Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Work Computer, You're My Only Friend

So, my work computer is sort of old. I think it used to be one of Becky's old girlfriend's, that we bought for like $50 bucks off her. (So not only is it an old computer, it's also a gay one.) For the most part Jen3 gets the work done, but sometimes it shuts down on me completely, or flat out refuses to switch to an excel spreadsheet when I've got "Fun facts about balls" googled on my homepage, and the entire office gathers around my desk for our Tuesday morning meeting, at which point I start wildly clicking the "X" as if the harder my pointer finger hits the mouse the faster the page will close, but then it gets the stupid bracketed {Firefox Not Responding} warning at the top, and I'm all, "I know firefox is not mother f responding! Why do you think I've been clicking so hard?!" and then I switch to clicking on the open tabs bar, and Excel won't come up, not even the letter I've been writing to Gige on Word will come up, even though I don't want anyone to see that either but at least a word document is better than a highlighted, ". . .the average testicle is 2.5 inches long by 1.25 inches wide. . . " (in case I need to make one?), and suddenly everyone is there and I try to block my screen with my body, but they're all standing and I'm sitting, so I throw my sweater over it, because it doesn't occur to me til after I've ripped off my hoodie and thrown it monkey-like at the monitor that it might, just maybe, might've been easier and less crazy to just turn the monitor off.

The meeting proceeded and of course the second it was over and I unzipped the hoodie from Jen3 everything was neatly closed, and tax returns were just doing themselves. Which was sucky, because I had actually been working all day. Working a lot, I had just taken a second to google some stuff that had been on my mind, and low - two seconds into my break the above happened.

So, it was all fine and dandy but then, almost immediately we had another little sub-meeting. Of course we did. We have a conference room by the way, but for some reason the gathering happens by my desk. (Jen3 wills them there with her mind power?) And I don't have anything inappropriate open, I'm fully prepared, and somehow suddenly in the middle of the meeting the printer right next to me start printing manically and all I can think is, "Oh god please don't let that be from my computer, please don't let that be from my computer." And everyone stares at it and someone looks down at the little screen and says, "Jen3. Whose computer is Jen3?" And I look around like, "What's a computer?", and then everyone is gathered around and I know it's gonna be just pictures of fun facts about balls, because clearly with my luck the text will have been changed to an accurate form of wingdings, and it'll be neatly titled "Amy Wanted To Know About This On Company Time".

So I reach over and grab the ONE HUNDRED AND SIX page printout and ho - l - y jesus.

They're totally blank.

Just 106 hot pages of nothing.

"What is it?" my co-worker asked.

"It's nothing they're blank."

"Why're they hot?"

"Because they just went through the machine."

"But there's no ink on them."

I could be wrong, but I don't think the ink is what makes them hot. But I zip it, cause I was just looking up facts on genitals.

"Why're they hot?"

"Oh, I accidentally hit the warmer setting. I just wanted to heat up some paper."

Ok, that was not as long as I wanted to keep it zipped.


So, I don't know what was going on. I don't know when I hit print on anything, but I sort of have a feeling I accidentally pressed it when I was crazily trying to close firefox and that Jen3 was just looking out for me. Like its way of apologizing for the earlier meeting; and that time last week when it shut down JUST BEFORE I hit save on something I'd been working on all day.

Although I'm fairly certain that shut down was because someone decided to make coffee when the copy machine was running. This is an accounting office from the 70s people, not an electric factory. We have to do one thing at a time or the island is gonna shift to the wrong time period.

2 comments:

Becky said...

I like you little LOST reference, how appropriate

Carrie said...

You've probably figured this out by now, but the real reason I've been trying so hard to get together with you for coffee is because I want you to rub some of your brilliance on me.

And by "brilliance" I mean "boob shelf."