6-8-11 Wednesday (Less Windex)

I was off today.  I figured it might still be a week or 2 before the lumber is delivered for the house.  For whatever reason I thought I’d go check out what was going on and I was surprised:

When Jim came home I asked if he had been by lately.  He said he had stopped by yesterday and there wasn’t even any lumber.  I guess things just moved a long fast.

Later in the evening, Jim and I went to check it out again.  Naturally more had been completed:

The dining room (left side of the house) only has 1 window but should have 2.  We emailed the powers that be for the correction.  Our salesperson, Michelle, says once the framing starts, the goal for completion is 70 days out putting us at an approximate date of August 20th.  Wow, just a little over 2 months!

With it moving along quickly, we’ll be checking on it more often.

6-7-11 Tuesday (Responseless)

On May 20th I wrote about my Verizon/AT&T woes.  Mostly that we got hit with an early termination fee that quite honestly I didn't see coming.  I didn’t really expect Verizon to refund me, a customer who abandoned them.  What I did expect was an answer.  A reply.  An apology.  A screw you.  Something.

Sometimes I think it’s a waste of time letting companies know how I feel.  May 13th I wrote about comments an employee made about saline at the eye doctor (EyeOptix).  I wrote them an email letting them know I thought it was unwelcomed.  Response?  Nope. 

I was reminded about these incidents when I saw this article on Consumer Reports:

Click here to see the full article.  I love Consumer Reports.

Jim says I’ve become crotchety.  I think he’s right.  I’m not quite sure when I became this anti-bad-service-martyr-blogger-guy.  I know, when I started blogging.  I guess at the time that I knew people were reading and listening to me, I decided it was a great time to begin ranting.  Maybe to rally the masses in favor of me as leader of the free world.  OK, maybe not that far.  But if you do want to vote for me, you can click here.

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Today was day 2 of training for most of my coworkers.  After “interviewing” several of them during breaks I got this feeling of “rebellion”.  They seemed unhappy with the bore of an instructor and her inability to actually know what she was talking about.  Unfortunately the other instructors that “assisted” weren’t much better.  They had to bring in some of the actual users (pilot testers) of the system to help answer questions.  I found out that I’ll be getting the same useless team of trainers. 

As far as my day, the phones weren’t quite as busy but I did spend a lot of time per call chatting up customers and taking credit applications.  That certainly made my day go a bit faster.  I also had my monthly review and I’m happy to report I was in 3rd place out of 44 people for the month of May.  Not bad for a newbie.  I’m still lagging behind on some of the many thresholds they evaluate me on.  Nonetheless, I got a good review.

Jim and I have been watching the original V series (via Netflix instant).  Well, correction, I’m watching it cause Jim wanted to.  What a horrible show.  Terrible acting and jerky stunts.  I can forgive the special effects but not the acting.  It all came out in the early 80’s.

“Set a year after the Visitors were driven from Earth, this series picks up where "V: The Final Battle" left off. On the way to her trial, Visitor commander Diana (Jane Badler) is assassinated by the scientists who helped destroy her plans. But former resistance leader Donovan (Marc Singer) feels that something isn't quite right, and his fears are realized when he learns that the Visitors are back in full force.”

I do like the newer version of V but while researching stuff for this post I just read that it was cancelled????  I’m so completely tired of shows I like being cancelled and then left to wonder about the rest of the story.  Someone’s comment on the website I just visited said it all:

“TV seems to be literally killing itself pulling shit like this. I've mentioned previously that I've now totally given up watching any new shows until I know what their fate is. I'm not investing any time in watching something which finishes unresolved. This is yet another show I don;t have to start watching, despite the fact I was looking forward to it. At some point TV will simply become a medium for advertising TV shows. TV shows that we can purchase directly from the makers for a (hopefully) reasonable fee. Rather than TV companies paying too much to broadcast shows and passing that cost on to the consumer - and still stuffing them with adverts, we will fund the programmes directly like HBO and Showtime.”

I’m bummed.  What shows are you missing that ended abruptly? 

6-6-11 Monday (I’ve Got No Class)

Most of my coworkers were in a training class today and again tomorrow to learn a new system.  My turn will be next week.  The phones were hideously busy.  As soon as I finished one call, another would immediately come through.  You see, in a call center, or at least mine, you don’t “answer” the phone.  It happens on it’s own.  There’s a beep and then someone is on the line… no button pushing.  While I’m on one call, I do have the ability to go into a mode indicating not to send another call until I say so.  I had to use that option a few times to try and maintain sanity, or take a sip of water or even go pee.  It’s definitely the busiest I’ve ever seen it and I’m sure that’s attributed to my comrades’ absences from the phones.  I will say the day went by so quickly though.

