Bloggus

Mail Call My mailbox here at work has two major functions: 1. Collecting my pay stub every-other week (the actual money is deposited, directly and electroncally, into my wife's purse), stapled to a bi-weekly newsletter that is promptly discarded. 2. Collecting technology-related junk mail. Although my paycheck is filled with many opportunities for comedy, today I will discuss junk mail. Specifically, the envelope I retrieved while microwaving my leftover pasta and sausage in the kitchen/mail/copy room declares, in red and blue, with more punctuation and fractured phrasing than necessary: "Get rid of spyware across your entire enterprise -- in minutes -- without leaving your desk!" Fabulous. Just what I needed. One more thing I can do without leaving my desk. One more excuse to stay seated, while my carpals tunnel, my weight increases, my eyes fail, and my vitality slowly drips away. I'm sure there are people in the Information Technology industry who might say "you know, if I could just find a way to spend more time sitting here at my desk, this job would be perfect. If I could get food and drink intravenously, I would be a paragon of productivity and perhaps even the employee of the month." What I want is an offer to take me on some sort of exotic information technology journey, to say "now, travel to foreign lands, have an excuse to be away from your desk for protracted periods of time, all under the guise of network security!" That envelope I would open, the product I would examine, and the purchase request form I would fill out and send to accounting. But when I get a chance to stretch my legs, flex my hands, and refocus my eyes as I go out to reheat my lunch, I see "Hey! Go sit down again! More ways to be chained to your desk! What are you doing up anyway? There is work to be done!" No thanks. Efficiency is bad for my health.