Well, the country took a dark turn on Saturday,
and headed down a path that will be dangerous for humanity for a long time to
come. Voting out as many Repugs as possible will help, but realistically, we’re
well and truly stuffed for the foreseeable future.
So on Gratitude Monday, I’m taking it local. As
in: me.
Because—while my personal and professional life
pretty much mirrors the dark hopelessness of our national politics—I am not
alone. And in the past few days, two men stepped up to give me a hand and haul
me out of the hole.
First was a long-term friend, who spent two and
a half hours Thursday night untangling me from a Microsoft-induced meltdown. We
don’t know what happened, but on my most recent reboot of Win10, Office365
helpfully bollixed Outlook, swallowing up both my Gmail accounts. I still had
webmail, but nothing in my desktop client.
This Great Nothingness included my contacts.
Which, ah, is where I store my passwords. As you might imagine, I was
distraught.
John talked me down from the ledge and restored
my accounts. I am in for it for storing passwords (I don’t have them en clair, guys; they’re coded) this way;
I have to look into password managers. And I also have to figure out either how
to get Outlook to not be such an asshole when it comes to working with Google,
or find a desktop client to manage Gmail. (I reckon Microsoft is trying to
drive us to use their poncy email—which has gone from Hotmail to MSN to Live to
Outlook, because they keep trying to fool us into thinking they’ve changed
anything. And I’m not going to do it. I have one Outlook account, which I had to create when I bought this
machine with Win10 and Office365 loaded. That’s one Outlook account too many,
as far as I’m concerned.) But I have my data back, and I’m grateful for that and
for my friend who patiently restored it for me.
The second instance was someone I know from
Twitter. He’s in information security (infosec), which is something I’m
interested in. He’s launching his company’s website; he asked me to take a look
and tell him what I think, which I did. (Good start; could do a better job of storytelling
on the company, its services and its people. I like good stories.) A couple of
weeks ago I might have mentioned that I’m looking for my next gig, and he
offered to help.
Well—I’ve heard this song before, so I didn’t
pay him much mind. But one thing led to another, and I sent him my résumé. He
read it, offered some suggestions (which I didn’t read at the time, being at
GHC) and we set up a call on Friday, which was when I ran through his résumé
revamp. Totally helped me step back and rethink how I present myself. The call
was also extremely helpful, and I’m feeling reenergized—for the job search, at
least.
So, between getting my Outlook/Gmail data back
(but completely mistrusting anything Microsoft does going forward), courtesy of
my old friend, and having a new friend show me new paths for my professional
life, I’m really, really grateful for…the power of friendships. They offset
some of the shite generated by this completely fuckwitted regime.
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