in this self portrait. And black slacks under a grey hooded sweathshirt ... what's up with that? I have no idea what that is on her cheek ...

It doesn't really match the rest of my bathroom decor, but it's a cute picture of the kids. And, well ... at least they're not drawn as snowmen.

First Things First

First thing in the morning, I usually find out that I've been sleeping WAY past the time I should have woken up. I roll out of bed (often literally) and into the bathroom. The Master Bathroom is right off the bedroom, which is kinda nice.

Why Do You Hurdle?

The reason for the baby-gate barricading the bedroom is the fluff ball in the window to the left of my bed. That's Milly, short for Milicent Margaret Amanda who was, of course, nicknamed Milly-Molly-Mandy (because Millicent Margaret Amanda is simply too long of a name). But I'm getting off track, even before I've really gotten on track.

Milly is a kitty. She lives in my bedroom because she hates dogs. That's normal, right? I mean, all cats hate dogs -- and it's a shared hatred.

Cat people would say, "Get rid of the dogs, then you can take down the baby gate." But I kinda like having dogs, especially now that I'm running again. I like having a running partner.

Dog people would say, "Get rid of the cat, then you can take down the baby gate." But my wife is allergic to cats, and, well ... nothing else on that topic really needs to be said.

This is a bad picture, because of the way the sun shines in the window. I'm not sure how to improve this shot (avoiding window glare) other than taking a picture earlier in the day (before the sun is resting on the back side of the house). I really wanted to show how "Feng Shui" minded I am, always striving to find Inner Harmony.

I sleep on the left (the side that Milly's on).

Bedroom Hurdles

This is a baby gate, which barricades the entrance of my bedroom. It stands 32" in height, which is just BARELY high enough for me to straddle on both sides without injuring myself. The gate is one of those annoyances of my married life, something I tolerate, because it's really not worth fighting about. So every morning and every night, I swing my leg over the hurdle and finish the maneuver with a short jump to clear it.

Of course, I don't HAVE to leap over it. I could unclasp the middle section, which would draw the two portions of the gate in toward each other. Then I could move the gate aside, step past, turn about, stretch the gates apart, and refasten the clasp. But that just seems like so much work, just to walk through a simple doorway. So, I hurdle.

The purpose of the gate is to keep two dogs (1 greyhound, 1 junkyard mutt) from attacking the family cat, which lives in my bedroom. I *hate* this arrangement.

When I was a young boy, my parents had cats and dogs, and they lived in peace and harmony. Of course, we always had a period of "adjustment" when we brought a new animal home, but within a day or two, they were usually getting along just fine. I've suggested that we could do the same with our pets, but my wife insists that greyhounds who have been trained on live bait will never adjust. A tiny cat is no different, in their eyes, to a tasty little bunny.

And so, I hurdle.