Up To Speed
Hello World,
Greetings again from the other side of the autumnal equinox, as we have already passed that seasonal milestone and find ourselves hurtling full tilt and headlong into winter, which will be here before we know it at this rate. Of course, yesterday was 85 degrees in the local area, so it was a little hard to get into that late September vibe around here, but that's about all that we can expect from a year like this, where the weather has been not only all over the map, but must also include maps of far distant solar systems, based on some of the crazy conditions that have bedeviled us lately, and not just in these parts, but from sea to shining sea, So wherever you may be, I hope that the weather is to your liking, and if it is, you'd better hurry up and enjoy it while you can, because unlike the Energizer Bunny, it doesn't just keep on going and going and going, but is rather "hare" today and gone tomorrow, and I ought to know.
Alert readers may recall my previous note about making the hospital employees attend the Safety Fair, which served the inadvertent purpose of making me more stupid afterward than when I first walked in, so that when they gave us the exit test, I got all of the answers wrong, despite years of mandatory information courses on these very same subjects. One of the questions I got wrong was the sequence of fire alarm bells in my department, which I identified on the test as 2-2-2, which was the alarm for the building that Purchasing used to be located in, about 15 years ago. I realize that now, because when I got back to my office and checked the fire bell list, I was embarrassed to see that my answer was off by two buildings and a decade and a half at least, which is not even close in hand grenades, much less horseshoes, and would be no help at all in a fire. But I figured that I learned my lesson, and the next time, I would have the right answer at my fingertips.
So earlier in the week, when the fire bells went off, at least I knew where they were for, and I considered that a significant improvement on my part. In the hallway, I bumped into the Director of Engineering, who was talking with a bunch of other people milling around from the second floor, and he asked me if I heard the fire bells and knew where they were from. "Oh yes," I answered brightly, "The bells were 4-1 and if we're 4-2 here, then it's probably the first floor in this building." Instead of being impressed with my expertise, he glared at all of us and snapped, "So what are you all doing here? If the fire alarm says that there's a fire in the Library, which is directly below you, why are you still up here in your departments?" He went on to give us a long-winded lecture about treating all fire alarms as a real fire, not a drill, and reminded us that our ancient rattletrap of a building was constructed entirely of mud and straw, and would go up like a tinderbox in a fire, so we had to think fast if we were going to get out in one piece. After years of fire safety training at this very hospital, I couldn't take that lying down, so I asked him what we were supposed to do. After all, I pointed out, they've always told us when we hear the fire bells to stay where we are and not wander around up and down the stairs, use the elevators, or open up the smoke compartment doors, but to stay at our post and await further instructions. But he said that if the fire is in our building, we need to evacuate, and as soon as we heard the bells, we should have gone outside. At this point, I had to tell him the story of a bomb threat, years ago when we were in the other building (which turned out to be a real bomb and no joke) and when we saw everyone else from our building outside on the sidewalk, we went outside too, even though we didn't know what was going on. When the two people in charge of our department heard about it later, they had a fit and told us loud and long, and in no uncertain terms, that we were never to leave the department unattended, no matter what, unless specifically instructed by the Fire Department, and they were all set to dock our pay to drive the point home. But apparently that was then, and this is now, and he assured us that the hospital places a premium on staff safety, and would not be gratified to hear of employees being burned to a crisp, or blown apart, while staying at their desks during an emergency in their department. Normally, this is where I would say, "So we all learned something today," except that afterwards, they gave us that same quiz from the Safety Fair, and I still got all the answers wrong, that is, except for that one about the fire bells, believe me.
Also losing control and flipping out on the learning curve, we have the TV section from our local newspaper, and their episode synopsis of "The Cleaner" on the A&E network:
===============================
"William attempts to help an old friend who is looking
to leave behind his heroine and speed addictions ..... "
================================
I understand that "speed" is a slang expression for amphetamines, but all I can come up with for a "heroine" problem would be someone addicted to SuperGirl, Scarlett O'Hara, Wonder Woman, Mother Teresa, Nancy Drew, Venus, Florence Nightingale, Guinevere, Betty Boop and Xena the Warrior Princess. Of course, your average person on the street might mix up similar words like "heroin" and "heroine," and I don't mind saying that the spell-checker is not going to help you in that case. But one presumes that they have people with a bit more qualifications working at the newspaper, who might be expected to know the difference between the two words, and not give the TV section a black eye by looking like they have no idea what they're doing. Apparently one would be wrong to presume that.
