To the idiot who just decided to spam every journal entry here... find something better to do with your time...
They day I go over to my parents' house is a couple of days before Aunt Flo shows up! No WONDER I looked fatter... ::sigh::
They're trying to figure out how to rearrange cubicles because we're running out of room on this floor again... They're talking about putting a cubicle in front of mine... Unfortunately, they don't have enough full-sized walls to give me a three full walls, instead of 2 walls and a drive-thru window... Grrr...
I swear, if I didn't need the money, I'd probably be following Mischa out the door tomorrow. It's the only way to guarentee that I won't kill a certain person in this department.
I'd said that whole issue with my direct deposit had been cleared up right? Yeah... well apparantly not enough for my pay check to have been posted to my account yet. Grrr... At this point, I can't tell if my credit card's accepted the payment I set up BEFORE I knew that there was a problem... With any luck, they haven't...
To make matters worse, I got a notice last weekend about a possible fraud problem with several check cards... including mine... for the second year in a row, I might add... Well, at least my bank gave me more than 2 days notice this time... I hate money...
Apparantly there was a screw up with the people who handle our payroll and people with direct deposit weren't paid this morning... They just cleared that all up so with any luck the credit card payment I set up BEFORE I found out about the little mix up will go through...
A zippy little black BMW, which is what I want to upgrade to if I can ever afford to get a new car again...
I hate... repeat... HATE large sedans that make me feel like I'm one of those little old lady drivers that have to sit too close to the wheel to drive properly...
You know it's bad when I, the quintescential non-girl, is willing to set foot in Sephora as an excuse to run away from the office for 15 minutes.
On the other hand... it did allow me to meet this cute guy in the elevator who claimed to be the great, great, great, whatever grandson of Vlad Dracula... I was about to do violence to him until he explained why he was staring at my chest the entire ride downstairs...
He apparantly doesn't often see people wearing pictures of his famous relative on T-shirts...
This new schedule's kind of grating on me... I always thought I wanted a night shift... And I still do, really... but an actual night shift, not a late afternoon shift that takes away most of my day and messes with my sleep schedule...
My body can't decide if it wants too much sleep or not enough sleep half the time.... And sitting around here, doing nothing... Granted, I'm getting paid to do virtually nothing, but I could do that just as easily at home.
Not that spending all day skulking around my apartment... alone... sounds any better than sitting here among my co-workers.
I think Wighead was right... I need a pet. Although I'm just now getting the hang of keeping most of my plants alive. I have no idea how an animal would fare in my apartment... not to mention, I can't afford to take care of another mouth in the house...
There are times I wander around my apartment and almost wish for a roommate again... but then I remind myself of all the crap I would have to either get rid of or put into storage and how another person in that apartment would probably drive me crazy... No... if I ever live decide to live with someone else again, it would need to be in a house... a fairly decent sized one... with a big yard that I can grow herbs and veggies in.
Hell... I could even get a cat or a dog or a bird or something...
I'm tired of the monotony of nothing ever happening... I say that now, of course and my life will probably bee thrown into chaos in the near future.
What I really want to do is get back to work on my Cafe idea and/or my script idea but I'm feeling completely uninspired. I just don't have the energy...
::sigh:: I need to make it to May... Then I can drop my stock options and (hopefully) pay off the rest of my credit card debt... Not to mention start paying off my student loans, which will kick in come March...
::double-sigh:: The coffee I had today has just given me a mother of a headache... I need to go find some drugs now...
Got in a bit of a spat with the Wighead this morning because I informed her that the department records say she X number of sick hours left. Of course HR's records are totally different but if it actually comes to a dispute between CS and HR, CS will probably win. I know this because Der Fuehrer seems to favor anything that will get someone fired faster.
Last day here and then I'm off for finals. GODS!! I wish I was out of here for good though. I can't believe I have to stick it out here for at least another 3 months (and PLEASE let it be only 3 more months).
