Selling out.

H**** is in San Diego this week at some sort of company-sponsored Microsoft conference. So, she calls me on Wednesday and out of the blue says, "I think you really should upgrade to WinXP."

My desktop machine at home has a 2 gig processor, 512 meg of ram, an 80 gig drive and is running Windows 98 Second Edition. Outdated? Perhaps. Obsolete? Certainly not. It runs all the software I need it to run, why should I upgrade?

H**** said she attended a demo of Symantec's latest anti-virus software which includes all sorts of neat features including anti-spyware software.

Ahhhh. Now I see why she wants me to upgrade. The latest Symantec product won't run on Win98. But, in all honesty, I don't need it.

First off, no hacker in his right mind, no matter how evil, is writing viruses to exploit weakness in Windows 98. Every hole in the system has been pretty much found and plugged by now so I don't need the latest and greatest AV software to protect my machine. I use Firefox and it does an excellent job of keeping spyware off of my machine. Scans with the software I have now turn up one piece of minor spyware only once every few months as opposed to the half a dozen I could pick up in a day of surfing with IE. I don't need a Symantec annual subscription. AVG works well.

On top of that, I have issues with Microsoft's requirement that I be connected to the Internet to update XP. Their EULAs give them permission to look at my system and install software, even from third parties, without asking my permission or even informing me about it. And in short order they are going to even further restrict the license so that they could use the online update process to make my operating system cease to function if I do not upgrade to the next OS.

I don't need WinXP. I don't need its features, capabilities or vulnerabilities and I certainly don't need to sell my soul to Bill Gates for it. So, why should I spend hundreds of dollars for something I don't need? I'm no neo-Luddite but I don't see the reason to jump on the latest technology bandwagon when the technology I have now, only seven years old, suits my purposes.

More vacancies.

I just started training a new back of analysts, the fourth batch in a row.

But I hear some other recent news. D**, one of the people I trained earlier this year, has given his two week notice. Now, when he was hired, they offered him $10.50 an hour. Later, while looking for postings on Monster.com, he saw a listing for Help Desk in Pittsburgh. When he looked up the details, it was for new employees at our help desk.

The kicker was that the offer for them was $12.00 a hour.

I know this sort of thing goes on all the time. I know that I am making more than some of the (few) employees who have worked there longer than I have, but to see that listed in black-and-white on the website is even more insulting.

Word quickly spread throughout the Help Desk and those that started at the same time for the $10,50 an hour rate went and talked to the HR Rep and the Site Manager. The response was that they would "look into it" which, from experience, means that they will send their question up to the Corporate Overlords and then forget about it. The only substantive thing to come about is that the listing at Monster.com for the next batch of hires did not have an actual pay rate listed.

I asked D** to see what other sort of opportunities are available where he's gone. The benefits sound top rate and the owner sounds like he cares about his people. I could do for some improvement in that category.

I also learned that M*** gave his two week notice. Now M*** was one of those employees that you wished would leave. He didn't produce quality work and was an irritant to all those around him, speaking constantly about sports endlessly (Hockey and Baseball) and getting into every conversation whether he knew anything about the topic or not. I was very glad to be sitting on the other side of the room.

When he tendered his two week notice they told him not to bother filling out the time. Someone else has cleared out his desk for him.

And so, it begins

Today is Halloween and construction has begun on the big nativity scene that goes up each year on the plaza at USX. It does not bother me in and of itself, it is what it portents because in short order the holiday decorations will go up in the stores. The lights and advertisements will line the streets. The billboards will proclaim the coming season. The carols will play in lobbies and elevators. There will be no escape.

As a non-Christian, I understand better than most Christians the importance of the religious freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution. The pilgrims came to the New World looking for religious freedoms. Their descendants, faithful Christians all, fought a revolution and enshrined in the Constitution the right of people to worship the way they chose. But the modern Christians have forgotten this. They know themselves to be the majority and believe that it conveys on them the moral duty to guide the nation the way they think it should be guided. They are, after all, the majority.

But the Constitution is not there to protect the rights of the majority. It is to protect the individuals from the tyranny of the majority. The First Amendment freedom of religion is there to allow people to believe and worship as they wish. Or to not believe and not worship if they choose.

Of course, as a non-believer (or "infidel"), I must tolerate other's expression of faith or else I become as hypocritical as they are.

Doesn't the Bible say something about not worshiping idols, and yet I see people standing in adoration of larger-than-life ceramic replicas, literally praying to them. People pray directly to Mary, Saints and angels for divine intervention, forgetting their own First Commandment.

