serinde

Neither my passport nor my checkbook is in their accustomed locale. (Indeed I haven't seen my passport since moving, I don't think. Or have I? fkdljaf;jsdkf;jaskdjkdf)

Returned home (OMG have airport cab fares gone up) to find that my PC is bricked and failing to boot; my facial cleanser exploded inside my suitcase, which would be okay because I always put Product in a gallon Ziploc but I did not see the pinprick holes in this Ziploc; and there is a general shambles du chat. (And my room ain't no prize, either.) And I was hoping to move Ranger here this week sometime.

Oh great, Algernon is howling. This usually precedes an Outside the Box Experience.

Also, I was apparently supposed to keep the conference program for reimbursement. I did not know this, and jettisoned it for space. I will point out that I asked both $OVERBOSS and Financials Girl back when this conference was first mooted what I needed to do, and this was not mentioned.

I just ate. This should help. Somewhat.

so. fucking. sick. of salad.

Unlike the other computers around the college, the machines dedicated to use in the larger lecture halls are (in theory) maintained by the AV people, not by the usual technicians. So therefore it's much harder for me to go and smack a bitch when I come back from a new student orientation and find that the lecture hall has attempted to pass my flash card a virus, as happens about 50% of the time. Or when, as happened today, the fucking equipment wasn't working at all.

"Hello, freshmen! I'm from the IT department and I'm here to tell you about all the wonderful services we provide with consummate professionalism! OH EXCEPT THE SHIT IN THIS ROOM WHICH IS BROKEN"

I really hate being made to look stupid. I desire to find someone to express my displeasure to, with a very large stick.

In addition to the obvious ones that we all put up with in public restrooms such as "peeing on the seat", and the entertaining & special varieties encountered in $JOB-1's facilities such as "leaving the door open when you're doing your business" (!!!) and "smoking a doob in the tiny tiny stall", I can add a new one: However much you are relieved by your evacuations, please avoid an accompaniment (or counterpoint, as it were) of loud, contented gasps and groans. I don't need to know how much fun you're having. Really.

So. Orientation. Part of this is, they march the kiddies up to the computer lab, and have them register for Fall courses. This year, it's cause for DRAMA!~ because CUNY has decided (not entirely unreasonably) that it's very Bad to have students authenticating to the course registration app by SSN, and said "instead thou shalt use the CUNY Portal", which is fine except the Orientation/New Student people had no freakin' idea how this worked. So I researched it all, and explained it to them, and me and Accounts Guy stuck around for two or three registration sessions, and we found all the tripwires, and I documented them all. And I spent a day writing and condensing down a one-page help sheet, with helpful screenshots, to give to the "peer advisors" (upperclassmen who help at registration time), and passed it unto the Orientation People. And my work here was Done, and Done Well.

I was just chatting to one of the peer advisors. Who then asked me a whole bunch of questions answered in said help sheet. Which he had never seen nor heard of, and was about to send a bunch of newbies to entirely the wrong place with the wrong problem.

WHY. DO. I. BOTHER.

It's college, and from what I can tell university, policy that for the middle chunk of the summer--end of June through early August (but not the week of Independence Day; don't ask), roughly--the place is Closed on Fridays. You can either work 8-5:30 and take a 45 minute lunch, or you can chalk the days up to your vacation balance; but you Do Not Show Up For Work On These Fridays.[1]

This year, the season starts on June 23. Unless you are the school gym, in which case summer is now, and anyone who wants to work out for the first three Fridays of the month is just screwed.

I am deeply vexed. I can't even go for a long walk for lunch, as my knee starts objecting[2], and the last thing I want to do is make it any worse; so weights, leavened with a judicious amount of elliptical, are my only option to burn off energy without committing mayhem.

[1] I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, Fridays off, Holy Shit!. On the other, my transit suddenly becomes a Goddamn circus; I may end up forced to the 6:30am train, fuck you very much. We shall have to see how it shakes down.

[2] Yes, I'm getting it looked at. I can haz referrals, and I have a sports-medicine specialist appointment next week.

Running yesterday caused me some knee grief, but a night's sleep and an icepack did it some good. What has not assisted is standing for two hours solid to hand-hold the kiddies (by which I mean the Orientation people, not the freshmen) through fall semester registration, because CUNY is now doing it differently blah blah blah. What's even more vexing is that the wide-eyed newcomers have no idea that two of us are only here to help with accounts issues, and cannot help them with their grave and woeful concerns about whether to take Math 101 or Psych 101. Or what number to put in the circa-1972 interface to indicate same.

Also, the exact timing meant that I missed my train by about three minutes, leading to an hour's bounteous delights kicking around 34th St., where it is entirely impossible to find a quiet drink on a Thursday night. Feh.

Srsly. Bite me in 3-D.

Situation: There is a thrice-yearly meeting, which consists of $OVERBOSS, as CIO, telling a varied audience consisting of interested parties in the administration, the faculty, and a couple of student representatives what we're spending the student technology fee on. This makes sense.

My attendance is, in theory, relevant for two reasons: 1) because the student workers I will be managing are almost entirely paid out of said monies, and 2) because the hat that's glommed onto me for Managing IT Stuff That Relates To Students means that I should be the primary liaison between Us and Them for just about everything related to these funds. However, what I actually got to do there is take minutes; which is particularly redundant, since my officemate Financials Girl also takes minutes, and always has. This was also true for the last one I attended, in November.

(I was not invited to the February iteration. However, $OVERBOSS thought I actually was there, and had taken minutes. I should point out that I wasn't invited to today's, either: on Thursday he asked if I was coming to the meeting, and I said "what meeting?" "Oh, you should definitely come." Well, okay, whatever.)

The meeting began inauspiciously with The Faculty Gadfly--someone who has a certain amount of understanding & study of technology, and is not at all afraid to share it as publicly as possible (faggot hackers: assume Thor)--commenting that the last meeting's minutes can hardly be said to be "minutes" at all, since they did not accurately reflect what was said, and who said it, and what discussion occurred about it. $OVERBOSS responded by burbling on about how "the people taking the minutes can't always keep up" and "don't always know who's saying things". This, when Financials Girl and I are sitting there on either side, laptops open, busily typing away, so it's not as if there's some question of who he could possibly mean by this obfuscation of names. Why, thanks so much for the public show of support! Thanks so much for saying to the Provost, the Registrar, the Head of Student Services, and various faculty that we, who are likely to have to deal with them in sundry other transactions, can't even handle taking notes! (And completely regardless of the fact that, on my part, I wasn't even at the meeting in question; and that he had rewritten the whole thing, so it may not have been her fault either.)

I'm going to take this to $ACTUAL_BOSS in our weekly meeting, and strongly represent my sense of insult. I probably should take it to $OVERBOSS directly, but I rather expect it'd go in one ear & out the other.