My gimpy leg

For the first time in years I went to the doctor due to an injury. As I mentioned a few post back I fell trying to skate that ditch I cleaned out. It's still hurting and the pain hasn't seemed to lessen. So I made an appointment to get it checked out. Now I have to get an MRI (I've never had one of those, heck I don't even know if I've ever had x-rays other than the dentist) but the early diagnosis is that I've torn my meniscus. Joy. The good new is that the ankle portion of the injury is healing nicely and is little more than a pull and bruising.

Of course, I managed to secure extra time off this week but I'm hesitant to go skate in the condition I'm in. Although, if I pop enough ibuprofen and wear a my knee brace, I imagine I'll be OK. The doc did say as long as I didn't try to do a bunch of crazy stuff there's no reason not to skate, well unless it seems to cause more pain actually.

So I think I'm going to take a little drive down to Canon City. It near the Royal Gorge and I've never been there. And there is a skate park there that looks like it could be fun. Plus there should be some good picture taking opportunities.

No matter what I'm just glad not to have to go to work for five days.

Spike'll getcha

For whatever reason that picture of Spike cracks me up. I called it "Spike in a box" over at Flickr. I think part of it is because she seems to have the temperament that she would just jump out of that box and get you if she wanted (although I'm beginning to think that some of that is just an act). Of all the cats she has the raspiest voice. She is also the most demanding when it comes to accessing the bathroom and as she is a princess the toilet should be referred to as a throne in her presence.

I wasn't the biggest cat fan before I met Phrank. Don't get me wrong, I was never a cat hater but I was fairly apathetic to them. Dogs were my domestic animal of choice. But I can see the advantage of cats. And considering that one, if not more of ours act like dogs, I don't even really feel the urge to get a dog right now (that and we can't have them in this apartment complex).

Which isn't to say I wouldn't like a dog but dogs do require a level attention that cats don't. When I come home late at night from work, two of the boys whine until I pick them up. A dog on the other hand would require a walk and perhaps a treat or two just to calm them down. Walking a dog after getting off work is probably not the first thing I'd want to do.

So for now I'll stick to the cats. At least until we move and I make the mistake of walking into the shelter.

Oh yeah, French Toast.

Teh Kewl!!1!

Somewhere in the back of my head I though about typing a whole post in l33t 5p34k but then I decided that the only people who would be able to read it were probably not going to find this little corner of the Internet. I'm sort of surprised that I can read l33t (well as long as it's true l33t and not that obscure l33t stuff), I guess it's mostly from lurking here on the Internet since before the days of AOL. I can only thank the BSU VAX/VMS cluster for that (scary to think that there are a few of you who remember that).

Enough geekery, I'm losing my kewl. What kewl you ask? Yeah, good question. Actually stuff like l33t fascinates me. Being able to witness a major shift in the way the world communicates as I've seen (and to a degree participated) in the last fifteen years or so has been pretty amazing. To watch this new forms of slang and idiom evolve out of the revolutionary changes in communication leaves me with a sense that I'm witness a major change in our evolution of a species (which I realize seems to be a bit of a bold statement but I think future history will back me up on that).

The fact that the letters we used to write that took days if not weeks to be delivered can be retrieved in a matter of moments many times is a big shift. That we can have instantaneous letter like communication through instant messaging software is also a big shift. I don't think we're at the point to know exactly how to use it wisely yet but it is here now and we might as well get used to it.

The wrap up to this is that when I use a typed slang like l33t, somewhere in the back of my mind I'm aware of this amazing shift that we as a species are going through. And in some twisted sense it give me comfort.

Special people

Today was special person day on the phones. Most of the special people were of the "might be riding short bus with the square wheels that go round and round" variety. I may get a bruise on my forehead from too much head-to-desk action but I can deal with these special people (and I think fairly pleasantly (especially when I remember that most people haven't the foggiest when it comes to computers)). But there is a second kind of "special" caller that usually ends in frustration and sometimes a supervisor call for me. I don't have quite a catchy name for them but it has something to do with entitlement and the false premise that the customer is always right.

The company I work for is not an email company. We offer email as a complimentary product that you can choose to use when you sign up with us or as the case with most customers the company previous to us. No matter which company a customer originally had, it was laid out in the Terms of Service that email was for entertainment purposes only and explicitly not for business use (there is a good reason for this and it goes back to the fact that we are not an email provider). As we all know, no one ever reads the TOS (myself included) but it's in there.

