I feel vindicated.

Erm, that's not really the word I'm looking for. Validated? Whatever.

A few month back I submitted a short story to Morphic Tales, a brand new furry fanzine. It was immediately accepted. (Yay me!) All of the stories are to have accompanying illustrations, and I received a sneak peak at the picture that will go with my story.

It's perfect. It's exactly how I pictured it. Which, I suppose, shows me that the story was well written and well described.

Of course, it might just be a coincidence that the picture jives so well with the story. But I don't care. My name's gonna be in print! I'm psyched.

When the story was accepted, I told my mom about it. She asked for a copy of the 'zine when it comes out. grin I explained to her that it's just a very short story, and that she probably wouldn't like it (since she's not that "into" furry stuff.) She didn't care. Her little girl got a story published.

Go mom.

At work, we're upgrading our scheduling system into a Y2K compliant version. (Right now we're running a DOS version which won't work after December 31.) Basically, we use the software to book trips, keep track of no-shows and cancellations, do run dispatching, make routes, and other related foo. In other words, it's the heart of our operation. The DOS version is really slow and clunky, so it will be a Good Thing to finally join the Information Age with a Windows version.

I used the Windows version at my old job, so I'm well aquatinted with it. This week the trainer from the software company is doing training on the new software, and we're set to go live on it the first week of December. I've opted out for the first few days of the training, since it's just trip booking, trip administration, and scheduling editing (all of which I did at my old job.)

During one of their breaks I popped my head in to see what they were doing. I told our Ops Manager how to make the scheduled times "pretty;" that is, how to make them "round" times. (It's a lot easier to explain to an old deaf lady that we'll pick her up at 9:15, rather than trying to explain that the bus will be there at 9:22.) I know a lot of shortcuts like that, since I'm so used to the software.

While I was explaining this, the trainer came back into the room and overheard what I was saying. He immediately jumped all over me, telling me that the software wasn't meant to be used that way, he's never heard that, he'll need to check with his supervisor to see if that's a valid use of the program, yada yada yada.

WTF? All I did was set two times in the trip booking, which is how I was trained to do it. And it yields "pretty" times, rather than the messy ones. Where's the problem, Sherlock?

He said he'd have to get back to us tomorrow.

You know what I think? I think that he was just upset that I'd known something he didn't. After all, he trains people on the use of the software. Basic stuff, you know? After he trains one group, he moves on to the next city and starts over. I, on the other hand, have been using it day in and day out for over a year. I know that program inside and out.

Yes, I do have something to learn on it. It's a very complex, powerful system. But trip booking? No sir. At my old job I'd have a stack of trips to enter this high every day.

Idiot.

Anyway, we'll see what happened tomorrow in training. The trainer will be finishing trip booking, and moving on to trip administration. (Easy stuff.) After that, schedule editing.

Let's see if there's any other tricks I can show him.