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If, on your way home from work after a long day, you should feel compelled to burn off extra adrenaline by doing your very best (and very loud) imitation of Anne from “Little Britain,” it would behoove you to make sure that your car’s windows are fully rolled up first. Otherwise, you run the risk of severely startling pedestrians, and, indeed, other nearby drivers whose windows are down even slightly.

Bit embarrassing, that.

I’m feeling a little less cranky: apparently the VP has had similar memory lapses with other people in other sections, so it’s not just me. A DVD marathon of “Little Britain” commentary episodes has also helped.

The electronics recycling drive yesterday at the Decatur high school went very well. Not only did I not manage to get lost, either getting there or getting back (always the trickiest part), but it took less than five minutes for the volunteers to help me unload my car, which was pretty well stuffed with the stuff people had brought in to work and my own electronics detritus. The drive was efficient and well organized, with people directing traffic and lots of people around to help, and I was pleased that there was a lot of community participation — there were huge piles of old electronics everywhere, and I got there after they’d only been running a couple of hours. Wish I’d thought to take a picture, though.

Though I’m certainly not ready to recycle him, Errol the Macbook has unfortunately begun refusing to connect to my WiFi network. I suspect that something in the OS upgrade Thursday night did something wonky, because I was able to connect perfectly well beforehand (my previous blog entry was written on Errol), but after the upgrade was installed and I restarted, he started saying that there was an error connecting to my network. Absolutely refuses to connect, though Nyman the PC obviously has no problem — and oddly, Errol will still connect to the local unsecured linksys network. I’ve poked around in the Apple forums, and, according to one of the posts in this string, it’s been a known issue since at least January: the suggested workaround is to remove security from your network. Eff that: I’m okay with using an unsecured network occasionally for some things, but not as my main connection at home. I suppose I’ll just have to wait for a patch and/or later upgrade that undoes the harm this one did, and just not use Errol for anything even remotely sensitive in the meantime.

Actually, I’m a little annoyed with Apple at the moment. In addition to Errol’s AirPort woes, my mom’s iTunes regularly freezes and crashes after she’s ripped two CDs, making the process of setting up her new iPod incredibly annoying. She’s actually mentioned just rehoming it, because it may not be worth the trouble. Thus far, I haven’t been able to fix the problem over the phone, and she hasn’t had much luck with the online help or forums — as with the AirPort bug, this seems to be a known issue but nothing’s been done and the Apple reps on the forums seem either to get snippy or to cover their ears and sing loudly until the complainers go away. I’ve found lots of threads for each of the problems, going back months, but haven’t yet found a single one that was resolved with a solution (though it’s possible, given the number of posts, that I just haven’t found it yet).

It turns out that the vice president of our association has no earthly clue what I do. This has come up before as he’s given various visitors the tour of the building, but it’s always been subtler: “Oh, this is Heather, and she, um, works on this book.” Until now, he’s been vague about specifying what exactly it is I do on the book — though you’d think the name badge on my cubicle that says “associate editor” would give him a clue.

But, no, apparently he thinks I’m a typesetter/art cleanup person, and spend my days redrawing graphs.

Maybe it’s just the fact that I feel as if I’ve been doing the Red Queen marathon thing at work since late November, with no end in sight and actually increased intensity for at least the next five weeks; maybe it’s just the fact that today I was reminded that, much as I love my job, it has zero growth prospects because there’s simply nowhere to go; maybe it’s just the fact that I’m constantly the last to know anything around the office and just feel isolated. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I still, two months later, have not regained full feeling in two of my toes after working at the meeting, which is rather annoying. I’m probably just a little less than strong right now, which is why I’ve been obsessively ruminating on the fact that, as far as the big boss is concerned, everything I kill myself trying to do is pretty much worthless.

I know that, by its nature, editing is supposed to be invisible to the end user. It’s just particularly irksome that he recognizes that there are editors in other sections of our department — indeed, he seems to realize that my immediate boss is an editor — but he seems to think that I’m not one of them.

Oh yeah — and the people to whom he described me as someone who redraws graphs? The freakin’ board of directors.

Thanks so much.

• PETA Petition: Help End the Cruel Harp Seal Hunt
  It astonishes me that Canada still allows the annual baby seal hunt (335,000 this year). Please consider signing this petition asking the PM for a ban. (For a more neutral background source, see http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/sealhunt/.)
  (tags: antihunting antifur activism petition peta)
• Take Action: Tell the Bush Administration to protect polar bears and their critical habitat
  While you’re at it, maybe urge the U.S. government to protect polar bear habitat in addition to protecting the bears themselves?
  (tags: environment global petition animalwelfare)

• BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Brit actors ‘judged on accents’
  Stephen Fry’s musings on the differences between U.S. and U.K. actors, and Hollywood’s perceptions (and stereotypes) of Brits. Call me biased, but I still prefer British “speechifying.” :-)
  (tags: entertainment stephenfry)