Utterly Pointless v. 1.0 ((first loves die hard))

And yet again, it's been forever.

First and foremost...I love Matantei Ragnarok Loki! Heimdall is just so cute and snuggleable and in need of hugs. And he and Loki would make such a cute couple, despite all logic ^.^;;;;

So, I found out we're going to Manchester, then I found out a pipe burst and the Manchester move will be delayed. Which is annoying, especially since I already had half my stuff packed. But as the manager pointed out, better now than *after* we all moved. And early february is still a lot better than some of the guesses that were floating around.

And my friend Shawn is getting married in the fall (yay!), but he's having my ex as his best man - the one I'd really rather not be within a hundred miles of. Well, what can I do? We're both adults, I'll suck it up. Can't shun a wedding just 'cause I don't like the best man. Especially the wedding of a good friend I've barely seen in years.

More retarded horror films! 'the jaws of satan' (demon cobra), 'the nest' (the cockroaches that ate LA), and 'the uninvited' (radiated feline terrorizes yacht guests)

And what is wrong with an answering service that doesn't answer the phones at 7 pm on a saturday?

I was wandering around on my break one day and saw a computer that was being used by a ghost! Seriously, the monitor was on and active, and showed the mouse moving around, applications being opened and used and closed, type appearing and all...at a totally empty workstation. Pretty weird, eh? I didn't know IT could do that.

It's funny how the same description can sound complimentary in one context and insulting in another. For our xmas party at work, I wore a green velvet dress, and a female co-worker told me that I looked like an elf - 'all cute and seasonal and festive!' Needless to say, I was hardly thrilled at this description. But when I was mentioning to a male co-worker my grievance at being called an elf, he said 'Well, I can kinda see it - it's the long exotic dark hair and the intricate bracelet and the dress. Of course, you'd have to be of elrond's lineage, since you're dark-haired.' I'm not sure, but I'd be willing to bet I was wearing a *spectacular* blush at that comment! That type of elf hadn't even occurred to me!

The company was nice to us this xmas. We all got a box of lindt truffles, a poinsettia, and a catered dinner ^__^

And I found out that Orlando Bloom's birthday is january 13th. Ah, what a sexy beast that man is...and he's *real*, even if I'll never meet him. It gives one hope...

I have a co-worker who actually put on one of those electrified dog collars that works with a perimeter fence and ran through the perimeter. I know I've compared her to a golden retriever before (enthusiatic, friendly, and not too bright), but I'd say that's taking things a little far...

Is it just me, or does anyone else out there find it amusingly ironic that there's a type of SUV called the 'Suburban'?

Speaking of oxymorons, I got a document titled "(company name) cable competitive talking points", right below which it read 'not to be used as talking points'

You know it's not gonna be a good day when you over hear your boss exclaim, 'What is wrong with these freaky people?!'

I am so not looking forward to the superbowl this year. Not only is it the superbowl, and I'm working, and the local team is playing, but it's the first year we've offered high-definition tv. I want to start a betting pool on how many irate callers we'll get who didn't realize that getting a $5,000 HDTV isn't enough to get the superbowl in HD, and didn't realize this until they already had 25 guys over to watch it.

I managed to totally crack up a bunch of the guys at work the other night. I have this one co-worker who keeps trying to get me to go to a gay bar, and everyone at work also knows about this. So, the other night, this same girl is reading aloud from some of the more interesting personal ads in some newspaper she picked up somewhere, and she was suggesting that we go to one of the more exotic invites. So I turned around, lifted my hands in confusion and said in a tone of helpless befuddlement, "Sometimes I think she wants to get into my pants. It's the only possible explanation." I thought they were gonna kill themselves laughing

What do you do when you have a woman on the phone who's accusing the cable technician of stealing her cat, and she's hysterically sobbing and talking about how life isn't worth living if she doesn't get her cat back? Yeah, I didn't know either x.x;

I don't know if that's better or worse than the woman whose remote, when she pressed the menu button, displayed '666' on both her cable box and her tv screen...

I always thank god for the callers who give me hope that not all is not yet rotten in the state of Mass. Like the gentleman who, despite our just screwing up a service visit and leaving him with practially no service, assured me that really, it's no problem, he understands that things like this just happen sometimes, and there's need to go out of our way to hurry fixing it. I gave him a big fat credit, even though he didn't ask for it, just because he was being so nice about the whole damn thing. Which is a lot more than I would have done for a jerk. (<-- jerks take note)

Or the fellow who, after we said our goodbyes, could be heard exclaining to his wife just before hanging up 'Boy, was she nice! Wow, what service!' Or, best of all, the guy who told me at the end of a call, 'You weren't just helpful, but polite and pleasant and most importantly, you knew what you were talking about.' *beams and blushes* Gotta love compliments!

It worries me that I can walk by the desk of a co-worker and overhear, 'No, sir, you can't put the VCR tape into the cable box. It doesn't work that way....Sir, you need a VCR to watch a VCR tape.'

And speaking of things one might overhear in our call center, the following conversation actually took place...
"I want to know what kind of compensation (company name) is willing to offer me for my trouble!"
"Well, ma'am, I'm prepared to offer you a free installation for your trouble; that's a $50 value. Does that sound fair?"
"It's not about the money, I want my service fixed!" Riiiiiiiiight... Oh, and by the way, the whole mess was her own damned fault anyhow - she wasn't cooperating. But she's still going to (try to) sue us if we don't get it straightened out. x.x

And speaking of bizarre conversations, this was also taken from work --
"Thanks for calling (company name), how can I help you?"
"Oh, uh..I was just trying to dial on my phone and it connected me to you."
"Oh. Well, is there anything your cable company can do for you today?"
*thinks a minute* "No, not really."
"Okay, then I'll just wish you a good day, and good luck with your phone."

It's never a good sign when someone gets four different kinds of error messages on their cable box in 24 hours, plus two kinds of problems that don't get error messages at all.

So, I had a charmer the other day - her doorbell is broken, and she leaves the ringer on her phone off, and yet she gets mad at *us* when the tech who's been sent to her house leaves after 15 fruitless minutes of trying to contact her. Oh, and when we tell her we can't get anybody back out until the next day, it's *our* fault and we're the ones not taking responsibility. Does the phrase 'riiiiiight' sound familiar?

And then there was the caller who, when I picked up, was talking to his significant other. At least I *hope* that's what he was doing. I'll spare you the details, but when my line went active, I heard some interesting stuff, lemme tell you. Can't say I'd ever heard nooky referred to in that particular manner before. He seemed *very* embarrassed when he realized I'd picked up...*giggle*

I got a customer at work who told me he wanted our multi-product discount without actually having to buy more than one of our products. I hate to beat the phrase 'Riiiiiight...' to death, but...

I love the customers who call in with cable trouble and state that it's not their tv, nor their cable box, nor the cable itself. Not sure what those people think the problem is...voodoo, maybe?

And, of course, it's always our fault. Yep, folks, the cable company has an evil conspiracy going wherein they will not provide cable! You've guessed it; it's all part of our evil plot.

And it never fails to amuse me when scumbags end up tripping themselves up. This one dork, to whom I shall refer as Mr. Brainiac, had an idea that he'd bring in his neighbors to help him get cable illegitimately. See, Mr. Brainiac had called for service and we'd rejected him, because the last person living at his address (who incidentally had the same last name and phone number as him) was a deadbeat who owed us a big stack of money. So Mr. Brainiac dreams up this scheme wherein he has his neighbors next door call and schedule an installation under his name, and then when the tech shows up at apt 2 to hook up 'Mr. Brainiac', the neighbors will just say 'Oh, Mr. Braniac lives in apt 1, not 2', and the tech will just go next door and do the install without checking the credit history. He didn't figure on the neighbors just letting the tech give them the full deluxe service at apt 2 under Mr. Brainiac's name *snrk*

What does it say about some of our callers when I, as one of dozens, possibly hundreds, of reps available at any given time, can have gotten the same caller as many as three times in a year-and-a-half time span? I'm sorry, but that's just plain scary.

And you almost have to admire the chutzpah of the man who calls up to order porn on a woman's account and, when asked to verify her SSN, openly admits that he doesn't know it because he broke up with her.

Or the woman who calls up to ask if she owes us money, is told yes, asks if she has to pay before she can get service at her new address, is told yes, and then asks if someone else can get service at her neew address under their name.

And I always have fun with the people who allegedly returned equipment, but it's still listed on their account, and even though the mistake was made years ago, and they have no idea when or where they returned it, and they certainly don't have a receipt, we're supposed to figure out what happened to it. It's like the people who send us a check, don't put their account number on it, it doesn't get applied to their account, and when they find this out (*if* they ever notice, which they don't always), they think we ought to find out what happened to it. Never mind that they don't even know whether or not the bank ever *cashed* the check, let alone being able to provide us with such necessary details as when the check was sent, the number of the check, or sometimes even the amount of the payment. I always get mental flashes of needles in haystacks whenever I take those calls...

And the audit calls. Ok, I don't really blame people for not knowing what their cable package consists of, (though they could always easily enough find out if they just looked at their damned bill) but c'mon, if your cable bill goes down $35 a month and you don't lose a single channel, doesn't that seem a *bit* odd? And yet they get mad when we realize our mistake and correct it, taking away all those channels they've been getting for free for god only knows how long. They get $45 worth of cable for $10 a month for sometimes years at a time, and when that stops, they *complain*! I *always* hate audit calls...

So, picture a three-floor building, one apartment on each floor, in a town that has two cable companies, us and a competitor. Apt 1 calls me up and says all their stations are on mixed up numbers. Troubleshooting fails. I check the neighboring addresses to see if anyone else is experiencing the same problem, and the plot gets thicker - apt 3 had this problem starting four days ago, and had a service call to fix it today, at more or less the same time that apt 1 went wonky. So I'm trying to figure out how the hell the trouble tech transferred the problem from one apt to another, and it occurs to me to check apt 2. Apt 2 is not active, it was disconnected *two* days ago, which had no apparent effect on either other apt. I'm trying to figure out how this all fits together, when I notice a note on apt 3 from four days ago: 'scrambled channels - matches competitor's lineup.' So, as best as I can figure out, four days ago apt 2 had our competitor come out and hook up service, only they hooked up apt 3 instead. Guy at apt 3 called us, we sent out a tech, tech attempted to remedy situation and did indeed fix apt 3, but instead of hooking up the competitor's line to apt 2, he hooked it up to apt 1, causing them to call me. Meanwhile, I'd bet my boots that the guy at apt 2 was on the phone with our competitor two days ago because he had no service, because the only line going to his house was ours -- which we cut two days ago.

You know, one might think, reading this blog, that I make up these stories. Honest to god, each and every work-related story is absolutely true. I don't *need* to make anything up, these calls are zany enough on their own!

//Hotohori last sparkled at 12:59 a.m.//
//Sunday, January 25, 2004//

So, I have survived the Mongolian Death Flu! Yay, me! It was a particularly nasty bout, I must say - enough to actually keep me home from work, and that's saying something. I've coughed until my back and shoulder and stomach muscles all ache, but with any luck, it'll clear up and I won't get sick again this winter. *looks hopeful and checks for signs of flying pigs*

It's a good week for movies. Emperor's New Groove, Aristocats, Goonies, Spaceballs...fun stuff ^__^

All of the days I want off next year are days I'd have off anyway as part of my weekends, all but one. Yayness!!

One idiot co-worker of mine was trying to notate an account that has been disputing pay-per-view purchases, and they wrote 'customer says she never ordered paper view' -.-;;

It amazes me what weasels people can be. I got a call from a sixteen-year old girl whose mom ruined her credit by putting all the utilities in the daughter's name (because she's already been shut off by everyone herself, no one would touch her) and then not paying any of them. The poor kid doesn't even have a driver's license and her credit's already been ruined! And the mom didn't even *tell* her about it - even after the account had been shut off for nonpayment! If the girl hadn't happened to get the mail that day and see the collections notice in her own name, she would never have known! Christ, what kind of mother is that?

Here's a life lesson for ya - never taunt the cable people. I had a guy who called because he got a letter stating that we would be auditing his town in the next few weeks and he might lose channels. After talking with the guy, I established that yes, he was getting a lot of service he wasn't paying for. Naturally, I confirmed that he'd lose those channels when we did the audit, and advised that he upgrade to the appropriate package if he wanted to keep them. But no, he was all snarky, saying how he didn't think we'd catch him when we did the audit and why should he start paying for something he's getting for free, and he wants to keep getting it for free. And he really thinks he will. Needless to day, I took great satisfaction in sending a tech out the very next day (long before the audit teams were scheduled to go through) to check his service levels. And I took even greater satisfaction on seeing, two days later, that the moment he lost those channels, he was on the phone with us to upgrade his package. (and learning that he was going to have to wait a week to get those channels back, well, that was just a bonus)

Don't you love it when you get yelled at for trying to help people? This guy mentioned in passing that he wasn't getting all the chs that he should be one one tv. I'd already had to schedule a service call for him, so I said 'if you want, I can have the tech take a look at it while he's out', and the guy yelled at me! Jeez, why'd ya mention it?

And I was highly entertained by the lady who claimed that the $2 more a month she'd have to pay for high-definition TV was 'highway robbery' *rolls eyes* What, you though we were gonna start handing out channels for free? New technology costs money, people! And frankly, considering what it cost the company to make HD available, I'm amazed they're not charging more. the dish gets $10 a month for their HD package, *plus* you have to spend between $450 and $750 on equipment (which you have to pay to fix if it breaks, too). I bet she's just mad that the people at BestBuy didn't mention that merely spending a few grand on an HD tv set wouldn't be enough to get HD television.

