First Things First

I've been working in the office for two weeks now. I have a brand new computer with my own work email address. I'm not so fond of Outlook but I'm hoping that we can find a way to be friends. I'll admit that I'm prejudice against things that are ugly. Outlook is not pretty to behold.

The Boss installed Quickbooks. It didn't work at first and he had to fight with it. Then he installed stamps.com. It also put up a fight. He wanted me to listen to some tutorials on the tax software but I couldn't hear anything because there was no audio drive installed yet. More time working on that. He wanted me to study tax concepts with a program called Fastax. It worked on the first day, wouldn't open on the second. More Boss vs. computer followed.

So basically I spent my first few days at work watching him fight with my computer. While that happened I tried to find ways to keep busy.

• I went through the magazine basket and tossed everything in it older than 2008 in recycling. That ended up being everything in the basket. New assignment: Get fresh magazines for the basket.
• In the spare desk, I found a drawer that only held binder clips. There was another drawer that was mostly binder clips in my desk. Then I found a basket that was filled to the brim with binder clips. They're all together now in the spare desk. I'm a bit concerned that the combined mass of all those binder clips just might be producing their own gravity.
• I found Christmas decorations and put them up.
• I watered the plants. Again.
• I drank a bunch of hot cocoa.
  

Finally, I had a fully functioning computer system with all of the programs I could ever need working in perfect harmony.

Last Wednesday The Boss gave me a stack of pages to scan. I hadn't touched the scanner yet and had literally no idea what to do with these pages. But the way he put them down and then walked away, I could tell that this was some kind of test. Could I possibly handle something as trivial as scanning without needing help?

There was a problem right away.

"Is this a magical scanner?", I asked in my most sincere voice.

"What?"

"Well it's not plugged into anything. Not the computer. Not even a power source."

That proceeded with a lot of grumbling and rooting through a box of various cords in order to get it hooked up. Then he loaded a program called Vuescan. You guessed it. It's didn't work. About an hour later I got those documents scanned, all by myself.

That's right. I passed the test.