I absolutely hate the word “blog”

HOLY SHIT.

MY BOYFRIEND IS AWESOME.

And soon, the image quality on this blog will improve.

On my way back from scoring a sweet street parking spot, I saw an awesome-looking antique table sitting on the corner by the dumpster. Grant and I have been in the market for a table that could serve as a desk for quite some time now, and this baby seemed perfect for the job. And the price is right!

But Grant was at work, and I couldn’t drag the thing home by myself. (My spot wasn’t THAT sweet, I admit.) And along came Cool Pierced And Tattooed Friendly-Looking Neighbor Guy out of the apartment complex next to ours.

So I grinned, asked if he was in a hurry, and when he said no, I proposed that he give me a hand hijacking said table in exchange for whatever cash was in my wallet at the time. ($10, turns out.) He gladly agreed, and we chatted pleasantly the whole while as we headed back to my place so I could drop off my groceries to free my hands.

Read the rest…

My dear mom offered to buy me the new glasses I need for my birthday, so I just went shopping for frames. This time around it was super-fast — I fell in love with the second pair of frames I tried on! Last time I went glasses shopping, it took almost a whole day to figure out which ones I liked best, so I was almost scared to commit so quickly. But these babies are GOOOOORGEOUS on me, I must say, and everything else I’ve tried on pales in comparison.

My favorite thing about these puppies (besides how hot they look on me) is the exquisitely cool Japanese design concept they employ. The temples are made of three horizontal layers of metal, which consist of a layer of flowers, a layer of stems, and a layer of leaves. So when you bow your head, the three layers all show and you see the whole botanical picture. The gal at the glasses shop is even going to see if they can swap the placement of the flowers and leaves for me so the leaves are more obvious, since that’s more my style.

The designer, Kamuro, only deals through the Seattle shop Ottica for their US distribution. A bunch of the frame styles are actually named after employees in the store — adorable. The ones I’m getting are an Ottica exclusive, but they’re very close to the luluwdy. The image here is a little different than mine — mine are black with dark grey and silver temples, so they’re a little more subtle.

The best part is that they’ll be ready super-soon, so I will probably be able to show them off on my birthday in a couple weeks. Ah, I love shopping, but I REALLY love instant gratification!

I’m not often one to re-post a link, but the guys at Penny Arcade hit a real winner with this one.  Finally, Garfield cartoons are actually funny.

So being unemployed has its positives and negatives, but I find that I kind of miss the assholery that sometimes goes on in the workplace. Sure, I miss a real paycheck and having an active mind for forty hours a week and all that, but I really, REALLY miss the pranks.

And I never worked in the most prank-tastic offices ever, either. At the law firm, Ann used to occasionally just throw random shit over the cubicle divider into my lap, and she had surprisingly good aim given that she had no line of sight. It was uncanny.

But more fun than that was when we’d get on the office intercom and page ourselves to our own phones. “Virginia, please call extension 115. Extension 115 please, Virginia.” Over and over. And the attorneys were so involved in their stuff that they never really noticed.

But Something Awful’s office prank thread yielded the best one I’ve ever heard of. Simple, easy, and pricelessly funny:

I tried this one once.

Take a screenshot of the victim’s desktop, then set that picture as their background. Then uncheck “show desktop icons” under “arrange icons by.”

Effect: Them hopelessly clicking on an icon trying to open the folder/file with nothing happening.

Freakin’ amazing. Almost as good as Jim’s Nickel Phone Prank. (You have to read through some other pranks to get to it, but it’s worth it.)

It’s official.  And we at Windows Secrets adhere to the Purple Pen Protocol.  Just one of the many but minor changes that I have to get used to.  And honestly, it’s easier to read than red, so that’s a plus!

This is one of the strangest combos I can imagine - Zach Galifianakis doing Kanye West. The only tie I can really figure out is that both were at Bumbershoot last year. Anyone know of any other link between these two?

