A Week of Mondays

Ugh... I'm on call this weekend again. Gotta get my hours in now so I can take time off for the honeymoon. ¡Arriba!
Before I leave for work, something possessed me to take a picture of my cube and post it on the LJ... choke on it.

A Monumental Dream

Last night (or, more appropriately, early this morning) I had a dream that I visited the revamped "Yes, it takes you to the Washington Monument home page, moron.">Washington Monument (they just finished remodelling it not too long ago, but I haven't visited it, yet... the lines were always packed), but they had removed some of the corners of it so you could see inside. And there was this line of tourists going up the stairs inside the monument. The line was really long. I didn't feel like waiting in that long line to go to the top, so, somehow, I sneaked up a sort of secret elevator to the top (I know they have a few public elevators, but they weren't there in my dream, ok?). After I went to the top, I met a monument worker. He wanted me to get to the front of the line, so he opened a door and pushed me into the room. When I looked around, I saw the front of the humongous line. I was actually in front of everyone.

What was the line for? It was one of those electric-tour Hershey's-Chocolate-World-type of rides coming out of the top of the monument. I guess it took you above DC or something (which isn't too bad of an idea). The guy who was next in line was all mad because I stepped out in front of him. So, instead of riding, I ran back out of the side entrance and went into the innerworks of the monument. There was a bunch of tour-car seats and headrests lying around. What was really amazing was that there was a loading dock at the top of the monument. When I asked the guy why there was a loading dock so high up, he acted like it made the most sense in the world.

The Joy of Management

I was recently asked to write some documentation for my work to educate all of our users about the new faxing program we're using after we upgrade to XP.

I had never used the old program that we were upgrading from, so I had to learn it all from scratch. Faxing, in and of itself, is pretty boring. But, the guy who asked me to do the document told me to come up with a creative title for it... I guess that was a mistake on his part, given that "fax" begins with an 'f' and has a nice hard consonant in it. After I put the finishing touches the documentation, I decided to work on the title, because the working title of Just the Fax, Maam was way too generic. I mulled some ideas in my head... Fax on the Beach, How to Fax without Really Trying, etc...

I finally ended up going with The Joy of Fax. It was short and comical, yet deliciously innuendous (look Ma! I made up an adjective!) enough that I didn't think I would be flogged over it. Well, when I presented my masterpiece to the guy who requested it, he and the other guy on the project thought the name was funny, but I'm not sure if they knew why they thought it was funny. I was happy that it was accepted, so I distributed it out to the XP team for any suggestions.

It just so happens that my supervisor was on the distribution list for that team, and he sent an reply, CC'ing the rest of the distribution list, that the name, though catchy, needed to be changed. He was afraid that the document might end up in court sooner or later, and the opposing attourney would "have a field day" with it, by saying that we don't take our training materials seriously, and so on and so forth. I didn't fight it. I reluctantly changed my brilliant title to the much more flaccid Introducing FaxPlus.

I believe that everyone I spoke with still preferred the original title, though. Would you have blocked that title?

Trials and Tribblelations

Man, if my truck sucked anymore, it'd be inside out.

Now, my truck is making a loud... knocking/putting noise when my RPMs go up. It just started today after I got so mad about it not starting immediately that I pushed the gas too fast and I heard a kind of clank sound, followed by the current constant sound. It might be something around the carburetor (yes, it's that old). It has also had an oil leak for as long as I can remember. I don't know how much worse it can get. Oh yeah, it's now burning oil enough to put out blue smoke. I have to take it in to the shop tomorrow, so that I can get an estimate and get it fixed soon after. Otherwise, my truck will give up the ghost this week and give me an ulcer.

In case it never makes it out of the shop, here's the last known photo of my truck.