The next 12 weeks are going to be the worst though. I start my restaurant rotation schedule next week, which basically means that I'll be TA'ing over at the baking campus for 3 months. Somewhere in there, of course I'll have to take my Final 420, for which I'll be taking an entire week off of school but that shouldn't be for another 6 weeks at least... maybe longer. It kinda depends on when they schedule me.
I also have to work on looking for an externship... still... Mom sent me my cousin's email address, so I'll be emailing them to request to use them as a reference. I still have to start sending my resume out, which I'm hesitant to do since I can't actually GO on interviews. Only 4 sick days left and all that.
That would be a nice birthday present though... to say goodbye to this shit job forever. ::sigh::...
Per an email I found sitting in my box this morning, The Bobs have officially come to my place of work. Everyone in the company was sent this spreadsheet that we're supposed to use to list what we do all day. The email we got says to be brief but there's just so much I do in an hour here... the work related stuff, anyway...
There's of course stuff I'd like to add, such as stare blankly at computer all day, chat with Esowolf, etc, but those are likely to get me fired...
Of course if "The Bobs" don't like my list of stuff I do, I could find myself fired anyway... Not that I really care about anything other than the loss of livelihood...
California law says that you can't collect unemployment if I quit or self terminate, but I can if I'm fired. Not that I want to lose my income, but at least it would give me more time to look for externships.
I've GOT to get my ass into the Externship office today. Gotta see if there's anything or any way that I can apply for an externship without actually having to go to an interview, which I don't really have time for.
The next three weeks are going to be bad... I can tell.... Things are already starting off on a bad note. Having nothing but plastic and a yen for Mexican food, Esowolf walked into the Me Gusta across the street... only to find out that they only take cash.
The next 20 minutes was spent discovering that none of the ATM machines in Hollywood and Highland work today. And, on top of that, the credit card machine in Burger King is busted too.
So reasonably annoyed and very much starving, I just squandered the remaining 10 minutes of my lunch ordering Chinese food... Which is here now that my lunch is over.
Happy New Year! Mercury just went into retrograde and there's a zillion people calling.... weeeeee....
Is it too much to ask for this building to loose power when the rest of Hollywood goes dark? For the second time in a week, I've woken up to reports of power outages in Hollywood, but upon arrival at work, what do I see but lights shinning from my office. Grrr...
This is the first time I haven't had to work Thanksgiving weekend, thanks to the discontinuation of our 24/7 support program. This has a good side and a bad side. Good: I didn't have to deal with the Hollywood Christmas Parade traffic this year. Bad: I had to come into work today. Good: I had four whole days off. No work, no school, no nothing. Bad: All the stuff none of our customers cared about on Wednesday, they all care about now. This is the first break in calls I've had since 6 this morning. Good: I actually got to join in on the annual CoEd Full Contact Football game this year. Bad: It took me two days to recover because I'm so out of shape. Good: I got to do some work on the script I've been writing. Bad: I still have 4 or 5 homeworks assignments to finish before 4 this afternoon.
But now break time is over and I must get back to work... And the bagels aren't hear yet... ::sigh::
What? I said MAYBE I'd get to it on Saturday.
It's pretty much dead here at work right now. As good a time as any to reflect on the events of last week.
In a nutshell, I pretty much got the same thing everyone else got last week. My stomach had been not on its best behavior all day on Monday but I hadn't had any signs of actually being sick. I managed to make it through my math final (by some miracle, I got a C on the test), got home, went to bed at like 8, then ran to the bathroom promptly at 10 to puke my guts out. Spent the rest of the night tossing and turning until I finally got up and took one of the two remaining Alka-Seltzer's I had.
Tuesday morning, I wasn't feeling much better, but against my better judgment, I decided not to use up my last sick day and go into work... Yeah well, that was the idea... I ended up going home at 10 and sleeping the rest of the day until I had to leave to go work on my final project... Got as much as was absolutely necessary done and then left early to get some rest... after Buffy, of course.
Wednesday, being the start of my vacation, I slept until noon and pretty much did nothing but attempt to recuperate and make sure I that staying vertical for 4 hours at school was possible to finish my final.
Thursday, by about noon, I was up again and I finally got up the energy to unclog my sink from Monday's bout of fun... ew... I even started the grueling task of cleaning my apartment by putting all my clothes away, though I still spent most of the day sleeping until it was time to go to class to clean our lab and get my final grades (I got an A-).
Friday... cleaned. I can see desk and floor now. Then went to a small gathering of peeps to wish Mischa a happy birthday and a great trip to NY and Chi. We drank, smoked and spent a lot of time bashing work.... It was great.
Saturday, I finally got around to cleaning all the shit off my kitchen table. I even planted some seed packs in one of those disposable greenhouses. Spent most of the day vegging. Then went to have Mexican food with my parents.
Sunday, my... stomach flu, I'm guessing returned with a load of gas and the shits (again, ew). Went to do my laundry at the parents' house... only to find out that my cousin, who's living with them right now, hadn't finished his yet, so mom ended up finishing my laundry after I left.
Which leads us to today. Where I return to mountains of email, attitude from the other billing lead, a new set of classes to worry about for the next six weeks, but at least, at the moment, my queasy stomach has been placated with Cheerios and Saltines.
This whole weirdness of the combined classes at school is starting to come to a head. Now I'll be the first to admit that even I was weirded out by all this drama but that was adjusting to the bigger class, adjusting to new personalities, sheer boredom and, of course a healthy amount of PMS, but I'm over that now (well, except for the boredom) and I've found my way back to my zen.
As far as the whole drama's concerned, yes, there are attitudes on both sides that are blowing things WAY out of proportion, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm back to dealing with the situation the way I deal with everything else: Shut up, do my work and vent here. Of course, as is inevitable, people involved have asked for my opinion... and obviously since the people in my class have only known me for 5 months, they don't know me well enough to know that I'm keeping quiet about this whole situation for one reason: they don't WANT my opinion.
Now there are bones I have to pick with the way the class is being handled... 1) Our lab is WAY too crowded, and it doesn't help matters that the AM class hogs all the room, but this I can deal with. 2) The tests are WAY too easy... I thought I remembered Chef S saying something about them making two different tests for each of the two different classes, but that isn't the case and you know what? It doesn't even bug me that much. And 3) The demos are way too long. Now I realize that part of this is because Chef C needs to cater to two different levels of experience, but I can tell you that the demos would go a LOT faster if people would just shut the fuck up and listen instead of forcing the chef to stop lecture and find out why there are 50 other conversations floating around in the lab... but this is a problem I've had with people in my class since I started school and as much as it pisses me off, I at least have enough tact to keep my mouth shut on the issue. Although even my sense of tact becomes strained by the time Thursday and Friday roll around.
At this point though, I realize that the drama is going to explode in peoples' faces any day now, and if and when it comes to that, my ability to keep my mouth shut is probably going to take a flying leap out the nearest window. Shit happens. DEAL WITH IT!!! If you don't like it, leave. But I'm not going to waste the next 10 months of my life listening to the bitching and moaning... not when I'm getting MAYBE 5-6 hours of sleep a night... not when I have practically NO TIME to do anything else I want to do... and not when I have enough drama to deal with at work.
Just what I don't need while I'm on vacation... calls from people saying that they want money or they're going to sue me. Time for more calls to my debt consolidation service....
Hey... I haven't done any quizzes in a while...
What Planet Are You From?
So I called Spago, but they only have part time positions open right now... Drat. That would have been just so killer to tell the saps at work that I'm leaving them to go work at Spago... ah well... I still have a year of school to get through...
That's not to say that I'm not keeping the feelers out, however. Hardly. I'm still looking for better deals because I know that there has to be something better out there.
