Resolutions

It's that time. It's New Year's Eve. I hate this day actually. I hate looking back at the year that passed and saying "Man, I just didn't do anything that I wanted to do". This year, it seems to be a lot of that. But, I want to look forward. But looking forward right now doesn't seem that cherry. Each time I see my mom she talks about another food that is going to be eliminated from the house for 3 to 6 months as she takes on chemo and radiation. She says that I can still have it, but that's entirely wrong for me. What if I'm making chicken one day for myself and its the one thing that she wants to eat. I can't possibly bring chicken in this house if she can't eat it.

So, before I get off on another topic, here are the resolutions:

Work:
- I will clean my desk by the end of January.
- I will get one training and/or test for certification
- I will realize that I'm doing my best and that's all that I can do.

Personal:
- I will no longer wink in the online dating. Everyone winks. It's time to write emails.
- I will do whatever it takes to get my mom through all of this and I will not physically harm my sister in the process (although I'm sure it is going to be damn tempting).
- I will go on vacation, even if I have to go by myself and be bored out of my mind. I cannot wait until September when my mother "may" be able to go on vacation with me. I'm getting out of here. I need away from all this craziness.
- I will continue on my diet, no matter how many dietary restrictions my mother gets and no matter how many nights she craves things like Burger King Whoppers (which is what she has been talking about for two weeks!)
- I will exercise, whenever I get the time. It may be dancing with the Wii, but it counts!
- I will try to take care of myself as well as I can. It's going to be hard while taking care of someone else, who isn't going to slow down at all.

Ok, I have to stop this list before I get even more depressed. I feel like I can already chalk up 2008 to being hell. I thought that life was going to get better at some point, but right now, it's just one thing after another. It will be even more difficult if my sister gets the job closer to our house. She'll claim that she is around to "help" but I know my sister. It will be about "free food" and other things. I still can't believe that my mom gave her money for parking at the hospital!

Need to Vent

Maybe I haven’t been blogging just because I haven’t been able to do anything at work about my current situation. Maybe I haven’t been blogging because I’m sick of every entry sounding like a complaint – they aren’t supposed to be, but they just are. Maybe I haven’t been blogging simply because there are hundreds of things to do and simply not enough time in the world to do them.

 

But today, I just needed to blog to vent. It has everything to do with a person named Texas. (Of course I can’t use her real name). I was friends with her when I worked retail and brought her over to my real job with the retail store went under. At first, she did anything I asked, which was nice. I had true help. But then, the ugly head of Texas was found (I like to call it Bush). Bush is an evil person. Bush is a liar. Bush is a manipulator. Bush uses humor and jokes to turn the power in the agency towards thinking Texas is nice. Bush backstabs you a hundred times before you even know that she has started.

 

So, about two months ago, the PG (being a brilliant boss that he is) asked me to “Just keep the peace” and not to “make her be Bush”. So basically, this means pulling back on asking her to do *ANYTHING* of work for me. So simply, I’m doing all the technical support for the entire agency without anyone to rely upon. In fact, it has gotten so bad that the PG has gone back to being my backup. So much for the whole days worth of training we gave Texas with a board member and then with a technician for our support company (whom she has equated to the anti-god or some other evil spirit thing – although he is a sweetheart to me and does me extra favors all the time!) The PG being my backup isn’t working out too well, he isn’t here half of the time.

 

So, Texas/Bush has gone and tried to make friends with other coworkers, but it’s almost sad. She hangs out with the Hoove-er, who is almost as creepy as the name sounds. He cracks jokes about movies that aren’t even funny and if there is a pun in the world, he says it over and over again. And he just stands there and watches people. Yuck! So he has become her new best friend. Which I don’t really care about – it keeps her away from me.

 

However, when we were getting our new phone system, Texas made the decision to tell everyone in the building to come to her first with problems, that she would help them first. Well, that’s all find and good, but most of the time the problems are not user-based it’s more technical end. I have to change a password or for some reason our phone conferencing went down. Well, they all go to her first and then Bush arrives because she can’t fix the problem. I’m not going to train someone on things like this if they aren’t going to do simple things like peel the labels off of printer drums because they bought cheap-crappy labels. So, naturally it takes three to four times longer to get the problem reported to me because Texas/Bush has to pretend to know what she is doing.

Then, usually when it finally gets to me, I get hollered/snapped at/hissed at/complained at by Bush about how long it is taking and how she doesn’t want to ask me to do anything. Well, isn’t that funny... I can’t ask her to do anything and she doesn’t want to ask me to do anything. Well, I didn’t start this craziness. I’m not the one with the mood swings that would cause any swing to spin around the top bar at a rate too fast to watch. I’m always the overworked techie. I’m always on edge because there is always something breaking.

 

But holding my tongue as Texas turns into Bush in front of people that I respect and I care about what they  think about me has come to an end. I’m done with it. I’ve told the PG this too. He is the one that created this mess by never addressing his lack of ability to control and manage her. He had held the peace too long and never did anything.

I have too many things to do around here in the next month to sit here and take this abuse. I’m heading towards hiding in the server room (although it’s like a freezer in there) and only coming out when I have too. It’s awful that my work environment has become so hostile, but this is what it has become. I can never know what kind of person is arriving at work for the day... is it Texas or is it Bush. One can never tell. One can never tell how quickly Texas can change into Bush.

 

My bets are on that the PG doesn’t do what he said he was going to do. He said that he was going to sit her down and talk to her about these things. I’ve heard these promises before. I always hear these promises. He hates conflict and he hates making someone do their work. He isn’t going to address this – I’d bet money on this!  He is just going to hope that this blows over, that I get used to doing all of this extra work and that I don’t turn around and holler/snap/hiss/complain back to her someday. Of course, if that happens, I’m sure that I’ll be the one that is wrong. I’m always the one that is wrong. And the PG has no problem when it comes to telling me what is wrong and what I have done wrong.

The best training conference yet

Did you know that 30 million people that mobile blog? Yep - that's me today!

The head of homestead.com is here and is great. He has these myths of the internet and blowing them away.

I need more trainings like this.

Plus they have great coffee.

Finally Done!

If the title doesn't say it enough -- maybe this does below. If you know what I'm talking about - you'll appreciate it!

A New Favorite Humor Site

I cannot believe that I got this link from a somewhat “professional” eNewsletter. Not that it isn’t professional, but it is all about humor and not real support.

http://lolnptech.blogspot.com/

For those of you who love cats, you’ll love this one a lot too – because a lot of these wonderful NonProfit Techie humor pictures are based off of images of cats. There are few on this site that I might have captions for, particularly this one, that looks like th cat is about to be placed under arrest. Well, there are few employees that I'd like to do that too (starting with the PG all the way down to the girl-who-is-hyped-up-on-so-many-diet-A.K.A.-speed-pills-she-can't-sign-on-right-every-morning)

Either way, my first idea was “Step Away from the Group Policy Snap-In”. Once I start editing group policy, I have an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other shoulder. The one is saying "be nice, only make them have a four character password" while the devil is saying "Make it be eight characters long, with at least three of the four - a capital letter, a small letter, a number and a symbol. And they have to change their password every 30 days!". Then when changing permissions to the ability to change things, the angel says "Sometimes being unique and giving the ability to change the background and screensave breeds happiness within employees" while the devil screams "Keep everyone the same!" I am almost proud to say this - but I listen to the devil much more often. When it comes to my network, lock it down! So, at times, I feel like I should be arrested for making so many strong changes to the group policy.

Of course, the caption could be something less about me and more about the employees - “Guilty of using password as a password”.

I had my first phone call for tech support this morning at 5:59 am – I wasn’t even downstairs and people were calling the offices going, “I know that you are there, so can you unlock me from having a frozen account, I can’t get into my Outlook”. I haven’t fixed the problem yet. I’m just bitter that people are freaking calling me that early and expecting me to jump for them. The problem is this user keeps coming in earlier and earlier – and it’s just plum ridiculous. They better not call me on Wednesday morning when I am sleeping in for the big event that evening. They better not even think of it!

If there is National Boss Day - Can there be National Bad Boss Day?

Or rather, “My Boss is a Big Giant Jack-ass Who Doesn’t Know What the Word Boss Means and Therefore He Can’t Function At That Job Title” Day? That would be around the title I would give for a holiday that celebrates my PG. And guess what – none of my coworkers are doing ANYTHING for the PG. We have all decided to pretend like it is any other day.

 

We used to plan elaborate things. We would make false meetings and go meet him in cool restaurants. We used to have fun with it. But somewhere along the line the PG has morphed horribly into this boss who can’t function as a boss. I know that he doesn’t like conflict, but now we’ve added the following things that he doesn’t like to do: make decisions, follow deadlines, correct staff, follow the rules, answer his phone, answer email with more than one word, and be at work. In fact, the list of things that he does do has shrunk too (much like his height). He likes to clean the cupboards (too bad we have a janitorial staff that does that too). That’s about it. Oh, he also likes to poke fun of staff, screw off during work, place the blame of things not getting done because he hasn’t done anything onto his staff (ME!), and generally go around and annoy everyone. A couple weeks ago it was damn magnets (Thanks Geeka! He hasn’t said anything about them this week. It’s been blissfully silent with those things gone.) This week he is deciding to work on our huge event next week. He is asking all of these questions, wanting to see the videos, having suggestions, and worried about the fact that we are down over 100 people in comparison from last year.

 

So, in the glory that National Boss Day is, I have gone researching for some material on Bad Bosses – and man, there is a jackpot of information out there. There must be a lot of PGs out there (or other versions of him). So, to get this started, I must admit that both the Post Gazette and MSN had lead articles on their websites yesterday and today about Bad Bosses. (Now, doesn’t that make everyone stop for a second and say “Why is that?”). Either way, the MSN article gave me the wealth of information that I sought. It started out with this website: http://www.badbosses.net/  - Yep, the Bad Bosses Website. And on this website, they have an assessment tool to rank you boss: Bad Bosses Assessment. Now, this is absolutely the best one to take. Can I say that I love this website? I can also say that this survey calls out the extremes that the PG can be. Let’s just say every one of the passive questions, he scores the highest on. He isn’t the worst boss out there, but when the survey comes up saying “Mayday! Mayday! You could be in store for a  crash landing with a very difficult boss!”, I have to tell the survey that it isn’t telling me something that I don’t already know. Too bad there wasn’t a question on there about “Can you bribe your boss with chocolate and do other people in your office use chocolate to gain favors from him?”.

 

But my research didn’t end there. No way. Instead, I continued on and found some things that I wish I could just drop on his lap someday. There is this website: http://www.badbossology.com/ that has a book called “Coward’s Guide to Conflict” that he ABSOLUTELY FREAKING NEEDS TO READ!  However, this site seems to be too serious for my taste. I’ve already sat through one horrible wrong Stress Management class with the PG – I don’t need more advice that is along the lines of “Before going in to see your boss, take two deep breathes and outline your conversation along with the things you want to achieve”. That NEVER works.

 

So, further research made me find this site, http://www.workingamerica.org/badboss/  which I wish I would have found earlier. I don’t know if I’d ever get the guts to submit my PG into a contest because I’m sure he doesn’t rank up in the categories of being a mean boss, he is just a bad boss. Well, according to this website, he is also known as The Second Worst Boss on the Block: BOZO the Boss.

 

Finally, in honor of Geeka, I googled “My Boss Is A JackAss” and let’s just say, there were plenty of hits (and lots of other blogs – and Geeka was the 6^th site that was on the google search with her post: Jackass-palooza ). So that Geeka doesn’t have to go and look these up, here are some that everyone may enjoy: http://www.workrant.com/

My Boss is a Jackass Message Board

http://www.fthisjob.com/node/60

 

 

Being Polite

I would think if I ever am a supervisor and I have an employee who works the entire weekend a project – let’s say, a big giant video that is going to be shown to 450 people that features popups boxes as in the VH1 Popup Video style along with voiceovers – that the first I’m back at work, that I would stop and see how the progress is. It’s only polite since the employee is probably putting in more hours than what they are being paid for, they are stressing out to no end, and they were categorically against using their own voice for the popup voiceovers, but had to do it either way.

 

But simply said, the PG doesn’t know Polite if it bit him in the ass and took his damn magnets away.

 

Yes, the PG has been too busy playing with magnets that make noise when you throw them together than to come see a video that I’ve probably worked on for well over 28 hours since Friday morning at 7 am.  Needless to say, let him destroy equipment with the magnets – there will be no conversations between us. I know that he wants a new freaking blackberry, but playing with magnets around the blackberry is going to do nothing to get me to put his blackberry on our servers. Hell, it’s not going to get him anything if he ruins stuff with magnets.

 

And now, he still has things to do for me, and he is too busy. What the hell? Was I too busy this weekend to work on the video? Was I too busy this weekend to figure out how to make up the popups clear and not translucent? Was I too busy this weekend to place 4 filters on all voiceovers to make it sound better? Was I too busy to find the stupid “bloop” sound for each popup? I don’t think so. Give up the magnets, become a grown man for 6 minutes and 24 seconds and see the damn video!

