If you're confused by the title, join the club. I've officially landed a position as a hydrocode analyst at ITT Industries Advanced Industries and Sciences in Colorado Springs, Co. The only trouble is, I have no idea what a hydrocode might be or how to analyze one.
It's been a big weekend, but most of it was devoted to reading Harry Potter. I won't spoil it, but I'm going to have to hurt these people who keep putting it off. Kind of hypocritical on my part, since i didn't read any of them until 2003.
Bleh, I have pictures, but still no internet connection at home. I've set up a temporary headquarters at my sister's place, but I expect to be kicked out any minute now.
Not much to say really, until I get the pictures from the beach and the Harry Potter party. Most of the costumes were underwhelming, although it was funny to see a 35-year-old man come dressed up as a wizard with a seven-year-old kid who wasn't. I'll write more when I get my Zoloft refilled. I've been having a headache since I ran out, and it's contagious, from what I can tell. Better quit while I'm still ahead, I guess.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Friday, July 15, 2005
I Put the Ass in Associate
So I'm calling yesterday my last day at the Sharper Image, mainly because the boss started back today, and it wouldn't do for me to be in her company a minute longer than absolutely necessary. Once I found out that, by giving them the courtesy of a 2-week notice I was cutting myself out of commission for the period, I stopped worrying about courtesy and got more pragmatic in a hurry.
I started giving away my sales again, and managed to hook up some of my cow-orkers with some pretty sweet deals, including several RSGs. It gets tricky deciding whom to give which sale to, since you don't want to screw up anybody's RSG percentage or units/transaction average, or any of the other asinine ways they rate us.
Anyway, at one point some poor sucker decided he had to have a $10 HugOO pillow. It was originally $30, so I couldn't talk him out of it, but I had to decide who the benefactor of the commission ($0.04) would be. I logged in the register as me (which I'm required to do by the policy), and when the register presented me with a list of employees to choose whose sale it was, I got a singularly evil idea. It was the closest thing to a little devil on my shoulder that I've had in a long time. I think they call him the Imp of the Perverse, but I'm not sure.
It turns out that the first name on the list is the full-time stock boy, who isn't officially a Sales Associate. One might ask, "If he isn't a sales associate, then why was his number listed under the heading Sales Associates?" If one had asked my manager that, she would've probably gone off on a tirade about how short-staffed we are, and how our IT people can't be bothered with little details like that. Probably the same reason she makes me sort through a clipboard with 200 pages of emailed pieces of time-sensitive data instead of allowing me to take 400 milliseconds to search in the computer. But back to my story...
The stock boy is pretty cool, despite being an old friend of the PHB. He gets to use tape, box cutters, stickers, and ladders all day, which makes me jealous, since I'm already bored with all our products, and tape never gets old. Since he's a full-time stocker, he didn't go through the sales training, and isn't elligible for commission, and (according to my boss) can't sell anything.
So I figured, "If he's not a sales associate, what happens if I credit him with this $10 sale? It's about time he sold something anyway, always hiding in the back room watching DVDs and sucking up to the boss." Plus, since I was tired of trying to explain the virtues of well-designed (or at least half-debugged) software to my boss, I figured she deserved an example. She's always quick to throw the book at me, so my thinking was, if it's paperwork she likes, I'll give her some.
I typed in the stock boy's number (only one digit different to an actual sales associate, so if anybody asks, my finger slipped). The transaction went on as usual, and at the end of the day, the computer listed him among the sales associates. This was on Sunday, and nobody said anything about it when we closed.
So far, you're thinking, this is a pretty lame story. You may have to have worked in a similarly braindead beuracracy to understand how much trouble one mistyped digit can cause. In this case, Adam was instantaneously semi-promoted to sales associate, now has a customer history, and will probably get a commission report and RSG lesson (since he's at 0%, having only sold one item). I bet he also gets a letter telling him his sales productivity isn't high enough in a few weeks, although by that time he'll be using a different number to log in.
The reason he needs a new number is because now my boss has to terminate him as a stocker, re-hire him as a sales associate, then terminate him and re-re-hire him as a stocker. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets three W-2s in January from TSI, having now been spliced into more than one person. So, in the fraction of a second it took me to type one digit out of place, I've created probably dozens of pages of paperwork for the higher-ups who were so keen to keep me down. The district manager noticed, naturally, but the official story was that it was an accident. I'll take the fifth on that one, although I should probably start watching what I type here, seeing as how I'm gonna be investigated by Uncle Sam and all.
The moral of the story is, people living in glass libraries shouldn't throw books. That, and don't try to bury me in a loophole, if you're still close enough to the ground to fall into one yourself.
