Wednesday, September 03, 2003

Living Under Rocks

Good lord. This lady I've been helping is so bizarrely clueless about computers. Not quite "what's a mouse?" bad, but bad enough. Also, I think she is a nun. It's an older woman with long, gray hair, no makeup, and wearing a simple black skirt and white blouse.

First she wanted to know where to open Word. All she could see was someone's personal file on the desktop and she thought that was it. Fair enough. I told her to open the Start Menu and go to Programs and there it'd be. Then she asked about printing, and she seemed to think that she'd have to tell the printer to print off each page in her Word document individually. Again, she had some reason to believe that to be the case; an article on the web had multiple html documents to print. I assured her she didn't have to do that.

A few minutes later, she came back to the desk saying she couldn't see a Start Menu.

Crap. I'd foolishly assumed she was on a PC when she was using a Mac and didn't even know the difference.

I had to explain. I told her to use a PC, and since she didn't even know there was a difference, she was fine with that.

Then she wanted to change the margins of her document because the default view onscreen is page view, zoomed out to 75% for some reason, which didn't look right to her. Her one inch margins on every side were also the default, but she didn't understand. I had to patiently explain that what she saw on the screen was what she wanted and that it would print out the way she wanted.

...

For the first time since the end of Fall Quarter last year, I am not the only girl to work behind this desk. Yay! Aleks is returning. She dropped by today to discuss schedules and such with Paul. It was nice to see her again.

Chris and Lauren left for London this morning, a few hours before I took my sister to the airport to return to San Francisco. They didn't even say goodbye, though. You bastards! Kidding, but send postcards, mmkay?

(Like they are going to sit in internet cafes and read my fucking blog while in London.)

I am really stuck on Built to Spill's Ancient Melodies of the Future lately for some reason. I keep getting all the songs stuck in my head.

Anyway, tonight I am leaving for Olympia, then heading to Seaside tomorrow. Rachel will be joining me there at some point, which will be wonderful.

I am at work right now, getting over some day-one-of-menstruating sickness crap that ruined my afternoon. This is the second time it's happened to me, but not the worst. The first time I just felt crummy, went to class, then felt like absolute shit. I thought I needed to puke but didn't. I called my mom and she asked me if I was pregnant. Hello, I'm *menstruating,* and not lightly. But that was like five or six cycles ago.

So yeah. Not much to talk about. I'm leaving.

No comments: