Declaring Bankruptcy

Guys, my cellphone has been broken for two weeks. I have not made or received a call in that whole time, but my account has been active. I know when I went outside to get a signal and first discovered that my cellphone was busted, I had amassed more than ten unheard voicemails. The fact that I had intended at that moment to check them was irrelevant in the face of my non-charging, Check SIM device.

Since that time, calls to my phone have automatically rolled to voicemail. The volume of these little audio clips means that the task of checking them is daunting enough to make me actually dread getting "connected" again, even though my new phone may be in as early as this afternoon.

Therefore, this is my announcement that I am hereby declaring "Voicemail Bankruptcy". Voicemails left in the past two weeks as well as the 10+ in the period immediately preceding my communications blackout will henceforth be stricken from the record. These messages will not be played or answered in any way. If there was something important in them that requires action on my part (heheh) this action must be assumed to be unperformed until such time as a new communication is issued by the requestor.

In the event that your voicemail had contained Emergency Information upon which the balance of human life rested on my timely response -- sorry about that.

Here is the fact: The best and fastest ways to contact me are always email, followed by a phone call that I answer, followed by Instant Message, followed by text message, followed by paper letter addressed to me with a kitten drawn on the envelope, followed by a note stuck under my windshield wiper on decorative stationary, followed by a brick through the window with a missive wrapped around it, followed by voicemail -- Which most of you know is rarely checked even when I have a working phone because I hate the AT&T voicemail menu so very, very much.

In short, this post is a notice that I haven't been actively screening any of you, but I will be retroactively screening everything from the past 2 weeks or so.

And we should also expect a brief phone breaking-in period in which I'm trying to figure out how to answer a new phone and the little differences between the new phone and my old phone which will probably technically vex me to the point where I'm trying to find Torrent files for Matlock episodes, meticulously counting daily fibre intake, and scanning Craig's List for someone to come over part time to chew my food.

While we at the Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng Institute of New and Awesome Technology and Low-Carb Muffin Outlet embrace change and technological advancement, it also makes us a little bitchy.

In other news, last night we started what I'm certain will be a delightful annual Hanukkah tradition for our family. One of the cats jumped up on the table to investigate the menorah and set her face on fire a little. She's fine, but some of her whiskers are a little curled and blackened. Our cats (and I suspect most cats) like things a certain way and change makes them light their faces on fire.

Please understand if I have a similar reaction to a new cellphone.

Field Trip

Alright, people! Listen up!

Hey! You in the back!Can you read this okay?

Good.

Today we are going on a brief tour. You don't have to go if you don't want to. Just wait here refreshing this page until the rest of us get back.

Those of you who are going, pick a buddy. You will be responsible for making sure that person gets back here. That is our number one rule: Everybody goes home. Got it?

Our first stop is Andrew's blog. He just opened a new play and links to some posts on another of his Blogspot homes for the latest in puppet-related news. It's an awesome read, as always. You could also make a stop at UpToBat, but you'll need to hustle -- We've got a timeline here. Hitting Backspace (Or delete for those of us in the know) should bring you right back here.

After that, we will pay a visit to Pam's blog. She has her own performance stuff going on over there and it is past time you guys caught up. Again, grab your buddy and Backspace back here so we can continue the tour. Stay together!

Tess needs a visit. Poke at her. She hasn't posted in a while and we need to make sure, as a group, that her blog doesn't fade out. I used her "Horses can't vomit" post in a meeting to totally change topics. It worked better than the time I set the conference table on fire. You know the drill, Backspace back here for updates.

Now, while some of you may know better, I feel the need to post this little reminder: Save your juvenile remarks for the comments section here. Remember, we are guests at these blogs so be on your best behaviour. No cursing in the comments, no leet-speak to jack up the flow of comments from the natives, and save your blogger abuse for Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng -- I'm used to it.

So none of your regular foolishness, people. No flaming, no cursing, no grab-ass. Got it?

Okay. Everybody line up and foll-OW! Who threw that?

Hacking the Post Office

Quick tip: If you want to send me into a screaming, flailing rage, please send me something which requires a signature on delivery.

We get a vaguely-worded note from the Post Office about how they are "holding our package" (and I take a brief break here to giggle like a 5th grader) and will be waiting for us to drive down to the office to sign for it, then we need to find a time to make that trip during the hours the Post Office is actually open.

No "Sign this card and leave it". No "Mail this card at your own cost and we will try to deliver again". No "Email us your work address so you can sign there".

Just an all too plainly stated "We've got you by the package -- See you soon".

