Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2014-05-24 01:26 am
azurelunatic) wrote2014-05-24 01:26 am
"How else would you hold a dead mouse?"
Today was the day of the Dead Mouse.
On Monday I was rearranging my computer. I have an ergonomic keyboard, but still had the old, non-ergonomic keyboard, mostly as a convenient socket to plug the ps/2 mouse into. I returned both to the local helpdesk (the guy upstairs in the new building) and got a new USB mouse for my troubles.
Throughout the week, I started having little mouse glitches. Today, the little mouse glitches got bigger. I tried unplugging and replugging. I tried plugging into a different USB socket. It would take at least a minute to recognize, and then crap out again; sometimes it would recover, but then after a while it would not, and then no amount of plugging and replugging to the same socket would make it work. I would plug it into a new socket and it would work, but then crap out again. I rebooted. I googled things. I called the helpdesk rather urgently around 3pm, when it was apparent that I couldn't resolve it on my lonesome.
I called back when it became apparent that instead of bumping it to the local desk, it was to some guy offsite. I was suspecting now that the problem was a dying mouse, and here I was googling obscure USB problems which I couldn't properly carry out because keyboard navigation is an arcane art to the unskilled. The guy put in an urgent ticket to the local helpdesk, and I watched it get bumped back to the main helpdesk queue at five minutes until 4 (the usual quitting time for helpdesk, and there are no moves this weekend so no one staying late).
It didn't occur to me until much later to have just walked in to local helpdesk, because I don't have that sort of relationship there yet.
The Stage Manager offered to test known good/known good, and I told him I'd take him up on that after I was sure local helpdesk wasn't coming down (as phone helpdesk had promised they would be, but I knew better). They didn't, so I unplugged the mouse from its latest USB socket and walked over to his office, dangling it gingerly by the cord with a distasteful expression screwing up my face.
Dogesitter Designer was there, and wanted to know what was wrong.
"What do you think is wrong?" I said, nodding to the mouse. She didn't know, and wondered why I was dangling it from my fingers with that look on my face. "How else would you hold a dead mouse?"
The Stage Manager took the mouse and plugged it into his machine. It refused to acknowledge or light up. "It's dead!" he said, and chucked it unceremoniously into the bin.
I'm borrowing the mouse from Dogesitter Designer's Windows box until helpdesk comes back on Tuesday.
Turns out that when Purple is sending the lunch broadcast message, if his IM client thinks you're not there, it won't include you (even if you are there). I didn't look outside, and I had a relatively quiet lunch -- well, I was sitting adjacent to Mr. Zune's group, which is always pleasant, and then the QUILTBAG leader cruised through and we sat together and caught up for a bit. And then Purple's group paraded in, and Purple detoured to perch on my table while I finished my sandwich.
Still no word on the Dude, Where's My Stuff issue, alas. Purple is quite put out.
The person spearheading my greater department's move was able to put four of the six people I nominated into the move for the 30th before it maxed out. And then I learned from Purple that his department is moving haphazardly, and he and his new officemate won't be going in the same wave. He had been baffled until he learned that there was a maximum number to the moves that the movers could handle at once. He laughingly accused me of taking spots in the move from his team.
"Sorry, bro," I said cheerfully.
"'Sorry, bro' won't cut it this time!" he threatened, with hyperbole. I can't precisely reconstruct the banter, but it ended with a fistbump, so it was all good.
Later, over chat, we negotiated other communications difficulties. He said something, and I wanted to express affection and solidarity. I explained that normally I would send a heart, but I didn't want to cause any confusion of message.
"Maybe one of those sour cherry balls would fit in your catapult," he teased.
The emoticon for sour cherry ball is, for the record, a lower-case o. If your chat clients mutually support colored font, a red o is ideal. He was glad of the font coloring, as it had been somewhat rude of me to blackball him earlier ...
We shall draw a veil over any off-color jokes which may have ensued.
The week sort of feels incomplete if I don't get to have a good solid talk with him. We are in accordance that my dad and his dad talking would be a fearsome thing, especially over model rockets. Making rude gestures at email resulted in a conversation about the evolution of new rude gestures based on sex advice from Cosmo, but bogged down at exactly how one would convey with gestures the idea of stuffing sliced banana where no sliced banana should be stuffed. Purple does not care to have his nose booped, and if booping someone's nose was bad on its own, doing so with a bezoar or one of those polished turd spheres from that MythBusters episode would be exponentially worse. There's a scene that's looking to happen somewhere in Cutting Room Floor where a parent opens a thing, and approximately fifty condom wrappers and a few unfortunately chosen accessories fall out. I'm thinking it's when the horrible great-aunt looks for cables in the box labeled cables or something.
Purple did not realize that he sat like Captain Kirk. This devolved into/from a conversation about SGA, mostly via the time that embodiment of the planet tried to bang Sheppard, much to McKay's annoyance. I allowed as how in much of my SGA exposure, it was McKay and Sheppard banging. "You mean fanfiction, right?" Purple asked urgently, because in much of canon, apparently McKay is too much of a dick to be let near anyone else's dick.
Purple wandered past my cube on his way out. This time he did not attempt to make a couch angel. I showed him the Usability Canary sketch.
