October 26, 2005
Roadside America
Tourist spot - My friend and co-worker, Will, made a roadtrip recently to Pennsylvania. Besides hitting the coaster rides at Dorney Park, seeing the odd town of Centralia, he went to a retro tourist attraction called "Roadside America". It's a slice of Americana all done in miniature models, not unlike what you see with model trains. The difference here is that the founder really “kicked it up a notch” (to quote Emeril). I think most men have wanted to tinker with this kind of thing in there youth. This guy really lived it. Check out his photos from the visit.
School - Milford school always seem to pick the best days for teacher training days. They use voting days, day adjacent to existing three day weekends. Yesterday I learned that they have a teacher training day the day after Halloween. I don't ever remember getting that when I was growing up! Perhaps they just didn't want to deal with tired children who've had too much sugar? ;-)
Chaos - Today Michelle had quite the busy late afternoon. Daniel had a bloody nose. Claire had a very upset stomach (no details needed, use your imagination). Michelle feared that Timothy had flushed the roller that toilet paper pivots on. And we didn't have an up to date phone number to cancel Claire's piano lesson. It was a bit hard for me to relate because by the time I got home, I went by the piano teacher to explain (and get an up to date number), the boys were in bed, Michelle found the toilet paper roller, and Claire was feeling decent. I told Michelle not to worry. I had my own infuriating morning at the office. But it's best not to talk about work on the web...
On the plus side, I attended Michelle's step class today. She wore one of my favorite shirts. It's a tight black babydoll tee that says “I *heart* MY GEEK!” It helped cheer me up after the frustrations of work. Years ago I bought a few shirts from that place for me. This one, this one, this one, and this one. You can tell that working in engineering support can make one a bit jaded, eh?
Okay, I don't understand 3 out of the 4 t-shirts. The only one I "got" was WTF. Surely, the other ones aren't as naughty as that one? Care to explain? I'm either to old, to dumb, or probably just too tired to try to figure these out on my own! ha.
Posted by: Lisa at October 27, 2005 06:38 PM"RTFM" -- Read The Fine Manual*
"There are only 10 types of people in the world..." -- keep in mind in binary "10" is two. Yes, it's geeky humor.
"Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script" -- Okay, this is about as geeky. It implies someone else's work role is so trivial that you could write a simple program (a shell script) in half an hour that does their job.
Keep in mind I don't wear these shirts at work. I might wear them doing yard work or exercising. A lot of time these four shirts reflect my feelings after dealing with a particularly difficult or demanding customer. I'm actually not that mean spirited (or snobbish), but buying those was a bit of an outlet at a time when I was feeling a bit stressed at work.
So far I've resisted the temptation to buy a poster from:
http://www.despair.com/
but they've tempted me as well for similar Dilbert-esque reasons.
PS: *F doesn't often stand for "Fine" but that's the story I'm sticking to.
Posted by: Scott at October 27, 2005 07:32 PMThank you for trying. I still hasn't sunk in. That's okay, though. You know what's funny? I can't stand Dilbert
Posted by: Lisa at October 27, 2005 11:35 PMHi Lisa,
Dilbert style humor really doesn't mean anything until you've spent a few years at a desk job in an office building for a large company or an engineering firm. Some place where you're a desk jockey, either working at your computer or attending meetings all day long. It has a very unique set of frustrations. It's kind of like the way moms can get together and joke about things common in their daily lives, but if they told the same joke to a powerful business man, he wouldn't get it.
My day job is engineering technical support. It's not tech support like when grandma calls Dell because her PC is flaking out. The people who call me are engineers at other companies. All day long I debug, solve problems, and answer questions of extreme technical nature regarding our products. It's 90% email with some conference calls where needed. It is so Dilbert-esque. That's why I get his humor. I'll admit that the majority of America probably doesn't, but for those who do, it's spot on! You'd think he was spying on your company to get comic strip ideas.
Posted by: Scott at October 28, 2005 06:55 AM