Procrastinator Should Be My Middle Name

For my real job I have to take continuing education every couple of years to renew my license.  The Internet has made me lackadaisical in my pursuit to get my required courses completed before the deadline.  Which is why I’m always scrambling at the last minute to get my courses completed online.

Every year I swear on my mother’s grave I won’t wait until the very last minute to do my CE and every year I break that swear and I’m forced to sit in front of my computer for hours at a time and listen to some chick read to me and then click the green button to go to the next page and this goes on for so many pages I want to scream and swear out loud.  Don’t worry though because, yes my mother is dead but no she doesn’t have a grave, so I think I’m safe with that one.

This time I have to take 30 hours to be exact, only it ends up taking me more than 30 clock hours to complete because I turn off the volume and then guess at the answers on all the chapter tests.  A person use to be able to convince their then 4 year old it was a game and he needed to press that button every time it turned green, but now they’ve added these “validation questions”. 

For example:  What color are your eyes?   Where a 4 year old would answer  u83hs8t5      What is the name of your second cousin twice removed on your father’s mother’s side?  ue99373

The tesing powers that be know the answers to all these random questions they ask because I have to answer them all before I start testing.  The thing is, I also have to write my answers down or I’ll forget which email address I gave or what the first three digits of my telephone number are, not including the area code.  Huh?   I’ve got 20 seconds to answer and sometimes it takes me more than 20 seconds to process the question through my Aspartame hardened brain, so I have to write them all down.

The subject matter has little if anything to do with everyday real life real estate.  Here’s a screen shot of one page out of the thousand I have to click through. 

How many people have ever been given a car by a cat?   I had to click on the sentence that utilizes the active voice.  Duh!  Who writes this stuff, anyway?

After sitting and clicking through all the worthless useless information about stuff I’ll never need to know, then it gives me a test at the end of each section.  A ten question test with multiple choice answers.  Should be easy, right?  No it’s not, especially when you haven’t been paying attention to what you are supposed to be learning.  I have to make 100% on my score and if I miss just one measly little question, I have to start over from the beginning and listen to that female robot voice telling me useless information and wait for the button to turn green so I can click to the next page fifty seven times again. 

To amuse myself I try different things to mix it up a bit.   I sit back on the couch and watch television while glancing at the screen every once in a while and then I click the green button with my big toe that is painted shocking pink.   My toenail, not my entire toe.  They must know I do that because sometimes they change it up and I’ve got to move the cursor over to another button to click on for “more information” but I’m getting pretty good at using my toes for that too.   When I really get bored I use other body parts to click the green button of which you can only imagine because I will neither confirm nor deny which ones I’m referring to. 

You should file this information back for future reference just in case you might happen to come to my house to visit and need to use my laptop.  I’ve tickled the ivories with much more than just these fingers of mine!  My laptop keys are ivory, right?   What?  They’re not?  Oh, o.k. then plastics.  I’ve tickled the plastics.

Anyone want to borrow my laptop?

HAPPY TRAILS, Y’ALL