Ok. I’m mad.

REALLY irritated.

Like it isn’t bad enough that it is a Monday? Ohhhh, NOOOOOOOOO. It’s got to go and be a PAYROLL Monday, as well. ANNNND the first business day of the month, which is busy as hell, anyway, no matter which day it falls on. So it’s like having “The Perfect Storm” in the office; everything lines up in just such a way that you’re screwed, no matter how well prepared you think you are for it.

Then there is that variable – we all have them; the wild card, the loose cannon. None other than your office PC. Mine HAS to be of the devil. Three of us in my office have these oddball computers provided to us from the contract company that oversees the Facility Services departments where I work. Everyone else in the free world has a normal machine from the IT department. We don’t. Every three years we get an upgrade. Every three years we display our naiveté when we talk amongst each other about how WONDERFUL the new PC’s simply MUST be. Every three years we each go home at the end of the week after the installations cursing our new nemesis.

At this point, however, I KNOW something has to give. When I switch from mail to calendars in Outlook, the whole program crashes, and for whatever reason, it wants to take the entire OS with it, which makes no sense to me, but what do I know? Two weeks ago we found out the replacements would be in during the week of the 26^th. In preparation, the three of us took ALL third party software off of these machines. You know…the browser you aren’t supposed to have but use anyway, because it isn’t nearly as craptastic as Internet Explorer, which is the facility’s browser from hell…errr…of choice, I mean. I am also missing Spotify, which is how I listen to the tons and tons of playlists I’ve compiled without having to drag an mp3 player in or whatnot. I also removed EVERY image manipulation program I had, so I REALLY feel hobbled.

And while I’m whining, I have to say that I miss the spell check functionality of Firefox, as well. I use Safari on the Mac in the studio which has a built in spell check, also, so I have gotten spoiled and lazy. In fact, I am typing this in Word and will paste the CORRECTLY spelled paragraphs into the blog from here.

To add further to my dissatisfaction, the new machines did not come in as scheduled. AND they tell me that they are going to be loaded with Windows 7. Do what? Did they not just come out with 8? We have been running on XP Professional for many years, and I am not sure how we skipped Vista (which is okay, really, as I have that on my laptop at the house, and it seems unstable to me). Can’t we simply return to Win98SE? Life was so much easier back then. Further, if you are THAT set on keeping up with the times and meeting productivity goals, just get three iMacs and call it good, ok?

Now then…

This blog was supposed to have totally different subject matter, but before I write the blog (which, btw, has been put together on my lunch and coffee breaks, which IS possible, because I DO type almost 100wpm, for the record) I usually try and find a nice accompanying picture. My new friend Liz Gray pointed me in the direction of feedfloyd.com and like an idiot, I signed up for my account from this machine, not the one at home. No picture today, boys and girls. The browser from hell says, “NOOOOO!” Google images are a struggle. Bing images just show up as those empty boxes with the little red “x” in them.

So, no picture, no original concept, which is ok…probably better saved for another time when I’m in a better mood ANYWAY. (Yes, there IS an implied snarl in the latter part of that sentence.)

So with that, I am going log off of my hobbled computer, and head toward the house, hopefully where I will have time to finish some images from Sandra’s that I’m working on AND start the next installment of this blog with the content originally scheduled for today.

Until Next Time…