Where is the World Going? PDF

OK.

You know I was thinking about this earlier – I’m going through this thing where I’m asking myself “What do I want to be…” When of course I'm already eyeball deep in what I am.

I have to then say “Well, where is the world going? What skills will I need in 40 years?” Because the reality of my life is in 40 years from now I will most likely be dead or still working. It’s the truth.

And as I’m contemplating these things in the recesses of my mind I get this e-mail (see below).

PDF Upload Process Team.

I mean? Is this the job of the future? Will they be as in demand as doctors? Will they need to be board certified for this job?

Show me your PDF upload response time. 72 hours?! FAIL. I mean - they give 48 hours? just to upload to PDF. Not 48 minutes, 48 hours. They should have 48 seconds.

On the other hand I’m guessing these poor, poor saps – like me maybe in the next 15 years – will be walking around with a resume that is useless.

- PDF Upload Process Team Lead

o Versed in opening e-mail systems

o Can receive and open e-mail attachments

o 100% PDF to Upload conversion rate

I just want to throw myself out a window. Maybe that’s a job of the future – throwing people out the window.

From: Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2010 3:10 PM
To:
Subject: Server reply

Dear Sender,

Thank you for your email which has been received by the PDF Upload Process Team.

This is an automatic response acknowledging your email. There is no need to reply.

Please note that this is only a technical mailbox for pdf invoices, other supplier queries will not be replied from this e-mail address, with those please contact your business partners or the relevant vendor communication channels. Please find the list of mailboxes in the bottom of the page.

We have received your invoice and it will be uploaded to our system within 48 Hours. This leadtime is only for uploading, your invoices were sent for further processing.

Bored Times: Old Post: Good Stuff

OK - let me preface this because you guys have the worst minds. I like to listen to music and while I do this sometimes I cruise Craigslist Missed Connections because I'm a romantic and I find it to be extremely amusing.
That said and moving on...

Next - You have to have seen the Family Guy episode I'm referencing and then maybe you'll find it funny...the one I'm talking about is where the aside is between two foreign guys.....wait, let me see if I can find it on youtube.....hold please....found it.

http://www.mediazine.net/view/family_guy_foreigner_english

Any how I see this ad (it reminds me of this episode)...and if its in any way serious; and for my own amusement it is, then the below is classically perfect.

10/5 evening we chatted on the 38 bus - m4w - 26 (downtown / civic / van ness)

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Reply to: pers-869459304@craigslist.org ^[?]
Date: 2008-10-06, 9:56PM PDT

Hey S. You are from East state. I'm from Southern Cali. I was wearing white pants and yellow shirts on the way back to my place from grocery shopping. You took off at Larkin. I just say bye but I missed timing ask you out for talk sometime. I just want to have a chance to talk with you. You seems to me real woman. E-mail me if you see this or I hope we meet again. I live at Post/Jones.

The Apartment Complex I: My Life is Filled with Murderers

More blast from my past...I used to live in the nuttiest apartment complex, without further ado:


I woke up this morning to what sounded like a bullet hitting my wall and them a steam train rolling though my home.
This was in fact my new radiator bleeder (so 1900s) busting it's little cap due to extreme pressure. Upon inspection I realize all is well, but maybe I'll need a new little cap. I thought I had stowed an extra one in the kitchen and when I went there to retrieve it I develop a severe case of soaky sock. I wade through what seems like 1/2 inch water to turn on the light to further illuminate what I knew, my kitchen is flooded. I thought, my radiator is the cause. These new bleeders are too powerful. And while it is spitting lots of water, it's not enough to cause this Noah like flood. Upon further inspection I see that from under my sink is where the water is leaking from. I clean up most of the mess and turn off every valve I see. Still, there is a slow and proven to be damaging leak occurring. I do what I did not want to do at 5am, I called the building manager, who answered quite chipperly on the 3rd ring. I tell him what I've done and he explains that I have to go into my neighbors apartment and shut off her valve, because this summer they tapped into it to give my apartment more water pressure. So, if I do no turn hers off mine will still leak. I was thinking, yeah, ok, i'll just wait until you come and do that. I mean, it's 530am, she'll think i'm a rapist scam artist, as they seem to frequent this building. But, when he asked, aren't you knockin? I say fuck it, my kitchen rug is ruined, I need to save the rest and I go do it.

