Sound the Alarm

Today has been an interesting day rather pleasant, annoying, and unsettling all at once. It was a shopping and prep day at work for me, so it was a day I had really been looking forward to. I would be out most of the day, each lunch with my colleagues, and then I would print a bunch of templates from AutoCAD to make the scenery construction (which starts tomorrow) run smoothly.

The shopping part of the day was great! I went to Lowe’s and Hobby Lobby with a co-worker. We’ll call her Cynthia. Cynthia is incredibly funny and has the world’s most adorable baby. (I’m serious. I’ve seen tons of babies – some cute – some grotesque – some miniature Winston Churchills; Cynthia’s baby, however, is too cute for words.) Her baby stayed behind with Lisa (another co-worker), however, because the shop van lacks a sufficient number of seats, and strapping a small child to the roof rack is – if not illegal – certainly ill-advised.

Once back, I began working on prep for tomorrow – and tried to get some things printed. I was having one helluva time due to technical difficulties. I e-mailed the files to myself, and headed upstairs to the design lab to print everything. When I got there, however, the plotter (read gigantic printer for those of you non-designers) had photo paper on the spool and I needed regular drafting vellum. I found the vellum, but I didn’t know how to change the paper. As it turns out, no one in the building knew how to change the paper either, so I asked for the manual. That’s when I learned that the IT department felt that we didn’t need the manual, so they never gave us one.

Anyway, after searching the HP website, I found the manual, and printed one off for the department. This bothers me, because while I understand the great convenience of having these manuals on-line, why should I go through the difficulty of looking up the manual on-line when there could be a printed copy next to the machine? Really IT? We should have the manual. You can waste your time looking it up on-line because you are never around to have to use the fricking thing. Nothing is more irritating than having to drop what you are doing and Google something that should be at your fingertips.

Soon I was downloading my file, but when I went to open it, the computer wouldn’t recognize the file format. As it turns out, you can’t just access AutoCAD on those computers. AutoCAD hasn’t always been Mac friendly, and the department doesn’t have the latest version, so it becomes a little more difficult. Not as difficult per se as sacrificing a goat under a full-moon while doing the hokey-pokey blindfolded, but difficult enough. Apparently you have to restart the computer while holding the option key. This brings up the option to convert to Windows. You have to run Windows and then you are able to access AutoCAD. The program exists on the computer, but only in a mirror universe. The two universes can’t speak to each other, and while they occupy the same space, are completely unaware of the other’s existence. It’s a little like Charlie Sheen and reality.

This is when things really got interesting… After finally getting AutoCAD up, my file downloaded, and the plotter ready to go, I began to adjust the file for printing. I was 85% done when Cynthia came upstairs to let me know she and Lisa were leaving early, and she didn’t want to lock my stuff up in the costume shop. I was very grateful that she had remembered my laptop was there, so I thanked her and bounded down stairs to pack up my things.

While putting away my laptop, I received a phone call, and this is how it went:

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this…” the caller mispronounces my name.

“Yes, this is…” I correct her.

“Hi, this is…” she introduces herself as being from ADT. “Your alarm is currently going off, is everything okay?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I’m at work.”

“Well, your Zone 9 – that’s your front door – is going off. Is there anyone at the residence that would be coming home at this time?”

“No, it’s just me and my parrot, and I doubt he went out for a stroll.”

“Well, would you like me to notify the police?”

“Yes.” What did she expect me to say? No, I just pay you guys to not notify the cops in case someone attempts a robbery.

We wrap up our conversation. She told me the police would be there shortly, and asked me to meet them at my apartment. I told her I’d be there quickly.

I ran into a huge traffic jam while rushing home. All I could think of was Joey. If the alarm was still going off – Heaven forbid – he was going to be practically deaf by the time I got there, and scared out of his mind. (That alarm is loud.) If it wasn’t going off, he would still be scared… or, he could have been stolen. If someone stole my feathered baby, I don’t know what I’d do. I know there are sick bastards in the world, but stealing someone’s pet – a member of their family – would be overly cruel. Steal my possessions, I will eventually forgive you; steal my Joey, and there aren’t words.