Anyway there are a handful of customers that come through that seem to think that the email is more important than their connectivity. Of course these people are the ones who (according to them) their entire livelihood depends on their email address they maintain with us. If email was truly that important to their survival, one would think they would invest a small amount of money into a plan with an email provider instead of our rinky-dink email service that was really designed for grandma and grandpa to get email from the darling granddaughter (who may or may not be named Nikki). It's like asking for Coach leather seats in an Escort. And are these people special, as in their time is more precious that everyone else and they are "model customers that you don't want to loose my business". Here's the thing, in the how many ever years they've had high speed Internet with us, they've never had a problem with it. And they're not calling because they can't get online.

I offer this up: a quick scan of my contacts in my Gmail account list a whole two who use an Internet Service Provider email address (and one is AOL the other is Earthlink). In this day in age there is no reason to be dependent on an ISP provided email address.

Perhaps it's just me. Maybe it's because I've had my Yahoo! email address for over ten years at this point and I don't understand the reason people are beholden to an email address that can change for any number of reasons (moving, canceling or the company selling). I don't get it.

I also don't get why people can get so work up over something they weren't even aware of just a few years ago.

Although I wonder what would happen to me if I had to go more than a day or two without the Internet.

Sufjan Stevens almost made me cry

So I'm sitting here on the floor in the living room and listening to Sufjan Stevens and I find it hard to write anything. Partly because I'm always at a loss of what to write about but mostly because I get lost in his music. Yeah, I know that his music is pretty much on the soft side and can easily be considered wussy music by some. I don't care. I've come to the conclusion that he's probably one of the most talented singer-songwriters and all around musicians creating music.

I know this much that when I listen to one of his albums, it moves me. Some times bordering on tears, other times what I can only describe as a feeling of joy. Beyond that the music has an intricacy resembling a spiderweb (and you can find yourself caught in it). The music doesn't rock but it has this quality to it that I can't put my finger on it.

Sufjan Stevens is from Michigan and there is a strong Midwest feel to his music. I can feel my Indiana roots when I hear his stuff. The fact that his two of his albums are about/entitled Illinois and Michigan is not lost on me as well. Not only that but there are reference to Christian symbols and stories scattered throughout his songs that leave yet another Midwestern feel to the music.

Watch this guy, he's going give us some nice gifts I think.

Go figure...

Well, I did make it to that ditch I had spotted. This time I showed up with a push broom, five gallon bucket and a dustpan with the intention of cleaning it up. Apparently there was a lot more sand in the bottom than I really realized. That and it really doesn't take that much to pile up as I discovered today.

So I managed to clean up the part closest to the road back to the ramp, which you may not be able to tell by the photo but that's a good amount of territory. I go put the broom and stuff away and grab my skateboard because I want to try it out. So what happens when I drop in the first time? Yep, I fall. My front foot stays on the board and my back foot drags and I pull a muscle and twist my ankle a bit. I didn't even manage to get to the steep wall. The thing is I'm not even really that surprised at all. Not that I expected it to happen but it is pretty typical. Oh well, maybe someone will stumble upon it and enjoy it. And I'll probably go back and try to clean the rest of it. Although it's going to take a few trips. So if your driving down south Hancock in Colorado Springs keep you eye out for it.

Oops, I thought it was only a couple of weeks

So I'm going for extended hiatus here. I just checked and it's been over two months since I've put anything up here. Dang. And to think I thought I'd start doing it more in 2007.

I really just haven't had the motivation to write anything here. It's not that there isn't anything happening, I'm just not into the whole recapping it thing. Perhaps it's because I deal with the Internet all day at work.

Speaking of work, I did get a promotion already to what's called Tier 3 tech support. It's a higher level of high speed Internet support and we do the digital phone troubleshooting (it's not VOIP). I'm also learning about the drawbacks of working for a large corporation as a opposed to a small or mom and pop type establishment. The flipside being the pay is really good and a great health insurance plan that allowed me to had Phrank (without going into detail, we had perfect timing getting on the plan). Another bonus is that I don't have to deal with video (or billing) calls if I don't want to. Those video calls are getting transferred out away from me. The only calls I get that escalate into supervisor calls are video calls (I actually had a lady demand a supervisor when I told her that it would cost her 29.95 to have a field tech come to her house and program her TV remote).

