![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Wednesday's child
May. 28th, 2008 09:38 pmIt's true, I was born on a Wednesday. "Wednesday's child is full of woe..." Well, no, not really that bad I hope.
It was a beautiful day, and I got to be outdoors in it for a bit this morning since I don't go into work until 12:30 on the W day. From there on out until time to go home, it was literally a circus and a shooting gallery combined. The boss had messed up the desktop on her Windows somehow. She blamed it on yesterday's power outage, but I'm not buying it. The quick launch toolbar had disappeared, and she tried to reconstruct it by dragging icons from the desktop, making a royal mess that didn't work. When she finally went out on an errand so I could sit down at her desk, it was easy to get the toolbar back. She had turned it off through the menu for the bottom tool bars. (She's erratic with the mouse, a wild clicker with bad aim.) I turned it back on and all the icons she expected were still in it. Then I went to the control panel and removed a bunch of junk, like Yahoo tool bar, Zango tool bar (whatever that is.) and Google Earth. Should free up some disk space and maybe make the machine run faster too.
I was the only senior staff there in the evening, because she's taking off on another trip across country. Fortunately I had a very capable part time assistant, but we seemed to get more than our share of looneys and weird people in three hours. You know, the ones who are hard of hearing and insist on shouting at you and want you to shout back at them? The ones who have always lost their library card and need yet another replacement. The ones who call on the phone to find out if they returned that book because they can't remember and actually it was their daughter who checked it out only she's moved to Nashville now and sent it back in the mail, no not to the library but to her mom only mom can't remember it coming in the mail and wants to know if maybe she returned it in the "night drop..." No, it hasn't been returned and it isn't our book, it was borrowed for her from Rockford College. Oh, well could I call Rockford and see if they have it? No, because they use the same system we do. If they had checked it in, it would show on my terminal. It hasn't been returned. And on and on. Meanwhile people are lining up at the desk to check stuff out...
Then at one minute to eight I finally locked the doors and started turning lights off only to have a woman show up and start pounding on the glass. "It's not eight yet!" she insists. Actually it's after eight by my watch, but OK. She only wants to pick up stuff being held for her at the desk. So we let her in and are treated to five minutes of argument about whether the videos are held on her card or her husband's. Lady, we'll let you have them. Just shut up and go away.
As happens every year, the Harvard gas stations raised their prices higher than everyone else in surrounding towns for Memorial Day weekend, and therefore got less business than usual. Now they are in a panic and dropping their prices to try to make up for what they lost. They never learn. Down from $4.21/gal for unleaded last Thursday to $4.07/gal this morning. I won't be surprised if they go even lower tomorrow or Friday. Meanwhile the other guys outside of town are holding steady at $4.13 to $4.16, right where they've been for two weeks.
Tickling my brain to remember how to program in 8080 assembly language for a CP/M 2.2 system. Fortunately I still have my books on the subject, and it's coming back to me. Using an Altair simulator on Linux to do the work, because the target machine is a notebook computer that has no development tools in its ROM-based system. Fortunately it does have xmodem file transfer capability through a standard serial port, so I can get executable binary code into it once I have it in the correct form.
Oh, and Tess went out to the pasture early today, since I was home in the morning and wouldn't be here at her more usual time. The neighbor's rat dogs ran through the hedge to yap at us again, rattling her a bit but not so badly this time. I wish she'd just squish one of them and get it over with. Neighbor was on the other side of the hedge, where I couldn't see her, shrieking at the dogs to come back. Of course they ignore her, since they have had no obedience training whatsoever. Tess was out for two hours, and I thought she'd be unwilling to come back in so early, but it was no problem. She met me at the gate and followed me right back in without complaint.
It was a beautiful day, and I got to be outdoors in it for a bit this morning since I don't go into work until 12:30 on the W day. From there on out until time to go home, it was literally a circus and a shooting gallery combined. The boss had messed up the desktop on her Windows somehow. She blamed it on yesterday's power outage, but I'm not buying it. The quick launch toolbar had disappeared, and she tried to reconstruct it by dragging icons from the desktop, making a royal mess that didn't work. When she finally went out on an errand so I could sit down at her desk, it was easy to get the toolbar back. She had turned it off through the menu for the bottom tool bars. (She's erratic with the mouse, a wild clicker with bad aim.) I turned it back on and all the icons she expected were still in it. Then I went to the control panel and removed a bunch of junk, like Yahoo tool bar, Zango tool bar (whatever that is.) and Google Earth. Should free up some disk space and maybe make the machine run faster too.
I was the only senior staff there in the evening, because she's taking off on another trip across country. Fortunately I had a very capable part time assistant, but we seemed to get more than our share of looneys and weird people in three hours. You know, the ones who are hard of hearing and insist on shouting at you and want you to shout back at them? The ones who have always lost their library card and need yet another replacement. The ones who call on the phone to find out if they returned that book because they can't remember and actually it was their daughter who checked it out only she's moved to Nashville now and sent it back in the mail, no not to the library but to her mom only mom can't remember it coming in the mail and wants to know if maybe she returned it in the "night drop..." No, it hasn't been returned and it isn't our book, it was borrowed for her from Rockford College. Oh, well could I call Rockford and see if they have it? No, because they use the same system we do. If they had checked it in, it would show on my terminal. It hasn't been returned. And on and on. Meanwhile people are lining up at the desk to check stuff out...
Then at one minute to eight I finally locked the doors and started turning lights off only to have a woman show up and start pounding on the glass. "It's not eight yet!" she insists. Actually it's after eight by my watch, but OK. She only wants to pick up stuff being held for her at the desk. So we let her in and are treated to five minutes of argument about whether the videos are held on her card or her husband's. Lady, we'll let you have them. Just shut up and go away.
As happens every year, the Harvard gas stations raised their prices higher than everyone else in surrounding towns for Memorial Day weekend, and therefore got less business than usual. Now they are in a panic and dropping their prices to try to make up for what they lost. They never learn. Down from $4.21/gal for unleaded last Thursday to $4.07/gal this morning. I won't be surprised if they go even lower tomorrow or Friday. Meanwhile the other guys outside of town are holding steady at $4.13 to $4.16, right where they've been for two weeks.
Tickling my brain to remember how to program in 8080 assembly language for a CP/M 2.2 system. Fortunately I still have my books on the subject, and it's coming back to me. Using an Altair simulator on Linux to do the work, because the target machine is a notebook computer that has no development tools in its ROM-based system. Fortunately it does have xmodem file transfer capability through a standard serial port, so I can get executable binary code into it once I have it in the correct form.
Oh, and Tess went out to the pasture early today, since I was home in the morning and wouldn't be here at her more usual time. The neighbor's rat dogs ran through the hedge to yap at us again, rattling her a bit but not so badly this time. I wish she'd just squish one of them and get it over with. Neighbor was on the other side of the hedge, where I couldn't see her, shrieking at the dogs to come back. Of course they ignore her, since they have had no obedience training whatsoever. Tess was out for two hours, and I thought she'd be unwilling to come back in so early, but it was no problem. She met me at the gate and followed me right back in without complaint.
