Friday Five
It’s been forever since I’ve done one of these!
1. Are you going to school this year? Officially, no. But I’m sure I’ll be *at* the schools a lot with three kids in school now! Casey starts kindergarten this year ::sniff::, Melissa will be in 2nd grade, and the one that really blows me away is Kevin will start Junior High!
2. If yes, where are you going (high school, college, etc.)? If no, when did you graduate? Oops.. I covered that in question number 1. 
3. What are/were your favorite school subjects? English was always fun for me. So was drama and dance. But I guess the second two are considered “extracurricular”. 
4. What are/were your least favorite school subjects? Math and Science. I thoroughly hated both. When I was in school I would’ve said History or Social Studies too but now that I look back, I just had really crappy History and Social Study teachers. Except for one in the 8th grade.. she was cool and I remember enjoying her class. But the rest were like the guy in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Anyone? Anyone?
5. Have you ever had a favorite teacher? Why was he/she a favorite? Ohh… hard to pinpoint. The first one that comes to mind is my 5th grade teacher. The year she taught my class was her first year as a teacher. She was so much fun and always let us know that she was learning too and made us feel important that we were helping her out a lot. She was from Chicago originally and her best friend there was a teacher also. So our two classes were pen pals. It was a lot of fun writing to someone clear across the US! I kept in touch with my pen pal for a good 10 years before we lost contact. I also think my 7th grade Science teacher was a good one, but I skipped class too much to remember much. And my 11th grade English teacher was awesome. My teen years were “troubled” and he went the extra mile for me all the time and took a special interest in my well-being. When I won an award in the “home” (long story) I was living in, he even came to the ceremony and pinned up the newspaper clipping of me accepting it in the class.
The Worms
I’m thankful I haven’t upgraded my OS to Win2000… Not that I would open any strange emails or whatever anyway but I’m just glad that having my old OS has protected me from that last couple nasty worms that are shutting down systems everywhere.
But I’m still pissed. I bet these virus authors don’t realize (or maybe they do and don’t care) that they literally are messing with people’s lives and putting lives at stake with the little virus they create. I’m sure most people don’t think about this… but what do you think happens when a major hospital gets infected with these viruses? Total mayhem… and this mayhem affects our health care.
Jack and his co-workers have been working overtime for the past two days trying to protect and disinfect the network system at the local hospital here in our city. This hospital spends millions to keep viruses out of their system and it does a good job. But one mistake (and a loophole they didn’t think about) from one vital person caused them to be hammered with the virus. Their network is currently locked down.
So lets say you have a disease and you pass out. You’re taken via an ambulance to the emergency room. Normally they would pull up your file and all the information they need about your disease and the treatment for it would be at the health care worker’s fingertips. Well not today. Since the network had to be shut down, they have to go find your file and pull all the paperwork from it. This takes precious time that you may not have! If you’ve had x-rays or bloodwork done, it has to be found and located the old-fashioned way.
Jack worked next to a doctor who had a Kaiser patient who was very sick. Since our local hospital is NOT a Kaiser hospital, normally he’d dial into Kaiser’s computers and look up his patient’s information. Well he couldn’t do that. He had to call Kaiser and they had to locate it and give this patient’s info to the doctor over the phone where the doctor had to scribble it down on paper. Jack said it took 45 minutes to get all the information he needed about this patient and to try to diagnose what the problem was based on the information he was receiving over the phone. Normally he would’ve been able to look this up on his computer and cross-reference everything to figure it out. Meanwhile this patient is very sick, is suffering, and could be dying and they can’t do anything till help him in a timely and efficient manner.
It just makes me sick that people think it’s funny … or whatever … to write these viruses. It just isn’t funny to endanger people’s lives.
Cuteness Overload
Bears are mine and Jack’s “theme” since we got married. It just kinda happened when we fell in love with Cherished Teddies on our honeymoon. When I saw this set I had to have it. It’s way too cute. Almost too much cuteness. But I like it! I got the set at Graphic Garden. There’s a link on the side bar too. 
PS I’ll get the archives matching later… I’m behind on laundry! 
You know you did something right when
… someone STEALS your work. I just spent the morning watermarking a BUNCH of my work because someone liked it enough to steal it for themselves and pass it off as their own work. Isn’t that neat? 
My First Day
I started my job bright and early at 6 AM this morning. I was so nervous! Jack got up with me and made coffee. We chatted a bit then I logged on to begin my shift.
Within seconds (literally) of clicking “begin receiving calls” my phone rang. I was not prepared to receive a call so quickly and it caught me off guard. The caller told me what product he was interested in but as soon as I asked him for his first bit of info he hung up.
The second caller wasn’t entirely sure what the exact product name was (and I had 5-6 to choose from that were completely not the same thing, lol) so I ended up putting her on hold and using the “Call Help” button to ask my “supervisor” what she was talking about. Fortunately the supervisor was able to tell me what it was she wanted and I was able to continue with the order. It was kinda funny because the caller asked me “Surely I’m not the only one who’s ordered these things?” to which I replied, “no, but I’m new”. She laughed and said “OK”. That made me feel better and she was really nice and patient.
I had several hang ups. A couple wrong numbers, and I think I only screwed up badly once. LOL Depending on the number they call and the ad they saw, each screen can be different so it’s a little confusing to get used to. I’m sure in time it will become second nature but it was definitely scary. The time FLEW by (I worked a two-hour shift) and was actually disappointed when my shift ended. I think this just might work out!
