Jest Fun

The last few days have been rather interesting.

We've been in a state of chaos at work with the replacement of ALL computers. At the same time. Nobody's been able to be productive, we've had multiple temporary contractors running around the building, and now that they're done? The computers don't all work correctly.

Go figure. This is the government we're talking about.

We've spent a couple weeks in a preparatory panic, trying to get all information off of hard drives, finding the disks and licenses for all the software packages we use, etc and on and on. I had to be assigned an external harddrive for all the computer modeling and data archiving and databasing I do as part of my job, so mine was a little easier than some, but I still had to hunt down some legacy software and licenses.

WARNING: Geek Alert! Feel free to skip to the next section if you're not into tech humor!

I use Quatro Pro pretty regularly, as it used to be the standard and I haven't finished making new data templates and statistics spreadsheets in Excel yet. So when a coworker in a neighboring office found a set of 5.25" diskettes from the Good 'ol Days, for Quatro Pro for DOS (the first spreadsheet program I ever used...) and gifted them to me...well, I've had them on display and gotten more than a few chuckles out of them.

Today, though, I had a little fun at the expense of one of the temp contractors. The fellow working on my computer was quite friendly, and we'd been chatting all morning during the software installations. He spotted the disks and we talked about all the different changes in computer media over the years. A younger temp came in while he was holding the disks, and the fellow working on my computer told him to go find a 5.25" external drive so we could install the software. He presented the work order listing all the software going on to my computer, which stated just "Quatro Pro", as proof that these disks needed to go on my brand-new laptop. The young guy kind of nodded and pretended that this was all normal, and then left to go find the drive! The guy at my computer hollered after him "make sure it's USB!!!"

It was kind of funny. We laughed. The guy fell for it. We expected that he would walk away and then get the joke...until a higher-up came in and asked if we had requested a 5.25" external USB drive.

We flashed him the goofy pack of disks, and it took him a minute to realize the joke, but then he laughed with us.

It took a couple of hours before we let the other guy in on it. He had been wandering the building, asking where he could find one.

Later we found out that a different computer guy had been looking to buy one for the office just last week...the joke was on us!

Anyway...

Kimberley Update

During all the computer chaos at work I had to spend long hours sitting near my desk and logging into my computer on command as they loaded and changed things and rebooted the thing over and over and over. I managed to finish all the edging and half the inserts on Kimberley while waiting and chatting and playing pratical jokes on temporary workers.

So tonight I came home and soaked and pinned out all the major pieces, hoping that they'll be dry so I can finish putting it together. As I stuck the last pin into the last piece of seriously curled stockinette I looked over and there was Rotti, neatly plucking out all the pins in the first piece and stacking them in a neat little pile in the middle of the piece.

I would have taken a picture, but I refuse to replace as many pins as that kitten would have gotten out in the time it would take me to run downstairs, get the camera, get back upstairs, and take a picture. So again, no pictures, but I'm getting closer.