I started giving away my sales again, and managed to hook up some of my cow-orkers with some pretty sweet deals, including several RSGs. It gets tricky deciding whom to give which sale to, since you don't want to screw up anybody's RSG percentage or units/transaction average, or any of the other asinine ways they rate us.
Anyway, at one point some poor sucker decided he had to have a $10 HugOO pillow. It was originally $30, so I couldn't talk him out of it, but I had to decide who the benefactor of the commission ($0.04) would be. I logged in the register as me (which I'm required to do by the policy), and when the register presented me with a list of employees to choose whose sale it was, I got a singularly evil idea. It was the closest thing to a little devil on my shoulder that I've had in a long time. I think they call him the Imp of the Perverse, but I'm not sure.
It turns out that the first name on the list is the full-time stock boy, who isn't officially a Sales Associate. One might ask, "If he isn't a sales associate, then why was his number listed under the heading Sales Associates?" If one had asked my manager that, she would've probably gone off on a tirade about how short-staffed we are, and how our IT people can't be bothered with little details like that. Probably the same reason she makes me sort through a clipboard with 200 pages of emailed pieces of time-sensitive data instead of allowing me to take 400 milliseconds to search in the computer. But back to my story...
The stock boy is pretty cool, despite being an old friend of the PHB. He gets to use tape, box cutters, stickers, and ladders all day, which makes me jealous, since I'm already bored with all our products, and tape never gets old. Since he's a full-time stocker, he didn't go through the sales training, and isn't elligible for commission, and (according to my boss) can't sell anything.
So I figured, "If he's not a sales associate, what happens if I credit him with this $10 sale? It's about time he sold something anyway, always hiding in the back room watching DVDs and sucking up to the boss." Plus, since I was tired of trying to explain the virtues of well-designed (or at least half-debugged) software to my boss, I figured she deserved an example. She's always quick to throw the book at me, so my thinking was, if it's paperwork she likes, I'll give her some.
I typed in the stock boy's number (only one digit different to an actual sales associate, so if anybody asks, my finger slipped). The transaction went on as usual, and at the end of the day, the computer listed him among the sales associates. This was on Sunday, and nobody said anything about it when we closed.
So far, you're thinking, this is a pretty lame story. You may have to have worked in a similarly braindead beuracracy to understand how much trouble one mistyped digit can cause. In this case, Adam was instantaneously semi-promoted to sales associate, now has a customer history, and will probably get a commission report and RSG lesson (since he's at 0%, having only sold one item). I bet he also gets a letter telling him his sales productivity isn't high enough in a few weeks, although by that time he'll be using a different number to log in.
The reason he needs a new number is because now my boss has to terminate him as a stocker, re-hire him as a sales associate, then terminate him and re-re-hire him as a stocker. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets three W-2s in January from TSI, having now been spliced into more than one person. So, in the fraction of a second it took me to type one digit out of place, I've created probably dozens of pages of paperwork for the higher-ups who were so keen to keep me down. The district manager noticed, naturally, but the official story was that it was an accident. I'll take the fifth on that one, although I should probably start watching what I type here, seeing as how I'm gonna be investigated by Uncle Sam and all.
The moral of the story is, people living in glass libraries shouldn't throw books. That, and don't try to bury me in a loophole, if you're still close enough to the ground to fall into one yourself.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Technical and Non-technical Difficulties
I've been hoping to report that I'm employed gainfully in Colorado Springs. The trick is to wait for them all to be at the office on the same day, find all the rubber stamps, and the extra-long roll of red tape required to get me hired. I understand that my low GPA means that they have to fill out "due diligence" paperwork, but that shouldn't slow them down much. I have an unofficial verbal offer from them, for what that's worth.
I'm also interviewing with Goldman Sachs in New York, for the position of Mortgage Analyst. This is yet another subject I may be qualified to be an analyst for that I know next to nothing about. Just goes to show you, I guess. These blue chip Wall Street guys like to have a room full of well-paid eggheads to tell them when they should buy and sell what. I can sound convincing, and that seems to be the most important thing. Sure, there are spreadsheets involved, and some occasional legitimate math, but for the most part I'd be a professional gambler. It's interesting that they ask for a background in "stochastic calculus," which sounded hard until I realized I'd already taken it under the heading "random variable calculus." That's the best display of mathematical marketing I've seen since they started calling imaginary numbers complex numbers, to try to dispel the growing belief that imaginary mathematicians were using actual money to do imaginary work. It's sad that the least sophisticated mathematicians are the best paid, but, at this point, I'll take it.
