Two days ago on my way to work, I was really happy. I was rocking out to a song on the radio and drumming on my steering wheel. (Not drumsteering, mind you, as I was at a red light.) I realized I was being a little more obvious about it than I usually am, but I was still surprised when the people in the car in front of me exchanged some words and then the passenger brought down her visor mirror to take a look!
I smiled at her. :-) Share the love, I say!
Right, so I’ve been a bit behind. It’s funny how that works. I say to myself, “I’m going to blog about that tonight!” and then I don’t.
So I’ve got a few quick ones that I’ll just jot down here. :-)
Yup, it snuck up on me this year.
Thanks to my parents, who called me at work, and Jordan and Rob for their B-day wishes. I hope everyone else has a great day too!!
So, it finally happened. It had happened in other jobs, so I knew I wasn’t going to be able to avoid it. I got a call from an asshole today.
Fortunately I didn’t have to talk to him for very long, or I’m sure it would have been much worse than it was. But he called up wanting to see if he could get someone’s password changed. Not his own; this person is retiring. He said her name is “Dotty Monroe” but that she’s in our ph database as Dorothy.
I was on another call when he called me, and I put the other (much nicer!) user on the phone to speak with him. I don’t remember exactly what he asked me, but he was speaking very fast and wasn’t making any sense. He had very little idea what he was asking for, but he thought he knew. He kept saying he wanted Dotty to be able to log into the “port hole” instead of the “portal.” Finally he said something along the lines of “is this where I go for that.” (It wasn’t quite that; I took whatever it was as meaning that he was looking at a webpage and wanted to know if it was the right one.)
I waited for him to finish what he was saying, because it sounded like he wasn’t done. When he didn’t say anything for a minute, I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re asking me.”
So then HE says: “You know, I think I had you before. Son, you’re not very good at answering questions.”
I was floored. First of all, I’d (thankfully) never spoken to this jerk before. But secondly, where does he get off telling me I can’t tell him what he can’t ask for??
He’s lucky I didn’t hang up the phone right then. That was my first instinct, but then I decided that that was very unprofessional and I’d probably get a talking-to. So instead I said, “Excuse me, sir, but I don’t appreciate being spoken to that way.”
At this point, I try to double check with him that the spelling of the woman’s name is correct, Dotty Monroe, because I can’t find any mention of her in ph. He tells me he doesn’t know how to spell her last name. (See: “doesn’t know what he’s asking for” above.) I can’t find anything under “Monroe.”
Since I can’t find any mention of this woman, I tell him he needs to speak to Terri, my boss. She isn’t in, so he says he’ll call back Monday.
No major tragedy, but damn if I want to talk to that asshole again. EVER.
sigh
On the plus side, I stuck around and talked with Brett and Jim (a coworker and my other boss) tonight after I was done with work. It was fun; they’re both really nice people with some interesting ideas. And now I’m tired. Bed is calling...
Do not, under any circumstances, EVER go to a site named tubgirl. Just trust me on this one.
You have been warned.
I discovered a few new bits of polish that I just had to share. First of all, it’s no secret that Open panels in Panther have become more like Finder windows. You can choose different views (via Cmd-2/3), you can use all the same shortcuts (Cmd-Shift-H/A/C), and you even have the same sidebar as a Finder window.
But did you know that my favorite little Finder window hack is also available to Open dialogs? That’s right: Cmd-Shift-G opens a sheet that will let you type in a path! It doesn’t appear to be exactly the same thing because, while the Finder allows you to tab-complete folder names and such, the Open panel does not. No worries, however, as this is very useful in and of itself. Say you were reading a webpage (as I was yesterday) and it suggested to you that you might take a look at some documentation installed with the dev tools on your machine (as it did). You could take the time to navigate to the the folder using the Finder, probably switching back and forth from Safari a few times for a long path, select the item and then Cmd-down. But who wants to do all that? From within Safari:
Triple-click the line and copy it
Hit Cmd-Space (You are running LaunchBar, right?)
Type “tex” and hit enter
When TextEdit opens hit Cmd-O
When the Open panel opens hit Cmd-Shift-G
Paste in the path and hit Return
The folder will be switched to and the correct file selected, so just hit Return again
(You could of course just open it with Vim from Terminal. That would be even faster.)
Wow, how fun was that!? Are you ready for another one? When using Cmd-(Shift-)Tab to tool around your list of open applications, did you know you can press Cmd-Q to quit the hilighted app and Cmd-H to hide it? You most certainly can. :-) Thanks to Philip for that awesome tip.
For that matter, I still can’t get over how useful it is to be able to select an item with the mouse cursor, especially when the cursor is dragging something. For some reason I find this more intuitive with the Cmd-Tab bezel than with the Dock. Perhaps it’s because the bezel is in the middle of the screen, and typically larger.
Thank you Apple!
I’d seen it before, but this is the first time I really took the time to look at Downhill Battle, especially their section on stickering CDs at chain retailers.
When I showed my friend Adam that second page, he disagreed with what DB was doing on the grounds that it was vandalism. We had an hourlong discussion about it, which was really interesting. I don’t think either of us won; he had good points about the payola situation, while I feel that my position was stronger when it comes to the RIAA lawsuits.
I don’t think anyone would care, so I won’t post a transcript of the conversation.
Oh, and it looks like I may get some of the stickers myself to put to good use. Rawk!
I know someone through Fire who has a professor who has a blog. On this blog there is a link to a list of 40 songs that “changed his life” in 2003. So far so good. But check out the description for song 15:
I know “Such Great Heights” is the Postal Service track we’re all supposed to love, and it’s a great song, but this is the one from Give Up (a must-buy album, by the way) that stayed with me. I really like how the beat kicks in about halfway through, yet the tone stays pleasingly melancholy all the way to the end.
And now look at my Song of the Week entry for 15 February 2003:
If you had caught me even a day earlier, I would have told you that the song of the week was the other standout on this album, “Such Great Heights.” But this is now, and I am hooked on this song. If you’re not used to this type of music (which I certainly am not), you’ll probably first be struck by its “8-bit” nature. But don’t let that turn you off: both the music and the lyrics are astounding. The song moves seamlessly from subdued to up-beat without losing the melancholy. Truly a gem.
I wonder if... naaah.
I’m sure most of you are familiar with a Googlewhack. I just found my first one today:
Don’t ask. Just don’t ask.