Which brings me to another little burr in my side. I got my bonus today (well it was directly deposited in my bank account Friday morning, actually)... A wopping $115.00!! yay... Most of it's already been blown on Hot Topic. Der Feurer took me into a meeting and handed me the envelope. Bitch slapped me for my apparant attitude the other day and for disturbing other people at their jobs (the people I disturbed were actually people at lunch already) about getting food, as well as interrupting my work to go do stuff like PAY for my food. Fuck! This is really getting ridiculous. How do companies function this way?
Oh the kicker is that they've changed the bonus structure AGAIN. Bonuses will now be handed out according to how good my reps make me look and how much ass I can kiss. Fuck that... As Mischa said, I'm zero personality girl while at work. I have no personality. I go in, I do my job, I leave, I don't give a shit what happens. I just do my job and leave.
I can't even really level with my group of people at work because there's this one guy who's under me that I don't completely trust. It's partly the attitude I get from him and partly because I don't know him all that well. See... Der Feurer wouldn't give me this friend of Peanut's we hired because I'm supposedly good friends with her vicariously through Peanut... even though I'd only met the girl once before we hired her. So what does he do? He gives me this new kid and Evil Panda's best friend instead (he didn't want to give Mischa any more of her friends either, I guess). So I have three people who I know that I can explain exactly what's going on and one wild card. But I can't pull just three of my people into a meeting and leave one of them out... not to mention that Der Feurer is likely to drop into any meetings I hold.
Fortunately, I know that at least two of my peeps read this thing, so here's the deal guys: It's no secret among us and a few others that I'll be out of here in a year, maybe sooner. It's no secret that the place we work at now sucks major ASS. Just buck up guys. If I have anything to tell you that isn't for all ears, you'll see it here. But do me a favor and don't come here at work because they DO monitor what sites you visit. I've even gone so far as to delete all my bookmarks from my work computer. Just because I'm not stressing doesn't mean I'm not just a tinsy bit paranoid when it comes to dealing with the Ghestapo.
It's happening again... this nagging dread that something ain't right. A bunch of shit is going on that I either can't talk about or other people can't talk about.
I don't get it... I NEVER had panic attacks like this before I worked at this job. But, by the looks of it, by the time I'm outta there for good, the only thing left of me will be an empty, axiety-ridden mass of ulcers and, quite possibly white hair. Am I over reacting? I have no idea at this point. But I feel like I'm gonna hurl again and I have class in an hour.
To quote the Wighead, "I feel gnarls". I couldn't sleep last night. So here I am a walking zombie at work... because obviously I can't go home, thanks to Der Feurer's rash of ultimatums. Right now I'm going from feeling like I'm going to hurl to having cold flashes.
Need sleep... ::Shivers::
Well... as expected, the Wighead wigged and wigged bigtime.
The weird thing is that Der Feurer is suddenly ultra concerned about everyone's attitudes around here and spoke to me about the Wighead's. I told him that I had no problems with the attituded because 1. I ignore it and 2. her data and mine are obviously not matching up. I happen to think that she has every right to wig out...
Unfortunately, Der Feurer doesn't see things that way...
Is it 3 yet? I want to curl up in bed and stay there until Friday.
To paraphrase Hitchhikers, "Their trying to confuse me do death, very cleaver of them..."
Yes, the confusion continues.
Der Feurer's big thing this week is to get the time reps spend "unavailable" to take calls down as far as possible. I've told my people this.
So what do I do? I run a report our phone system gives me, give it to all my reps and proceed to either completely confuse or piss off everyone who works for me.
ONLY THEN does Der Feurer inform me that there's a DIFFERENT report I need to run...
Looks like the green work permit didn't get me shot... it just got me a whole bunch of shit.
.... I may just spend all of tomorrow curled up in bed....
BTW: To avoid confusion, The Slacker will now be refered to as Der Fuerer when I'm in a bad mood or bitching about work.
I think I need to find a graveyard shift that will pay me what I'm making right now. It might make things easier.
I just have so much energy when I get out of class that when I get home, I don't WANT to go to bed. I feel like I could stay up all night and maybe the whole day afterwards... but then I have to go to bed and to sleep and the wake up and come here where I sit on my ass all day... And I find that it's the lethargy that puts me to sleep.