I have completed the first half of the Manchester move - to Lowell, my office until Manchester is ready. They gave us a 'welcome to lowell' pizza party ^__^ As a general rule, though, I don't much like Lowell. The cubicle walls are about 5'6" - taller than me, so I can't see a thing. and talk about feeling isolated! You can't even see the person in the cube next to you, or across, or anything. And my back's to a wall, so I don't even get people behind me. But we have brand-spanking new computers, which is soooooooo nice! Only trouble with that is I keep forgetting Nuriko's mouse doesn't have a roller-thingy, and I miss it ;_; And it has a really nice kitchen. Also, I'm right by the door, so I didn't get lost in the office my first few days >.< But they were full of it when they said lowell was open until midnight - the only people there at midnight are me and about three other people. I don't know why they couldn't have had the other later-working CCP's there, too. The building itself is one of those old, old mill buildings that have been around as long as the city has. I typically spend my breaks wandering around exploring, since I don't eat, and after two weeks, I haven't explored half the place. It's huge. Also vaguely creepy, but that's mostly because it's old and dark and empty. One section is set up like the original mill, and that's more than vaguely creepy, in the dark and utter quiet of the deserted building (the whole place is always deserted by the time I go on break). And there's this one oddity - the elevator only goes up to 4, but if you go into the stairwell on the 4th floor, there are stairs leading up another floor, but they're blocked off with plywood. The plywood has a hole in it, that someone labelled 'look here'. If you do, you can see light coming from under the door of the 5th floor. That's downright *very* creepy. The floors all creak really loudly, and the stairs all look like they're about to give way at any second - they're all wood, and they're rotting at the edges, or so it looks. And the whole place is so drab, even outside - not a blade of grass to be seen, only a few miserable shrubs in holes in the asphalt. No place to go out and enjoy a nice day.

The move itself was reasonably smooth, though attended by all the typical minor moving demons. We didn't have trashcans at our desks, and the e-mail wasn't setting up right, and some nitwit left all their garbage in the drawers of my new desk. Oh, and it took me a bit to find out who my new super was and where they sit. Our first night the alarms threatened to go off - seems no one notified security that we now have people working up until midnight, instead of 11 am. The parking wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it'd be. I'm still not quite positive I'm parking in the right place, but no one seems to care, so whatever.

today was a day of much fun and snarfness! We had 18 towns all go down at once, thanks to a power outage at our distribution center. 500 calls in queue and 62 agents to handle them. Of course, when you consider that each call took about 3 seconds...('Hi, I'm having trouble with my cable.' 'Ok, and what town are you in?' 'Springfield.' 'Yes, Springfield is currently experiencing a service outage. We're aware of the problem and have all available people working to get service restored as soon a possible.' 'Ok, thanks')

I love people whose arguments I can poke full of holes. When someone gets shut off for nonpayment, and then they pay and we reconnect them, there is a reconnection fee. And everyone *hates* to pay this (especially the people who are often getting pinged by it) and they'll try any excuse to get us to waive this fee for them. One of the more popular arguments is 'I've been a customer with you people for a long time.' Nine time out of ten, I look at their credit history and see that yes, they've been with the company for a long time -- and they've been delinquent in their payments all that time. *shakes head* I swear, I'm going to start telling people we only waive reconnection fees if they pay their entire balance, plus prepaying next month's service. that'll get rid of them damned quick!

I had some lady describe her house to me as 'jello-colored' (?!)

More demon-posessed equipment! One person told me they'd had to unplug their cable box because the entire LCD display woke them up, it was glowing so brightly. Mind you, this wasn't just the readout *on* the LCD display, or even '8888' - the entire rectangular display was just one big glowing blob!

And here's a creative thinking finanical mind...As you may know, company B bought out company A, and company B is now the cable provider for the region. So I was trakcing a 'new' customer, as we always do, to see if they owe any money on old accounts (as they often 'forget' to mention). And sure enough, this chick had a balance at a previous address, and when I asked her about it, she was like 'oh, yeah, but that was from when you were company A.' So, like, you think don't owe it? Wrong!

I got a call from some guy who was like 'Man, you gotta help me, I'm desperate! I fiddled with the cable wires so I could hook up a portable TV, but I gotta get it fixed before my girlfriend comes back, or she's gonna kill me!' *snrks*

And I know I'm not a salesperson, but it's *really* annoying spending 45 minutes reviewing packages with someone because they're a moron and can't get it in five like everyone else, and just when you think you've sold them, they're like 'I gotta think about it, I'll call back.'

Yet another call from someone who wanted to bitch more than he wanted his cable fixed - when I told him we could have a tech out to fix it, he just kept bitching. Seeing that this was *not* going to be one of the calls where he just needed to let off steam before getting down to business, I said 'sir, I can send someone to fix it or I can work with out over the phone to fix it. that is how cable gets fixed. if you don't want to do either of those, than what is it that you want?' he said 'I want you to take your service and shove it up your...' well, you know *rolls eyes* Needless to say, he then hung up on me. I'll keep an eye on the account, see if there are any minor unplesantnesses I can send his way.

I totally blew away my goals this month - at 115% on only week 3. Yay!

New most expensive cable package - $225 a month! Double cable internet service, deluxe all-channel package on six cable boxes. Yow!

//Hotohori last sparkled at 01:22 a.m.//
//Wednesday, September 24, 2003//

Meeping!

I love getting paid double and a half time for doing diddly-squat ^__^

So I'm wandering around on break, and I'm looking at some award plaques, and I come across this poor bastard whose honest-to-god name was Willy Wonka.

I've decided that people who walk around with their cell phone glued to their ears really annoy me. You'd think, working at a job where you talk on the phone for eight hours a day, the last thing you'd want to do on break is talk on the phone. But there's this chick at work, and I've literally never seen when she's not nattering along on her cell. And she's on my team, so it's not like I only see her every now and again. There's another guy who's almost as bad, and he's developed the annoying habit on coming into the lobby, which is the *only* quiet place to be on break, and yacking loudly in disregard of whoever else might be there (usually me). Grr.

We had a potluck at work, and I decided, rather late in the day, that I wanted some of the apple pie that someone had brought. But there were no more plates, so I got a cup and it kind of ended up being apple squish. But it was still yummy.

Kitty-meister was actually fairly cuddly! He came up to me and mewed and nudged my hand for pettings. Much cuteness. Still, whenever I feel like I got overpaid for that job, I remember that the job description included cleaning up kitty-barf, and then I don't feel so bad x.x;;

There was a skunk in my yard the other night. He was cute, from a distance. And I've had both an inchworm and a dragonfly camp out on me recently. Critters!

What kind of dimwits use a staircase as in impromtu meeting site? An entire staircase, no less.

Probably the same kind of twit who leaves their shopping cart in the check out lane despite the people behind them in line.

So, the theme at work this month is 'carnival', and one of the things they gave us to decorate with was a whole lot of balloons and instructions on how to make balloon animals. And naturally, certain individuals began making balloon sculptures that were...questionable.

A whole lot of the computers at work got hit by that virus, especially dispatch. Which meant no order could be completed, and jobs had to be scheduled by hand. Tons of fun. I keep getting the virus in my Hotmail account, disguised as a mailer-daemon 'undelivered mail' thing, but since it's been weeks since I e-mailed anyone anything, they kinda don't fool me :p

And, of course, they decided to update our software with a version that knocked out pay-per-view password capability right before the big monthly WWF wrestling match on PPV.

So some idiot calls up because he's mad that we won't let him make changes to his wife's account. He wants us to add him as an authorized user. We've told him a dozen times that we can't help him, since it's her account *she* has to call us to add him. But he won't have her call, he keeps trying to do it himself. Moron.

Why do the managers get the five-foot sound-blocking cubicle walls when we, the people who are on the phones all day, get four-foot noise-allowing ones?

So some poor lady bought a duplex and made it into a one-family house. So I check the address, and it's actually listed under four different files, the four previous tenants of which, collectively, have owed us over $1200 for the last two years O_o Unless you count the equipment costs for the seven cable boxes they *also* owe us. Which would make it over $3100.

Deana and I got a split-personality caller. He calls me and asks for a super. I ask about his issue, and he calmly explains it to me with perfect civility. He really wants a super, so I go get Deana, and the second she gets on the phone he's swearing blue murder and generally being an abusive asshole. Very odd.

And I think some bone-brain may have shut off the cable to a police station while auditing for non-paying accounts. The poor policeman called in out of service and I'm checking various things, are sure enough, that town was undergoing an audit that day. I'm looking at this and thinking 'Surely, no one would be dumb enough to shut off a *police* station.' And yet...

And then there's the poor woman who called to figure out why she can only get half her cable, and we determine that the electrician who put in the outlet only put in half the outlet. Some electrician...

So Bob is talking to this woman with cable problems, and he asks her if she can check that all the wires are tight. She says that no, she can't, because her husband put a padlock on the back of the entertainment center so she can't touch anything and mess it up *snrk*

//Hotohori last sparkled at 01:14 a.m.//
//Tuesday, September 2, 2003//

*GRINS* I have Orlando Bloom in my bedroom! I can even say I had him in bed with me *.*

And we get professional backrubs at work tomorrow. Life is good ! ^______^

//Hotohori last sparkled at 05:03 a.m.//
//Wednesday, August 20, 2003//

Wah, I can't believe I forgot to mention Arthur's visit! Sorrrrrrry, Arthur! Arthur is my big bro from Cleveland, he's awesome, he came out for a week's visit and we had a grand old time doing oodles of fun stuff! ^o^

In other news, Karasu's dad got the job with our company! Woohoo, big fat bonus check, here I come! ^_______^

//Hotohori last sparkled at 02:07 a.m.//
//Monday, August 18, 2003//

I LIVE!!!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

*coughcough* Does not blogging in 3 months make me a big 'ol loser? Probably....

Time for my life in a nutshell!

I will probably be going out to visit my grandparents at xmas, which is also good. My kid sister's friend got married, which is freaky. My kid sister herself just turned 22, which is even freakier. I may be transferring to a call center closer to home and with no Mass income tax (YAY!) I am currently taking care of my friend Dave's pets, a rat and a hamster, which is interesting with a cat in the house. I actually managed to get on touch with my friend Alicia and am theoretically going to go see her next weekend, and also encountered my aniki, Saishi. I went up north and spent a day at a lake, and went boating and swimming - in the pouring rain ^o^ I spent two weeks taking care of the cats of the people who were renting the cottage on said lake. I have endured un-funness at work caused by many massive thunderstorms. I did not go to Otakon ;_; I hosted a Kenshin-a-thon, which was much fun and left me with *way* too much food O_o I finally got around to seeing Pirates of the Caribbean, which was awesome, even if Johnny Depp was more swishbuckling than swashbuckling. I nearly started a forest fire on the Fourth of July. I read Harry Potter 5, and was disappointed.

K, we all good with the major updates? Yay!

Then for the little stuff ^__^

Sage quote of the day - "The only thing accomplished by sweating the small stuff is that you get sweaty."

My sister's friend wedding was nice. Very pretty and sweet, though it was entertaining when they managed to extinguish the unity candle ^o^ I had very spiffy hair for it, for a change :p The bachelorette party was fun too - a traditional sleepover with makeovers, truth or dare, junk food, 'The Princess Bride' and silly pajamas. We even had awful-tasting Jell-o shots *snrk*

I saw a fox while I was coming home the other night ^__^ And we've had so much rain I have to be careful driving so's to avoid the frogs. I was coming in my door the other night and found a big fat ol'toad on the wall about eye level.

Boo is as cute and as inept as ever, having managed to recently a) fall off my lap, and b) get chased around the apartment by a hamster.

I have three funny quotes - "At a certain age, a Speedo becomes a Spee-don't," "I was thinking about buying a Humvee, but decided it would be cheaper to just get a tattoo on my foreheard that says 'I need attention'" and "Cuddles the cat ate your workboots?"

I got static zapped so badly by my chair at work that my cubemate's monitor popped out of sleep mode O_o

A co-worker of mine got to talk to a customer whose actual, birth-certificate name was French Fry. Poor bastard.

I've actually seen funny ads recently. One was for one of those swiffer things and it said 'you mother used a mop. so did her mother. But then, didn't they also walk uphill both ways in the snow while barefoot to get to the store?' Another was a Walmart ad from around Halloween, advertising all the horror DVD's in their movie department. below the pics of Freddy and Jason and all it said 'We also sell deadbolts'. Then there was, most incredibly of all, the funny car ad. This guy in a car sitting in front of a church imagining a wedding, and voiceover 'plenty of room in case you're ready for that next big step in your life' then the car peeling out and 'and a 140 horsepower engine in case you're not' then the guy pauses and imagines the wedding again and hauls a u-turn 'and power steering in case you are' the guy sitting next to the car and banging his head against its door 'and dent-resistant frame in case you need some time to think about it'

You know, there's a movie out there called '40 days and 40 nights' and the premise is that a guy gives up sex for lent and then meets the girl of his dreams, and has issues with not being able to sleep with her for the next five weeks. Whenever I see this movie in the listings, I can't help but wonder if it's really the norm for new couples (especially ones that are supposedly serious about the relationship) to sleep together within five weeks of first setting eyes on each other. That seems awfully...prompt...to me.

Can you believe Spike Lee actually *won* an injuction against Spike tv channel delaying their launch under that name? Sad, sad, sad...

The other day it ocurred to me to wonder what overnight shifters do when the daylight savings shift happens. Do they work a nine-hour shift every fall and a seven-hour one ever spring? Ick...

Stupid customer stories!!! (I swear I am not making these up!)

Customer calls in stating that the screen on the TV in her kitchen is all black. Rep asks her to put in on channel 03, and hears strange beeping sounds. Rep asks customer what the beeping sounds are, commenting that it sounds like a microwave. Customer says "Oh, I forgot - I don't have a TV in my kitchen. That *is* my microwave!"

Customer calls asking if the channel numbers are the same on his upstairs tv as they are on his downstairs tv.

Customer calls to pay on overdue bill. In the course of conversation she mentions that "Yeah, my roommate gave me some money to pay this bill, but I didn't and we got shut off. Now he's all mad at me and I can't understand why."

Customer calls stating he's having problems with his remote. It is determinted that the batteries are dead. When advised to replace the batteries in the remote, customer states he does not know how to do so.

In the course of troubleshooting, customer is asked to unplug the tv. After the requisite half-minute, he announces, "Ok, I plugged it back in but now I'm just getting a black screen...oh, wait, do I have to turn it on first?"

...Should I feel bad about laughing at these people?

And two more tales of demon-possesed tv's - one tv was flipping constantly between showing a picture, showing the menu, and showing the on-screen tv guide. Without any outside assistance, of course. Another TV would show a different channel every time the customer tuned to channel 72. Every other aspect of her tv service was working fine, but whever she when to ch 72 it was something different. Nickelodeon, oxygen, home shopping network...very odd. Poor woman was like "I know you're thinking I'm either insane or an idiot, but I swear that's what happening!"

