Happy Thanksgiving!

Who's bringing the cranberry sauce?

D'oh!

So I get to work about my usual time, 7:45. The clock on the wall says about 5:50 or there abouts. I notice it and say to self, "Huh, the clock must have stopped. Probably the battery died." I go into my office where I have an "atomic" clock and it's about 7:50. I get my computer fired up and check mail, voice messages on the phone and the phone rings.

It's my fellow office worker who lives in Lame Deer. She says, "I'm running late, the power was off last night, my alarm didn't go off and I overslept."

"Oh," I say. "That explains the clock being off." Then I notice that the clock now says 6:oo and there is a cord hanging down the wall. Not dead batteries. Back to my desk I go. Gotta get things done. Phone rings again. It's about 8:00 by now.

"Hi, Ann. I'm trying to log on to READ 180 and it says it can't connect."

"Oh,the power was off. Maybe the server didn't reset yet. I'll get it." D'OH!!!!! None of the servers are on yet! They're all waiting patiently to be turned on, logged on or reset. The phone starts ringing in ernest now. Nothing is working and people are starting to log on.

Moral of the story. Next time I get to work and the clock "died" CHECK THE SERVERS! On the other hand. If no one knew the servers were off, how would they know how clever I was to turn them back on?????

I Earned MY Highschool Diploma

You paid attention during 100% of high school!

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high!

Me Three

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
Philadelphia
Boston
The Northeast
The West
The Inland North
The South
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Week's End UPdaTe

I had an interesting weekend. On Saturday I got up and decided that this would be the weekend I finally finish, once and for all, my Lego Star War game I got for Christmas. I had finished quite a bit, but had left the "hard bits" for last. Mostly the racing levels. I stink at racing. Well, today, I finished all the levels at "True Jedi" level, which unlocked the extra level and two new characters. I'd amassed so many gold legos playing the epidsodes over and over to get all the "kits" that I could buy the last two characters. Ta Da! Not many of my games do I get to beat like that. All the levels, all the extras, all the unlockables.

In between playing sessions, to give my hands a break, we went to Colstrip to the annual Christmas Bazaar. Didn't find too much, a lot of the stuff isn't handmade any more, but I did find two new pinky rings. Can't have too many pinky rings. And they are handmade. I also managed to work in the usual weekend house chores, so I can't feel guillty about spending so much time with the video game and pinky rings.

Tomorrow after work, I leave for Billings where I'll spend the night before heading out to a workshop that involves my job training. All in all it was a good week end. I just wish that my hobby didn't involve using the same sore hand I have to use so much for work all week. I keep looking for a "gamer's glove" with built in ice packs. If anyone knows how to get my hand in one, let me know.

Have a great week!

Free Rice

No registering, no signing up, no commitment. Just answer some fact-type, study for your ACT type questions and for every answer you get correct, someone donates 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program. Come one, you know you like it. Might as well feel virtuous about sitting at the computer a few minutes longer.

Just click on the title of this post.

Grace in Defeat

I 'm listening to John McCain's concession speech. If this John McCain had been visible during the last months of the campaign instead of the John McCain we DID see, it would have been a closer race.

Daylight Saving Time

I've said it before and I'm saying it again. I'd vote for the candidate whose only promise was to end daylight saving time forever or end the electoral college, two concepts whose time is past.

WeEkenD UPdaTe

Well, I had a busy and rewarding weekend. I went into Billings Friday afternoon and had a delicious dinner with my dad at a dinner following a business meeting he attended. It was good food and good company, what else do you need? The next morning I had breakfast with aunt, uncle, cousins and two very friendly dogs. Then some shopping and a late lunch, more shopping and home again. Trips to Billngs tend to have a lot of family meals and shopping. I enjoy the family meals, but the shopping......not so much. It's just that living as far away from stores as we do, shopping in "big cities" is a neccessity, not a pleasure. I have gotten quite good at online shopping, but sometimes you just have to try something on, and as yet, they don't deliver cat food and toothpaste online. Maybe someday soon some one, somewhere will invent one of those replicator thingys like on Star Trek and I won't have to shop in Billings at all, just spend time with family!

Experiments in Telecomuting

This summer when gasoline prices starting spiraling upwards, those of us who commute to work started talking about ways to save gas$$$. One of the ideas was to continue working 4/10 hour days as we did in the summer. I liked the idea of 4/10 but the reality was that I was worn out on Friday and didn't get much done at all. The other idea was to stay home and to my work from there. After all one "data monkey cage" is much like another. It turns out that all I've done this week is data entry and fact checking for our state report called "fall count." All my programs are web-based so that's not an issue. Today was a perfect time to give it a try. It was actually not much difference for me. It was just as tiresome and boring as it was when I drive 25 miles to work. The difference was that I didn't have to shower if I didn't want to, (I didn't) and I could putz around a little before "going to work." When the quitting bell sounded. I could just log off my school program and start blogging. No 25 mile drive home with all the stops in town to get mail or milk. As far as I"m concerned I could stay home a couple of days a month and get as much done as I would at work and gain the above mentioned benefits. With winter approaching, another advantage would be to avoid the nasty, icy, slippery roads and the snow drifts that make my drive up the hill an "adventure in sliding." Of course I don't know if the people at work even noticed that I was gone. If not.....it may not be such a good thing.

