If You're Evil and You Know it, Clap Your Hands

I'm happy today, because I got a thingy done!

For the first time in weeks, I actually had a free day, (Saturday), and I didn't have to be anywhere or do anything, so I went in to my job.

No, no, I wasn't trying to fill time in my pointless, lightless existence! I had an agenda! Really!

I've been wanting for weeks to set up a program that would print these reports automatically. See, every time we run a file, we have to print out all these reports. Two sets of them. And switch the trays and stuff, because they use different paper, et cetera. Et cetera. And, et cetera.

And it's fine, but to print each different report, you have to click like eight million times, and each report requires different clickings, and blah blah fishcakes. It didn't take too long at this job before it was obvious that this process is horse-related fecal material. We're PROGRAMMERS. Why are WE doing all the clicking, when the computer can do it for us?

So: You may not know this, Gentle Reader of the Internets, but there is software that's very cheap that will let you automate any mouse clicks or keyboard typing you can imagine. And that is all I want from life. (My needs are few in this world.)

So, it was an easy thing to set up... the problem was just in getting the time to do it. The one thing you don't want when you're setting something new up is to have people constantly asking you for things.

So, since today was SATURDAY, and there was nobody there to ask me to look at files or fix problems or ANY of that -- so I hummed a happy tune, popped a Mountain Dew, (drink of the gods), and piddled around and played and fiddled and whatnotted to my happy heart's content. And it works, it's all set up, and the reports, they is printing themselves now!

So, what does one do, once one has automated a previously onerous, annoying, ginormous waste of time? Only one thing: One shows the new feature to one's coworkers... claiming it's an existing feature that comes bundled with the software one already has had for years!

"You mean you guys didn't know this was in the software? You mean, you've been printing reports one by one, for five years?!? Oh, gosh! I'm sorry! I would have said something if I'd realized you didn't know! Oh, well... You know now. Just think of the time you'll save... that you wasted til now. Huh."

Which to the what, now?

I was in a bank the other day, and noticed a Hurricane Katrina relief fund jar. I felt generous, as you do at a bank, yet I don't want to donate my hard-earned buckaroonies to just any fly-by-night, disreputable organization, like Catholic Churches of America or whatnot. I decided to ask the teller about it.

So I says to Mabel, I says, "What organization receives the funds from this donation jar?"

She looks at me, slightly googly-eyed, as if nobody had ever posed such a question before. "Um, I think it's, uh... Oh! Yes, it's Blue Cross... Blue Shield! Or something like that."

I looked back at her. "Do you mean... the Red Cross?"

"Oh! Yes, that's the one."

I kept my buckaroonies with me to donate at a later date.

90% True � I Am A Terrorist

I Am a Terrorist

Or
“How I Threatened To Burn My Professor At The Stake”

This is a rundown of what happened when a college student at Baylor University sent out an email satirizing another student's email. Let's call him Satire-Guy Cody. (Baylor is in Waco, Texas, and is the largest Baptist college in the world.)

The other student, let's call him Zealot Chris, got freaked out in Intro to Neuroscience, because the professor basically said that the Bible is not a science textbook, and so it wouldn't be the focus of the neuroscience discussion in the neuroscience class.

Zealot Chris decided to protest this blasphemy by walking out of class, boycotting that professor, standing outside of class every time that professor taught that class, and emailing everybody about this plan, so that they could choose to join in the boycott. Or, perhaps they could ask him questions so that they could be guided by him, and thus gain entrance to Heaven. Either way.

Satire-Guy Cody found this ridiculous enough that he was compelled to ridicule it. Hey, it was ridiculous. Ridiculable. Right?

He ridiculed it, all right, in an amusing email that was a line-by-line copy of the Zealot Chris email, but went further, saying things like the professor was a heretic, and the Bible states that you can't suffer witches to live, so... He called on his fellow Christians to bring rope and kindling, and on Wednesday before the lecture, they would burn him at the stake. Good plan!

Not a wise email to send, for several reasons.

Firstly. Zealot Chris had sent his email to all of the students in the class, but not the professors. Satire-Guy Cody didn't realize this. It turns out that some people received the email that had NOT received the Zealot Chris email. Some of these people thought it was serious.

Next. Satire-Guy Cody's email appeared above Zealot Chris' email in people's inboxes. Some read his first, and some of these people thought it was serious.

Next. Some people read the Zealot Chris email before Cody's... but just didn't get the joke. Some of these people thought it was serious.

Basically, there were a few people who read Cody's email who just didn't understand that it was a satire, and only a satire. They thought a student was actually planning to burn a professor at the stake. Naturally, they couldn't just reread the email to determine whether or not this was really happening, since they couldn't read well enough to locate the satire in the first place.

And, after the campus police were done messing up Cody's next couple of days, and the professor had laughed off the attempt on his life, things got back to normal, and we were all older but wiser.

Well, older, at least.