I get to go on a field trip today!

My first field trip at camp EVER!

I’m excited…because for half a day, I’m not going to be holed up in the school.

I have no idea where we’re going, but I’m sure it’ll be all educational or whatever.  And stuff.

I’m back! I think…

Well!

I get back from Vegas only to find out that while I was gone, a comedy of errors took place.

First, a lightening storm obliterated both the modem and the wireless router.  Then, my car’s Check Engine light came on.  Shortly thereafter, my dad’s car overheated.  Then a man who was supposed to fix the washing machine broke a copper pipe and nearly flooded the basement.  To dry the place out, my parents tried to use the dehumidifier, which instantly broke.

On the Internet front, the entire day I’ve been back has been spent trying to fix it.  It worked in the morning (apparently) but broke as soon as I tried to use it.  I managed to help fix it, but the signal wasn’t strong enough to reach my room, so we had to get another range extender (we had one, but it was of course incompatible with the security placed on the new router) in order to broadcast the signal into my room.

AND I have to go back to work tomorrow.  DO NOT WANT.

I don’t know when I’ll be able to check up on stuff.

On a positive note, Vegas was awesome.  I loved every minute.  Took some great photos and had some great times, so I’ll hopefully share all of those soon.

Oh, and I’ve picked out my new phone. 😉

Tomorrow’s a ‘Celebration.’ Maybe

Been busy recently with work and haven’t had time to update anything.  Plus, all I want to do when I get home is precisely nothing.

However, tomorrow is the Bank Formerly Known As Commercial Federal’s “Celebrates America” concert in Omaha, which is free to the public.  This year’s headliner is Kool & the Gang, which is very exciting.  Also, .38 Special will be there.  Previous years have featured KC & the Sunshine Band, The Village People, The Pointer Sisters, The Supremes, and others.  It usually draws 50,000 or more people.

The sucky thing is that due to cruddy weather, the entire thing may be postponed. We’ll see.

The non-sucky thing is that regardless of weather, next week is my week off and I’m EXCITED.  Again, I plan to do precisely nothing.

Sleepy, sleepy, sleepy

This was a tough week of work.  Each day was at least 10 hours with Thursday clocking in at 12.  So I treated myself to some awesome video games—the Lego Star Wars and Indiana Jones games, recommended by many 10-year-olds. 😛  But seriously, I played them, and they’re both excellent.

The grandparents are also over so I’ll be spending time when them.  I’ll get into normalcy soon enough, I hope.

Parents’ Night is for suckers!! Oh, wait

As a camp counselor and not a teacher, we don’t need to attend Parnets’ Parents’ Night, which is an extra two hours of time with the kids—and their parents!

Well, tomorrow, I’m staying and filling in for a teacher in exchange for her doing my “after care” session Friday, which is like a daycare for the kids who have parents who aren’t responsible enough to pick them up at 4:00.

I’m going to need a doubleshot espresso on ice from Starbucks.

Can’t…move…brain…shutting down

Work today was excruciating.  I was in a Lego Robotics class all week, which culminates in an inventory of all the tiny friggin’ Lego pieces, of which there are thousands.  I didn’t get off work until 5:30.  And I haven’t been able to sit down at all today (not uncommon) so I can barely stand.

The only way to relieve this feeling is pool together the $450 I make per week (six weeks this year, plus the seven last year I stashed in the bank) and buy some phones at the end of the year. 😛

The pay totally makes up for the lack of sleep and the acheiness.

Can’t take it no more

I don’t think I can take the humidity.  After two weeks in a climate with 0% humidity and then coming home to a climate with 500% humidity, I don’t think I’m going to make it next week when I have to be outside for lunch duty at the summer camp.

Bleeerrgh

I just got done with four hours of CPR training and stuff for my summer job.

As boring as it was, it had its moments of hilarity, especially during the movies, which featured clearly under-competent actors attempting to be way too dramatic given the fact (a) there is no emergency, (b) they’re doing CPR on a dummy, and (c) they’re the only ones in the room.

So you get:

“Don’t worry, I’m CPR-certified! You!! Dial 9-1-1!”

