It took me no less than 20 minutes to sign into my blog account today- partially because it has been approximately 345 days since my last sign-in and partially because a very angry man across the table from me was yelling at his friend on the phone that he absolutely, without a doubt, one hundred percent did NOT want pizza for dinner. He articulated every vowel and consonant so precisely that I haven't the foggiest notion as to why the poor fellow on the other side of the line didn't clearly receive the message the first time the guy announced it to the whole coffee shop. The conversation, entertaining for me and uncomfortable for everyone else within a mile radius, went on for several minutes....leading me to almost put the lad out of his misery and offer to go eat pizza with his friend in his place.
"Here. You just sit here and continue to mumble to yourself over your notebook full of, I'm sure, earth shattering thoughts, drink your low-fat, no sugar, skim milk americano and I will take one for the team and choke down cheesy, greasy goodness with that extremely tolerant person on the line."
I would take the phone and say to the guy, "Give me the time and address, you forbearing human-being you, and I will eat pizza any time and any day for dinner with you. I will even give you advice as to how to pick friends - free of charge. Good day, sir."
But, like the other 20 pragmatically appropriate human beings in the room, I sat staring at my computer screen, withholding blinks, stifling my giggles, and intently listening to a 20-something year oldman child throw a temper tantrum over pizza.
So now that my tummy is rumbling with thoughts of pizza and I'm slightly delighted that my male counterpart has left the room, I can tell you why it took me an additional 10 minutes to start writing.
It came to my attention that it's been almost a year since my last blog post. In college I was able to produce witty, useless commentary for my 3 followers sometimes twice a day (three times if something really good happened like eating waffles for breakfast or witnessing a particularly hilarious Commonwealth avenue trip/fall). Grad school swooped in and gave me a swift kick in the buttocks, and along with my social life, ability to hold a normal conversation, personal hygiene, and sleep schedule went my blogging. But now that I'm (almost) a big girl doing (almost) big girl things - I can blog more! You're welcome, Kristy, mom, and grandma.
So! Deighted that I just passed my Praxis, finished my thesis edits for today, took my online quiz, finished my lecture, and completed my weekly lesson plans for therapy, giddy, I clicked on my blog link.
The sign-in page popped up. Crap.
I typed in every combination of e-mails and usual passwords I could think of - I even made some up in the hopes that blogspot would take pity on me and just sign me in (I really think computers should be able to do that by now..."You look puzzled and I would hate to see you get stressed out. Here, let me help you out with that, small human being.").
No such luck.
Okay fine, I'll do that handy little "user name/Password recovery" program. If I can get the right username, I can usually fumble through my typical combinations of old pet names, boyfriends, street names, favorite triathlons, and random assortment of birthday, race, apartment, and anniversary numbers until the right password is entered...or I get locked out and I have to call the company and chitchat with an always-friendly representative. I especially struggle if the password is case-sensitive, which is a death-sentence for remembering passwords. I tend to try to get clever when making login passwords by TyPiNg ThEm LiKe ThIs...JuSt iN cAsE a HaCkEr oR TeRrOrIsT wAnTs To StEaL mY QuEstAr GaS CoMpAnY LoGiN NaMe He'LL GeT T.r.I.P.p.E.d ^up^ oN My C-L-E-V-e-R ComBiNaTiOnS oF CaPitAliZaTioN, sYmBoLs, NuMbeRs, AnD LeTTErs.
I like to do my part to evade hackers. Target should have hired me...they could have avoided that whole identity-theft situation if they had just used the right kind of obscure combinations formulated in the crafty mind of Katie Weller.
So anyway. I typed in my blog name and clicked "send me my username" and a screen popped up that said "A username recovery e-mail has been sent to the e-mail ending in .sbcglobal.net."
Do I even have an sbcglobal.net e-mail? Apparently I do. Curious.
And then, like an old scent on a shirt that sparks the tiniest of memories, in the very, very back file of my brain somewhere between my temporal and parietal lobe a neuron woke up after years of being dormant and sent a little piece of information:
'Yes, you do, Katie. Don't you remember? In 7th grade you made your e-mail getinthebeat89@sbcglobal.net - even though your dancing career ended at age 5 when you announced to your mother that dance tights were too restraining and itched your 'private parts', so you were promptly quitting. So when you had to make your first e-mail you obviously chose the surname 'getinthebeat' because, clearly, you were in fact, in the beat. You also picked an obscure domain, because at that time you were through your 'I'm an individual' stage. "
Genius, Katie, real genius.
So like any typical technologically advanced girl I sent to the sbcglobal.net website (Which is apparently run by att.net - who knew!?) and typed in my supposed e-mail and then was presented with yet another password. And yet again I typed in every favorite word, color, animal, old best friend names and every combination of numbers I could think of to no avail.
What does girl have to do to write a damn blog post around here!? Apparently crack username and passwords created by the mind of a 7th grade girl, which, in my experience, is more complex and scatterbrained than the CIA. I was dealing with a mastermind of the past here.
After doing yet another recovery program to find out my password for my e-mail so I could find out my username and password for my blog, taking a bathroom break, refilling my tea, sighing loudly several times so that all the people in the room knew that the coffee shop had yet another disgruntled member, I went back to the blogspot website and tried to sign in using a different e-mail, hoping that at some point I had connected the two accounts.
Of course, I didn't.
So I signed into my other blog hoping that I linked my two blogs.
Of course, I didn't.
Remarkably, I COULD, however, remember all those usernames and passwords. Naturally. After hopping back and forth across websites a few times, making awkward eye-contact with a concerned passerby, and several moments of "I will never blog again" despair...Finally, I was able to travel back into the pensive mind of Katie Weller and unlock my old password for my obscure e-mail and retrieve my blogspot username and password. Whew. I promptly changed my e-mail on my blog and deleted the getinthebeat89 e-mail.
