Eye Contact

Well its’ Monday so it you know it was bound to be one of those days.  True to form… I slept terribly last night,  wound up being up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night, woke up late this morning as a result and my dog picked this morning to decide she needed to be retrained as to what bodily functions must be performed— knowing, of course, that I was short on time.

Rushing around I was quite surprised to find that I did not forget anything!  However, being late to the commuter lot I wound up having park in The Mysterious Beyond (see previous blog post).  This of course had the disadvantage of having to walk much farther before I could get to the bus stop.  That had the net effect of allowing me to miss my bus by a mere 47 seconds (that’s not an estimate).  Could I have caught the bus?  Sure if all of the stars were in alignment, etc. etc… Well OK if I were not suffering from some severe lower back pain, I would have broken into my O.J. Simpson sprint, hurdled the street and the bus and landed right in front of the door before the bus pulled off…. not a drop of sweat on me and my clothes in perfect condition; bowing briefly to the cheers of the onlooking commuters who all wished they could to that too.   But as I said the back is hurting so no laurels this morning.

So I wound up doing something that I have not yet had to do… In the interest of saving time and not having to wait another hour for the next Crystal City bus I got in the slug line on the way INTO work.  I was not sure where the Crystal City slug line for going into work was but, my bus stop was right next to the Pentagon slug-line and I could rid the Metro two stops from there.   My choice was a no-brainer!  I stepped into the slug-line (sounds like a Soul Train dance, doesn’t it) and did not have to wait long before I was able to hop into a vehicle.  <That was all just the intro now for the reason I’m making the post in the first place…>

I got in to a minivan with a lady driver.  Spanish music blaring.  The other Slug rider got in the front seat so the back seat was mine…. or so I thought.  Just to my right sat a little girl with her headphones on.  I was wondering what she was listening to.  Then she said in perfect Spanish (couldn’t have been older than 3 or 4) Mommy, my show.  Having taken Spanish for 7 years I sometimes don’t even realize that I had just made an automatic translation.  Of course if it is toward the end of the day as opposed to early on— forget it.   I guess I qualify to take English as a second language!  Anyway, Mom apologized (also in Spanish) and hit a button on the dash.  Talk about high tech!  A little screen folded down and there I was staring at Dora the Explorer.  I didn’t realize there was going to be “in flight entertainment.”

In the mean time the other person who was riding in the front seat and the driver began having a conversation in Spanish.  At first it started off casual, but then the front passenger decided that he was going to tell a joke… I understood part of it and then laughed when he said the punch line— not because I understood the whole thing, but because it was time to laugh.  They stopped laughing  to look at me.  At which point I stop  laughing because the driver has not slowed down any!  Lo and behold she remembered she was driving.  I think it had something to do with the car starting to swerve to the right– but what do I know.  The driver now starts talking to the passenger and says I think he can understand what we are saying.  Then WHILE STILL DRIVING AT 70 MILES PER HOUR turns to look at him for his reaction! 

SERIOUSLY?  Can the person operating the moving motor vehicle please keep their eyes on the road.  Eye contact is important, but now was not the time!   The passenger just shrugged, so I said, “Si, es muy verdad.” [Tranlastion:  Yes, that’s very true].   She turned to look at me again.  Then she said to me (in English) you understand Spanish?  Thankfully she did not keep looking at me to wait for my answer but turned her attention back to the road.  Well I couln’t resist, so instead of replying in English I said, “No, no hablo Espanol.  Hablo Ingles solamente.” [Translation: No I don’t speak Spanish.  I only speak English.”]  I love using that line.  But (and I know this is bad English) I shouldn’t have oughta done it. SHE TURNED AROUND AGAIN!  This time I think she actually sped up!  Perhaps the fact that I was turning white from fear made her turn back around again.  After all when a black guy turns white, you have figure SOMETHING must be wrong, right?

Well the driver and the front passenger continued to have an entire conversation about the fact that I could speak Spanish and how they are glad that they were not talking about me because it would have been quite embarrassing.  And YES, she kept taking her eyes off of the road to look at him for his response.  Then just to test me, I’m sure, she was talking to him about something that had to to with politics (I couldn’t follow it all) and in the middle of the conversation she threw in “Entiende que alli?” [Translation:  Do you understand that back there?]  Without missing a beat I replied.  “Entiendo que decirlo fuerte y claro” [Translation:  I understand you loud and clear.]  I could have just said, Si comprendo, but not knowing her I decided to reply in the formal since she asked in the formal.  I will not type her one word response/exclamation.  And, by the way, she did not bother to use the Spanish version.

