Rage, Rage Against The Emptying of the Pot

How many times has this happened to you?

You’re the first one in the office and need coffee badly.    You’ve got a ton of shit to do and need to get those deadlines met.     The eyelids droop.  The attention wanes.  The sound of snoring is coming from your cube.   CRAP!  It’s you.  You’re tired.    Maybe your team decided to lose a heartbreaker of a game in double overtime the night before.   Maybe you spent half the night dealing with a particularly glitchy video editing application.  Maybe you just decided to catch up on half of a season of Game of Thrones so that you can walk into the office without the fear of “Spoilers are Coming!”   I HAVE EIGHT MORE HOURS OF THIS!

So, you shake it off and head to the office kitchen for some much needed caffeine.    Once you get there you notice there is no coffee to be found. 

“That’s right!”  You say, “I was the first one in today.” 

You sigh and resign yourself to making a brand new pot.    The next four minutes are agonizing.  Realizing that a watched pot never brews, you decide to go to the bathroom, drop off that mail that needs to go out, and head back to the kitchen.

Your fresh pot should be there, waiting for you, like a good dog after the war, warm and loyal.   So, you enter the kitchen, passing that one guy you don’t like, carrying a cup of coffee. 

“Damnit!”   That douche bag violated my pristine brew.   

You shrug off the evil thoughts and head for salvation in a cup with equal parts cream and sugar.

EMPTY!

The pot is empty.  That M-F-ING ASSHAT not only took the last cup, he didn’t start a new pot, either. 

So, you do the steps all over again and realize that you are still behind schedule.  So, you go back to your desk and barrel through a few tasks, hoping to get back before the time is up on your re-brew.

You run, not walk, to the kitchen and now there is a crowd forming around the pot you brewed.   The timer goes off and in a Pavlovian response, they pounce on it.    The ratio of people to ounces of coffee is too great.   Once again, you are out of luck.   AND STILL NO ONE STARTS A NEW POT.

You slink back to your desk, another pot on, and there is your boss, standing at your cube, looking at their watch.  “You’ve been in unavailable status for nearly 20 minutes.”

What excuse can you tell them that doesn’t end with you re-enacting that scene from Office Space with the Bobs?  So, you take your licks and barrel through the next hour, just getting shit done.

You head to the kitchen and finally there is a fresh, untouched pot waiting for you. 

Too bad it’s decaf.

And you see, officer, that is why I sideswiped that Starbucks truck on my way home.











This really didn't happen.  This is simply me being creative.

Perks in Occupations

I’m a creature of habit. I do not adopt or embrace change in a timely manner. My least favorite book of all, about business, is Who Moved My Cheese? This should tell you what kind of guy I am. Now, get off my lawn.

Having to go to work every day is a necessity. Having free coffee in the workplace is a luxury. Having K-Cups provided to you along with vending machines with free soda is an awesome luxury. Having all that change on you in an instant is enough to make you want to flip the tables over in the kitchen and go Wild Bunch.

When I started this new job a year ago, I was floored at the prospect of having free soda provided to me. I only drink one can a day, with my lunch, but I’ve already saved like $70 over the last year from not having to buy cases of pop for that purpose.

As far as the coffee is concerned, for about six months I was making three batches, consisting of two k-cups per batch, for a grand total of 36 ounces of coffee per day. I noticed that I needed the coffee to keep going and I didn’t like it. So, I actually embraced a change when I got a cold and switched to a two k-cup, 8 ounce cup when I got to work and then drank two cups of tea consisting of three Lemon Zinger k-cups in a 12 ounce mix. What I didn’t realize was that there was no caffeine in the tea and after awhile, I didn’t miss it and was more alert than ever. See, caffeine is a drug, you can become addicted to it, and it can cause you to need more to compensate over time.

But back to the coffee. My work just made a switch over to regular brew pots of coffee and these things called Perfect Servings which dispense all of the cream and sugar automatically.

Not happy. I need a puppy to kick, like now.

First of all, I know the company we switched over to. We had them in my old job for vending and coffee service. They used to supply the muffins and pastries in the cafeteria at the plant and one day, my late mother-in-law was witness to someone breaking open a muffin to find blood in it. Now, of course, this information never made it to the general employees’ ears. She worked in HR and she kept a lot of things secret that would have made the masses occupy boardrooms. I only found out because my wife once said, “Don’t eat any pastries from XXX”. I won’t say who they are but their company is also a file extension for video files. So, I’m a little bit leery when it comes to hearing that this company is now providing us with coffee and is providing us with pastries as an incentive to make the switch.

