(we're all about bandwagons…)
Dave’s gotten me into watching the Ted talks. There’s something like 380 of them online so far. They vary wildly in quality, but the good ones are very good.
If you’ve got a free hour of time, here’s 3 that made me think. They are startlingly related, considering that it’s unlikely these three people set out to give related talks.
Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice.
Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce.
Dan Gilbert on happiness.
On Thursday Michele yelled up the stairs to me. We have an intercom system on the phones, but she can never remember how to use it. So she walks from one end of the downstairs to the other to yell up the stairs to me whenever she needs something. My desk is at the top of the stairs, and I can hear her fine from there.
“Joanna?”
“Yo.”
“Have you been having trouble with your applications this morning?”
“My applications?”
“I’ve been having horrible problems with Firefox and InfoSelect. Do you think it’s the wind?”
“Uh, why would the wind…nevermind.* Have you restarted your computer?”
“No, I probably should have done that first.”
“If you’re still having problems after you restart, I’ll be happy to try to fix them.”
I didn’t hear of any further problems after that until the next morning.
“Joanna?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m having horrible problems with Firefox.”
“Firefox just installed a new update, so you should be better soon.”
“Okay.”
I sat down at my computer for the first time. On Fridays I clean the house, so I hadn’t been doing my usual scouring of the Internet. Sure enough, the load times on major sites I visit every day were unreasonably sluggish. I checked my bandwidth, which was much slower than usual.
So I called Qwest. I hate talking to tech support people. He had me turn the modem off and back on again, which worked remarkable well, once I plugged the Ethernet cable back in after it had become unhooked from the modem to the router when he had me turn the modem around to find out what model it was. I really should replace that cable.
“What was wrong?” asked Michele.
“We had to turn the modem off and back on again.
“Everyone had to get out of the car and get back in?”
“Exactly.”
She was referring to this joke. There are three engineers in a car; an electrical engineer, a chemical engineer and a Microsoft engineer.
Suddenly the car just stops by the side of the road, and the three engineers look at each other wondering what could be wrong. The electrical engineer suggests stripping down the electronics of the car and trying to trace where a fault might have occurred. The chemical engineer, not knowing much about cars, suggests that maybe the fuel is becoming emulsified and getting blocked somewhere.
Then, the Microsoft engineer, not knowing much about anything, comes up with a suggestion “Why don’t close all the windows, get out, get back in, then open the windows again, and maybe it’ll work!?”
Here’s a conversation I had with Duncan recently:
“Joanna, Outlook isn’t working right.”
“Did you restart the computer?”
“Yes! Three times!”
I wasn’t sure I should be happy he’d restarted it before coming to me or to tell him the definition of insanity. Instead I just sighed and fiddled with stuff until it started working again.
Yes, I am the IT department.
*The house is in the middle of nowhere, and up until recently the only broadband we could get was either satellite or line of sight. Our line of sight antenna would jiggle whenever it was windy, making our Internet connection go in and out. In March the Chinook winds come. This whole last week the wind was blowing at about 40 miles per hour constantly.
But we’ve had DSL for 2 years now.
I just got my simulator schedule. I’ve posted it to my Google Calendar. I’m going to be in Vancouver from March 15 – March 30. Sims will be late at night, so I’ll be doing a lot of sleeping during the day.
My written test is tomorrow. Then boring nonsense until Friday. I get to go home, then come back for a few days next week for CSI and oral.
The two new cats showed up after being trapped by some of the volunteers and brought to the ranch. Michele kept them in the horse trailer, because cats often try to head home, no matter how far away they are, when they’ve been moved. She was out of town for a few days, so she told me to be sure to feed and water them. She put Sunflower Velcro in there too so an owl wouldn’t eat her.
Every morning I’d add some water to their bowls of frozen water and put some food in their other dish. I’d check on them at noon and then when I did the evening feeding. Velcro would be right at the crack of the door ready to see me. The other two cats were in the two furthest corners of the trailer as far as they could possibly be from one another. One of them was an orange and white cat that Michele called “The Flat Cat.” The other one was some sort of Siamese. They would stare at me, motionless in their respective curled up balls. I would make sure they were alive. The missing food and accumulated poop proved that they were, even though they never seemed to move otherwise. Satisfied, I’d scoop Velcro back into her prison/safe and wedge the door shut.
When Michele came back, she decided they could be released. The two new cats disappeared under the tack shed. We’d see glimpses of them from time to time and give each other reports on their sightings. They were obviously terrified of people. We weren’t sure they knew that the food was in the barn. Of course, Bear was in there too, and may not be keen on sharing. Soon we’d stopped spotting the flat cat, though not before Velcro started looking suspiciously pregnant.
Michele managed to catch the Siamese a couple of times and take it into the barn to show it where the food was. She left on another business trip, so I was in charge of feeding again. That Friday I opened the barn door to find Bear, Velcro, and the Siamese all inside. The Siamese was at the far side of the barn and had that deer-in-the-headlights look of whether she should flee or stay stock still. I spoke gently to her and turned my attention to filling the food dish on top of the rabbit hutch. Bear immediately came over and started eating. I leaned over to pet him, which he loves, enough to let me do it as much as I want while he eats. He even paused to rub his head into my hand before going back to munching as I baby talked to him. Velcro was trying to figure out how to get a mouthful without ticking off Bear.
I turned over to the Siamese as I stroked Bear’s black coat. “Would you like some loving too?”
“Mrorrr?”
“You can have some too. Doesn’t this look nice?” I gave Bear a satisfying caress.
“Roorrr?”
She took a tentative step toward me as I continued to stroke Bear. “You can come over here if you want.”
“Rerrr…”
I reached out my arm and met her halfway as she approached. I put out my hand and gently reached under her chin. She nearly went into a paroxysm of pleasure, as she tried to help me stroke her cheeks, talking loudly the whole time. I stayed at arm’s length, not wanting to freak her out.
On Monday the Siamese was again over by the tack shed. She looked like she might bolt as I approached, but I told her I bore dog food, and sprinkled some on the bench where she’d been sunning herself. She approached cautiously to eat and let me carefully touch her again.
On Tuesday I opened the barn door, and the Siamese came running up to me! I stroked her and put some food in the dish. Bear approached to eat his breakfast, but the Siamese slapped him in the face. He hissed and jumped backwards about a foot simultaneously, then stood there asking, “What just happened?” The Siamese turned her back on him and started chowing down.
On Wednesday Michele had returned. I asked if she noticed anything different about the Siamese. “Thinner?”
“Anything else?”
“Friendlier?”
The Siamese went to live with Lara this weekend, whose 22 year old cat just died.
But now she likes people.