I swear, something about the way the hallways and doorways are laid out at MSFT is completely counterintuitive as far as actual usability goes. I can’t quite put my finger on it - they don’t seem any narrower than other hallways, but somehow people are always in each others’ way or awkwardly almost crashing into each other around blind corners (which don’t seem any blinder than normal corners, but somehow they’re worse). In the hallways, if two people are paused to have a conversation, it’s incredibly hard to get by without feeling like you’re in a mosh pit, even if they courteously stand to the side. But I swear the measurements aren’t any different from other corporate buildings I’ve worked in! Even in the kitchens, which are spacious and seemingly well-laid-out, it’s always awkward if there’s more than one person, because both people will sort of inadvertently block the path to whatever device the other person needed. And, I mean, I’ve been in kitchens half this size frequented by twice as many people, and never felt the same strain. Truly uncanny.

It sort of reminds me of when I was living in Barcelona, and I took a trip to Pisa to visit my friend Kendra. In Barcelona the custom when meeting someone new was to kiss once on each cheek if it was girl-meeting-girl or boy-meeting-girl (boys meeting boys would usually shake hands, I think. Maybe. I don’t really know, because it was never necessary for me to learn that one). So when Kendra told me that the Italians in Pisa also did one kiss on each cheek, I figured I was in the clear, since I wouldn’t have to adjust my normal behavior. But every time I met someone, which was pretty much daily, it would be this totally awkward exchange where neither of our heads was in the right place at the right time, and we’d nearly crack skulls, and it was generally just not the pleasant, friendly, tactile, barrier-breaking experience it had been in Barcelona. It took me until my last day there to realize that it was because in Pisa, they start on the left side and then go right, whereas in Barcelona they start right and go left. So essentially, every person I met I had inadvertently tried to kiss on the lips. Suddenly all the awkwardness made sense, and as soon as I realized I needed to adjust my Barcelona kiss to the Pisa direction, all went much more smoothly.

…And that’s why I keep waiting for something similar to click here - some seemingly subtle but eventually obvious indicator of why the hell no one can seem to walk down a hallway, enter/exit a restroom, stall, conference room, office, or kitchen, or grab a cup of coffee, or a glass of water, or a phone call, or an elevator, without awkwardly dancing around and nearly crashing into their fellow MSFT employees. The thing is, though, I’ve paid close attention to this out of morbid curiosity since I started back in February, and I can’t come up with any explanation - and if the Pisa trip was any indication, you’d think I’d have grasped it by now (that was a ten-day trip, and I got it on day nine). Unless it’s something directly proportional to the total amount of time I’m to spend here, it should be cleary by now. I think we really are just all very awkward, and lost in our own worlds, and in a hurry to get back to where we’re going.

That, and, they probably hired a frickin’ programmer to do the architecture.

Seriously, I do NOT understand cases like this one, where people go to great lengths to avoid being called for jury duty. My whole life I have been dying to serve jury duty, and learn more about the way our courts work first-hand. I’ve never seen the inside of a courtroom, except when delivering documents to my old boss while she was in trial (a very rare instance in family law, as most cases settle well before the trial date, since it tends to be vastly more beneficial for both parties), and that was never particularly exciting as court was never in session.

My old roommate, the law student, was called for jury duty right during orientation for law school, I believe (or maybe it was during finals), so for cases like that I can understand. I think pretty much anyone in academia should be exempt if necessary, as should certain professions - kinda like the draft, I suppose. But I can’t honestly understand how any law student wouldn’t BEG for permission to miss class/exams and attend - what better way to apply what you’re learning?

Maybe this just comes from the fact that I don’t tend to read a lot of Tom Clancy type novels or see any John Grisham based movies, and I’ve only seen a handful of Law and Order episodes the whole way through. I lean more towards the wonky foreign and crime-heist-action flicks, and I tend to watch non-legal-themed TV (aside from the occasional Monk marathon, and that’s really just for Tony Shalhoub) so maybe it’s just that I haven’t been exposed to the potential frights of serving as a juror - I fear no mafia hit or car bomb as vengeance for my courtroom soothsaying.

