What A Joke
Hello World,
What a week! This was the kind of week that I always say it's a good thing we can't see into the future, because we wouldn't want to know what was just about to jump up and bite us, and that's putting it mildly. So many crazy things happened that you would think it was April first, rather than the second week in March, and from the looks of things, I don't mind saying, it's not about to get much better, and believe me, I can recognize the signs by now.
Of course, it starts with the weather, it always does these days. The previous week, it was so cold that I was scraping ice out of the bird baths, and wearing my winter coat and fuzzy boots to work. And yet on Sunday after worship, I was in the church office filing invoices, and what to my wondering ears should a-peal, but the unmistakable sound of the ice cream truck across the street. And this was March 7th, mind you, when we still had piles of snow everywhere from the last storm, and certainly not looking like the tropical paradise that would make people long for any sort of frosty taste treat like ice cream, that's for sure. But there it was, probably because the Incongruous Police have been disbanded due to budget cuts, but not any the less incongruous for all that. I should have realized right then what kinds of tricks the week had up its sleeve, and just run for the hills when the getting was good, and in fact, after reaching the hills, just kept right on going and not look back.
Sunday was actually nice and sunny, giving rise to a totally unrealistic impression on my part, that I could clear enough snow away from the church driveway, so that the gate would close once again, as it's supposed to during the week when we're not at church. First I got out my gloves and started clawing at the piles of snow with my hands, but I soon realized that greater measures were called for. I had a shovel in my car, so I made use of that, and made some pretty good headway, although there was a lot to do, since the driveway is very wide, and the plow had pushed the snow a good ways past where the gate should have been closed. It ended up taking much more time, and being much more difficult than I anticipated from the start, and it didn't take long to regret ever coming up with this idea in the first place. But I finally cleared enough of the snow from the top of the driveway so that I could push the gates closed from each side, and meet in the middle where the chain holds them together. Alas, the joke was on me when I noticed for the first time that the plow in its zeal, must have pushed so hard against the gate that it actually put a crimp in it, making it about 3 inches shorter on one side, and no amount of clearing snow away from it was going to make it long enough to meet up in the middle with the chain anymore, and that's a fact. As early April first jokes go, the gate fiasco may have lacked finesse, but it certainly hit its target.
Then on Monday morning, I went charging in to work, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as I usually do, and turned on my computer, only to be met by the sounds of deafening silence, not even crickets. There was not a light, not a click, not a fan, not the merest whisper of a hum emanating from the cabinet, it was dark and quiet and forebodingly dead, dead, dead. Zip, zero, zilch, and plenty of it. This surprised me, since it had been working fine when I left on Friday afternoon, and although it wouldn't have been unusual for it to act up, I could not have anticipated any scenario whereby it simply had no power at all. Everything else in the same power strip was working, including the monitor, printer and speakers, so I had no reason to suspect that, and I plugged the computer into a different outlet with the same results. Not knowing what else to do, I called downstairs to our crack IT department to place a service call, and waited for them to rescue me from the black hole of computer failure. (Although in retrospect, what I really needed was Daffy Duck to show up and say, "Shoot me now! Shoot me now!") A mere two hours later, someone did come from downstairs, tried all of the same things I had already tried, and then picked up the recalcitrant machine and took it away for further study. (Actually, "taking the patient for surgery," is how he described it.) He actually came back in short order, announced that he had replaced the power supply, set it back up, and everything worked fine and back to normal. Not so fast! Soon the computer became unresponsive, and when I tried to restart it, the exact same thing happened all over again, no power, just nothing at all. The rest of the day was a dizzying blur of techs in and out of my office, with tools everywhere, spare parts, moving furniture, extension cords, hunting down electrical outlets or network connections, and a resulting effluvium of dust and grit that would make an archaeological excavation look pristine by comparison. In the end, it still didn't work, but at least I had rounded up a spare computer to connect to the hospital network in the meantime. This meant that I could look up purchase orders or invoices, without having to go use someone else's computer, but I had no access to email, or any of the data and documents that were on my computer. I was prepared to take this in stride, figuring the problem would soon be fixed one way or another, but alas, the joke was on me once again, as it stretched through the entire week like that without getting my computer back, and I left on Friday the same way I started on Monday, with a black hole where my computer should have been. With the luxury of hindsight, there are many things that I would have done differently (oh, Daffy!) if I had only known that April first was going to be coming so very early this year.