It amazes me how some people manage to make it into the adult world without any concept of personal responsibility. "I haven't gotten a bill in three months, it's not my fault I didn't pay" And in all that three months it never once occurred to you to call us and find out why? Or to see if you owed a balance? "I've been on vacation for the last six weeks, that's why I didn't pay" If you knew your bill would be coming while you were gone (And you should have), why didn't you make arrangements to either pay ahead or pay while you were gone? "You've been billing me for two years for a box I never had, I want a credit for the full two years!" Again, in all those two years, you never once looked at your bill and saw this? "My service has been out for six weeks and I want a credit" And you let the problem sit around for six weeks before your thought to give us a call so we could fix it? "I'm cancelling my service and you're never gonna get another red cent out of me!" And what is it that makes you think that just because you cancel now, that means you don't owe us for the service you had in the past? And my all-time personal favorite - "My son/brother/in-law/roommate/houseguest ordered $150 worth of adult PPVs over the weekend, can you reverse the charges?" Give me one damn good reason why I should.

We lost power at work the other night for a good five minutes or so. Took forever to get the computers back up and running. And we're supposed to take calls all that time x.x;

One caller of mine found a new way to grouse about our phone answering system. He wasn't just annoyed that he'd had to go through it to get to us, but 'that's forty cents a minute on my cell phone!' Sir, this is why our number is toll-free. No one is forcing you to use your expensive cell phone to call us.

Man, was I ever mad the other day - I got a 'learning opportunity' feedback because a customer was lying to me. Dispatch team rejected my request for an emergency appointment because the chick was *not* out of service on every channel, like she'd told me, but had basic service. So I got to look like a moron because she freaking lied (probably in order to get that emergency appointment)

I do, however, find it amusing when customers lie in such a fashion that it is immediately obvious they are doing so. "My service has been out for a month! Fifty dollars I paid for that month, I want the whole thing credited!" "Ok, sir, let me just have a look at that for you..." *checks the account* "Sir, two weeks ago you scheduled a technician to come and install an additional tv in your home. Even if you chose to do so despite having no service, I do believe the technician would have noticed. Especially since part of the installation process is verifying that the new service is working." "......."

One of my co-workers had a caller insist that the number printed on our bill was a phone sex number. ¬.¬

I got a call from some poor guy whose landlord set fire to their apartment building O_o

And I *love* guys with Irish accents. Yum yum!

I had a very amusing experience sending a call down to the sales department. I had some guy call me up wondering about one of our combo tv/internet promos. Now, I don't know anything about those, because I don't do internet. So I call up the sales department and explain to the girl who picks up. See, this guy saw an promo that you can get a great deal on the internet, but only if he gets tv too, and he doesn't have a tv. The sales rep's response? "That's his problem." *pause* "He's not on the line with you, is he?"

I hate it when I make exceptions for people who promise to follow a payment schedule and then break their promises. Usually I track the accounts and if I see them not paying on time, I disconnect them immediately.

I love talking to the little old folks. Nine times out of then I can solve their problem within two seconds and they think I'm a miracle worker. One even called me an angel, another said she'd pray for blessings for me. They're such sweet people, and I feel really bad because sometimes they get the reps who are impatient or condescending and that is so awful. They're not stupid, they're just dealing with complicated equipment that's unfamiliar to them and no one's ever taken the time to explain how it works. God knows I knew about as little about tv when I picked up this job.

I had a *hilarious* call the other night - some guy's calling up because his three new cable boxes, which he just picked up from the service center, aren't working properly. As always with self-installs, I started by asking him to check the hookup. He gets very huffy and assures me that he used to work for us and he *knows* how to hook up a cable box. So I humor him and we try a few other troubleshooting tricks which, of course, get us nowhere. So finally I say 'Look, could you just humor me and check right quick?' And he sighs heavily and says loudly that he'll do it even though it won't do any good. So I describe step one of the hookup and there is a looooooooong silence. Then an abrupt 'hold on, will ya?' followed by much puttering sounds and then 'It's fine' *click* ^o^

I always love those folks. it's like 'if you know so much, why are you calling us for help?' I had a guy yesterday fervently argue that he is supposed to be getting a different lineup on the tv's that have no cable boxes than he does on the ones that do. He had a whole insane technical 'explanation' for this, too. Once I saw he would not listen to reason, I tried to drop it, saying that the tech would take care of it when he went out (since I'd had to schedule him for a service call), but he *insisted* I agree with him. Literally. "No, you *have* to agree with me on this!" (*no, I don't, and I won't, and you're an idiot*) I finally got him to leave it alone by saying something like 'well, I'm sure that when the tech proves you right and me wrong, you'll be very happy to hear it" -- which is a perfectly valid statement, since we all know that's never gonna happen. He was extremely smug, telling me that when I was proven wrong I'd feel pretty stupid. A sterling example of the fact that you can think whatever you want, but that doesn't mean you're not a moron.

I love the guys who agree to do the troubleshooting then grumble and bitch at every step that it's not gonna work. It's like, if you don't wanna do it, just freakin' say so! Save us *both* a major pain in the neck.

And why oh why do these people own equipment they know nothing about? This one guy I talked to probably had just enough technical knowledge to work a can opener. The non-electric kind. And yet he'd paid someone to hook his tv's sound up through a stereo receiver. He wasn't getting any sound, so I asked him to test the receiver by putting a cd or tape in the stereo and he had no idea how to do it. Didn't even know how to turn on the radio on the thing.

And then there was the one fellow who had gone out and spent several thousand dollars buying two high-definition television sets, but he only wanted one high-definition cable box. He was willing to schlep the thing backa dn forth between his two TVs because he didn't want to spend the extra $9/month renting a second high-def box O_o

It always annoys me when people call up being assholes because we took away the cable they were stealing. This one chick was getting $115 worth of stuff from us and paying $35 a month for it. And she has the nerve to bitch at *us* when we catch her!

And it always puzzles me when people steadfastly pay their bill a month late because they 'don't like paying for something they haven't gotten yet'. Don't these people ever go to the movies? Subscribe to magazines? Order anything out of a catalogue? Guess what folks, it's the same deal. You put down the dough and *then* you get your stuff! Just because we function like a utility doesn't mean we are one.

Or the people who says 'I've been paying the amounts you've been telling me to pay'. No, if you'd been doing that you would have been paying the amount that's on your bill where it says 'balance due'. When you ask us what is the the bare minimum overdue balance necessary to pay in order to avoid getting shut off and then pay only that amount, that's not paying what we tell you to.

And *why* do these people think I know anything about how to set up a karaoke set?!

Anyone who thinks it's funny to be mean to a customer service rep should be shot. I get these people occasionally, they come on the phone bellowing about how we suck and I suck and they're gonna throw their cable box out the window, then they laugh and says 'just kidding!' Tell me again how this is funny...

And the ones that make it personal. Those are the ones that get me the most. I don't care how much someone maligns Comcast, I really don't give a damn about that. But when I'm a useless asshole who doesn't give a damn about anything but making a buck by ignoring callers all day, that hacks me off but good, lemme tell ya. This one woman got so bad today I had to stop and say to her 'Ma'am, I do wish you wouldn't insult me personally. It's really not productive in terms of resolving your problem.' (at which point she got deeply huffy and said 'it's not personal' and kept right on going.)

Can you believe I had this guy who was going off about how it's not fair to people on welfare to charge $90 a month for our super-deluxe all-the-channels-ever-offered package?

We had an incident last week that made me truly want to go out and hurt people. You know how the emergency broadcast system overrides all tv and radio programming? Well, last week the state of Mass used it to broadcast news about three children who had been kidnapped - details of the kidnappers car, photos of the kids, etc. And we got flooded with calls, of course, because this was on every channel in dozens of towns. And most of the people just wanted to know what this was all about; some were even afraid we were under attack (it was called an 'amber alert', the system being named after a california girl who was abducted and killed - but it *does* sound like one of those stupid national security codes, ne?). But we each got a handful of real assholes yelling about 'who cares about the stupid kids, what gives you the right to interrupt my baseball game?!' I wish *all* types of pain down on those fuckers. (pardon the french)

Ok, that's enough ranting for one night. Hopefully the next time I update will not be three months down the road ;_; Jaa! *waves

//Hotohori last sparkled at 01:24 a.m.//
//Saturday, August 16, 2003//

MEEP! Finally, bloggage!!

Well, I have a new car! It's a black 2003 Honda Civic, and it is much spiffness! My brother gave me freaking heart attacks when we were test-diving - he said he wanted to see how the cars handled during 'emergency maneuvers' x.x;;; And I want to hunt down the motherless son of a ruptered deleted who dented my beautiful new car before I'd had it two days *grrrrrrrr!!* At least the insurance isn't going to skyrocket as much as I was afraid it would.

In case anyone's wondering what happened to my grandparents' car, my uncle basically decided he wanted to keep it for himself, so after 3 months of him stalling, my parents concluded that this was never going to have a satisfactory ending and they felt so bad (and stupid) for having told me to scrap the taurus that they're helping my buy a new car.

Today was a good day! Nice quiet day, jeans day, no boss, and of course, double-and-a-half time!

Boo is a klutz. She attempted to jump from the chair onto the table, failed, fell back on the chair, then fell off the chair -.- She is truly incompetent. Cute, though. It's funny - she's almost always in the same room I am. she curls up at my feet when I'm on the computer, she's at the foot on my bed or the corner chair when I'm alseep...all cute! =^.^=

In fact, special moment of Boo cuteness - I have a tall dresser that has a little mini-closet built in, and right now the mini-closet's pretty empty. When I went to get something out of one of the adjoining drawers, there she was, all cuddled up, nesting in the remanining clothes. And she chirred at me!

And I have the GW artbook!! *squees* And the english translation version of episode zero (chibi Duo is so *CUTE!!!*), blind target, and a few of the comics, and two decks of GW playing cards! *squee!!!*

And that day in the middle of my vacation that they told me I couldn't get off? They reversed it, my vacaiton will now be uninterrupted ^__^

And I *finally* have freaking hot water!!! It only took the bastards seven and a half weeks to fix it!! Christ! But god, it's good to have it back!

Here's a website everyone should see - www.actsofgord.com Funniest damn site I've seen in forever. Tales of a video-game store owner. You click on the different books. I think the Book of Villainy mgiht have been my favorite. Tough call, though. Oh, and www.insultmonger.com is good too ^___^

I saw the funniest the camoflage t-shirt at the con. Regular camo t-shirt, but with little white letters on the front that said 'oh, shit, it's snowing!' ^___^

So, tales of co-worker idiocy! I found one account that was noted 'customer was using unseen and nasty language' and another noted 'customer don't speak english real good, he think this were a misunderstanding'. And then, this one woman's had an appointment to get installed on february 26th, but for various reasons did not *actually* get installed until april 26th. guess when they started the billing! you guessed it, she gets her first bill and it's for three months of service, two of which she never had. And someone else tacked $183 onto someone's bill with no explanation at all why they did so. When I e-mailed them to aks for an explanation, they replied 'I don't remember why I did it' x.x And then there's the quote from one of your team meetings - 'we, as a company, have a lot to offer. we have in-house products and outhou...er, out of house products' *snrk*

But then, there's customer idiocy too. Like the very obviously male caller who claimed to be 'Rita' in order to convince me to put on Playboy channel. As if that weren't enough, the account was plastered with notes about "Rita Smith called and verified all info, says her husband is not allowed to order pay-per-view. *no PPV for anyone, including the account holder!*" that was interesting. how does one politely tell a customer 'you're lying and we both know it'?

Or the customer Eva got - some guy whose Hot Zone pay-per-view order isn't coming in. So she asks for the phone number on the account, and the guy goes 'well, I don't know. it's not exactly my account' And Eva asks 'well, do you live there?' And the guy goes 'well, not really. but I own the building' So this landlord was sneaking into his tenant's apartment and ordering PPV porn and it was being charged to the tenant!

There are many psycho drivers in the world. I was coming home the other night, up the highway, and I was passing some slow dude who was in the right lane. so this car comes up *really* fast behind that guy, and I'm thinking 'he's gonna have to break really hard to slow down in time', but no, he swerved into the right-hand breakdown lane to pass. oh, and did I mention he had to have been going at least 90?

The guy who taught our class at work today used to be a tech, and one time he got to disconnect Mike Tyson's house for nonpayment of services ^o^

And my brother is a fecking dink. I invited him over to dinner, and he neglected to raise a finger to help, did not even make a pretense of offering. In point of fact, when I outright asked, he said 'I would, but I'm feeling lazy'. So then, after I've spent a good while going nuts trying to tend to eight billion different things in the kitchen, he demand to know if dinner would be soon, because 'it's getting late and I hadn't planned to stay this long'. I *totally* wanted to deck him. If my mouth hadn't been full when he asked, I would have given him one hell of an earful!

I saw the X-men 2 movie. It was cool and life was good ^__^

Oh, and this was funny - the other night I was watching 'wetwired', an x-files episode about how the government, masquerading as cable guys, are putting evil things into people's TV's. Halfway through, my TV screen goes to blue with a message 'the cable company is conducting a test' *grins*

I have the platinum extended edition 'fellowship of the ring' ^____^ And fancy nail polish that's all shimmery in different colors

Oh, and this is funny! My mom heard about Chris somewhere, and jumped to the conclusion that since Chris had been my roommate, Chris is female. I didn't correct her *snrk*

My brother got two baby bunnies for pets. They are very cute, if insanely skittish and annoyingly loud. They got inadvertantly names 'Hasen' and 'Pfeffer' x.x;; He objects to those names, but they've stuck.

I cannot go to Otakon. Too few people going, hotel too expensive ;_;

But I have the Weiss Kreuz dub outtakes. which are *hysterical*!! 'these men all have something in common. their lives are in the gutter. that one on the left is facedown.'

I now know how to make sauerbraten. This pleases me.

Some nut went psycho on my old college campus with a gun. One killed, 10 wounded. Lovely, eh?

Not that this is comparable, but I was also saddened by something that happened while I was out with my family the other week. I went out for lunch with my dad and brother and my brother's friend eric. eric and jeremy found what was apparently a plastic egg outside in the parking lot, and they were kicking it around a little. eric kicked it a little harder, and it fell apart leaving an almost-ready-to-hatch duckling. it was obviously alive, it was moving around and crying and you could see the baby plumage and everything. it died, of course. we couldn't do anything. I damn near cried.

...And I need bed. Nighty-night!

//Hotohori last sparkled at 04:44 a.m.//
//Tuesday, May 27, 2003//

quick and random bloggage. first, fervent hopes that this week will *not* be like last week. If it is, much misery shall ensue.

Secondly, much cuteness with my cat I thought I'd share. I brought home a bunch of mini-balloons for cat toys, about three inches long. She was attacking one and it got so static-y it stuck to the fur of her butt. So she was rampaging around like nuts trying (unsuccessfully) to get this thing un-stuck from her rear.

