Lookin for sum1 too

The thing I am looking for in a person is: A really good sense of humour, must like movies, and my dog. I just want someone too be there, through good and bad times. Looking for some too love, and care for. It seems, like not alot, but is so hard too really meet someone, know a days.

It does seem like a lot for people to like movies and puppies. Like nearly impossible.

Just once I'd like to read a profile that does not say I like movies, do you like movies?

Just once I would also like to see: A Lot. Not an alot.
To: also, in addition, as well.
Too: very. excessive. more than.
Know: understand. be aware. have information.
Now: present. this moment. today, in fact.
nowadays: At the present time, in contrast with the past.

Word, Guy. Looking for sum 1 too.

Strudel

Awkward conversations during a Christmas dinner with colleagues you barely know, or worse their significant others you may have never met, are often rescued by topics such as the weather, local sports and of course movies. Imagine that I am the least likely to know actors names... but I proudly mention that I guessed this one correctly on my first try.

During dinner the girl sitting across from me mentioned she recently watched a movie with that Strudel actress in it which was quite good. "Strudel actress??" we all wondered.

"You know Marilyn Strudel or whatever!"

Meryl Streep.

How to lose at dating girls

First date, wear a suit and a shirt with monogrammed cuffs but don't pay for a girl's coffee. Ask her to go shopping with you for date #2 because all girls must love to shop. And to dress men up? Um, that'd be a big N.O., not this girl anyway.

Second date, graciously allow her to plan the evening, but then email her instructions to show up at 4pm on Sunday for dinner (dinner that early??) at a restaurant of your choosing because you already made the reservation. Commence licking your knife, sword-swallowing style, for the entire dinner. Do not offer to pay for her $4.95 salad at the family-style dining establishment. Proceed to pull out your calculator and "do the math" because you don't want to over tip the wait-staff.

Third date. I can hear you saying "Why are you going out with him again??" The problem is that there is a balance sheet on men... the pro column has things like "Has job +10," and "Owns property +10" and the con column only had things like "Inflexible about time of Sunday dinner -2," "Stingy tipper -2," "Licks knife while eating -4."

Licks knife while eating: go ahead and let that sink in.

So third date. The plan was to go to a Japanese restaurant. I said yes because there's not much weird you can do with chopsticks except possibly put out an eye. As long as it isn't my eyes, I'm ok with that. Then, I was emailed that the plans had changed to a restaurant 30 km from my house at an impossible time, and there was no negotiating on the reservation or location. "Inflexible to alternative plans - 2" and "Not understanding of choosing a restaurant geographically located within his or my vicinity - 2."

"More knife-licking at dinner -2"

As the waitress placed the bill on our table she asked him "will you need the debit or credit card machine?" to which he replied and looked at me "I don't, but perhaps you do?"

Quickly I added:
"Cheapskate - 2"
"No good at small talk or social interactions or any kind of conversation - 2"
"Wears hiking boots for a casual date - 2"

A cookie cutter engineer, thinking he's completely different, just like all the other engineers.

Stranger than fiction

Subject: wanna marry me 

Message: ok, let me tell u a little about myself, i'm a well established guy. i'm a student. as a matter of fact, i use prosthetic arms. let me know if u wanna chat.

Dear Well Established Student, no thanks, but I have this itch you could scratch....

What do you do? Trick question.

It's always super awkward going on first dates and having to repeat yourself over and over again. Every once in a while someone makes it interesting though...

Me: I'm a web designer
Him: So what does that mean?
Me: I take care of the development and posting of the websites.
Him: How much work could that be?
Me: We have actually quite a few websites that I take care of, some online systems, a few databases, a wireless portal, a search site, the intranet and then, of course, the public website. You might be surprised how busy I am each day, almost everything has a web frontend now adays.
Him: Ha! You said intRA-net.  You mean internet.
Me: No... intranet is internal, internet is external website.
Him: What.

Invention idea.

I would like to invent a battery for smoke detectors that won't run out of juice in the middle of the night.

Something's not right...

The biking guy has a personal massager for his stiff muscles. In his legs. From the biking you see.

I can hear vibrating coming from the cubicle across from mine... and I can see the chair but not the guy's head. He's either slumped over or slid way down in his chair.

I hope, my dear reader, you are as uncomfortable at this point as I am.

Schwetty...

A douchebag I sit across from bikes to work and I'm guessing his trip is about 15 km in the mornings, it takes him about an hour. Often by the time he comes into work he'll have muscle cramps and hurting bits so on occasion he has asked me for Advil or Ibuprofin, because all girls are a source of band-aids and personal-care supplies. Yesterday he comes in and I didn't take notice of him due to headphones. Not much of a morning person anyway, but I'm listening to music to drown out the chitchat and arguing this group really seems to enjoy. Douchebag comes up behind me and pokes me in the shoulder; I turn around and he's not just still gasping for breath, but he's also dripping with sweat. Gigantic beads of sweat dripping onto his shoulders and onto the floor of my cubicle. He's holding a sandwich baggie full of Advil and says: "Hey why don't you help yourself to some of these since I'm always asking you for some of yours!"