And so it went the rest of the rest of the way except they pretty much ignored me now.  I was amused when the passenger up front asked in Spanish why they don’t just speak English since I could understand anyway.  The driver, TAKING HER EYES OFF THE ROAD AGAIN, said, in Spanish:  Does it matter?  We all giggled.  Then little Jr. (actually I think Jr. was a girl) wanted to open a bag of chips for breakfast.  Mom turned almost all the way around, while driving and took the chips, put them in a bag, pulled out a bag of dry cereal which I recognized to be Luck Charms (we sure needed those!), and handed them back to the child, turning around again, this time swerving as she did.  –I began to have my doubts as to whether or not we would make it to the Pentagon.  Then in an English/English exchange (what a concept) the kid said Mommy I want something to drink.  She actually did NOT turn around and said, “It’s in your cup holder.”  The kid seemed to be having some problems with this and so Mom finally DID have to turn around and this time took much too long trying trying to pry the cup out of the cup holder.  We stopped short of the car in front of us that had also stopped short of the car in front of them— and who knows how long that chain ran?  What a ride.  But hey the kid got her milk!  That was the goal right?

After that little incident we sat in bumper to bumper traffic for about 15 minutes with everyone else in Washington, D.C. who was trying to exit I-95 and make the left turn into the unsecured area of the Pentagon parking lot.  As I diembarked, surprisingly able to walk on what I thought I was going to be very wobbly legged, we had one last giggle to the commemorate the morning.   Without thinking I said in Spanish:  “Muchos gracias por el paseo” [Translation:  Thank you very much for the ride.]  (I was surprised I was remembering that much!)  She replied in perfect English:  “No problem thanks for riding.”  We both realized immediately what we had done and shared a laugh.  My only task now was to make it through the Pentagon Parking lot with my backpack and dressed in my bulky black coat, not to mention being black, and a million prying security eyes on me every step of the way without them thinking I was a security threat.  You know, me, the guy who is always the RANDOM check at the airport security when I fly!   Obviamente, esta vez lo hizo muy bien.   Uhhh, I mean Obviously–this time I made it just fine.

Looks Like We Made It!

SNOW!  Oh NO!!!!!!!!!

I was over helping a friend with their website and had stayed a lot longer than I was planning on (but they fed me lunch, so I can’t complain too much, right?).  We still had a good deal of stuff to cover, but it became increasingly obvious that it was not going to get covered today.  I’ll have to go back in a couple of weeks and do some more, but I’ll have more prep stuff done this time, in advance, before I go to, hopefully, make the learning curve easier.

I was just winding down (and it’s a good thing) when I looked outside and saw what looked like the blizzard of 2012!  Where there was absolutely no snow before, all of a sudden there was whale of a snow storm in full swing outside.   Not a big deal to a lot of people I know, but my only experience with driving in the snow has been very limited and it was with the snow already on the ground.  I thought people drove like maniacs then– WRONG!  Try putting flake or two– or two million– in the air and watch them go C-R-A-Z-Y! Literally!

So here I am, having been driving now for all of six and a half months (long story– take me out to dinner sometime and I’ll tell you all about it), and scared to death.  No not because of the snow– because of the other drivers.  My car seemed to be handling the roads pretty well and the stuff wasn’t freezing so I was doing OK in that respect.   Well there I was, GPS yelling at me to get in the right lane, and trying to avoid the guy who did not seem to be able stay in the left lane.  Honestly I think he was trying to drive in between  the snow flakes.  Good Luck with that!  The sooner I could get by him the better!  That was when I realized that I was  only scared half to  death.  So,  scared half to death (btw what happens if you get scared half to death twice?  Now there’s an imponderable!)  and wondering if I was going to make it home or be a statistic today.  Just then Barry Manilow decided he was going to give me little encouragement and started singing  “Looks Like We Made It.”  I bet you thought that was a song that dealt with recovery from past relationships.  Not today it wasn’t.  It was very timely too.  Not really wanting to take  a hand off the steering wheel (OK, I pried it off!) I reached over and hit the repeat button. Barry was going to encourage me all the way home… or however far I got!

 

 

The Highway was a joke with half of the folks driving way above the speed limit, half the folks driving below the speed limit and half the folks trying to figure out what the other two halves were doing and which one they wanted to belong to.  (Yes, I know that is three halves.  Its Vice Presidential mathematics– you had to be there.).   So anyway,  Barry was blaring away and I was just trying to stay out of people’s way.   I have a thing or two to say to the jerk in the blue 74 Chevy, but being a Christian I would do better to put those thoughts out of my mind.  The closer I got to home the less  I had to worry about.  I was outrunning the storm!  Now I didn’t feel so bad for having left the dog outside.  She wasn’t getting any snow!  But that doesn’t mean she’d be any less indignant.  I was right.