A month or so ago I got a new phone that has a camera, that's where the photo came from. What you can't make out is that one of those mountains in the background is Pikes Peak. When I took the pic I was more interested in the colors (and I was surprised how well they came out when I got the pic on my computer).

I did manage to get a closer look at what may be the best ditch to skate around here. It needs a bit of cleanup before I can skate it but it's nothing a push broom can't take care of. I'll try to remember to get a few pictures of it next time I'm out there.

Anyway, I'll try not to let three months go by next time. If there are any of you left that is.

QA

It's like I forget this thing is here it seems. I just looked and it's been a month to the day since the last time I put anything up. And to think that I was going to start doing it some more.

Let's see, we made it through the holidays relatively unscathed but afterwards have been a bit, well, something.

One good thing is I seemed to have settled into a bit of a groove at the call center. Today I had what's called coaching (it's where my supervisor sits me down and goes over how I'm doing). It seems I'm doing fine other than I talk too much. Apparently, I have an ability to calm down most angry customers or at least not let them escalate the calls. Now if the company could get enough people on the phone to keep people from waiting an hour to talk to me.

I still feel sorry for some of them. It's kind of amazing just how much people depend on the Internet now days. Heck even ten years ago it wasn't like this. I was still using dial-up and residential high speed Internet was something that I read about on Usenet. Now the livelihood of people hinge on it (both Phrank and myself wouldn't be doing what we're doing if it weren't for it). Of course most of them accept that there can be disruptions in service and they're the ones who I seem to have the most sympathy.

Completely unrelated, I think I'm ready for winter to end. Or at least the snow to melt all the way out of the bowls at the skate park. For some reason the snow just piles up on the good transitions.

Up in smoke

I'm approaching six months with out a cigarette. It's been long enough that I don't remember what I felt like when I did smoke (or what I smelled like). The fingers I used to hold my cigarettes have lost the yellow tinge that I thought was going to last forever. It seems that my sense of smell has improved, I can tell when I wake up late at night if the downstairs neighbors are smoking or not.

There are very few times I even think about wanting a smoke. The other day I was telling Phrank that one of the few times I find myself wanting one is after mopping the floors. She thought that was odd, I think. Although, the post mopping smoke was a habit I had for many years at the various gas stations I worked at. That's the thing about smoking, smokers use a cigarette as a reward or a moment to catch their breath (ironic as that may be).

The big test for me was probably driving back to Indiana by myself. I've been told over the years that road trips are a big deal breaker for people trying to quit. I can see that. I'd tried the drive before without smoking and it was pretty tough but this time I'd been off them long enough that it wasn't so bad. There were those moments late at night after the coffee had long stopped working that I would want one. Just as something to keep me awake.

Anyway, it seems that I'm going to keep this not smoking thing up. I kind of like not having to be outside when it's freaking cold. And my clothes don't seem to smell as bad, not to mention my car. Well the car still smells but that's just that french fry I lost.

Catching a sound wave

It's just my luck that I discover that Sleater-Kinney was one of the greatest rock bands several months after they go on indefinite hiatus. The local library system has several of their albums and if I see on I'll grab it to give it a spin. Last Sunday, the album The Woods from 2005 (which apparently is their last album) was in so I grabbed it. I kind of don't want to return it. When I finally popped it in I was blown away. I've liked the other records I've heard by them but this one is something different. It seems to have all the elements of noise that make a good rock record for me. Just enough dissonance, catchy hooks and lyrics that seems to tell stories (and I'm beginning to think there is a theme to this album).

Due to such a wide selection of music at my local library (and a fresh stack of CDs from Paradox that cam in the mail yesterday) I am once again completely behind in my music. It going to be time to play catch up. And that doesn't even take into consideration the actual albums I've been picking up at thrift stores and garage sales.

There could be far worse things than having a lot of music to catch up on. And Phrank did get me one of the better Sonic Youth albums (Murray Street) to come out in the 00's (on CD and vinyl no less). That one I've actually listened to enough to come to that conclusion (and if you don't have it, get it).

And I still have plenty of room on my iPod.

Voices on the phone

So I finally got the customer I was waiting to get. That would be the one that couldn't spell CNN. I'd been waiting for her since I hit the floor. There have been other people I've talked to who probably shouldn't have computers or access to the Internet. My coworker, Larry, was lucky in that he got her is first few days but that time she couldn't spell HBO. His was even better because that time he had to tell her HomeBoy Out to get her to spell it right. I just told her CharlieNancyNancy.

