February 25, 1997 - You will be the best, Part II

~~You will be the best, Part II~~

Tuesday, February 25, 1997, 8:00 p.m.

Dora wrote today and reminded me of that custom of adding "in bed" to a fortune cookie fortune. I don't know how I could have forgotten that, since my mother-in-law insisted on reading everyone's fortune aloud with that addition the last time we ate Chinese with them. My fortune, you will recall, was "you will be the best." You can draw your own conclusions.

Yesterday and today my office was full of laughter. Most of the time it was stress relieving, and sometimes it was a little out of control, but several times throughout the day we've found ourselves laughing helplessly at something stupid, something ridiculous or so horribly annoying that you can't help but laugh. I was acting silly yesterday, poking fun at someone who had just called on the phone and made a stupid request, and one of the vice presidents walked by and suggested that someone might want to call Security since I was acting so weird. That prompted another fit of giggles.

I'm lucky that the two other executive assistants and I are so compatible; it would be unbearable without someone to share the stress, someone you can make eye contact with during a moment of absurdity, and know without a doubt that they know exactly what's going through your mind.

Yesterday afternoon Lisa stood up and told me that she was going to the restroom and then go by the vending machine to get some M&M's, but what I heard was, "I'm going to the restroom and slit my wrists." I looked at her sort of blankly, and then I realized what she had really said. As I told her, the scary part was that my first interpretation sounded perfectly logical at the time.

The weather has been beautiful for the past couple of days, sunny, clear, briskly cool. I'm walking with a little extra spring in my step, smiling more, enjoying life more. Spring is on the way, I can feel it, finally. This winter has been so long. I need to figure out why it was so awful and try to find a way to endure it better before next winter. But like most things, once it's past I'll forget about it until next time. Around the time of the first snowfall of the winter I'll ask Bob, "Was last winter this bad," or "this early?" My memory for those things is very short. I guess that's good. Like childbirth (or so I've heard), if we remembered the pain we'd never go through it again.

Want to be stunned and amazed at how the minds of the people who run cyber-censor software companies work? Read Who Will Watch the Watchmen, from Internet World, first published in September, 1996. Of course, if someone (either someone in your family or someone at your company, your school, or even perhaps your ISP) has installed Cybersitter on your computer or network you won't be able to access this article.

Among the words Cybersitter blocks are "fascism," "Ku Klux Klan," and "Sinn Fein." Pity the student who wants to do a report on hatred in America--or who is interested in the political side of the troubles in Northern Ireland. Also on the outs is anything by Ernst Zundel, who denies that the Holocaust ever happened, and Adolf Hitler, who would probably disagree. Sometimes the brush is broad; sometimes it's very narrow.

Not only does Cybersitter block sites that it considers offensive, it blocks entire domain names if one customer maintains a site containing undesirable material. It also blocks sites which merely link to the so-called offensive sites.

Want to be banned, too? Click on the graphic below to find out how.

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