Looks legit, I'd say! Being offered a sandwich baggie of Advil by a guy drowning in his own sweat... I wave him off and tell him it's no problem and I'm good for Advil. I do not throw up into his baggie of sweaty Advil, so way to go me!

After which he goes to the kitchenette beside his cubicle (directly kitty-corner from where I sit) and proceeds to have a wipe-down/sponge-bath. In the kitchen we all use. I do not throw up or say anything mean. So way to go me!

Then the guy who sits across from the kitchen and directly beside me comes in from his own bike ride to work and proceeds to inform me that he is going to be changing in his cube and would appreciate if I don't look over for a bit. No worries Douchebag #2, I'm so not interested. Then he hangs all his clothes to dry out over our shared cubicle wall, including some part of his gear that looks like a man-bra. Again, I do not throw up or say anything mean like "all your wobbly bits fit into that tiny bit of lycra?" so way to go me!

Yes, we have a bathroom, that is barely 10 steps down the hallway.
No, I don't know why they don't use it.

How to tell I work with nerds

...besides, you know, the pocket protectors and lack of any personality:

"We should be able to calculate the velocity of the wind by the angle of the rain."

This may be my superpower

Mid-afternoon power outage throws the office into a disarray. I get up to go for a walk and there's people stuck in the elevators banging on the doors and people come out of the bathrooms all disoriented.

I say to the help desk: "Why is the internet not working!!"
Glares all around...
"Guys! 'Lighten' up, it's a joke!"

See what I did there?? When the power goes out I'm still really funny!

Pro Tip!

It's easier to not work when your account is locked out.
It's even easier when IT "accidentally" deletes 250 accounts.

Collaboration

Working on a document with a special user and I send him instructions with pictures and arrows, and speech bubbles that say things like "Click here!" "Press next!"

I get back only one complaint:

At the bottom of page 6 is 'view this list' and 'amd' (hopefully you see what I am talking about.) what is amd?

I respond:

Haha, AMD: Administrative Maintenance of Doughnuts... (take a break here)
Just kidding! I have no idea... just a blip I guess. Must have been typing too fast to make any sense.

The sounds of pain and suffering

A colleague has been getting phone calls during the work day from their kid who seems to have a defective phone. So it goes like this all day yesterday and today:

ringtone: "Happy Birthday Happy Birthday!"
"Hello?"
"Heeeeello?"
"Hellooooooo?"
"Hello? Whatever my kid's name is? Hello?"
"Hello!"
"Hello? Hello?"
"Hello."
"Hello!"
"Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?"
"Helloooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
"I can't hear you."
"Hello?"
"Hello!"
"Hello!"
"Hello?"
And repeat.
Starting with "Happy Birthday".

Freudian Slip of the Fingers...

Following a series of rather unfortunate events through which both of my index fingers have been injured and rendered useless, I am stuck at the office typing with my two middle fingers. How fitting... *Eff you, work!*

Just picture it. You'll laugh too.

Disruptive

Someone is disturbing my train of thought on a beautiful Saturday afternoon by blasting Cher... there's only one solution! Blast some country to combat the caterwauling...

Yes, that's right, I like both kinds of music: country AND western!

The preponderance of good over evil-wordy-documents.

Burried in a wordy 60 page document I find this gem: "there are a preponderance of data management storage solutions"

To-do list:
look up "preponderance" so I can fake knowing what it means in the next meeting.

Stupendous compendiums

PS: Today my boss used the word compendium in a document. There was a compendium of presentations in a certain folder.
PL: Never use a shorter word when a longer one will make you look more like a wiener.

Ninja Stealth Fail.

Guy walking down the street with a full motorcycle helmet, no bike anywhere in sight.

Helmet says "Ninja" so maybe that's ok...

Speaker phone

Kind of annoying when you're in a cube-farm and some yahoo insists on using speaker phone rather than getting a headset. Kind of funny though when it's a recorded message that is broadcast into the shared space: "...because you are a preferred customer press 1 now to claim your special gift! To claim your free travel voucher please press 1 now! You've won a surprise gift, press 1 now to claim your prize!..."

I piped up "Just press 1 already!"
Someone else added "I think they want you to press 1..."
"Press 5 and really mess them up!" added another guy.

Listen you...

File name: name_BetaVersion_Draft8_FINAL.pdf
As my head explodes someone, somewhere is snickering.