Irish Stepdancing Monkeys and Moron Magnets

This was a very serious conversation I had yesterday with Geeka on the way back from the very cool farmer's market (butternut squash fo 75 cents, giant heads of cauliflower for $2, homemade sugar-free jams for $4.50). It all started with the fact that we both work with complete morons. More specifically, we both have bosses taht are complete morons. Geeka's moron is the Canadian moron. She has been with this moron for too long. I'm with the Pocket-Gay Moron. Unfortunately, I've been with my moron for longer, but he wasn't always a moron.

However, this opened up new avenues for exploring morons. Because I really think that I attract this special breed of morons known as the "Gay morons". Now I must say, I'm perfectly find with this lifestyle for people who find themselves attracted to others of the same sex. I'd rather know about that first though. I don't know how many blind dates my first gay moron set up on with other men who were more interested in him than me.

Ok, back to business... First, gay morons are not exactly hiding the fact (although the PG is not exactly out of the closet but he isn't all the way into closet either, but he is small enough you can't always see where he is at a given moment). Second, they pretend to be this cool person who has all this fun when in the background they are like models on "America's Next Top Model" - ready to stab you in the back and throw you underneath the bus (or ACCESS van). Third, they need to be the most important person in the relatioship and demand it. If they aren't, they just fight with you so you go away. Fourth, they love to do things just to drive you absolutely batty because they love to see you upsest. (The PG has been carrying around these loud-ass magnets that make noise when you throw them together. He has been using them for over a week now. No problem, but there are tons of computer equipment in my building. Computer equipment that doesn't like magnets.... Getting the picture here?)

I'm not saying that I don't attract other morons and I'm not saying that only me and Geeka are specializing this. I'm sorry to say, but I even think Image Goddess attracted the same Canadian moron that I had. It wasn't our fault that time. We were hurt. We needed physical therapy. We were assigned the Canadian moron. (Although the verdict on this is still way out there. Somehow this man is still sort of right about my knee, although I'm still in pain.)

So the question is out there, if you are a moron magnet, how to do demagnetize yourself? Is there some sort of spray that I can get to get all the morons away? It seems as if I left one gay moron for another gay moron. In fact, I think my PG morphed into a bigger moron after I got rid of the other gay moron. Did I cause that because I no longer had a moron attached to me?

Enough of this -- but here, for some fun and what I teased about earlier: Irish Stepdancing Monkeys:

This Video Sums Up My Work

Simply said, I run each and every time my servers do something like this. My employees DO throw things when things go down. Change this man into a woman and it's me!

&*&*#&!*(#()$#) (Insert Swear Words Here)

Some days it isn’t even worth it. Some of the most basic things that need to be answered, can’t be answered. And when I have a hundred and one things that need to be done, the damn freaking ass boss just starts this crap “I don’t know what to tell you” and “I don’t know” and “I don’t have an answer”. Well, it’s simple – do you want to spend the money or do you not want to spend the money? Do you want me to just patch things together as we always do or do you want to do it the right way? Do you want me to work here forever and ever and ever like a freaking ass slave, or do you want me to be like a human being and actually work a regularly scheduled week?

 

How can I continue to support technology that I have no say in and no control over? It’s insane. I need things and I need things approve. I need decisions – not non-committals. This is ridiculous. We have a $20 million + budget and I can’t even get a $4,000 server approved. But yet wave a freaking new blackberry in his face and suddenly it is a must have!

 

What happened to what the real needs are? What happened to listening to what is right? What happened to TELLING your staff what you want and not letting things just hang in the air forever and forever and forever.

 

This is bullsh$t. There is no freaking way someone can work like this month after month after month. There is no way that someone can expect to be nice and kind with month after month of this sh!t.

 

And now, I get a freaking book that I’m supposed to read and do “homework” assignments because I’m a supervisor. Well, I don’t supervise anyone and I can’t make any decisions, why should I have to do homework? Do I really want to read Stephen Covey’s 8^th Habit book – NO! I don’t have time. I want to have time to get certified. I want to have technical letters after my name that mean something – that say I know what I’m doing. I want to be able to tell stupid technicians that they don’t have to talk down to me because I know what the hell they are saying. Now that means something. That means more than reading a book and doing homework in it. Like I have time for homework?

Maybe I should do the homework over doing the 7 freaking videos that have to be done by October 24^th with freaking pop-up boxes on one of them no less – that the same boss that can’t make a decision can’t seem to write!

Notes from a Holiday Weekend

First, thanks to geeka for sending me this wonderful article. I know that the PG won't ever read it or ever listen to it - but it is so my situation at the office each and every day! http://www.lifeclever.com/jason-fried-working-closely-together-aint-productive/

Now, a couple notes about the weekend:

1. I completed the Steelers/Gatorade 5K in record time ever. I walked mostly (but jogged a good bit) and finished in less than 45 minutes. The time was somewhere near 44:36, but I won't know until offical chip times are in.

2. My sister and her preacher-wanna-be-husband (PWBH) just visit to play wii anymore.

3. My sister has to be bigger than me by now. She is wearing clothes that I stopped wearing and they look awful on her.

4. How long after a wedding are you required to look at wedding things like it is important? My sister brought another "scrapbook" on Sunday and made me and my mom look at it. Plus, the next time we are supposed to see "the wedding video". I thought this would be over by now.

5. I'm sick of hearing the phrase "son of a motherless goose". PWBH just says that way too often and I'm really sick of it. It's a stupid phrase and it totally takes way too long to say it. PWBH thinks it's funny, but it's not - it's annoying.

6. Totals for the prayer - 2 Oh Lords, 4 Oh Gods, 1 Bless your children who are straying (that's me!), and 6 Almighties. Yes, prayer is now a game between me and my mom.

7. I had 5 emails Sunday night to remind me about the phone system at work needing to be changed over. Needless to say, I hardly slept at all on Sunday and I had crazy dreams all related to the damn phones. Thanks to the PG and Stinky to ruin my extra day off.

8. My scanner doesn't work with the Mac! Boo-hoo! More work to do at work. Groan!

Meme? Yep

After four really long days and one huge water main break that may make me wake up early if water isn't ok at work - I'm finally going to get to this Meme that Image Goddess tagged me with a while ago.

