Day: August 20, 2021

#writephoto — Bring Your Kids to Work Day

Fandango15 Comments

I brought our two-year-old son to the annual Bring Your Kid to Work Day at my office. My wife was skeptical, feeling that he was too young to appreciate spending the day with me at the office and would be a burden on me. But I persuaded her that it would be fine and I’d be able to keep him entertained, so she reluctantly acquiesced.

Andy seemed to enjoy walking around the building and being introduced to my co-workers, who thought he was adorable, fawned all over him, and answered his never ending “what is that?” questions as he pointed to various objects around the office.

At around 10:45 I got called into my boss’ office for a meeting, so I sat Andy down in my chair in front of my computer monitors and streamed a cartoon movie for him to watch. I said, “Andy, be a good boy and watch the movie. I’ll be back soon.”

When I returned to my cubicle about an hour later, I noticed that my monitor screens were dark, but I didn’t think much of it as it was almost lunchtime, so I grabbed Andy and took him to the employee cafeteria.

When we got back from lunch, there was a sticky note from my boss stuck to my primary computer screen. I sat Andy back down in my chair and went to see my boss. He was not a happy camper.

“Someone opened an attachment and it installed ransomware onto our main server. They’re demanding one hundred thousand dollars in Bitcoins by close of business today or they’re going to start deleting all of our sensitive files, which they have encrypted so that we can’t access them.”

“That’s awful,” I said. “Who would be stupid enough to open up an attachment from someone they don’t know?”

“We traced it back to your computer,” my boss said. “Did you leave your computer on when you went to our meeting earlier?”

“Yeah, but I put a cartoon movie on for my son to watch,” I said.

“It seems that something popped up on the screen,” my boss said, “and your son began to cry and started pounding on the keyboard to get it off. In doing so, he must have accidentally opened up the ransomware and infected our network.”

“Oh shit,” I said. “Am I in trouble?”

“No,” my boss said, “but we’re canceling all future Bring Your Kids to Work Day events going forward.”

Written for this week’s #writephoto prompt. Photo credit: KL Caley.

Fibbing Friday — The British Invasion

Fandango6 Comments

Frank (aka PCGuy) and Di (aka Pensitivity101) alternate as hosts for Fibbing Friday, a silly little exercise where we are to write a post with our answers to the ten questions below. But as the title suggests, truth is not an option. The idea is to fib a little, a lot, tell whoppers, be inventive, silly, or even outrageous, in our responses. Today is Frank’s turn to host and here are his questions.

1. Finish the lyric: “It’s been a hard day’s night, and I’ve been working like a __________.”

one-armed paperhanger.

2. What nickname was given to the British group, The Beatles?

The Mopheads

3. What TV variety show did the Beatles appear on in the U.S.?

Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.

4. Finish the lyric: “That deaf, dumb, and blind kid sure plays a mean ____________.”

fiddle.

5. What rock group was responsible for the 1969 album, Tommy?

Sorry, but I can’t remember Who it was.

6. In the 1975 movie adaptation of Tommy, what part did Tina Turner play?

Aunty Entity.

7. Finish the lyric: “I can’t get no _____________.”

peace and quiet.

8. What is Mick Jagger best known for?

Not being able to get no peace and quiet.

9. What is Keith Richards best known for?

He played Cosmo Kramer on Seinfeld.

10. What was the rise in popularity of music from the UK during the 1960’s in the U.S. known as?

The second American Revolution.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — August 20th

Fandango20 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 20th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on August 20, 2017.

Ignorance and Apathy

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I walked in a few minutes after the first speaker at the conference started making his presentation. I found an empty seat near the back of the large meeting room and worked my way over to that seat and sat next to a guy who was busy texting on his smartphone.

“What’s the speaker discussing?” I whispered to the guy.

“He’s talking about ignorance and apathy,” he responded, without looking up as he continued his texting.

“Did I miss anything important?” I asked.

The guy, clearly annoyed, finally stopped texting, turned his head toward me, and said, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

*****

Okay, you got me. That was a joke. But with everything that is going on these days, ignorance and apathy are serious concerns.

Ignorance is the lack of knowledge or understanding, whereas apathy is the state of indifference due to a lack of interest or an emotional connection.

Ignorance either exists in a person or it doesn’t. Once a person becomes educated about a topic, the state of ignorance on that topic is diminished, if not gone. It’s generally understood that an ignorant person would do something different if he or she knew better.

Apathy, on the other hand, is more a state of mind that comes and goes with inclination and emotion. Thus, even with an increase in knowledge, an apathetic person may continue to exhibit indifference.

“Ay, there’s the rub,” as the bard would say. Author J.K. Rowling once stated, “Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright ignorance.”

I believe that it’s more difficult to overcome apathy than ignorance. You can educate someone about a topic, but you can’t make that person care about it. That must come from within.

I am concerned that apathy may be the largest problem we face in our society today. Apathy fuels a number of social, political, economic, and environmental challenges that confront us.

If we are to preserve our way of life, we need to figure out how to get people to give a shit.

FOWC with Fandango — Lean

Fandango26 Comments

FOWCWelcome to August 20, 2021 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “lean.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.