I had to share this moment of colossal “duh” with you all.
As some may recall, I started a new job this week. I’m working at the help desk at a community college. Mostly I do website stuff and research projects, but I answer incoming calls from faculty and students when it’s busy.
So, being new to the college, I don’t really know what’s what and who’s who. That’s my excuse for the following tale. Really, it was just a moment of total misunderstanding.
Phone rings, I pick it up and say “Help Desk, this is Rasa.” The man on the other end of the phone says “Hi, this is Joe Schmoe. I’m on one of the satellites. Jane Doe from the Dean of Satellite Services’s office asked me to call you and let you know we need someone to come out and take a look at one of our computers.”
My brain stopped processing at the word satellites. First thought? “Wow. This is just a community college, in Rhode Island of all places. They have satellites? That’s pretty fookin’ cool! I wonder what they do!”
Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. We’re a community college. We have many campuses, and some satellite campuses. He was calling from a satellite campus! I didn’t really get far enough into my dumb moment to believe that he was calling me from orbit high above the earth, but I do recall thinking how cool it was that we had satellites.
I shared my wisdom with my coworkers (who I worked with for about 5 years at my alma mater–they all shifted from one college to another) and they all got a good laugh at my expense, and wanted to know if I’d like to go work on the satellites. But they think that I’m doing a stellar job.
Anyone else got any total brain fart moments they want to share, so I don’t feel so dumb?
I once stood, clueless, in the middle of my third grade class, asking how much money is 100 pennies. Seriously. I thought the pennies were figurative, or something, not actual disks of zinc coated in copper used as the lowest minted denomination of American currency.
I regularly forget what day of the week it is.
In fact, I often forget how old I am until I’m about six months away from my next birthday.
my fav. was when my boss stood outside the bathroom door for about 10 minutes, looking at the door, the floor, the door, the floor. finally i walked by him and said, “are you going in there?” " oh, ah, yes," he said.
We’d just pulled into Guam, and were riding a bus into town when one of the girls in front of me asked “What’s the exchange rate here?”. There was a moment of thundering silence, and then a very quiet [sub]“Oops. That was kinda dumb…”[/sub] from her. Actually, in her defense, we’d hit a dozen and half ports, and maybe 8 different countries, so we were all pretty used to asking that question. No one gave her too much grief, but that event earned her the sobriquet “The International Banker”.
A favorite “brain fart” moment occured when my sister decided to make brownies, got the box of brownie mix out and all the other ingredients. I walked in on her, and her hands were all covered with brownie mix. When I asked why, she said that “the directions say you’re supposed to hand mix it!”
Wednesday I was installing some software on a spare computer in our quotes department. The keyboard was on the desk and there was one of those keyboard shelves under the desk. I kickstarted the monitor by hitting the space bar and called up the computer guy to let him know I was ready for him to put the cd on the server.
I was sitting at the desk waiting and noticed that the shelf was hitting my knees so I tried to figure out how to lower the chair. There wasn’t one of those levers so I pulled out the keyboard shelf to see if I could raise that. I noticed the shelf was empty and said (unfortunately outloud around several people), “Hey, there’s no keyboard!”
My co-worker politely pointed out that there was a keyboard – the one that I’d already used & that was sitting on the desk right in front of the computer.
Oooo, I used to do stupid keyboard tricks all the time too! Couple jobs ago, when I was tech writing (I got paid to break apps and figure out how to fix them, then write up how to’s) I had 3 machines–one for work, one for installing apps on to play with, the other was my crashbox that I would format and low level format and destroy generally. They had identical cases, identical mice, identical keyboards, and they were all on the same shelf thingy. I’d be typing away, not looking at the screen, and I’d look up a couple minutes later to realize I was banging away at the wrong keyboard, and hadn’t actually typed anything.
I had a numb brain episode just this week (‘cause, there are those who know and love me an’ say that numb-brain episodes happen to me all the time, but …)
Passing by a local credit union bank, I noticed that, in the front window where some staff member had a desk, a folder had dropped down and was open to the window. As this might have been something confidential, I thought I’d do a good deed and tell the bank.
Went up to the doors, but they wouldn’t open. I couldn’t for the life of me figure this out (so used to auto doors, I guess).
I knocked on the glass, and a bank customer pointed out the “Push” sign stuck on one of the doors.
Just ordinary, push-and-they-shall-open doors.
D’oh.
I blame the 'flu I’m recovering from, just now. That’s it. I’ll blame the 'flu …
The 50 million times I’ve forgotten my glasses was on top of my head
But the big one was a few months ago my comp monitor was in the shop for a month OK i have 2 monitor ports on my computer
One that came with the original graphics card and one that came with my 3d card
Now my original card was disabled and wasn’t used
The loaner monitor was a 1991 monitor that couldn’t handle or fit in my v3 card I used this one for 6 weeks and r and plugged it in to the original port Which now i think about might have been dumb because i never re enabled the original card
the shop comes back and says oh your monitor is fixed i take it home and plug it in
Its not working …
I call the shop they tell me to try another monitor I use my cousin who has her own computer it works fine
heres the kicker
I hook the second monitor which has a 3d added card also in the disabled port on my cousins computer instead of the card port she fixes it in 5 minutes
We take the monitor that’s mine back to the shop they hook it up and its running fine they say its my 3d card that went out
I’m having a fit because having not played everquest in a month I was going through withdrawals and I didn’t have the 200 they want for a new card I’m so mad I’m having a tantrumn
I get home remeber the earlier incident that day and plug it into the 3d card … everything is working snappy
I spent the next week looking like an idiot to every one I knew
What made the whole situation worse was i was supposed to be the family computer genius
Although i have a thousand stores such as this if i could remember them
Years ago, Mr. Rilch showed me a video of Glory, which I hadn’t seen on it’s original release. Early on, I asked, “Are they Union or Confederate?” He replied, verrrry slowwwwly, “Well, look at the color of their uniforms.”
Yeah, I got an idiotic moment. And mine you guys can see.
Oh, another one. I work in a grocery store and have to unload trailers. Well our refrigerated trailers we just call “reefers” for short, and by going around back of the store we can flip a switch and turn them off when we’ve finished unloading them. Well I told a girl working in the office (brand new to the company), that I was gonna go around back and “hit the reefer.” I had to have a talk with my manager when I got back.
