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April 23, 2007
Just Call Me Savvy. Tech Savvy.
I'm a dedicated Hotmail user. I've been using my Hotmail account since I was a virgin. A long time. But lately I've been using Gmail so Rafe and I can chat online while he's away in Memphis for the 22nd Annual Tennessee Ribs Eating Contest. I mean...while he's away on "business." Anyhow, I forgot that I had signed up for multiple accounts back when Gmail was new. Remember how you had to be "invited"? I must have thought all the good handles would be taken if I didn't act fast so I signed up for as many handles as I could. Just in case. For the future.
I had already missed the boat on debbiegoldberg@gmail.com (still cursing myself over that one) but I was victorious in claiming icecreamandhotdogs@gmail.com. Why? I do not know the answer. I also got japaneseconversations@gmail.com. That I remember. Vince and I had hatched together a plan when we were both woefully unemployed. We were going to set up a little business tutoring newly arrived Japanese kids who were moving to the East Village and transforming it into a Little Hipster Tokyo. We would work with them on their English (whatever that meant, we had no ESL training), take them around New York to museums, out shopping, barhopping, whatever they wanted to do. It was to be a cultural escort service. Yeah, whatever, so the idea never really got off the ground. But look where I am now? With the Japanese. It was meant to be.
Also, how could I forget? I finally, praise the lord, got a NEW computer at work. This, after two years using the original Macintosh. I've moved on up.
My new computer is a fresh-from-the-factory Mac. It purrs and glows in all the right ways. It knows me. It can predict what I want before even I know what I want. And today I discovered PhotoBooth, the little widget that uses the computer's built-in camera. See how savvy I am? I know all the lingo. Widget. Actually, I could be wrong. Is it a widget or an application? Both? I have no idea. Wasn't Widget a pansy cartoon character from the early 90s?
According to Wikipedia, yes it/he was. Widget "was a 4ft tall, purple alien from the Horsehead Nebula named Widget who could shape shift." Hmmm...
But the PhotoBooth widget is completely different. Here's my first PhotoBooth self-portrait. Exciting!
But wait. Then I discovered the very special special effects:
Hello from the future.
Sorry. I will try and capture other things in the office besides my face, such as New Girl. I'm not sure what she does exactly. Hell I don't even know her name.* What I do know is that she's a very close talker and that she's taken a real liking, if you know what I'm sayin, to those giant ergonomic/exercise balls that everyone else has long abandoned.
After Kiko slipped off one and injured her tailbone a few months ago, the boss figured the spinal health of his employees wasn't worth the inevitable lawsuit- so the next day we came into the office and saw that the balls were all gone. Gone! During the night he had rolled all the balls into the conference room and brought back the real chairs. The ones with legs. I was disappointed. I was half-hoping to have a little slipping "accident" of my own and get a fat workers comp check. So much for that dream.
Anyhow, New Girl discovered the stash of balls, inflated one with her own breath (just kidding, she used a pump) and now she's bouncing away on it all day long like she's in a never-ending aerobics class. And when she wants to talk to me, she stands up, takes the ball with her, moves it right next to my chair, sits on the ball, proceeds to bounce up and down, and then talk at the same time, with absolutely no self-awareness. She might as well be hopping on a pogo stick. OR A BIG BOUNCING BALL.
Here I am, busting my nuts producing serious journalistic reportage and New Girl is pretending to be the star of her very own fitness video. How the hell am I supposed to prep my interview questions for Buddy** when my co-workers are being so damn unprofessional?
*An explanation: I know, I'm socially inept and lazy but no one has told me and it's been a week and now I feel stupid asking- a reasonable excuse, no? Also, when someone is talking to me and referencing someone else, they don't refer to the person by name, only "him over there" or "her"+ pointing gesture. When they talk to each other they use their last names with "san" at the end (like Goldberg-san, for example) but since I'm not expected to use "san" with everyone, it gets confusing. I don't think anyone here knows everyone's first names anyway. I'm not the only one! There, I feel better.
**Yes, Buddy is the donkey. But as I said, we take what we do very seriously here- we aim to get all sides of a story.
Posted by debbie at April 23, 2007 11:44 AM
Comments
hilarious... honestly, hilarious...
Posted by: marie at April 27, 2007 10:02 AM
Yes, we are funny in Japan with name use. When direclty speaking to someone and you don't know their name, I have difficult asking them simple questions because the word "you" or "your" is too intimate for a stranger.
Posted by: Megumi at May 14, 2007 11:03 PM