Meanwhile, I’m already dreading my turn at training.  When I went through my initial training, our instructor was Jay.  He was the best.  Lively.  Kept an awesome pace.  Funny.  In the back of the room sat another trainer.  She didn’t do much… that we saw.  I found out through classmates who peeked at her paperwork that she was a spy.  Maybe she did other stuff but she certainly took notes on what classmates were doing during training.  Who was sleeping, who was texting, who was late, etc.  One day, Jay had to leave early so she took over for a couple of hours.  She has the personality of a rock.  I was so thankful she didn’t teach the 6 week class.  I would have failed.  A.D.D. would have kicked in for sure.  The point is, SHE is training the new system class.  2 days X 8 hours = 16 hours of horror.  Please, please, can I be lucky that next week Jay will teach my class?  Let’s join hands. 

I rarely proofread before I post.  I apologize for that.  Sometimes I find out I left out a word or put in a word like “past” instead of “part”.  Naturally, the spellchecker passes it and I think it’s good to go.  I decided to read this post and edit accordingly.  As I read the previous paragraph I thought to myself, self, cause I like to call myself that, what good did the spy actually do?  The texters, the sleepers, the late-comers, the cheaters, they all still do that crap and seem to get away with it.  Why do these people still work there?  It’s obnoxious… really.

Training happens to be up the hall so as my coworkers take their breaks we gain knowledge about the new system.  It sounds like good and bad points.  I can tell you that our current system in a lot of ways is horrible.  It takes a long time to do anything due to the abundance of useless screens.  There’s application screens that if translated to paper would totally destroy forests.  I’m exaggerating but think “name and address on this screen and then another piece of info on the next one”.  People, it’s a screen, you can make it bigger or smaller.  You can format it in so many ways.  Ugh.

I’m sure having a program changed is probably a nightmare.  How’d it even get that way to begin with?  Who approved it?  Who said, “This is perfect.  Roll it?”  Perhaps our bank software (not where I work) programming friend, Derek, can shed some light on this?  I’m obsessing.  I know.  It simply kills me.  A multi-million dollar corporation and this is the best we can do?  Oy.  OK, I’m done.

6-5-11 Sunday (The Power Of Twine)

We had an awesomely fun day with Billy and Mike.  We picked them up at about noon and headed to The Liberty in South End for brunch.  The burgers weren’t cooked to order.  They were awfully raw… We weren’t impressed but did manage to have a good time.  Jim and I have been there previously so today we spent our last Groupon. 

Above: Billy & Mike.

Meanwhile, in the parking lot:

Above: Nope, not our car, although I did admire criticize the “there, I fixed it” repair.

We explored Dilworth and South End a little bit, showing Billy and Mike the sights.  We had a little fun at an antique/mall/flea market type place in NODA called Peddler’s Post.

Above: Mike.  Hello?

Above: Art class mannequin and Garret.

Above: Mike.  Look what he found.

Above: Jim

Above: Mike dreams about Arms Of Steel.

With hours of exploring under our belts, we dropped off Mike and Billy to their house and went home to start dinner where they later joined us:

Champagne, wine, cards, coffee, dinner, cake…

Above: Mike

Above: Billy… with the help of Clea

Above/Below: Birthday boy Billy

 

Above: Dasher

Above: Billy

Jim won Phase 10.  We’ll get a rematch in soon!

6-3-11 and 6-4-11 (Friday & Saturday)

Friday:

Last week I told you how we had a little uproar at work regarding a new job posting at my company.  Several of us complained and inquired.  I pointed out the schedule in the posting and was told, “Don’t worry about that.  They just put that there.”  Huh?  So you’re purposely advertising your new positions incorrectly?  Do you really want to hire a bunch of people who are disgruntled right out of the gate?  I’m not sure what they’re doing.  Honestly, I’m not quite sure they know either.  Over all, the feeling in the department is that there will be a lot of problems if the new hires get a better schedule rather than the shift-bid method the company supports.

In other work-related news, Jim found out that he will start training on Monday to underwrite for the new project, B*nk O* Am*ri*a.

Today we were also told that the foundation has been poured!  Yay.  Jim stopped by after work and said it looked like the bathroom plumbing is in the wrong place but it’s hard to tell and it’s hopefully right.

“…they passed all foundation inspections this week and were able to pour the concrete today! it will cure over the next few days and be ready for framing next week.  not sure what day lumber is coming since concrete was a couple days ahead of the schedule i had.  will let you know when i find out.”

Saturday:

It was off to work for me and Mike while Jim and Billy spent hours upon hours shopping Salvation Army stores and Goodwill stores all over town.

After work Jim and I went to the lot to take a peek at it’s progress.  We have a foundation!

Above/Below: 6-4-11

Here’s some prior photos from June 1st:

I was happy to see they didn’t try to reuse the pipes they dug out!  We don’t have a completion date but they’ll be able to estimate once the lumber arrives.  It seems to weird to have a house built of wood rather than concrete block.

Long John Silver’s has been advertising a family pack.  10 fish or chicken (we got a mix), hush puppies and 1 side for $10 so we stopped by and picked that up for dinner.  They shorted us 2 pieces.  We probably won’t complain or anything.  Maybe it’s karma for when the cashier thought I was poor/homeless or something?

We’ve got plans for tomorrow.  Lunch and dinner plans actually!  Stay tuned!