Boudicca's Voice

Random Thoughts and What THEY Think About Me. Heh.

I like brownie corners. I made a batch of brownies as my husband’s Aunt Glo, a woman I ADORE and wish was my own aunt and lived nearby, came for supper. That reminded me, I like the corners of brownies.

Lemon mint toothpaste tastes like crap. Mint is good. Lemon… maybe in a pinch. Lemon mint is icky. My husband brought some home the other day. I’ll use the kids’ toothpaste, thank.you.very.much.

I'm the Treasurer for the school for two more years. I have a replacement lined up at the end of the gig. Scary that four years into it, I'm still learning the software. Something is wrong with that picture. (Odd scenarios keep popping up...)

I have a Math Illness. My boy Alg II student had two problems last night I could not readily get, dealing with 3rd degree polynomials and factoring, finding asymptotes and holes. I promised him I'd figure out what to do and email him the answer. I got them both after I had time to sit down and REALLY look at them.

The scary part is I LOVED doing it. I emailed him with the answers and the Mom sent me an email back telling me she feels guilty for my spending so much time when she knows her son isn't putting that much time into studying. I tried to explain this LOVE of math and solving problems.

I don't think she gets it. Her son thinks its funny. I think its an illness... bonus for me... I know some of YOU have the same affliction. I KNOW IT.

I think I’m officially a pain in the ass to the IT department at work. Our printer has not been working for several months. Irritating doesn’t even begin to describe the situation.

A month ago, a form came out asking what we’d like to do for our group lunch. The guys didn’t seem to care… if we even had one. So I took the form polling us and wrote at the bottom, “None of the above. We would all be perfectly content if we could have a new printer instead of a group lunch. We have been fighting this printer for months with great frustration. Get us a new printer. It’s the simple things…”

I was asked by management if I was serious and I said I was dead on.

Nothing happened. One of the bookends was threatening to go to HP maintenance classes. The HP rep started to live in our office. We decided that my coworker could actually TEACH HP printer maintenance.

Then I was told that HQ said we couldn’t have a new printer until they had a record of all our calls and we were NOT to fix our printer ourselves, but call our IT call every time it broke.

Riiiight.

And so I did and they have caller ID. Every.time.it.broke.I.called. “Hey, Joe, this is Bou, our printer is broken. We’ve been told to call you…” When he refused to answer my calls, I started to call his IT co-workers.

They all have caller ID.

We have a new printer.

Funnier still, I opened my email Wednesday to see an email from the IT department… one they have to send out when they fix a trouble call. *I* am the one on the sheet as the customer, not my tech lead, not my boss, not any of my 20 coworkers that utilize said printer, not my manager, but ME.

That cracked me up. I suspect I have called in all my chips now for this printer, but it annoys the crap out of me to sit there and listen to people bitch about something. So… I got it fixed.

And now everyone in IT knows who I am. I’m not sure that’s a good thing…

But as I was leaving the building I saw IT Joe and said, “Thank you for the printer. I’m serious… thank you. I wouldn’t have been such a pain in the ass if management hadn’t threatened to not let us have a new printer if I wasn’t."

His reply? “Bou, we don’t mind the nice people calling. Anytime…”

Heh. Funny. I’m the nice people. Just a nice pain in the ass. I did notice though… they did quit picking up my calls. Still makes me laugh, but I can do that because… we have a new printer.

Posted by Boudicca at May 9, 2008 08:31 PM | TrackBack