And didn't Jesus say a thing or two about charity and helping ones fellow man? How much money has been dropped into this exaltation? This huge advertisement which will stand for three months. Surely the tens of thousands of dollars could have been put towards the betterment of society. It's built like a house. With the same money and a slight re-design it could actually be a house to protect the homeless that wander the streets of Pittsburgh from the coming harsh winter.

And every day I'll walk by. There will be no escaping the music blaring on expensive stereo speakers.

The Grinch complained about the noise generated by the Whos down in Whoville. He became bitter because of the incessant joyful noise and I can understand his pain all the more because I have come to believe that the Whos singing in front of their creche don't really understand what it is they're actually singing about. They talk about "the meaning of the season" but then never take the steps that the guy they're worshiping told them they should take. The carols are empty self-agrandizement driven by a mob mentality.

It's that hypocrisy that will grate on my nerves day after day for the next few months.

Mutants & Masterminds: Session 1

H**** has convinced me to join in a Mutants & Masterminds superhero game that she's involved in. It wasn't a hard sell. It's been a long time since I've been in a role-playing game of any significance and I've been missing it. So, I've created a Mad Scientist.

Character: Brian Czitrovszky

Brian is a Mad Scientist in the mold of Christopher Lloyd's character in "Back to the Future" or Brent Spiner's character in "Independence Day". He's a super-genius with half a dozen doctorates. He wears these goggles all the time (even when sleeping or showering) that give him infrared, low light, x-ray and other specialty visions. He's got a force field belt with an extradimensional pocket built into it so that he can carry lots of tools and equipment. He has one super power in that he can mentally connect with computer, electronic and mechanical machines. He has that power at a fairly low level (level 3 with a range of 1000 feet) but I thought it would be useful. Brian has a lab in a former railroad roundhouse. Lots of equipment lying about. Weird things. Empty pizza boxes, cheetoes wrappers and Red Bull cans lying about. Don't look in the refrigerator.

I've been careful not to give him a superhero name. He doesn't have a secret identity. His computer (named Aimee) refers to him as Doctor. Most know him as Dr. Czitrovszky. His online name is Doctor Woot.

Scenario:

Brian is involved in some slightly less than above board activities. He is building low-level power enhancers and selling them to a minor-cape out of costume named Firebrand. Firebrand shows up at the Lab and pays in cash. He also warns of a villain out and about in the city named Scourge that is trying to kill people off. Oh, and there are political things in the works over the regulation or restriction of those with super powers.

Brian has another customer named "Mr. Johnson". He lives in a upscale end of town and deliveries of the devices are made to him. (He gets charged extra). In making a delivery I arrive to find his house on fire. Looking not at the house but at the surrounding area, I see a red-and-black clad, Ninja-esque guy on a rooftop watching things. When he notices me noticing him, he disappears in a puff of streamers. I take to calling him the Confetti Ninja. I later find out by listening to the Police frequencies that someone was found inside the home, burned beyond recognition but having been cut up.

Analysis.

I'm not familiar enough with the Marvel Comics universe to recognize a minor characters like Firebrand or Scourge, but that's where the GM got him. The political things are clearly based on the "Mutant Registration" storyline from X-Men. And the Confetti Ninja is Deadpool. Again, I don't know much about Deadpool but he is apparently a somewhat psychopathic mercenary with super-regeneration, the ability to teleport and who knows himself to be inside a comic book. I also have learned that Deadpool is the GM's favorite character and, based on past experience with GMs who really want to play one of the NPC's they happen to run, this version of Deadpool will be invincible. No matter what anyone does, the GMs pet NPC will be able to get away to move the plot where he wants it to go.

Not much exciting overall but it will be a few game sessions before he manipulates things to bring us all together to form a team.

Look, a bunny!

D****, our HR Contact, was at a meeting with the Corporate Overlords yesterday. On returning today, we didn't get exciting news about the restoration of salary increases, 401k matching, bonuses or any of the other valuable information one might expect from a meeting with the Lord High Muckedy-mucks.

We got. . . mousepads.

And it's not even a good mousepad. Sure, it have the corporate logo emblazoned in bright colors but those of us with optical mice have discovered that the surface it too reflective to work properly. The pointer bounces around, seemingly at random.

It strikes me as a piece of misdirection. Like a magician trying to point you in one direction while the real trick is going on somewhere else.