I didn’t realize that my fingers were so tightly glued to the steering wheel until I let go of the wheel to shift into park.  And sure enough, just as I had pulled into the driveway, good ol’ Barry (who had now sung the song about 5 times) was at the refrain and bellowing out:  LOOKS LIKE WE MADE IT!”

Yeah, Barry, you got that right.

I’ll Fix You!

You know its Friday when people just start acting plain weird for absolutely no reason at all!  OK So for some of its its Friday everyday, but for the majority of us… Its not an every day occurrence.  Today, admittedly, I was the weird one!  It all started quite innocently.  I went downstairs to the pantry at work to get Schweppes Ginger Ale and a piece of fruit to go with my lunch (beef, broccoli and garlic shrimp over fried rice).  Most of you don’t care what I had for lunch, but I just stuck that in there for my daughter who follows my blog—I see a comment coming now!. 🙂

Back to the ranch…. Having accomplished the task I came up to the double doors that lead to the lobby.  When you step on the sensor, the door is supposed to unlock automatically from this side.  From the other side you have to swipe your security card for access.  Well I stepped within the area that the sensor wash located and nothing happened.  I stepped back and stepped again.  Nothing happened.  I started tap dancing in the senor area.  Nothing happened but the 3 people behind me were quite amused.  I tugged on the door (still locked) a couple of times and guess what happened!  NOTHING!  Well since the piece of fruit I got to go with my lunch was a banana, I took aim and fired… making the mock gun shot sounds of course.  Blew that bad boy away!  I had that door hanging off ot its hinge.  Yeah, you don’t mess with me!  Especially on a Friday!

OK, truth be told… Everybody was quite entertained by my antics.  Not my intention actually, I was really quite frustrated with the stupid door!  The Chief of building maintenance was there and he got my attention and pointed to the wall.  There a button that lights up that you can push to trigger the lock when the automatic mechnism fails.  I knew that!  Well at least I’d seen it used before, I just never had to use it.  So I holstered my banana, pushed the button and we were all overjoyed to hear the tell-tale click of the lock mechanism opening.  Gently pulling the door I swaggered into the elevator bay with my “Go Ahead, Make My Day” look on my face and my hand close by my side ready to draw my banana if necessary.  When I sawy that there would be no problems I pushed the up button an immediately one of the elevators responded by opening its door.  It probably heard about my last encouter and did not want to face the wrath of my banana!  After all of that do I even need a Friday Funny post?   I’ll think about it.

Friday’s Funnies (February 3, 2012)

Friday’s Funnies

This will, likely be my weekly header for my Friday’s Funnies posts.

I wasn’t even going to make a blog post today, but I have been inspired.  Got the idea, actually, from a co-worker last week.  It was indirect and quite by accident.

One of my co-workers and I tend to have breakfast together because we are the first two in the office.  I am sometimes amazed at the things that he does that are natural to him but so odd, awkward or backwards to me.  For instance when he says yes and is in agreement with something, he turns his head to the left and right repeatedly while doing so.  Totally confusing to just about anyone currently reading this because we use that particular gesture with our head in conjunction with the word NO.  Conversely, when he says no or disagrees with something, he says no but nods his up and down— our equivalent to the word YES.  At one point, one of our supervisors would ask him a question but turn away when he answered so that he could just take in the words (I guess that would be “audio only” mode) and not be confused by the (in our opinions) contradictory gesture.  We had some very interesting meetings!

 

The other day he did something that (in my opinion) outdoes the contradictory gestures by leaps and bounds.  It is something that would be so simple to you and I— literally a no brainer, but his justification (hold on to you seats now…   Pause for dramatic effect here… OK) actually made sense to me!  Our company has an employee pantry in which they supply a wide variety of snacks, fruit,  coffee, tea, hot chocolate, milk and an assortment of  breakfast cereals around the clock.  My friend Mellanie is the supervisor and keeps us well stocked. (That has nothing really to do with the post, just wanted to put in some kudos for Mellanie since she and the other staffers do such a great job.)  My Co-worker and I went down for breakfast, as we do on many mornings.  We got our cereal and banana (and I got my coffee.  He gets warm just before we leave.) and sat at one of the far tables.  Same routine and we’ve been doing it for a few months now.  This, however was the first time that I noticed how he peels his banana.  He had peeled it from the bottom!  Not from what WE would consider the top.  I had to ask why and he explained that where he was from (India), they normally cut of the stem at the top and that makes the banana easier to peel.  However, here in the U.S.A. we don’t do that and it is much easier to peel the banana from the bottom.  I understand it but I can’t do it!