I want to be OUT!! Doing SOMETHING right now but instead I'm locked in a tomb of steel and concret and glass.... and tied to a chair. Hell! I think right now, I'd even take the tourist rush of Hollywood Blvd over the just sitting here accumulating fat.
As it stands (or sits) now, the most excitement I'm getting today is listening to the new guy's phone calls... which really isn't that exciting.
::yawn::
Sleeeeepy...
You ever have one of those really important meetings that seem to go so well that you begin to think that something might actually get accomplished... only to find out that everything you've discussed is a load of bullshit?
Had one of those today...
Me, the Slacker and the Boss met with the heads of another department to discuss concerns we had about lag time in their department. Since what they do directly affects customers who yell at my department on a regular basis, our concerns were well founded. It's been well known throughout my department that the other department in question has been backed up almost a month with their work. I come to find out today, in our meeting that the lag time was actually 10 days... Being overly optimistic this morning, I ignored the nagging in the back of my mind and assumed that everything was fine.
What a load of crap...
See... one of the main points of our meeting was to discuss the possibility of helping out my friend RA, who is basically doing the work of three people at the moment. This is not hard to figure out if you've ever seen the mountains of paperwork piled on her desk. So when I'm told that her back up is only 2 weeks, this morning, I'm happy! I mean that's great!
Bullshit... apparantly, later this afternoon, a person, who shall remain nameless, overheard RA's boss bitching her out because she was complaining to me about being over worked. On top of all that, I am informed that their declaration that everything was under control has all been a front. In other words, RA's bosses flat out lied to me and my bosses.
Gods! You can't even begin to imagine how pissed that made me... For one thing, RA very possibly one of the sweetest people I know and does not, for one moment, deserve the kind or abuse she's taken lately.
On top of that, everytime my department makes the suggestion that we lend RA a hand, she gets bitched out.
And I wonder why I'm so jaded with my place of employment when people I work with can pull this kind of shit. On top of all than, I'm now incredibly depressed because I've somehow brought this upon her. Honestly, I'm amazed that RA's lasted this long. The woman she took over for would never have taken this kind of crap.
So now that I've gone from pissed to jaded to stewing to depressed, I'm going to go cry myself to sleep... And then tomorrow, I'm going to get up, remember that I don't really care and start working on corporate battle tactics.
Grrr.... Mischa's not here today, so I can't get my Salon.com fix. And there's this article on the whole Catholic sex scandal I really wanted to read...
As opposed to doing actual work that is...
I posted this topic to one of my mailing lists. As there are at least 15% percent of our memebers outside this country I seriously wanted to know if the entire world was this outraged about the whole issue, or if they thought Americans were blowing the whole thing out of proportion.
Oddly enough, most of the answers I got were from our members in the States. They made some very good points: 1. This is about pedophelia, not religion. 2. That the offenders were priests is disturbing because they are just that; priests... people you are supposed to be able to confide in, feel safe with...
My problem with this whole thing is that it's not like any of this is new. This kind of thing has been going on for centuries and it seems to me that coming from Puritanical, prudish society that people in the States have created, this country is trying overly hard to make up for centuries of turning a blind eye.
Hmmm... Maybe it's just me... Or maybe I'm just jaded enough with American society and organized religion to not give a flying fuck about it.
Oh don't get me wrong! I think it's terrible that kids have been subjected to this kind of abuse. But let's treat this as abuse and leave it at that, people! You're not going to make the Catholic church change it's colors over night. Hell! They still don't believe in birth control, for fuck's sake!
Okay... really needing $100 right now....
I went in to meet with the administrators of a local culinary arts school. And this isn't just any school... this is like one of the best in the country. The instructor I met with and I hit it off immediately... and then he found out about my aunt's sheep farm in Lancaster... ::cue drooling:: I was literally giddy as when I left at 5:30 yesterday. I haven't been this giddy about anything in a long, long time. And it just felt so great! I've gotten used to going through the last two years, slowly learning not to care about shit. And now this happens.