I am now a week past due for my performance appraisal. I haven't had any resolution on my occupation tax issue (9 months waiting). People who I started training nearly two months ago still haven't received their paychecks. The people who started nearly three weeks ago are due get their first paychecks the day after tomorrow. I wonder if they will get paid. They still haven't gotten most of the accounts they need to login nor have they all gotten access cards to enter the building. They still need to be escorted in by building security.

It's all smoke and mirrors.

Recaptured

I though both T*** and G***** were leaving but apparently at the last minute, literally, The Corporate Overlords made a counter-offer. Under normal circumstances they probably would not have accepted but the company to where they were going looks like they will be contracting with The Company for their Help Desk. They would be leaving here only to be bought up again by the same employer at a later date, having lost seniority and accumlated PTO.

Missing Serenity

I went to see "Serenity" today. In point of fact, I saw it a week ago but I was able to convince H**** to see it with me this time. And rather than going into a lengthy review (I liked it a lot), I want to comment on the differences between the two.

The movie I saw last week was not the same movie. There were three scenes that were cut. Not long scenes or terribly important scenes, but they were distinctly gone.

****** SPOILERS BELOW *******

When the crew is in the mule preparing to head off to the robbery and Simon says that it's OK to run and leave the others to die, River says, "I'm the brains of the operation."

Cut.

When Mal receives the wave from Anara he is shirtless with pants but she can only see him from the waist up. She says "I hope you're wearing pants." Mal replies to the effect that he is the way he came into the world (implying that he is not, in fact, wearing any pants.

Cut.

In the final fight scene between Mal and the Operative, the camera lingers close up so that you aren't sure who has been stabbed. For a moment, it cuts back to show the sword through Mal's side.

Cut.

What is Destinta doing? Is Destinta getting a different version of the film or are they cutting it themselves? Whay would a theater show a version different from other theaters and, if they were editing it for some sort of content, why would those three scenes be cut?

I feel as if I've been robbed or deceived.

Tumbling tumbleweeds.

Today was T***'s last day. V*** also appears to be gone. N*** will be changing to part time next week and while G**** has anounced that he's leaving next week, he's hoping that perhaps The Corporate Overlords will make him a counter offer because his leaving (in addition to T***'s) will be cutting the Function Desk staff by half.

And here I was foolishly worrying that the new hires wouldn't have desks to sit at. Indeed, things are starting to look fairly empty at the Help Desk. Of course, their leaving and the increasing call volume due to the Finantial Services Help Desk downsizing make it all the more difficult for those of us that remain.

Annual delay.

Today is the sixth anniversary of working for The Bank. Not something I am particularly pleased with but it is the day that I was due to have my annual performance appraisal. It's not unusual for it to be late and this year was no exception. My Team Lead said that they couldn't have it today but they definitely wanted to have it by the end of the week.

Not that it matters. No pay raises. No bonuses. Just another year of superior performance by myself with no hope of fair compensation.

Welcome to The Suck.

Columbus Day.

The typical plan for bank holidays is, because the branches are closed, we are at half staff or less. Half of the staff works this holiday and then will have off the next minor bank holiday (Veteran's Day). Major bank holidays, like Thanksgiving, find everyone off except the handful of volunteers willing to get a little bit of extra time in addition to holiday pay. I may be one of them because I won't be able to get the Friday after Thanksgiving off and, since I won't be able to visit with family in Maryland because of that, I might as well get some extra pay by working that Thursday.

But, back to Columbus Day.

Even though we are at half staff and the branches are closed, the markets are still open. Which means brokers and financial service consultants. But the Help Desk that supports them are due to get the axe. They are working a bare minimum levels and most of their duties have been transferred to us. Which means a high volume of calls and almost noone at the Help Desk to take them.

The Powers That Be did not take that into account when staffing the Help Desk.

Wait times were 30 minutes long at times. I took 150 calls, one right after the other. All day.

The result is on Veteran's Day, a day I might have expected to have off, we'll have to be nearer to full staff. Well, I need the money.

Rats

Three of the four new hires showed up today. Not an good start. Many of the recent hires are coming in with a lot more experience than the Tech School recent grads that HR has been hiring of late. On one hand, it shows a market that has skilled people taking a cut in pay to find a job. On the other, these people will be jumping ship at the first opportunity.

And another analyst has done just that today. We ar hemorraging employees at an astonishing rate. And I have been training their replacements on an almost continuous basis for months.

I'm due for my annual performance appraisal next week. I'm not expecting good news. Sure, my performance has been excellent, but I suspect questions of pay raises, bonuses and the like will continue to be met with platitudes. "We're looking into it," seems to be the catch phrase.