I know I should not complain. I have a decent job with a decent company and having the perks I’ve had is something that I never saw in my old job. To see them go is a shame but that’s the cost of doing business. Once the bean counters realize that they’re spending x amount of dollars on you and they can save that money by outsourcing that service, streamlining it, and reducing the offerings, they are nuts not to make those changes. Considering the economy, the fat has to be trimmed. But at the expense of morale?

Look, you come into work every day, sometimes with an enormous chip on your shoulder. You’re not getting a raise or seeing promotions come along. Whatever. The one thing you have to balance the mundane requirements is that little perk. Then, suddenly, it’s gone. And the company that provided those perks have now installed these fancy machines that supposedly do all the work (i.e. cut down on people using a lot of sugar or creamer) for you. You have this routine down where it takes you enough time to roll in, make your coffee, get stuff done, and get to your desk in time to get working. You throw a wrench into that routine and devastates some people.

Not to mention that when you come in on the day of reckoning and members from the service are there to stand over your shoulder while you fumble your way through the process. They get that cheery disposition and the ‘We’re going to make it all better’ attitude that is just lip service. The bottom line is, “You guys have had it good and we’re not going to cut you off completely but there are going to be some cost saving changes.”

No one wants to say that, though. Because of all the stigma surrounding those in power who make the decisions, they’re not going to fire that shot across the bow of the S.S. Underling.

“Mongo, you’re crazy. You’re shorts are too tight in the seat. You’re just displaying that old man curmudgeon mentality that you always show.”

Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am just too resistant to change to see the positive. Maybe I just need coffee. Oh that’s right. I couldn’t find it this morning because they moved everything around and there’s a huge ass line because we all have no idea how to work the new machines.

Grrr.

Honestly, It's Not My Bag, Baby!

Last Fall, I had an unfortunate infestation of ants in my home. They poured out of the wall, underneath the baseboards and marched across the hardwood floors of my living and made a condo out of my laptop bag. I immediately took said bag and tossed it on our enclosed back porch. Then, I attended to the source of the problem, setting traps and spraying the gap between the baseboard and floor. Unfortunately, since I am a lazy f**k, I never got around to fumigating my bag, which had now become a retirement community for stinkbugs as well.

In the meantime I had begun taking my wife’s laptop bag to work. She never used it for anything, but it wasn’t exactly the most manly thing in the world. It was a Vera Bradley, solid color, quilted laptop bag. I didn’t have a lot of options. I knew my work was not going to replace my bag and I didn’t feel like buying a new one for a work laptop. I simply just kept using my wife’s and stowed it out of sight for the duration of my stay with my former employer.

Flash forward to this week. I get up and proceed to get for work at my current job, which is an hour drive away. I go out into our living room and see that one of my cats has knocked over my new, company issued laptop bag, possibly to lay on it, as they always do. Then, I realized the horror. One of my other cats has decided to piss all over it, leaving a puddle of urine laying there.

I cleaned it off best I could, using Lysol wipes and hot water. I simply did not have time to tear apart the entire house, waking my wife and daughter at 6:00 AM in order to find a replacement. Besides, after I used the wipes on the bag, it seemed to be OK. That was, until I was driving home and the smell really hit me. I couldn’t take it back to work in that condition.

That night, my wife suggested taking her bag to work, like I had before. I was a little leery. When you’ve worked at the same company for nearly ten years and you do something like bringing a purse to work. They kind of give you the benefit of the doubt if you’ve never done it before. When you’ve been at a company for only six months and do something like that, your coworkers don’t understand your life the same way. Everyone at my old job knew the tale of my cat causing us to have to replace the floor in our basement so this was simply par for the course. At the new job, they don’t know this and will generate their own opinions.

Needless to say, I took my wife’s bag. I knew it was probably a bad move and I should have really considered, putting it in my desk drawer, out of sight. Unfortunately, I had an all day meeting and simply did not have the opportunity to do this.

About ten minutes into the meeting, of which I am sharing my laptop screen on the projector, I receive an IM.

“Where did you get the pretty laptop bag?”

Fortunately, I had moved all of my email and IM screens to my laptop and only extended my windows desktop to the projector. This message was only visible to me. Well, me and the three other people with which my coworker decided to share. Suddenly, the incident took on a life of its own as more people, including my boss and my boss’ boss, were chiming in about my lovely bag.