The Four Things Meme

Four Jobs I Have Had In My Life:
A Michael's Arts and Crafts Sales Associate (twice - once during undergrad and again when the school loans hit the mailbox!)
Van Driver for a disabilities organization
Toys R Us Cashier (during the Pokemon craze!)
Jack-of-All-Tech-Trades (that's the current one)

Four Places I Have Lived:
Pittsburgh
My Aunt's House in Pittsburgh
My Godparents House just outside of Pittsburgh
Work

Four of my favorite foods:
Sausage
Salsa
Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream
Doritos

Four Places I’d rather be right now:
Walt Disney World
New Orleans
Disney Cruise Line
Toronto

Four movies I can watch over and over:
While You Were Sleeping
Shawshenk Redemption
Any of the three Pirates movies
A Knight's Tale

Four TV shows I like to watch:
Las Vegas
Ugly Betty
Kyle XY
Clean House

Four websites I visit daily:
YouTube
Microsoft
Post Gazette
My work's webpage (it opens up automatically)

Four early musical influences:
Nelson
Madonna
New Kids on the Block
Annie, the musical

Four Computers I’ve Owned:
NEC desktop
Dell Desktop
laptop given to me from geeka
multiple and always changing selection from work now

So, I was guessing that I'm supposed to tag four people - how about two? Sorry, geeka. And, since I gave the whole outline of how I know geeka and Image Goddess - Steamed Puddings you are tagged.

When it rains - it pours

We've had water main breaks at work before. Usually it's not too bad.
Well, follow the link below for what I have had going on at work today.

It isn't bad enough that I have enough work to work the entire Holiday
Weekend -- but now, I can't get out of my building!

"More Raw Footage From Oakland Water Main Break - Video - WTAE
Pittsburgh" The link:
www.thepittsburghchannel.com/video/14013767/index.html?taf=pit

The water has sort of stopped now, but now there are huge chunks of road
broken off and all of the roads here are blocked. We have no way out!

Signs that your "Backup Person" shouldn't be your backup

I have a person who is supposed to be my backup person to network issues. She is supposed to step up and help me when things are not easy and when I can’t just simply do enough things to get things done. It’s actually a joke. It’s a big joke. Really, she doesn’t qualify has help. She doesn’t qualify as backup either. Here are just some ways that you can spot if someone shouldn’t be your backup:

 

1. They need directions with pictures on how to empty out the internet cache.
2. They need directions on how to hit the button that says “CLOSE” on a pop up box.
3. They write emails bashing the technical help desk and send it to the technician that they absolutely bash to pieces in the email and forget to send it to you.
4. They call helpdesk to have them reboot a server because they are afraid (even after they were given one-on-one training by a big-wig Microsoft trainer who knows the network personally).
5. They always offer to help but suddenly are “going to be late” on that day.
6. They don’t respond to important emails
7. They forget how to install printers.
8. They forget how to turn a computer off.
9. They forget that we have updates running automatically at night.
10. They forget to tell you when they have changed toner out so you don’t run out of toner.
11. They bitch about you behind your back.
12. They mess up changing a user’s password.
13. They tell people to go to them first with any problems.
14. They can’t install regular printers, but they can manage to install the color printer for their friends.
15. They install game software without seeing what they were installing.
16. They gave someone the secondary administrator password to a regular user who said they knew what they were doing.

 

 

Ways to Update My Resume

So, my wonderful CEO decided since I have a Masters in Social Work, I need to apply to be a Field Instructor. It’s a non-paid thing and it has an application a mile long. The hardest part is that I have to include a resume. I haven’t updated my resume in ages. But then, there hasn’t been much to update.

 

I can update my job title as here was my progression: Development Associate, Community & Technology Facilitator, Community & Technology Coordinator, and now Technology Coordinator. Wow, how exciting is that!

 

But then, I have to write what I do. So I guess I have to find a way to promote myself as being the technology slave in good terms that sound professional. I guess installing toner for the idiots who don’t know how to install it will be: Performing maintainence and upgrades to hardware. Then, when I have to clean the toner out of printers because someone has managed to break the toner that will be: Creatively enhances usability of hardware.

However, this is already getting boring to me. The easiest way to describe what I do is as slave.

Which leads me to the other gripe of the morning – and it has to do with the damn stress management class I have to go to. In class yesterday, she told us that we choice be pessimists and optimists and that we can control everything. However, I would say, when you entire job is to handle everyone’s problems and their pessimistic issues. I don’t get to hear “Oh this is working so well”. No, I only here “this doesn’t work” and “this never works” and “you never can get this to work right” and “you broke it again” and “you didn’t do this for me”. Yeah, I can really turn those kinds of things around. I wanted to tell this woman it’s a two way street – that if you get shit in, you are going to give shit out. That’s reality. That’s life. There is no way to make shit into floral potpourri!

I Should Be Working - Instead, I'll Blog

Since I haven't blogged a lot of late, I'm going to try to get back on track. It took Image Goddess to get me back on track, although I was reading hers and Geeka's blog almost every day. It was also knowing that someone else was reading my blog. It was a big shock to go to Steamed Puddings to find out that I was even mentioned. So, before you continue on, you might want to read how I was mentioned on Steamed Puddings first... because I'm going to answer how I am actually attached to Image Goddess and Geeka - so if there are more of you out there reading, you know the story.

Of course, we protect our identities. This isn't because we are scared (ok, well, we are sort of scared and if it gets known, our honesty might just drop off and then we would be boring). If I didn't protect my identity, I couldn't possibly talk about my boss the Pocket Gay or complain about my co-working Texxxxx-aas (think of it of how William Shatner says it in Ms. Congeniality).

Ok, back to how the trio of us know each other. Truth is, I've known Geeka since middle school. Yep - we were in chorus together in middle school and we are still friends now. All through middle school, high school, college, and multiple years of post-college education. But I must admit now, I am no longer an academic-minded person. I got my masters in social work (yeah, it makes no sense now...) and I got out into the workforce, working a technology-based job for a nonprofit that likes to give us a salary in peanuts. Through all of those years, Geeka has been there for trips to New Orleans, watching my dog, and all other crazy sorts of things. It has only been the last few years that she moved so close to me that we shout things to each other practically every other day.

It was from Geeka that I met Image Goddess. It was sort of a friend-of-a-friend thing until we had someone else in common - the same odd-Canadian PT guy when we were both hurt and partially cripple. One day, I was there, doing leg lifts for a bad right knee and I looked across the room and this girl looked like someone that I knew. I think we both had that thought, but it was Image Goddess who asked the odd-Canadian PT guy if it was me and then we got to spend a lot of time together in PT. (Between the two of us, I think we have a whole good body and a whole bad body). Image Goddess was there when I practically tried to shove the odd-Canadian PT guy's head in my crutches when he wouldn't let me off of them - and this was for when my LEFT knee went bad while fixing the right knee.