Two for the road.

On Friday, I noticed that J**, one of the newest analysts, came in early and was sitting with B***. So, when the others showed up and I was looking to place them with established analysts to listen in on calls, I was surprised to see the new guy gone. Another of the new analysts didn't show today.

Another analyst told me that J** had been called into the office and, shortly thereafter, grabbed his backpack and was escorted off the floor.

The only thing that I can imagine a new analyst doing to generate that sort of reaction would be failing the drug test. I asked what was going on and D**** didn't tell me anything except to say neither of the two would likely be coming back.

So, out of the seven analysts hired three weeks ago, only three remain. That's an extremely high drop out rate. Four more are going to be starting tomorrow.

But, on top of that, two of our function desk people have found jobs. Both at a company that has hired people away from our helpdesk before. A place that has gotten a lot of praise from those who have gone before.

Oh, and N***, the analyst who used to sit next to me before I moved to the full cube and someone who I had trained, has gotten another job. He'll still be working part-time for the Helpdesk here but at his new place he's got full-time salary and benefits.

I need to send out more resumes.

The Whack-A-Mole Keyboard

I cannot type. No, that's not quite true. I typically type using the "5 finger" method, a step above "hunt-and-peck". I can even get up to 40 words per minute. But it's not 100% accurate. When I'm having a particularly difficult time typing, I will say that I need the "whack-a-mole" keyboard with big keys that I can smack with a hammer. "K!" *bam* "E!" *bam* "Y!" *bam*

Reading on BoingBoing.net I see that someone has, in fact, invented just that: The Sledgehammer Keyboard.


It needs TWO hammers!

In the dungeon

This mornings bike ride into work was entertaining. The thunderstorms had ended just as I was getting up but it was still raining quite heavily on the way in. Nothing like arriving at work soaking wet.

Then, arriving on my floor and beginning the process of moving to my new cubicle. Someone had stolen the nice, new chair that had been there and left me a piece of junk that was more beat up than the chair I had now. I asked around but noone would fess up. Eventually, my Team Lead said that he and the other leads had claimed them. T**** said that she had had her chair for a long time and R**** just denied it. That left only my Team Lead to have taken it.

"Thanks a lot, J***."

"You're welcome."

*Humph*

I started moving my things and, once my computer was in place I turned it on and "tried it on for size." It was kind of bright so I climbed up and disconnected two on the fluorescent lights. Now it seemed a little dark but I had to make it that way to reduce the glare.

Perhaps I'll get a desk lamp to keep it from seeming like I'm in a dungeon.

I wasn't able to find a periscope but I did take a webcam to work. With that, I can mount it on a pole or something and use it just like a high-tech periscope. The problem is, the webcam is an old one that doesn't have drivers for WinXP.

I have a new webcam that I was going to bring in but I just read my daughter's blog. It seems that she's gotten a new tatoo and, to post a picture of it for all to see she was going to ask me to bring up the webcam for her when I visit her at school the weekend. Funny that I have to learn about this in her blog rather then her sending me an e-mail, IMing me or talking to me on the phone.

What a strange commentary on modern communication.

Main Street Theft.

When I got back to my bike today after work, I discovered that someone had stolen my handlebar bag. The contents were two or three chemical glow sticks and an almost empty bottle of chain lube but the bag itself was worth $20 or so. Not a tremendous loss but something I will eventually have to replace.

Apparently a busy street is not enough to deter petty criminals and someone without biking gear taking something from a locked-up bike obviously not his isn't enough to get the attention of nearby pedestrians.

I suppose I should start parking in the building. There really isn't a place to park the bike inside. There are no bike racks in the parking garage. Any railing I could lock my bike to is part of a thoroughfare and thus could be hindering pedestrian traffic. I don't want to just find, as was suggested by building security, "an out of the way corner" and just leave it.

Movin' on up.

In an effort to find places for the new analysts to actually work, The Powers That Be have added four new cubicles. The rest of the Help Desk have half-height cubes so that everyone can see (and be seen) by everyone. The Bank didn't have any more pieces to put together half cubes and weren't going to spend any more money than is absolutely necessary so the four additional cubes stuck on the end are full, high-wall cubes.

And so the struggle began as to who would actually get them. The Hardware Guy and The Programmer were the two top choices because they really don't interract with anyone on a regular basis. They just sit and do their thing. Two down, two to go.

Well, 1 to go because I was offered one of the cubes.

