It Only Hurts When I Blog

Greetings, Blog Hoi Polloi!

Day 60 and Bloggin' Along!

I had to grab 'Hoi Polloi' from a thesaurus - it means 'the masses'.

Uh, didn't the thesaurus become extinct with the rest of the dinosaurs (and the Cobol programmers)?

No, Karen, you would have had to put that in yesterday's blonde moment blog.

Maybe my blog is growing ever closer to extinction and I don't even know it!

Speaking of yesterday - I didn't remind you that yesterday was my second month anniversary of Working Independence Day! Is that like - dude, whassup WID you? Yes, month two has come and gone, my many minutes of liberated happiness leaving a trail of happy-dust in the universe.

I went to the company credit union yesterday to deposit my unemployment check and the security guard said to me 'I've never seen you look so happy'. Well, I AM happy! But eventually I'm going to need payola, unless my blog-audience sets up an annuity for me.

I guess I could start pan-handling in downtown Nashville (My sign would say 'will blog for food') or sell treasure maps on ebay.

Hey, that's an idea! Instead of giving away stuff I don't want to Goodwill, I'll bury it somewhere in capsules.

Then I can sell pirate-style treasure maps on waxed and ironed grocery bags (that gives them a batik old-paper effect if you've never been in Girl Scouts or Camp) to willing and eager Gen-X'ers, complete with GPS coordinates for the more modern tekkie folk.

So, Karen, is today's blog going to be filled with bad jokes and random ideas? I dunno, it's just how I started out!

This morning, Charlie got out of the shower and came back into the bedroom to find me completely hidden under the blankets. I said 'Look, I'm lumpage'. He laughed, so that started off my morning of bad jokes.

I'm sitting here drinking my power-blogger-juice (coffee) and thinking 'SIXTY blog entries sounds like a lot'. Is there a blogger-AARP that I am now eligible for? They could send me a magazine chock-full of advertisements, along with a very occasional idea, and some recipes. They could have photos of bloggers who were popular when they were younger, and now have become 'mature and accepting' of their blog-ulinity. All this, for the low price of 10 dollars a year. But wait! There's more!

Ok, enough of that subject.

Here's a blogger juice story...

My very first computer job (the one I started on April Fools Day of 1982) was working for a company run by a single individual. No committees, no boards. A tyrant. This man had not heard of 'sensitivity training'. When he was ready for coffee - he stuck his arm out of his office with the empty cup on his fingers. If you were the unlucky soul who was walking by, it was YOUR turn to go get him some coffee. End of discussion.

I had the nerve (or the idiocy) to disagree with him about something. He turned several shades of pink and hollered 'You will do what I say!' I said 'Yes, I will do what you say, but I need to tell you I disagree'. He looked at me and hollered 'You will do what I say!' I repeated 'Yes, I will do what you say but I disagree'. Repeat this scenario a few times, and yes, I did what he said, and yes, I disagreed.

This man had an interesting method of sending people on travel to Washington. He would not provide a hotel for us - we had to stay AT HIS MOTHERS HOUSE. Good grief.

Well, it's getting late so I'd better send this out to the masses, and add more later if I feel like it.

Have a nice Friday and Weekend, everyone!

Update at 8:17am.

Since it appears I have sparked interest in the above job I held in 1982, I'll tell a few more stories about 'the tyrant'.

Whatever services he needed, he would start his own company to service the need. This separate but related arm would be led by a family member. He needed to travel, so he had his own travel agency. He needed publications and printing, he had his own people to do that. He wanted to advertise, he developed and printed magazines.

The secretary kept a huge stack of BLANK business cards. Whatever role you were playing for whatever contract you were working on, the secretary would type your name and your position on the card. I had several - developer, analyst, operator, technical writer, procurement - whatever fit the bill.

Some of the equipment was really old and worked sporadically.

If you were needed overnight to keep things running, you worked overnight. Sometimes people would work all weekend long. See the picture on the left of the disk drive? The older ones would have trouble 'spinning up'. We'd have to reach in sometimes and start it going with our hand like it was an old dryer tub.

'Mrs. Tyrant' got REALLY mad at her husband one day and got revenge. She took it out on his wallet by ramming his new Mercedes into one of his buildings. It was talked about for years.

The landscapers and maintenance crew at his OFFICES also had to go work on his HOME (which I believe is a business no-no for tax reasons). They would come back with stories about finding chicken bones in the pool and other such curiosities.

By the way - he was eventually banned from doing business with the government (his meal ticket), and the company closed.