27 June 2001
Last year: It sounded like an ambulance in a blender.
Well, my first IM-less day went slowly, but not too bad. Many many thanks to everyone who sent me e-mail and/or phone messages. (I should warn you all - the phone messages don't always come through right away. Yesterday they were taking hours to get to me, and there's still one outstanding. It's a good thing my form has them e-mailed to me as well!)
Office scuttlebutt is that this, like the semi-annual Internet crackdown, is an official policy with the purpose of covering the company's collective ass if they have to fire someone for doing something really stupid. I don't know if we're ever going to be able to bring IM back, but we'll see what happens... There's a poor but workable Java version that might get overlooked if they're not really checking browser use closely.
All the same, it's annoying and stupid and I'm still looking for another job.
Oh, and to comment on productivity: I didn't actually start working yesterday until 11:30. With full access to IM and no worries about browsing wherever I want to browse, I usually got started for the day around 9:30. Yeah, this policy helps productivity.
Matt and I went down to visit K.T. last night and provide moral support, since she'd had surgery to have a screw removed from her leg. (It's a very impressive screw - an inch and a half or so long. Gives me the shivers to think of it being in someone.) Anyway, because we're nice people and all, we decided to stop at the Chinese place around the corner and pick up dinner for everyone.
Halfway there, I suggested to Matt that he call our order in so it would be ready to go when we got there. Matt got my purse and dug out my Palm and cell phone.
"Hello? I'd like to place an order for take-out. Four orders of steak sticks, an order of General Tso's chicken, and a pint of beef lo mein. ...Yes. ...Yes. ...Right. ...Ye-hello?" Matt looked at the phone, which had spontaneously hung up.
"It does that sometimes when the signal's weak," I explained. "Just call back."
After some fumbling, Matt found the equivalent of re-dial. "Hi, I was calling in an order and got cut off. Sorry about that. We had the... ...yes. ...Yes, four orders... Ten minutes? Okay. Don't you want my na-" He looked at me. "They didn't get my name."
"We'll just say we're there to pick up the order with four orders of steak sticks," I said. "How many of those can they get?"
But it was worse than that. Far worse. When Matt and I walked into the place, the owner looked up at us, grinned, and said, "Thirty-two forty!"
We didn't even get a chance to tell him we were there to pick up our order. He just knew it was us. We have become the Steak Stick People.
Word of the Day:
fruition - pleasurable use or possession, enjoyment; the state of bearing fruit; realization, accomplishment
Currently Reading:
- nothing
Current Projects:
- drawing
- Hall stuff
- garden