I walk over, and knock. She has a little dog and it gets yappy mad. I hear her yelling at the dog. I hear her walk over and then lock the door ( it was unlocked?) before she retreats to the other room to call for her dog. "Bandit. Bandit ,come here! Come here!!" I continue with my gentle rapping but she never addresses me or the fact that someone is knocking on her door. She actually becomes silent as her dog continues to bark. I find this kind of odd. I'd at least shout "Hey F'er what do you want."
Instead I stand there staring at her door until I have to say, "Um, i'm sorry, it's your neighbor, from across the hall, I need your help...." and I start to explain to the door my plight. If she looked through the peep hole she would have seen me in scrub pants, disheveled hair, ET t-shirt.... She opens the door and I tell her the story quickly and then explain how I have to shut off her valve and she's all, "You don't have to go in my bathroom do you?" And I say "No, just under you kitchen sink." and I make the trek to her kitchen she doesn't bother to turn her lights on; Why won't turn she them on? even when I get to the kitchen i'm scrambling, until i have to ask, "the light?" This whole thing is so uncomfortable and I feel bad and now I'm thinking she has a dead someting in her bathroom. Her apartment is freakishly bare nothing anywhere. I do notice a lot of empty wine bottles and cases of budweiser 30 packs. Odd. When I entered her apartment her tv was on and from the glow it was casting I could see a pair of her underpants lying in the middle of her living room floor. I fussed with her valves (the ones under her sink) apologized lots and left.

So I go back to the phone with the bldg mgr/maintenance guy, he held the whole time. I tell him I've turned of the valves and it's still leaking. And then he starts to describe the valves under her sink, which look nothing like her. And I realize, he's describing my valves. I'm thinking aww, shyt, no, fool you are describing to me my valves and they are off and this is leaking. They tapped into my valves. He realizes it too, his mistake and says he'll be right over. So at 5:45 a.m. I hear a little rap at my door and this guy walks in with a big black satchel and of course I think in it is a saw and other torture devices which he'll use to dismember and dispose of me, probably in my neighbors tub; I think they have collaborated on this project. So for safety I grabbed my cell phone.

He fiddles with my valves and shows me that they are closed, as I had closed them and it's still leaking, brilliant. He asks, "do you have the tape?" And I say, "pipe fitting tape?" Because I do have this and I get this. And he says, "no the grey tape." Duck tape? He says yes, we will fix it with this. At this point water is soaked half way up my pjs, I'm holding sopping paper towels and my neighbor is a sociopath and we're going to fix this with duck tape?? I want to walk out and move to Kansas, simply because I just don't have that tape. After searching I find I have electrical tape, and this is acceptable to him, he won't saw me up and stuff me in a bag, because for now this works.

Fat Asians Don't Run

In my life I have had the fortune of coaching for a tremendous organization that values the health, positive self image, and productive group interactions of young children. I love coaching for this organization because all of the people are so committed to this ideal and the children are equally enthusiastic, or at least they usually are.

After a hiatus of two years due to scheduling I am back to coaching, the only thing that's changed is my geographic location. Whereas before I coached in Chicago, now I'm coaching in San Francisco and you'd think the change would be minimal; not so.

The main difference is I'm coaching for a school that has a predominantly Asian youth demographic. Again, while that doesn't seem different - something is different. Culturally I'm used to Midwestern kids of all races; working in Chicago schools provided a well balanced demographic of children.

The first day was full of excitement and anticipation. The school I'm partnered with has kids that participate in a variety of after school programs while they wait for their parents to leave their 9 to 5s and retrieve them. I understand that the school must face many challenges attempting to provide a variety of activities for a bunch of restless school kids who are forced to stay at school before they can go home. However, I would not expect one of those challenges to be asking them to stop studying to engage in physical activity. When I was a kid any excuse to get me out of doing homework short of but not totally excluding manual labor was a fair exchange. The first day of the program there were quite a few protests "Do we have to run? I'd rather be doing homework." Writing that seems more surreal than hearing it and I feel that it's a little too stereotypical; but it happened, it's true.