Then, of course, I did it deliberately by rubbing them on her fur and sticking them to random places. I got a photo of her with three of four of them stuck to her.

And we have some bad news from Yume-ville. My folks have informed me that I will not be able to get the new car until the third week of may. Which is, of course, three weeks after my sister graduates and will need her own car. I'm working with them to try to narrow that down, but ugh.

And I think I'm getting too cynical. I was reading Kimura's blog and saw the "List of things I want to do in my lifetime" and my first thought was 'I could do one of those, but none of it would ever get done and I'd just end up depressed as hell. just what I need, a graveyard of broken dreams just waiting to happen.'

And I will end that train of thought right there.

But speaking of the list...Kimura-chan! "10. do my own taxes" If you want, I can teach you how to do your taxes :p

//Hotohori last sparkled at 01:45 a.m.//
//Sunday, April 6, 2003//

Geh, what a wretched week. Every single day has been nonstop insanity from 3h45 straight through until 9. Sunday and Monday we had 60 reps trying to handle a 150 calls at any single given time for over an hour. Sunday was wrestlemania (-.-) but I can't for the life of me guess why the rest of the week's been so bad! Last week was totally normal.

At least I got to talk to some real prizewinners...more on that later, though.

The X/99 movie is going to be shown on cable tomorrow night...and four more times this and next week ¬.¬ So if you've always wanted to see the wretchedness that is this film and you happen to get showtime (beyond! :p), tune in at midnight tomorrow. well, acutally it starts at 11h55, but don't worry. you won't miss anything.

I went and read the review for it at the imdb - "Starting with the positive: X is pretty to look at and has a great premise [...] Try as I might, those are the only redeeming features of this movie. [...] X may be an incomplete manga series at the time of filming, but that doesn't mean you can release an incomplete film. [...] While I appreciated the mortality...of the characters in X (as opposed to the cliches of being beaten down to a pulp but then coming back and winning) it was just like watching meat through a grinder. [...] The...imagery of X is also very peculiar... It was something different, but different doesn't mean good in this case. [...] My final gripe was that the closest thing this movie had to a twist was simply unbelievable. It flew in the face of what little characterization had been created, then the film ends not with a bang but with a half-hearted sigh. It left me wondering if I had missed something vital, but not caring to endure a repeat performance." *dies laughing* I particularly like the meat through a grinder comment - it's *so* appropriate! (even if the author meant to denote the lack of emotional impact, rather than the pace, of the character deaths)

nifty quote of the week - "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing." - Abraham Lincoln

So, I went to see the Globetrotters, and it was nifty and fun! One of the players was able to make a shot by bending over and resting the ball between his shoulderblades, and then standing upright quickly. It was very nifty, even if that part was during the exhibition and not the acutal game. I hadn't even realized they played actual basketball (well, kind off :p) I feel *way* bad for the team they were playing - they got *creamed*! (something like 98-42) At one point, on of them rolled a pass right through the legs of the player who was trying to guard his teammate. the look on the guy's face was priceless. And at another point, one of them tricked a guy into dashing off in hot pursuit of a teammate after sticking the ball under the back of the guy's jersey - coincidentally incurring a penalty on the hapless guy for carrying the ball without dribbling it *snrk* Now, granted, a lot of stuff that was going on there would be totally foul in a *real* game...and the ref *had* to be playing along, or 3/4 of the team would've been out on their butts, but still, it was a riot.

and one of the half-timey-things they had was this group of acrobats doing human pileups and nifty jump-rope things. Like jumping rope on all fours (pushup position and crab-style) - they even had a guy doing flips while jumping rope (with a little help from the guys holding the rope) It was very impressive.

And we saw a ring-necked pheasant on the way down ^_^

Oh, and here's something highly amusing - in my dad's latest e-mail, he said something to the effect of why don't we all call mom just to chat more often? Gee, I wonder... *snrks*

And I have a new hobby - collecting live-action shounen-ai movies. I'm up to four ^___^

would you believe there's a movie called 'play-mate of the apes'? it's one of those 'shown on skinemax at 4 am' ditties. Probably shown as a double-feature with 'tail sting' (summary: giant scorpions terrorize plane passengers) or maybe 'octopus 2: river of fear' *snrks*

I got much very yumful dinner this weekend, courtesy of some *great* coupons - lots of salmon, a small filet mignon, a super-deluze salad, and a nice bowl of mashed potatoes. Life is good ^________^

I have two quote list entries, and I'm gonna post them here so they don't get lost. "I've never been told I was Leon by anyone's phone...not to my face, anyhow." And a two parter - "You should be in bed." "But...I just got some... and I'm hungry! *pause* Er! Home! I just got HOME!"

Hey, Kouri, I have a co-worker who thinks she might be able to get us cheap or even free parking for the con. (And parking that won't leave us stuck there overnight if we're there late)

And for the wacky wacky callers at work...

My personal favorite, a very fun and pleasant lady who was grousing good-naturedly about 'lord, what stations did my husband order *this* time? Just can't resist a deal, that man...' And I joked 'It could be worse - he could be ordering adult PPV's by the score' And she laughed and said 'Hey, that I might enjoy!' I *died* laughing.

And *not* my favorite - the woman who called me to ask how to hook up her camcorder to tape onto her VCR and have the picture play on the TV at the same time. *shakes head* Yet another call where speaking my mind would have gotten me fired ("Lady, what on earth gave you the idea that I know the first thing about camcorders? We're the *cable* company!")

And the chick who airily told me to have her $650 worth of cable boxes 'just left on the front doorstep' because she doesn't want to be bothered with an appointment.

And the man I wanted dearly to *strangle* - he was having the exact same quirky problem on every single TV set in the house, which ruled out a problem with anything inside the house. There wasn't an area-wide outage declared, so by default, that left something just outside his house. But when I told him this and advised he schedule a service call, he said "All that trouble for such a little thing? Isn't there something you can do from there? Anything?" So I said we could try troubleshooting, though I didn't expect it would accomplish anything. And every single thing I tried, he bitched that '*That* won't help!' or 'It couldn't possibly be that!' or 'you don't really think *that* will fix it, do you?' Another customer in the 'wants a magic wand waved to fix his problem' category.

I *detest* people who ask me for things and then refuse them. Like the people who call me up because they can't fix their TV themselves, but insist that they know better than I do and they don't need to listen to me. Why the *&^% did you call me for help if you know so damned much? Why haven't you fixed it yourself if you're such a whiz kid? You call me for advice on how to fix your godforsaken television, then *listen* to what I tell you!!!

Grrrr...

*clears throat* Ok, I feel better now. Moving on...the lady asking about senior citizen discounts - for both her primary residence and her summer home. Lovely lady. very unhappy when I told her she didn't qualify. very concerned about that $2 a month. You know, for the *two houses* she owns!

And the guy who did not understand 'do you mind holding on for a minute while I check something'. I rephrased about three times before I gave up and just said 'hold, please' and stuck him with the muzak.

Or the guy who waited until the last possible minute to order the $40 wrestlemania and then had the gall to demand it for free because the wait was such that he missed the first 15 minutes of the 3 hour event

And we can't forget and the barely-spoke-english guy who went off an a rant about how biased it was of us to offer a channel that catered to mexican americans. 'you think everyone speak spanish is mexican. is no true. dominican is speak spanish. colombia is speak spanish...' and went on to list damn near every country in central or south america.

Now, call me biased, but if I went or lived abroad I would not necessarily expect the country I was in to offer TV programming from America. If I'm living in France, I accept the fact that I am in France, not neo-america. TV will be french. Signs will be in french. people will speak french. If you want to come here and still live according to your native culture and speak your mother tongue, that's fine with me. We're a melting pot, and it's not like I can trace *my* ancestors back to the mayflower either. But don't get pissed at me when *I* don't speak *your* mother tongue.

And now, saving the best for last -- the woman who called us to lodge a complaint that we were forcing her to have sex with her husband. Wanted a supervisor, notes on the account, and the whole 9 yards. I never did find out what her logic there was, or even if there had been any.

Anyhow, that's all from the zoo for today. Nighty-night!

//Hotohori last sparkled at 02:32 a.m.//
//Thursday, April 3, 2003//

quick yayness bloggage!

I got to go skiing!! It was much fun! ^_____^

Of course, I'm sore as heck today, but some things are worth the price. And even the requisite belly-flop down twenty feet of slope wasn't too bad. what's a ski trip without at least one wipeout? I was surprised how quickly it came back to me, given that it's been something like 7 years since last I went. I wasn't as good as I was, but I did manage to get beyong the snowplow stage. And if the snow hadn't gone mushy-melted, I might not have even fallen. It was like skiing on a sponge in some places x.x;

But it was still fun! And man, what beautiful weather for skiing! Makes me wonder why I ever went in mid-january...

And I got my review today - and I got a raise!!! *squeals* Only another fifty cents an hour, but hey, that adds up! Every little bit helps. And it's interesting - I had enough good to balance the bad, so I got 'meets expectations', which came with a raise. After all my worrying about getting fired, too. I wonder if they realize that this review kind of gave me the impresison that it's ok to not make my sales as long as I do well elsewhere ¬.¬

Oh, and for those of you whom I have not already told - I'm writing a prequel to Fallen! After a nice long age, my muses have returned. Sam and Kai have kindly consented to tell me the stories of how they Fell, so there will soon be more story. Yay! ^o^

//Hotohori last sparkled at 02:36 a.m.//
//Wednesday, March 19, 2003//

quick narfage - anyone in the area wanna go see the harlem globetrotters? I can get cheapy tickets through work. lemme know if that sounds interesting! ^__^

//Hotohori last sparkled at 04:35 a.m.//
//Monday, March 10, 2003//

I figured out how to set the timer on my VCR! *is inordinately pleased with self*

...now, to see if it works -.-;

//Hotohori last sparkled at 03:01 a.m.//
//Friday, March 7, 2003//

So, have I not blogged in an age or what? Only time for a quick bloggage tonight, I am very tired with remnants of insomnia.

So, most of you probably know I got in a fecking car accident. But this is the major event since my last bloggage, so I thought I'd mention it. (Sunhawk, the next thing on my to-do list is writing you, and I will give yu the details then. Sowwies!)

So my car is going to the great parking lot in the sky *cries* I'll miss my baby! I have decided the insurance companies are vile and ought to be eradicated. I can't believe that they think my car is worth a measly $1600, and/or that such a minor accident is worthy of scrapping it. Argh!

On the upside, I will get my grandfolk's car, which is newer than the Taurus, has less mileage, and is a nicer car! Semi-luxury sedan, anyone? ^__^ And since it's a case of need, the family will let me have it for a song. Of course, transporting it from wisconsin to here will *not* cost a song, but it's better than trying to fly out and drive it back. (A big pain and I have squat for vacation time right now)

So all's well that ends not-horribly. But...my poor car...*sniffles* ;_;

Aside from that, jsut a few mentions of miscellaneous interesting items.

I did my taxes and I have $1500 coming back. much yayness! But trying to contact the IRS is guaranteed to induce a massive fecking headache. I *work* with automated phone systems, I know how to use them to my best advantage, and as a professional, I can assuredly say that this one *sucks*. Unlike some, it was easy enough to get through, it just didn't give you the info you wanted. and it *really* didn't want to give you a live person so that you could just *ask* the question x.x

We got evacuated from work today because of unspecified fumes. It was so bad people were sick, and one person even got sent to the hosptial O_o. Given that this is my second evacuation from a building at which I've only worked for 9 months, should I start worrying? I almost didn't even know they were doing it - they didn't use the fire alarms, and I was on break at the time, and taking my usual stroll through remote parts of the building. I was heading back and about to go back upstairs when I got abruptly shooed outside - without my jacket >.< It could've sucked a lot, since we ended up outside for nearly two whole hours, but a couple of nice people lent me their jackets, and after the first half hour, they said we could sit in our cars. Not that I had my keys - those were still in my jacket pocket upstairs - but a kindly co-worker allowed me to share her car.

It was get-nifty-stuff-at-work day today. along with lots of info, I now have a ton of candy, a little metal shovel which is secretly a pen, and another pen which has a little jar of bubbles in the handle ^____^ Oh, and lots of sticky note pads

And I got to overhear a conversation between two people planning to skip out on their bill. They called up to shut off their cable at an old address and when I asked for a forwarding address to which we could send the final bill the guy said hang on and then I heard
"they want an address where they can send the bill. what should I tell 'em?"
"Fuck 'em, I don't have the money to pay the bill and I don't give a shit. Just hang up! I dunno why you had to go and call 'em anyhow"
"But we gotta get this shut off! What the hell am I s'pposed to do?"
"Christ, just give 'em a bogus address, it's not like they'll ever find us."
"Shit, I told you..."
*click*

Note that all of the above conversation was in perfectly audible tones - they weren't whispering, not covering the mouthpiece of the phone, nothing *shakes head*

Earlier in my blog I mentioned rumors of a guy who got canned at work for making sketchy sales. Well, the other day I was looking through past sales records (to see how my sales compare with other people's). And I found this guy's records. Now, normal goals are maybe 18 digital sales, 45 movie channel sales. This guy once made 110 digital sales and 743 movie channel sales. that was somewhere and 2500% and 3500% of his respective goals. Now, to me, that makes him an *idiot*. Was he *aiming* to get audited? I can't imagine anyone at all seeing those numbers and *not* being suspicious.

Speaking of cheating, I was telling my mom about this and we got talking about cheating and she wondered if he was running a scam which, if you could pull it off, would be damn near flawless. You write down information for a few dozen random accounts, get an accomplice, and give them the information. Then the accomplice calls in, asks to be transferred to your extension, and and pretends to me Mr. Smith, looking to add a nice hefty movie package to his account. Accomplice mentions 'hey, how about that get a month free promotion' so that the customer never sees an increase in their bill, and then, when the month is up, you go back and take the package off. If you were careful about it and didn't get greedy, you could pull that off beautifully. And even if you *were* caught (say the cust calls in to ask what this free item on their bill was) you're blameless! You can say with perfect accuracy that you took a call from someone to be claiming to be Mr. Smith, that you verified all of their info, and that you put the package on for them - all in accordance with the rules! You haven't done a thing wrong - it's not even that uncommon for people to call in making changes to accounts that aren't theirs. As long as you verify all the correct info, you've done your job and the blame goes to the impersonator.

What a scam, ne?