I was a little hesitant to accept. I'm already as far away from the windows as one could be without being in the hallway. The cube I would be in was actually even further away from the windows and, with the high walls, I'd have to stand on a box to see them. I asked if anyone else wanted the cube and was told that they were being offered to those "who could work well unsupervised."

For as bad an egg as I am, they still think it's appropriate to put me in a position where noone will be able to see what I'm doing. A mark of respect, I suppose.

So, I'm going to accept. But I'll need a periscope or something so I won't be completely isolated.

Short Memories.

Lots of fun today. Twice today, D**** interrupted my class to ask me about changes he was making to a document that I had created to keep track of the accesses that had been granted or were still needed for new analysts. He was clearly working from an old document because it did not have the new accesses that we had received for a financial services group that is having their help desk responsibilities rolled into ours.

So, R*** the Education Coordinator later asks; "I know you are leaving early next Friday, would you be available to come in on Saturday?"

"No."

I was talking off early next Friday so I can spend the weekend visiting my daughter at college for Parent's Day.

Even later, D**** the HR Rep comes over to tell me that the week after next will be the third training group and by then I'll have to have this group (currently at the one week mark) up and running. So, what took three weeks with the last group will need to take two weeks for this current group. And to get the group after that up and running even more quickly I'll be spending six hours a day training instead of the current four hours.

I was unable to contain my joy.

And then I brought up the issue with D****. I asked if he had taken on the responsibility of tracking all the analysts accesses. I had thought to say that I didn't want to work with him because of all the previous issues (Something Stinks-16 Dec 2004) that I considered unresolved but instead I was more forceful.

"I won't work with him on this."

D***, as she almost always does, had a look on her face that was "I don't know what your talking about," having clearly forgotten the reminder I had sent her a month ago. (Do you remember when-25 Aug 2005) So, I had to explain it to her.

"Well, we're a teem and we have to be able to work together."

"I will not work with him."

She just said, "OK", and moved on the the training schedule again, apparently burying her head in the sand hoping it would all go away.

But, at the end of the day before going home I went to her cube to explain just how seriously I took this.

"The only thing that prevented my walking out of here that day was that I had a meeting with you in half an hour. If it wasn't for that, I would have been out of her and been calling a lawyer. And I would have been fully justified to do so. . . If he had said something like that to a Bank employee, The Bank would have had him fired. If I had said something like that to one of the people I was training, I wouldn't be a trainer anymore. As it was, he got a stern talking to. I don't consider the issue resolved."

"What do you expect?"

"I got what I expected. He got a stern talking to. But that's not what I believe should have been done. In just about any other business environment he would have been fired. At the very least he wouldn't be a team lead any more. I know that sort of action is never going to happen."

I told her I considered this the third major incident and, given that nothing of any significance has been done for any of those, I have no reason to believe that it won't happen again. She again got the quizzical look and I had to remind her of the incident where he warned me that "it's a tough job market out there" and the other where he accused me of "Just Geis being Geis" and refused to take the situation into the privacy of an office with the Site Manager, instead keeping it out on the floor in an attempt to embarrass me publicly.

She said that if I was angry all the time then maybe I shouldn't be working there. I didn't take it as a threat that I would be fired but as a suggestion that perhaps I should either get with the program or go somewhere else. Sorry, I'm not going to quit over this. They're going to have to fire me and then I'll have all this documentary evidence to take to a lawyer.

But I didn't say that. I simply reiterated, "I will not work with D**** without the filter of management. I will talk to you and you can talk to him then he can talk to you and back to me."

She suggested that since T*** is new to being the Site Manager and hasn't been involved in this, perhaps I should talk to him.

I know my employee folder has a lot of this stuff documented but, even though I've suggested it, I'm pretty sure that T*** hasn't gone through it. Hell, even D**** has forgotten issues I voiced less than a month ago. So I suppose I'll have to create an information package with all the relevant stuff and set up a meeting.

Erosion.

Day two of this batch of training and the guy who didn't show up yesterday didn't show again today. I was also told that one of the six remaining has decided that it's too far for him to drive for part time at $12 an hour and will no longer be joining us. That's a 30% loss in the first two days. A new record.

Out of the gate.

The second batch of eight started training today. Actually, they only hired seven and one of those didn't show up because he was in an auto accident yesterday. I don't know whether he didn't show because he was hospitalized or because he didn't have transportation but I figure if he doesn't show tomorrow then he's going to be asked not to bother.