Just to keep my options open, I interviewed for a programmer/analyst position for a concrete manufacturer. That's right, you need a computer to mix concrete now. Apparently it's a pretty technical company, with 80% of the staff being involved with the programming. Naturally they use one of those sissy business/web-based/4GL languages, but at least it's local.
So basically, by this time next year, I could either be a Wall Street (ok, technically Broad Street) bond expert, a missile defense/hydrocode secret-cleared engineer/scientist/analyst guy, or a concrete-mixotronic engineer. The only people who like my resume are the ones who can't write a job description for what they need; they enjoy finding a candidate as confused as they are.
I'm still waiting on Charter to get their wires uncrossed. They gave me a new, cuter-than-cute cable modem yesterday, but the little lights on the front aren't blinking right, so they're coming out to fix it. That and the cable TV is out as well, but since we still got the All-star game, G-diddy hasn't suffered any permanent damage yet.
More pictures are forthcoming, including a few I plan to take at the Harry Pottery Convention Friday night. If you're not a Potter fan, what's wrong with you?
I'm also interviewing with Goldman Sachs in New York, for the position of Mortgage Analyst. This is yet another subject I may be qualified to be an analyst for that I know next to nothing about. Just goes to show you, I guess. These blue chip Wall Street guys like to have a room full of well-paid eggheads to tell them when they should buy and sell what. I can sound convincing, and that seems to be the most important thing. Sure, there are spreadsheets involved, and some occasional legitimate math, but for the most part I'd be a professional gambler. It's interesting that they ask for a background in "stochastic calculus," which sounded hard until I realized I'd already taken it under the heading "random variable calculus." That's the best display of mathematical marketing I've seen since they started calling imaginary numbers complex numbers, to try to dispel the growing belief that imaginary mathematicians were using actual money to do imaginary work. It's sad that the least sophisticated mathematicians are the best paid, but, at this point, I'll take it.
Just to keep my options open, I interviewed for a programmer/analyst position for a concrete manufacturer. That's right, you need a computer to mix concrete now. Apparently it's a pretty technical company, with 80% of the staff being involved with the programming. Naturally they use one of those sissy business/web-based/4GL languages, but at least it's local.
So basically, by this time next year, I could either be a Wall Street (ok, technically Broad Street) bond expert, a missile defense/hydrocode secret-cleared engineer/scientist/analyst guy, or a concrete-mixotronic engineer. The only people who like my resume are the ones who can't write a job description for what they need; they enjoy finding a candidate as confused as they are.
I'm still waiting on Charter to get their wires uncrossed. They gave me a new, cuter-than-cute cable modem yesterday, but the little lights on the front aren't blinking right, so they're coming out to fix it. That and the cable TV is out as well, but since we still got the All-star game, G-diddy hasn't suffered any permanent damage yet.
More pictures are forthcoming, including a few I plan to take at the Harry Pottery Convention Friday night. If you're not a Potter fan, what's wrong with you?
Friday, July 08, 2005
C-ya Later, Gator Tater
I'm still chuggin' away at the Secret Clearance application, and I hate to think what hoops I'm gonna have to go through to get my license to kill. Since it was getting tedious, I resorted to my usual method of wasting time when I want to feel a sense of accomplishment without expending any energy or thought: giving blood.
Actually, I got bored with regular blood and switched to giving platelets and RBCs, via a process called aphoresis. I don't know how it works, and I'm not sure the nurses do either, but they have a cute little machine that sorts out which cells go where and what gets put back in. All they have to do is run through the 50-part medical questionnaire in under 45 seconds and stab me with whatever sharp objects they have handy.
I get an even bigger kick out of it because my blood type, like just about every other parameter you might use to describe me, is rare in more ways than one. I'm O+, CMV-, which means my blood cells can go to premature babies, cancer patients, and people suffering from immune disorders like HIV. If nothing else, that's my contribution to humanity (well, that and the prestigious publication that you, dear reader, are now enjoying).
Since it's Friday, and since the men at Samford are afraid of cooties, and since the girls know I have nothing better to do, I was summoned to go swing dancing at Roman's. I figured I'd take it easy, seeing as how I'm sort about 40 million platelets, but I had to revise that figure to keep the ladies happy. (Keeping women happy, I've found, if possible at all, involves, among other things, the ability to revise, rework, remove, and refuse all kinds of logic).
Anyway, the one who requested my services was of course not interested in dancing more than a half a song once I got to the place, but that was fine, since the crowd contained better dancers anyway. Granted, pulling me off my couch when I'm studying valuable educational programming and then refusing to dance with me when I ask her to dance, citing a disinclination to dance to the current song, then dancing with some old geezer 8 bars later is enough to make me want to break her ankle all over again. But I was in a good mood, and still feeling the effects of the missing brain cells that I suspect the people at the donation center helped themselves to while I was distracted squeezing the hand exerciser, so I let her off with a few choice comments. Not that they're comments anyone else would've chosen, but I guess I must've chose them on some level, because they came out of my mouth.