I'm sure it will come as a surprise to no one that on Computer R.I.P. Monday, I left work and walked to the parking lot, only to find a flat tire on the Escort, thanks not. Actually, I never noticed it in the parking lot, because by then it was dark and on the passenger side besides. It wasn't until I was driving it around the block that I realized that something was very amiss, and since I was already out and driving, I figured I may as well just keep on driving it to my mechanic and leave it there, rather than going back to work with it. They were closed by then, of course, and I had no phone with me, so I had to schlep all the way back up the block to the hospital and call home for a ride. Bill was kind enough to come back out and pick me up, but I don't mind saying that it had turned into a long and difficult day that I would just as soon forget, and that's no joke. And I wasn't the only one, as I found out later that the JCAHO inspection team had turned up at the hospital unexpectedly, and thrown the place into its usual uproar. Every single time the JCAHO shows up, and this is a routine inspection that happens to all hospitals on a regular basis, it's like this has never happened before in anyone's lifetime, and the entire administration goes completely bonkers, as if the place was in the path of an invading zombie horde of apocalyptic proportions, and they were the last hope to save humanity at any cost. (Personally, I have seen numerous JCAHO inspections in my tenure there, but not a single zombie so far, although I'm sure everyone realizes by now that I certainly know better than to try and use logic with irrational people.) It turned out to be a quiet week for the rest of us, as half of the staff was running around trying to dazzle the inspectors with documentation and details, while the other half were in hiding, as not being inspection-worthy, so they didn't dare go near their desks, or any place they could likely be discovered, and spoil the impression that the hospital was trying to create. I know of several people who were told just to stay home, because even hiding out at the hospital was considered too risky, although if the apocalypse zombie horde did indeed show up, these employees would probably have been just as glad to be at home instead.
I thought my computer problems were catching, when a co-worker complained that her mouse was not working, no matter what she did. She called the computer department and asked them to send someone up to look at it, since the cursor didn't move, regardless of what she did with the mouse, and she had tried just about everything. It turned out the joke was on her this time, as we found out later that an errant Post-it note was stuck to the bottom of the mouse, so that wherever you moved it, the optical sensor thought it was still in the same place, since all it could "see" was the Post-it note, which didn't move. I thought that was so funny, and I have to say that as a practical joke for April first, that would be a pretty good one.
Normally, that would be all the Post-it stories to be had in one week, but not so! This has been an unusual week in many ways, so our friends at 3M had one more surprise in their joke bag for me. We had gotten our tax returns back from the accountant's office, with handy Post-it flags pointing to the places on the forms where they needed our signatures. Or did they? One flag pointed exactly in the middle of two signature lines, without indicating which was the right one, while the other flag pointed directly to a signature line that identified the signer as the paid preparer and not the taxpayer. I can't blame 3M for the confusion, but the way they were used, their flags certainly didn't solve any problems, and I had no choice but to call the accountants and ask them where I was supposed to sign, which essentially defeats the purpose of those "sign here" flags in the first place. I suppose there's little enough to laugh about at the accountant's office in March, so perhaps playing jokes on the clients is how they get their jollies, for all I know.
And as if I didn't already have enough technological difficulties in my life as it was, I also got a new computer at home, and while it's always nice to get a new computer, it can also be very disruptive. Of course, you can go right ahead and use a new computer, but it doesn't have any of your programs or documents on it, which you conveniently forget, until you suddenly realize that there's something you need, which should be right there, but naturally isn't, because it's still on your old computer. There's also a new multi-media keyboard, with a different and confusing layout, plus a plethora of extraneous keys for specific media applications that are not on regular keyboards. Somehow they manage to squeeze everything together so that it's even smaller than a regular keyboard, thanks not, and none of the function keys are where you expect them, so the most routine tasks often generate the most alarming results. I'm a fairly good typist, but so unfamiliar with this layout that everything I type ends up looking more like cartoon obscenities than anything I would have intended, and an even bigger concern is that I will finally get used to this keyboard, so that I won't be able to type on any of the other keyboards I use, and the joke will really be on me when I have exactly the same problem in reverse.