I love the people who openly admit that they didn't care enough about their cable problem to call in to get it fixed, but they still demand credit for the three weeks their service has been out.

Dude, I can't believe the guy who plays pricipal snyder is quark! ...or maybe I can *snrk*

I have another weird cable phenomenon to add to the list - when she turns her cable box on, she gets a picture, but no sound. normal, you say? well, when she turns the box *off*, she gets sound but no picture. I think that deserves a good 'huh?'

Getting back from vacation is always hard. Especially when a group of 50 agents is trying to handle 160 waiting calls, with more coming in as fast as we can take care of the ones who get through x.x;;;;

And then there's the poor little old lady who keeps paying her balance faithfully, even though the balance is *negative* - money that *we* owe *her*! it started off with an over payment of like $10. So when she got the bill saying we owed her $10, she paid ten, so that the next bill said we owed her $20, so she paid us twenty, and so on. By the time she got to me, we owed the poor woman something like a hundred and fifty bucks. I tried really hard to explain the situation, but...I wish I could be sure she got it.

Or the woman whose 'friend' sold her her cable box and moved away - never mind that the cable box was never her property to start with. the woman wanted to know if she could get a credit towards her service if she did the right thing and turned it in to us, and I hated to tell her that her credit would be that we might not prosecute her.

and the new company managed to do something right! we just instated a new policy wherein if we accidentally disconnect a customer, we get someone out within 2 hours to fix it, instead of within 24 hours, which was the former policy. It gives me hope...

They finally noticed the big ol' sign downstairs saying 'remember - we are now proud to be AT&T broadband!' *snrk* Too bad, that was funny.

My vacation was nice. I accomplished squat (unless you count reading books and watching movies and sleeping a *lot* to be accomplishing something) It was great, just what I needed after a nice hellish week x.x

anyhow, bed will now be had. hugs to all! ^_^

//Hotohori last sparkled at 02:47 a.m.//
//Thursday, March 6, 2003//

much long bloggage today. lots of fun babble, plus a big fat rant about the new company that bought us out.

There's actually a town in Massachussetts that has an honest to god Lovers Lane. I talked to a customer who lived on it.

The post office finally nabbed me - I've been using 34 cent stamps ever since the rate increase back in June. And of *course* the item they had to return was a bill that was due the day before I got it back. Normally I pay bills as soon as I get 'em, but since payroll screwed up and didn't give me my vacation pay, I was holding out as long as I could in hopes of getting it. Well, here's hoping they don't charge late fees *sighs*

On the other hand, I did a quick-and-dirty guesstimate on my taxes using a spare 1040 EZ from last year, tax tables from this year, and my W4s. If I'm right, I've got a *lot* of money coming. Which is weird, since that doesn't even *cover* the mass income tax I'm due to get back. I dunno why it'd be so much more this year. *shrugs* But I'm not complaining :p

And my mom called me this weekend to say 'oh, we cancelled our trip to europe, so you can come out to arizona on your vacation after all!' Of course, by this point, my vacation is in two weeks. Granted, it's not like I object (much) to the idea of Arizona in February, but two weeks is a *bit* sudden! Not to mention that given the hassle of flying, I think I'd really prefer a quiet week at home. And they really put me on the spot - I had to decide that very night, or the plane fare would've tripled. I actually managed to beg off without any retributional emotional trauma (so far).

Of course, a large part of my excuse was that since they asked (read: ordered) me to go pay my sister's $580 car insurance bill the next day, I couldn't afford to put a plane ticket on my debit card :p Man, talk about presumption! 'you have a decent balance in the bank, rght? you can cover this until we can get a check out to you.' Just because she's too damned cheap to get overnight mail. I should've lied and said I didn't have the money.

I now know how to make chocolate mousse. life is good ^_________^

My 401k went up $10. Not much, I know, but in this economy...^_^

You know what scares me? It's not how many non-cable-related 'can you fix this?' calls we get at work - it's how many of those calls we can actually successfully troubleshoot!

I got the cutest little old lady on the phone the other night. I was walking her through checking the diagnostics on her box and she was all excited about 'oh, I feel just like a repairman!' It was adorable.

When will people understand that if you're dealing with a situation complicated enough that the customer wants your extension so they don't have to talk to someone who doesn't already know what going on, then it's a nice thing to put notes on the account so that if the cust *can't* get through to you, they don't have to repeat the whole damned story to someone else!

At work yesterday our meeting ended ten minutes early, so we got to play a game ^_^ it was kind of a cross between musical chairs and 'i've never' - it's called 'move yer butt' *grins* nine chairs, ten people. the person in the middle says 'anyone who drove to work today, move yer butt!' and everyone who did has to move to another chair. And of course, depending on the company, you can make it squeaky clean, like at work (anyone with black shoes, anyone wearing earrings, anyone who made their sales goal today) or not so clean, as among friends (anyone who's snogged during a movie, anyone who's shagged in a ariplane restroom).

It was still partly light out when I took my 5h30 break today! Only just barely, but still! Heretofore it's been full-out night! We're getting there! ^_____^

I actually found someone who had a phone support job for an even more reviled instution than mine - she worked the phones for the IRS! O_o;

They're showing FY on the international channel! Too bad it's the hideous english dubs x.x

You know, when Nelson Mandela, of all people, gets hot enough under the collar to say 'One power, with a President who has no foresight and cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust' - that oughtta give people pause, doncha think?

I went and read the State of the Union Address, the whole thing. I'm not even going to waste my breath commenting.

And I loved the Brittney Spears quote calling the movies of the Sundance Film Festival 'weird - you actually have to think about them when you watch them.' *rolls eyes* God forbid!

Today in the mail I got a packet from the Red Cross - it's because I finally filled up my first donor card. The packet had my new card, of course, along with letters of thanks from the organization and little profiles of and statements from blood recipients. And, of course,a little certificate of appreciation. You know, I've earned a lot of certificates in my life, some more meaningful, some less. And even though this one was just a form-letter type certificate, sent out to anyone who does this, it means the world to me. That little piece of paper represents the effort I put in to make this happen - hard work and pain and sacrifice - and it represents the very real difference that I've made in the world. I may not have done much to make this world a better place, but I did this, and I'm proud of it. Really goddamned proud. I don't care if it sounds stupid, but I'm going to treasure that piece of paper. It means so much more to me than so many of the others I've gotten. I cried when I read what was in that packet. Yeah, it was a form letter, but I sure don't care. It was awfully nice to be reminded that the sacrifices I've made for this have made a real difference to real people.

WARNING! BIG OL' RANT AHEAD!!!

So, our lovely new comcast cable company is 'rebranding' effective next week, and it looks to be suck. For one thing, the first thing they're doing is coming in and changing all of the prices and packaging (which they said they wouldn't). Lemme tell ya, i might as well just paint a nice big bullseye on my shirt. The one ray of light is that they're not forcing current customers into the new packaging. But that's going to have it's own set of problems - 'the guy next door only pays $12 for his HBO, whaddaya mean I gotta pay $20??' And the sole and only defense/reason they're giving us (or the public) is 'we want to be more aligned with Comcast offerings'! And if you change your package for *any* reason, you can't get it back. Disconnected for nonpayment of services, if you transfer from one location to another, if you want to temporarily downgrade for a while until you can get your bills under control, *anything*. So say you've got some guy in our biggest, most expensive package, and we'll say he has 4 cable boxes - not that unusual. If he does *anything*, then to get the exact same service he has right now on the same number of TV's, he'll be paying $15 more a month for it. Way to treat our biggest-paying customers, eh? They're being very sneaky, too - they're not actually raising the price of any given package, so that when people accuse comcast of raising prices, they can legally deny it. They're just giving you less with it, so that if you want the same stuff, you have to pay more. And it's always the *good* channels that they're moving into the more expensive tiers. Oh, and they're raising the bar on 'minimum service level required to get multi-service discount'. now, is you ask me, even *having* a minimum seems ridiculous - if they have more than one of our products, they should get the multi-product discount. now they have to have our 3rd most expensive package (which now comes with diddly squat) to get the discount. Some deal. Is it just me, or is it an awfully big coincidence that they scheduled 'challenging customer training' starting this week? ¬.¬

And they keep telling us they want us to have the best customer service in the industry. Maybe we could give them that, if they didn't make it so damned hard for us! It doesn't matter how polite, friendly, knowledgeably, or helpful *we* are, if the company keeps screwing over its customers. And how are we supposed to be enthusiatic about a company that even *we* feel is fucking people over? How are we supposed to convince angry customers not to drop their service when honestly, we feel that they're 100% in the right? And Comcast was presenting itself as being all concerned about starting off their entrance into this market with a good image. Well, folks - this ain't the way to do it! I know that all cable companies are universally reviled, but still! You would think that the fact of the introduction of these policies being met with unmitigated dismay by the employees who actually have to deal with the public would tell them something.

And we *just* raised prices in January. People are going to have kittens. I can just see the headlines in the Globe. I pity the poor public relations department. Nearly as much as I pity myself and my co-workers.

You know, you'd think someone would have done a little research and noticed that the people in this region have gone through about 4 cable companies in the past 8 years. Evey time these people turn around, it's a new name with new packages, and the prices go up. You'd think it would have occurred to *someone* that maybe coming in and making massive, confusing, expensive changes right away might not be the best way to make a good first impression, but noooooo...

Plus, word on the street has it that comcast might not be the most fun company to work for. Now, I realize that a fun job is a privilege, not a right, but someone I talked to said that in the future you're not even supposed to *talk* to your fellow employees unless 1) it's about something that's 100% work-related or 2) you're both on break *and* in a break room. and, of course, there *no* use of the internet or e-mail for anything that's not directly involving a customer concern. we can't even check the HBO website to see what's playing next month or iNdemand to see what movies are debuting on PPV. we can't even e-mail each other with a heads-up on an article in the boston globe about how comcast sucks. if it's not something that involves a call we're currently on, it's verboten. I mean, I know they don't want us using the internet or e-mail recreationally, but really! Oh, and they've got a new technology that will allow anyone - a super, a coach, anyone - to see exactly what's going on on your computer screen at all times. You could get yelled at for not pulling up somone's account fast enough. Granted, the whole 'we can see what you're doing ' doesn't bother me *that* much - Fidelity kept a log of every URL you went to. (of course, they have a *much* greater need for computer security than we do!) It's the potential abuses that worry me. Cubicle police, anyone? And word has it they're tightening up on making us hit our goals - *and* they're raising said goals, *and* paring down our stats. Oh, and if you don't measure up, to hell with working with you to help you improve and grow and develop into a better employee - one warning and you're out on your ass. And that much is direct from people have have already gotten their one warning. I'm starting to feel like I'd better start checking the want ads now. How the f*ck am I supposed to render superior customer service in 6.25 minutes per call?? Not to mention that I don't know *how* we're gonna make our goals with everything so much more expensive. And no one's going to want to change out of the packages they have, because if they do they can't get them back, and they'll be screwed. I already know they're being really ruthless about the name change. We got a memo saying that effective 2/18, the day of the 'rebranding', everything that has an ATTBB logo is verboten, or else. Everything from t-shirts to coffee mugs to certificates of achievement.

And it really, *really* pisses me off because this is a great job, and a lot of fun, and I was really hoping it could be a keeper for me. I am so freaking sick of bouncing from one job to another. Since I gradutated from college, I haven't kept a single job for more than a year and a quarter, and that really doesn't look too hot on a resume. Again, I know that having a fun workplace is a perk, but an openly hostile one? That's what *I'm* going to be feeling if they tell me I can't even say 'hello' to my coworkers. I know how it is - first in, first out - and I *really* don't want to be made an example of!

//Hotohori last sparkled at 04:11 a.m.//
//Thursday, February 13, 2003//

Yay, happy blogtime! ...you know, for once -.-;

You know, the weather just keeps sucking. after a week of twenty below zero, it's now back to snow. Man, I can't wait for spring!

I have finished another mask. It is silver and emerald green on black, and it is very nifty, if not quite what I had imagined. *happies*

And I have to say, despair.com is the only online store where the order confirmations are *funny*! "We could thank you for your business, but that would imply that we care about our customers." I was successful in ordering a tin of those evil candy hearts, which shall adorn my cubicle for the season, to offset the nauseating pink-and-fuzziness of the rest of the place. I think I'll put them next to my demon-cupid...

See, we were given little cupids to decorate and put up, but I had to get a replacement after ruining mine in a random fit of doodlement. By 'ruining', of course, I mean that I gave it black wings, cloven hooves, bloody fangs, horns, claws, and glowing red eyes. The really scary part is that I'm not the only one on the team who did that sort of thing! ^o^

And I have Valentine's Day off, so I can go bother the lovebirds in peace ^__^

I survived Super Bowl Sunday! The cable gods were kind, and we managed to avoid having any major outages ^__^

You know, I've decided to take a new attitude with the inheritance money. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't exist. Never did, never will. That way I won't go nuts thinking about how I don't have it and how much good it could be doing me. It'll rot away in some interest-bearing account and I'll never freaking touch it because "it's better to leave it to accumulate interest, you'll get more money in the long run", and sixty-odd years from now, when I die, someone's going to find that much-more-impressive-than-if-I-had-used-it sum in my financial records and wonder what the hell it is. It'll probably end up going to charity, since I won't have anyone to leave it to. Or maybe the courts will use it to pay opff the debts which I'll probably still have. Or maybe in the intervening years it will have been lost - I've seen that happen. And it'll just snowball interest forever in that black hole of lost money, until the bank finally notices it and does whatever it is they do with lost money. Maybe *they'll* give it to charity. Which is freaking ironic when you consider how close I've come to being a charity case myself on more occassions than I'd like.

And yes, I *am* bitter about it. Y'know, just in case you hadn't noticed.

Here's here's an interesting rumor that's been floating around the water cooler - scuttlebutt has it that one of the department's best salespeople was just sacked. According to hearsay, the reason is that he'd never do any troubleshooting, only sales, and those were sketchy enough. I always wondered how somebody's numbers could be *that* good if they were playing by the book...

I love it when my callers ask me if I'm real *sighs*

Did you know that the chick who played Princess Vespa in Spaceballs wound up on Melrose Place? Isn't that sad?

