Dear So-and-So, Frantic Friday Edition

Dear World of Work,

You do realize that if you set all of the deadlines for the same week, even if everything does miraculously get done it will not get done well or with the care it normally would have been given, right? And oh yes you can take your Friday close-of-business deadlines and put them somewhere that the sun doesn’t shine, I am not going to bust my gut to give you something that will sit on your desk in an empty office over the weekend. You’ll have it all by Monday morning. And yes I am writing dear so-and-so letters instead of finishing another incremental paper shuffle and I’m aware that I’m doing it.

Never one for arbitrary-ness, especially in paperwork, NFAH

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Dear Subconscious,

May I express my displeasure at your having invented a new recurring anxiety dream this week? I already had the whole ‘airport going to miss my plane’ thing and the whole ‘flying-heights-falling’ thing but now the ‘show up to give a lecture/performance/recital unprepared’ thing too? I really did not need this (although interesting how clearly it reflects the current state of things…)

Needs less dreams, more sleep, NFAH

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Dear British Schools,

As usual, I find there to be something deeply interesting about the way you react to things–in this case, banning Valentine’s cards to avoid students having hard feelings. As several bloggers in America have noted recently (this from CalifLorna being but an example) the American reaction is to encourage the students to give something to everyone in the class, not to ban the holiday altogether. I think I prefer the inclusive latter solution, although it wouldn’t make for as exciting a headline.

Hearts and cards and chocolates for all, NFAH

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Dear Microsoft,

You won this round, I had to break down and buy Office for my laptop after a series of misadventures with Open Office, involving the dropping of greek letters and the refusal to properly pdf anything that had the characters “fi” next to each other in a Times New Roman font. The nice manager in the Apple store disappointedly knew nothing about how to use equations in iWork Pages and playing around made it look like a no-go at least in terms of a short learning curve.

Someday I’ll be able to quit you, but unfortunately so far that day has not arrived, NFAH

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Dear Grandma,

It was so good to talk to you this week and to be able to wish you a Happy 93rd birthday! And I’m sure you’ll forgive me for not confessing that I very nearly forgot, and was saved by someone at work making an offhand comment about elderly parents which then got me saying I have a ninety–whoa Grandmother whose birthday is today eek better remember to call her! And no matter how much you try to tell me that you’re not the adventurous type and don’t know how I can live abroad, I will continue to refuse to believe you on the grounds of that whole fantastic 1939 World’s Fair adventure plus that whole bus to the west coast adventure–your 20s were pretty adventurous even by modern standards.

All my love from England, NFAH

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Dear Bloggy Friends,

If I’m quiet for a few days, both here and on your blogs, understand it’s because my sister will be here and real people trump people in the computer.

I’ll be back, NFAH

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Never easy: cell phone edition

I was abroad twice last week, Belgium with my sis and Switzerland for work. Both times I experienced serious mobile phone failure, which is silly since I have been the most ridiculous mobile consumer: one US phone (on monthly contract), one UK phone (on pay as you go) and one UK smartphone (on work contract). I decided this was all silly and that I needed to consolidate. The simple truth is that enough trips to interesting places had led me to believe that I needed at least two mobile phones to guarantee that one would work wherever I was. My UK pay-as-you-go phone had not worked in Singapore and I was roaming on my US phone. My work Blackberry had miraculously shut off its reception in Belgium and I was roaming on my UK pay-as-you-go phone. I was tired of having so many digits and so many options. So I broke down yesterday and assumed a full Mac-geek status by buying an iPhone. The thing is not yet fully functional for many reasons: I am trying to get my UK pay-as-you-go number transferred, and I assume this will take more time. So far the “activation” process has been hampered by (1) my living in the UK less than 3 years, requiring me to pay a £200 deposit to get the thing, and (2) some snafu at O2 that I still don’t get but when I stopped by there this morning, they were much aware of, compounded by (3) Barclaycard’s fraud department getting suspicious that I had charged both a £200 deposit and £99 for the phone in the same day. After two times dealing with Barclaycard, including realizing that for some strange reason they had my birthday “in their system” off by two full years, the phone went live about noon today, but the number is random and not the one that I had so handily put in the PAC code transfer request for. I had yet another call from their Fraud department today, at which point I just pretended that my birth month and year were what I had been told was erroneously in the system. It’s all a mystery to me. Hopefully soon the new phone will be active, and I–as a 2.5 year resident in the UK–will finally close the door on my US cell phone account, which I have kept to this point in the case that I would wind up there again and wish for the number. Perhaps I’m settling in in the UK after all.

Genius

Anyone who knows me will have seen my conversion from a normal human to a Mac Person a few years ago; it was when I was at MIT for a few weeks in 2005 with my Sony Vaio that I discovered exactly how bad my windows machine was doing in terms of combatting intrusion hacks. I bought a Mac laptop when the Vaio started having more premature electrical problems (that machine was adorable but a headache from start to finish–shortest time I’ve had a laptop in my life, although a bad Dell was a close second) and now I run a fully Mac life–computers sync’ed with iPods and the mysterious “cloud” — except the phone. I still have a Blackberry although I love my iPod touch. Regardless, I knew that when I started with the Mac stuff I was unusual, this was the age of the iPod and I got the new laptop as a convert long before I got an iPod. But now I’ve had four, two of which are in the rotation these days. I love having the option to get instant gratification by legally downloading a CD that sounds interesting. And I’m on my second laptop and contemplating a new machine in the office. But today was one of those days where even after years of Mac-ness, I was stunned into silence. My favorite new game: pick the song that matches your mood, and click the new iTunes “genius” playlist button. I could spend hours examining the reasons why the Genius picks songs–it’s not genre, clearly, as in any one genius playlist it’s pretty random. The same artist can show up with a song on several different and seemingy unrelated lists. It’s like hours of entertainment for the geek insomniac set (me). The strange thing is that somehow it works–the mood I’ve been going for has so far been captured every single time. I’m dumbfounded. I used to listen to the same song over and over when in a particular mood, and did not realize that I had several more where that came from! But now I must run, I’m desperate to see what Genius thinks of the Dresden Dolls…