The falconer

AP: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13407712

PL: CRAZY.
AP: I bet he’s a falconer.
PL: Probably, he's got the pants to do it.
AP: I wish I was a falconer.
PL: Step 1. Get a falcon
      Step 2. ?????
      Step 3. Get chicks & profit!
AP: I’ll work on number 1 first. I think there was a falcon flying around here recently..or maybe it was a pigeon – I’m no scientician.

Perfect Word

Yesterday I took a call from some lady who wanted to make a hyperlink in Word Perfect. I was like "offhand in Word it's Ctrl+K but in Word Perfect I'll have to check the help. I'll press F1 and type in "hyperlink" and oh, here you go..."

Because, if it happens on or around the internet, it's my problem.

Happy Birthday!

A colleague's cell ring tone is Happy Birthday.

... being right 1 out of 365 days a year is not bad odds!

There's a service that runs to automate sending emails to the public. The fact that it's called pubemailbot makes me laugh.

Get it?
pub-email-bot vs. pube-mail-bot

Ugh, there are probably worse thing a robot could send you. But I can't think of any.

Some days I have the humour of an 11 year old boy.

Searching for sarcasm

The entire internal website is unsearchable today, an issue I raise with the IT department. They thoughtfully ponder "I wonder how many employees will be using search today?" and conclude: "Probably just the librarians..."

Although it was delivered deadpan, I am fairly certain there is sarcasm in there somewhere as only 10 of over a thousand employees are librarians, but those 10 are very vocal when the search does not work as expected.

And maybe a tiny bit of sarcasm because my background is library...

Sharepoint Portals

Sitting in a video-conference, hoping the poor picture quality will mask the fact that every time the concerned lady on the other end says something about her "Internet Porthole", I start shaking with laughter.

TT: I'm currently filling out Form XYZ and I can't change anything outside the grey boxes.

PL: I'm sorry to hear you are having trouble. That particular form is not protected in anyway, so you should be able to fill in the form even beyond the grey boxes.

TT: It is in the grey explanation areas below the lines with boxes that I cannot make changes.

PL: The form isn't protected at all. I can type all over it, in the grey boxes and beyond. Perhaps you could cut and paste your answers into a clean copy of the form?

TT: I'm using Adobe Reader 9 and Windows XP.  Could either of those present a problem?

PL: The form is in Word format, so you wouldn't be able to open it with Adobe Reader at all. I would really recommend you start with a fresh copy of the form. Good luck!

I thought you'd like to see what is going on in my cubicle today

Someone has their gym clothes hanging over into my cube today.  >:(

How the body works.

I was given a lecture this weekend on how come cooking with oil is better for your body than butter:

Butter, you see, is a solid. For example when used in cooking, it will melt and then fiendishly it will return to a solid and plug your arteries. Yes, despite your warmish-temperature of 37.0 °C (98.6 °F). 

Given my love of cheese, I'm incredibly worried. No wait, that's not science: that's ridiculous!

An IT joke

Q: How many IT people does it take to troubleshoot a coffee machine?

A: Six. But only if one of them has a paper clip, IT's secret weapon!

Robots

PL: This web content management system. It's not as good as these people think it is.  I think they've been working with it so long.  Maybe it's better than the alternatives but... it still sucks.
PS: that's frustrating
PL: we've got all these non-web people "helping" so they put the icons under their own folder, instead of within the images folder.
SIGH.
sure it works, but it's wrong.
PS: ahaha
PL: why? Robots, that's why.
and you can't explain robots to everyone.
most people would glaze over.
PS: haha yes
PL: dang robots.

most of the phone numbers on your site are "NOT IN SERVICE" anymore!!!!!!!!! This is very disappointing!!!!!!!!!!

Sir: Thank you for sending me my monthly quota of exclamation points. Try the fax numbers: those never go out of style.

Please do so.

I notice that the 2010 Calendar has not been removed and replaced by the 2011 Calendar.  Please do so.
Thank you.

No no, thank you for asking so nicely. 

Screenshot

Tabs open in this error screen shot sent by a user:

1. Facebook
2. Hotmail
3. Forget "Mr. Good Enough"
4. something about a 12 Step program
5. *work related*
6. Better Single Than Sorry

1 work related tab out of 6 ain't bad!

How to confuse the new girl

A long string of increasingly frustrated emails winds up in my inbox with a "why can't anyone help me with this!!"

Looking over the email trail everyone has volleyed the problem into someone else's court and finally, probably because I'm new and might try harder, it winds up with me. It's a form problem. The location: somewhere on the websites. I search internally. Externally. Shared Drives. Can't find it.

I call, and turns out she is complaining on someone's behalf. She can't find the form either and the person complaining went home early. Really? Is this the best use of all of our time, tracking down someone to manage non-existent forms?

Frankenstein, Vampire, Clown.

Yup. Expanded the list of wacky dates to add: clown.

To be fair, he did fix a flat tire for me, and he only clowns part-time.

Still.