You know, I picked up a handy, if slightly shady, sales trick. When someone can't decide which premium channel they want to add, I can offer to let them try the includes-everything package for a week or so, then when they have a better idea of what they want, they can call back and choose. This is, of course, not what we're supposed to be doing - we're supposed to ask about the customer's interests and figure out what they'd like best. But damned if I'm gonna get sacked from my best job ever because of some stupid sales numbers. Oh, and it's been brought into dispute whether you can upgrade a customer who's delinquent. We were told absolutely not, but apparently others were told that as long as they haven't been shut off, they're fair game. Sounds good to me! A bad idea, of course, but see above note about sales figures.

And I found 2 new names for my list of 'most pathetically named horror movies ever' - 'adrenaline: fear the rush', and 'octopus 2: river of fear' (and yes, I know that octopi are marine animals. that just makes it funnier.)

I saw a funny bumper sticker - I don't need to have kids, I married one! *snrks*

I hate it when I write down dates and then have no idea what the heck they mean. I have here '1/10 and 1/24', both of which were fairly uneventful fridays. I have no idea why they might have had some significance. And I wrote those dates down wednesday, I think. So I *really* don't know what significance they'd have had a week or more after they were over. If you happen to know, maybe you can help x.x

Of course, right below that is written 'fal song', so maybe I was just on crack that day -.-;;;

I was lucky enough to get some guy on the line who was a cable tech, and he was bitching because we don't have any on-call techs to go out within the hour when someone's out of service. I was *really* tempted to tell him to go fix the problem himself if he had such a problem with waiting 18 hours.

ok, bed now. yay ^__^

//Hotohori last sparkled at 01:55 a.m.//
//Friday, January 31, 2003//

bloggage! it is *freaking* cold here. by some estimates, negative ten degrees last night. which is, incidentally, the overnight low estimate for most of this week *shudders*

maybe I can still take my folks up on their offer to use their arizona house while they're in france next month.

you know, if people work 14 hour days seven days a week, they shouldn't get cranky when they have trouble scheduling an appointment to have the cable guys come out. our techs can't work 24-7. can you imagine them trying to climb poles in negative-ten degree pitch blackness? I feel bad that they can't just hibernate until spring.

Some of the newer CCP's are just coming due for their spend-a-day-with-a-tech time. Poor bastards.

some dork I had today was whining about how, when the tech took extra time out of his schedule to hook up some of the customer's new special equipment (not something we normally do), he didn't take even more time to show him how to use it. the caller seemed to think this was a great crime. loser.

you know, when the first thing a caller says is 'i want you to tell me why you can't get anyone out here before wednesday!' you can tell it's not gonna be a pretty call. I checked this guy's records after he hung up on me, and mine was at least the 5th call in the last 6 months in which he'd threatened to call his lawyer. and those were just the people who *had* noted the account.

Is super bowl sunday next weekend? And if so, can I call in sick? I do *not* wanna deal with frothing-at-the-mouth football fans whose cable can't be fixed until monday.

it's amazing the kinds of thoughts intense boredom, coupled with lack of sleep, can cause. I was doing nothing at work today, just staring at my folded arms, and it occurred to me to wonder why your arm hairs stop growing at a certain length. sad, isn't it?

I have a DVD player! *beams* I shall soon be the proud owner of the complete bells-and-whistles edition of the first LotR movie. once my tax money comes in, that is -.-;;

should people who 'don't know how' to check for loose wires, and who have to look to me for instructions on how to turn their TV off, even be allowed to own a television?

I love the people who rant about 'I've had so much trouble with your service' and you check their history and the last complaint and/or service call they had was 3 years ago. Don't lie to the cable company, people! we'll know!

and here's another fun dialogue -
me - 'ok, now I need you to unplug your cable box, and leave it unplugged for about thirty seconds. half a minute.'
*two-second pause*
cust - 'ok, it's unplugged.'
me - 'ok, now we're...'
*cust interrupts* 'ok, I plugged it back in. was that long enough?'

Oh, and the star intellectual who read me every number off of the back of his cable box *except* the one I asked for. How unclear is 'it's seven digits and starts with GI, G as in george, I as in india'? Ok, it might not be easy to find, but what's the point in reading off all the other numbers? If you're thinking that it makes you look less stupid for not being able to find the right one - you're wrong!

you know, I've been caught picking up the phone with a full mouth on a couple of occasions, but if you're the one *making* the call, doesn't it make sense to take 3 seconds to chew and swallow first?

i saw a funny ad the other day. it was an ad for a new super-meaty spaghetti sauce and it had a pic of a plate of spaghetti all sauced up, accompanied by the words 'want more meat? have a steak.' *snrk*

oh, and I found another truly lame horror-movie title - the terror of the tongs. I swear I didn't make that up.

I was trying to troubleshoot with a woman today, and at various points in the conversation, she asserted that the problem definitely couldn't be coming from outside the house, that it surely wasn't a problem with the wiring/hardware inside the house, and that it couldn't possibly be a problem with her cable boxes. I'm still trying to figure out where she thinks the problem was...

there's a bible college that got assigned a phone numebr starting with 666 *snickers*

here's a brilliant bit of news reporting concerning some wrap-up being done on a murder case - "The victim declined to comment." Maybe this news team should have followed the victim's example. (and yes, I got this from a cartoon)

and from the same cartoon, another bit of stunning detective work - 'Sources say the fire was cause by a flame or something hot.'

Someone else posted a magnificent quote from Martin Luther King, Jr - "Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missles and misguided men." Kinda makes you stop and think about the world we live in, doesn't it?

well, grandma and grandpa have finally sold their house, so my sibs and I gathered for the 'what would we like from the estate sale' discussion. I feel unpleasantly like a vulture. And the sad part is, I'm glad I got the chance to do this. When my other grandmother had hers, I didn't, and consequently have no mementos from her house, which I've always thought was a shame.

I'm so unproductive in the winter. I get home from work, huddle under a blanket in front of the computer and the whole time I'm e-mailing or whatever, I'm thinking 'I'd be much warmer if I were in bed' Maybe that's why I sleep so much - preferable to the alternative?

I managed to successfully give blood on Thursday! Yay!! And the donation went perfectly smoothly, too *preens*

I went to my bro's buffy-thon this weekend, which reminded me why I am a troll most of the time. Too many people, too many strangers, and with ten people in the room, I sure as heck couldn't catch what was going on in the buffyverse. and lemme tell you, when you go to a TV marathon and can't hear the TV, it's not much fun.

i wanna know what kind of logic can lead a person with a $75/month cable package, whose only payment in the past 3 months has been $24, to honestly think their balance is squared away. This baffles me.

and I really wanna know since when does channel 7's programming constitute 'nothing'? we changed the lineup in this one town and a woman's trying to tell me one channel is missing. I ask her what she's seeing on the missing channel and she says 'nothing'. we spend the next half hour going in circles trying vainly to fix this before she mentions that 'well, it's not really that this stuff is gone, it's just the channels, they're all mixed up' - ie, in new places. Her beloved soapnet was now on ch 34 and had been replaced by channel 7 x.x;;;

Oh, and you know how sometimes giving your equipment a good thwack seems to make it behave? there's an official term for this now - 'percussive maintenence' *giggles*

You know, I'd never heard of someone complaining because their tech was *on time* - until today. The tech was on time, but they, of course, were late. Sorry, peeps, if your tech has an arrival window of between 3 and 5 pm, you kinda can't just get home at 4h45 and expect the tech to be there. you think these guys have enough time to stop by your house every five minutes to check and see if you've gotten home yet? And they think that as long as they call before it's 5, they're entitled to have the tech come back out. they don't like to hear that we can't do that.

ok, bed now. bed will be much warmer than this....

//Hotohori last sparkled at 12:58 a.m.//
//Monday, January 20, 2003//

finally I return to happy blogland ^_^

I have been trying to be a good girl and go to bed early so that I will not be too tired for the kodocha marathon pt 2 this weekend ^__^

And am I ever glad this weekend is here. If the full moon brings out all the looneys, then the just-shy-of-1st-quarter moon must bring out all of the assholes. Every single caller was yelling, each one was pissed, each one was stupid, each one was argumentative....christ. Like the guy who said we sabatoged his cable so as to be able to gain entry into his house. Or the guy who screamed at me for a good ten solid minutes - I had to hold my headset a full inch from my ear the whole time.

And I'm afraid I have to offer an apology to the people for whom I was going to tape the extended edition of the fellowship of the rings - I wasn't aware that it was only going to be PPV for a mere 3 weeks - and those the three weeks right before xmas. Having seen other movies lurk around on PPV for months at a time, I figured I'd be ok to wait until after all the xmas insanity was over before trying to sit down for a 4-hour move. guess I lose. sorry, all. *sigh*

and here's another dumb-crook story - apparently in Australia they've been having a rash of people grabbing purses and bags from the passenger side of cars that are stopped for red lights. Well, one guy who did that is going to be very unhappy when he finds that the bag he stole from a professional snake handler contains nothing more than a four-foot-long, highly poisonous red-bellied black snake *snrk*

How dumb do you have to be not to know your own address? I was talking to some college kid and the most he could tell me about his address was that it was 'Peters Hall, Babson College' *rolls eyes*

And speaking of dumb, how dumb do you have to be to try troubleshooting with a customer when the very first page of there account says 'outage declared'?

I looooooove guys with English accents. yumyumyum...

Has there been even a single day this week when it hasn't snowed? Ugh!

You know, I know the BMI is supposed to be the definitive measure of whether you're overweight, but I'm sorry, the proper body weight for me is *not* 100-127 pounds. I've *been* 127 pounds, and anyone who remembers me from that time can tell you that I was *not* healthy. If you can see my ribs when my arms are down by my sides, then I am too skinny.

They've found a way to quantify happiness. Why doesn't that surprise me? *sighs*

Now, here's a quote I found that just alarms me - it's from an article on whether kids' backpacks are too heavy. "Efforts should be redirected towards educating children on proper backpack safety habits rather than restricting weight loads." Is it just me, or is it totally ludicrous that there is even such a concept as proper backpack safety habits?

Man, some of the people who call me are soooooooo drunk...
me - "Channel 412? Are you sure it's not channel 402?"
guy - *slurring heavily* "Nah, s'channel four...uh..one, two! Yeah."
me - "All right, then..." *puts on the PPV on channel 402*
guy - "Hey! there it is! How'd ya do that?"

I feel bad for one poor tech of ours. the customer called me to ask a bunch of questions while the tech was there, and basically ended up changing his entire order. poor bastard.

//Hotohori last sparkled at 02:22 a.m.//
//Friday, January 10, 2003//

meep! Good and bad day. bad because the handle for the chimney flue broke off. As in *off* off, not just 'I have to stick the handle back on' off. Needless to say, Murphy decreed that the flue would be *open* at the time, so now all my expensive heat is pouring out the chimney while my apartment freezes. I've managed to rig up a blockade of beanbags and junk, but I really hope it won't have to last an eon while the maintenence guys try to get a chimney contractor to come back out again. We all remember last time, when I got so fed up with waiting that I fixed the damned chimney myself, ne? I'd do that now, but it's not really fixable by any means I can see.

Good day, because I earned $32.50 per hour today, for a total of $260 just for sitting around putzing around online most of the day - I set a new record for fewest calls received - 15! Have I mentioned that I love my job?

I had this one highly entertaining fellow who wanted to add HBO just for one movie. Now, as silly as that is, I don't care if he wants to do it (I've talked to people that switch their packages around a dozen times a month, trying to catch this movie or that), but this involves a change-of-service fee to both add and remove the service, which generally makes it not worth bothering with. Barely does mention of this fee make it out of my mouth when he says, in the most imperious manner imaginable, 'Waive it.' I actually said 'excuse me, sir?' (those who've read my little polite-speech interpretation card know what that means!) So he was like 'You people owe me because you fucked up my service. I know you can waive those fees. C'mon, the movie's already started.' So I said, none too warmly 'Sir, I can't just waive fees because I feel like it. I'll have to do some research.' He was pissed. I read the notes and found out that yes, there had been a billing error, which we corrected - and gave him $20 for his trouble! So I explained that we didn't owe him anything, and he said fine, fine, just put the damned movie on. Then I tried to explain that since it's not a PPV, he has to call back to have it removed afterwards. man, what a temper tantrum. *shakes head*

I also love callers who accuse us of trying to steal from them *rolls eyes*

Why would somebody go out and buy a top-of-the-line surround sound system and then try to hook it up to a TV that is *so* old that it not only isn't capable of interacting with a remote control, but has the 2 channel dials, 2-13 and 13+ (remember those?) That thing didn't even have inputs, you had to attach little alligator-type clips to screws on the back of it! people are weird.

Hey, remember the bint who whined about 5 previously-unknown channels not coming in on 1 of her 3 TVs? well, the tech went out for the trouble call and found that the channels she'd been lookin at weren't in her package, even though she'd sworn to me that the channel numbers she was looking at belonged to channels she had. What gets my goat is not that she's a moron who lied to me, but the tech is gonna think *I'm* the moron, which could reflect poorly on me. Any time we send out a tech who doesn't need to have gone, it goes against our numbers.

And why does some yutz ignore 2 out of 4 criteria to issue an extension to a chronically delinquent customer? especially an extension that's twice as long as we're supposed to *ever* give?

I finally got my Sopranos jacket!! it's a *nice* piece of goods - all genuine leather, zip-out lining, and the 'sopranos' is just stitched into the back as black-on-black, so it's not really gaudy-looking. That's gonna get me a pretty penny ^__^

Not to sound politically incorrect, but how can a blind person watch TV? Isn't the picture a fairly integral part of what's going on? ^.^;;;;

You know, it's a good thing I have a nice entertaining job, otherwise this would be a really boring blog, ne? What can I say, I'm a sad, pathetic person with no life outside of work. At least I can be amusing (though that can arguably depend on your definition of 'amusing')

Our esteemed president seems to be taking after a certain ex-veep who shall remain named Quayle - "The education issue ought to be discussed about," and "More and more of our imports are coming from overseas." Both real quotes, those.

Speaking of Bush the scary, a poll found him to be by far the most admired man in the US (28% of respondents - next-runner-up was Carter, at 9%) Is it just me, or is it truly disturbing that a war-hawking, wants-to-run-everyone's-lives-according-to-his-blueprint, small-minded bigot is three times as admired as the man who just won the nobel peace prize?

I can't believe time.com listed '8 Mile' as one of the top 10 movies this year, praising Eminem as a really wonderful actor *rolls eyes*

TVGuide.com has a poll - who's sexier, Aragorn or Legolas? Which wouldn't be particularly big news, save that they have accompanying picture galleries of both of them 'to help you decide' *drools idly* Legolas is winning, btw, 60/40 *laughs*

Some guy in France who crashed his car through a roadblock and led the police in a big ol' chase is claiming that he was being chased by Martians at the time. Surprisingly enough, he was *not* drunk at the time (they're still waiting to hear back about the drug tests, though)

Here's a good point raised by an article about overused phrases - what's with obituary writers using the phrase 'untimely death'? Some deaths are fairer than others? Where are all the timely deaths?