So, maybe I have answered some questions of how three of us know each other. Even though I may be sarcastic here, I'm even more sarcastic in real life - something that I am trying to fix - but that is a blog for another day.

So it ain't so ---

Your Score: Angelic

You scored 70 on cruelty!

Is that a halo above your head? Your cruelness is basically non-existant

Link: The Cruelty Test written by legend1979 on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Something has to be wrong on this test. This can't be right? I'm known as the techie bitch or or the bitch techie -- there is no way that I am angelic. Hell, I strive to be known as a witch and I made a personalized ring tone at work for my phone if the Wicked Witch saying I'll get you my pretty... and your little dog too!

Take the test... and find out how wrong it is!

Reaching a Goal

I've been so quiet of late and there are lots of things going on. There are things that I'm not sure that I'm ever going to post about and then there are other things. But then there is my goal that I finally reached. I've been doign Weight Watchers on and off for three years. We really started it three years ago at work and then they would quit at work. I didn't gain all the weight back, but I didn't really lose any more until it started back up at work. This past fall - enough was enough... I joined up outside of work - which was good because the work group this year was just awful, but that is another story. I thought I would be excited when I lost a total of 50 pounds. It was great and exciting, but it didn't seem as big as this goal. You know those scales at doctor's offices... you have that big weight at the bottom. It has been on a number that I hated so much - and it has been there forever. I know now the next time I go, it has to move down to a smaller number. Now that seems more exciting than a fifty pound total.

One good thing about today

I made my first training video for work with iMovie without needing geeka’s help – and I was able to complete it in under an hour!

 

Bonus gift: I was even able to export it and get it be viewable on a Windows Machine!

Pray for Me

I know – me the most unreligious person around, is asking you to pray for me. Well, I’m going to need it today. Let’s just say, this bad day started out yesterday when I got an email that said, “It looks like the loader might be failing I will give you a call tomorrow.”  This would be our tape autoloader at work. This would be the tape autoloader at work that does all of our backups for all of the servers we have in the building. *This is really bad news!*

 

Since that email, things have just been going down hill – and fast. I have a special eNewsletter that I’ve been working on this department that can only find things wrong. It looks great, but the company we use, for some reason has problems with apostrophes, hyphens, and quotation marks. Of course, this department does not want to rewrite their text because then it will look to “FORMAL” and they are more “informal kind of bunch”. Fine, I can try to figure this one out – it is just an email to the company, no big problems.

 

Then overnight, I got 40 messages from our antivirus software about a full quarantine and items that have expired and items that have not been able to be scanned. WTF? WTF? Yeah, so this scares me and of course no one has ever showed me where on the 10 servers we have where to go look into this. I did this once before, when I only had 3 servers to work about.

 

I have changed 4 passwords this morning and I am booked almost every second of this day with meetings and such. Add to the fact that two coworkers are after my head right now and they just want me gone – even though they were the ones that were entirely wrong. Another coworker is upset at me because I think she is breaking dress code and of course one of the people who wants me head told her that I’m the only one complaining about her clothes (ah, truth is, about 8 people say she wears bathing suits to work).

 

So, maybe I need to pray to the god of computer gremlins. Maybe I need to pray to the god of ‘just let me get thru this day’. I don’t know. But I need it – NOW!

My First Meme

This is my first meme. I've been tagged by Image Goddess who is my PT-buddy and who has been battling the summer-crud that has been going around.

Rules

1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog

Random Facts

• When I was in middle school, I wanted to be a physical therapist/athletic trainer because I was so into sports. Needless to say, I probably would have been able to save myself some grief and money in physical therapy had I done that career path!
• I am one of the first members of my middle school’s Sports Hall of Fame for participating in softball, swimming, and soccer. It is one of the rare things that I still display from my sports life.
• I started to write fan fiction for a television show named La Femme Nikita almost a decade ago and I still write fan fiction based off of that show today. In fact, I would almost say I have a fan base of readers who get nervous if I don’t post at least a chapter a day (if not more).
• I prefer to be around my father’s family rather than my mother’s side of the family. This all sounds nice, but is the most impractical thing for me. My mom’s family is all in the Pittsburgh area while my dad’s family specializes in spreading across the entire United States and moving around quite frequently.
• I used to color in coloring books while in my college sociology class in order to stop myself from falling asleep.
• I love to take photographs and I feel that even with the digital camera, nothing is as good as actual film and photographs. In fact, I really like to take black and white photographs as it is more difficult to do.
• I have published poetry – call it young teenager angst.
• I’m really good at putting the borders together on jigsaw puzzles, but often become too bored to do anything more with the puzzle.

Now, I'm supposed to tag 8 people but the problem is I don’t even read 8 blogs. I have two places that I go all the time and I have not branched out at this time. I know, it’s time to start reading! So, I’ve answered but regrettably, I cannot tag anyone else to continue this on. Any suggestions on fun blogs to read – I’m game for it!

Practical Jokes

Some times I like to pull practical jokes and lately, it has been my pleasure to be able to do this with customized ring tones on our phone system. It is one of the neatest things to be able to do to our phones. I have control of the ring tones and most of them are the normal ring tones and a few fun ones. But there have been so people that just needed specialized ring tones.

 

First there was mine and the “Payroll Bitches” ring tone. I was able to get the Wicked Witch of the West saying “I’ll Get You My Pretty, and Your Little Dog Too”. It’s great – it matches my personality. Along that same time I got our CFO an Elvis ring tone… he sings “I’m All Shook Up” whenever her phone rings. It gives her a smile – which never hurts with the CFO. She controls the money so keep her happy

 

It didn’t end there. I have this woman in the development department named Marci. Her given name is Marcia, but she hates it. Well, I was able to find Jan Brady saying “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia”. What makes this better, is that we got this onto her phone and we turned it ALL the way up. At first, she thought we were doing something to make her phone play that way. She had no idea that it was now her ring tone. She hated it at first, but the nice thing is… she has embraced it as something unique that she can really hear with the ring tone down lower.

 

I tried to get the Facilities Coordinator a new ring tone but he won’t go for it. Often, he saves the day around here, so I was able to get Mighty Mouse’s theme song. You know… “Here I come to save the day!!!!!” It’s perfect for him, but he wants us to record women talking sweet to him. Yeah, he sits next to me so that isn’t going to be happening anytime soon!

