became over and over

The computer teacher last year ordered 18 copies of a certain computer program for our lab. It's a photo manipulation program that our students are going to use for making the year book. It came in two boxes, they were approximately 1ftx1ftx2f. They felt pretty light, but I opened them up to reveal the software boxes. The boxes are usual size for software, and I proceed to open one.

Well, since these are 'education' editions, the manuals are online. Which means that the boxes contain nothing more than a CD in a paper sleeve, and a CD-sized piece of paper on which is printed the serial number for the software. The entire package could have fit into a single one of the software boxes, with plenty of room left over. The fact is that all we needed was one CD and a sheet of paper that had the 18 serial numbers. Instead, we were shipped approximated 1x2x2 of empty air and worthless cardboard!

Why am I ranting about this? BECAUSE WE ARE IN AFGHANISTAN. This was shipped from the States. We could probably have bought another one or two copies of the software if it would have gotten shipped in an efficient manner. I'm not blaming our folks in the States that sent it, I'm blaming the software companies that package their stuff in such huge, useless boxes. I mean, I recognize that this is probably safer, but sheesh, couldn't you have sent 1 or 2 CDs and 18 serial keys instead? This is infuriating.

Sigh.

In a slightly unrelated piece of information that I wish to relate, I keep getting worried that I'm going to be the next person to get sick, with all the people that keep getting sick here. But I've been safe so far. I find this to be a good thing, and hope that the trend continues, because I think being sick would be really lame, and I don't want to have to deal with that. I guess we deal with what comes.


One of the other staff members here told me they thought I was doing I good job the other day, everyone was happy with me. I guess I didn't respond as positively to that as they thought I should, because they asked me if that was bad. I said, "I guess not, but my ideal is really that people are indifferent to me because they don't have much interaction with me. The more interaction people have with me, the more things have broken. While I'm happy to fix things and let people go about their job, if I were really good at this, they wouldn't have to worry about things breaking in the first place." Obviously, I am continuing to make friends in my own special little way.

The preceeding paragraph may put some of you off, so allow me to explain what it is that I mean by what I have stated. See, if I were really on top of things, people would not have to interact with me, because things would not be breaking. If I were on top of things, I would have added all of the appropriate printers to the teacher's computers before I had distributed them. I would have loaded all the proper software on teacher's computers before they went out. I would have already fixed the copiers that keep breaking. I would have identified the source of certain other issues, and put those issues to rest. I would have had all of the student logins and passwords created. But instead, I'm behind the eightball in a lot of things, and only through barely hanging on to the current situation am I keeping my head above water. I keep getting dunked by new things, not hugely, but it's like I need the tide to go down a little bit to catch my breath, get organized, and start proactively fixing the issues that exist that I know about.

Ok, so in addition to a work metaphor, this is a metaphor for the rest of my life. Not just here, but everywhere. I think that I am just short of the crest of the wave, unable to see over the top of the next precipice. So though I have nothing that's of worth, I hope to have it all Taken from me, and to leave it all behind.