Anyway, in a week like this last one, I can tell you about the last thing I wanted was to hear from one of the old hold-overs from Walk Group (gosh, remember them?) who said they were going to start in walking again next week. I had given up walking when I came back from vacation in January, and was so behind on everything that I stopped taking lunch at all, in an effort to catch up. I thought it was probably just as well, with the miserable weather we had all winter, and I'm not one to let weather stand in my way, not by a long shot, but even I would have been daunted at the prospect of walking in the kind of ugly slop that was being tossed our way by the weather trolls, and that's no joke. Also, I had just about gotten my heel spur under control after months of rest, so that I could finally stand without pain, and I can't say that I was looking forward to getting back on that same old track once again, even just for old time's sake. I said I would let them know, but I'm not ready yet to climb aboard that old gray mare again, so they may as well just put that horse back in the stable, and that's really no joke.
And speaking of the same old tired jokes, of course this weekend is the switch back to Daylight Saving Time, so I certainly wish that all of you would get out there and save some daylight, so that we can at least make it all worthwhile. After all, they don't call it Daylight Saving for nothing, so if people aren't doing their part to save daylight, then the whole program would be nothing but a big fat joke, a huge waste of time and energy, and a continuing nightmare of inconvenience and confusion for everybody. I guess that explains why they're doing it now, rather than April first, when the timing would suggest connotations that would be all too unflattering to the DST trolls. In fact, that reminds me of a joke about trolls, where a Priest and a Rabbi walk into a bar ..... oh wait, that's on my other computer.
Elle
What a week! This was the kind of week that I always say it's a good thing we can't see into the future, because we wouldn't want to know what was just about to jump up and bite us, and that's putting it mildly. So many crazy things happened that you would think it was April first, rather than the second week in March, and from the looks of things, I don't mind saying, it's not about to get much better, and believe me, I can recognize the signs by now.
Of course, it starts with the weather, it always does these days. The previous week, it was so cold that I was scraping ice out of the bird baths, and wearing my winter coat and fuzzy boots to work. And yet on Sunday after worship, I was in the church office filing invoices, and what to my wondering ears should a-peal, but the unmistakable sound of the ice cream truck across the street. And this was March 7th, mind you, when we still had piles of snow everywhere from the last storm, and certainly not looking like the tropical paradise that would make people long for any sort of frosty taste treat like ice cream, that's for sure. But there it was, probably because the Incongruous Police have been disbanded due to budget cuts, but not any the less incongruous for all that. I should have realized right then what kinds of tricks the week had up its sleeve, and just run for the hills when the getting was good, and in fact, after reaching the hills, just kept right on going and not look back.
Sunday was actually nice and sunny, giving rise to a totally unrealistic impression on my part, that I could clear enough snow away from the church driveway, so that the gate would close once again, as it's supposed to during the week when we're not at church. First I got out my gloves and started clawing at the piles of snow with my hands, but I soon realized that greater measures were called for. I had a shovel in my car, so I made use of that, and made some pretty good headway, although there was a lot to do, since the driveway is very wide, and the plow had pushed the snow a good ways past where the gate should have been closed. It ended up taking much more time, and being much more difficult than I anticipated from the start, and it didn't take long to regret ever coming up with this idea in the first place. But I finally cleared enough of the snow from the top of the driveway so that I could push the gates closed from each side, and meet in the middle where the chain holds them together. Alas, the joke was on me when I noticed for the first time that the plow in its zeal, must have pushed so hard against the gate that it actually put a crimp in it, making it about 3 inches shorter on one side, and no amount of clearing snow away from it was going to make it long enough to meet up in the middle with the chain anymore, and that's a fact. As early April first jokes go, the gate fiasco may have lacked finesse, but it certainly hit its target.
