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finally! the Word debacle is

January 31, 2002 | Leave a Comment

finally! the Word debacle is over and nary a drop of blood was shed. it was all a relatively simple process, too, which still amazes me.

i called Gateway this morning and was armed with all of my software files, serial numbers, a big cup of tea and a bottle of Tylenol. i was expecting to be put on hold for at least a half hour, (which happened the 3 previous times i attempted to get help with this problem) but i got right through to a technogeek. and it was a female technogeek at that! two surprises within 60 seconds; be still my heart.

she was extremely knowledgeable and walked me through the entire process very efficiently. we reconfigured my comp’s start-up system then dug around for a file and deleted it.

she said, “Ok, go ahead and start up the Word program now.” i’m thinking, “yeah, riiiiight… this thing is gonna crash and burn like the friggen Hindenberg, lady… just watch…”

but i clicked the button and voila, it opened right up! all of my files were there. all of my data and lesson plans. all of my whining neatly categorized in various formats. i’m not kidding you, i squealed like i just got the other correct button clicked, if you know what i mean.

the lady geekstress laughed out loud and said, “Well, you sound delighted! You called for help and you got it.”

damn skippy, i am delighted! to be totally honest, i was basing the possible outcome of this phonecall on all of the crappy customer service i’ve received from male technicians in the past, and that was very unfair of me. i mean, there was no condescending attitude coming from this woman; she never left me hanging in the open air while she ran off to chuckle with a supervisor about my dorky problem; no “females should not be operating a computer” snottiness — nothing like that at all. it was great!

it was like the difference between going to a female gynecologist and a male one. hah.

i called Gateway back a few hours later and left a very happy, very glowing report with Valerie’s supervisor. (yes, her real name is Valerie, not Ms. Geekstress.) i am hoping it will benefit her in some way, or at least make her day to realize she is appreciated. she sure made mine!

remember about a week ago

January 30, 2002 | Leave a Comment

remember about a week ago when i mentioned that Microsoft Word was wreaking havoc on my comp? well, i bought a new copy of Works 2000 and i’m going to try reinstalling it tonight. hopefully that will do the trick! the worst case scenario is that i’ll totally screw something up beyond my ability to unscrew it and i won’t be online for a couple of days.

trust me, it could happen. i once had to buy replacement parts for a food processor 15 minutes after i brought it home. now that is scary isn’t it? hahaha

anyway, here goes…
=========================

it’s hours later, (12 midnight, to be exact) and i have tried to install 3 different versions of Word on this !@#$%^! thing. everything runs perfectly except that one stupid – yet essential! – program. looks like i’m going to spend most of the day tomorrow on the phone talking to a Gateway customer support geek.

can you say “pissed off”? ahh, i knew you could.

cats that go bump in the night

January 29, 2002 | Leave a Comment

hello again. it is me, your friendly insomniac warden at the home for wayward geriatric felines. as i type this, cat #1 is down in his kennel in the basement pathetically yowling his little lungs out. cat #2 is sitting in the bathtub noisily slurping up water that was freshly drawn at her incessant demands, even though she has a constant supply of clean water 15 feet away in the kitchen. Agent J is tucked in bed and snoring blissfully, oblivious to all of this commotion.

they’re ALL making me nuts, i tell you.

actually, they aren’t. what is making me crazy is that i am still without a permanent teaching position. that is what is keeping me awake at night. it’s been 6 months since i’ve moved back here and i still don’t have a full-time job. well, an outside-of-the-house job. there’s plenty of haus frau crap to do around here, but i am slowly becoming fed up with all of it.

what’s worse is that the longer i do this routine, the harder it is going to be to break out of it, for both me and Agent J. we have this weird thing in our relationship that makes us slip into certain patterns of behavior. when i’m not following my creative path for whatever reason, i turn into this June Cleaver sort of person. a nurturing, but dependant wussie. and J, like many males in our society, loves to be taken care of in homemaker-y ways and also likes the feeling of being the breadwinner of the house. don’t get me wrong; a certain degree of all of that is healthy in my opinion. but for us it would be toxic as a lifestyle. i always seem to burn out on it much more quickly than J does, too. after all, it’s more fun to be the receiver of the homemade chocolate chip cookies than it is to bake them all the time. gah!

so today i am printing up the third wave of resumes and will send them out later this week. something has got to turn up soon. i just need to keep at it, i guess.

it makes me wonder how many other multi-degreed people are sitting awake at this very moment, pondering their employment future and listening to a cat do God-only-knows-what somewhere else in the house. hundreds of thousands, i bet. heh.

trust me, i feel your pain, baby.

at first i wanted to

January 27, 2002 | Leave a Comment

at first i wanted to talk about how vastly different this image, feathered delicacy, is from many of the others that i have previously posted, and then connect that with my thoughts of there being different kinds of beauty. then it dawned on me (again) that this piece of artwork started exactly the same as all the others in this series. at its essence, there is no difference. it was a black void in the beginning, and i merely began applying different filters to that void; coloring, rotating, intensifying or softening the image until i was pleased with the state it was in. if i wanted it to, the soft, ethereal design you see below could be just as gem-like and hard as some of the others that came before it, and vice versa. it would simply be a matter of submitting it to the process of different filters.

i have often said throughout my career that my creations are like little people to me. they are their own unique selves and i release them out into the world to live and communicate to the best of their ability; to be admired, desired, ignored, simply tolerated, etc.. it amazed me to think this morning that perhaps simply running a “less beautiful” image through one more filter might make the entire difference between it being an ugly duckling or a swan for the rest of its existence.

i think we humans are created in a similar way. at our essence there is no difference. we all emerge from out of nowhere and the things that happen in our lives are the filters that determine who we become and how we may appear to others. the biggest difference, in my opinion, is that of control. unlike finished pieces of artwork, we always have access to the filters in the toolbox and we can try out something new whenever we choose to.

i believe we are as alive and beautiful as we desire to be at any given moment, and always, always on the threshold of change.


“feathered delicacy”
photoshop 6 raw creation
image #7 of the beauty suite
333 x 333 pixels
01.27.02

i’m still half asleep, but

January 26, 2002 | 1 Comment

i’m still half asleep, but this was too bizarre to hold back.

i just had a very strange dream. i was naked with a bunch of other people and we were swimming through this thick liquid that looked like it was made of melted black rubber. after we were completely covered in it, we went to the top of a hill and threw ourselves one at a time down the slope. we rolled and tumbled at high speed until all of the stuff flew off of our bodies like those blown out tires you see on the side of the road when you are travelling down the interstate. the funniest thing is that there were people lined up along the sides of the slope and cheering like at an Olympic ski jumping event. apparently the more dramatic your crash-n-burn was, the more points you scored.

i, being bigger than most of the other contestants, left the ramp with the most momentum and flew farther and higher than anyone else before i hit the ground and began rolling. ecstatic, frenzied cheers went up from the crowd! they had never seen a champion rubber-covered belly whomper like me before! people scrambled for souvenirs of me as pieces of my black coating flew off and went into the grandstands.

when i finally rolled to a stop at the bottom of the hill, i was all bruised and scraped up and bleeding. there were reporters with microphones scurrying around me trying to get an interview. one of the judges came up to me and handed me a huge trophy and declared me the Grand Champion — and then he told all of the other contestants to go home because the competition was over. no one could or would ever defeat me in this event. i was just beaming with pride!

what the hell could a dream like THIS possibly mean? i don’t know if i should be laughing about it or calling my shrink.

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