IM is BAD!

Like many things, good and useful things in our lives can be misused for bad – IM being one of these things I’m convinced. I’ve actually felt this way for a while, but an incident yesterday at work has convinced me of this. Let me share.

Monday afternoon, an IM popped up on my screen from one of my co-workers relaying information about an event in the office on Friday. Since the message was talking about me, I assumed it wasn’t for me. So I replied stating that I thought it went to the wrong person. She replied back stating it had. At this point, I felt like I was being talked about behind my back, but not wanting to jump to the wrong conclusion I blew it off. I guess guilt got the best of my co-worker because about half an hour after the original message, I received an IM from her asking me to forgive her because she had been venting to another co-worker about how frustrated she had been that I told her I couldn’t help her with a project on Friday and she didn’t want me to think that they were gossiping about me. (No, they were just talking about me behind my back – just as bad).

First of all, once I asked her she admittedly said she wouldn’t have even said anything to me if she hadn’t sent the message to the wrong person (lesson #1, if your going to bad mouth someone via IM – might want to be sure you sent it to the right person). But what really bothered me is that she failed to get the facts before she vented her frustrations to someone else. You see, if she had come to me first, she would have seen a whole other side to the situation. What she failed to see was that I had been helping her out all week, she just didn't realize it because it wasn't in ways she was aware of. So when she asked for my help with a specific project, I wasn’t being difficult, I honestly didn’t have time because by this point I had to finish a big project of my own. I was so hurt that this person looked to her own self-interests instead of looking at the big picture and realizing I had in fact been helping her out all week and not recognizing the sacrifices I had made because of it. And to top it off, she made me look bad to another co-worker for no good reason.

But (and here is my point), it made me take a long, hard look in the mirror. How often have I been guilty of the same thing? Using IM to vent to someone instead of either keeping it to myself or discussing it with the person that wronged me? I’ve been trying for a while to be careful about behaving this way because I have come to view IM as the “water cooler” of the new millennium. IM has for too long been used by some in our office (at times, self included) to “vent frustrations” or even talk about someone else (because it isn’t gossip if it’s true you know). Like I said, I’ve felt this way for a while and have been working on it, but I think God used Monday’s event to open my eyes and be extremely more cautious about behaving this way. Definitely not a good experience, but a definite lesson learned.

I'm STILL Bored

Since I'm still bored, I was going through my "favorites" and came across this website a co-worker shared with me while she and her huband were trying to name their first child. This guy's comments make me laugh, so I thought I would share. http://www.notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/index.html

I'm bored

Theme for the Day 

For the first time in so long I don't remember, I have NOTHING to do. Since I have to be here, I'm trying to be productive and clean out some of my network folders and I came across this cartoon. Sorry, it's not the clearest, but it's very appropriate for my day - so I posted it. The End.

Eye Liner By Candle Light

 


My morning didn’t get off to the best start and the only reason I’m not in a bad mood is because the whole situation makes me laugh when I think about it. As those of you who live around here know, we had a storm move through this morning.

Now I’m not sure if it was the storm that woke me up, or if it was my bladder that was about to burst, but nothing annoys me more than waking up and having to go to the bathroom anytime close to when I’m supposed to get up, so the first thing I did was check the alarm clock. Problem. I can’t see the alarm clock. We have no power. At this point I’m thinking “I need to set my travel alarm so that I don’t over sleep.” So, I reach for my travel alarm and go to set it. Lovely! It’s 6:04 a.m. Not only do I not have power and have to go to the bathroom, I don’t have to be up for at least another 30 minutes and there is no way I’ll be able to go back to sleep now.

At this point my need to go to the bathroom over-rides my frustration with the fact that I’m being cheated out of sleep so I make my trek to the bathroom. Another problem. My bathroom is pitch black and I’m having trouble finding the toilet. Since I have no idea where my flashlight is, I decide to light a candle and I start the search for matches. Luckily, I remembered where I left the matches the last time I used them and it didn’t take long to find them – striking them was another story. I could NOT get them to strike for anything. After the fifth attempt on the third match, we have flame. So, I light a candle, take care of the business at hand, find my flashlight, and go back to bed.

As I suspected, going back to sleep wasn’t going to happen. Eventually, I just got up, lit several candles in the bathroom and made a feeble attempt to try to get ready. You know, putting make-up on by candle light is an interesting experience. I really didn’t want to leave my house looking like a 10 cent hooker from the corner store, so I was extra cautious not to apply too much. But the eye liner was the best. Not only is it kind of hard to put eye liner on when you can’t see very well, but to top it off, I had the hiccups – BAD. I’m sure any female reading this knows what I’m saying. It’s a steady handed job and hiccups make that difficult.

This whole experience this morning got me to thinking about how much we depend on electricity. Since our hot water heater is electric, we only have as much hot water as was in the tank already (luckily enough to wash my hair). The hair dryer was out of the question, but my first thought was to dry my hair at work. Of course, the thought of leaving the house brought about a whole new question – “how do we get out of the garage?” Yes, I know about the emergency release on the garage door opener, but neither of us had ever used it and weren’t sure how difficult of a task this would be. And what about the refrigerator? How long can the power be off before the food inside starts to go bad? And forget cooking anything because neither the stove nor the microwave worked. The power also went off at work and the server was having some issues. You would have thought the world was coming to an end by the way some of my co-workers reacted to the fact they couldn’t connect to the server or to email. It was only 8:30, the day wasn’t a total loss yet. It’s amazing how big a part electricity is to our every day lives – maybe too big of a part. But you know what? Though I’ve often thought I would enjoy living a simpler life, I don’t think I want to live one that simple. I have a new found appreciation for electricity!

Oh, by the way, the electricity finally came back on around 7:30 a.m., so we missed another opportunity to try the “emergency release” feature on the garage door. Maybe next time.

6 Saltine Crackers

Did you know that it is impossible to eat 6 saltine crackers in less than a minute without taking a drink? Blake Blackwell shared this fact with us this weekend and I didn't believe him - so yesterday at work, I tried it. Guess what, he was right. It took me 45 seconds to eat the first 3 and I tried to eat the last 3 all at once to make it in the 15 second time slot, but no luck.

Red Neck Floaties

This past Friday morning I’m at work and on hold with AT&T customer service and since I had nothing better to do at the moment, I started reading the “Fill-Air” inflatable packing that came in the box with the cell phones we just ordered when I noticed something that made me laugh. On the bottom of this “bag of air” was this symbol that states that you are not to use it as a flotation device. Now, this little bag of air isn’t much bigger than my hand. Yes, it would float, but what idiot would begin to think that this little bag of air would actually be useful in saving their life in an emergency? Seriously, if I was standing at the edge of a pool, and someone was drowning, I don’t see my self saying “here I’ll save you!” and tossing them this bag for them to use to stay afloat. The thing is, if it’s printed on the bag as one of many cautionary items, then at some point some redneck idiot got the bright idea to duct tape them to their child’s arms for their child to use as floaties in the cement pond.

This got me to thinking about other “warnings” I see printed on day-to-day items. Take for instance, toner. You know the powdery stuff that you put in copiers and printers. Our toner bottles at work say, “Do not eat”. Now what intelligent person would look at a bottle of toner and think “you know, I’m kind of hungry and that toner sure does look good. I think I’ll go get a spoon.”? HELLO! But again, if it’s printed on the bottle, then someone had to have tried it and probably tried to sue the company when they were surprised by the unpleasant outcome (I’m sure we’ve all heard about the lady who sued McDonald’s because she spilt hot coffee on her self, hence the phrase “caution HOT” now seen on their coffee cups.)

Yes, I have done some stupid things in my life – tossing a cigarette lighter in the fireplace to try to get my logs to light being at the top of this list – but I am generally a sensible person and I should have known better. I should have thought through the process and used what little I know about physics and gravity to know that when that cigarette lighter got hot and exploded, it was not going to stay put and it would go somewhere (thank goodness I had the common sense to close the screen to the fireplace). Scientists say that we only use 10% of our brain, but seriously – I think some people are using the wrong 10%.

Feeling Left Out

Well, I'm giving this "blogging" thing a try. I was feeling left out because it seems everyone I know is starting up a blog and since I enjoy reading everyone elses, I figured I'd give it a try too. Don't expect much. I probably will only get around to posting once a week or so and most of the time, you can guarentee it will be fairly random. So, this is it for today until I get everything figured out. Have a great weekend!