Maverick

Did I hear right? A TEAM of Mavericks? What part of Maverick doesn't she understand? A Maverick is a LONE dissenter who takes an independent stand apart from his or her associates. If you are in a group you can't, by definition, be a maverick. Who wants a Maverick in the White House anyway? I should think that we'd want a leader in the White House. Someone who is going to work with others to achieve a common destination, not someone who is going to go off on his own at cost of the rest of the us. Suppose the maverick values his "maverickness" so much that he appoints a lot of "mavericks" to his cabinet. He picked one as his "sidekick." What do we have then? A lot of people going their own way to prove that they are independent and refusing to work with any one, or a stampede to get to the head of the line to prove that he/she is a leader. No, I don't think we need a "maverick" in the Whitehouse. He is not going to convience me with that argument.

Banned Books Week.

It's Banned Books WeeK! Hurry, don't miss it! Read a book that was challenged or banned. Click on the title above for a list of books if you don't have a favorite banned book to read. Or just do a search for banned books, there are, unfortunately hundreds of banned books to choose from.

Can You Guess Where I'm From?

I found this link on the JWalk Blog. It's a game where a bunch of people from all over are speaking English with accents from there own country. Not all of the countries are English speaking countries though. I got 21 measly points. What's your score?


http://www.languagetrainersgroup.com/accent_game.html

Take 2

Meet Trixie

Meet Trixie, a data monkey like me. She was put together this week and accessorized today. She has the requisite two hands for typing and cutting/pasting from one database or spreadsheet to another. Like me she has highlights in her hair and is addicted to costume jewelry. She is going to join me in the office tomorrow to remind me how to have fun at work.

Self Portrait

How many times has this happened to you, ladies? You go to the salon and spend a few hours getting a new hair doo and then the next day, you cannot make it look like it did when you walked out of the salon?

Vacation Day?

I had yesterday off, but I'm not sure it was a vacation day or a medical leave. I guess it was both. I had to go to the dentist yesterday to get an impression made so I can get a removeable appliance to keep me from clenching my teeth together in my sleep. It's gotten so bad my ears buzz and wake me up. Anyway the procedure at the dentist made me gag horribly so I needed the rest of the day to decompress.

I had an early lunch with a good friend of mine and we talked about other old freinds, not gossip, I swear, just catching up. We talked about politics and agreed on just about everything so that wasn't a long conversation. Then I went to my hair appointment to get a "new doo" , but no one has noticed yet, so I could have saved my $$$$, but then it does feel better to me, so I guess it was worth it. Not much of a vacation, but it was a break from the routine.

Are You Being Served?

We're EVIDENTLY NOT being served. Let me explain. At our school we have used a database program designed for schools. It lets us store all kinds of data about our staff and students. It also lets us schedule classes and take attendance. It keeps a grade book that does all the calculations and comes out with a grade. It's WONDERFUL... when it works. When it doesn't. . . it's less than NOT wonderful.
Our state has begun implementing a new SIS (Student Information System) for state reports. We could just export our data to them or we could purchase the district verson of their program and the exports would happen "automatically." Since our old system was being phased out at the end of this year, our district decided to go with the same system the state uses so we could "synchronize" with their server and automatically export our data for state reports. It sounds great on paper. But when we finally got converted to the new system, they converted us to a version of the program newer than the version the state uses. Newer is better, right? NO it's not better, it's worse. The newer version won't synchronize with the older version and we had no way to assign state ID numbers to our new students. Bummer!
Well, after a couple of days of panic to get the new students enrolled, scheduled, graded and attendended, we got a "walk around" to fix it temporarily until we could sync. We spent Friday in a marathon work session entering in new data. Whew!!

Then Friday afternoon, somewhere in Minnesota. . . a server crashed. Guess whose server it was? Good guess. It was our server and we're back to where we were a week ago. I hope it's not longer than a week ago. I can't contact anyone until Monday to know for sure. I'm just hoping that we've already had our share of bad luck for the year.

If you're wondering why I should care about any of this it's because as of last spring I'm the head "data monkey."

Lucky, lucky me.

New chairs for old!

I remember blogging a looooooong time ago about wanting a new sofa. Well a few weeks ago, after a delay or two, it finally got delivered. When they delivered this they took away our old sofa and an old recliner chair that was looking a little worse for the wear and tear. Now we have a much less cluttered living room. We don't have a sleeper sofa any more, but we've plenty of room for one of those inflatable beds.



That's my new philosophy, if I'm replacing something then I have to get rid of the old something I'm replacing or I really don't need the new someting after all. That goes for sofas, shoes, books, and tires, but never people. You can't replace old friends or family for new. You can never have enough of either.

DATA MONKEY

From the Urban Dictionary

2.data monkey
22 up, 1 down
An employee whos job it is to take data from one source (eg SQL Server) and stick it in another source. A bit like a DBA (Database Administrator) but without the job prospects.
"Hey Jim, do you have that Excel spreadsheet yet?" "No Ann, the Data Monkey has only had the jobsheet for 6 days, I'll have it for Christmas...I think."

I thought I had invented the name Data Monkey to describe my new job. But when I Googled it to make sure it didn't mean something different, I found my job description. Who knew? I must have seen it somewhere and it just stuck in the back of my head until it leaped out one day when some student asked my what I did if I wasn't the librarian anymore. "I'm a Data Monkey!"