Meanwhile in the wilds of cyberspace, it's been a slow and bumpy road to learn the ropes in FaceBook, but it continues to be interesting in different ways. I've said before that it's not a place for the paranoid among us, because it's true that just about anybody can find you there, although I'm using an alias, so I'm a little harder to find than otherwise. But anyone who knows your email address, or recognizes your profile picture, can invite you to be their Friend, or request you to accept them as your Friend, even if you didn't know they were on FaceBook to start with, and would have avoided them if you did. (Of course, you can decline invitations and ignore requests, or even block someone completely if necessary, so you're not just at the mercy of everybody out there.) I was admittedly chagrined yesterday, when in spite of being many thousands of miles away in Lebanon, the former pastor of our church found me on FaceBook and added me as one of his Friends, and thanks so very much not. I don't mind saying that many words spring to mind to describe our relationship, but "friend" wouldn't be one of them, not by a long shot, and that's not just the heroine in me talking, believe me. But in the spirit of letting bygones be bygones, and taking the high road, I accepted him as a Friend, and I guess I figured, how bad could it be, after all, he's only one person. Bang! Virtually as soon as he was my Friend, my entire home page was over-run with 15 messages from him, which were all long and boring theological lectures, or stultifying articles about church controversies. Generally speaking, posts on a FaceBook page tend to follow the "Hey, how's it going" mode of conversation, and are usually as uninteresting as they are inoffensive. Frankly, I thought that was as bad as it could get, until suddenly my whole page was suffocating under the weight of essays, sermons and scholarly discourses of grave importance, and I realized that I missed all of the usual trite and vapid comments that I had come to expect and enjoy. Finally in self-defense, I had to Hide his posts, and get my home page back under control, which offered a cosmetic solution to the problem, without taking the drastic step of blocking him completely. I had to laugh when he posted this comment on my Wall:
===============================
Good to see you here! Now, finally, we can have some wit and humour ... ; )
===============================
Now, it must be said that from a normal person, no one would consider that to be the epitome of hilarity, but believe me, from the pastor, that's about the funniest thing he's ever come up with, and I ought to know. Of course, I just have to shake my head and say, by golly, you don't know the half of it. But I reject out of hand the notion that I will accept any old anybody as a virtual Friend, because frankly, my standards are very exacting, and in fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that I'm addicted to heroines.
Elle
Greetings again from the other side of the autumnal equinox, as we have already passed that seasonal milestone and find ourselves hurtling full tilt and headlong into winter, which will be here before we know it at this rate. Of course, yesterday was 85 degrees in the local area, so it was a little hard to get into that late September vibe around here, but that's about all that we can expect from a year like this, where the weather has been not only all over the map, but must also include maps of far distant solar systems, based on some of the crazy conditions that have bedeviled us lately, and not just in these parts, but from sea to shining sea, So wherever you may be, I hope that the weather is to your liking, and if it is, you'd better hurry up and enjoy it while you can, because unlike the Energizer Bunny, it doesn't just keep on going and going and going, but is rather "hare" today and gone tomorrow, and I ought to know.
Alert readers may recall my previous note about making the hospital employees attend the Safety Fair, which served the inadvertent purpose of making me more stupid afterward than when I first walked in, so that when they gave us the exit test, I got all of the answers wrong, despite years of mandatory information courses on these very same subjects. One of the questions I got wrong was the sequence of fire alarm bells in my department, which I identified on the test as 2-2-2, which was the alarm for the building that Purchasing used to be located in, about 15 years ago. I realize that now, because when I got back to my office and checked the fire bell list, I was embarrassed to see that my answer was off by two buildings and a decade and a half at least, which is not even close in hand grenades, much less horseshoes, and would be no help at all in a fire. But I figured that I learned my lesson, and the next time, I would have the right answer at my fingertips.
