You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!

Joke Number One
All of you people who have little children: forget about encouraging them to take up medicine or the law. Or missionary work or politics. What we need in this country (or at least what we need in this household) is a crackerjack IT person. Why? Because I will pay them eight million dollars for one house call if they can fix all my computer related problems. And I'll see to it personally that they are awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for Remarkable Achivement in Restoring A Crazy's Lady's Sanity.

Since I work from home, I purchased an ftp site (I think it stands for File Transfer Protocol - that's probably my first mistake - perhaps I should have learned a little about any extremely complicated and convoluted product on which I spent a not-so-little bundle of cash). It allows my clients to upload images to my computer so I can retouch, use for an album or whatever.

About six weeks ago, for no apparent reason, it quit working. Usually I can reset a couple of things and it's fine. Resetting a couple of things is pretty much the limit of my capabilities. When it gets beyond that, I give my friends at Globalscape (the company who sold me my ftp) a call and they magically get on my computer to fix whatever is broken. FIRST MISTAKE: Don't wait six weeks, because now I can't pinpoint what MIGHT have changed to discombobulate it. We narrowed it down to an update from our cable provider (Time Warner), renewing our Norton anti-virus protection, a security change we made to our Linksys wireless system, or that screwy face I made when I listened to a cd left in the car by Tyler. If it ends up being that screwy face I might as well just call it quits, because that face makes a daily appearance, for any number of reasons that I won't go into here.

Once it gets beyond the scope of my service techs at the Globalscape, I call for reinforcements, i.e. Ron Martin. He's the one who gets to talk to "Dan", who's no doubt sitting with his feet on the desk amidst a sea of cubicles located somehere in another hemisphere. Ron Martin is the one who's spent probably twelve hours this week (after he gets home from work) trying to get it figured out. I think he invented this "business trip" he's on right now just to avoid having to think like an IT guy for one second longer. THIS is just ONE of the reasons I love him. He takes on all the dirty jobs that tend to make my brain implode, at which point he'd have an even bigger mess on his hands.

So here's the joke. After spending all of these hours on the phone talking to four different companies, NO ONE is able to identify/solve the problem. They're too busy pointing fingers at the other guys to stop for a second to think "What if it IS something I'M responsible for?" I will say that my Globalscape guys are fantastic and if it was their problem they'd admit it. Time Warner was the worst. I was lying on Tyler's bed listening to the conversation Ron was having and I could actually hear the guy yelling at Ron. "Sir, that is NOT our problem. Call back never."

I'm thinking about starting a movement to return to the basics - like Sanskrit and papyrus.

Joke Number Two
Last night, after yelling at the cable people, we decided that perhaps sustenance might strengthen our brains (turns out that wasn't the case) so we headed out to get some take-home Chinese. And we got a near-death experience thrown in at no extra cost. BONUS! We were headed east on Johnson Drive, in the left-hand lane. Traffic was kind of backed up in the right-hand lane but we were cruising right along when all of the sudden we were up close and personal with a HUGE conversion van, which was making a left-hand turn out of a parking lot at SMNorth. Apparently the car in the right-hand lane had stopped to let this conversion van out, but the car being courteous was an SUV (curse word) so we didn't see this Green Monster barreling out of the parking lot. Ron slammed on the brakes (which worked really well) and I was thrown hard against my seat belt. The seat belt also worked really well, although I think my brain rattled around in my skull a little. It's a miracle we weren't rear-ended.

We drove another couple hundred feet and I was like "What is with this traffic?" It was 7:00 and Johnson Drive was bumper to bumper. Then a light went off. "Ron, what's the date?" Well, of course! Tax-Day and all of these dingdongs were going to the post office to mail their returns. It was really unbelievable. At the stoplight, we looked up the street towards the post office and I can't begin to explain it. Ok, I'll try. There's a four-way stop right before you get to the post office and all you could see was cars. Coming from every direction. Solid. It was kind of like a sci-fi movie. And people were driving like they were zombies - MUST. GET. TO. POST. OFFICE. POSTHASTE. DON'T. CARE. IF. I'M. IN. MIDDLE. OF. INTERSECTION. BLOCKING. TRAFFIC.

Go back to your night of the living dead.