I can spend the whole day playing with my balls.

I’m sorta in love with Bucky Balls. They are rightly described as “The Amazing Magnetic Desktoy You Can’t Put Down!” and they are right. Because of that, I don’t bring them to my workplace, otherwise I wouldn’t get any work done.

Another way I mitigate spending countless hours playing with balls:  I only bought two sets, one for each of my kids. If it’s their toy, I can’t spend all day playing with them. Until today. I did cave in and order two more sets from their website. Their “Thank you for your order page” cracked me up.

Because really, isn’t that what ChatRoulette is for? 

Boxed

I’m happy to report increasing sightings of “don’t block the box” paint on the road. Not sure if I’m using the right term, so let me illustrate:

Shot from a NY intersection.

See those lozenges painted in the middle of the intersection? They mean: “you should not be stopped in that zone, at any time”. Frankly I’m sad that we’re becoming a nation who has to be reminded that it’s stupid to block traffic when you yourself are not moving.

I thought Canada was known for its politeness?

Users

I try to stay away from blogging about my work, but sometimes it’s just too funny. Here are a few help requests we received.

How can I get some help?

Yes, this was sent through our help form.

My students cannot access their grades and I have all of them turned on. Suggestions?

Don’t do that? Get a room?

Student is having problem with virtual campus.

You’d be amazed at the number of requests like this one. We need details, people!

Any chance campus wireless printing will soon support iOS AirPrint?

If only I was in charge of that. You’d also be surprised at the number of requests we gat for stuff we don’t manage.

I need students to have access to this course IMMEDIATELY.  The course started today and they cannot get into the virtual campus to access the materials.

How about using the big “Manage Access” menu? Too easy?

I would like to obtain a copy (on CD) of the files currently in my Virtual Campus courses.

You mean the files you just uploaded from your computer? Is this a clever ploy to not buy a CD?

Can you tell me why do I get the “Why am I seeing this page?” page?

Did you read the page or just the title? I guess you forgot to include TL;DR.

My password (********) works on my email, but doesn’t work on [system B], so I can’t access [System C].

Yes, the person actually typed her password. Yes, we manage [System A].

I can’t enter [System A] anymore, but I have to access it because I still have to pay something. Can my login credentials for accessing [System B] please be restored?

We do manage [System A] but it has nothing to do with paying things. We don’t manage [System B].

Don’t remember any of my passwords (Lists all systems on Campus).

Ha, the shotgun approach. Our website clearly states that we don’t have sufficient privileges to reset you password, and the number to call to get ANY password issues fixed.

Star

Did you notice that the asterisk in the title is not the same as the asterisk in the post? The title has five points, the post six.

WORDPRESS: Y U MESSIN’ WITH MY OCD?

Inspired by this post at Father Muskrat.

If you still don’t get it: Dick Grayson.

Nothing.

Well, we did the Christmas Tree.

And I forgot to bring the memory card that has the pictures of said tree. So really, it’s like I did nothing.

I’ll leave you with an artist rendering of what my tree looks like.

Our Christmas Tree, 2010.

Sorry about that. Real pictures tomorrow.

I believe this should be illegal. I also think Apple should retaliate with their own Big Mac.

At first I stopped blogging on weekends. To be honest, I’ve been not blogging weekends for quite some time now, way before I made it official. I’m sure you’ve seen the tag “Webless Weekends” on a few occasions. Nevertheless, I used to put content up on weekends, now I don’t anymore. I spend time with my family. I drink wine. I drink Scotch. I go see movies. I play with the kids. I bake.

I blog about none of these things.

Work is… weird. I never blog about work anymore, because really how subtle would it be to blog about good things while completely staying silent on other (less than stellar) occasions? It’s not that nothing good (or bad) is happening – it’s just really extreme.

So I blog about none of those things.

I’ve also stopped being a slave to the midnight rule. If you look back through the archives, you’ll see that until a few months ago, all my posts were published at midnight sharp. If you go back more you’ll see I used to publish at one minute past midnight – go figure.

Then there’s the Diptych Wednesday. I didn’t think taking pictures was going to be much easier than writing words, but I loved the idea of doing that because that was one more day that I wouldn’t have to put words on a page.

There’s also the whole “reply to comments” thing. I used to reply to comments religiously. Replying to comments is a big part of what I enjoy about blogging. Why am I not doing it anymore? Or really, doing it really late and in batch?

I semi-jokingly thought about skipping today’s post and then tomorrow posting a blank jpg with the title “Wordle of my Thursday post”. That would be two posts writing nothing and/or about writing nothing. Seriously, this has to stop. There’s only so much posting about not posting I can do before it becomes ridiculous.

Maybe it already is.

Now where’s my Batman & Joker .jpg?

Looks like you need to roll again.

(I didn’t post Monday. Just move to Tuesday already)

Who can bake me a file in a cake?

Also, this is just a couple of days late for the Blue Diptych thing. Damn.

You’ve seen this right?

Not being an Apple Whore like my buddy Dave2, I was really surprised about how excited I got about this mysterious iTablet iSlate iPad thingy before it got unveiled. I even told myself:

I’ll get one when it becomes available in Canada – Just for kicks. Heck, the last time I did something even remotely like that was when I stood in line 30+ hours to see the first showing of the Phantom Menace.

Alas, the more I followed the keynote, the less enthused I became about the giant iTouch.

Now, I’m just meh about it. I mean, I already have a laptop and an iPhone, and I can’t see myself carrying this thing on the bus or even in a pocket when I’m out for a walk.

What about you? What do you think?

Click to embiggify

Just me?

The villagers came running up the hill to help the boy drive the wolf away. But when they arrived at the top of the hill, they found no wolf. The boy laughed at the sight of their angry faces.

“Don’t cry ‘wolf’, shepherd boy,” said the villagers, “when there’s no wolf!” They went grumbling back down the hill.

Later, the boy sang out again, “Wolf! Wolf! The wolf is chasing the sheep!” To his naughty delight, he watched the villagers run up the hill to help him drive the wolf away.

When the villagers saw no wolf they sternly said, “Save your frightened song for when there is really something wrong! Don’t cry ‘wolf’ when there is NO wolf!”

But the boy just grinned and watched them go grumbling down the hill once more.

Later, he saw a REAL wolf prowling about his flock. Alarmed, he leaped to his feet and sang out as loudly as he could, “Wolf! Wolf!”

But the villagers thought he was trying to fool them again, and so they didn’t come.

At sunset, everyone wondered why the shepherd boy hadn’t returned to the village with their sheep. They went up the hill to find the boy. They found him weeping.

“There really was a wolf here! The flock has scattered! I cried out, “Wolf!” Why didn’t you come?”

An old man tried to comfort the boy as they walked back to the village.

“We’ll help you look for the lost sheep in the morning,” he said, putting his arm around the youth, “Nobody believes a liar…even when he is telling the truth!”

The morale of that story is that you shouldn’t lie. Obviously. People used to get this, and even find this cute. Heck they would even make that tale into a nice musical story, with a bassoon and everything.

But that was then.

I strongly believe that this story can’t be told this way in 2009 and within the new corporate reality. The updated version would have this extra bit:

The Boy who cried Wolf – The Corporate Edition

[...]

Then the boy just ran back to the village, to his grandfather the village Chief, saying how the old man called him a liar and how that made him feel ashamed in front of everybody.

The village Chief decreeted that the old man was to be flogged within an inch of his life for bringing shame to his family.

And that’s why nothing gets done in the village: Because ever since that day, all the men spend their days running up and down that hill to avoid being flogged.

The new morale of that story is that it really doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do, as long as you know the person in charge. Obviously. I get it.