As I was pulling into my parking lot, I received a phone call from the police. They verified my address, and I instantly understood when they asked “what city do you live in?” that they had driven to the same address in Bessemer and not in Birmingham. I would be waiting on the police.
When I finally got inside, nothing was missing; my front door, however, was unlocked, and Joey was very upset. He was cowering in the corner of his cage. Someone had come in the apartment. Seeing as how nothing was disturbed, I called my apartment management to see if they had been in the apartment.

“Hello this is,” she identified the apartment complex and herself.

“Hi this is,” I gave her my name, address, and phase number; she pulled up my file. “Did someone come in my apartment today? My alarm went off and the police are on their way.”

“Did you have any outstanding maintenance orders?”

“Only the ones that have continuously been ignored.”

“What are those sir? Is it the dishwasher?”

“No. It’s NOT the dishwasher. I’m still missing that kitchen drawer I first reported in July, and my towel bar is still coming out of the wall in my bathroom. I first reported that two months ago.” This irritated me, I’m calling to see if I was almost robbed, and she wanted to talk about prior maintenance requests. Maintenance requests that have been continously ignored at that.

But NOTHING could have prepared me for what she said next:

“Well, we have no way of knowing if maintenance was in your apartment today. I mean, someone could have been there, to fix one of those problems. It’s possible that someone here set off the alarm, but I don’t know. Would you like me to call them?”

“Yes.” What the F*CK?!?!?! What is this: “we have no way of knowing” bullshit!?! How can you not know what your maintenance people are doing? Someone potentially tried to break into my apartment today, and I’m trying to figure out if it was my stupid apartment maintenance people, and the fricking office can’t tell me if maintenance came into my unit. This is beyond idiocy.

A policeman arrived and talked with me. He stayed on the stoop; he never came in; he never inspected the door. I told him I had been at work, and that I had phoned the apartment people and they didn’t know if anyone from their office had been in my unit or not. He took my information from my driver’s license, and went back to his car. The whole scene took less than 5 minutes. I called my mom and we both got concerned that he hadn’t fully listened to me, and had just kind of shrugged off the situation. I noticed that he was still outside in his car, so I hung up with my mom, and went back out to talk with him. He started to drive away, but I flagged him back down.

“Is there anything else I need to do?”

“No sir,” he replied as he handed me a copy of the report he was apparently going to mail to me.

“I just don’t know what happened,” I replied as I noticed the report read: False Alarm Report.

“It’s okay,” he said. “This isn’t going to affect you or anything. If you notice anything missing, give us a call.”

“Okay,” I replied and thanked him as he drove away.

I’m not sure what I expected him to do, but I thought maybe he’d bring a sense of peace or something to the situation. I was calm, but I really verbal reassurance. He’s a police officer after all. I mean, the police are supposed to protect the public. It seemed he could have done more, or at least acted like he gave a damn.

Then I went back inside. If the police weren’t going to be a comfort, this situation called for Rocky Road. I needed chocolate and I needed it in ice cream form. Unfortunately, there were only two bites left in my pint container…

So here I am, typing this post, without enough ice cream to calm my nerves. Someone I don’t know was in my apartment today, and I’m the only one who seems to care. Thanks Apartment Management, thanks ADT, thanks Police. Let’s hope no one else sounds the alarm – at least not until I get some more Rocky Road.

Technology Fail

Nothing irks me more than technology. One promise of technology is that it makes lives easier, but is that really true? We quickly become dependant on technology and then we can't remember what life was like before cell phones, i-pads, laptops, etc. Life existed before the advent of the computer age, and if all computers stopped working tonight - life would still go on, and somehow we would survive.

Now I'm not advocating that we all get rid of technology and embrace our inner-Amish; on the contrary, I love technology and want to thoroughly embrace it. I, however, demand that everything works the way it is supposed to - when I need it to work. This demand, however, seems to be the problem.

For instance, I finally gave up on loading one of the video diaries from the road trip because it was taking at least a day to load the video. When the video was over 75% loaded, the computer would go into hibernation, severe the connection, and I would have to start all over again. Frankly, the thought of sitting at the computer trying to load the video again made me want to projectile vomit. I decided living my life was more important than uploading a video to YouTube. However, I quickly discovered my life is boring and devoid of meaning at the moment. Thanks technology fail.