Training Spaces

N*** tells me that the Help Desk has gotten approval for additional cubicles for our additional staff. Four cubes will be set up on the floor and four desks in the training room will be cubed off.

"So, with half the space from the training room gone, where will I do training next week when I get eight more people in here? And then what about the eight people coming after that?"

He didn't know anything about that. Apparently we're going to have to scramble, beg or otherwise seek out a place to train. We have two desks available on the floor now. Four additional cubes on the floor and four in the training room will make ten. Of course, we only have seven computers so, without the computers, the cubes are useless. We're still going to be a dozen cubes and computers short.

Oh, and the scheme for the third eight is that Management wants them to be trained on passwords so that they can get on the phones in three days. It typically takes three weeks to get people up to the point that they are taking calls, sometimes longer. But three days! That's completely unreasonable. And considering that it typically takes at least two weeks to get accounts for people, there is no way they are going to be up and running in three days no matter what sort of miracle I pull out of my ass.

In the e-mail I sent to the Site Manager and Education Coordinator, I used "slipshod training and piss-poor customer service" to express my opinion about this idea. The response I received expressed that they shared my concerns but tough cookies. It wasn't said like that but I was given the impression that this pressure is coming from The Corporate Overlords and The Bank so we have to come up with some ambitious plan, even if such plan is totally unreasonable and has no hope of actually succeeding.

Faronics fraud

I received an e-mail this morning that purported to be from Paypal:

Because of the recent Internet fraud activity and the recent innovations in our anti-fraud Department we are planning to introduce a new checking and money transfer coming from the PayPal system confirmation. You`ll get a notification about every PayPal transaction on to your mobile phone.

For this we strongly reccomend you to click the link bellow and update your personal info by entering the paypal site and entering your cell phone number.

Now, I've received these sorts of messages before and was able to immediately recognize it as fraudlent. The mispellings of "reccomend", "bellow" and a few gramatical problems helped. The way to know for sure is to point (but not click) on the link and see that the website it would take you to is msg-paypal.com instead of www.paypal.com.

So, I went to Network Solutions and did a WHOIS on the address msg-paypal.com and learned that it was registered by one Brent Smithurst of British Columbia two days ago. An internet search found out that Brent is Vice President of Technical Operations of Faronics Corporation in Coquitlam, BC.

So what Brent is doing is prending to be Paypal so he can mine the Internet for Paypal account passwords and cell phone numbers.

So, just for laughs, I went to the site and signed into the fraudlent Paypal site using Brent's e-mail address bsmithurst@faronics.com and the password "fraudster". It looked just like a Paypal site and even the code was lifted straight from Paypal's site, but since it allowed me to sign in with Brent's e-mail address and a made up password, it is not Paypal's site. (Unless Brent happened to have the password "fraudster".)

The site asked for credit card information, including the number on the back to "prove" that you actually have the card in your hands. It asked for a cell phone number. It asked for social security number. I filled in some information on behalf of Brent and submitted it whereupon it redirected me to an actual Paypal login site where I was told the login information I had entered was incorrect.

The irony of all this is that Faronics produces products to protect computers from unauthorized executables. I can't help but think that their products protect you from competators executables but allow the worms and viruses produced by the back offices at Faronics right on in.

I have, of course, forwarded all this information to Paypal. I hope that monday morning, Brent will be receiving a call from Paypal's lawyers or, better yet, from the Canadian authorities.

Third time's a charm.

So, R*** the Education Coordinator informs me that after the next batch of eight new hires that will be starting the 19th, there will be yet another batch of eight new hires. This is all on top of the fact that we don't have desks, or computers for the first batch of eight (now six because two have quit already). We have two desks available. There are three in the training room for a total of five. But we need to find places for twenty-two additional staff.

Oh, sure. techs have been in measuring the cubicles looking to add a few more, and there has been talk about of re-working all the cubicles to be two feet smaller and thus squeeze in another row but even that radical reconstruction doesn't find room for nearly doubling the staff in the Help Desk area. And they haven't actually done any work. They just show up again a few days later and measure the same things over again. During one day, techs were under my desk three times. What the hell did they see the third time that they didn't see the first two?

D****, the HR Contact said "It won't happen overnight," but I countered "I don't expect it to happen overnight but it has been going on four weeks now and the weeks are rolling by quickly. Very soon, 'not happening overnight' is going to become 'too late.'"

R*** is asking if I'd be willing to do earn some overtime and do some training on weekends. I suppose they have to since there aren't enough desks or the training room available during the week. And me, like an idiot, said, "I suppose. I'll have to check exactly when to see if I already have something scheduled."