So what's the problem? Well... before we can even start discussing financial aid, I need to submit my application... To do that, I need to give them $100.00.
...I don't have $100.00 right now... So here's where the begging and pleading and scrimping is going to come in. Seriously, if I had the funds, I could literally start school the weekend after my birthday. How would THAT be for a birthday present? Come on... you know you want to...
In other news... Since last night was a repeat of Buffy, I spent the night reinstalling the rest of my software... at least the essential programs... And the, at about 8:30 last night, I discovered Audio Galaxy. That was 8:30 last night... As of 5:45, when I left home this morning, I was still downloading Anime themes... Really liking this... And really hating dialup...
Mischa's been struck mute. That's okay... Due to the increasing stupidity of people in other departments around here, I've managed to hold the daily wig out sessions in her stead. I've also had caffine this morning, which isn't good. There was about 1/2 an hour there when I was convinced I was about to have a coronary.
Managed to sleep through my alarm this morning... How that's possible, I have NO idea, since my alarm's set loud enough to wake the dead. That and I was having a REALLY disturbing dream... not disturbing gross, just disturbing as in really bad visuals that I've been trying to get out of my head. Things I REALLY don't need to be thinking about.
...Actually... the disturbing factor has managed to disapate now.... Unfortunately, the dream from this morning is still leaving me with two lingering thoughts: 1. How the hell does that not hurt and 2. I really DON'T need to know (or dream about implications) these things about people I went to school with and would rather not think about... ESPECIALLY in THAT context... ::shudder::
BTW: interesting article: http://www.beliefnet.com/frameset.asp?boardID=38032&pageloc=/story/103/story_10357_1.html
Mischa just called in sick. Looks like we're playing Typhoid Mary with each other.
And apparantly Esowolf and Peanut went to the Escondido Ren Faire Sunday... Can I tell you how much working weekends is beginning to suck?
Does anyone need a bartender?
I take it back.... I'm not getting used to this schedule. I wanna go back to sleep dammit!!!
Wow... What is with this week? What is with this month? Everytime I turn around, someone's freaking out or panicing or something. Not to mention that I've had to deal with cleaning up stupid mistakes made by other people in my department. Mistakes people should have known better than to make...
Well the month's over, thank gods! I'm tired of dealing with the every day stupidity. I'm so tired of it that the most coherent thought I'm having right now is debating whether to straighten my hair again tomorrow or not. Fun, huh? Ah well... at least tomorrow, I get to go see Lord of the Rings for the fourth (yes fourth) time. That should be fun.
And now, if you don't mind, I think I'm going to go eat and get very drunk...
Okay... so I'm slightly annoyed right now. I just realized that 1/2 the keys on Little Geek's keyboard are no longer functioning.... Okay... not half. As of now, I am lacking a space bar, a back arrow, a control button, an Alt button, two Windows buttons and the M key.
Grrrr..... And just how the fuck am I supposed to write anything like that?
Looks like I'll be questioning some of the guys at work about what I can do to fix this little problem.
You know? You really gotta respect a man like Murphy. I speak of Lord Murphy, supreme optimist, husband to Lady Irony. Everything was going so well!!
Work was nice... work was fun again... we'd finally gotten the department reorganized... and what happens? A generator blows on Sunset and Vine, wiping out all power in the Hollywood area. I'm sitting there in the office; feet on the computer tower; cancelling accounts and playing with my neopet... when suddenly my computer screen and the entire area arouind me goes dark. NOT good.
No computers, no elevators (a guy was actually stuck in one), no phones, no customers, no service, no workie.... Fortunately, I'm told we had a generator running long enough for us to backup our database. And we, my fellow customer service dungeon mates were left with nothing to do but goof off... Good thing, right? WRONG!!! The minute those phones went back on yestarday morning, BOOM!! WWIII is on and they're screaming at us from across the world wanting to know why their service was out!! And nevermind that what went wrong was the fault of the power company, that... that's just no excuse! Just like a few buildings falling down in New York is no excuse for lack of service either! GAAAHHH!!!
