Do we really have to do things the right way?
The money is starting to run out/slow down to a trickle here in Los Angeles, even with the cigarette savings, and the job hunt is heating up. The preseason is over, you could say.
Today I applied to two jobs. I was almost done with the second application, when I realized that to upload some relevant documents I would need first to reduce those documents from hard copy to something a little more malleable. I could have figured that out with a couple moments hard thought before I started the process. But instead I left my computer screen sitting there and went tearing through the streets of L.A. in search of a place to get them pdfed. And then I got lunch and then I came back and then I had been timed out of my application session and then I tried to log back in and it didn't recognize the password that it sent me in my email when I hit the "Forgot Password" button and it thought I answered the secret question wrong, which would mean that I don't know my grandmother's first name.
So I ate my lunch and started the whole process again. And in fact, magically, it had saved all my earlier-entered information, so I didn't have to tell them again whether I had received a commendation for working well with others in any of my previous jobs. And then I tried to upload the documents and then it told me the documents were too big and then I split them in half and then they were the wrong format and so on and so forth.
The whole thing took me a good hour and a half. And the whole time hovering in the back of my mind was that secret guilty knowledge that if I had done things right, if I had prepped my documents and read the instructions it all would have gone better and faster and smoother and I would right now be running through the fields instead of having a pounding headache to go with my sense of disaster narrowly averted.
This is something I run up against a fair amount. Sometimes I do things, but I just do them, I don't think them through properly. Now that suggests that I should try not to hold it against other people when they don't go along with my half-assed attempts to alter the situation. But assuming I don't blame others, and assuming I do what's needed to fix things, is it bad to behave in that flailing way?
I'm voting no, myself.
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7 comments:
You've exceeded your yearly quota for headaches. Ouch.
Also, if you ever need extra quarters, I have a lot now.
Thanks for the kind offer. But the core of quarter-based laundry doing is the creation of a capital of quarters, to be jealously hoarded in the between-laundry intervals. Only those quarters stand between you and the realization that you cannot fit all your clothing into one washer.
As far as I'm concerned you can hit the pinata any way you want, sweetheart. Go for it.
Perhaps this would be an acceptable place to rant for a moment about online applications for things. I regularly apply for a grant for academics from the Canadian Government. The freaking login-password deal in this process is not to be believed. It's more complex and secure than my bank and credit card put together. It's tighter than fucking NASA.
You have to change the password every 90 days. It must be exactly the right combination of letters and symbols and things, and cannot resemble any previous password you have used. And, get this, if you mistype it three times in a row, your account is permanently deleted.
All this for.. what? The data we are talking about is like a few places where I wrote down where I went to school, what kind of dumbass project I'm asking them to fund, and how much money I want. Careful! That's some sensitive information! You wouldn't want that to fall into the wrong hands !
I love the permanent deletion idea. Because it couldn't be anything other than profoundly menacing that you failed to remember your password three times in a row.
I like the permanent deletion idea. I remember there was this alien submarine computer game that came out for the Apple IIGS in the late 80's that featured a shocking new twist: if you died in the game, the game deleted itself. You would have to go and buy a new game if you wanted to try again. The game's packaging featured all sorts of bright bold warning labels reading something to the effect of: WARNING, IF YOU DIE IN THIS GAME, THE GAME WILL DELETE ITSELF.
I never actually bought or played the game.
The idea of a video game that deletes itself when you die is awesome and hilarious.
I am just the right age to have watched pinball change from being the kind of game in which getting a "high score" really meant something, because each quarter started you over at 0, to being the kind of game in which getting a high score meant shit, because you could "continue" your game by putting in more quarters. Dumb, dumb, dumb. No wonder it lost out forever to Doom or DanceDanceRevolution or whatever it is people play in arcades these days.
The pinball changeover is part of the sinister rise of the testing-industrial complex, led by Kaplan.
On an unrelated topic, do you know they know have a "Dungeon Master for Dummies" book out?
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