A few weeks of sixteen hours of overtime will be nice but it won't make up for the fact that I haven't gotten a raise in THREE FUCKING YEARS!

It's not like I have much of a choice, though. It's an impossible task, getting worse and worse but if it's to have any hope of working out, I'm going to be the one to make it happen.

First and final warning.

The Education Coordinator came up to me today saying that they had four machines set up in the training room and that some of the new guys were going to be taking password calls tomorrow.

"You are aware that none of them have actually taken any calls yet and that, even under ideal circumstances, they wouldn't be on their own for another week, right?"

So, apparently even my impossibly accelerated schedule for training isn't fast enough. Normally it would be a week of classroom training, a week of listening on calls and then a week of taking calls with analyst supervision. I don't think three weeks is a bad turn around time for what is expected of these guys. But now we're just starting their third week and *BANG* they're being thrown to the wolves. And it's R***, the Education Coordinator that is going to be mentoring them.

It was because R*** was the trainer and doing a less that spectacular job that I volunteered to take over as trainer in the first place.



And management wonders why I think that what I have to say falls on deaf ears. I told the Site Manager outright last week that they would need another week. They got four hours.

Oh, and they didn't get paid on Friday like they should have. So, yet another batch of new people are having their paychecks screwed up.

Do you remember when?

After yesterday's frakas over the new printer procedures, I came in this morning to see an email from D**** reiterating the procedures I had violated in attempting to actually help a user instead of wasting thei time.

So, I replied and CCd to the Site Manager, the HR Person and my Team Lead reminding them of the Something Stinks Incident of last december and my request as a result of it that D**** not talk to me again.

If you ever want to talk to me or about me concerning policy, procedure or the cost of tea in China, you will go to the Help Desk Manager. Do not approach me in the hallway. Do not hover by my cubicle. Everything goes through Management"

If the new Site Manager hadn't gone through my file by now, I bet he'll look into it now. I did not describe the incident in today's reply, only the date and the resulting request to keep D**** away from me.

As of late, I've noticed that D**** has not been keeping his distance as he had been. Perhaps he had forgotten. Well, I have not. I still think about it often and steel feel uncomfortable with him on the floor.

The help desk shuffle.

Last week in my meeting with the Site Manager, I spoke with him about some of the stupid policies that had been instituted over the rears and that Managements inability to explain the reasons for these policies was one of the things that destroyed morale. I also admitted to ignoring particularly inane or tedious procedure when following those procedures interfered with my ability to to help the user's calling for my help.

Maybe if a Team Lead would say "Yes, I know it's a cumbersome procedure but we have to do it because the XYZ Group is accusing us of hanging up on them deliberately and we have to document what's going on," then maybe we would feel let put upon. We would be a team working together under the same circumstances towards the same goal. Perhaps with that knowledge of why such a procedure was put in place, those of us who are actually implimenting the procedure could come up with something better to resolve the issue.

He responded that he recognized those communication failures and that working with the Team Leads on that was one of his top priorities. He also expressed a committment to customer service.

A new, stupid procedure went into effect today.

Printer support in branches is provided my the printer manufacturer. They have consistantly shown a disinclination to go on site and resolve issues, I suspect because their contract doesn't pay them extra for on-site visits. So now, we have a new layer of troubleshooting. The analyst who gets the call needs to troubleshoot the issue. Then, if they cannot resolve it they must go to either J**, C**** or J*** to take the call and perform troubleshooting. If they are unable to resolve the issue then they need to conference in the Manufacturer Support Line to have them troubleshoot the call. Only if that does not work, then a ticket will be opened.

All the while, the user is waiting and waiting and waiting.

This is not good customer service. It's not good communication as to why this assenine procedure was put in place. It's not really workable. And, of course, when push came to shove, I ignored it.

Well, I didn't exactly ignore it. I waited for one of the Printer Triumverate but one was away from his desk, another was on another call that looked like it was going to take quite some time and the third, the person who is the head of our Hardware Escelation "group" doesn't usually bother with reading the entire ticket becauee he's so busy so why should I expect him to have time to troubleshoot.

I opened a ticket and said in the freeform that the "printer troubleshooting anaysts were unavailable".

D****, who I have had many a run in with before, threw a copy of the procedure on my desk, on top of what I was doing at the time. He had thoughtfully highlighted just the steps that I had violated. I was on a call, threw his paper out of my way, and took a moment to put the call on mute so I could tell him that noone had been available.

