Congratulations to L.A. on this beautiful animal.

You may enjoy this exchange with a customer from a few years back. I’ve changed the names to protect the guilty:

Dear Joe,

I reviewed your Sarbanes Oxley compliance document and noticed a few things that are worthy of mention:

1. The security section requires that sensitive information be encrypted in transit but most users do not have encryption tools available.

2. The security section mentioned that a user is not allowed to disable his virus scanner, yet this is permitted on most or all workstations.

3. The security section requires that if possible a session must time out after 30 minutes, but none of the windows workstations times out. This is something that could be centrally controlled.

Yours Truly,

AP

And the response:

Thanks for your feedback. I’ll forward your email to Sue and Francine and add it to my file.

Joe

Today, I sit across the light brown cubicle wall from yet another proverbial profane personage. Yes, I said I would sit next to him again and here I am. I shall label this one a subspecies since his habits are different from my former profane office mate. This man spits vituperation and vulgar slang in a tone that ranges from ill-tempered to hateful.

He just picked up the telephone so I shall narrate. Now he asks “What the f___?” Now calls his customer’s mother a bitch. Now he calls for God’s damnation on some thing or other. Now he slams the receiver down. Well, at least he is unhappy about that conversation.

[Sigh]

Given my sustained frustration with the JDEdwards OneWorld software, I decided that tracking the level of said frustration was in order. For your review, here is the first month’s graph.

As you can see, I was enraged twice during the month but the second peak occurred during a period of sustained rage. Towards the end of the month I was able to coach myself back into denial, mainly because I interacted less with the most vexing features of the software.

As I upgraded a client’s computer last week, I overheard a conversation. It sounded something like this:

“Hey John, how’s it goin’?”

“Pretty Dern Good. Say, you burn wood at yer house don’cha?”

“Yah.”

“How much you use in a year?”

“Oh I ain’t gonna go troo more’n two maybe tree cords at da most. I just use it now and den ya know — usually whenever it gets below zero an’ stuff. Say, you know Jake Johnson don’cha?”

“Yah, I drive by ‘is place on my way to work.”

“Yah, I guess I knew dat. Did you see dat pile o’ firewood ‘e had in ‘is front yard? He musta had ten cords right dere between da house and da road!”

“Yah, I wonder what ‘is wife thought o’ dat. Well, she musta said somethin’ ’cause ‘e got dat pile outa dere inside o’ two weeks.”

“Yah, I’ll pro’ly cut up a li’l more wood dis year.”

“Yah.”

I’m tired…

Real life help desk ticket no. 5901:

She has done this before . She received the new build yesterday . Now every since the upgrade to XXXXXXX, when she puts in a requisition, says error action invalid . Usually fills in her description also and it is not.

Real life help desk ticket no. 4219:

They have two PC that they work on when he works on one as save tabs and goes to the other the tabs are all fine but if he works on the other and goes to the one the tabs will be all messed up and he will need to clear them before he can continue.

So I fulfilled my jury duty yesterday. For orientation, we watched a short video about serving as a juror. A couple of points of interest:

First, the Wisconsin State Supreme Court’s Chief Justice was chosen for jury duty a few years back. She said no profession is excluded from jury duty (but D — a former attorney — says that lawyers don’t like having former attorneys on the jury; I suppose a judge would be worse). Anyway, she was rejected (of course) but she said she was eager to serve. She didn’t sound eager.

Second, a judge in one segment said, “Has the jury chosen a foreperson?” This got me to thinking. If the judge said foreperson because she didn’t want to exclude women from her noun, perhaps she should have said foreperchild. Regardless, I will not use newspeak like that. I will not say foreperson, I will say foreman. Furthermore, when I say it, I will mean that the foreman could be a man or a woman….hmmm…perhaps we ought to change that noun (woman) too. Perhaps woperson would be better…or what about woperchild?

Yes, yes…I know I’m two weeks late on the “More to come…” To finish things off, we awoke on Sunday morning and worshipped with an area congregation, spent the afternoon “relaxing” at a shopping mall, and in the late afternoon, we hooked up with CW and drove back downtown. We parked at the Bradley Center and walked back to the Hilton where DC and LC had taken a room. The Hilton, by the way, is a refined hotel — plenty of marble and brass, full length slatted doors on the bathroom stalls, paintings of naked ladies on the lobby walls — but DC and LC rented the room on orbitz.com for $50 . So I guess I have to try that next time. Together, we walked back to the Bradley Center with the intention of enjoying a hamburger at a nearby pub. The chosen pub, however, was full to overflowing so we searched for another. As we searched, I walked past a man, whom I thought I recognized but didn’t bother to make sure because I thought, “If it is him, I don’t want to bug him.” Well, the gals were walking ten feet behind the fellows and of course C didn’t pass up the opportunity to say “Hi!” It’s in her blood. So we met Big Tom, former survivor contestant. Big Tom was quite kind. He remembered my name after only hearing it once and didn’t seem bothered at all to stop and tell us what was happening in his world. Thanks Big Tom.

After a tolerably long walk around the block, we finally found a seat at a pub and enjoyed tasty hamburgers all around, then headed over to the main event of the weekend, the Coldplay show. This concert was predictably excellent. The set was similar to the one we saw at Alpine Valley. The production, however, was different.

They used the wide screen much less this time, and because they were in an arena were able to use some other projection techniques, like a moving starfield that covered the walls and cieling. Our seats on the floor were not very good. Because we were so far back, one couldn’t see the stage well, unless one was over six feet tall.

Therefore, I could see well but C could not, so C spent the evening propped up on the chair in front of her. If we had been 10 feet higher, say in the cheaper seets 30 feet to our right, we probably would have enjoyed the show much more. CW had a pretty good view. His original ticket was for an obstructed view seat (behind the stage wall) so he asked an usher if he could move. The usher directed him to the ticket office where the cashier said “Well, I could give you this seat but it’s $30 more than your ticket. However, we want it to look full down there so here you go.” So CW had this view:

Probably the most interesting part of the weekend was noticing that when you go to the city, you always meet a lot of people that you already know. We saw Andy at the hotel, J and A at the mall on Saturday, Aaron at the Bucks’ game, Mike at church, Big Tom on the sidwalk, J and K at the concert, and it turns out that Chris was also at the concert and sat ten feet away but couldn’t come say “hi” on account of the ushers wouldn’t let him.

Well, sorry to write so much but it’s good practice to tell the story with all the details.