Now Comment Enabled. I Dare Ya.

After two years with my fancy-schmancy inline comments showing right below the post, I officially threw in the cyber-towel and reverted back to the old click-here-to-get-to-the-comments-first option. I’m a big fan of being unique…but not at the expense of losing precious comments. Now if I can just figure out why no-one’s avatar is showing, I’ll be golden.

Meanwhile, I'd mentioned that I’m now doing social media for our local Toyota. They were using an outside company before this…and they weren’t doing a very good social-job. I am so, so much better. Now I am their in-house social media, which means I get to cruise online all day. Suh-weet.

There is one major issue, though. This issue has become MORTAL ENEMY #1…the absolute bane of my existence. It’s called WEBSENSE. This is corporate America’s answer to blocking all employees from anything even remotely social…no poking, tweeting or streaming video allowed.

Or evidently, philanthropy….as I recently discovered whilst following a link from Toyota’s Twitter page:

Huh.

Then I attempted to link up with YouTube:

Wow.

So, I figured I’d head back to Twitter:

Ouch. Okaaay…this is annoying. I’ll stick with the basics and log into FaceBook:

Yikes. Seriously?? This WEBSENSE is starting to tick me off! Well, at least I can still review our own website:

At this point, I’d had enough. It seemed that as fast as I could get I.T. to UNBLOCK them, they’d BLOCK again. It was maddening…it was obnoxious…it HAD TO GO. So, I sent a text to my boss, who was at a conference:

Kathryn: “I CAN’T STAND IT ANYMORE. UNBLOCK ME. I CAN’T DO MY JOB.”

ToyotaBoss: “Who is this?”

Kathryn: “Oops. Sorry…it’s Kathryn. Bad day. UNBLOCK.”

ToyotaBoss: “JK. I know who this is. Why are you shouting? It won’t help.”

Kathryn: “UNBLOCK. UNBLock. Unblock.”

ToyotaBoss: “Okay.”

Then it got eerily quiet. I continually refreshed my email and kept glaring at the monitor, mentally composing a snarky email to I.T.-one where I’d tell them where they could stick their WEBSENSE:

Dear IT:
I hate you. You suck. You’re dead to me.
Kind regards,
Kathryn/Director of Social Media

Several hours later a guy in dusty work clothes, carrying a metal ladder and the biggest roll of Ethernet cable I’ve ever seen...knocked on my office door. Dave proceeded to set up the ladder and then climbed into the ceiling…and when he finally resurfaced, he brought back with him wild tales of dead rodents, exposed rusty nails and the news I had fervently hoped for: a new, (UNBLOCKED) internet connection! I whooped with joy and texted this message to ToyotaBoss:

Kathryn: “I have internet! Dave is my hero! I’d marry him if he wasn’t already married. Whee!”

Several hours later, I’d bookmarked a dozen sites and was happily viewing that previously-blocked video on Toyota’s Facebook page. That’s when it dawned on me that I hadn’t seen any emails come through in a while.

Uh-oh…