Technology (or idiot) woes…..

I didn’t have a very good morning at work today. I actually woke up on the first alarm this morning, which RARELY happens. (For those of you that don’t know…I am NOT a morning person; sometimes I don’t say hello to anyone until 9:00. I work an early tour just to avoid traffic; believe me, if there were a better solution, I would do it. I could make sleeping an Olympic sport.) Oops, went off on a tangent; now back to the story: So I actually made it to work on time today, so I thought to myself, “hey…this is gonna be a super duper Thursday.” Not. I say good morning to our security guard John and up the elevator I go to floor #4. It’s quiet in my hallway; just the way I like it. So into my cute little window office and I go through my morning ritual- I turn on my little lamp on my desk, start up my computer and turn on my tunes (gotta have background sound). As my computer boots up, I click on Outlook to see what fun emails I have in my inbox. (I really do love email- everyday is like Christmas). Before my inbox pops up, a calendar reminder flashes that says, “NGO Webinar 3 hours overdue”. WHAT? Three hours overdue? What’s going on? So I click on the appointment and as it opens, and I nearly shit myself. Right there in office #4103 there was almost a poop alert right there in my cute skinny jeans and on my comfy ergonomic chair. (and all this before the sun comes up) Nooooooooo!

Here’s the story: I volunteered to help my dear friends and colleagues Carmen and Kelly set up a webinar for our National Non-Governmental grantees on sustainability (a pretty important topic in our world at CDC right now) that was set to roll out this afternoon at 3:00pm. So, being the professional development team leader, I stepped up to the plate a few weeks ago to assist setting up their logistics for their webinar. But, what did I do? I set the calendar appointment for 3:00 AM, not 3:00PM. 3:00AM! Way to go genius.

So back to shitting on myself- thank God I didn’t or it was gonna be a LONG day. I tried to make light of it by talking to myself; “Well, why didn’t anyone log in at 3:00am this morning? I can’t believe there wasn’t a sole on the call.” It didn’t help. I was still screwed. Yeah, I was trying to prepare myself for Carmen and Kelly when they got to work later in the morning. Then an idea: “Hey, maybe I can go in and update the calendar appointment to 3:00PM and they will never know?” Well, mission accomplished on the first part. I could update the calendar to 3:00PM, but then the lovely red letter across the top of the screen popped up: Your session that you are requesting 100 seats for is over capacity. There are ZERO seats available for this time. Double rat balls. I am so screwed. No wonder I got in to the webinar scheduling system 2 weeks ago and got 100 seats reserved for this webinar; IT’S BECAUSE IT WAS SCHEDULED FOR 3 FRICKIN THIRTY IN THE MORNING!!! Now wouldn’t you think that we would have some system at CDC that should have called or emailed me to double check that I really wanted a webinar at 3:00am? Nope. Nada.

It’s slowly approaching 8:00am and I know that both Kelly and Carmen will be here soon. I just gotta face the music. I can see that Carmen’s office light was on. Damn- she was already working away on her webinar presentation uploading documents into what she thought was her 3:00PM webinar- bless her heart. Now I have to tell her that she’s uploading into a webinar that’s already over. I feel awful. This is Carmen’s first webinar she is conducting for our Division and I f’d it up. She’s so nice and cheery too. And sure enough, when I broke the news to her, she says, “no worries”. Wow. If the roles were reversed, fire may have come out my eyes; but no, not Carmen. Then Kelly arrives. I tell her the story too and again, I am greeted with “oh well, it happens.” No, it shouldn’t have happened. How hard is it to change a drop-down box from AM to PM? Well, obviously it a tough task for me. Way to go Poindexter.

So after my many apologies and offering to detail their cars, make them dinner, drive them around town on a bar crawl (LOL) …- anything; they slap me back into shape and reality. We made an executive decision to postpone the webinar until December 9th (and yes, it’s at 3:00 PM). They were both so understanding. I have the best friends and colleagues in the world. So, for those of you that read my blog, and you are one our funded partners, now you know the real story on why your webinar was postponed for this afternoon. The wack-a-doodle typing this blog was the “technical difficulty” that was noted in the email you received today from CDC on why the webinar was rescheduled. Yay me. I learned a valuable lesson today: slow down, check your work and do it correctly the first time. Geez…sounds like my mom (sorry Mom, but I think you have said that to me once or twice in my life- that’s why I love you!)- and… bonus for the “Momster” she gets back to back blog shout outs. (smile)

I will end my blog this eventing with a couple add’l “lessons” I like these better:

"It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others"- Anonymous

"Never do anything that you wouldn't want to explain to the paramedics" – Anonymous

"Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else" - Will Rogers


I’m heading to the kitchen for a dirty martini- that will help take the sting away, plus I can chill for evening, go to bed and go at it again tomorrow- except there are, thank goodness, no webinars on the books for me tomorrow.

Until then…..