Revoking the Charter

My internet connection has been hit-or-miss today. I'm about ready to switch to an ISDN or smoke signals, since the cable service is so unreliable and slow. That and Charter unceremoniously declined to interview me for the position of cable guy. I can take my business someplace else, as long as g-diddy still gets his fix.

It was a very productive day by my standards. I did like four loads of laundry, vacuumed another third of my floors, folded the last three weeks' worth of clean laundry, called all my recruiters and informed them of my incentive program, got my head shrunk, and hit Outback to celebrate my sister's cotton transplanniversary.

Anyway, since I don't have anything exciting to report aside from beating all the songs on Monkey level with a gold DK award (I know you're all proud), I'm gonna paste something else that I wrote for the Tech back in the good ole days before they graduated me.

No, I don’t understand the words that are coming out of your mouth.

Depressed at having missed out on celebrating the coming of 2003 with the Western world, I decided I could redeem myself by ringing in the year of the goat. I attended this year’s Spring Festival thinking at worst I’d lose $3 and a couple of hours, but was pleasantly surprised more than once at the vivacity, creativity, and pride that went in to making the evening a memorable one for all in attendance.

I’ve attended my share of Caltech parties, including events put together by just about every student organization on campus, so I speak with some degree of authority when I say that the Caltech C outdid themselves with this one. Never in my career of twenty Decompressions has the Winnett lounge been so packed, nor so well decorated. Everywhere I looked were shiny orb-looking-deals, huge non-ASCII characters, goats and sheep and a plethora of all things Asiatic. The food was abundant and delicious, although I lack the words (literally) to describe exactly what I was eating. Having arrived early, I had the pleasure of watching a hundred people stand in line as I ate, which made savoring the cuisine even more enjoyable.

The festivities were hosted by emcees Xin’ an (Joane) Xiu and Gang Duan. First year grad student Xiu was dressed in an exquisite red and gold satin dress, decorated with Chinese lettering in what I assume to be a traditional fashion. If it isn’t traditional, it needs to be, starting now. Duan was probably wearing clothes too, but because he was standing next to her your humble reporter failed to notice.

The Southern Chinese Youth Association performed classical tunes in a most professional and euphonic fashion, including a spectacular feature with demonstrations of various traditional (or maybe they were cutting edge—Chinese, in any event) wind instruments. I’ve known scores of wind players, but I can’t say that I’ve ever witnessed anyone who could play half a dozen instruments in a row without compromising musicianship. Actually, it’s not correct to say he played them all in a row, because this soloist (whose name I unfortunately neglected to find out) managed to play two of them at once. In tune. And in harmony. The instruments resembled a much finer version of the plastic recorders children play in school, which are not know for their intonation. This man was wailing.

Opening and closing addresses were given by the head of the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles. I had meant to learn Mandarin on Saturday morning, but I overslept, so I missed out on understanding the finer points of what I’m sure was a delightful speech. Most non-Mandarin speakers would’ve been confused at hearing it full speed without subtitles, but once you’ve survived an ACM 95c lecture, you can make sense out of anything.

Party games were a lively diversion, including several rounds of Charades. The clues and answers were transliterated for the rest of us, but for all practical purposes the game was rigged in favor of those who actually knew how to read all the little pictures. The most popular category seemed to be “idiom,” which generally meant I was hosed.

Later, however, I managed to redeem myself. I used my mad linguistics skills, knowledge of song lyrics, and utter imperviousness to embarrassment to win two door prizes in a later contest involving songs with the word “goat.” You had to be there.

An unexpected highlight came from Eli Jorne, a grad student in applied physics who at first glance doesn’t appear Chinese at all, who gave a passionate rendition of a Chinese (I think) song entitled “Girl, Please Look this Way.” His performance was complimented by at least one listener, who noted his astute proficiency in the finer points of Mandarin. I’m jealous, not because he could make the crowd laugh uproariously, but because he knew what they were laughing at. That and he’s a mighty fine singer to boot.

In addition, I got to hear the finest zither performance I’ve ever encontered, saw other students in musical acts, skits with goats and sheep, and interpretive Tai Chi dancing.

All in all, I’d say the Chinese C has raised the bar for heritage. I know culture isn’t a competitive sport, but I may just be persuaded away from KSA, OASIS, or CLASES in favor of these goat-loving people with the Karaoke machine and all the other traditional Chinese cultural gadgets.

What Women's Lib Movement?

In addition to teaching the art of shorthand, the book I got for a quarter has some interesting advice for would-be shorthanders. Women readers should be careful reading this; your bra might spontaneously combust.

The Thing About Onions...

...is that they can make you cry.

On the plus side, the customer who bought the one item I sold today also got the replacement guarantee, so I'm up to 0.76%. Woohoo.

My Sharpening Days May Be Numbered

Yesterday was fun. I've sold a total of zero replacement/service guarantees for the month of June, for a total of zero percent of my sales. It's not that I'm not trying, mind you, but the more pressure they put on me to sell the things, the worse I feel for my customers, and the less enthusiastic I feel about selling them.

So of course I had to watch the training video again, in accordance with policy. This time they made me watch it standing up, because if I got to sit in a chair it wouldn't be "like a punishment." Then I got in trouble for going back to watch it without consulting with all three managers. It sure is fun having to ask permission to do something you've been ordered to do, but it comes with the territory when you have three bosses who actually pay attention to you.

The worst part was that they revoked my yo-yoing privileges. I'm not allowed to touch the Yomega for a full week, and in the meantime, I'm supposed to handle products that aren't selling well, or that have a higher profit margin. That got old a much faster than the yo-yo did, since all it did was drip on me and make me look even less sophisticated.

