Friday, February 12, 2010

The Dog Ate My Homework and Other Excuses


So last night I finished up the last of my dossier documents. It was about 9 PM and I was feeling relieved that the work was done and I could turn the academic scrapbook in without embarrassment. The building was quiet, either my colleagues had finished their work or were putting the final touches on at home.

I had been saving my work all along with the intent to print at the very end of the project. So I brought up the first and hit "print." Suddenly an error box appeared on my screen. Now, I've seen these before, and never worried about them, so I hit "send report" (assuming somebody, probably in India, would get the message some day) expecting the box to go away and for me to try to print again successfully.

WRONG.

I hit "send report" and everything disappeared! I nearly fainted. I'm certain I said something . . . probably along the lines of "WTF?" Once I calmed myself, I opened Word up and, fortunately, my documents had been recovered and I could save them . . . just not print them.

So I typed a quick e-mail to my Department Head and his assistant explaining my situation. I had to laugh as I sent it along . . . I suddenly felt like a student using technology failure as an excuse for not getting a homework assignment done on time.

This morning I e-mailed all the documents that needed printing to the assistant and got my work done. And it appears the "error" with Word has magically been fixed today (maybe that somebody in India took care of it!). Whew!

Still, there was a time when I thought I was going to have to tell the Personnel Committee, "my dog ate it" (seriously, I've got four of them and one's a pit bull mix - who would doubt me?)!

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