The alert reader will have noticed by now that my narrative, to this point, has nothing to do with my title. For the rest of you, notice that my narrative, to this point, has nothing to do with my title. This is the point at which the one matches up with the other, thus resolving the suspense I've been building up until now.
At some point, two couples of young people (gasp!) showed up. They were all interested in dancing and relatively inexperienced, so I took the liberty of teaching them everything they needed to know. The first thing the men learned under my tutelage was that, just as in chess, if you take your finger off your girl, it's my move.
Anyway, both of the ladies proved excellent followers and a joy to lead, and as an added bonus, one of 'em is a radio personality, interning for none other than Rick and Bubba. For those of you outside of the sphere of influence of the Southern Trump, Rick & Bubba are to redneck radio what Ben & Jerry are to quantum electrodynamics. (All four of them eat inordinate orders of ice cream). So that was kinda exciting, and she told me her name--voted on by the listening public--was none other than the legendary Gator tater, a reference to her alma mater and her favorite flick. She took a picture with me on her camera, but tells me that they can't put it on the Rick & Bubba website on account of the absence of the two sexy fat men, the event not being sanctioned by the Birmingham Buddhas. Luckily, since my editorial staff consists largely of my imaginary friends (and I use the term loosely, as many of them aren't speaking with me anymore), nothing prevents me from posting her picture here. If you haven't gotten anything out of the reading material in this article (and I can't blame you, as I certainly haven't put much into it), here's some eye candy.
She'll probably remember me, because she managed to slip and land on her butt at the end of the fourth dance. I caught her head, though, and she was no worse for the wear. Naturally her smart-ass date chose that moment to tell me she had a torn ACL, but I can't take credit for dropping a girl if she was standing on her own feet at the time. Unless I put you in the air, you're generally responsible to handle any unfavorable gravitational situations that arise.
Actually, I got bored with regular blood and switched to giving platelets and RBCs, via a process called aphoresis. I don't know how it works, and I'm not sure the nurses do either, but they have a cute little machine that sorts out which cells go where and what gets put back in. All they have to do is run through the 50-part medical questionnaire in under 45 seconds and stab me with whatever sharp objects they have handy.
I get an even bigger kick out of it because my blood type, like just about every other parameter you might use to describe me, is rare in more ways than one. I'm O+, CMV-, which means my blood cells can go to premature babies, cancer patients, and people suffering from immune disorders like HIV. If nothing else, that's my contribution to humanity (well, that and the prestigious publication that you, dear reader, are now enjoying).
Since it's Friday, and since the men at Samford are afraid of cooties, and since the girls know I have nothing better to do, I was summoned to go swing dancing at Roman's. I figured I'd take it easy, seeing as how I'm sort about 40 million platelets, but I had to revise that figure to keep the ladies happy. (Keeping women happy, I've found, if possible at all, involves, among other things, the ability to revise, rework, remove, and refuse all kinds of logic).
Anyway, the one who requested my services was of course not interested in dancing more than a half a song once I got to the place, but that was fine, since the crowd contained better dancers anyway. Granted, pulling me off my couch when I'm studying valuable educational programming and then refusing to dance with me when I ask her to dance, citing a disinclination to dance to the current song, then dancing with some old geezer 8 bars later is enough to make me want to break her ankle all over again. But I was in a good mood, and still feeling the effects of the missing brain cells that I suspect the people at the donation center helped themselves to while I was distracted squeezing the hand exerciser, so I let her off with a few choice comments. Not that they're comments anyone else would've chosen, but I guess I must've chose them on some level, because they came out of my mouth.
The alert reader will have noticed by now that my narrative, to this point, has nothing to do with my title. For the rest of you, notice that my narrative, to this point, has nothing to do with my title. This is the point at which the one matches up with the other, thus resolving the suspense I've been building up until now.
At some point, two couples of young people (gasp!) showed up. They were all interested in dancing and relatively inexperienced, so I took the liberty of teaching them everything they needed to know. The first thing the men learned under my tutelage was that, just as in chess, if you take your finger off your girl, it's my move.
