Posted: Jan 22, 2000
I was a monument to efficiency today.
My stereo switched itself on to CBC Radio Two at exactly 8:50 AM this morning and roused me from my slumber. Random quantum fluctuations set my brain in motion, neurons fired, and I grasped around wildly for the remote. Thump thump. Grasp. I turned down the volume; didn't want to wake anybody up with my noisy radio. So I woke up at around 10:30 AM this morning and went through my fascinating routine of planning my day.
First, ummm, um, get some clothes on. First things first in the morning. Plod plod, dress dress. Thump thump. Next! Umm. Next. I'm hungry. Food.
Can't remember what I ate, but I did eat a banana.
And then I did something else, can't quite remember what, maybe showered, maybe read a book. That might have been yesterday tho. The big event of the day was to be the handing in of a Very Important Paper for a software engineering class. My Macintosh, powered up with WordPerfect, did a masterful job of it and I thought it looked quite good. Now to e-mail it to a friend with a printer. Yes, that's right, all this impressive circuitry and no printer. A UNIVERSITY STUDENT without a printer. That's something you never see nowadays. So I e-mailed a wordperfect file and took the bus to a staff meeting at the student paper I work at which was apparently vitally important, but was really very boring. After that was done, I jetted over to the computer lab to print out my file. Doh. The file was binhexed and I couldn't unbinhex it. Why? I'd set up Eudora to send attachments in BinHex. Anyone who knows a whit about Eudora knows that this is best if you're communicating between Macintoshes, of which there are none at the commie pinko IBM whorehouse of a computer lab at the U of O. So, using my awesome powers of reasoning, I killed an hour or so searching the web for cool stuff to kill an hour with, and then decided to go home and re-send the file. A half-hour later I'm at home. I re-send the file and then realize I'll be too late to print it out if i take the bus. But I don't have a car and biking won't help. So I take the bus back. Out of breath I arrive once again. The TAs haven't picked up the papers yet -- I'm saved. not. The Wordperfect file is corrupted, so I can't print it. I open the text version. It's ugly, but it'll do. I send it to the pay-per-page laser printer. I end up paying about fifty cents printing a bunch of copies of some guy's resume. I cuss at the printer and try to print it out on another printer. Finally I open the file in fscking notepad and it prints on the dot-matrix line printer. I hand it in and it looks like a cross between TTY line noise and a newsletter from the local conspiracy freak who only owns a typewriter. I feel deep, deep, shame.
Then it's off to another meeting and I whirl about dumbfounded, pondering how much crappier the day can become. The meeting is quiet and uneventful, but I got some grapefruit juice out of it. And caramel. So then it's off to a potluck at some person's house, but i have to pick up some samosas because the day's insane whirling had left me with nothing to bring. Samosas are bought and I congratulate the girl behind the counter at the downtown Herb & Spice for having lower prices than the store in my own neighbourhood. She smiles and says it's probably because they sell better here.
Indian snacks purchased, I wait for the car again and we speed off into gridlock. Fun fun as we wait interminably in post-rush hour traffic. The driver, a punctuality freak, is on the verge of insanity and a lot of effort is made to prevent her from leaving the car and beating her head on the road. We manage to wriggle onto a side street, which was pretty useless because the KFC we were going to next was on the main road. Much bungling afterward, the traffic clears up and we arrive at the potluck, late as all get-out. Sigh.
The food was good, especially the desserts. The people were pleasant. But the entertainment was sorely lacking -- at least, for such a one as I, who abhors TV, especially prime-time TV. I now fully remember why I no longer watch TV. The music videos are all T&A. The game shows are all hokey quiz shows with "thump thump" noises in the background. The sports are only interesting in a pub. And Showcase is...well, Showcase. Nobody likes nature documentaries anymore, it seems.
So ECW, Top 40 Hits, Greed, and Oz it is, until someone decides to put on a movie. I respectfully bow out after a cup of tea to close the evening, as "Class Act" fills the screen. Don't get me wrong -- I love the people that were there. It just wasn't the right kind of party for me. I set out into the cold of the night. Cold enough that my hair froze into separate locks if I left it uncovered. It took me half an hour to get home.
Efficiency is dead, Long live efficiency.
D.