But you've gotta love Hollywood though... the power can go out for the entire area and STILL they manage to pull in generators and proceed to put on movie premiers. The Christmas movie rush is upon us! I've watched them prepare Mann's (oh... excuse me... Grauman's) Chinese for Vanilla Sky - premier on Monday, The Majestic - premier on Tuesday, and Ali - premier tonight... That's three premiers in one week! I wonder how many they think they can squeeze in before Christmas.
Ah.... really all this is is my taking a break from the 150 Battle Mail challenges sitting in my email. BTW: if anyone I'm fighting is reading this, Blackfire2 is swamped. Back off a bit guys!!
Dammit!! this sucks!! I've had a full 12 hours of sleep and I'm still tired!!!!! Oh well... I guess it's off to bed early for me again tonight. I really don't know what's making me this tired. I thought it might be working 7 days a week (which I'm starting to hate but what can I do?), but I've done that before and it didn't take all that much out of me. Not that I wouldn't mind having my weekends back, but first I need a pretty hefty raise...
I'm actually starting to think that it might be due to the weight loss. I've been out of high school for 6 years and, in that time, I've managed to gain 60+ pounds. Not pretty. By the time I got home from Germany last year I was weighing in at close to 190. It wouldn't surprise me if I was swifty approaching the 160 mark again. Well... it's a theory anyway. My friend Spook said that he was very iritable from the rapid weight loss of running up and down the stairs of his new house so if he gets iritable, maybe I just get tired. Whatever... all I know is I'm starting to look good again.
And speaking of iritable... I've come to the conclusion that whoever designed the Chauenga Pass needs to be shot... and if he's dead already, well... he'd better be down in hell getting tourchered. Idealy, this stretch of road SHOULD be the fastest way to get from the Valley to Hollywood... it SHOULD be. Now picture this:
You have two lanes going into Hollywood on one side. On the same side, you have one lane (which is sometimes two lanes) leaving Hollywood but the two lanes merge at inopportune times... like right before a stop light... Now on the OTHER side of the Pass, you have another lane (which is sometimes two) leaving Hollywood, with the 101 freeway separating the two sides of the pass. Do we see a problem here? ::NODS:: Try getting home in a reasonable amount of time....
Who designs a road this way?? To make matters worse. The Hollywood Bowl sits at the Hollywood end of the pass and during the summer, when the Bowl is open, they tend to block the entire road (freeway entrance often included), effectively cutting off a major artery of traffic. Does anyone else see the non-logic in this?
But who am I to complain? I live in an apartment building that has a 5 car parking lot for 8 units...
I'm kind of mixed up about my first day back at work. On the one hand: it was good to be back... on the other hand: I think I could get used to working from home if the opportunity ever presented itself. The management kept their promise... nothing blew up while I was gone. One of my two burning questions has been answered: Yes I will be moving my desk for the 8th time. Not that I mind as much this time around because everyone's moving their desks this week. New seating arrangements... designed to separate those who chatter too much and place those who don't do much work under the watchful eyes of all senior staff of the department. This is a good thing...
The other burning question: Who is the boss of me? Has yet to be answered as of today. A little background here: There are two parts to my department - two companies merged together, the products are still separate, hence two different customer service centers within the same department. To further complicate things, the Wiffleball Champ is manager of one half of the department and Chief Iron Fist is manager of the other. Don't see the complications yet? Wait! There's more.
Let's throw into the mix that I started with the original company and I am the trainer for the Wiffleball Champ's half of the department. Now this was all fine and good... until our email exploded and we suddenly had 30000 messages to answer (can I tell you? Mergers SUCK!!!). To combat this surge in our workload, two solutions were reached: 1. We hire a bunch of temps to help out (this is how I manage to get all of my friends working in one company ;}). 2. Send Adrianne over to the other side of the department since she has a reputation for pumping out more emails than should be humanly possible and make her an over-paid email monkey.