 

I also got Mork going Nanu, Nanu… but on one has selected that one.

Of course, when the PG got wind of this custom ring tones and he came up with someone harder for me to do. All these other ring tones were sort of already shortened for me. But no… he wanted a Disco ring tone. Specifically, “Boogie Wonderland”. So the search was one. First, the files really need to be wav files to make this easier. It’s insane to find this, but after about 20 minutes of searching I found a full length version of Boogie Wonderland (that was the real song singing, but not some stupid synthesizer) and then I had to edit it down to a ring of the length of about 4 to 7 seconds. I was able to pull it off and he enjoys it.

 

But now we’ll get to the real practical joke. That would be on Ms. Texas. Yep, my girl Texas who is so against the Steelers its unreal. She is Cowboys through and through. Well, she is on vacation this week and we were wondering what we could do to her. Everyone wanted to decorate her desk, because that’s what she does to us. But, that didn’t seem like it screamed out something we would do. Then I remembered that I wanted to make a Steelers ring tone. Well, it is now done. The ring tone starts out with the fans screaming “Here We Go Steelers” then a robot saying “The Pittsburgh Steelers” and ending with “And The Towels Are Up!”. It’s brilliant! It’s awesome. She is going to hate it. But I know others in this building will use the ring tone too, so I feel that I did something for everyone… not just for a practical joke.

 

And some days, this is what I have to remember. I can work somewhere where we pull jokes like this all the time. I work in a place where I have the power to control the ring tones and the hold music. I have some fun that can make the long days when I want to slap the PG silly. So, I know that I have a long day planned today, but I wanted to share the fun of my ring tones. Who knows what will be next. I will get a feeling someday and just will do it. Maybe I need to get a man recording the “breathless” women for the Facilities Coordinator. Now that would be a hoot!

Why PG's Shouldn't Be Bosses

1. They lie to your face
2. They lie to other people behind your back
3. They like to micromanage.
4. They hate being bothered about stuff that they want to micromanage but don’t know enough about
5. They like to jump the line in a “To-Do List” to be most important
6. They like to make you work on the holiday
7. They think of stupid video concepts that are going to take a gazillion hours to do and not take any of your other work off of you
8. They go to stupid baseball games that they don’t even like in order to socialize rather than work
9. They like to tell you that you don’t need more training
10. They like to get you to do all of their work and take the glory
11. They like to get you to do all of their work and all of the blame when it isn’t exactly done the right way
12. They like to make comments about exercise
13. They notice the color of your toenail polish
14. They call you and leave you messages of music
15. They really, really, really, really like the song True Colors
16. They don’t make anyone else do any work
17. They don’t understand deadlines
18. They are too small to see how big a problem truly is
19. They leave you to deal with political nightmares
20. They let you get so much work that you feel like you are drowning and then they tell you that you are rude and need an attitude adjustment
21. They hire people that should be under you in the chain but decides to make them the same level as you so you have no control over what they do because the PG is the boss and he doesn’t manage the person
22. They suck!

Blah, blah, blah

I have been such a bad blogger of late. It is because as I started to see the light and start planning for my future, I get awful projects thrown onto my desk. I have been swamped with things that are just going to take so much extra time. Some of these used to be things that I liked to do and I would think if I wasn’t under pressure to do, I would like. I would like it even better if I got to make the CREATIVE decisions.

Instead, I am going to be stuck doing a pop-up video to True Colors. Ok, I don’t know if any of you have been to Disney World and Epcot Center during the 80’s. That’s when Michael Jackson was still partially black and mostly liked. His 3-D movie Captain Eeho (or something like) was the rage and would have horribly long lines. But when you got into the preshow, they had this wonderful picture show to True Colors (and I believe it was the Phil Collins version and not the Cyndi Lauper version). It was a stunning piece of artwork and I liked *THAT* more than I liked the 3-D movie. So, even though this sounds good and creative, in the back of my head, I’m thinking that anyone who has ever seen THAT preshow, this is going to suck. And it is stuck in my head. I know how great it was. I remember how stunning the pictures were. I remember the cute little pictures of kittens. I remember the giant balloons soaring in the air. I remember the rainbows and lightening pictures that were featured. There is absolutely NO WAY that mine is going to even be 10% of what that preshow was. It depresses me. It makes me sad. It makes me not want to do it, but I don’t have a choice. The boss has spoken – this is the way it is going to be.

 

So, I plan to get back to my blog. I’ll get rid of the poll that is causing all the popup ads (and since I had to put on a song today for the hold music that wasn’t even in the running, I may not have as much control of the hold music as I thought I did). I’ll do the 8 things you don’t know about me soon. I swear!

 

And then you will get to hear all about the horrible process of making a video that I don’t want to make.

Need Humor

I was going to spend my moment, writing on my blog about how great Grille 36 is. Yes, the restaurant that “The Bus” built, is fabulous – especially if you like portions that could serve 4 people. I call them all “Bus-portions”.  I was actually enjoying time with co-workers and finding it a good day. It is always nice to be appreciated with a meal at a New and Special restaurant.

 

Then, I had to come back to work and actually work. No problem doing that. I answered some emails and addressed some issues about one of our offices and the connection at that location. The internet and network has always been slower there. It isn’t our building and the lines aren’t even really ours. It’s all been kind of ad-hoc’ed together. I’ve troubleshooted problems for months and months… with my boss always saying “Don’t worry about it” and stuff like that.

 

Well, I didn’t worry about it – and what happens? This issue blows up in my face, people believe that I “have done all that I know how to do” – which makes it sounds like I don’t know what I’m doing, and it has gone to the CEO now for “addressing”. It’s crazy… but I have the facts. I have emails. I know what I have done. I know that the only way to fix this problem is to spend thousands and thousands of dollars that none of the departments in that location has the budget to pay for.

So, I’m going to go find humor right now. I’m not going to worry about this issue tonight until the boss response. However, if he does not response or if he does not support me fully on this mess, I will fight back.

 

To prepare, I see a round or two of wii boxing.

You know it is bad......

When the person you need to copy program books that are only 8 pages long… can’t figure it out.

Levity

This describes the week for me thus far. Enough said!

It's That Time Again

I think the time happens about once or twice a week. Sometimes it isn’t as serious while other times, I start actually keeping track of things. The time is when I swear I cannot take this job any more and it is time to move on. I actually start looking for a new job and then realized how truly and thoroughly screwed I am when it comes to looking for a different job. Oh, there is a job at RAND. Oh, the Woodlands Foundation is looking for a Senior Fundraising Director. Oh, that place I never heard of wants an eMarketing Director. Oh – can I actually apply for any of these without lying about my qualifications?

