Literary Webcam

[dgan]

If you are as ugly as me, then I don't really want to see you through your webcam. Trust me, you don't want to see me either. But being the literary fans that we are, why not write what would be seen if we did all have webcams?

Since our imaginary webcams are completely wireless with unlimited battery life, we can show just about anything in our general surroundings. We can even take it with us and describe the events along the way.

Maybe there are people or pets in the background, or maybe there is an application on your computer you could tell us about. Just about anything goes -- just remember this is a family forum. (Twyrch, that means you. )

This should be fun, and will perhaps improve our descriptive writing skills at the same time. Bonus! Alright, let's visualize...

[dgan]

You see a man far too close to the age of thirty than what he is comfortable with. He has an unmistakingly blank, tired look to him as he stares at his 17" monitor. His office cube is small, dreary, and noticeably unremarkable. You wonder why he doesn't have a picture of the ocean hanging above his desk just so they don't confuse his workspace for the janitor's closet.

If you would have seen him on Thursday, you would notice he is wearing the same sweatshirt today. And it hasn't been washed. He rationalizes this by saying he wears a T-shirt underneath. The real fact is, however, that he got about 2 hours of sleep today and simply grabbed the clothing articles closest to the door. His disdain for third shift shows clearly on his face, as does his 5 o'clock yesterday shadow. Meaning he hasn't shaved in two days. However, you know this to be an improvement because dgan frequently goes a week or more without shaving. Perhaps this increase in shaving frequency is because he just got a new Braun electric shaver with one of the fancy self-cleaning gizmos. Not really worth the money, but laziness comes at a great cost.

[dgan]

I have one of those anti-glare screens sitting on my desk. It is not on my computer monitor because I work third shift and the sun is not glaring. It is for my cube mate, who I don't think I have ever met. I remove it from my monitor because it does not attach, but simply hangs by two fragile arms that too easily slip from the top of the monitor and crash onto my keyboard, often causing me to awake.

I head to the cafeteria, which really is nothing more than a refridgerator and microwave with a garbage can in between. In the cafeteria downstairs, there are vending machines as well as tables and chairs. However, when you work third shift the entire lower level is alarmed with motion sensors. The security patrol does not think setting off the alarm for a ham & cheese and a Mountain Dew is very funny. I can tell you from experience.

I open the cheese drawer (or whatever that is for) in the refridgerator and remove my Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino that I brought from home. I keep it in that drawer because there is a certain individual in another department who regularly steals people's food, even if it is half eaten. Strangely, items in that transparent drawer somehow go untouched, like the saran wrapped sandwich in the movie Antz.

I locate a styrofoam cup and some ice cubes, although the cubes are nearly the size of a tape dispenser. Who needs ice cubes that large? I can only fit two in the cup. No real harm in that, I suppose, but I can hardly see a reason for it. I pour my Frappuccino into my cup, of course spilling some on that already sticky spot on my desk, and drink deeply. Ahhhh, only 6 hours to go....

Lord, help.

[karenee]

Haha! Who is brave enough to face this new challenge? Ok...so I'll do this later...after building up courage and planning what to say. I've been online long enough for now, anyway, and must go down to the basement to retrieve laundry that finished drying last night. Remind me to tell you about the basement...or perhaps I'll remind myself by reading this post over later and groaning at how lame it is.

[dancer]

Okay, I'll give it a go...please don't laugh. Okay, well, only if it's funny.

Wearing her favorite color today, silk purple blouse with long strait lined purple skirt and matching purple scarf, dancer wonders why she hates driving to the dry cleaners to drop off the clothes. If she had dropped them off sooner, she wouldn't have to wear a skirt to work. However, unlike dgan, she is unwilling to wear dirty clothes. So, here she sits in her cube with her 3 inch heel boots wondering why she wore those because now she can't walk the stairs at break time.

If you have a chance to look around her small work surroundings in her cube, you find a picture frame with 3 pictures from her recent vacation in Florida. Gazing at the picture reminds her of the relaxing time she had at the beach and makes her long for another vacation.

There is also her open Bible where she looked up a verse for a friend, it's open to Jeremiah 28. There is also a book, John C. Maxwell, 'The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player'. This helps managing teams for successful projects. And John Maxwell, if you didn't know is also a Christian, so his books are scripturally based, which is a definate bonus.

Other items that maybe aren't worth mentioning, but help round out the surroundings she sits in all day are her Gathering of Eagles Institute training manual (to study at lunch), a printer, her wireless headset, and a phone. On the cube walls you see a print out 'God's Promises' Leadership with scriptures listed that remind her the scriptures for great leaders and leadership qualities. There is the pen holder with a plithera of pens, a finger nail file, a Texas flag (why is that there?) a Pooh pen topper (actually I think it's an antenna ball, but there isn't an antenna on her Pilot, so it's become a pen topper), a straw, and some scissors.

Let's not forget the personal cup she uses every morning at Starbucks to get her morning dose of Grande Caramel Macchiato. It's shimmery green with white flowers that looks like they were made out of a button for the center and tissues or something of the like for the petals. Very cute.