During a break, I was able to come out and try some damage control, to no avail. People were laughing. I wasn’t sure why. Then I found out. We have nine large flat screen monitors hanging throughout the cube farm which displays stats and various other bits of information for the department. The slide show rotates through different screens and eventually, I noticed what everyone was laughing about. Tucked in between two of the slides was a picture of two or my coworkers modeling the bag in rather funny poses with the title of “The Companion Bag” above the words “MyLastName & CO.”, essentially making this an advertisement.

I couldn’t help but laugh because while it was making fun of me for bringing my wife’s bag, it also put their manhood on the line to have been photographed modeling it. Needless to say, it was all in good fun and if I can’t laugh at myself, I shouldn’t laugh at others. I gave them a “Well Played” and then went back into my meeting. Of course, I had to share and explain the incident, reiterating that my cat caused the situation.

I made sure that I found a suitable replacement for the next day, while I wait until my regular bad dries after being washed. It just goes to show that if I had ever expressed doubts about coming here, they made me feel welcome, even at my own expense.

Bravo, crew.
Now, I must disown my cat.

Parking Lot Dickery

As a self proclaimed prick I take pride in my acts of dickery. However, I at least try to do no harm. It’s all about the absurdity of a situation for me. What’s the one thing that could make an event turn completely on its axis and shoot off into another direction? Kind of like when Christ Pontius, on Jackass, would dress up like a Chippendale dancer and just show up somewhere. Most of my shenanigans are done for comedic effect and usually result in no one being hurt, especially me. And be relieved, no Speedos or thongs are involved. In any case, I was reminded of a particular stunt I pulled, soon after I began working at my current job, after a conversation with one of the people who witnessed it.

It was back in 2001 and our office was in the outskirts of Pittsburgh near the offices of WTAE Channel 4. It was a building that was used, not only by us, but by other companies so the parking lot was full of cars and parking was at a premium. Unfortunately, I was on a later shift since I had just started working there and since I didn’t have to be at work until 10:00 am, I was left with whatever parking space I could find. On the rare occasion that I had to come in for training or had the 11:30 to 8:00 shift, I was able to snag a nice space up front on the top level. I either was there before the rush of people or as those who went out for lunch had left. Parking on top was ideal because it was a short seven or eight steps from the ground while. Otherwise, I was forced to circle the lower level of the parking lot which was tight to maneuver. Luckily, I had a 97 Cavalier which didn’t take up too much space.

Pretty much everyone on my team was screwed because we handled West Coast customers and had that weird 10:00 AM to 6:30 PM shift. Our desks were right up against the window, so we could see all the lucky bastards who had earlier shifts leaving for the day. However, there was this one guy we couldn’t place. He must have worked for one of the other companies in the building because he was always leaving at 4:00. No one had those kind of hours where I was at. We didn’t care who he worked for, he was evil and needed to die for having a life. We sat our desks and when 4:00 hit we’d stare out at the parking lot and fire mind bullets at him.

It’s amazing how you can live vicariously through others just by watching the parking lot. There was the people who drove the big SUVs and we imagined they were upper middle class yuppies who had three kids in soccer and after school activities. This was all before 9-11 and life was different. People drove big cars and had big houses and didn’t think in ten years they’d be going through a recession and have to worry whether they still had a mortgage they could afford. Then there was the corvette that belonged to someone who didn’t have a job near important enough to actually own one. It was probably someone compensating for something or having a midlife crisis. But most intriguing was the person who parked far away from everyone else, usually towards the back of the parking lot. With everyone jockeying for prime parking spots, this person was bucking the trend and staying away from people. But why?

It wasn’t the soccer mom with the SUV. It wasn’t the corvette owner. It was a Pontiac Grand Am, for Pete’s sake. It didn’t even look brand new. It looked like a late 90s model. Who the hell owned this thing and felt it was so important that it had to be isolated from the possibility of being breathed on by other people? But all this speculation went away as 4:00 rolled around and our favorite mind bullet target appeared in the parking lot. Tall and skinny, he walked with a nerdy gait and carried a briefcase. Completing his look was a Member’s Only jacket that looked straight out of Burt Reynold’s 80’s collection. As he trotted up the steps he began to pass one row of cars. Then he passed another row. Oh my God! He’s the guy. He walked up to the Pontiac like he was approaching a King Cobra poised to strike. If he moved to fast, the slightest change in wind direction could cause it to age or something. That sealed it for me. In my best Jack Burton voice I said, “Son-of-a-bitch must pay!” [machine gun cock]

The next day I arrived at work to see my new best buddy, once again, parked at the back of the parking lot. I instantly made a bold move. I parked right next to him. There was even a real choice spot up in the front of the lot, next to the steps, but I didn’t care. I was going to be a dick for the sake of being a dick. This was one of my pet peeves. When someone thinks their car is so new and shiny and untouchable that they feel the need to park away from everyone I want to just key the damn thing. Worse yet is those who decide that they don’t want to park far away to prove their point so they take up two spots allowing for extra room on either side of their doors. I’ve always wanted to stop these people and say, “You know what? If you think your car is some inherent danger, you shouldn’t take it out of the garage.”