Then on Monday morning, I went charging in to work, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as I usually do, and turned on my computer, only to be met by the sounds of deafening silence, not even crickets. There was not a light, not a click, not a fan, not the merest whisper of a hum emanating from the cabinet, it was dark and quiet and forebodingly dead, dead, dead. Zip, zero, zilch, and plenty of it. This surprised me, since it had been working fine when I left on Friday afternoon, and although it wouldn't have been unusual for it to act up, I could not have anticipated any scenario whereby it simply had no power at all. Everything else in the same power strip was working, including the monitor, printer and speakers, so I had no reason to suspect that, and I plugged the computer into a different outlet with the same results. Not knowing what else to do, I called downstairs to our crack IT department to place a service call, and waited for them to rescue me from the black hole of computer failure. (Although in retrospect, what I really needed was Daffy Duck to show up and say, "Shoot me now! Shoot me now!") A mere two hours later, someone did come from downstairs, tried all of the same things I had already tried, and then picked up the recalcitrant machine and took it away for further study. (Actually, "taking the patient for surgery," is how he described it.) He actually came back in short order, announced that he had replaced the power supply, set it back up, and everything worked fine and back to normal. Not so fast! Soon the computer became unresponsive, and when I tried to restart it, the exact same thing happened all over again, no power, just nothing at all. The rest of the day was a dizzying blur of techs in and out of my office, with tools everywhere, spare parts, moving furniture, extension cords, hunting down electrical outlets or network connections, and a resulting effluvium of dust and grit that would make an archaeological excavation look pristine by comparison. In the end, it still didn't work, but at least I had rounded up a spare computer to connect to the hospital network in the meantime. This meant that I could look up purchase orders or invoices, without having to go use someone else's computer, but I had no access to email, or any of the data and documents that were on my computer. I was prepared to take this in stride, figuring the problem would soon be fixed one way or another, but alas, the joke was on me once again, as it stretched through the entire week like that without getting my computer back, and I left on Friday the same way I started on Monday, with a black hole where my computer should have been. With the luxury of hindsight, there are many things that I would have done differently (oh, Daffy!) if I had only known that April first was going to be coming so very early this year.
I'm sure it will come as a surprise to no one that on Computer R.I.P. Monday, I left work and walked to the parking lot, only to find a flat tire on the Escort, thanks not. Actually, I never noticed it in the parking lot, because by then it was dark and on the passenger side besides. It wasn't until I was driving it around the block that I realized that something was very amiss, and since I was already out and driving, I figured I may as well just keep on driving it to my mechanic and leave it there, rather than going back to work with it. They were closed by then, of course, and I had no phone with me, so I had to schlep all the way back up the block to the hospital and call home for a ride. Bill was kind enough to come back out and pick me up, but I don't mind saying that it had turned into a long and difficult day that I would just as soon forget, and that's no joke. And I wasn't the only one, as I found out later that the JCAHO inspection team had turned up at the hospital unexpectedly, and thrown the place into its usual uproar. Every single time the JCAHO shows up, and this is a routine inspection that happens to all hospitals on a regular basis, it's like this has never happened before in anyone's lifetime, and the entire administration goes completely bonkers, as if the place was in the path of an invading zombie horde of apocalyptic proportions, and they were the last hope to save humanity at any cost. (Personally, I have seen numerous JCAHO inspections in my tenure there, but not a single zombie so far, although I'm sure everyone realizes by now that I certainly know better than to try and use logic with irrational people.) It turned out to be a quiet week for the rest of us, as half of the staff was running around trying to dazzle the inspectors with documentation and details, while the other half were in hiding, as not being inspection-worthy, so they didn't dare go near their desks, or any place they could likely be discovered, and spoil the impression that the hospital was trying to create. I know of several people who were told just to stay home, because even hiding out at the hospital was considered too risky, although if the apocalypse zombie horde did indeed show up, these employees would probably have been just as glad to be at home instead.
