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Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2002 - 8:29 p.m. Today was �New Slim Client� training day. What a waste of time! Everybody from our storage and field office that has to use the new computers�oops, sorry- New Slim Client had to go to this training. The training lasted about 3 hours. Of the three hours, there were a total of two new things that I didn�t already know how to do, computer-wise: 1.How to log on with my new personal password. 2.How to access the old MMI system through the New Slim Clients. That�s it. No, I do not think of myself as a computer wiz. Far from it. But I can tell you this: I didn�t need 2 hours of training on what a mouse is, how to maximize and minimize a �window�, what a �window� is, and other such advanced concepts. Someone from headquarters could have just called me (and Eric, the grease monkey, for that matter) and told us our screen names (last name, plus the first initial of your first and middle names- high tech!) and where the MMI was buried (inside of My Personal Documents, which is a little odd if you ask me) in a 2 minute phone conversation. That�s all we needed, but that is not how the government works, is it? Eric and I kept jumping ahead of what the instructors were doing (�And if you hold down on your left button, you can move a Window!�), sending emails to each other (even though we were sitting next to each other), playing with MS Paint, trying (unsuccessfully) to surf the Internet. Once, when we were being taught how to type a �note� using a program named �notepad�, the instructor noticed that I had changed both the font size (from 12 to 48) and font (from Times New Roman to Comic Sans MS), and that I had posted �My computer doesn�t have a P drive� (the drive we were playing with, which my computer actually didn�t have). He used his laser pointer to shine on my monitor, and he said �Very Funny�. Good to see I can still piss a teacher off, after all these years�. So, here�s the lowdown on what these bad boys can do: Yes, you can get onto the Internet. That is, as long as all you want to see is the NDDOT web page, and nothing else. There are links in the favorites folder for MSNBC, ABC News and such, but the firewall doesn�t let you go there. They don�t trust us, do they? The MMI works faster, is in actual color (!), and should never be down anymore (as opposed to being down all the time, with the 1984 system we were still operating last week). I can send and receive emails from both coworkers and the outside world. But there is one catch- your email is not private. It�s open for anyone in the headquarters to read, if they so choose. If you decide to have a stock newsletter or a fantasy football league update sent to your email and they find out, you could be fired. And you think YOUR boss restricts your desktop computer usage� I will leave you with a couple of actual road signs, sent to me by my buddy Gary. They are not from OUR DOT, but that�s not to say we couldn�t have made them: I wonder who gets to hand out the punishment on this one?
Um, yeah�.damned if you don�t, damned if you do�.
BTW�a few years ago, our local sign shop put up one of those huge green �Information� signs (you know, the ones with the mileage to the next small and large town?) just east of our county line. On it was the distance to the state capitol. This sign was up for almost 60 days before someone noticed that they had misspelled the city�s name. Only after the local television station in the state capitol did a �Do you believe this!� report on the sign did the headquarters in London find out about the mistake. The sign was taken down the next day. That pissed me off, because I wanted to take a picture of it for my photo album�����
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