questions before work

Friday Five!

1. What song would you sing to your newborn child? (OR if you already had a child, which song did you sing to him/her?)
Hmm.... probabhly LOTS of showtunes, the Beatles, Great Big Sea and... oh, probably everything I know that I can actually sing without singing along with a CD. But yeah, showtunes would probably be a big part of it.

At the moment it would be "Summer" by Great Big Sea, because it won't get out of my head. ;)

2. How do you think animals think? (i.e. in animal language, human language, etc.)
You know how it is when you're not thinking with words (not subvocalizing, not using the words to give your thoughts form)? I think for the most part, for 'higher' animals, it's something like that. Awareness, some degree of memory and planning, but no language.

3. As a child, did you have a dream to make a difference in the world? Can you describe your dream?
Not especially. I wanted very much to be a paleontologist or marine biologist, but there was no thought of "changing the world." Just learning about really interesting things.

4. Do you believe in God/a Higher Being?
Nope. I believe in the universe, and I believe it's a marvelous, wonderful place. And I believe it's all we're gonna get, so we'd better appreciate it. ;)

5. Do you believe in aliens?
Yes, but not the way pop/New Age culture indicates. I find it implausible that we're the only life in the universe (seems statistically unlikely, as well as just plain arrogant), but the likelihood any other life from another planet would look or act anything like us seems pretty small, and I very sincerely doubt the whole UFO and alien abduction phenomena. The purported evidence just doesn't make sense to me.

day in the life of a website monkey

My job is strange.

This isn't exactly new news to me, but every time I actually think about it I get a little amused. I mean, in a lot of ways, my world probably made a lot more sense when I was stocking and selling textbooks, or before that when my job was to handle all the technology required by professors for their presentations and lectures, and rearrange classroom furniture as necessary. Now, I spend most of every day updating car-dealer websites, which in and of itself isn't all that weird, but the things the dealers want on their sites? Are frequently very weird.

More than that, it's weird to me how much the technology and processes have become old hat to me over the time I've been here. I remember when everything about our ticket system freaked me out, when Photoshop was still strange, and when Flash... was a completely terrifying new beast. I got used to it all gradually, so I didn't really notice the change, but now that we have six completely new people on the team it's been a complete eye-opener. Those things mostly don't scare me anymore. Okay, Flash sometimes does, still, but only when the object is really complex and weird. Otherwise? Meh. Same-old same-old. No problem.

I love that kind of thing, the shift that happens in your mind where all of a sudden you realize "wait, I'm different." I get a little nostalgic about the old days (I kind of miss being the girl who appears and "saves the day" for professors and their lectures, especially), but I like my current job a lot, too. I like my cubicle and my desk with my Dalek, and I like having a specialty (guys, I'm a professional! how scary is that?), and I get a kick out of the fact that my coworkers not only aren't weirded out by my having a Dalek on my desk, but that some of them come up and pick it up and start wiggling the plunger and chanting "Exterminate!" in the required nasal tone. I love working with geeks.

You know what else makes me happy? It's Friday. Anyway, that's my random update for the day, I guess.