In this particular case, in December when more people than I knew actually lived on this side of town all queue up frantically still stuffing live animals and gel and fireworks into boxes in the Post Office lobby to get everything delivered before the gift-giving mood evaporates on the 26th.

You've been to the Post Office. You know standing in line that you are the only one in the room who has ever mailed anything -- Or at least that is a pretty safe assumption given the stupid things everyone in the front of the line is trying to do.

And no one behind the counter hurries. Ever. Postal employees wear their steady pace like a vintage hoodie.

Here is the work-around for that:

Our Post Office closes at 5pm. Hard closes. The lobby is locked and if anyone inside can hear the frantic pounding on the doors they mask it like they were born to performance.

We chose to show up at 4:59pm, push past the strolling Postal Worker in the act of closing those doors and then take our place in the fastest moving line ever witnessed in the history of mail.

Apparently, the need to go home is strong in these brave Federal employees. And after 5pm, they don't care about the size of the air holes punched in the boxes of the people in the front of the line. They don't care about boxes with corners seeping blue goo. They don't care about envelopes that smell of sulphur and are on fire.

They just want to go home to play with the Nintendo Wii, have some Mac and Cheese and sleep the sleep of the "Guaranteed Retirement in 1,275 days" set.

This is your key to fast mailing any time of year.

I've gotten a few emails (surprisingly enough) about what I'd like for Hanukkah this year.

Guys, Hanukkah gift-giving is really more about children. Adults don't care so much.

It is a time for children to open gifts and for grown-ups to reflect on the miracle of light in dark times.

It all comes down to community. When we light candles every night we are a part of a global ritual of remembrance.

However, if your holiday traditions include gifts to bloggers then it would be hurtful and wrong of me to deny your right to celebrate in whatever way brings joy to you.

If that is the case, I'm sure you will be able to think of something.

Because That's How I Roll

So I decided that just being upset about the Jew jokes in my office was hurting no one but me, right? I mean, it isn't like anyone knows to care. Seething can be fun to a point -- And to be honest, it is something I have always been good at. But something needed to be done, or I'd have been breaking my own rule about communication in a pretty big way.

I'm not about direct confrontation. In fact, my father has always claimed "passive aggressive" is named for our family.
Anyway, what I decided to do was resolve the issue without involving legal council.
Instead, I skipped out over lunch on Tuesday and went to the grocery store.
After what seemed like an insane amount of digging through candy canes and little chocolate Santas I found a little dejected box of gold-wrapped chocolate coins (Gelt, in circles I run in) and I grabbed a few bags. I also grabbed some jelly doughnuts (Tradition!) and sugar-free pumpkin pie (our new tradition). And a Diet Coke Plus, because I'm always so very, very thirsty.
Armed with these little bags of candy coins, I walked around my office delivering them to everyone I knew had kids with a cheerful explanation and a "Happy Hanukkah!" of farewell.
And the jokes stopped.
Now, I know this hasn't made anyone find Jew jokes less amusing, but at least they would get told behind my back from here on out and denial is another thing I at which I excel.
On the interesting side, I've since become kind of a one-stop, have-your-Judaism-questions-answered kind of place.

Now, another thing I learned about this time of year is this:
While McNuggets and fries are cooked in oil as traditional Hanukkah food tends to be, eating a bunch of them and then chasing it with a lemon-filled jelly doughnut (especially when a person doesn't ever eat refined sugar) is a sure recipe for stomach cramps which will be severe enough to make a person long for the sweet release of death.

Additionally, I've become adept in the past week at artfully directing user hate away from our (admittedly
buggy) application and back onto the Windows servers which host that
application . . . As God intended.
Further, with the delivery of my canceled check on Wednesday, I might actually get paid for this gig, which (in the only truly meaningful way) would make this whole thing worthwhile. Maybe.

-G


Maybe if you forget to hide the keys


I'll take a ride to Applebee's


I'll come home drunk on daiquiris and throw up on the neighbor's lawn


p.s. This is my first post from ScribeFire on the Mac. If it looks like crap, please accept my apologies.


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I Do Not Want

Dell has just announced a laptop with a World of Warcraft theme. It is very pretty and completely nerdy.

I do not want one.

The hardware (aside from twice as much graphics memory) is pretty close to my Mac.

That said, the pre-configuration price is well over twice what I paid for my Mac. Plus, it runs Windows Vista. Gross!

I've been using my MacBook Pro for a few days now. There was a brief glitch which was fixed with a software update. Other than that, switching has been as easy as advertised.

I did download the Microsoft Remote Desktop utility. It works better than it does on Windows Vista, too. I can connect and administer Windows systems within a window on my Mac, as though viewing them from a safe distance.