Of course, I had to pull out my cell phone and photograph his banana.  At the same time, I was now ready to eat mine and could not resist also getting a picture or a banana peeled (I want  to say the right way, but I’m going to say) the way I am used to peeling for my 49 years of peeling and consumption.  I threatened to make a blog post that very day, but, as often happens at work, events took over and there was not time for personal things such as that.  So the Blog Post got put on the back burner until it surfaced today.  Not really much more I can say about it now.  Just wanted to get it out there!  And, just because this corny line just came to mind… I think that the way we peel bananas is certainly more a-peel-ing. <GROAN>

Upload, Download and Install

Being a bonafide geek, one of my pet peeves is when people use the terms Upload, Download, and Install interchangeably.  THEY ARE NOT THE SAME!  And to make matters even worse, I am often helping people over the telephone (many times relatives) and they will say, in the same breath, that they downloaded a program from the internet and then downloaded the program to their hard drive. 

Can you say CONFUSED?

Let’s just think about this logically for a min(there I go thinking again!)

When they downloaded the program from the internet, exactly where did they download it to?  Because if you follow their conversation, it obviously had not been downloaded to the hard drive yet.  Oh I know!!!!!  These folks have been using cloud computing before it even existed.  Silly me, why didn’t I think of that before….  I better back off there, because  I can see people now (one relative in particular) throwing a computer out of their window in hopes that it will rise and that cloud computing will be accomplished.

Well, Back to the ranch… (a saying that my College English 101 professor was fond of saying because he always got off track…. by always I mean every other sentence)… So now that they have downloaded from the internet, the program— wherever it is— can be invoked some how so that it can be downloaded (again?) to the hard drive.   But wait!  We have to remember the contingent of people who do their installations from portable media like flash drives and CDs/DVDs.  Why those folks are at least smart enough not to be downloading again.  But what drives me crazy is that those folks say that they upload things to their comptuers!  I am commonly obligated to ask a user what is the last thing or last few things that they installed on the computer.  Too many times I am greeted with the question that I absolutely hate hearing:  “What’s that?” or “What do you mean by install?”  And once I answer the question I then get answered with “Oh, the last thing I uploaded” or “the last thing I downloaded” was…  I have to stop and think… Did I even mention upload or download?  NO, I most definitely did not.

I guess the truly sad thing about the whole thing is that many of these folks have learned what, I guess, they perceive as the new catchphrase and they think they are actually sounding more intelligent and computer literate in using the “proper” terminology.  If only they knew how improper their proper terrminology was.  And sometimes you’re in a stiuation where you just don’t have the heart to tell them or it would be politically incorrect to point out the error of they ways… uh words.  It makes my skin crawl almost as much as scratching your nails across a blackboard.   UNGH!  OK, not quite that much.

So in my first installment of Computer terminology 101 we shall define these three terms. 

All definitions can be found at the Merriam Webster website:

SIDE NOTE:  Can someone please tell why Webster has to have 3 definition types?  You can lookup a word and get A) the straight dictionary definitions,     B)  “English Learner’s” definition or  C) you can can go one stop further and get the word defined for kids!  WHY AREN’T THEY THE SAME??????  Is it any wonder why people get so confused about the English language?  Its because it hasn’t yet been fully developed apparently.  A work in progress…. Yet it is the major language in 160 of the 195 countries in existence as of this writing– scary!

UPLOAD:  to transfer (as data or files) from a smaller computer to the memory of another device (as a larger or remote computer

Now I’m not even looking at you and I can see that look on your face that says “Well DUH!  What’s the difference?”

DOWNLOAD: An act or  instance of downloading something. LOL!  Sorry I couldn’t resist.  I saw that definition and just had to include it… But what we really want here is:  to transfer (as data or files) from a usually large computer to the memory of another device (as a smaller computer).

I see that “Well DUH” look again… Just note that the process of Uploading and Downloading is just transferring files and does not include any type of preparation or processing!  And, even still Uploading and Downloading are NOT interchangeable because the usage depends on the size of the computers or networks you are transferring from/to.  So Uploading and Downloading are exact opposites!   Now check out the definition for install.

INSTALL: To MAKE READY TO BE USED (my emphasis) in a certain place.— If you know how windows works (most people don’t) that takes a whole lot more than just copying or transferring files.  In many cases configuration files need be setup and then modified for you individual setup.  In almost all cases information has to added in very specific places within the windows registry so that windows knows what to do with the program when it is running!  No, the Windows registry is not new, it has been in existence since the inception of Windows, its just that back Windows 1.x 2.x and 3.x days the registry never got a lot of press time or exposure. In fact it was just beginning to come out of its shell with Windows 3.1

So I said all of that just to end up exactly where I started…. Upload, Download and Install are three different  terms that have three different meanings.  Now that I got that off of my chest I think I’ll pull up a game and relax.  After all I should be able to play it now that has been dowloaded, right?