Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Why there are Christmas trees

Christmas is a messy holiday. I'm sure there are zillions of blogs about the paper waste it produces. But before it's waste, it's presents. And if you don't have a tree, then your place is just full of presents, for yourself, for others, just piled around. It looks like you left a bunch of stuff on your floor. If you have a tree, you have a place on the floor where it's legitimate to stash them.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

I see stand-up in his future

The setting: a three-year-old is climbing into his carseat. He reaches into the seat and pulls out a crumb.

"Look, Lisa! It's my sprinkle!

"A sprinkle from my doughnut!

"I don't know which doughnut...."

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Is Mercury retrograde?

Today I struggled with technology.

  • I changed the message of the day on our intranet. After I did, the front page changed entirely -- to a warped version of the page I last saw three years ago in beta and that we never implemented.
  • I tried to get on a Google group. I was told I was part of it. I couldn't find it and got lost within that part of the Google universe.
  • I was directed by a colleague in very specific terms to a particular website about our travel policy. I just could not find it.
  • When I got to the gym, there was only one elliptical machine open. I was at this point absolutely certain it was broken. It wasn't ... yet.
  • While working out, I went to play a podcast on my iPod, and it crashed. Big time. Normally I can reset my iPod when this happens, but no luck. I worked out to the nearby spin class' music and hoped the iPod would wake up. Fifteen minutes later, I managed to reset it.
  • After my workout, I waited for the "workout summary" data to show up on the little display on the elliptical. I find it satisfying to see how ... uh, little or much ... work I've done. Instead of showing me the details, it just said, "workout summary ... workout summary ... workout summary...." No data.