I discussed the Mac construction process with a friend and we decided that there is a giant mold somewhere into which liquid awesome is poured and then cooled before a complete MacBook is popped out and sold. On reflection, I think it can't be that simple and that there is an added step where powdered Win is sprinkled throughout the inner workings.

Running the same applications on a Mac is just plain prettier and more stable. Media and photos display perfectly and I have not been disconnected in the middle of a heated player versus player free-for-all a single time -- and there have been a few thousand kills worth of those. N-Class networking is probably the best thing to happen in personal computing in recent memory.

What I find interesting about the Dell offering is that World of Warcraft is a three-year-old game. That kind of staying power speaks volumes about both the quality of the product and the strength of addiction, though I can't decide which it speaks more strongly about. Nothing speaks loudly enough to justify over $7000 for a fully-loaded system that still runs Windows Vista, however.

In other news, last night we lit candles and watched Gwynyth open a gift and we had turkey, even though this delicious image turned up on Consumerist.com:

 

Today, I plan to call AT&T. This whole not having a cellphone thing is getting really old. Email and this blog are officially the only possible ways to contact me. I actually logged into World of Warcraft last night just to chat with a real-life friend. And also pwn noobz. I multi-task.

Everything I Needed to Know About Corporate I.T. I Learned as a Theatre Major

I've been doing this whole I.T. thing for a while, but I just kind of fell into it. Back in the day, I was a different kind of geek. While "Theatre Degree" is not emblazoned across the top of my resume anywhere, I never actively conceal it in interviews or the workplace. If it comes up in conversation, it tends to make me stand out -- However, anyone with a degree in theatre who obsessively counts hits on their blog every day is not one to shy away from extra attention.

Look at me! Look! Look what I'm doing! It's cool! Look!

What I don't usually reveal in an interview is that I had only one computer class in college (History of Computing) which started with the abacus and moved up through Pascal and more "modern" things -- but I skipped the single lab day. I say usually, because if it comes up I totally disclose that and my three dance classes second semester senior year which I needed for PE credits just to graduate.

Here are some of the things I learned from "The Theatre" which apply in my current day-to-day corporate I.T. life:

1. If people buy a ticket to something, you can be sure they want to be entertained in some way. This gives the performer an edge, since the audience has already committed to suspending their disbelief for a while. This is partially why no one cares if they can see the wires holding Peter Pan in the air. This phenomenon is in the corporate workplace in a slightly different form. There is a basic, primal, tribal feeling of "mutual competence" in most workplaces. No human wants to believe, at the core of their being, that they are the only ones who know anything. In a rush to find like minds, co-workers will often suspend their disbelief and accept technical information at face value. It should be noted, however, that when this feeling gets broken (just like with a forgotten line or a falling set piece) it is a million times harder to get it back.

2. Audience participation is good -- To a point. The audience needs to be involved in the theatrical process. You need their buy-in just like you need the support of your users in an I.T. setting. However, just as anyone who wanders uninvited onto the stage in the middle of Act 2 should be Tazered and carried away, users who "help" too much should be Tazered and have their access revoked.

3. Hundreds of years ago, Playwrights were required to follow basic formulaic forms when creating new work. Anything else would get them branded as a heretic and burned at the stake. The rules are less strict today, but in I.T. you can expect almost the same level of backlash as a response to a new way of doing anything.

4. Communication is the point. Theatre is an art form about telling a story. If the audience leaves the theatre bewildered with no idea what they just dropped $40 on, you can bet they will scare their friends away from future performances. I communicate. One of the things that sets me apart from a lot of geeks is my ability to talk about technical things to non-technical people in a way that answers their questions and reduces their concerns. One time I had a performance review where I failed the "Communication" section. At this point in the meeting, I knew my manager was making stuff up to avoid giving me a raise. My reaction was an incredulous "Why don't you just put down that I steal office supplies and that you think I got the Receptionist pregnant -- because there is every bit as much truth in that?" As I thought, there was no defining incident where my communication skills had failed and, in the end, that section of the review was brushed off.

5. Don't try to fool the audience. All the pyrotechnics in the world won't distract them from bad acting. This translates to Corporate I.T. as "Power corrupts; PowerPoint corrupts absolutely". When giving a presentation, a hundred slides full of bullet points won't help at all. Make PowerPoint a backdrop to re-enforce a well-thought-out speech. If possible, use simple, non-focus-pulling images or single words.

6. Rehearsal is a time sink, but if you skip it everyone will know. Showing up unprepared for a presentation is obvious. You can't fake realistic confidence in anything you don't know and the Q&A will pick off anyone you managed to fool the first time through. Also, enunciate.

