Technical Difficulties

I've been offline since Saturday afternoon. I was in the middle of my Preventing Sexual Harassment training for work, because I don't have the "spare time" at work to do it, when it crapped out on me. I lost the last 20 pages I'd suffered through and was very blue. I ended up finishing it at work yesterday by putting on my Bose head set and waving co-workers off. I've found that mere earbuds don't work. People don't respect the earbuds, but throw on a honking pair of ear phones and the world steers clear. This also works on a plane. I assume it's because you look plain crazy.

Anyway, I've been relying upon the kindness of strangers for my wireless access for the past 6 months or so. It's been a patchy arrangement but my Airport seemed to be slowing down the desk top computer so we disabled it. I've gone a day or so without internet service in these past 6 months but, after 3 consecutive days of no service, I caved and re-connected it. Desktop computer be damned! So far it seems to be working. My laptop is happy again. Of course I'll have to reconfigure my Tivo which proved to be a long torturous ordeal last time around. I'll give it a go over the weekend when I have more energy.

So, what did I do while I was offline? I eventually completed the sexual harassment training. It's a shocking online course with some fantastic dialog. I was bombarded with one God awful scenario after another. All I kept thinking was 'This stuff is in here because some fool actually said/did this.' Man, are people stupid. I technically "Manage" people so I have to take the Manager's harassment training. It was new to me. The training took me through case after case that was dismissed in court then found it's way to the Supreme Court eventually becoming a landmark case. Let's just say I don't have much faith in the lower courts these days. I don't know who's more moronic, the sexual harassers or the lower courts dismissing so many cases.

I made the mistake of looking at my 401k yesterday. That sucked. The 10% of my salary that I've contributed, so far this year, is gone. Well, I'm exaggerating, I still have $100 of it! *sigh* Obviously I'm a little bummed out about it but I'm not panicking. God knows I'm not retiring for decades so the market has loads of time to recover before I need it. Still, it is a serious situation. I knew it was bad when I read off a CNN email alert to a colleague on the phone. She gasped then drifted off mumbling something like "What?! Oh... I... I've got to call my guy. No, seriously, I've gotta go. Bye." I've never known that to happen. Now all I'm hearing is that I'll never get a loan now. Can a girl catch a break? Mama needs a house! I seriously need all of the Wall Street a-holes to get their act together... pronto. If I can configure a wireless network shouldn't they be able to figure out how to not bankrupt the country? Is that too much to ask from the financial wizards of the US.

And speaking of the world, did you hear all of the world leaders telling off Bush and Congress today about not passing the bailout? If it wasn't all so depressing it might be funny.