The second biggest, or smallest depending on how you look at it, cultural difference is size. These Asian kids are tiny and conversely many Midwestern kids are large, but I mean if there were toy versions of children as their are in dogs per se, than many of these kids would fall under the toy category. They are not unaware of their miniature statures or the larger frames of others. This was apparent the second day when to get to know each other we played a name association game, e.g. "My name is Martha and I like mints." Simple, friendly, fun? As we went around the circle many of the kids struggled to find a word to associate with their names but some found no problem finding words to associate with their teammates names. One particularly tiny kid next to me was particularly mean spirited, not caring to hear what others said or to participate. Going around the circle we came to a slightly larger kid, I would say semi unfit but no where near unhealthy or concerning in size. However her tiny teammate disagreed so when she shyly said "My name is Sami and I like Squids." her team mate turned to me and snickered "She means her name is Hammy." I said "That's not very nice" and that quieted her a bit. The next kid to participate was a friend to the tiny thorn and offered "My name is Emily and I Don't like Elephants." I said "Well, I guess that works, but why don't you like elephants?" She replied matter of fact, "Because elephants are fat and fat things are ugly." I was slightly taken aback but not super surprised. I wanted to say a variety of inappropriate things but realized I was talking to a school kid so said instead "Elephants are not fat. They are big and strong and many people hope to grow up big and strong."

I don't know if I'm big enough or strong enough to handle to the little attitudes but we'll see.

BoW Club - REAL Office Mystery

Facts:
i. I'm in a Beer of the Week Club
ii. I'm the only female in the BoW club
iii. Last night there was a 6 pack in the fridge for the 6 BoW club members; my contribution for this week.
iv. I'm OCD, I have odd neuroses, every minor and totally irrelevant detail of the minutia happenings in life I just happen to notice

Evidence: Exhibits A - E

Events:
Mid-Morning - I retreat to the ladies to relieve myself of my morning coffee
Mid-Morning Mid-Stream - While sitting there I notice on the TP dispenser a beer cap, and it looks oddly like a beer cap that belongs to one of the beer of the week club beers which is chilling in the fridge.
Mid Morning - A quick check to the fridge shows that out of 6 beers, 2 are missing.
Mid - Mid - Morning (my bladder is the size of a chick pea) I'm sitting in the bathroom and I notice Exhibit A.

I find it a little odd because (I use the same stall every time - is that odd?) it was not there earlier. So, I look closer and I find Exhibit B.

I think to myself, this is strange.
Lunch Time - I look in the fridge and to my surprise more beers are gone. I think, "Huh?" are my BoW club mates putting the beers in their bags for later? I again have to visit the ladies and on a hunch, and this is gross, I look at Exhibit C (for the gents this is a receptacle which can be found in most sanitary ladies stalls)

and upon looking inside (the gross part) discover Exhibit D.

Now I'm thinking - This is so bizarre, sad, funny? I also think this is a set up, someone has to be playing a joke as this is too strange to be true. I go back to the fridge and now there is only 1 beer left! That's it.
Post Lunch - My mind is piecing things together and I then wonder, wait...I see caps, but where are the empties, if this is a joke then most likely they're in the kitchen recyclable bin. However, as I go back to my desk it kind of hits me and I know I have to go back to the ladies to confirm.
I confront Exhibit E

and when I look inside my suspicion is confirmed with Exhibit F.

Now everything is pieced together; the where (ladies room stall), the general when (mid-morning to mid-afternoon), the general how (some lady had to be going to the kitchen and then directly into the bathroom and chugging - as the bathroom is pretty trafficked - a beer in the stall and tossing the empty in the garbage. Again, this is soo odd to me. I can't even begin to wonder the why. I think of the ladies that work in my office - that's the other thing, it's just our office on the floor and no one else is on our level, and I think, WHO? could be doing this. Is it a joke? Is this someone's kind of funny but also kind of sad reality. It's a Tuesday. We're at work. I start thinking maybe a lady thinks beer is the demon so she's sneaking in the stall dumping the beer down the toilet and then tossing the evidence. Maybe some lady is doing this on a bet a dare. It's almost all too much for me to contemplate.

Am I prude? I'm no saint and on a fleeting occasion or two I've had a beer at lunch in the height of summer and in the throws of a rare 2+ hour lunch outing. Still something about this the image in my head. A lady going into the kitchen, discretely and quickly stashing a cold beer in her skirt? her bra? dashing to the bathroom, not sipping but chugging? and then going to a meeting? Our office is pretty intimate, there were not many of us ladies today - 9 all in; desks are close, except for mine which is why I can't figure out the last part. I would think you could smell the beer so someone who sits near the suspect knows the last piece of my puzzle.