Anyway, both of the ladies proved excellent followers and a joy to lead, and as an added bonus, one of 'em is a radio personality, interning for none other than Rick and Bubba. For those of you outside of the sphere of influence of the Southern Trump, Rick & Bubba are to redneck radio what Ben & Jerry are to quantum electrodynamics. (All four of them eat inordinate orders of ice cream). So that was kinda exciting, and she told me her name--voted on by the listening public--was none other than the legendary Gator tater, a reference to her alma mater and her favorite flick. She took a picture with me on her camera, but tells me that they can't put it on the Rick & Bubba website on account of the absence of the two sexy fat men, the event not being sanctioned by the Birmingham Buddhas. Luckily, since my editorial staff consists largely of my imaginary friends (and I use the term loosely, as many of them aren't speaking with me anymore), nothing prevents me from posting her picture here. If you haven't gotten anything out of the reading material in this article (and I can't blame you, as I certainly haven't put much into it), here's some eye candy.
She'll probably remember me, because she managed to slip and land on her butt at the end of the fourth dance. I caught her head, though, and she was no worse for the wear. Naturally her smart-ass date chose that moment to tell me she had a torn ACL, but I can't take credit for dropping a girl if she was standing on her own feet at the time. Unless I put you in the air, you're generally responsible to handle any unfavorable gravitational situations that arise.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Coup Data
So I'm in "the final stages of the application process" with the blower-upper-designer people in Colorado, and they've got me filling out an app.
Now I get the thrill of tracking down payroll records for jobs I worked at 16 and 17, figuring out if I have an alibi that I was self-employed as a tutor in high school, and trying to sort out how to list the five or so different gigs I held at Tech while I was busy doing everything else.
My favorite question, which is a simple yes/no, actually comes at the end of the form, but it would have made more sense at the beginning methinks:
What bugs me about it is the hyprocracy of the thing. I mean, here we are, the week of Independence Day (or Good Riddance Day as the British call it), patriotically celebrating the anniversary of an act of high treason. We're a nation founded on the notion that there are times when a government simply has to go. I'm not engaged in the violent overthrow of the United States Government, nor do I belong to any organizations that are (although the Society of Women Engineers always seemed a bit sneaky...). However, I wouldn't be a Patriot if I put my love of my country ahead of my commitment to what it stands for in the first place. Government is a tool to protect freedom, and freedom should not be sacrificed to protect it.
Of course, it gets interesting determining what constitutes "illegal activities" in this context. I mean, a coup d'etat is only illegal if it fails. Revolutions are righteous, but rebellions are punishable by death. Kinda an all or nothing game.
Anyway, if there are any G-men reading this, don't get your g-strings in a wad. I've invested too many tax dollars in Uncle Sam to want to topple him by force. Naturally there are some things I would change if I had my 'druthers, but I'm really not charismatic enough to lead a coup.
On a more serious note, I wrote the above sections yesterday, before the attacks in London, and no connection to those tragic events should be inferred. All references to hypothetical future revolutions are abstract musings and should not be construed as threats.
Now I get the thrill of tracking down payroll records for jobs I worked at 16 and 17, figuring out if I have an alibi that I was self-employed as a tutor in high school, and trying to sort out how to list the five or so different gigs I held at Tech while I was busy doing everything else.
My favorite question, which is a simple yes/no, actually comes at the end of the form, but it would have made more sense at the beginning methinks:
Have you ever been an officer or a member or made a contribution to an organization dedicated to the violent overthrow of the United States Government and which engages in illegal activities to that end, knowing that the organization engages in such activities with the specific intent to further such activities?It gets better:
If you answered "Yes", explain in the space below.And, yes, they provide a total of one line for the explanation. I feel safer already.
What bugs me about it is the hyprocracy of the thing. I mean, here we are, the week of Independence Day (or Good Riddance Day as the British call it), patriotically celebrating the anniversary of an act of high treason. We're a nation founded on the notion that there are times when a government simply has to go. I'm not engaged in the violent overthrow of the United States Government, nor do I belong to any organizations that are (although the Society of Women Engineers always seemed a bit sneaky...). However, I wouldn't be a Patriot if I put my love of my country ahead of my commitment to what it stands for in the first place. Government is a tool to protect freedom, and freedom should not be sacrificed to protect it.
Of course, it gets interesting determining what constitutes "illegal activities" in this context. I mean, a coup d'etat is only illegal if it fails. Revolutions are righteous, but rebellions are punishable by death. Kinda an all or nothing game.
Anyway, if there are any G-men reading this, don't get your g-strings in a wad. I've invested too many tax dollars in Uncle Sam to want to topple him by force. Naturally there are some things I would change if I had my 'druthers, but I'm really not charismatic enough to lead a coup.
On a more serious note, I wrote the above sections yesterday, before the attacks in London, and no connection to those tragic events should be inferred. All references to hypothetical future revolutions are abstract musings and should not be construed as threats.
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