I like political cartoons, because they poke at all the things that bother me, and yet, lately, it's been so depressing reading them. A lot of the crap they're pointing out is downright scary. It's one thing to poke fun at Clinton when he can't keep it in his pants - when you're reading about impending nuclear war, the sale of Americans' privacy, and the replacement of the Constitution with the Bible, it's not nearly as amusing. Of course, it makes you wake up and pay attention to just what the hell is going on, which is the point. But still.

Warning - completely opinionated political rant ahead which will piss off many people - particularly if you didn't vote. If you don't want to hear my opinions inflict blunt trauma on your own, you don't want to read this paragraph. Ok, that said - I heard an awful lot of people say that they didn't vote because either they didn't know the candidates, or the issues, or couldn't bother, or couldn't get a ballot in time, or whatever. Mostly, though, it was the 'I don't know the candidates' bit. And I'm generally the first person to concede that voting straight ticket is a bad idea. But there was so damned much at stake in this election. This nation just gave Bush a green light to do *whatever* he wants for the next 2 years. That includes starting nuclear wars, violating our privacy, inflicting his religious views on the general populace, and a whole host of other ills. Isn't it enough to know that this is not a good idea? How much more did you need to know? If everyone who just couldn't be bothered had actually taken the time to vote, how different could this election, and this world, have been? And don't even get me started on the people who willfully ignore the outside world because 'the news is depressing' and then says that they don't know anything about what's going on. That evokes nothing in me but the purest contempt. Ok, I feel better now that I've vented that. Needless to say, this wasn't aimed at anyone in particular, and if you disagree with me, I don't particularly care. I *really* don't care enough to argue the point, so if you disagree, you might as well save your breath -- I'll just ignore you. Yes, you're entitled to your opinions. So am I, and this is one of them.

Can you believe some jackass deliberately drove into a telephone pole because one of his car speaker shorted out and he was trying to 'jolt things back into place'? *shakes head* It's a sad, sad world, this.

I totally need sleep. I had a grand old New Year's Eve party, which included me getting a total of about 4 hours sleep. So, g'night!

//Hotohori last sparkled at 02:16 a.m.//
//Thursday, January 2, 2003//

meep! tis late, so no time for a long entry, but I just found this online and *had* to share!

you know despair.com - the website with all those anti-inspirational posters? well, they've just released a new product - 'bittersweets' - those little valentine's candy hearts with sayings on them like 'we need 2 talk' and 'i need space', and 'just a friend' *rolls on the floor, laughing herself sick* I have *got* to get my hands on some of those!! ^_____^

//Hotohori last sparkled at 02:56 a.m.//
//Tuesday, December 31, 2002//

gyeah, it's been too long since I blogged >.<; I don't know how I'm so behind on stuff. must be my thrice-bedamned need for insane amounts of sleep. yuck.

THERE ARE MORE VERY SECRET DIARIES!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I saw the two towers, and it rocked my world. the stupid fecking theater cancelled the show that would have allowed me to make it to work with a reasonable margin of time, so I had to go to a later showing at a theater farther from work, and as a consequence was not really on time. I managed to slip in right on the button, but since we're supposed to be logged into the computer, signed onto the software, and ready to take calls when the clock ticks over, I can't really say I was on time. But since all they see is the punch-in time, I should be ok. really, I probably should have rescheduled, but since I'd gotten up *four hours early* to go see it, that option just was *not* attractive to me.

anyhow, the two towers. the below stuff is pretty much spoiler-free - I left it deliberately vague (mainly by using a lot of antecedent-less [unspecified] pronouns). anyone who's seen it will know what I'm talking about, but if not, it won't ruin anything.

it irks the hell out of me what they did with faramir, but he was a much-beloved character of mine, so that may just be me. they changed a whole heck of a lot, and I know it was to make a better movie (and I can't argue that it was a *fantastic* movie), but...argh...

however, on the upside...mmmmmmm, acrobatic elf....

I wonder how many people noticed Grima crying in that one shot. I wanna know what the heck was up with that!

hooray for pippin growing a brain! let's hope he doesn't lose it in the next film >.<;

I can't say I entirely approved of Gimli's relegation to comic relief status, but oh well. And legolas is unbelievably cool (more so than he was before, believe it or not). I love the competition between them.

I personally think Gollum freaked me out more in the first movie, but that's because you barely saw him. everything's scarier when your imagination is doing the dirty work. drag it out into the light of day, and it loses half the scary right there.

I missed the huorns. I think those would have been damned cool...*sigh*

and you *know* in that one scene between aragorn and legolas, the thought that's running through eowyn's head watching them is 'so *that's* how it is!' I mean, I'm sorry, but they look *so* gay right there! ...not that that's a *bad* thing...mmm...*.*

when my sister and I pointed this out to our brother, he laughed so hard I thought he was going to burst an artery. he was *literally* rolling on the floor, pounding his fists on the carpet. his reaction was funnier than the thing itself.

that was one of two extremely funny things that occurred that night, but if I ever mention the other one again, my sister will kill me. so ask me in private if you're curious ^.~ (just kidding, chibi-chan! put down the knife! ^.^;;)

i need to wrap presents...

why do people call me to arrange for a technician to come out and do an installation when they have to check with someone else to know when's a good time to scheduled the appointment, and they're not even sure of the address that needs installation?

you know, we used to offer playboy as a regular old subscription channel. for x dollars a month, all the softcore you want. then we decided not to do this, instead opting to sell these channels only as blocks of PPV. people ask me why this is, and I really can't tell them the real reason - money! even if playboy had been twice as expensive as other premiums, it couldn't have been more than $30 a month. now, compare that to the PPV, which is $12 for a single three hour block, and *you* do the math!

you know, some schools are offering courses in 'peace studies'? I think that's a great idea.

I cannot *believe* Fox is cancelling Firefly. Retards. We all need to e-mail them and tell them they suck. (well, probably not in such terms, or they'll just throw out the e-mails, but you get the idea)

do you know there's a swim coach who decided to encourage his team by tossing a six-foot crocodile in the pool with them? granted, the croc's jaws were taped shut and it was declawed, but still. the coach says it really does improve the team's times though...-.-;

and a catholic church newsletter published an article about problems the clergy are having in this day and age, including the story of a nun who handled an incident of hostility rather well. a random jerk decided to yell at her as she passed in the street 'hey, fucking nun!' to which she replied 'one or the other, but I can't be both!'

they rearranged the teams at work. this displeases me, as I liked the people on my team, and I liked my nice window seat *pouts*

sometimes I really wish that well-meaning people wouldn't fiddle with the buttons on their remotes in a vain attempt to fix their cable. chances are way too good that you'll just screw it up even worse. (of course, it's not like I hear about the people who succeed, but still)

I wanna know why in the name of all that's holy did some loser send a tech out to a perfectly good customer's house to shut off their cable. It wasn't set up as a voluntary disconnection (possibly because the customer had indeed requested no such thing) and it wasn't set up as a non-pay disconnection (possibly because the customer had a sterling payment record). Nope, just a 'special request - disco' category of work order - generally something we only use if we find out someone's illegally stealing cable, or as a follow-up to an electronic disconnection, or so forth. But neither I nor my super could figure out why the hell someone had set this chick up to be hacked. she was very nice about it, but man, if I could find the dumbass responsible for that one...

I got coached for only my 2nd time the other day - apparently both the coaches on my team thought the other one was coaching me *snrk* I got good reviews, though - aside from a couple of technical glitches, the coach said I had the best phone manner of anyone she'd ever coached *beams*

i actually taked to a woman who thought i was so nice that she was going to write an actual physical letter to my boss saying how cool i am. go me! ^__^

i got called 'happy-face' today by a very nice older gentleman who apparently approved of my cheery phone manner ^.^; which was nice, because it came right after a call from a woman who wanted to bitch more than she wanted her cable fixed. every single word I said was interrupted by either a long-suffering sigh or a 'jesus, mary, joseph!' With lots of extremely melodramatic 'I'm *begging* you, *anything*, just get this fixed!' Which was bull, because she didn't do a damn thing I told her to, because she was too busy bitching. oh, and I wasn't listening to a word she said, even when the problem was the words she *hadn't* said. and it wasn't even a box problem, it was a remote problem, so it beats me how she thought I was gonna fix it without her doing anything. adn then she accused me of wanting to hang up on her, and of lying to her, and all sorts of crap. with those people, you really can't win. no matter how much they protest it, they *don't* want their cable fixed, they want their greivance. they grouse and lie and refuse to cooperate and don't pay the slightest shred of attention to what you're telling them, and how the heck do you help people like that?

does anyone have cat's email? I need to get in touch with her, but since I work nights and she works days, phone and AIM are problematic. help would be much appreciated.

I screwed up taping the first Harry Potter movie for the bajillionth time. I've come to the conclusion that the Forces That Be do not want me ot have a copy of this movie. Everything that can go wrong, has. I'll forget to set my alarm, or my VCR screws up and only records static, or they'll preempt it -- my HBO even died! none of the other channels, just HBO! (well, and cinemax, but narf)

trent lott is now claiming that the whole racist comment thing was him "falling into a 'trap' set by his political enemies" *snrk* no, trent, you're just stupid. that one was *all* you.

I've determined that the software we use at work is retarded. I was closing an account today and got the familiar little 'you've made changes, do you want to save them?' notice. so I hit cancel, looked over the window, couldn't find anything, shrugged and hit 'update' And got an error message 'no change in information' -.-;;

and here's a story sure to amuse -- this guy made a donation to a college, nice big lump of money, so that they'd name a wing of a building after him. Well, the college finds out he'd been writing obnoxious letters to mixed-race couples promoting 'racial purity'. So, they decline to name the wing after him, and use his money to create a scholarship fund for minority students *snrk* He sued to get his money back, but a judge ruled in favor of the college.

personally, i don't think you sould be allowed to make stipulations on charitable donations. if it's a *truly* charitable act, you should be willing to let the money go wherever it's needed most. for example, at our school there was this one dipshit who gave millions of dollars to the college and insisted it be used for statuary instead of funding departments or research or scholarships. that pissed me off. granted, you can argue that it's the donor's money, so they can impose whatever conditions they like, but still....

I took a mere 18 calls today. I think it's a new record. that's barely more than 2 calls per hour. Of course, moving from one cubicle to another took a good half-hour, but still...

Oh, and I know I talk about work too much, so sorry. if you don't like that stuff, you can skip those parts.

ok, I need bed now - gonna go give blood soon, so I need to be well rested ^__^

//Hotohori last sparkled at 02:46 a.m.//
//Monday, December 23, 2002//

short bloggy today - tired and headachy - but I just *had* to squee...

I SAW THE TWO TOWERS!!!!!!

*.* major ranting about this epic event in my sad little life will broadcast tomorrow - at the bottom of the entry for nice easy spoiler-avoidance ^__^

//Hotohori last sparkled at 02:22 a.m.//
//Friday, December 20, 2002//

tirrrrrrrred. I keep waking up thirsty a dozen times a night. ick.

some dipshit threw a first-class cow because it was going to take us (gasp) two whole days to come out and fix five of her 300 stations (that were only out on one of her 3 TVs) and you know what the kicker was? she didn't even *know* she had these stations until I mentioned it! obviously, I should've kept my mouth shut.

I had some chick protesting that she couldn't have been shut off for nonpayment, she'd just set up the account in october. which is nice, but she had not yet made a signle payment. just how long did you think you could get cable without paying for it before we shut you off, weirdo? and then she's like 'so you're not going to help me fix this' - well, no, since I already know what the problem is, and until you give us money, it's not fixable. she bitched so much I agreed to run through some 'troubleshooting' with her - and she then refused to lift a damned finger! dude, if you want me to try to fix your cable, you have to work with me!

whenever I go sit in the break room, the lights are motsly off. why do people always sit in the dark on their breaks? weirdos.

my phone died again. luckily, this time the problem fixed itself. but I still missed talking to my big bro, which is annoying in the extreme (no, not my biological brother)

I got an autograph from one of the Sopranos cast! Not a main character, but still, pretty nifty, eh? Btw, if anyone reading this is a sopranos fan, let me know, because I've got plenty of nifty Sopranos merchandise, from a watch to a leather jacket, that I'm looking to unload. If I don't get any takers, I'll just fob it off on ebay, so if you want it, let me know ^_^

You know, I'm not inclined to be understanding when some caller's whining about how she can't pay because she's on welfare and only get her check once a month - when I see that she has a $90-a-month cable package!

Speaking of things that might be of interest to my readers, I found a real, live-action shounen-ai movie! With real live bishonen! It's a kawaii little film titled 'Billy's Hollywood screen kiss', and anyone interested in seeing it, just let me know, we can do a movie night or something ^__^

we had a fun time at work today - a channel that wasn't supposed to be broadcasting in a variety of towns (but was being picked up from a neighboring town) was lost to several folks when we started broadcasting on the supposedly empty channel. Boy, were people snippity about that! One loser ate up half my lunch break being a moron about it - I must've explained the situation six times!

