Well, the first week of classes are over. The first week I cover phones at the helpdesk. Monday through Wednesday I averaged 16 calls an hour. Things slowed down Thursday and Friday to about 8 calls an hour. Let’s just say I’m glad this week is over and if I don’t have to talk on the phone for a while I’ll be happy. 
I got the idea for this story from the latest recalls of Dora toys due to lead paint.
*Scene opens with Dora the Explorer looking for Boots the Monkey*
Dora *looking around*: Where is Boots? *calling* Boots!!
*Boots enters looking sick*
Boot: Oh, Dora. I don’t feel well. My mommy said I have lead poisoning because all of my toys had lead paint on them.
Dora: Oh Boots, I’m sorry you’re sick. Why did your toys make you sick?
Boots: My toys were made in China where they can pay someone less than a dollar a day to make toys. But in China they have no safety oversight and they used lead paint because it was cheaper.
Dora: We need to do something about that!
Boots: But I don’t know where to go to stop this.
Dora *looking at the camera*: Who do we ask for help when we don’t know which way to go?
Boots and Dora: Map! Map!
*Camera switches to the Map emerging from the Backpack. Map sings his annoying song and then displays a path*
Map: I know which way to go! Tell Dora she needs to go to the Corporate Boardroom, then to Washington DC, then to the people of America. Remember, Boardroom, Washington, People of America!!
Dora *to the camera*: Where do we have to go?
*Pictures appear at the bottom of the screen, depicting a Boardroom, Washington DC, and the People*
Dora: Boardroom, Washington, People of America. Let’s go Boots!
*Boots is too sick to run and dance with Dora, so Dora pushes Boots in a wheelchair to the Corporate Boardroom*
Corporate CEO: What are you doing in my boardroom?!? Security!
Boots: *coughs*
Dora: But sir, my friend Boots is very sick because your company outsourced all toy manufacturing to China where they have no worker’s rights and use toxic materials to make toys!
CEO: *laughs* Does your monkey friend own any stock in my company?
*Dora shakes her head no*
CEO: Silly girl, I only care about what makes money for my stockholders. They don’t care what we do as long as it maximizes our profits in the short term. You see, American workers expect to be paid a living wage, and the government expects us to use safe materials in our toys. By exporting our manufacturing to China we can produce our toys for much less. But we can still charge as much as we were when we made them in the States. So that means more profit for us!
Dora: But Mr. CEO you are making people sick and hurting American working class families. What happened to Worker Pride and Quality Workmanship?
CEO *opens locked safe*: I keep those locked away where they can’t bother me.
*Swiper the Fox music plays*
Dora: Did you hear that? That sounded like Swiper the Fox.
Boots: *coughing* That sneaky fox is always trying to swipe our stuff!
Dora: If you see the fox, yell Swiper!
*Swiper sneaks in, hiding behind the CEO*
Dora and Boots
CEO *Interrupting*: Hold on a minute!
*Swiper takes Worker Pride and Quality Workmanship and throws them off-screen*
Swiper: You’re too late! You’ll never find them now!
CEO: Well, I’m glad to be rid of them, they were always getting in the way of making a quick buck.
*Security enters and throws Boots and Dora out of the building*
Dora: Well, we weren’t able to help Boots there. Where do we need to go next? Washington DC, right!
*Dora pushes Boots in the wheelchair to Washington DC*
Politician: Who let this child and animal into my office?
Dora: Ayudame por favor! Help me please! My friend Boots is very sick because of the lead paint on his toys made in China.
Politician: Big business has spent a lot of money keeping me in office, so I need to help them out as best I can. It would be bad for their profits if they had to pay American workers to produce quality toys. It’s better for all of us if we keep things the way they are.
Dora: But it’s not better, my friend is very sick!
Politician: Oh I didn’t mean all of us as in everyone. I meant all of us as in myself and my friend the CEO. And anyway, where are your parents. Letting you wander around with a sick animal. I better have CPS investigate. And were speaking Spanish? Are you even in this country legally? DHS will have to look into this as well.
*Dora quickly pushes Boots out of the office*
Boots: OH NO! Now I’ll never get better! And more kids will get sick too!
