Feeling Good

Today Yuko put this little note on my shelf in the fridge, along with some Emergen-C to help with my cold. Thankfully, I'm on the mend. A lot of it is because of Yuko's generous donations of Emergen-C and Throat Coat/Ginseng Teas. I love my co-workers!

It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Look guys, I don't want to say I warned ya, but I'm warning you . . .

The apocalypse is coming.
So, be ready, k.

You see, the other day, our work email was flooded with about 15 emails (between Inbox & Junk Mail folders) containing coding and I'm pretty sure it was a subliminal message. This was the email I sent to our IT guy:

Good morning ———,

In an attempts to keep you extremely baffled yet completely busy and entertained, I thought I would forward this to you. We have about 7 emails like this in the publications inbox and they all contain jumbled codes seen below. It wouldn't normally bother me, except for the fact that I have NO clue what they are from or what is going on. The only other time I've seen an email like this was during a movie about the apocalypse. I don't think this is fortelling the end of the world, but I thought I'd let you know that we got these. Also, consider this your "I told you so," if in fact, the world ends today.

Thanks!

Amanda

Today he came up and checked and said that he was confused by some of the hosted coding. He wondered why anyone would send an email that was completely random like that with no understandable purpose. I told him they were probably geniuses, and that I can attest to the level of genius involved, since I've successfully sent a quarter of a billion random emails to unsuspecting recipients posing as a prince from South Africa in need of money. He didn't seem to believe my credibility, but decided he would confer with the email server technicians. But for the record, I'm pretty sure they're going to plead innocent—no one REALLY wants to admit they played a role in the apocalypse.

Also today, the IT guy and I were having a conversation with other co-workers who were experiencing some strange things going on at their house. They had an influx of fleas, bugs that sounded like locusts, and currently rats. The IT guy and I decided that those incidences seemed too suspicious to be happenstance and noted the biblical allusions—you know, those miserable plagues. So, we came to the conclusion that we would keep an eye out for swirling gray clouds (which isn't so far off here in SeaTown) and do all we can to prepare for the apocalypse.

That said, I'd advise you alert your neighbors if your water turns to blood or you notice an influx of cows on their side (not from cow-tipping).

Look guys, I know it's a doomsday topic, but really—you gotta be prepared! This is so much bigger than Y2K and the Grammys. It's the apocalypse for crying out loud! I fully intend to utilize the money I have saved in my Swiss Bank Account from my Prince From South Africa scam to buy out all the Twizzlers and Dr. Pepper that will aide me until the end of the world. I advise you to do the same.

Don't believe me?

Ask these guys—They know what's up!

Steady As She Goes

Some things you should know:

1. I LOVE my job—the workplace, the co-workers, the atmosphere—i just LOVE it all! I seriously wish people could spend a day with me and get to experience all the greatness of my workplace!

2. My office building is an old church renovated into offices.

3. My personal office has 2 huge round portal windows with beautiful views.

4. One of those windows is removable plexi-glass so that I can get a fresh breeze when it warms up in the summertime.

5. There are no elevators in my office building.

6. I work on the 3rd floor

7. There are still more offices higher up than mine.

8. When you gotta get things from one place to another, you get inventive.

9. When you sit and work at a desk all day, it's nice to get interrupted with these inventive ways

10. When these inventive things happen, I will most likely take pictures of it!

One day last week, we had to get a whiteboard into my boss's office, but there was no way to get it through the stairwell up to his office. So, my co-workers got inventive . . .

They tied rope around the whiteboard so that we could
hoist it up from my window directly into my boss's office

It wasn't holding right the first time, so they kept trying different knots

Finally found one and made sure it could handle being hoisted

We lifted it up out of my office and began to hoist it up!
(i promise i helped!)

Then they hoisted it up

Up . . .

Up . . .

And away!!!

It's a good thing my boss's office is directly above mine ;)

What It's Like

Most people don't like meetings. I, on the other hand, look forward to meetings. It's so easy for me to get tunnel-vision and so focused on my work that I forget other people are around me. Meetings give me a chance to see other people and have social interaction . . . that's not on a computer. It's great!

I love gathering with others and sharing thoughts, ideas, setting goals, etc. It's very therapeutic. Every Tuesday, at my work, we have a publications meeting. We talk about what each of us are doing, and we do some brainstorming for the next issue of our main journal, and we share artwork. We also have SO much fun laughing at some really ridiculous things.

For instance, I'm the youngest person on the publications team. My other co-workers are a lot older, and don't always understand all the inner-workings of technology and computers. Well, they do, but have a hard time conveying it in a way that our Tech guy, Hugh, can understand. At our last meeting, we talked about computer issues. Here's how it went:

Co-Worker: When I put in or try to link text in my InDesign it does a weird wrap thing where it won't look right on the screen and it throws everything off.

Hugh: Like when you put it into a new document? Or when you open a certain document?

Co-Worker: No. It happens on a lot of documents in this specific journal. I try clicking on things and nothing works.

Hugh: Wait. So what tools are you using when you place the text?

Co-Worker: I don't know, just the normal stuff.

(Then Hugh looks at me, confused)

Me: When she opens the document, there's a formatting error that's causing the text that she's placing to force a text wrap effect on it and it shifts the layout so she can't work on it. We've tried to adjust the settings but they all seem normal and I don't know if it's isolated just to that document or not, because none of the settings I adjust are making the problem go away.

Hugh: Oh. Okay.

Co-Worker: Yeah, what she said. Amanda's my translator.

We then all BURST OUT laughing!! It's not that I'm a translator, things just get lost in communication. Then we went around and my co-worker in charge of the meeting asks us to go around the circle and share some great reports on what we're doing.

Co-worker: Alright, K—, you want to share a great report on what you're working on?

K—: (facetiously) No. What if I want to share a terrible report?!?

Co-worker: Oh, okay. Sure, tell us a terrible report. How are things?

K—: Oh you know, pretty sh***y.

At this point, we are all laughing so hard! Like I was seriously bent over laughing!! It was so funny!

Today at our morning meeting, Hugh said that yesterday he was kind of dreading going to another meeting, but our meeting actually made his day better and he had so much fun. He said, "I should know better by now how much fun I'm going to have in these meetings."

I agree! :D