Anyone Want It?

Always need to be careful when Friday the 13th falls on a monday

Jeremy has no idea what a calendar looks like.  This should come as a shock to nobody.

So, nobody likes mondays.  They're that first work day after a "relaxing" weekend filled with shoveling that flaky white crap off your driveway.  It's a time for catching up on the ridiculous pile of emails you somehow managed to get over the weekend where everybody but you was apparently working.  

People also fear Friday the 13th.  It's become such a thing that it gets its own word, "Triskaidekaphobia."  

So, when you combine the two concepts, you get monday the 13th.  That's today, if you hadn't noticed.  

As such, a thing happened at work today which is mightily symbolic of monday the 13th.  I work with a number of suppliers who provide goods and services to the company I work for.  One of these suppliers had a quality issue a little while back that they developed a fix for, but wanted to elaborate on the root cause of the issue.  So, they sent me a box full of their products that have the root cause on them so that I can...well...quite frankly, I'm not sure what it is I'm supposed to do with this box of stuff, but they sent it to me.  

Normally, when a supplier sends me a box of material, it stays in the warehouse and I get a notification that I got a box of material and the warehouse folks ask me what is to be done with them.  I coordinate with them, and things happen.  Delegation!  In today's case, this didn't happen, and the box of products showed up in my office...8 cubic feet of cardboard (a full approximately 17% of my available office area) with stuff inside that I can't possibly use in my office.  I have even less of an idea now what I'm supposed to do with this stuff.

Regardless, I open the shipping box and pull out the gubbins inside.  Inside the box is a container with the materials in it...well...more or less.  A full 20% of the material was broken during shipping and now exists as a pile of fragments at the bottom of the container.  So not only can I not use this stuff in my office, but I can't use most of it anywhere since it's either broken or contaminated with broken pieces.  I have further even less of an idea now what I'm supposed to do with this stuff.

I sent the supplier an email explaining the situation and how the box arrived damaged.  I ask the supplier if they had expected me to return this box of product after I was done doing whatever it was I was supposed to do with it.  The supplier's response was to say that they didn't need it back, and since it got broken, they can just send me another one.  I continue to have further even less of an idea what I'm supposed to do with this stuff, and now there's going to be more of it!   

Ladies and Gentlemen...only on monday the 13th. 

Everyone At Work Is Talking About The Game

It’s Password Day!  My email password is no longer PuppyB0w!  

You know, Jeremy, this was awfully good timing for you to have this as your email password and have it expire the day after the actual Puppy Bowl.  Remarkable foresight, I'd say. 

Or pure luck, one or the other.  

So, in case anyone is unawares, yesterday was the day of the most highly anticipated sporting event in America....Puppy Bowl!  It's an annual tradition that corresponds to some football game wherein a bunch of puppies are let into a playpen and allowed to frolic for a while on national television.  It's adorable.  

Also included is the halftime show featuring kittens who are let into a playpen and allowed to frolic for a while on national television.  This year's halftime show also included penguins and internet sensation, Keyboard Cat.  It really was quite the spectacle.  

So, right around the time of the last Password Day, I looked at the calendar to see when the next Password Day was going to be (you know...the day all of my work system passwords expire, and I spend half the morning going through different systems and emails resetting a dozen different passwords and hoping beyond all hope that the new password I've chosen follows all of the different sets of rules for all of them...no such luck).  I immediately noticed that it was going to be today, the very day following Puppy Bowl.  My course of action became clear.  

I spent the last however many days are in between Password Days in anxious anticipation of Puppy Bowl, since I reminded myself each time I had to log into something.  It really was quite exciting, and now that Puppy Bowl has come and gone, I must move on to my next password.  

At this time is when we remind our readers that neither this, nor any of the passwords featured in "Password Day" posts were ever used as Jeremy's email password.  Don't bother trying them.  You won't succeed, you'll look foolish while doing it, and the only thing you stand to gain is a bunch of boring technical worky gibberish anyway.  It's just not worth it.

 

Now I Want To Pop Some

Today, I learned that “Bubble Wrap” is copyrighted  

Well that's a thing.  Is popping it a violation?  That would spell trouble for just about everybody.

So, true story: some time ago, I spent some time working at a home improvement store which, for strictly Blag purposes, we'll call "High's Home Improvement."  During that time, one of the things that I ended up working on was the display of doors.  This involved putting up a few new models which had been shipped to the store.  When they were shipped, they were packaged securely with Bubble Wrap (or a similar product produced by a supplier other than the copyright owner, Sealed Air Corporation), so the first step in our project was to unpackage the doors.  This created a giant pile of bubble wrap approximately 8 feet tall in the middle of the aisle of the store.  Since we were doing this work during the day, there was the occasional customer that came along, and the occasional worker as well.  Every last person who passed this giant pile grabbed a handful of the bubble wrap and popped it.  It was pretty fun to watch, and if I'm being 100% honest, it was pretty fun to pop as well.  

All of this is tangential to the story here.  

What's important is that I keep my eye on various little-known holidays from time to time in case I find myself in need of something to celebrate.  In doing my research for this, I learned that Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day was held earlier this week, and I am totally Not Making That Up.  What stood out in that was the fact that there was a little trademark symbol every time the site made mention of Bubble Wrap.   So, I dug a little further.

As it turns out, Bubble Wrap was invented in 1957 by two guys in New Jersey who were trying to invent a new style of wallpaper by gluing two shower curtains together.  I'm not making that up, either...maybe there's something weird in the water in New Jersey.  The name Bubble Wrap was trademarked in 1960 by Sealed Air Corporation, and the product's first commercial use was packaging and shipping IBM computers in 1961.  

And there you have it...more information than you thought you were going to learn today about Bubble Wrap.  Enjoy!