So, this situation was double jeopardy in that not only did this guy get to leave early, he feels his car is in danger and has to park far away. “Commence dickery,” I thought. I didn’t park right up against him, but close enough to his passenger’s side to give the illusion that I could ding his Pontiac, getting out. Of course, I was very careful in getting out of the car as to not actually hit it. Remember, no one gets hurt. It’s all about the illusion and absurdity. I do another little gag when I’m walking up towards our break room, which has all glass in the front that faces the hallway. When I see someone coming out and they aren’t paying attention to hall traffic, I slightly knock on the door and then hold my nose like I just got hit in the head. It usually gets a reaction of “OMG! I didn’t see you!” Which I let them believe they actually hurt me for like two more seconds then I let them in on the ruse. Like I said, I’m a dick but just for laughs.

After a long day of answering the phone I couldn’t wait until 4:00, even though, I had two and a half more hours to work. I had clued my coworkers into my dickery so we could all watch the show because while our mind bullet sniper sessions were great watching what happened next was priceless.

4:00 on the dot and ‘Member’s Only Man’ began his nerd walk. He made it up the steps and started towards the back of the lot and paused. The lot was half empty on top that day so there was no need to use the back row in the first place. But there my Cavalier was, snuggled up alongside his Grand Am. He took a few seconds and then approached the car. He seemed unsure as to what was happening but it was great to watch. We all laughed out loud at him when he stopped in his tracks. He got in his car and drove away and the joke was over. Or was it? Not by a long shot. He almost escaped. He almost got away unscathed but he made one fatal mistake.

The next day, when I arrived at work, I couldn’t help myself. Once again, the parking lot was half full and the perimeter spaces, along the wall of the lot, were all empty. As I made my way into the lot I saw Member’s Only Man parked on the opposite side, all alone. I couldn’t believe it. He moved. He actually moved because, the day before, I parked next to him. Unreal and opportunistic for me. Not only did I park next to him, again, I parked backwards so that my driver’s side door was facing his. Like before, I was careful not to hit his car, getting out.

4:00 rolled around and a larger crowd now gathered at the windows to watch the show. Nerd walk up to the lot. Pass by rows of cars. Stop dead in tracks. I could only imagine what was going through his mind. “Was this a trap? Is there someone with a camera watching? “ He started looking around the lot for someone, anyone watching from the bushes. He slowly walked up to his car. Now, usually, comedy comes in threes. But I was willing to end the joke right here and now to save on it becoming stale. However, you can’t write this stuff. Sometimes the jokes come right out of the situation and I was inspired to go at least one more day because he actually checked his door for dings. He was honestly afraid that I dinged his precious Pontiac. So, not only did I continue it one more day, I went the rest of the week.

I suspect that he was on to us because the next day he challenged me by not moving. He must have sensed that we would have to be watching him in order to continue carrying out the joke. Eventually, I got tired of parking far away and just ended it. But not before another co-worker joined in and parked on his other side on the third day. That was too funny. He tried to play off the reaction but it was obvious he was beginning to realize he was being made fun of for his parking choices. After that he started parking with everyone else and I felt satisfied in my attempt to be a dick for no reason.

I don’t know what happened to that guy and I’ve stopped doing things like that at work because I usually get in around 7:00 AM, which is before most people. I still see some, parking their shiny new status symbols far away from people, but we are also in a different building with only our company as tenants so it would be pretty easy to figure out who was doing the dickery. Still, it was fun while it lasted.

For those about to mock, we salute you.

Seven Sins For Seven Virtues Part 3: Diligence vs. Sloth

A continuation of the Series Good vs. Evil: The Internet

Can you just see where this one is going to play to?