Confused yet? It gets better.
TECHNICALLY, I still work for both sides of the department. I train all the people who work for the Wiffleball Champ... and I crank out emails for Chief Iron Fist. Basically, I'm the middle child and, in ways, a child of devorce because both sides have to share me (It's nice to be loved). Now normally, this doesn't really bother me... until, that is one side asks me to do ONE thing and the other side wants me to do something completely different. Here is where my dilema comes into play! Who do I listen to?!?!?!
To complicate things further, I have all the knowledge of the company (I know more about the ins and outs of both sides of the department than anyone... excepting Wiffleball Champ since he's been there longer) and no power. So I can tell people that this part of our database is supposed to work like THIS as opposed to how it's working now, but I can't tell someone to get their ass back on the phones when there's 10 calls on hold and she's yapping away about things that don't really matter.
::Sigh:: Fortunately, I'm told that all will be revealed shortly. This should be good.
In the meantime, I've got to get back to the arduous task of updating all of my webrings. This is what I get for trying to organize my files....
Making this quick because I have to get to work...
Well... I less pissed than I was yesterday. This is what happens when I don't check my email all day: I get a whole bunch of emails from people informing me that my site has been hacked. That's right, if you were trying to get to Versemix.NET via the front door yesterday, you wouldn't have gotten here. Instead you would have gotten a lovely paragraph in Spanish protesting all the shit that's going on in Afghanistan.... Not that I completely disagree with what they said, mind you, but the fact that they've apparantly hacked into 8 or so random domains (this one just happening to be one of them) to do it pisses me of.
Ah... whatever... The front door is back up. Everything is back to normal... Although I think I may go with Mischa's idea and be a political prisoner for Halloween....
So... my department was terrorized to day by a gem of a human being... He literally spent hours screaming at mky co-workers, over something as minor as a few extra lines of text that were added to messages he gets from us. That's right, young hatchlings! This poor man was inconvenienced solely by the fact that instead of... an attachment... there is now TEXT and an attachment!
Does this seem like the kind of thing to waste your time on? Is it that hard to highlight a few lines and hit the DELETE button? Oh you poor thing!! Come here and let me help you with that...
On a more frightening note; my mom showed psycho tendencies yesterday by calling me not once, not twice, but six times after I got home last night. I was, of course, on-line, like I usually am throughout most of the day, so my phone line was otherwise unable to get her two calls to me. Likewise, my cell phone, was in the other room charging, so I didn't hear when she called me the other four times....
::Rolls eyes::
As a result, I took the time to change the message on my voice mail to imply that it's just possible that I'm ignoring my phone. Do I think it will work? Dont really know yet, so we'll put that in the undecided category for now.
I've decided that it's a bad idea for me to be up before 5am... I do weird things when I'm awake at that hour... like suddenly becoming facinated with the fact that in this room, I don't have to get out of bed in order to hit the snooze button.
And then I realize that the only reason I'm up at that ungodly hour is because in order to facilitate paying my rent on time, I had to go back to my old 7-4 shift. Fortunately, it's only for today... until my rent's due again that is...
Maybe I'm feeling anti-social... I don't know. I'm just writing right now to keep myself in the habit... Especially after about a week of silence. Don't worry... I'll be back to my usually bitchy self soon.
And will someone PLEASE shut that damn bird up?!?!
4:50 pm After spending an hour in collating hell, I'm having a Tyler Durden moment... Excuse me while I see how Project Mayhem is coming along.
Hey Catwoman's downstairs! Along with... who the f... "Warning to all religious phonies, sex perverts, adulterers, child killers, cheats & liars, athiests & drunks, fornicators, dope fiends, garbage mouths and misc heathens... Judgement is coming by God!" Hmm.... let's see... one, two, three, f... I guess I'm going to Hell then. While I'm at it, I'd better check my profits on The Soul Exchange.