again with the no pictures. get over it. this is not yahoo!, you yahoo.

for training today on the new computer system, officelady & i were in the same class. things got started off on the right foot when instructor asked officelady to sign in. officelady said, "somebody already signed in for me." instructor said, "no they did not." officelady said, "yes, they did. see? my name is right there." instructor said, "that's the 'name' column. see? this is the 'signature' column, the one with everyone's signatures, beside their names?"

sigh.

class started at 9AM so long about 9:10 everyone is chatting because isn't that why you say class starts at 9? so everyone can sit around and chat? right. so, coworker1 says, "going back to school after having the baby just about killed me." and instructor replies, "oh, school is fun!" and coworker1 goes, "yes! school is fun! fun!" well, which is it there coworker1 - just about killed you or fun! fun!, eh?

sigh.

coworker2 sat in a chair and it broke. no, not b/c she is fat, although that would have been humorous. [oh, relax your politically correct self. fat people breaking chairs is funny! funny!] so, the chair was just a bit wack and it broke, so she pushed it "out of the way" which was interestingly, directly between my chair and the wall so that i was sort of trapped in the desk. she said, again, "i am just pushing it out of the way." i grasped the rolling chair firmly in both hands, twirled it around, and pushed it forcefully at the far wall, where it came to rest in a space which was truly out of the way. i then turned back around to finish my game of spider solitaire, as it was still pre-class chat 'em up time and ace don't chat, yo.

sigh.

in front of me was seated the typical "eejit" student. instructor gave the intro and said, "all right - everyone with me?" and eejity-coworker raised her hand, waited to be called on, and said, "i did not understand a single thing you said." instructor blinked. blinked. bal-leenked. then she said, "maybe when we get to the hands-on part that will help." firstly, eejity-coworker demonstrably speaks english, so it's a bit of a zaggeration for her to say she understood nothing, and secondly, keep reading here to see how well the hands on part was designed, sure to overcome eejityness.

sigh.

the class began with the instructor telling us to open a browser window and type in the url to get to the software. there were myriad choices on the desktop for opening a browser because for previous classes on other softwares the instructors had created a shortcut to simplify access to the software and avoid the very first class activity being a task rife with complication and error. if not using a shortcut, an instructor can ease software location for the class by writing the url on the wall-size white board. for our class, the instructor chose to do neither of these things, leaving us floundering for the correct syntax, feeling we'd failed at our first assignment. way to get us started on the road to success, there instructor!

sigh.

one of the folks who was supposed to be in class walked by the open door. the instructor remarked on the fact and said, "if he didn't want to come to class, he should have just said so." one of the class attendees said, "maybe it was a fig newton of your imagination." oh, yeah, nothing like a trite pun to really set off the humour rockets.

sigh.

when he walked by again, instructor called him out: "coworker3! i thought you were going to be out all week!" he came to the door, faced her snide grin, and said, "i will be out the rest of today and i have been out the first three days this week." instructor's pithy comeback was something to the effect of, "oh."

sigh.

at one point, instructor had put some items in the cart. no, this is not a commerce system. no, it's really not. not at all. but, it does have a cart. and, you place orders. because, you know, software should make sense like that. sigh. and so instructor is staring at the projection image of her monitor, up there on the screen, and she's going, "why isn't it showing where my items are? why? why?" and i am like, "the cart is displaying as red. they're in the cart where you put them, which is indicated, with the red."

sigh.

the cart shows in the directory tree. that's right. you heard them both there. the CART which should show as an ICON of some sort is displayed in what is called the DIRECTORY TREE which is such a wildly outdated dos term that i doubt many of the folks in the room even know that "directories" are what we now, in the windows world, call "folders". directory tree? really?

sigh.

meanwhile, thru the hands on part, eejity-coworker was checking her bank balance, facebook, and yahoo! news! she gleaned enough information from a yahoo! news! quiz! to declare aloud at the end of class, "well, we didn't have any chemistry - no wonder the date didn't go well. i had a first date last night, and he just was not a buttery cream cake to me." yeah, i don't know.

sigh.