Friday, April 14, 2006

1.3 idle hours left or...

....things to do while Google is indexing your desktop.
An essay lacking all the conventional forms of expository discourse.

I work for a pack of Microsoft missionaries, who love their desktop gadgetry, and Office tools (capital O office, italicized tools). We have been mandated to attend a day-long class on the effective use of Outlook, which is ironically called "Take Back your Life." After which we will work all night to make up for the lost day.

I promise to let you know how that can fill 8 hours. By that time, I may be fully indoctrinated and the name of this page will have changed to Bill'sBabe.com I shudder.

Downloading the Google desktop search tool is not mandated, just a make-nice for the New Boss, who gets very excited when I take his suggestions. He nearly burst into the tears yesterday when he wandered by my desk at 7pm and discovered my partner teaching me how to read the daily Pulse report. I would love to attach a screenshot of the daily Pulse, because it looks like the kind of WENUS that you would Alt-Tab to as a cover-up for the fact that you are actually bidding on eBay. But sadly, it is proprietary, and I would certainly be fired for displaying it. So trust me. It's a rainbow of data tables, including one chart that is actually lines OVER bars, so you can see why it required education.

New Boss digs the Google desktop search, and I have to say I've been impressed by its speed. Certainly I am forever losing something I was just working on, and can only locate by recalling some of my typical key words in the text, such as "appalling," "formidable," and "why don't you
Super Size that big cup of shut the **** up?"

Free software? On the company computer? that the Boss recommended?
well, sign...me... up.

I forgot I dial-up. I dial-up because it is the Company's laptop and the Company's ISP. And I am a cheap bastid whose cable comes with the condo fee.

Here's a story while we wait. In a conversion of wierd events, the building we work in is shutting down its power for some sort of outage drill for the weekend, but we were prepared to send our calls to our center in India during this outage. Then rioting broke out in Bangalore during the funeral of beloved movie star and national icon Rajkumar.
(You may read that again; I'll wait. And PS: I just linked you to Al Jazeera)

And now we are not so sure the operators will be at the phones if they ring."Thank you for calling MegaCo. The estimated wait time is 2 days while we burn down our city."

The phone agents have made much sport of this "national event." How soon we forget.

Google desktop comes with an annoying news alert pop-up box, which has just shown me a story about Nicole Richie. I will not click to learn more, I believe.

I will come out in favor of Google Earth though I agree it is a little creepy, and one night with friends we discovered the pictures of Crawford, TX are suspiciously blurred. But such hours of fun to fly around the world to every street you have ever lived on and try to find your house. I found this completely entertaining.

My index is now 92% complete. I'm a little afraid that this ease of search may cause me to forget more things. The learned helplessness of the mechanized age. Next thing you know I'll no longer know embroidery or butter churning.

1 comment:

  1. You are a good little Microsoft Office Tool.

    Google desktop cannot be beat.

    When will corporate ever understand the concept of irony? I didn't realize the session was called "Take back your life". I thought it was a joke, but remember, you live in a Dilbert strip.

    Now I have to go type "dgtcusuh" in the box below in order to leave this comment.

    ReplyDelete

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