I need to stop nearly falling over when attempting to hug him goodnight. It results in very awkward moments and hair in random unexpected parts of the face.
On Monday I was rearranging my computer. I have an ergonomic keyboard, but still had the old, non-ergonomic keyboard, mostly as a convenient socket to plug the ps/2 mouse into. I returned both to the local helpdesk (the guy upstairs in the new building) and got a new USB mouse for my troubles.
Throughout the week, I started having little mouse glitches. Today, the little mouse glitches got bigger. I tried unplugging and replugging. I tried plugging into a different USB socket. It would take at least a minute to recognize, and then crap out again; sometimes it would recover, but then after a while it would not, and then no amount of plugging and replugging to the same socket would make it work. I would plug it into a new socket and it would work, but then crap out again. I rebooted. I googled things. I called the helpdesk rather urgently around 3pm, when it was apparent that I couldn't resolve it on my lonesome.
I called back when it became apparent that instead of bumping it to the local desk, it was to some guy offsite. I was suspecting now that the problem was a dying mouse, and here I was googling obscure USB problems which I couldn't properly carry out because keyboard navigation is an arcane art to the unskilled. The guy put in an urgent ticket to the local helpdesk, and I watched it get bumped back to the main helpdesk queue at five minutes until 4 (the usual quitting time for helpdesk, and there are no moves this weekend so no one staying late).
It didn't occur to me until much later to have just walked in to local helpdesk, because I don't have that sort of relationship there yet.
The Stage Manager offered to test known good/known good, and I told him I'd take him up on that after I was sure local helpdesk wasn't coming down (as phone helpdesk had promised they would be, but I knew better). They didn't, so I unplugged the mouse from its latest USB socket and walked over to his office, dangling it gingerly by the cord with a distasteful expression screwing up my face.
Dogesitter Designer was there, and wanted to know what was wrong.
"What do you think is wrong?" I said, nodding to the mouse. She didn't know, and wondered why I was dangling it from my fingers with that look on my face. "How else would you hold a dead mouse?"
The Stage Manager took the mouse and plugged it into his machine. It refused to acknowledge or light up. "It's dead!" he said, and chucked it unceremoniously into the bin.
I'm borrowing the mouse from Dogesitter Designer's Windows box until helpdesk comes back on Tuesday.
Turns out that when Purple is sending the lunch broadcast message, if his IM client thinks you're not there, it won't include you (even if you are there). I didn't look outside, and I had a relatively quiet lunch -- well, I was sitting adjacent to Mr. Zune's group, which is always pleasant, and then the QUILTBAG leader cruised through and we sat together and caught up for a bit. And then Purple's group paraded in, and Purple detoured to perch on my table while I finished my sandwich.
Still no word on the Dude, Where's My Stuff issue, alas. Purple is quite put out.
The person spearheading my greater department's move was able to put four of the six people I nominated into the move for the 30th before it maxed out. And then I learned from Purple that his department is moving haphazardly, and he and his new officemate won't be going in the same wave. He had been baffled until he learned that there was a maximum number to the moves that the movers could handle at once. He laughingly accused me of taking spots in the move from his team.
"Sorry, bro," I said cheerfully.
"'Sorry, bro' won't cut it this time!" he threatened, with hyperbole. I can't precisely reconstruct the banter, but it ended with a fistbump, so it was all good.
Later, over chat, we negotiated other communications difficulties. He said something, and I wanted to express affection and solidarity. I explained that normally I would send a heart, but I didn't want to cause any confusion of message.
"Maybe one of those sour cherry balls would fit in your catapult," he teased.
The emoticon for sour cherry ball is, for the record, a lower-case o. If your chat clients mutually support colored font, a red o is ideal. He was glad of the font coloring, as it had been somewhat rude of me to blackball him earlier ...
We shall draw a veil over any off-color jokes which may have ensued.
The week sort of feels incomplete if I don't get to have a good solid talk with him. We are in accordance that my dad and his dad talking would be a fearsome thing, especially over model rockets. Making rude gestures at email resulted in a conversation about the evolution of new rude gestures based on sex advice from Cosmo, but bogged down at exactly how one would convey with gestures the idea of stuffing sliced banana where no sliced banana should be stuffed. Purple does not care to have his nose booped, and if booping someone's nose was bad on its own, doing so with a bezoar or one of those polished turd spheres from that MythBusters episode would be exponentially worse. There's a scene that's looking to happen somewhere in Cutting Room Floor where a parent opens a thing, and approximately fifty condom wrappers and a few unfortunately chosen accessories fall out. I'm thinking it's when the horrible great-aunt looks for cables in the box labeled cables or something.
Purple did not realize that he sat like Captain Kirk. This devolved into/from a conversation about SGA, mostly via the time that embodiment of the planet tried to bang Sheppard, much to McKay's annoyance. I allowed as how in much of my SGA exposure, it was McKay and Sheppard banging. "You mean fanfiction, right?" Purple asked urgently, because in much of canon, apparently McKay is too much of a dick to be let near anyone else's dick.
Purple wandered past my cube on his way out. This time he did not attempt to make a couch angel. I showed him the Usability Canary sketch.
I need to stop nearly falling over when attempting to hug him goodnight. It results in very awkward moments and hair in random unexpected parts of the face.