fuck this job.com

Isn't it fun when someone you've never seen before stops by to let you know how many things you've been doing wrong for years, and furthermore, how to do them? Well, if you're anything like the majority of the teachers that I deal with every day as a school's tech monkey, then you might as well go ahead and brace yourself for the happies, because I'm that someone.

Dear teachers: this is going to blow your mind, but it turns out that "broken" is not a standard volume setting on your computer's speakers. Further, simply cranking the volume knob on said apparati will not circumvent the issue known as "broken" in any measurable way, which is something that you probably should have figured out somewhere between number "six" and number "four hundred thousand" in your exploration of the various levels of inner-ear lethality proferred by that devilish plastic dial.

Yes, my calm and my eardrums were shattered once more than I'd care to admit before I made it a habit of checking that the control was set to a reasonable volume before resolving the problem.

Here's something else you might not know: "These things just have a mind of their own" is not an acceptible excuse for willful ignorance of all the carefully worded, extremely clear instructions provided to you by our networking system, even if you cap the sentiment off with a resigned sigh. If you're told that you need to change your password and that you'll only be allowed five more logins with your current password, then you should probably go ahead and change your password instead of allowing your account to become locked on that laborious sixth attempt. No, your computer does not have a mind of its own. That's something the two of you seem to have in common.

Also, I'd prefer that you never open any sentence with the phrase, "Hey, I have this computer at home...." unless you're going to finish it off with "and I am going to give it to you." Knowing a dentist does not mean free cleanings. Knowing a lawyer does not mean free representation. Knowing me, therefore, does not mean that you get free computer service unless you happen to have a closer relationship with me than "hey, your name's Dave, right?" And no, my name is not Dave. The only professionals who give free housecalls are murderers, and may you have great luck securing that appointment.

Sometimes I miss the simple, wholesome stupid I came to love in my days as a cashier. Maybe it's because everyone who came to the store brought his or her own personal stupid (A veritable I-wish-you-had-never-been-born-ucopia, if you will whether you will or won't) rather than sharing a singular community stupid wherein all of the perpetrators do and say the very same stupid shit. There was a time - early in my blogging career here -- when I'd get a sort of a base thrill every time a customer would do something stupid. I would look into those beady eyes and think, "you just got your own paragraph, fucker." These days, it's hard to keep from just sitting down, burying my face in my hands and marinating in the horrible realization that these people are educators.

So yes, this blog entry is from out of the blue. It has simply been that sort of week. I've noticed that the physicality of my workload seems to be directly proportional to exactly how terrible I feel on any given day. One day this week, there happened to be a tiny army practicing flipkicks in my guts, so naturally that's the day that a shitload of computer equipment - having been in a particular place for months - spontaneously developed a need to be somewhere else, and it evidently communicated this desire through some spiritual bond with the person who asked me to carry out that wish... 'cause I didn't hear those things say shit.