In her cube, there is absolutely no privacy. There are rows and rows of cubes, she sits on a row with 4 cubes. There are 4 on the right side that face the 4 on the left side. The positive aspect is that of the 4 on her row, 3 are believers, her being one of them. This brings her great joy each day as she knows she has cubemates she can rely on to pray with her in a crisis and she just as often prays for them.

Well, that about wraps up the description of dancer's work life, tune in next time to hear about her dance room and the joy that abounds there.

[karenee]

I sit at the computer rubbing the last of the sleep from my eyes. My mother in law is on the way over, so the time is growing short before I'll have to turn off the site and log into Word to help her type up a form she needs. On my lap sits a small girl with curly hair. Normally this would be more pleasurable, but she's whining, a constant low moan. Behind me, my elder daughter is collecting the assorted blankets we keep for snuggling in front of the TV and restoring them to the low cabinet recently purchased to contain them.

The computer desk in front of me is cluttered, something I always intend to remedy but I haven't quite figured out where the piles could go if I moved them, so they remain scattered, an eyesore. Eventually I'll get sick of the look and push it all into the green concourse trunk on the floor under the window. As it's our official paper place, they're supposed to go in there anyway, just...well, not in a pile. I tend to keep the lid of the trunk closed, but right now it doesn't really shut completely. I predict a paper sorting day is coming soon.

My FlyLady timer clings to the metal support of the desk shelves, right at eye level. It went off three minutes ago. I suppose this means I'm done. Eventually, you might get to hear about my basement, but I need to finish readying the house for the impending visit.

[dgan]

Putting the web cam on my shoulder, you get a look at what I do on my computer at work. First, you'll notice sticky notes that my cube mate likes to stick to the outside of the monitor. Some I would say are turning yellow from age, but obviously they were yellow to begin with so who can say? Then you'll notice there are so many applications on my task bar that it looks like I've been attacked by popups. But I haven't -- in fact, most are entirely work related. Since our fraud monitoring system requires the use several different monitoring systems, my task bar gets pretty full.

Furthest to the left next to the Start button is our email program, known as Lotus Notes. This is quite possibly the worst system for a corporation our size and is down for a majority of my shift anyway. Trying to use reminders is useless because the system is usually down when I need to be reminded.

Next to that is our mainframe used for fraud monitoring that holds all the credit cards, still only accessible only through green screens. It times out every 10 minutes requiring my lengthy password to be entered about 358 times a night. Next to that is our debit card GUI which houses every debit card that exists. Unfortunately, it really isn't useful for anything other than looking at one piece of information not accessible elsewhere. It also times out every 10 minutes and has an equally long password.

Next to that I keep my "additional browser". This is what usually is directed to the SRL forum or ESPN.com. Sometimes it is required for work purposes to either google or use whitepages.com or our department's intranet, but mostly I use it to screw around.

Next to that our three GUIs for monitoring debit cards. One houses 1,000 banks, and the other two are for their respective dedicated banks. These do NOT timeout, thankfully, but it is great fun to keep switching between them to make sure fraud is not happening in one system while you are in another.

Next to that is a wonderous device known as Excel. Considering that we are an "Information Technology" corporation, it is somewhat ironic that we house all our most important data on a spreadsheet. The fact that a billion dollar company is relying on Excel macros (and those macros were just created in the last 6 months...before that, we entered everything via copy/paste) to perform repeated functions no doubt causes the most overhead in our department. The time we spend messing around with macros easily loses whatever the company saves by not developing an actual program that is compatible with our monitoring systems.

OK, calming down -- whew -- next to that is either my Windows Media Player tuned to the free "Alternative Rock" station or to Pandora. I like Player because I can (and do) skip songs often, but there are so many commercials. I like Pandora because there are no commercials, but it has limited fast forwards per hour. Considering much of the music in their library is just plain awful, that is a major hindrence.

The fact I can listen to music at all is only because I work third shift. That and being allowed to break the dress code are the two positives to working this shft. Hardly seems worth it...

That is me talking about working, which is the closest thing I've done to working tonight...better go!

[karenee]

As I sigh with relief that I do NOT work third shift (except when my kids wake up in the middle of the night) I glance toward the dining room, which is currently set up for homeschooling. The six foot long shelf my father and brother recently built to fit beneath the window is already filled with books and workbooks. Our cool new dining table surrounded by a bench and an eclectic mix of chairs has pencil boxes scattered over it, but the kids have evacuated the area since I'm currently distracted by the computer.

Against the opposite wall beside the door to the kitchen is the official kids' art table, constructed of half a cherry-wood veneer table-top and a couple cheap white tower shelving units. The folding stools from Walmart are the perfect height, and the kids regularly scatter paper to all creation while enjoying the convenience of not having to ask for the art supplies.

To differentiate between the living room and dining room, I have to look at the floor. We have a convenient line between the two, marked by the narrow metal strip between the old tile-like substance and the carpet which covers the rest of the house.

Piled into the ugly mustard-colored wing back chair, the two girls are reading to each other. I'm pretending this isn't actually school, because they're enjoying it so much and I'd hate to disillusion them. Upstairs, the sound of my son crashing cars alerts me to the fact that he is, in fact, studying gravity and motion. However, without me to point out the scientific details he's most likely missing out on what he could be learning. Excuse me while I collect them all and get back to math. Oh, and I'd better take the laundry down to the basement too.