 | | Dec. 17th, 2008 @ 06:59 pm In an attempt to stay positive: Three Amusing Things That Happened To Me Today |
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1)
Today for lunch I went over to the food court at the Westchester Mall, which happens to be literally around the corner from the office building I'm working in (the NY one, anyway). While eating I was doing a bit of people watching and taking in the holiday decorations. One of the food places was called "Baby Yogurt!", which in itself sounds like a euphemism for vomit, or worse. Baby Yogurt had a big colorful Christmas sign hanging below its main neon sign, and it was hanging directly in front of the words "IT'S FROZEN YOGURT". From where I was sitting, it looked like the signs read "Baby Yogurt! It's F N YOGURT!" I found that amusing- "It's effin' yogurt!" would be a great marketing catch-phrase.
2)
After lunch I decided to head down to the Apple store. The first thing I noticed (aside from the bright white.. everything) was the solid mass of people writhing around in the store. There were two models/bouncers at the front door (seriously, one girl and one guy standing around in Apple uniforms looking like they should be standing in front of an Abercrombie or NYC lounge). I forged ahead, entering the store not to browse for hardware but to inquire about study materials for the ACSP exam (see previous post).
I saw in the very back of the store two bookshelves, one with boxes of software and one with books. As I was looking through the books, a very "Hi, I'm a Mac" looking dude came up and asked if I needed any help. I told him, "Sure, I'm trying to find a study guide for the ACSP." He looked at me like I was speaking Swahili, and responded, "We have software for the SAT and PSAT." After recovering from the "ow, that hurt my brain" moment, I said, "No, I'm looking for a physical book that I can use to study for the Apple Certified Support Professional exam." His reaction- "Oh, I don't think anyone out on the floor here has that. We don't usually recommend that to our customers. Maybe one of the service techs in the back can help you?" At that point it occurred to me that this was sort of like walking into a Best Buy and asking around at the Geek Squad counter for a book on the A+ exam. I thanked him for his time and squeezed my way out of the store, trying not to smirk too obviously.
3)
Work itself was pretty uneventful today, mostly because there really weren't any events that happened. I got in on time despite nasty ice/snow weather, blanked out the last few hard drives that are getting recycled, and headed upstairs to check my email and such while they were running. At that point I found out that the internet connection for the entire office building was down. So I went to the guy I'm working for and asked if there was anything else I could do since I had finished my previous task. Apparently there wasn't. His response- "I'll be working on this internet problem for a while, why don't you go check your email... or.. something, and I'll come find you when there's something to do."
Since the internet was dead and I had nothing better to be doing, I fired up the music player on my phone and basically poked at everything that wasn't locked down on my Mac Mini. OS X is actually pretty cool- it's roughly Unix based, so it has some similarities to the Linux distro's I've be playing with, and I find that all to be interesting stuff. Unfortunately, with no internet and a very limited set of applications, once I had been through all of the programs available to me and tweaked all of the settings, I was bored again with hours to kill still. So I started a game of Chess. About three games in, the guy who sits in the cube next to me (technically, I sit at a desk that is up against the outside wall of his cube.. I'm open to the hallway) pops his head over the barrier and whispers "You might not want to do that." "Do what?" "Play games on there. It's kind of against company policy."
At that exact moment the boss of my boss's boss (Manager < Senior Manager < Old Guy Everyone Seems to be Afraid Of) happened to be walking by and overheard what he was saying. "Playing games, are we son?" "Yes sir, I'm between tasks so I was playing a game of chess." At that point his expression changed. "Chess isn't a game, it's a strategy simulation. Go see if (my boss) has anything for you to do yet, if not you have my permission to continue using this program. I'd much rather see my employees do that on their free time than mess around with the mindless nonsense on that My Face Whatever Site." I'm not sure if he knew that the internet was down, which is why I wasn't on Facebook at that moment, but I thanked him and did a lap around the cubicle farm before finishing my game.
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The next several days should be interesting. It sounds like tomorrow will be more packaging stuff, Friday is the move itself, Saturday and Sunday will be unpacking, setting up, and testing, and Monday/Tuesday will be "live support" for lack of a better term. From Wednesday until January 5th the entire company has a break, which explains why I was told I wouldn't be needed during that time. I don't have any plans for the holidays or New Years, so if nothing else that'll be a week or so to study for the A+. I'd really like to have the A+ and ACSP done before the Net+ comes out, but I guess we'll see how it goes. |
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