This post, however, was inspired by Twitter. As you may have noticed, I'm attempting to incorporate Twitter into the blog. Hopefully this will be another way for you all to comment on the posts, and make it easier to share the blog with your friends. I made two Twitter profiles, one for me personally and one for the blog. Yet, Twitter has yet to let me upload my profile photos. I have triple-checked to make sure the photos are within the size parameters and double checked my Internet connection. Everything on my end is in working order, but for two days now - Twitter will not load my fricking pictures! Why can't something work the way it is supposed to? Shouldn't it just load my photos? And if it's not going to work, why can't someone fix the problem quickly? This is America damn it, aren't things supposed to work?

Also, I swear the technology is out to fuck with me.

During the road trip, we would often try to find hotels before we departed, so we would have a location to input into the GPS. Well, Cara and I needed a hotel in St. Louis, and we were in Sullivan, IL. As you may remember, we had stopped there to visit a friend. It isn't that far of a drive - a little more than 2 hours, but we wanted to have a hotel booked before we got on the road. We were using the free wifi at the theatre our friend works at on both my I-pad and my laptop. Patrons were starting to arrive, so we had to go outside on the sidewalk to use the Internet, (maybe 25 feet from where we were originally sitting) but both the I-pad and the computer kept dropping the signal. A signal that tons of people use every day - kept dropping us - as we attempted to find and book a hotel. What made it worse was that our friend was supposed to attend the premier of the play inside, so we were on a deadline and down to the wire.

There I was sitting outside, in the summer sun, on concrete, in a hurry, with two Internet capable devices, and neither of them working properly. Happy people were arriving, excited to see The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, while sweat was dripping from my brow as I hopelessly tried not to swear. I bottled my rage inward, and attempted to focus my efforts on using what little Internet connection I could hang onto. All I wanted to do, however, was shout profanity, punch pregnant woman, and tell old people to shut the Hell up. I was uncomfortable and irritated, happiness was not allowed.

We eventually did book a hotel, and I confided in Cara that I almost lost my shit while I was sitting there. She knew. Apparently I'm not that good at hiding how I feel. (Anyone surprised?) I hope I didn't scare the patrons, but someone needs to let that theatre know that it needs to beef up its Internet connection. Even though it sounds like a question, wifi should be a statement. And that statement should include stability, ease of use, and inner-peace. I think if the world had better Internet connections - everyone would be a lot less cranky - at least I would be.

I swear I'm the only one who has this problem. All I have to do is appear to be busy, and something will cease to work. This could be the plotter in my old office, my personaly printer, a scanner, free wifi, etc. Hell, even camera batteries will die immediately after I put them into my camera. And it's always when I need to use the technology as well. If I didn't need to use the scanner, it would magically scan something on its own, but when it's something I need quickly, it fucks with me.

This has happened since I was a child. My first printer died once while I was attempting to print a research paper. It printed my paper - in hexadecimal notation, and then printed instructions on how to fix the problem... in Spanish. Seeing as how no one in my household spoke Spanish - that was a fun day. Also, trying to explain to your teacher that you typed your paper in English, but your printer decided hexadecimal notation was a better format - is a tough sell. Luckily, after hours of deliberation, we unplugged the printer, plugged it back in, and magically my paper printed in English.

Another peeve of mine is the remote control on my mother's TV. I'd heard of super-sensitive remotes before, but I'd never before seen or heard of a dumb remote before. I can press buttons on it for hours, and it won't change the channel. Finally, I have to drag my lazy ass off of the couch (or sit up and lean ridiculously far off the couch) to get the sensor to read properly. It basically makes the concept of a remote a moot point. Remotes were designed to keep you from exercising while channel surfing, but with this remote I end up getting several crunches out of the deal. Often, I want to take the remote and hurl it into the LCD screen. I've had fantasies of the screen shattering as the remote punched past the glass and into the wall. "That would teach it to not work," I think. "If I broke it more, that would make it work correctly."

I guess it's something I will just need to learn to deal with. Let's face it - technology is fun, but we can't count on it for everything. We can barely count on it when we need it to work. We need to be able to easily access our inner-Amish and come up with a plan B. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day for me technology wise. I have to believe that Twitter will be fixed, and I won't get my daily workout while channel surfing. Otherwise, I may have to blog about it...