I'm not making any of this up. It's all true, I mean it's one of those it's too strange not to be true type scenarios.

Any how - that's all I have, I can't say any more about this.

FAX You.

Our health care system causes me concern for many reasons. One of the most alarming is the administration of the system by those in the trenches.
True story. I help administer our health care - our company uses a very large health care provider - which requests, prefers actually, that all correspondence concerning employee maintenance from the activation to deactivation of their plans be handled via fax. I have issues with the fax machine, the public openness of their placement in many offices, the speed at which they relay information, etc...
Recently I had to activate an employee's insurance. I did as requested, filled out 11 pages of paper work and stood patiently as I fed into the fax machine each page, waited for them to scan, and then submit/process. In return I was rewarded with a one line print out which read "OK" giving me the confidence that my fax and all it's precious information was in fact relayed and my employee could rest easy knowing they'd be insured.
A week later - via the USPS I received a typed letter saying my fax was missing one piece of information and I should re-fax not the one missing piece - but the entire document - because this is how things are done. I phoned immediately raising my concern but was assured this was the proper procedure and there was no alternative. I couldn't give the missing information via phone they needed a faxed, and then scanned record. During the call it was also revealed that only 6 of my 11 pages were received and my "OK" meant zip.
A little frustrated I did as told and again faxed all 11 pages and was rewarded with my one line confirmation "OK"
This time I decided to be proactive and phoned the representative the next day. I was told my fax was not received. Calmly but sternly I replied "But I have a fax confirmation that says it was relayed and to the number you gave me. It says "OK"." The representative told me that might be the case but I still needed to resubmit all 11 pages - I could mail them. However, I was told because of the time that had elapsed the employee would have to be enrolled in the next billing cycle which was not acceptable. I said I faxed the information timely and received not one but two "OKs" and the employee should not be punished for this exercise in archaic information transmission. I was told that I had to prove my faxes were indeed sent within the allowed time period. When I asked how I could possibly do this and expeditiously I was told "fax us the fax confirmation pages..."
Seriously health care administrators? Fax you.

My Walk To Work

Every day I walk to and from work. I usually take a similar route and I get up early so I can make a stop at they gym. Now - I have to be honest and say that San Francisco is truly filled with some of the craziest motherfuckers you'll ever meet. Sorry Aunt Deb - but sometimes the only way to really paint a mental picture of something is to pepper in some profanity. That aside they are a lot of wackos out here. I don't see a ton of homelessness except on my walk to work. They're all still sleeping all along the sidewalk and I literally have to step over them. I really need to take up biking and I'm working on it...I'll keep you posted.


I'm sorry I have to stop for just a moment and I have to put this in here, it ties into the profanity statement. I listen to music while, well, I listen while I do everything but I'm listening (again - sorry to you I keep mentioning them to) to this band I can't get enough of and they are a bit vulgar and profane and this song is kind of kitschy but I dig the beat...So 3OH!3...don't trust me.

Back to the story at hand. There are just a lot of crazy homeless people here. And I don't use the term crazy lightly - I think on the certifiable scale the crazy people you'll encounter here get their own scale. They have to go above and beyond to be abnormal. For example I was walking to work one day and when I approached an intersection that was near the city center there was a woman standing on the corner in a cat suit. It was a tiggeresque patterned dress and she was wearing matching ears. Parked next to her was a stroller atop of which were two sleeping cats - at least I hope they were sleeping my other theory is that they were dead or drugged. As people would pass by she would hold out a cup and meow. I wish I was joking but I'm not. My point is the effort this took. Either she was obsessing about this for quite some time or she woke up one day and said "I want to beg for money but I need a gimmick - I know I'm going to spend the day as a cat." And then she had to go to the craft store and get tiger patterned materials for her custom dress. She had to find a drug dealer to give her sedatives for her cats.
The story doesn't end there though. A couple of weeks later I was coming home from a day at the beach and this same woman was walking down my street dressed in a Christmas themed outfit. I saw her walking towards me and as I frantically fumbled for my keys and with the locks she approached (as I knew she would)and started to tell me about "And the pigs are eating the chickens and the chickens eat the rats and Jesus will save them all..." And all I could do was avoid eye contact while telling her "Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone..." That was a close call I was one second away from being recruited into her crazy holiday themed lifestyle. She took my two favorite holidays so I'd be stuck dressing up as a bunny and carrying around dead rabbits. I'll let you know how that goes.