Something you don't see everyday in Iowa

So the news has been reporting for a few days that President Bush was going to visit Iowa and tour some of the flooded areas to see what was going on…

Anyways, this morning my carpool buddies picked me up at 0900 and we start heading up I-380 towards Cedar Rapids. At around 0915 we get passed by a state trooper. Big deal, you might say. Well, right after the state trooper is a black SUV, then another, then another. Holy crap, we realize it is the Presidential Motorcade. So the motorcade consists of the first state trooper, followed by about probably 8 of the black Chevrolet Suburbans, followed by probably 8 white vans marked “Media” or “Support” or something similar. Then a few other cars behind that. So they passed us and KC (our driver) pulled into the left lane, only for us to realize, we just broke into the presidential motorcade!!! OOPS! So he pulled back in to the right lane and let everyone pass, then at the tail of the motorcade was another state trooper, who promptly moved over to the center lane of the interstate, so both lanes were blocked. Continue reading ‘Something you don't see everyday in Iowa’

Wow, AMAZING!!!

I just saw one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my life! More to come in a few hours…

HELP, opinion needed!

OK, so I have a very important question…

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Which of these colors BEST matches color “GB”?

I need to order scrubs and they have to be the closest to GB as I can get.

Hurry, please let me know!!!

FREE severe weather alerts

So a few months ago I was driving with the kids in some bad weather and I pulled over because it was raining so hard I couldn’t see. We went inside Walgreens to wait for it to clear up when they informed us there was a tornado warning. They locked down the store and I had to wait in the little break room with the kids and the employees. It really sucked. I didn’t have any idea what was going on so I kept texting Kate, who was in class with a computer and internet access, to find out what was going on. As it turns out, the tornado didn’t get too close to us, but I was still a little freaked out knowing there was a tornado warning in effect and I was away from my computer and TV and couldn’t figure out what was going on.

So later that night I signed up for some free severe weather alerts at http://www.weatherusa.net/alerts/. You have the option of having text messages sent to your phone, an email, or both. So far it’s been working well. Now when there is severe weather we are notified immediately.

I have no affiliation with this site other than being a satisfied customer (am I a customer if it is free?). Anyways, just wanted to let you all know in case you wanted to sign up.

Pizza Hut Ultimate Grill Pizza

One word: GROSS!

2008 Pinewood Derby is in the books…

So before I write about what happened tonight, I want you to read my post from last year: Last years Pinewood Derby recap. Go ahead, I’ll wait, just come back when you’re done…
Continue reading ’2008 Pinewood Derby is in the books…’

Sometimes, I hate my job

So anyways, for those of you who don’t know how the printing here at the University of Iowa works, they installed this new system with a series of checks to make sure you really want to print whatever it is you want to print. The way it works is this:

Continue reading ‘Sometimes, I hate my job’

Daily Iowan prints one of the dumbest articles EVER!

So this morning I woke up and read the DI online and there was this article about how T9 (the predicative text messaging software) doesn’t include any swear words, so it  makes it much harder for people to swear in a text message. Really? This constitutes news? Why in the world would anyone write this? And who came up with this idea? It is really stupid.

Full Article Here

Little Miss Attitude

So I’m sitting here at work, and this girl comes up to me and says:

So, your little system took my nickel, and didn’t print my paper.

Well EXCUSE ME for ruining your life lady. Anyways, what this probably means is:

  1. It didn’t print, because she did something wrong, or
  2. It did print, and she waited too long and somebody else accidentally grabbed it.

These people are REALLY starting to annoy me sometimes…

Let's see if this works

So we’re having problems with printer #3 at work. It sucks. It’s a piece of junk. It always jams and throws out weird error codes, and the ITC hasn’t replaced it with the printer that they took out that actually works!

Anyways, since it keeps jamming, we just shut the stupid thing off. So, for those of you who don’t know, when we print here, some people are randomly assigned to printer #1 and some to printer #3. Now, at this point, I don’t expect people to know not to print to #3. However, before a job will print, you have to go to a different computer and sign in with your HawkID to authorize it a final time to print. This special computer is called a “Print Release Station” and authorizing the job is known as “releasing” the print job. The selected printer is displayed when you log in.

Now, since printer #3 isn’t working, we put a hand-written sign that said “Do not release any print jobs to printer 3″. It is at this point where I would expect a reasonably intelligent college student to NOT release a job to printer #3. HOWEVER, this is not the case. A few dozen people so far today, in about three hours, have indeed released the job to printer #3. That is a problem.

Now what they have to do is go back to their computer and reprint the job, selecting printer #1. This has made many people very angry. Most people seem to think it is my fault. I am assuming this based on the fact that they are yelling at me.

STOP! So now I have made this sign. Perhaps it will be hard to read, but you will get the idea of what I have done. As you can see, I not only taped a sign to the desk in front of the keyboard, I also taped one directly to the monitor. The message reads “STOP!!! If you sent your job to Printer 3, DO NOT RELEASE IT! If the printer listed is itcprint\LM-ITC-Main-3 please cancel the job and reprint to Printer 1 from the computer.” I hope this will take care of the problem.

UPDATE: During the time it took me to type this, THREE MORE PEOPLE have come to me because their jobs “didn’t print”. Apparently I was wrong, it didn’t take care of the problem. And I was wrong to assume that just because they have been accepted to college that they are reasonably intelligent.

Not working!ANOTHER UPDATE: So since people were still hanging around #3 waiting for their jobs to come out, I put another sign up. This one reads “THIS PRINTER IS NOT WORKING. If you printed a job to Printer #3, please read the note posted near and on the PRINT RELEASE STATION”. We’ll see how long this works.