Anyway. I just don’t get it. I’m sure that if I ever do get called for jury duty, I’ll be disqualified right away for some silly reason, and I’ll be incredibly disappointed - but I can’t picture ever try to get out of it. (Watch me say that, and then get called in on my wedding day or something.) I always figured that, even though in the normal course of my life I feel ashamed and guilty for not keeping up with current events and local news as much as most people, this might be the one area in which my ignorance might actually be helpful - both to myself, in helping me actually get selected for duty, and to the courts, in providing a stunningly uninformed seat in the box, ready and impressionable.

C’mon, pick me, pick me!!! I promise I’m FINE with missing work AND exams to help further the cause of impartial justice! Also, free lunch!

First of all, when the phone extensions are five digits long, you know you work in a bigass company.

Ahem: I forgot my badge AGAIN this morning. That would be, probably the 5th time in the past month - and I’ve NEVER forgotten my badge until the past month. Moving has been rough - I can’t find many, many things I would like to set my hands on, and, well, I forget stuff a lot lately. Like my badge. Which I can tell you is hooked on the pocket of the pants I wore to work yesterday.

So normally, forgetting your badge is not a big deal - you either hitch a ride in with someone in the garage who’s opening the elevator doorway, and if you’re lucky you get someone who recognizes you so you don’t have to explain yourself beyond the sheepish “forgot my badge” admission. If no one shows up for a while, you trudge out of the garage and into the reception area, and have the receptionist look up your ID, print you a temporary badge and buzz you into the building.
But when you come in early specifically to get a lot done before all the people start showing up, well, then you have a problem. Because the garage is near-empty and reception is not open for another 45 minutes.

So this morning I waited until someone showed up and parked nearish my elevator in the garage, and asked if I could hitch a ride in. He looked skeptical (the 7:15 AM crowd is MUCH less lenient than the 9:15) and he said he’d escort me to reception. I said I wasn’t sure if they would be open, and he sort of harrumphed, escorted me there, left me there and let the door swing shut and lock behind him, and either ignored or didn’t hear my knocking to indicate that, thanks, but I was now simply locked in a different portion of the building. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say he didn’t hear me.

So then, I’m sitting at the front desk. Until 7:25… and no one shows up. I finally send a Google text to get the number of the Microsoft Switchboard (hint, hint, Microsoft - I had to text GOOGLE for this, not you), and I started calling random coworkers in my building whom I know to be early birds. Not a single hit in ten names. Where are all you slackers who fill my inbox before I get in at 8:30 on a good day? Sheesh!

So then I give up on the directory crap, reach over to the reception desk’s phone, and dial x60000 for security. Select 1 if it’s an emergency, 2 if it’s a parking violation, 3 for other issues like access to a building. BINGO! So I select three - “Microsoft Security, is this an emergency?”

No, no, it is not. It is me being dumb and forgetful yet again, while shockingly resourceful and typically charming, and still striking out left and right, thanks. So I give her my email alias so she can look me up, and right as she’s saying she’ll send someone I tell her that the first person I’ve seen in fifteen minutes finally shows up to the front door. She says she’ll wait while I see if he can’t let me in.

The guy is on a cell phone call, and has to struggle to swipe himself into the building, and when he does I sort of apologetically gesture at him, while cradling the reception desk phone in the other hand. He comes over, still mid-call, half-joking half-bitching to the person on the other end that the only reason he works the weird hours he does is to double as a security guard. I apologize, explain myself, and ask if he doesn’t mind letting me in, and tell him that I have security on the line if he wants to talk to them to confirm. He says, “but how do I know you’re really Microsoft?”

I bust out a printed-up email between my boss and myself, and show him my name in the signature, plus my photo ID with said name printed. Only then does he agree to let me in, so I let the security guard know, thank her, hang up, thank him, and tag-team into the building. He’s still on his call this whole time. I thanked him and took off, and made it to my office a full 30 minutes after exiting my that’s about two floors directly below the space my office occupies.

So Microsoft, I just want to let you know - if you think you have a security problem, you can relax. You absolutely do not. I have never met more diligently trained employees in my entire life, and I will never ever fear a non-campus person being granted access inappropriately. Kudos to you, software kings. I surrender. Thanks to both of the guys who let me in, plus the kind security switchboard operator. I’m kind of afraid to leave my office now, so I’ll probably be extra-productive today to boot. Good strategy, my friends!