And then, when I joyously signed into my blog and was welcomed back into my cyberspace commentary on the life and times of Katie...I forgot what it was I wanted to blog about.
Another day, another time. Til later,
-Katie
"Here. You just sit here and continue to mumble to yourself over your notebook full of, I'm sure, earth shattering thoughts, drink your low-fat, no sugar, skim milk americano and I will take one for the team and choke down cheesy, greasy goodness with that extremely tolerant person on the line."
I would take the phone and say to the guy, "Give me the time and address, you forbearing human-being you, and I will eat pizza any time and any day for dinner with you. I will even give you advice as to how to pick friends - free of charge. Good day, sir."
But, like the other 20 pragmatically appropriate human beings in the room, I sat staring at my computer screen, withholding blinks, stifling my giggles, and intently listening to a 20-something year old
So now that my tummy is rumbling with thoughts of pizza and I'm slightly delighted that my male counterpart has left the room, I can tell you why it took me an additional 10 minutes to start writing.
It came to my attention that it's been almost a year since my last blog post. In college I was able to produce witty, useless commentary for my 3 followers sometimes twice a day (three times if something really good happened like eating waffles for breakfast or witnessing a particularly hilarious Commonwealth avenue trip/fall). Grad school swooped in and gave me a swift kick in the buttocks, and along with my social life, ability to hold a normal conversation, personal hygiene, and sleep schedule went my blogging. But now that I'm (almost) a big girl doing (almost) big girl things - I can blog more! You're welcome, Kristy, mom, and grandma.
So! Deighted that I just passed my Praxis, finished my thesis edits for today, took my online quiz, finished my lecture, and completed my weekly lesson plans for therapy, giddy, I clicked on my blog link.
The sign-in page popped up. Crap.
I typed in every combination of e-mails and usual passwords I could think of - I even made some up in the hopes that blogspot would take pity on me and just sign me in (I really think computers should be able to do that by now..."You look puzzled and I would hate to see you get stressed out. Here, let me help you out with that, small human being.").
No such luck.
Okay fine, I'll do that handy little "user name/Password recovery" program. If I can get the right username, I can usually fumble through my typical combinations of old pet names, boyfriends, street names, favorite triathlons, and random assortment of birthday, race, apartment, and anniversary numbers until the right password is entered...or I get locked out and I have to call the company and chitchat with an always-friendly representative. I especially struggle if the password is case-sensitive, which is a death-sentence for remembering passwords. I tend to try to get clever when making login passwords by TyPiNg ThEm LiKe ThIs...JuSt iN cAsE a HaCkEr oR TeRrOrIsT wAnTs To StEaL mY QuEstAr GaS CoMpAnY LoGiN NaMe He'LL GeT T.r.I.P.p.E.d ^up^ oN My C-L-E-V-e-R ComBiNaTiOnS oF CaPitAliZaTioN, sYmBoLs, NuMbeRs, AnD LeTTErs.
I like to do my part to evade hackers. Target should have hired me...they could have avoided that whole identity-theft situation if they had just used the right kind of obscure combinations formulated in the crafty mind of Katie Weller.
So anyway. I typed in my blog name and clicked "send me my username" and a screen popped up that said "A username recovery e-mail has been sent to the e-mail ending in .sbcglobal.net."
Do I even have an sbcglobal.net e-mail? Apparently I do. Curious.
And then, like an old scent on a shirt that sparks the tiniest of memories, in the very, very back file of my brain somewhere between my temporal and parietal lobe a neuron woke up after years of being dormant and sent a little piece of information:
'Yes, you do, Katie. Don't you remember? In 7th grade you made your e-mail getinthebeat89@sbcglobal.net - even though your dancing career ended at age 5 when you announced to your mother that dance tights were too restraining and itched your 'private parts', so you were promptly quitting. So when you had to make your first e-mail you obviously chose the surname 'getinthebeat' because, clearly, you were in fact, in the beat. You also picked an obscure domain, because at that time you were through your 'I'm an individual' stage. "
Genius, Katie, real genius.
So like any typical technologically advanced girl I sent to the sbcglobal.net website (Which is apparently run by att.net - who knew!?) and typed in my supposed e-mail and then was presented with yet another password. And yet again I typed in every favorite word, color, animal, old best friend names and every combination of numbers I could think of to no avail.
What does girl have to do to write a damn blog post around here!? Apparently crack username and passwords created by the mind of a 7th grade girl, which, in my experience, is more complex and scatterbrained than the CIA. I was dealing with a mastermind of the past here.
After doing yet another recovery program to find out my password for my e-mail so I could find out my username and password for my blog, taking a bathroom break, refilling my tea, sighing loudly several times so that all the people in the room knew that the coffee shop had yet another disgruntled member, I went back to the blogspot website and tried to sign in using a different e-mail, hoping that at some point I had connected the two accounts.
Of course, I didn't.
So I signed into my other blog hoping that I linked my two blogs.
Of course, I didn't.
Remarkably, I COULD, however, remember all those usernames and passwords. Naturally. After hopping back and forth across websites a few times, making awkward eye-contact with a concerned passerby, and several moments of "I will never blog again" despair...Finally, I was able to travel back into the pensive mind of Katie Weller and unlock my old password for my obscure e-mail and retrieve my blogspot username and password. Whew. I promptly changed my e-mail on my blog and deleted the getinthebeat89 e-mail.
And then, when I joyously signed into my blog and was welcomed back into my cyberspace commentary on the life and times of Katie...I forgot what it was I wanted to blog about.
Another day, another time. Til later,
-Katie
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