So earlier in the week, when the fire bells went off, at least I knew where they were for, and I considered that a significant improvement on my part. In the hallway, I bumped into the Director of Engineering, who was talking with a bunch of other people milling around from the second floor, and he asked me if I heard the fire bells and knew where they were from. "Oh yes," I answered brightly, "The bells were 4-1 and if we're 4-2 here, then it's probably the first floor in this building." Instead of being impressed with my expertise, he glared at all of us and snapped, "So what are you all doing here? If the fire alarm says that there's a fire in the Library, which is directly below you, why are you still up here in your departments?" He went on to give us a long-winded lecture about treating all fire alarms as a real fire, not a drill, and reminded us that our ancient rattletrap of a building was constructed entirely of mud and straw, and would go up like a tinderbox in a fire, so we had to think fast if we were going to get out in one piece. After years of fire safety training at this very hospital, I couldn't take that lying down, so I asked him what we were supposed to do. After all, I pointed out, they've always told us when we hear the fire bells to stay where we are and not wander around up and down the stairs, use the elevators, or open up the smoke compartment doors, but to stay at our post and await further instructions. But he said that if the fire is in our building, we need to evacuate, and as soon as we heard the bells, we should have gone outside. At this point, I had to tell him the story of a bomb threat, years ago when we were in the other building (which turned out to be a real bomb and no joke) and when we saw everyone else from our building outside on the sidewalk, we went outside too, even though we didn't know what was going on. When the two people in charge of our department heard about it later, they had a fit and told us loud and long, and in no uncertain terms, that we were never to leave the department unattended, no matter what, unless specifically instructed by the Fire Department, and they were all set to dock our pay to drive the point home. But apparently that was then, and this is now, and he assured us that the hospital places a premium on staff safety, and would not be gratified to hear of employees being burned to a crisp, or blown apart, while staying at their desks during an emergency in their department. Normally, this is where I would say, "So we all learned something today," except that afterwards, they gave us that same quiz from the Safety Fair, and I still got all the answers wrong, that is, except for that one about the fire bells, believe me.
Also losing control and flipping out on the learning curve, we have the TV section from our local newspaper, and their episode synopsis of "The Cleaner" on the A&E network:
===============================
"William attempts to help an old friend who is looking
to leave behind his heroine and speed addictions ..... "
================================
I understand that "speed" is a slang expression for amphetamines, but all I can come up with for a "heroine" problem would be someone addicted to SuperGirl, Scarlett O'Hara, Wonder Woman, Mother Teresa, Nancy Drew, Venus, Florence Nightingale, Guinevere, Betty Boop and Xena the Warrior Princess. Of course, your average person on the street might mix up similar words like "heroin" and "heroine," and I don't mind saying that the spell-checker is not going to help you in that case. But one presumes that they have people with a bit more qualifications working at the newspaper, who might be expected to know the difference between the two words, and not give the TV section a black eye by looking like they have no idea what they're doing. Apparently one would be wrong to presume that.
Meanwhile in the wilds of cyberspace, it's been a slow and bumpy road to learn the ropes in FaceBook, but it continues to be interesting in different ways. I've said before that it's not a place for the paranoid among us, because it's true that just about anybody can find you there, although I'm using an alias, so I'm a little harder to find than otherwise. But anyone who knows your email address, or recognizes your profile picture, can invite you to be their Friend, or request you to accept them as your Friend, even if you didn't know they were on FaceBook to start with, and would have avoided them if you did. (Of course, you can decline invitations and ignore requests, or even block someone completely if necessary, so you're not just at the mercy of everybody out there.) I was admittedly chagrined yesterday, when in spite of being many thousands of miles away in Lebanon, the former pastor of our church found me on FaceBook and added me as one of his Friends, and thanks so very much not. I don't mind saying that many words spring to mind to describe our relationship, but "friend" wouldn't be one of them, not by a long shot, and that's not just the heroine in me talking, believe me. But in the spirit of letting bygones be bygones, and taking the high road, I accepted him as a Friend, and I guess I figured, how bad could it be, after all, he's only one person. Bang! Virtually as soon as he was my Friend, my entire home page was over-run with 15 messages from him, which were all long and boring theological lectures, or stultifying articles about church controversies. Generally speaking, posts on a FaceBook page tend to follow the "Hey, how's it going" mode of conversation, and are usually as uninteresting as they are inoffensive. Frankly, I thought that was as bad as it could get, until suddenly my whole page was suffocating under the weight of essays, sermons and scholarly discourses of grave importance, and I realized that I missed all of the usual trite and vapid comments that I had come to expect and enjoy. Finally in self-defense, I had to Hide his posts, and get my home page back under control, which offered a cosmetic solution to the problem, without taking the drastic step of blocking him completely. I had to laugh when he posted this comment on my Wall:
===============================
Good to see you here! Now, finally, we can have some wit and humour ... ; )
===============================
Now, it must be said that from a normal person, no one would consider that to be the epitome of hilarity, but believe me, from the pastor, that's about the funniest thing he's ever come up with, and I ought to know. Of course, I just have to shake my head and say, by golly, you don't know the half of it. But I reject out of hand the notion that I will accept any old anybody as a virtual Friend, because frankly, my standards are very exacting, and in fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that I'm addicted to heroines.
Elle
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 8:56 PM
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