And:

“The AED is charging! Stand clear!!”

Of course, during this, the “actors” are doing various hand gestures to illustrate “stand clear” and what not, so the end result is that they look and sound like Power Rangers.

It was a good night.

For the deaf

There’s a guy in the computer lab just now who answered his cell phone. This is the conversation:

“Hello? What? Yes. No. I’m in the computer lab. Yes? No! Uh-huh. I don’t know. Maybe? You should—I said, you should—huh? No! I mean, yes! YES! OK! I’ll talk to you later.”

Bored, bored, bored

Finals are this week.  Though they coincide with normal class time for the most part, I only have one per day (two on Tuesday) but I still have to work.  So I have loooooooong periods of waiting around doing nothing because it’s inefficient and silly to go back home for three or four hours.

So I’m stuck here.  I guess I’ll blog until my eyes bleed open.  Or I could study….nawwww.

Just make it stop thinking

I don’t have too many entertaining work-related stories because I no longer pull the midnight shift, which is when the socially awkward people appear in droves.

However recently, I had someone all in a tizzy as me if I would be able to make computer “stop thinking.”

Whaaaa?

I kind of knew what she meant; she was complaining that the CPU was being overtaxed and was freezing up, but it entertained me nonetheless.

I playfully suggested that she kick the computer, as the only way to forcibly stop a computer from “thinking” is to damage it.

Hopefully, she knew I was kidding.

The unanswerable question

I just had a lady in the computer lab ask me “How many pieces of paper can you three-hole-punch at a time?”

To which I answered: “If I tell you that, you’ll have to tell me how many licks it takes to get the the center of a Tootsie Pop.”

More tales from the crypt

Another short computer lab story.

I just had some guy in here with a question. An assignment had appeared on his online grade list and it hadn’t been graded. He wanted to know what the assignment was. I looked at the left hand column where the title is, and told him it said, “Report: Who Am I?”

That wasn’t good enough. He wanted to know what the assignment was. He wanted to know when it was due, what material it covered, how many pages, yadda yadda yadda.

I don’t take your friggin’ class, dude. I don’t know.

After I told him I didn’t know, he left with a, “Thanks anyway,” as if I had failed at my duties for not being able to read his professor’s mind.

Rabid English major

I work in the computer labs at school. Ten minutes before I’m supposed to get off on Wednesday, I get a call from my boss who said the printer in the 24-hour lab in the student center was not working properly. They fixed it, they thought, but needed someone to print something to make sure.

I walk to the 24-hour lab, which is just three computers and a printer. All three computers are being used. I ask the lady on the computer closest to me:

Me: I work for ITS, and the printer in here wasn’t working properly. I’d like to see if it’s functioning again. Would you mind if I go into Word quickly and type in some gobbledygook and see if it prints?

Lady: What did you say?

Me (thinking the lady was offended or didn’t understand): The printer is printing error pages instead of what is supposed to be printed, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to go into Word and type some random gibberish to see if it works now.

Lady: No, what was that word you used?

Me: Gobbledygook?

Lady: Yes, that. Is that a real word?

Me: I-I don’t know. I think it is. And if it isn’t, it’s slang, so it’s in the dictionary either way.

Lady: How do you spell it?

Me: I don’t know. I’ve never really had an occasion to use it.

Lady: Do you think you could find out?

Me (reaching for the printout, which printed successfully…I still need to go to the admin building to fill out a form, eat, and go to class within 45 minutes, so I’m a little impatient, but I told the lady I work for ITS, so I don’t want to be rude): Uhh…I guess so. (I type the word into Google and it comes up with some hits.) There you go. I guess that’s how you spell it.

Lady: Oh, THANK you. You know, I’m an English major, and every time I hear a new word, I like to know what it means and how you spell it.

Me: Glad I could help.

Ringtones

It’s always entertaining to listen to other people’s ringtones when they go off in the computer labs. One person’s went off just as they got to the door and blasted showtunes music at a decibel normally reserved for jet aircraft. Another’s went off to the song from “Titanic.” What the hell?

My ringtone varries week to week from “Bad” to “Beat It” to “Black or White.”