~Tuesday~ I was dragging ass this morning, and it took everything I had in me not to call in sick for the day. I put off getting out of bed so long that I didn’t have time to make breakfast, lunch, or even coffee to take to with me to work.
I parked on Gorman, and within minutes, both the #9 and the #9a Wolfline buses arrived. I got on the #9, since it was in front.
A boy sitting to the left of me read a hardback, library book called Blood, Sweat and Chalk, which I incorrectly guessed might be about teaching. His bookmark consisted of a mostly white—but coffee-stained in places—napkin.
A guy across from me looked at what the girl next to him was typing into her cell phone and I resisted making a value judgment about it, particularly since my neck was still a little sore, and my eyes still a little crossed, from craning to read the title of the book that boy sitting next to me was reading. Pot. Kettle. Black.
My work day wasn’t bad, considering it was the first day back from vacation and how bad I didn’t want to go in this morning in the first place.
At lunch time, I hopped on a Wolfline bus to ride down the street, and the bus driver had the worst braking technique ever. Lurch. Jerk. Screech.
I met both Susan and Brad at Sadlack’s, where Susan and I used our second-to-the-last Groupon for the place. We’ve got one more to use, and we’ve scheduled that for May 4th.
As always, the food was good, and the company better.
I got so desperate for something sweet today that I opened one of my:
There are two little drops of gum in each box, and the affirmation is actually written around the inside of the box. I had to twist it and turn it to read it, as I didn’t want to tear open the box so I could it back in its tray when I was done.
The affirmation said, “You are the master of every situation.”
Do you ever wonder how wacky ads end up on seemingly reputable websites? I do. wral.com, which is the website of a local (Raleigh) TV station has this little section of ads that always at least get an eyebrow raise out of me. Here’s today’s fare:
Any news source that purports that scientists are “discovering” miracles is suspect in my book.
Afte work, I drove to the nearby Food Lion to buy two things to quickly throw together:
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to take to tonight’s oral defenses for the Master of Science in Technical Communication program at NC State, the program from which I obtained said degree myself in December of 2007.
Two of my friends were defending tonight, and I volunteered to assume their refreshment commitments so they could completely focus on their task at hand—their project presentations and oral defenses, the culmination of obtaining their master’s degrees. In my opinion, it’s totally ludicrous to expect the night’s presenters to have to bring refreshments.
And to make it worse:
- They found out about this refreshments responsibility the night before the defenses started.
- They were assigned the category in which to bring food, as opposed to signing up for one.
- They were to bring that category of food for all five nights of defenses, including the night they’d be presenting.
- There was no consideration of cost, as one person was assigned bottled water the entire time, while another was assigned “entrees.”
I mentioned in a previous posting about “emotional intelligence” versus “intellectual intelligence”…
Once again we were crammed into the smallest room in the building, and I did my best to get some refreshments without turning in such a way that my laptop bag, or my fat ass, would take out the unlucky person sitting in the column of chairs closest to the refreshment table.
The two friends of mine I went to see did stellar presentations on worthy projects, and I was most proud of them. I’m not going to get into a lot of the issues I had with the third project and presentation, but let’s just say that when one of the deliverables of it was lauded as “superb work,” it made me think of the “denigration of the Master of Science in Technical Communication degree.”
I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t actually see the deliverable, but it essentially documents help with certain Facebook functionality, which even if it is exceedingly well-done in terms of technical procedural writing, by admission of its author that things change so fast on Facebook that she had to make several adjustments to her project along the way, this document:
- Is going to be out-of-date in no time.
- Thus, creating an immediate maintenance issue.
- And it’s not stored in a version-controlled area to insure that anyone who might choose to update it can get to the latest version, or that others who depend on it will be notified if it is changed.
In my humble opinion, which is arguably nearly irrelevant, these important factors detract considerably from its superbness.
And if that work was superb, then without a doubt so was the work of the first two presenters, and I’m dismayed, disappointed, and embarrassed that their work wasn’t lauded in at least the same way.
After the defenses, I joined my friends Jen and Sarah, along with Sarah’s parents and a friend of theirs for some celebratory suds at Flying Saucer downtown, where a fun time was had by all.
Afterwards, I dropped by The Borough, where I ran into AbbyLadyBug, but ultimately decided not to get a drink.
Since I was parked in front of Flex, I dropped in there after walking back to my car, and immediately regretted doing so. I left after one drink.