And *why* do I keep getting call from people that speak no english? you try talking someone who speaks only cantonese through troubleshooting a cable box, or getting a german-only speaker to reprogram their TV to turn off the secondary audio programming x.x;;;;

And I had a lovely gentleman who was either drunk or just crude - when I put on his movie and asked if there was anything else I could do for him, he replied 'well, yeah, but I can't say it over the phone' *rolls eyes* this after ten minutes of calling me baby and honey and asking me if I were single.

hey chibi-chan, got a couple questions - for one, I need have my spare car keys back. I left them in the ignition of the cavalier when I drove to keene, since I was in a hurry. I guess I'll pick up the emergency car kit at the tiem time >.<; also, was it you or karasu to whom I lent my firefly tape? I'd really like to know. Also, I need the website for that anime con (was it just animeboston.com?) so I can go register ^__^

ok, s'all folks - bedtime for me! (and here's hoping I sleep well tonight)

//Hotohori last sparkled at 01:52 a.m.//
//Tuesday, December 17, 2002//

Happy Birthday, Kimura-chan!!! *large glomplings*

and I'm not really late, because it's still thursday to me x.x;;;;;;

ps - I hope you haven't found me an xmas gift yet, because I don't have a b-day prezzie for you, and I'll feel like a ratbag if you give me something x.x;;;;

...ok, shutting up now x.x

//Hotohori last sparkled at 04:14 a.m.//
//Friday, December 13, 2002//

wai, more bloggy things! today is friday the 13 (technically) which, is supersition holds true, will be an extra-lucky day for me. I hope so - between my car, being late, being tired all week, being hungry most of the week, and all that other good jazz, it's been a long and lousy week. but I plan for the weekend to be good anyhow. tomorrow I go spend money on discounted explosives, then watch movies or read a good book and make a nice dinner, then saturday will be a cookie-making marathon ^_^ Nice relaxing weekend, no time constraints or waking up early

I am way too nice. Customer calls up and asks me the name of 'a movie with Richard Gere playing a lawyer'. Can you believe I found it for her? Yeah, neither do I x.x;

*snrk* TV Guide had this tremendously entertaining and immensely nasty review of a 'star dating game' show - "When did reality TV get *this* desperate? has-been celebrities are paired off with normal people while the cameras capture every wince-inducing moment. The first victim's date was sufficiently unimpressed to comment, upon meeting him, 'who have I offended?' Me, and probably most sentient viewers."

we got to sharing some 'dorkball customer' moments at the last team meeting. two of my favorites - a woman who called Rich a 'god damned son of a bitch' when he told her that the eternal word christian network wasn't available in her area, and a guy who, first thing, said to Eva 'Look, this is a problem with the cable not working. is there a *man* there I could speak to?' (this also happened to me at fidelity, as some of you may recall)

there gonna be switching the teams around soon. this makes me sad, I like my team. I also like my seat. ;_;

oh, and any those of you who may use ebay - if you get something asking you to send info to 'ebayupdates.com, it's a scam. (this is not just another internet rumor - CNN.com had an article around it)

And now bush is threatening to use nukes against anyone who takes action against us. lovely. ever since WW2, the entire human race has managed to have at least just enough civility to refrain from using nuclear weapons - and now *he'll* be the one to open that can of worms. I can't wait until everyone else jumps on the bandwagon. And don't get me started on his charming new plan to allow the loggers into the protected forests under the guise of 'reducing the risk of potential forest fires'

Oh, and if you go to ucomics.com, today's (12/12) For Better or For Worse beautifully illustrates a conversation I've had with my mother more than a few times (minus the baby topic, of course)

we've been getting a *lot* of out of market calls lately - usually from california, I've noticed. I wonder why that is.

*giggles* I saw the *funniest* cartoon today - the caption was the line from 'frosty the snowman' about there being magic in the hat, because when they put it on his head he began to dance around - and the picture is of a snowman running around grabbing at his hat, screaming 'ahhhh, it's full of lice! get it off, get it off!!!' Wrong on *so* many levels, but freaking hilarious!

I love 'news of the weird'. just a couple of examples: a town decided to throw away an ugly donated statue. some guy is salvaging at the dump and takes it home and puts it in his yard. the town sues to guy to get the statue back - not to put it back up themselves, but to make sure it goes to the dump and *stays* there this time

Certain karaoke bars have removed the frank sinatra song 'my way' from their playlists because of the frequency of impolite listeners yelling 'yeah, and your way sucks!'

Also good for a chuckle is Dave Barry's weekly column (of course) He reports that there is an honest to god company out there whose product is to mount machine guns onto SUVs (not currently available in the US, at least) I also particularly relished his comment about 'the little drummer boy' xmas song; somehting along the lines of 'if someone was banging a drum within fifty feet of *my* newborn, I'd take his drumsticks and shove them up his rum-pa-pum-pum.' *snrk* Oh, and his 'holiday gift guide' is *hysterical* - duct tape purses, a flatulence telephone, shotgun-shell holiday lights, and a body stapler kit! (for more, go see http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/special_packages/gift_guide/4502186.htm )

And some guy today wanted it officially noted on his account that "AT&T stinks." He wanted to know when we were going to survey the people of his town to find out what they thought of AT&T. what I thought was 'uh-oh', but what I said was 'we don't tend to conduct surveys, but if you have any comments, I'd be happy to make a note of them and pass them along to my supervisors.' "It stinks." 'Is there any particular problem we can focus on improving?' "It stinks." 'Is there anything special you'd like done for you, specifically? "It stinks." So, I guess we stink -.-;

And I wanna know *who* the hell opened up an account at the same address, for a person with the same last name and same phone number, as the previous tenant - who has owed us over $900 for over two years! Honestly, I'm at a loss to explain how the balance got that high - they don't have any multi-hundred dollar unreturned equipment fees, which is where cut-off balances usually get jacked up.

I had someone tell the boss nice things about me today ^__^

And I saw a shooting star tonight!!!! *beams* I actually forgot to make a wish, because I was so excited I was too busy bouncing up and down and going 'squee!!!' ^.^;;

Oh, and I made 2 digital sales today, so I have a reasonable chance of winning the sales-day-of-the-month prize (a $25 gift card) But I won't know until Monday, probably -.-;

LotR premieres on Starz this weekend. I'll be taping it, along with the PPV extended edition. Why do I need both versions? If you need to ask, you'll never understand.

Oh, and hey, chibi-chan - Spike made it onto the TV Guide's '50 things to love about television' list! ^o^

//Hotohori last sparkled at 02:47 a.m.//
//Friday, December 13, 2002//

mergh, new bloggy. hotmail at some point decided it was going to eat all 'sent messages' over 30 days old, so god only knows how many conversations I just lost.

I need sleep so much. goddamned neighbors blasting music again today. I finally put a little semi-polite 'I'm sick of pounding of the floor, keep your fucking music down' note on their door.

I love the twits who threaten to cancel their service over a one-time $1.99 processing fee.

And I had yet another guy demanding three year's worth of back pay for a box he claims he never had. fucking morons.

I got called charming ^__^

You know, I feel really bad for people who are so addicted to cigarettes that they have to go outside every couple of hours in weather like yesterday's to have a butt. That's sad.

Some dimwit added $28 worth of 'additional outlet installation' charges to a simple HBO order. I was the lucky schmuck they guy called up and said 'what the hell is this?' Granted, he was very nice about it, considering, but what the hell *was* it? I mean, usually when someone fucks up I can at least understand *why* they did what they did - forgetting that a truck needs to be rolled to install a trap, or neglecting to check if a house is digital ready. but this, I had *no* idea why that person added those charges. And wasn't it fun admitting that to the customer! x.x

and I get graded on how many adjustments I put on people's bills, so things like that really annoy me.

know what I don't get? there's a $15 reconnection fee if you account lapses so far into delinquency that there's an electronic shutoff. I've seen accounts where this is happening every month or so. If you can afford to pay literally $15 for nothing, why can't you pay the bill on time?

some guy called me up and asked if we did web hosting -.-

yesterday was ickfully busy. 40 calls in call x.x;;

here's an excellent quote/comment on the last election -- 'when people feel uncertain, they'd rather have somebody who's strong and wrong rather than somebody's who's weak and right.' Explains a lot, doesn't it? It really boggled me how inexplicable the results of that election were, but the opinionated are nothing if not strong in their convictions. The quote was from Clinton, interestingly enough. I just hope whatever Democrats we can manage to elect, once the country wakes up and realizes it doesn't want to become the next Nazi nation, can manage to undo all the damage Bush and Co. are wreaking. Though I doubt it - especially where foreign afairs are concerned - some of those guys have proven that they have very very long memories.

And let's hope Ashcroft doesn't pull me in for this blog entry being unrighteous and unpatriotic, now that he has access to the miniscule details of everyone's personal lives. *gets a mop for the sarcasm*

I sent an account down to the billing and research department to have a $180 unreturned equipment fee removed, since the equipment in question was long since returned. they did it, but sent back an e-mail 'you should have done this yourself' Like I can credit an account $180 - they'd have my hide! Losers.

Can you believe my employee discount's getting better? *beams* internet will become totally free, as will my first two cable boxes. Not that I need two boxes (not having two TVs) but still! Plus I'll get half off all PPVs and video on demand when it gets here. *grins*

I got a pound of pasta at work today. and not just any pasta, either - genuine original Sopranos gourmet pasta *snrk* I wonder why I got it - i just got back from break and it was on my chair. I nearly sat on it. Just what I need, more pasta x.x;;

The fireworks store has a buy-one-get-one-free sale on. I'm going to go out this weekend and blow a chunk of change. I deserve it, i've been good.

although I can't be *totally* reckless - that nice little unallotted $450 is probably going to end up largely going to my f*^%ing car. Which died, again. This time the starter died. Rendering me unable to get to the blood drive for which I spent nearly a week preparing, and throwing me into hysterics courtesy of my very-near inability to find any way of getting to work for 3 days. Luckily I have a saintly sister who was kind enough to lend me her car *glompies* Thankies, chibi-chan!

Oh, and wondering where the $450 if going to come from? It's the first payment out of grandma's money, which seems to have settled. Of course, my parents have placed the money in an interest-bearing account and will be doling it out as they deem fit, which is annoying, but at least I'll be getting it. I *had* wanted to pay off my student loans *quickly*, before the interest ate any more of my soul than it has to, and before any life-shattering disaster that would cause me to *really* need to be debt-free (read: car dying permanently) Grargh. Well, I'll allot the majority of my tax returns to it, that'll help, and I can at least set *part* of the payment to the same purpose.

Now tell me, would you eat at any restaurant that has the following disclaimer on their menu - "Consumer Advisory Notice: Consuming raw or undercooked meats, poultry, seafood, shellfish, or eggs may increase your risk of foodborne illness, especially if you have certain medical conditions." Dude, I thought it was the *restaurant's* responsibility to make sure food wasn't raw!

I have new wallpaper on my computer-chan. it's a pretty pretty pretty picture of two boys almost-kissing - characters from the web comic arcana, which I highly recommend, if you haven't read it. Heck, it'd be worth it just for this picture *drools idly over wallpaper* Nuriko seems to like it, too - has been behaving very well since I put it up *snrk*

//Hotohori last sparkled at 02:47 a.m.//
//Wednesday, December 11, 2002//

yay! I got my archivies back! *beams* glomps to the chibi-chan, who helped me! ^_^

I found the VCR manual, though it didn't have anything useful. at least I now have a number to call. I hate modern equipment so 'advanced' that if the remote breaks, you're fucked. some functions should *always* be controllable through the machine itself. grr.

mmmmm, cocoa. much good, on yet another freaking cold night. brrrrrr

I had a woman on the phone who was as bad as my mother for yakking. if you listened to our conversation, you'd hear little blips of sound as I try to get a word in edgewise x.x

I don't like reps who blind-transfer calls to me. If I have to transfer a call to another rep, I call them, explain the situation, give them the account info so they can review the file, and *then*, once they're ready, I bring the caller back on the line, introduce them to the new rep, and bid them farewell. If you ask me, it's downright rude to just dial someone's extension and dump the call in their lap without any warning or notice. Especially when you consider that callers who specifically ask for a certain extension generally have fairly complicated problems. And it's rude to the customers, too, because the person who received the transfer may have no idea who they are or what the problem is, so they have to explain everything all over again. *grrs*

Would you believe there's actually a movie out there called 'baby monitor - sound of fear'? Is that sad, or what? (in case your mind is boggling over what sort of movie this could possibly be, it's a babysitter-sleeps-with-husband, wife-plots-murder movie -.-)

They're moving our internet service to 'comcast high speed internet'. Our coach, who was running this week's meeting due to our auspicious leader's training absence, gave us a nifty little acronym - CHSI - cheesy! ^o^ I'm sure I'll never be able to think of it as anything else. *snrk*

This is the same meeting where we went over the HSI 'remote excess...er...access' *giggle*

I got told I sound like a recording today. Apparently I need to put a little more pep into my greeting x.x;;

I also got asked 'are you the person to whom I'm speaking?' -.-;

And then coming home a route 3 detour was so crappily marked that I ended up driving in a big circle because I ended up going to wrong direction on rt 3, wasting ten minutes. I was *not* amused.

garg, this weekend is going to be busy. And I'll be giving blood on saturday, too. So the question is, can I do everything that needs doing on friday, before I end up melding with the couch?

ok, I need bed - gotta get up early so I can run to shaw's - it's the last day of their sale flyer and they have Ben & Jerry's for $1.88 *.*

//Hotohori last sparkled at 03:04 a.m.//
//Thursday, December 5, 2002//

wah, my archives aren't there! Help!!

//Hotohori last sparkled at 02:46 a.m.//
//Wednesday, December 4, 2002//

Lookee, I archived my blog! It *was* getting kinda ridiculous, ne? >.<;;

I spent half an hour running around the floor trying to find someone who knew how to contact the telemarketing department so they could fix an error on an account (not being telemarketing, I didn't have access to the necessary codes to fix it) Then I followed up w/the account later and the dipshit had added the service but not the damn discount code! Argh!

I had some guy tell me today that I was very nice and that 'any guy would be happy to latch onto you' -.-;;

There's a study out there that links mountain biking to impaired male ability to *cough* perform. 'It's the jolting.' *giggles* Scary, ne?

Why is it that even when people are *looking* at my name spelled out, they get it wrong? That *bugs* me!

It was another day of loser co-workers. One scuzzbag in the sales department went and added digital onto the installation order of a woman who had explicitly asked for 'standard only, no box' (he made it free, but *still* - desparate to make your goal, are we?) Then I had a guy call in with all snow on one of his TVs - one rep had told him it was an outage (even though the guy's *other* TV was working just fine) and another just sent a signal and told him to try back tomorrow. You know what it was? The TV just wasn't on channel 03. In fact, the screen was displaying 'ch 46', and the customer said so! Argh!

TV Guide ran an article about the 50 best DVDs out there, and I noticed that DVD's are *expensive*! Granted, a lot of these were special editions or director's cuts, but still! prices averaged between $25-50 apiece!!

I am kicking ass in sales! I had 2 digitals and 4 premiums today ^_^ I've already made my weekly digital goal - which is good, because it gives me the next 2 days to make up for the ground I lost last week! I may actually make my goal this month! *happydance*

Hershey's is making chocolate mint hershey's kisses for the holidays. I bet those don't suck *.*

Did you know there's a 'Bad Sex in Fiction' award? *giggles* I know a whole lot of people who'd qualify for that one!

//Hotohori last sparkled at 02:26 a.m.//
//Wednesday, December 4, 2002//