Writing school papers were always a burden to me. I would get the assignment and pretty much put it off to almost the last possible minute. There was always something better that I would rather do then to sit at my old 286 PC or Apple IIC and pound out a four page paper on any subject. Still, I had hopes of being a writer and that kind of procrastination is evidence as to why I am not one today. However, when I would sit down and begin to write, I could get in the zone and within a couple of hours, I had five to ten pages of my paper written. I could bullshit with the best of them but at times the gas tank would run dry and I'd find myself adding some margin space or extra words to fill up the page. But, I made sure I followed the advice of Dr. Meredith from Real Genius who said, "Always... no, no... never... forget to check your references" So, I kept musty old books and MLA style guides riding shotgun as I fluffed my paper. Then, during my junior year I had to perform a mighty task, an electrical outline. Simply put, our crazy Physics teacher had us do a huge paper on chapters from our Physics textbook. This was the same assignment that my brother had done when he took the class six years before. The teacher was so behind with the times that he used the same tests for years and made students covert all the metric units into English in order to take the test. So, when it came time for me to write my outline I figured if his tests hadn't changed maybe his electrical outline hadn't either. I asked my brother for his copy and I reproduced it on my computer. The teacher thought he was keeping us honest by marking every page with a pen so that we couldn't simply change the name and submit one he previously graded. All I did was follow the work of someone else and typed it out word for word. I got a B. He docked me because the printer ink was a little lighter than his liking. It was all worthwhile since I made a $100 selling it to another student the next year.

Now, I told you that story as a basis for how the Internet can help to blur the lines between diligence and Sloth. In 1991, the United States went to the Persian Gulf to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupancy. Gone were the days of going to the movies to see Moviola reports on the Allied efforts during WWII. Now, we could watch up to the minute reports on CNN. We could see grainy black and white POV footage of missiles as they flew through windows and exploded. News and information just became an instantaneous commodity. One the Internet would take to new extremes.

In the race to be first and grab the audience, the Internet has made it possible for news and information to be available 24/7. However, there are casualties in the war for information supremacy. Diligence has become one of those casualties. Newspapers and other media outlets want to be first and its hard to compete with the Internet for first place in the race to report. An example is something I mentioned in my last 7 for 7 post, the Sago mine disaster. While the the reports came in unchecked that all but one miner was alive, the news outlets scrambled to report the good news. What they didn't do was check their facts and wait to see if there was a mistake in the chain of information. It turned out that all but one died in the tragedy and the devastation to the families was second only to the confusion at how a mistake like that could have been allowed to happen. For that matter, how could it have made it half way around the world before it was caught?

Now, before you start throwing fits, I don't believe that the Internet suddenly became sentient and started telling everyone bad information. Anderson Cooper was right there and he got the word, too. But with the Internet as a player in the game, everyone wants to scoop everyone else and to beat the Internet means you have to be quick. Facts be damned. One hand washes the other. There's even been times where the legitimate, and I use that word loosely, have relied on the Internet as a source of information, only to discover it was a prank. In fact, now, there are times when I watch the news where stories or images are credited to websites, like TMZ.com or Smokinggun.com instead of actual reporters. Sometimes, a lackey with an itchy trigger finger and too much Red Bull has pushed the button prematurely on a story before the facts are all there. In an attempt to be the first to prey on the grief of the world, templates are even prepared for obituaries of prominent people and Joe Intern has accidentally left the door open. The interchangeable obituaries leave room for nasty errors like "Dick Cheney was the 'UK's favorite grandmother.' One quick edit could drop the grand and have been accurate. For the record, Elvis is still dead, but Abe Vigoda is very much alive.

The other side of the coin being Sloth. I'll have you know that I'm writing this post from work right now. Remember when I said I would rather find something better that sit and do a paper or any work. I've re watched movies, bad ones, more than once even though I have work to do. I am a professional procrastinator. There is nothing I can't do that the Internet can't help me to do in the act of avoiding work. Although, I do make an effort when I am on the clock. I only stray towards an open browser during lunch or when I'm waiting for my little SAP or Sharepoint window to load the next screen. Usually, it's checking alternate email accounts or reading news. Of course, my work has blocked most fun sites. Oh you name it and it's blocked, most radio station homepages, Facebook, myspace, Youtube, Lottery sites, and anything mp3 or streaming music related, and so on and so forth. I'm surprised eBay is still active as well as ESPN.

When I first started in Customer Service in 2001 I was on a team of four, who were responsible for all orders for the west coast. We handled maybe 35-40 calls on an average day. Since I was the new guy, I had to work most shifts from 11:30 am - 8:00 pm. This usually meant that around 6:30 pm the phone went silent and I was alone in the office with one or two credit analysts. Since the phone wasn't ringing I was surfing. Pogo, Iwon.com, iwin, CNN, eBay, everywhere. My usage probably made IT's head spin as I commandeered the bandwidth pipe and went nuts all to keep myself busy until my shift was over. As I gained tenure, my hours became more regular and the work load became more. My usage became less, still whenever there is a lull, I was out slacking around the net. Today, since most of my favorite sites are blocked, I have to wait until I'm home to do some fun stuff.