Dora: Don’t worry Boots, we can still appeal to the People of the USA!
Dora *Facing the camera*: YOU! Stand UP! Stand UP! We need to save Boots! Stop watching TV! Write a letter to the corporate boards, write a letter to your congressman, write a letter to your newspaper! If you all make your voices heard we can make this country a better place. A place where we can take pride in ourselves. Where you can earn a living wage and raise a family. Where you can have affordable health care. Where we don’t have to worry about hazardous toys being sold to our kids for the sake of a quick profit. YOU can make a difference! HEL-*static*
*Sorry this transmission has been stopped by the DHS. Please go back to your regularly scheduled viewing*
I made the mistake of driving through town this afternoon. It is move in weekend, so the population of our little village jumps by about 5000 over the weekend. As a result, traffic is usually pretty messy as everyone finds their way to campus. It is always a bittersweet moment when school is about to start. But welcome (or welcome back) to the student population! After all, without the students there would be no college, and without the college I wouldn’t have my job.
Last weekend we went camping for a few days to get away. It was really nice to unplug for a bit and spend some time with Karen and the girls. I had a chance to upload a couple pictures from the trip:
The girls in the cabin
They say things always break in 3′s, but it sucks when you get 6 broken things all at once. Our six broken things are TV, DVD Player, Computer, Tree, Dryer, and Car.
The DVD player was under warranty, so that was easy enough to get replaced. One down and five to go.
The next biggest thing is the dryer, since it is very difficult to keep up on laundry when you have to dry things for a day on a drying rack. I spent many hours learning how to take apart and reassemble our dryer. I can do it in about five minutes now. 
Originally I thought it was just clogged so I took it apart and gave everything a thorough cleaning. It needed it since the insides and the ducting were full of lint. However that did not solve my problem. After some research online and talking with our helpful local repair shop tech it was determined that the most likely point of failure was the coils. I replaced those tonight and am merrily drying my second load of laundry as I type this. Not too bad, and certainly cheaper than having someone come to the house to fix it. Plus I get the satisfaction of actually fixing something. Two down and four to go.
Next on the list is my car, since it is very inconvenient being a one car household. We are thinking it is the fuel pump, which will probably wind up being expensive since I am pretty sure I can’t do that myself. I guess my lesson learned from my recent car ordeals is keep the newer car and trade in the older one. Once we’ve figured out what we can do with my car we need to get our tree taken care of. We had a tree come down in the front yard which we’d like removed. More importantly though is our big maple tree. It really needs to be trimmed and taken care of before the whole thing dies. So hopefully we can get someone in soon to take care of that. I just hope nothing else breaks anytime soon.
I have been working on a grant project as a technical consultant/trainer to help nonprofits in the area get online through eBay’s MissionFish project for fund raising. Our local paper the Observer ran a story on the project, you can read it here.
Last post I mentioned gaming nostalgia, so here is some music nostalgia. Van Halen is going on tour! What really surprised me was that, according to the Chicago Tribune article I read, they had not recorded a new album since 1998. Nine years ago? Damn. And Roth hasn’t toured with them for 22 years. 0_o Whoa. That means that even the seniors at college would consider Sammy Hagar as the singer for Van Halen.
I am almost the target demographic for this concert. Although I don’t really care to see an aging Van Halen re-live the glory days, I am nonetheless excited about this tour for some reason. Probably because I remember listening to 1984 (on cassette in my Walkman) a lot. I would go see them purely for the nostalgia. However, and this is where I fall out of the demographic, I am not about to drop a few hundred dollars on a concert. Apparently Eddie’s teenage son will be playing bass for the tour. Kickass for him! I imagine that would be super exciting to do. I hope the tour actually happens and doesn’t fall apart.
I was reading The Cool Cam on Worse Than Failure and it was so funny I had to mention it. I have fond memories of MicroProse computer games from way back when. I would have liked to see the wingless plane get launched into space though.
The BBC has released a web page that shows their most popular news articles in real-time. (Link via techyum)
This is really neat. Not only do you see a real-time listing of news stories, but also general traffic stats for their website. I’m always happy to see an appropriate and useful implementation of technology. Very cool.