Anyway, I was closing yesterday, and it was just me and Chris, who bears a striking resemblence to Morpheus, but whose resemblance doesn't bear much on the narrative I'm about to relate. About ten minutes to closing, a woman in a hot pink shirt and shortish skirt came in and asked if we had any of the 23" LCD HD TVs in stock. I dutifully checked on it, and couldn't even begin to try to sell it to her before she decided to take it. So I looked in the 'puter, and it said we didn't have one, but then I asked Chris, and he said we should have one anyway, so he went back into the cage to unlock the one we had while I rung her up. Of course I told her about the service plan, but she wasn't having none of it. I figured, ok, if she buys a $1700 TV on a whim, maybe she considers it disposable. How should I know?

Naturally, she pays with a check, which is where the story gets slightly more interesting. It's a winnie-the-pooh check from Bank of America, with an address on it, a name that matches her ID, a watermark, and the whole bit. I run it through the validator, and it validates itself, so the transaction goes through. So Morpheus goes and retrieves the TV from the holy of holies in the stock room, while my customer asks me to show her some iPods. Interestingly, she inquires as to how many people we have working at the time, and, being the honest kid that I am, reply, "Just us." Then she wants to know if I have to go back and help him carry it, but he's got a handle on it, so I follow her to the iPod case.

At this point, accounts differ. Chris says that hot on her tail was another gentleman with the same area code as her who wanted to buy a DV Handicam with a check. Same deal, no questions, he just wants one. Since we haven't seen anything illegal happen yet, he goes to the back and fetches it.

About this time, I'm helping a 9-year-old explain to her mother what an iPod is, and how it's better than an XM MyFi. For one thing, it comes in pink. I'm so jealous of all these preteens with iPods. When I was her age, I was lucky if I could bang on a pot with a spoon for entertainment, and then only after I'd eaten all the porridge out of the pot. But I digress.

Anyway, since Certegy verified the check and I did all my procedures right, it looks like we're not liable for the TV. I'm not in trouble for the likely $1742 theft, or the stereo that disappeared sometime during the circus, about which, coincidentally, someone called two minutes after its vanishing act to inquire about the price. I am, however, in pretty deep effluent for not selling the service plan on the TV. According to Chris, who is the world's leading service plan evangelist, if he were going to pass a fraudulent check to buy something, he would always get the service plan. I tried to argue that it's just one more trail of bread crumbs for us to follow to get to the culprit, but he countered with the fact that we don't write down serial numbers of the gadgets we sell.

So anyway, I'm still at 0% RSGs, and will almost certainly be written up for not selling 5.25%. There's no real fixing it now, since I've sold like $4000 already this month, and the only way to sell the big RSGs is to sell a high-dollar item, which will further dilute the percentage anyway. Plus, as Chris was quick to point out, selling something big without the plan hurts the store's percentage, which takes money out of the managers' pockets. I'm did my best to cry myself to sleep over that one.

The moral: if you suspect someone is using a stolen check to buy a $1700 HD TV, make sure you get them to steal the service plan while they're at it. Retail is harder than it looks.

Verbosity City

For the sake of sounding more edumacated, I wrote down some more words that I wasn't a hundred percent on, then made 'em blue with my magic excel commands. Nothing much happened yesterday, except that I got a new belated birthday present. I'm lovin' it.

abstruse

adjunct

affable

affront

affront

aflatus

alpaca

amyotrophic

anteprandial

apertite

apoplexy

apoptosis

apposite

apres vie

apres vie

ascetic

asceticism

ashew

askance

askew

assuage

baleful

baronet

begonia

bewail

bluster

braise

brazen

brilliantine

buttress

cacuous

callow

cameo ring

carbine

chagrin

chatelaine

chemise

chirrup

chortle

cleft

cloy

coiffure

compendious

complacent

complacent

contrite

cordial

corpulent

corpuscle

countenance

crackle

crepuscular

dash

dawdle

debauch

depose

deprave

diaphanous

disconsolate

disjunct

dispel

disquieting

divan

dolorous

doublet

dour

effrontery

elephantiasis

elicit

enervate

ensnare

equanimity

excoriate

extricate

exuberant

farinaceous

feston

filial

flaccid

flicky-fick

foom

frenetic

frutify

fulminate

furtive

gamut

gaunt

germinate

glib

glowering

glum

goldbrick

gully

gusto

hangdog

harangue

harrumph

hem

hussy

ignominious

imbue

impertinent

incandescent

indolent

ingratiate

insensate

insuperable

invidious

jamais vu

jovial

jowls

lackadaisical

lackey

languid

languorous

leaden

leonine

lepage

leviathan

libidinous

licentious

listless

lithe

livid

lope

lumber

macabre

mellifluous

menial

meningococcus

mollify

moue

mulish

musette

necrotic

occlusion

officious

opanescent

orderly

ostentation

ostentatious

pariah

pate

paturient

paunch

pensive

peremptory

perplex

pestilence

plagal

poliomyelitis

potter

prawn

precipate

pregarious

presque vu

primeval

prodigiousl

profusion

rancor

raprod

repudiation

reticent

ribald

roistering

sagacity

sallow

sardonic

sartorial

serene

shirk

simian

slattern

slipshod

somnolent

sordid

splay

squalid

strew

strident

stultifying

swarthy

swashbuckle

swoon

tart

tempestuous

thro

torpid

transduction

trestle

trice

unperjured

urbane

valor

verdant

vexatious

vicissitude

visage

vituperations

whangee

zinnia