My wife asks me what the hell I'm doing. I say, "Getting a third of my $156.00 worth of money spent on cable." I play casino games, scrabble, and other little goofy aps on Facebook, check the job sites of various companies and catch up on email. If I have some time, I even try to finish up a few blog posts to build up my library so that I don't have to scramble at the last minute to keep up with my three a week commitment.

I am not much different than, well, anybody. I get up for coffee or to go empty out my recently ingested coffee and I see numerous screens. Doing a search of "Work Internet usage" in Google News returns a lot of results from Canada and the UK. The Internet has even been a part of a few lawsuits in employee termination cases. Diversions from work are a part of everyday life and the Internet, or more importantly those who create and market sites on the Internet, know it and use it to make billions of dollars a year. What would happen if it all just went away? No more penguin tossing or flying a paper airplane through the office. Go read Richard Clarke's Breakpoint. Of course, his novel is more about terrorism and government networks, but just think of it in terms of slacking. First there would be complete and utter chaos followed more or less by increase of productivity. Maybe, that would be a good thing. Then again, if that happened, how would those 2.5 people who actually read my blog see it? I discovered the .5 was someone who just scanned through and didn't actually pay attention to any posts. Go figure.


Therefore it is the judgment of the Mongo Municipal Magistrate that the Internet isn't evil in terms of diligence vs. sloth.

The Internet isn't out to get you or make you lazy. You are. "It's PEOPLE!"

Ode to YouTube. How do I love thee, let me count the ways.

In my realm of real world, not cyberspace mind you, I work in an office. It is an unassuming building perched on a hill top above a busy intersection. We are a simple people, making our way the only way we know how, by avoiding work as much as possible. Until about a year ago, we had access to all manner of distraction the internet had to offer, iTunes, Streaming Satellite Radio, eBay, facebook, myspace, and of course YouTube. Oh, how we'd wile away the hours watching badgers in a loop, listening to our favorite Howard Stern bit, flipping over to Will Ferrell getting cursed out by a two year old, all while sniping each other's bids for the last Prada bag or bootleg copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special. Damn you, wookielove5! Next time, next time.

Now with our IT group finally getting on board with traffic shaping and blocking sites, we have lost all access to myspace and YouTube. With other sites soon to be on the way, we have to think of creative ways to get our daily fix of wasting time. I had moved on to writing up articles to be posted into a non existent blog. The equivalent to a tree falling in the forest. One day, I happened to be on a much needed coffee run and saw something spectacular, a coworker was watching something on YouTube. But, but, YouTube was deemed blocked by Websense. How is it possible that this fellow cube dweller was able to see the elusive monster from Cloverfield? I asked him and me made pinky swear not to tell anyone. He gave me an IP siteURL that hadn't been picked up by our IT people. I quickly ran back to my desk, secured my headphones in the appropriate jack...you must check this, otherwise you could be embarrassed...and let the magic happen.

Suddenly, relief came in waves of Robot Chicken bits and music videos forgotten by time. I was able to peruse all the videos people had been emailing me for months. I finally found out who Chris Crocker was and figured out how to connect all the people on LOST through one easy video. My life was given meaning, again. No longer did I have to toil away on senseless excel sheets or answer ridiculous meeting requests regarding my job performance to date. The internet was finally given back to me and all was right with the world again. Like riding a bike, my fingers quickly keyed Alt+Tab like a seasoned pro when folks wandered by my cube throwing a glaring eye at my screen. People begun to notice a spring to my step, a gleam in my eye, and a reduced need for a cup of Double Folgers' Regular coffee from the kitchen. Alas, there were some adverse side effects. My regular trips to coworker's cubes to keep up on Survivor and Big Brother slipped to biweekly status. The once, long standing meeting at the coffee pot with my friends was met with my absence. I don't know what ever happened to those folks. Perhaps they found a new job and have gone on to bigger and better things. Maybe, I'll find a bypass for MySpace and see them once again. Maybe, just maybe.

But for now, I have to check out this kid stacking cups. I hear it's unbelievable.

Quick list of favorite my YouTube clips.

Where the hell is Matt?
The Vader Sessions (caution, profanity)
Vader being a smartass
Numa Numa
No explanation needed