 

I have no certification or stamp of approval that says “Yes, I know how to do this computer stuff!”. I have no proven track record with doing fundraising, because it all goes thru Marci and credit is never divided out. Then, I get worried that I think that I have more skills than I truly do have. I do rely upon help desk to do a lot of the troubleshooting. Half the time, I think I act like a goose with a chopped off head. I never truly know what the answer is. I guess at a lot of things. What kind of place would hire that?

 

There are benefits to what is going on here. I get 17 days vacation. My boss virtually doesn’t do any supervising until he is 4 to 5 months late with the reviews and then he gives the obligatory – your attitude sucks speech. I can create my own hours. I have cool guys at help desk that make me laugh when things are bad. I can talk to Board Members and not have to worry about the stuck-up attitude and entitlement that most Board Members have.

 

But days like this, when my wireless connection might as well be called wireless-less, and when I get ambiguous reports of ‘the state says there is something wrong with our connection’ while there are no hints of any problems – I almost want to high tail it Florida, to work at Disney, where things have got to be easier to understand, where there probably is a boss that would supervise and not let me just hang in this vast wonderland of nothingness.

 

Yep, it’s that time again.

 

 

Bad situation

You know what is awful is when you bring someone into the workplace that you think is going to be a great person for the position – but then they are the worse person. Then, you don’t know what to do to end the situation. You are sort of responsible for bringing in this awful person, who is just throwing off the entire environment of the workplace.

 

Now, she is getting worse. She is going out and being mean out in public while representing my work. If you really didn’t want to do this, say NO. Don’t stomp around, being mad at people who are DONATING money to my agency, and coming back to work and being proud about what she did.

 

It reflects bad on me. I thought she would learn how to behave herself after a year. Especially after being here a year. It isn’t my responsibility to make her behave. She should know what common sense it. She should know how to act while working with a board member. There are things you do in public and things you say in public when having a challenging time. You don’t freak out on people and don’t be mean to them when they are trying to have a fun time.

 

So now, I am going to try to find her a new job. It will do everyone well if she just leaves the agency. I think this would be good for me too. I’m miserable with her around, trying to mother people while stabbing them in the back. But who do I push off my problem onto?

Reasons why not to bowl

It was a fun concept – bowling for your birthday – to avoid the “girly-day” plans my sister had. In fact, I had fun while doing it, but now a couple days later, there are some reasons never to do this again:

 

1. My knees are now 30 years old… and they crack like they are fifty.
2. Pain, pain, pain – and pain everywhere – hips, forearms, thumbs, lower back…. Most of these don’t matter, but the forearm pain in my right hand is bad – it impacts typing.
3. Watching my sister try to bowl left-handed – it was a comedy show really. And it showed up in my dreams.
4. Seeing what my sister was wearing and the fact that it was not bowling appropriate. Let’s just say, it was too damn tight and she spent more time pulling down than actually bowling. She has always been the perfect candidate for What Not To Wear. If I dress her, she looks fine, but right now, she looks like someone who is denying their size while also being a Wal-Mart junkie.
5. No open bar.
6. Smoking was permitted there – doesn’t impact me right away… but that night, the little bit of smoke was felt in my lungs
7. I have a wii at home. Wii bowling – much easier.
8. No homemade salsa at the bowling alley.
9. It was damn cold in there. I think I could have worn a sweater and still been cold.
10. Competition – even though my sister acted like there was no competition going on, she was watching that scoreboard like a hawk. It has always been like that.
11. Talk – talk – talk – talk – ok, so this was for my birthday… but my sister barely talked to me during bowling. Instead it was to mom about her weight, her money, her car, her job, her need for more money… Oh, in the end… the day that was my sister’s plan – turned out to be paid for by my MOM!
12. And although it has nothing to do with bowling, I must have one last bitch about my sister and her involvement with this day. After bowling we went to a cookout at my house. That’s fine. I paid for the food. I prepared the salads. Mom grilled. My sister – she never even asked if she could bring something. NEVER! Ugh!

 

Ok, now that I’m going to have to find a nice place to put my Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow poster – my sister wants it in the exercise room, which for all purposes has photographs of places around the world that I would love to see – not cheesy movie posters – even though Johnny Depp is hot and I like all of the pirates movies – I still wouldn’t have gotten this poster, EVER!

 

It is now time to go back to work. Don’t feel like that either. All of those pains leftover from bowling……..

I Got A Wii!

That’s all that I can say right now. I got a Wii. I looked and looked and when I was least expecting it, I came across one at Wal-Mart. It’s amazing! I want to play Wii all the time.

 

What to do first?

It has been one of those ‘Manic Mondays’ where things are just not right and there are two many things going on. I guess it is part of my fault since I have been taking Fridays off, but that isn’t really my decision. If I could take another vacation, I would. But it is impossible. And then, I may have to come in on Friday just for an hour or two to make sure some techs are comfortable in my building. So much for a vacation day.

It is also one of those days, were everyone is pointing out all of my flaws. It is a Monday, where I got to the Post Gazette and start looking at the job postings and wondering if any of these jobs are worth even applying for. It is a Monday where one of the jobs looks interesting, pays more than what I currently make, but the qualifications are muddy and unclear. I wonder if I have the skills to do that job or would I just be expanding myself to sound good to be only put in a worse situation than I am now.

Its not that I hate my job - I dislike many aspects of my job right now. I dislike the fact that I have to get every little thing approved that I do, but it is seen as being annoying. I dislike the fact that when I try to be more proactive and assertive in making decisions, it is seen as being overaggressive and ill-advised and that my boss needs to approve these things. I dislike the fact that I have to recall things I learned 6 months ago, but I haven’t had to recall them until now and I don’t remember. It’s my fault that I don’t remember any of it. I should have written it down, but I was so busy at the time. I dislike that I’m near tears every time I have to try to bribe people for work because I’m all by myself and Board Members have dropped off the face of the earth after they promised help. I dislike the fact that everyone needs me but yet I’m not supposed to need any of them. I dislike the fact that no one every says thank you any longer. Even for the simple things like changing a password – it would be nice to just hear a ‘thank you’. I dislike that coworkers can say *I’m not doing that, you can do that.* and then they go and place my name on a letter, effectively making me in charge of something that I wasn’t aware that I was going to be in charge of.

