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Tech Fetish

For our more rich and generous fans, I would not mind finding one of these under the tree next Yuletide.

Damn Reality II

They pulled the new program at work. Not only do I not get a more tolerable program to move to, the center is still overstaffed. Blood is in the water. Soon the sharks will be coming to feed.

So, I am looking for a new gig before I get sent packing. To be honest, and no one is more surprised than me, I miss being a tech. I was burning out when I was laid off from my last tech gig. But now that I have had a breather, I am finding I am missing it. I still want to get into programming. But that is still at least two years away. In the meantime, I want to stay on my game.

Besides, after all the bullshit Friday, this new development has left me less than pleased with my current employer.

Damn Reality

Laura and I recently earned our blue belts in Taekwondo. To celebrate, we are quitting.

Well, we really aren't quitting, but we are going to have to take a break. We are both working nights, and that has made getting to class hard. We have either had to go in the mornings, or when we had a weeknight off. With my new schedule, I won't have time to take morning classes and get cleaned up and get to work. I won't have any weeknights off either.

I do want to earn my blackbelt. In a few months, I will hopefully be able to change to a more TKD friendly schedule. And maybe in that time, I might be able to lose a couple inches off of my massive belly. As we have been progressing, my flab has been proving to be more and more of an impediment. Hopefully, losing a few pounds will make life a bit easier when we start back up.

Anyway, The Simpsons is on. Got to run.

Music Related Post Title

"Max, if you could just some with me," is how it always began. I would be led to an office or a meeting room for an unannounced meeting with an agenda to be announced. Within 10 or 20 minutes, someone would come in and explain that in order to improve the company's bottom line and allow for larger executive bonuses, I was to be laid off. Nothing personal.

Needless to say, my suspicions were aroused yesterday when I was pulled off the floor and taken to a meeting room for an unannounced meeting with an agenda to be announced. It does not take a genius to realize that the boys upstairs are not going to long tolerate the five and ten minutes we have been waiting between calls. And the fact that I was in that room with Stephanie, another less than stellar sales agent was making me a little nervous.

Then I and Stephanie were asked to leave the room. Although a meeting was to take place on "the same subject" our meeting was to discuss, the sales people were supposed to have it elsewhere, as people from other projects were to meet in that room.

So Stephanie and I were moved to another room, where we waited. And waited. Until after ten or twenty minutes, someone came in and asked us to go back on the phones, that the meeting will be delayed for a half hour. Sorry for the cock up. Nothing personal.

At this point I knew I was out the door. Now I was already somewhat tense do to some bad news I had already received earlier that day. (That news is not mine to share, sorry). So, I was just short of going postal, to use an outdated cliché.

Now, I have never had a great relationship with any supervisor. Most were tolerable at best. There were a few I respected, none that I really liked. That is, until I started at Convergys. My supervisor, Deborah, is the best supe I have ever had. She knocks herself out every day to try and help losers like me do their job right, and she never lets you feel like a moron in the process. Better, she regularly stands up to her superiors to protect us from anything she perceives to be unfair. Most important, she genuinely cares about the people who work under her.

Never before in my life has talking about personal matters with a supervisor ever struck me as a good idea. But yesterday, as I was starting to panic, there was one tiny voice in the increasingly irrational cacophony in my head that said, "Talking to Deborah would be a good thing. Telling Deborah I am about to flip out will make good things happen." You know what? That voice was right.

I knew that she knew whatever it was they were going to be telling me when they finally got their asses together. And I knew that she would be shown the door if she stole their thunder. So, I don't hold it against her for not cluing me in. Further, I respect her for managing to keep her mouth shut about what she needed to, while still managing to calm me down.

Finally, the called me and Stephanie into the meeting. I am still employed. In fact, the management at Convergys has gone up a few notches in my book. They were in a position where they could have made their lives a great deal easier by letting people like me and Stephanie go. Instead, they have spent the past month drumming up new business so there would be projects they could move us to.

So I am not only not laid off, I am on a new, better project. It is still sales, but the sales are easier and the commission structure less hit or miss. And, after spending the last month working weekends for the first time since the summer of 1997, I now have my weekends off again.

Yes, kids, I am being rewarded for being a lousy sales agent. For once, this world's ass backwardness works in my favor. Maybe I should go buy a lottery ticket.

Vacation - All I ever wanted!

   Starting tomorrow I will be on vacation for the week. We are finally going on our Honeymoon. We're taking a cruise to Alaska!

   We're both pretty excited about this. I'm excited that I won't have to see work for a week! The last two weeks at work have just about killed me. I wanted to kill all my vendors and take a flame thrower to our voicemail system. I'm glad I didn't and all, it's comforting to know I will have a job to come back to when the cruise ends!

   All that aside, you may have noticed that I updated the commenting fields - they'll look a little different from what they did. YACCS, the service we use, has been going through some changes. The person (singular) who runs YACCS (for free!) has been getting as overwhelmed as the system he runs. But, this new code puts more work on the individual servers and less on his. You'll probably see more changes to the comments as the weeks go by.

   Speaking on the passage of time - this is the 100th day of IWDC! At least it's the 100th day we have counted. I wanted to mention this because this is the first day of the month. Why is that special? Well, last month was our biggest month so far! Last week, the 20th through the 26th, was our biggest week ever! In other words, we're growing like mad and I couldn't be any happier about it! Thanks to all of you for continuing to come out and give me a reason to get out of bed in the morning!

   Well, I leave you in the capable hands of Max while I'm gone. Be good. Eat your veggies and mind your sitter!

Posted by: Jericho - 6/1/02 - 2:06 pm -

© 2002 by the Gentlemen known as Max and Jericho