Documentation Without iPod is Bad

I forgot to charge my iPod last night, which was unfortunate because I spent my 10-hour workday reading a release document, a monotony broken only by a scintillating team meeting. Don’t try any of that without tunes, Gentle Reader. Ever.

Tonight, I charge the iPod. Maybe I’ll even take the charger to work and jack it into my computer. You know, just to be on the safe side.

I know what you’re thinking: Hey, Kath, why didn’t you just listen to Pandora all day, like you did before Helen gave you her old iPod? Because, when I plug my earphones into my computer, I get this really annoying buzzing sound that cannot be drowned out, even by the Pandora Punk station.  That’s a helluva a noise if it can overpower The Sex Pistols. So, no internet tunes for me, alas.

Oh, but I have muzak on my phone, too. My phone, that my earphones cannot plug into. Yeah. That phone. Now, I could have been the bad colleague and just let the music play, sans earphones, but I’m too nice. Unlike the woman on the other side of the cubicle wall who hangs on conference calls all day long–loudly–and speaks in corporate buzzwords and clichés. She keeps saying she’ll “reach out” to people and “socialize” them to whatever thing she wants them to understand. My buddy in the cube next to me and I keep a running tab of Buzzword Betty’s vocabulary. We want our boss to have a word with her boss to socialize him to the wondrous modern marvel known as the conference room. Where polite meeting participants hold their conference calls. So other people can get their work done without wanting to commit seppuku. But our boss wants proof. He wants us to call him over when she’s on a call so he can hear for himself how irritating and distracting she is. Gee, thanks for the trust, Fearless Leader.

It’s like the mythical Chinese water torture, only with clichés, which for a language nerd like me, is far worse. On the bright side, my colleague and I are having fun playing Buzzword Bingo when concentration becomes impossible.

So here’s me, reading documentation so dry it makes me thirsty, and with Buzzword Betty barking on and on about socializing and reaching out and circling up wagons. I retained nothing of what I read, and I have to finish that doc and read the second one tomorrow. And review them both. I am totally not doing it without the iPod. No way, no how, nuh-uh. I can focus through music, but not through human chatter.

Two more 10-hour days then a 4-day weekend for me! Yay! I believe I will chill. Yes, that sounds like the perfect plan.