I thought my computer problems were catching, when a co-worker complained that her mouse was not working, no matter what she did. She called the computer department and asked them to send someone up to look at it, since the cursor didn't move, regardless of what she did with the mouse, and she had tried just about everything. It turned out the joke was on her this time, as we found out later that an errant Post-it note was stuck to the bottom of the mouse, so that wherever you moved it, the optical sensor thought it was still in the same place, since all it could "see" was the Post-it note, which didn't move. I thought that was so funny, and I have to say that as a practical joke for April first, that would be a pretty good one.
Normally, that would be all the Post-it stories to be had in one week, but not so! This has been an unusual week in many ways, so our friends at 3M had one more surprise in their joke bag for me. We had gotten our tax returns back from the accountant's office, with handy Post-it flags pointing to the places on the forms where they needed our signatures. Or did they? One flag pointed exactly in the middle of two signature lines, without indicating which was the right one, while the other flag pointed directly to a signature line that identified the signer as the paid preparer and not the taxpayer. I can't blame 3M for the confusion, but the way they were used, their flags certainly didn't solve any problems, and I had no choice but to call the accountants and ask them where I was supposed to sign, which essentially defeats the purpose of those "sign here" flags in the first place. I suppose there's little enough to laugh about at the accountant's office in March, so perhaps playing jokes on the clients is how they get their jollies, for all I know.
And as if I didn't already have enough technological difficulties in my life as it was, I also got a new computer at home, and while it's always nice to get a new computer, it can also be very disruptive. Of course, you can go right ahead and use a new computer, but it doesn't have any of your programs or documents on it, which you conveniently forget, until you suddenly realize that there's something you need, which should be right there, but naturally isn't, because it's still on your old computer. There's also a new multi-media keyboard, with a different and confusing layout, plus a plethora of extraneous keys for specific media applications that are not on regular keyboards. Somehow they manage to squeeze everything together so that it's even smaller than a regular keyboard, thanks not, and none of the function keys are where you expect them, so the most routine tasks often generate the most alarming results. I'm a fairly good typist, but so unfamiliar with this layout that everything I type ends up looking more like cartoon obscenities than anything I would have intended, and an even bigger concern is that I will finally get used to this keyboard, so that I won't be able to type on any of the other keyboards I use, and the joke will really be on me when I have exactly the same problem in reverse.
Anyway, in a week like this last one, I can tell you about the last thing I wanted was to hear from one of the old hold-overs from Walk Group (gosh, remember them?) who said they were going to start in walking again next week. I had given up walking when I came back from vacation in January, and was so behind on everything that I stopped taking lunch at all, in an effort to catch up. I thought it was probably just as well, with the miserable weather we had all winter, and I'm not one to let weather stand in my way, not by a long shot, but even I would have been daunted at the prospect of walking in the kind of ugly slop that was being tossed our way by the weather trolls, and that's no joke. Also, I had just about gotten my heel spur under control after months of rest, so that I could finally stand without pain, and I can't say that I was looking forward to getting back on that same old track once again, even just for old time's sake. I said I would let them know, but I'm not ready yet to climb aboard that old gray mare again, so they may as well just put that horse back in the stable, and that's really no joke.
And speaking of the same old tired jokes, of course this weekend is the switch back to Daylight Saving Time, so I certainly wish that all of you would get out there and save some daylight, so that we can at least make it all worthwhile. After all, they don't call it Daylight Saving for nothing, so if people aren't doing their part to save daylight, then the whole program would be nothing but a big fat joke, a huge waste of time and energy, and a continuing nightmare of inconvenience and confusion for everybody. I guess that explains why they're doing it now, rather than April first, when the timing would suggest connotations that would be all too unflattering to the DST trolls. In fact, that reminds me of a joke about trolls, where a Priest and a Rabbi walk into a bar ..... oh wait, that's on my other computer.
Elle
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 7:08 PM
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