7. Costuming sets the mood and the context. If the lead actor is wearing a doublet and hose when he walks on stage, the audience will immediately know that this is a very different version of Oklahoma than they have ever seen before. I try to dress for work in a way that fits the contemporary mental image people have for "I.T. Professional". I do not use a pocket protector, because that is too heavy-handed. For most days, any button down and khakis will work. It should also be noted that I do not wear pants with pleats, partially because I think it is neat that they were banned during World War II and partially because they make me look like I have ginormous thighs. Whatever you wear, your work costume will give the people around you an immediate (even subconscious) idea of who you are.

8. A good actor can walk on stage, point towards the audience and mention the pouring rain and the audience will believe it while staying perfectly dry. In I.T., sometimes confidence and belief are more important than fact.

9. The audience respects a performance that is honest. An understated but authentic emotion will generally play better than screaming and flailing. When dealing with co-workers and users, I will try to always admit when I don't know something off the top of my head. An honest "I don't know but I'll try to find out" will always play better than "Your flux capacitor is loose".

10. The show must go on. Most often in the theatre the opening night is scheduled before the first rehearsal. From the publication of that date, whatever happens people will show up on opening night and expect to see something. This means there are often a large amount of all-night set construction parties, rehearsals that last until a few hours before the next rehearsal starts and much time spent with the rest of the cast and crew in shared misery and hard work towards a mutual goal. I.T. projects start off with a clearly published completion date. If the new login page isn't ready when the CIO tries to use it at 8am on that date, you can count on losing your grant money for future performances.

If you can't use any of this information right now, file it away. Someday, your child may want to major in Theatre.

-G

Also, if you want to reach people, theatre is not always the best way to do it.
Harvey Fierstein

Round Two

"If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?"

Shakespeare knew something there. Especially about the bleeding part.

You may remember the last great bleeding-in-the-back-of-a-bus challenge. Sunday morning the Blood Bank bus was again parked in the parking lot behind the temple, calling to me.

Todd and I skipped out in the middle of a puppet show about Hanukkah to race through the questionnaire and hurl ourselves into the bleeding couches. I may have indicated that I have not been pregnant in the past six months instead of selecting the "I am male" button, but blood is blood, right?

Anyway, this time I started squeezing the foam rubber clownfish early, because they already had Todd merrily filling a bag across the aisle from me and although they told us they were timing both anyway, I felt some pressure. No one wants to blog a loss, especially twice.

Apparently, when you start squeezing early, bad stuff can happen. For instance, when the phlebotomist finally got around to the needle part, blood shot out of my arm. Some went into the rubber tubing and bag, some got on my arm, and some (though I was looking the other way) managed to hit my glasses like I was in some noir murder scene shot with the camera on a witness instead of on the victim or killer. What's in the briefcase, Mr. Tarantino? Someone bleeding so startlingly in the Blood Bank bus that the trained professionals curse in front of the Rabbi?

Probably not.

But it was pretty gross. And I started laughing semi-hysterically. I totally lost focus, actually.

So I lost the bleed off by over a minute.

What Shylock was warning us about in Merchant of Venice, my friends, was that one should never try to win a bleeding competition with a life-long Jew. If you ever find yourself in the position of trying to out-bleed one, just back down. It will save you a trip to the restroom to wash blood off your glasses later.

Lending evidence to my theory is this:

Shana and Todd's wife Sabrina went in into the bus a while later and hit the couches at about the same time.

Sabrina left for the mall a short while later while the technicians used a turkey baster to pull the last of the bag full of blood from Shana's arm. They were pretty disturbed by her lack of bleeding and more by the texture of her blood which progressed from "Like freaking Elmer's Glue" to "Holy crap -- Is that powder?" towards the end. Some ten or fifteen minutes after Sabrina left, Shana was picking up a bottle of water while the blood techs complimented her mad clotting skills.

By my reckoning, I've been Jewish about ten minutes longer than Shana has, so I bleed about ten minutes faster. This phenomenon is not (nor should it be) discussed in the polite circles of science, but Bill Nye (who is also Jewish) would tell you all about it if you agree with him that Pluto should not be defined as a planet. If you disagree about Pluto that guy will open a vein and drown you in hemoglobin, then casually wander off to play with a plaster of Paris Mount Vesuvius. Shriek in terror, little plastic Romans.

Anyway, some short time later we piled into the car, both with wrapped elbows and defeat spattered all over us, to go home for a nap. Defeat is more draining than filling a hundred bags of blood -- But it takes about the same amount of time.