I use CNN.com as a test page because the page updates every thirty minutes or so. That way I know that it not a page loading from temporary files. Sometimes I get the guy that thinks I am trying to brainwash him by directing him to that site. Usually it's something like "you know they are part of the liberal media" or "I get my news from Fox, bub." Amazingly I have to explain that I didn't pick CNN because of their content but the fact that the frontpage stays pretty current. Although I have this sneaking suspicion that one day someone is going to be seriously offended that I've asked them to go to CNN and get so mad they'll want to talk to my supervisor.

I'm not sure about all of those people that live in Southern California.

Soul Sucking Jerks.

It seems that winter has started. The cold hit finally. I don't mind it so much but defrosting and scraping the car in the morning can be a pain especially if I'm running late.

This new job of mine is sucking the life out of me I think. I never realized how much I dislike highly structured work environments until working here. Add to that the fact that no one ever calls when they're happy. The past four days were spent in a room they call the Icebox. And that's a literal description. I think I've begun to get sick from sitting in there all week.

And what's even better is everything we were taught this week in training is going to be obsolete within a month or so. WooHoo!

You know I should probably think of something nice to say about the place but I just can't. Okay, some of the people that work there are nice.

I really think I had something else to say when I sat down here but I can't remember.

Customer Disservice

I've decided I would really hate to be a customer of the company I work for or at least certain customers. It seems that the standards are set in such a way in the call center that some customers will get stuck in an infernal loop of transfers that a resolution to their problem is impossible. Most of this is due to the fact that we as agents can only be on the phone for so long, and to keep call times down people get transfered. I'm new enough that my call length by far exceeds what is expected of agents on the floor. It seems that if we weren't trying to keep our times down so much we may be able to take care of many issues without transferring people.

Although after being on the side of the phone I am now, I can see why at times it's taken several calls to some companies to get a resolution. It completely depends on which agent you get calling a given call center. There is a lot for agents to know and not all of them even know the basics. It seems I have a fair handle on what I'm supposed to know and can come to a resolution for a customer much of the time. But I still get those questions that stump me. Most of the time it turns out to be Windows issue or something unrelated to my job. Like the fellow who wanted me to setup his printer over the phone.

The really funny thing about having this job is that I really hate answering the phone. Ask Phrank, she'd tell you. Or any of my past roommates that I've shared a phone with. I really can't answer why I took this job other than the benefits are good and I might pick some things up for the next step.

Boring email

Ever since I've started on the phones I've been asking myself a question. Why the hell would anyone use an email address provided by an ISP (Internet Service Provider)? I can't count the amount of calls I've taken where people are having issues with their email. Due to the ever changing nature of the telecommunications industry it doesn't make sense to me to use an email address where the potential for the address to change several months from now is high. Not only that but most ISP have stingy limits on the storage space on their servers. The company I work for had a max limit of 100 megs, that's tiny! Not to mention the amount of spam they seem to receive. There really is only one advantage that I can see and that's the ease of configuring email client programs (and even that is a lame excuse).

Perhaps it's a generational thing, it does seem that it's the over 55 set that uses the company's provided email more than the younger ones. There is that age group that still believes one can trust the companies one does business with.

Who's to say? And if you made it this far, sorry about your eyes glazing over. But I'm having to work myself back into this blog thing. I'll get better I promise.

I'm not even sure which circle it is...

I imagine by this point writing anything here is probably like talking to myself. I've pretty much forgotten about this little section of the Internet. The truth is I've been far more interested in being a passive participate out here on the Interwebs lately.

What's new? Well since you asked, I've left the print industry. And yet I've still managed to descend into a new level of customer service hell (hey it's a start). If you're reading this from the LA region then I represent what most likely is your local cable company (for job security I think I'll leave it nameless) and I am answering your angry phone calls about why you can't get online. Yep, it's a call center. In the high speed Internet division.

The thing about this job is that nobody ever calls us when things are going good. And some people are really freaking pissed when they call. I guess the advantage is they aren't able to physically do any harm.

It's only been a month. I do like the fact that I have coworkers again. That's nice.

Something tells me this new job could provide ample ground for new gripes here at Surly Pump Monkey. Like the lady that couldn't spell HBO (Larry took that call).