Monday, April 27, 2009

Overheard in My Office

My boss, talking to a coworker:
"You can't have a pandemic AND a grant proposal in the same day!"

Ah, the joys of working in public health... But I will be quite interested to find out what we have to say about Swine Flu. I know that the CDC has released information regarding this outbreak (20 cases in the US so far) but I'll be interested to see what my office has to say.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Quick Updates

~ My beloved iPhone is back to normal, which makes life in general much better.

~ In the past week, I've attended two of the Stanley Cup Semi?Quarter?I'm not sure? finals to watch the Washington Capitols get pounded; nonetheless, I'm excited to go to the game on Friday.

~ Spring has fully descended upon DC. I love it, even if my allergies have been terrible!

~ So have the tourists - which I do not love. I really wouldn't care -- or complain -- so much if they could just remember that there are quite a number of us who actually live and work in this city. It's not just picturesque monuments and impressive museums, people. And I need to get to work, so please don't try to hold the Metro doors open like they're elevator doors, okay?

~ I realized this morning that I have only dissed female footwear decisions, and not paid any attention to the fashion travesties committed by the men who walk amongst us in DC. That was quickly changed this morning when I heard a jangling sound in sync with the foot-falls of the gentleman who was walking next to me. It was like a chain was attached to his shoes, or, as I realized when I glanced down... Spurs. On business shoes. Oh, how I wish I'd had the chutzpah to take a photograph! I was intrigued and baffled and tried not to laugh. Then I thought: Perhaps this was not as much of a fashion disaster as a fashion statement that I simply did not understand. I just hope someone (else) got it.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

oh iPhone, you torment me so

After months of dreaming, I recieved my my beloved iPhone this past December (it was an extremely generous holiday gift from my boyfriend). I crowed over my gift, inspired several coworkers to buy their own, and pretty much relied on it to keep me sane and organized.

We've had a loving relationship... until the past few days.

On Thursday afternoon, all of my music vanished. Several of the 3rd party - but still absolutely necessary, like Twitter! - applications that I'd downloaded refused to operate. I determined with a quick Google search (Safari was still working, thankfully ... what, I was out with friends) that removing and re-installing a few of these apps would fix the problem. Which it did, and I re-installed my music on Friday morning. Happily, I went off to enjoy the holiday weekend.

Yesterday, I was syncing my phone at work, as usual. And noticed that the "Other" memory was signfiicantly larger than it had been before. I didn't think much of it. But when I synched again this afternoon, I realized that this "Other" category was growing.

Another quick Google search (yeah, I love them) proved that the losing-music-growing-"Other" phenomenon was not rare. And that it could become a serious problem. An email to the Mac-Addict friend who got me hooked on this toy in the first place confirmed my greatest fear: the only fix was "restoring" the phone to original settings.

Which I did. And I stayed late at work in order to take care of this process, and then re-sychronizing so that I could leave the office with my contacts, calendar, and life as I know it back in the palm of my hand. Except for my music - but, since I was able to sync my little electronic darling at two computers before, I assumed I could get my music back when I got home.

But no, this is not the case. After much research (props, Google!) I'm relatively confident that the fix is a simple one: Make sure the right switches are flipped, as it were, at my office iTunes to make sure music is only synched at my home computer. Just like before.

All of this is to say: I have been sitting at my apartment and thinking about going back to work, to reboot my computer, check the iTunes settings, change them, sync the iPhone, and then come home to put music back on my iPhone.

But I'm not going to do it. Thinking about doing it is silly; actually doing it could be considered crazy. No -- I'm pretty sure it would be crazy.

Oh, iPhone. You've resulted in my creating a new tag for my blog: crazy ideas. Pitiful that it's my favorite piece of electronic equipment that has resulted in this tag -- not a boy, not a shopping frenzy, not a trip to Tokyo on the last few grand on my credit card, but my iPhone.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Long Weekend in Central VA

A few pictures from our weekend getaway in Charlottesville....