I do cool things every once in a while. But those cool things are coming few and far between. I want to do more of those things, but instead I get stuck trying to bribe or sweet-talk, or make nice with people. I spend a lot of time tip-toeing around people because they are so more emotional than me. I spend a lot of time doing more work for others because they are the real drama queens. Real drama queens can make others look like drama queens so they can look like they are perfect princesses.

Ok, I’m off to do more bribery. That’s what I do best!

On hate

Right now, I think I have reached a new level of hating my job. It isn’t actually the work that I hate. In fact, oddly, I sort of like the work because it is never the same thing. And although I often mention how much I hate the boss, this new level of hate is not related to him much of all.

 

It’s the expectation that everyone here has that I don’t know what I’m doing. It is the expectation that I have no freaking life and that I will jump to attention with every single email that hits my crackberry. It is the expectation that they better double-check the stuff that I just fixed incase I’m lying and I really didn’t fix anything at all. And it is mostly my ‘backup’ who is doing this crap (insert a swear word there in the place of crap – because that’s what I truly mean).

 

Yesterday, after I left at well after 3 pm, I had an email about the fax machine not working at 4 pm. Well, first, I’m off the clock. I had already put in enough hours and I did not have to reply back. Second, she is allowed to call the help desk and get help for those sorts of things… but she is allowed to not like the person who answers at help desk and just never call them. Third, after doing nothing and waiting for me to come in this morning – I checked all the plugs to find that a plug was out. *IT’S THE FIRST THING YOU CHECK!*

 

So, she comes in this morning, doesn’t even say hello or anything, and starts pounding away at the fax machine – like I ignored her email and her help desk ticket and didn’t do anything. Guess what – I had another emergency going on and I still got it fixed. But, do you think she says anything – nope. She storms off and grumbles that it took long enough. What? Did she think I was going to come back to work after I left yesterday to fix something like the fax machine? If it was that important, why didn’t she call help desk about it? Why does she think I have to jump to when she says too?

 

I’m tired of this. I’m tired of untrained people second guessing what I’m doing. I’m sick of people who are supposed to help me, doing crap, giving me more work, giving me crap about the way that I do my work, and the commenting how long it took me to do the work. Hell – it’s called work for a reason. Not a lot of people like it. If everyone worked here, I wouldn’t have to do everyone’s work that they don’t feel like doing.

Oh, I can just feel the great day coming on… it’s going to be a *glorious* one right now. I can feel it.

Stupidness

I feel that I should get paid triple for any issue that is related to people being completely stupid in their activities and their actions. There are also levels of stupidness, and lately, they have all been happening. Let me explain.

 

Level One of Stupidness – this is for the person who knows no better, and they act like they know more. Instead of asking for help, they just start pressing random buttons, hoping to solve the problem. And in addition, they did not keep track of what they were doing when they were pressing the buttons. Acts on this level deserve a good *Whack* behind the head.

 

Level Two of Stupidness – this is for the person who knows better, has shown signs of life inside of their head, and they have suddenly forgotten everything. This usually occurs when the person has moved their office – either from a building to another building or even when they change departments. Suddenly, it is like they are using a computer all over again. There are signs of lapses of brain activity, the symptom is usually forgetting the answer to a question I had already answered 5 times in the past week. Asking me again, is not going to get you a different answer. I’m not the stupid one, so don’t ask me the same question again. Acts on this level deserve a good *kick* in the butt.

 

Level Three of Stupidness – inactivity of any sort. This is usually when someone gets a brand new laptop, gets home access, and they promptly wait 3 months to turn any of them on and then wonder why the password has expired. This is not my fault and I should not be bothered about these issues. This level should be at least triple pay for myself. Acts on this level deserve a good *smack* across the face along with the *kick* and the *whack*.

 

Level Four of Stupidness – any combination of the first three levels of stupidness. This is the ultimate person who shows no signs of being able to ever really work with a computer. They are the biggest PITAs and they have an air of entitlement. For the punishment for this level, they should be required to partake in training and all of the above punishments.

 

And anyone showing these signs, impact my job. It is my job to cure their stupidness or to hold their hands. It is enough to drive someone to the edge. I did not sign up for this job to hold hands and to cuddle people when they are afraid of the power button.

Another cure for this stupidness would be to take their mouse and keyboard away – to visually shame them – to make them an example – to show everyone else around them, they are so stupid, they can’t be trusted with keyboards or mice.

 

Just another day as a frustrated non-profit accidential-but almost trained techie.

July Music Poll

I can't believe how much of a success Everyone Walk the Dinosaur has been, that once more, I am asking my friends to help me select the hold music. I did get a request for disco, but alas, I don't have any disco music on my iTunes. It breaks my heart not to offer that up as an option. Maybe I'll have some on my iTunes before August.

But again, I must give the reasons behind some of these song choices......

Hey You by Madonna - Yes, the one that was available for free by MSN. It is actually a good song. It is about time that Madonna gave us some free music!

Red, Red Wine by UB40 - Can I just use the reasoning that it is a fun song?

Tell Me 'Bout It by Joss Stone - It is from her new cd and I like it. I am kind of torn on most of the cd, but this song I can listen to quite frequently.

Let Them Talk by Harry Connick, Jr. - I think I always have to have a choice that somehow screams back to New Orleans. This one is from Harry's NOLA cd. Plus, it has the reference to "talk" in it. It is a bit slower, but with Harry, his voice keeps you happy.

I Would Walk 500 Miles by The Proclaimers - You all are probably thinking, "huh?". Well, I really like this song and I have a plan for this song. When I get married, (don't roll your eyes all at once), this is going to be the Father/Daughter dance. It was my dad's favorite song and I can't think of a better song to make him "there". It's such a great song and it never makes me sad.

Kinda Cool, Ain't It by the Povertyneck Hillbillies - Pittsburgh boys - nuff said! At least I didn't pick Mr. Right Now from them.

So those are the choices. Vote away. Vote often. Throw the vote! Help me pick the next hold music!

And the winner is....

Was (Not Was) with Everyone Walk the Dinosaur! It has made it’s debut on my phone system at work and has been a hit so far. I actually have staff calling each other and placing the other on hold to hear the hold music. It has only been on a couple hours and I’ve had three comments from callers (all positive, I must add!)

 

So, I will work on another list of possible songs for June/July and put the voting back up for my friends – because my friends have the best taste in music. And the voting is not limited to one vote. You can entirely throw the decision in your hands if you vote enough! It’s going to be fun. I will only put up songs that I current have access too – I won’t download anything just for this bit of fun (of course nothing stops friends from making sure I have more music to pick from). Now, if I could just get Will Smith’s Summertime, there may be a contest next month.

Stay tuned!