"You could have said that in the ticket."

"I did. Read the freeform again."

I'm pretty sure that D**** came up with the procedure, just as he has been the architect os so many poorly conceived and executed policies and procedures. And, that this happened yet again show me that the Site Managers rhetoric of last week was just that; empty rhetoric.

What does that mean exactly?

I received a call from someone who saw my resume on the Internet. For a moment or two I was excited but then he said that it would involve 5 to 10 hours a week and earn me $2,500 to $3,000 a month. He said it was "redirecting buying power over the Internet."

"That's sounds fairly euphemistic. What does that mean exactly?"

He said that it was difficult to explain over the phone and that he would like to meet with me for twenty minutes or so at, say, Pannera's.

"When I've spoken with potential employers before, they have always been able to tell me what job I was performing. Even in general terms."

"Oh, I wouldn't be your employer. But it's like trying to get a haircut over the phone. I'd really want to meet with you to discuss this."

"Hmmm. 'Redirect buying power' sounds like a multi-level marketing. . . er. . . program."

"Well, yes. . . "

"Thank you for calling but I'm not interest in your scheme."

Many rears ago, I received a similar phone call from a "friend" of mine. We went on for nearly half an hour with him dancing around not only what his "offer" would actually entail or on whose behalf I would be working. It turned out to be Amway but I was astonished at the level of obsfucation. And it wasn't particularly effecting dodging. In this instance, I knew it was a scam as soon as he said "5 to 10 hours a week and $2,500 to 3,000 a month." An employer going to pay me essentially $75 a hour for my technical skill? No way.

I stayed on as long as I did just to see how long it would be before I could get him to admit it was a pyramid scheme.

It was disappointingly short.

Touched by his Noodly Appendage

Buwahahahahahah!

Any description I try to make about this at this time will be inadequate. You simply must read it for yourself.

Open Letter to Kansas School Board

Upon the king!

I heard an open letter on NPR today from Stephen Mansfield, author of "The Faith of the American Soldier". In this commentary, he chided Cindy Sheehan for bringing her grief over the death of her son in Iraq into the spotlight by waiting outside the Bush ranch for an audience with the president.

The central issue is that when your son volunteered for military service, he placed himself upon an altar of sacrifice. Sadly, the ultimate sacrifice was indeed required. Yet he gave himself willingly, as all our soldiers do in this generation, and his death is therefore the noble death of a hero and not the needlessly tragic death of one accidentally or foolishly taken

When your son, and the thousands like him serving today, pledged himself to military service, he did not just "join the army." He offered himself to his God and his nation in an act of devotion that has been repeated for centuries. He entered the fellowship of those who offer their lives willingly in service to others. His death, though a horror, was a horror with meaning, willingly engaged.

My first thought at comments like these was that, in truth, these soldiers are not willing sacrifices. The vast majority of them are poor and undereducated, looking to do something better with their lives. They are enticed by military recruiters with promises of job training and money for college. I remember back in high school and early college when I was approached by these head hunters. They never talked about noble sacrifice. The never said anything about combat. They never mentioned the possibility of injury or death. They barely even mentioned service to country. No, this was a career opportunity.

The other image I had in my mind was Shakespearian. In Act 4, Scene 1 of "Henry V", the king, disguising himself as a "gentleman of a company" has an encounter with some soldiers pondering their fate and the coming battle.

One soldier speaks:

But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.

This is Cindy Sheehan's contention. The war in Iraq is not the noble cause the administration makes it out to be. Saddam Hussein, while a tyrant, had nothing to do with the attacks of September 11th and did not have weapons of mass destruction. Without those reasons, George W's justifications evaporate, leaving only revenge for his father's embarrassment in not bringing down Saddam in the first war.

Only if George W's cause is just, will the deaths of the soldiers that he ordered into battle have meaning. Only if the battle objectives are noble will the deaths of the soldiers be noble. The president will have much to answer for should this adventure prove to be a fools errand. And, in my view and that of Cindy Sheehan, it's not looking to well.

Upon the king! let us our lives, our souls, Our debts, our careful wives, Our children and our sins lay on the king!

Flash! AAAAA-aaaaaaa!

Do you remember the Flash Gordon film from 1980? There is the scene where Flash is in the Forest capital (or something like that) and Prince Barin (Tomothy Dalton) is challenging him to put his hand in this tree root where some deadly poisonous creature may, or may not, bite him.

Well, every day when I return to my car after work, I have exactly that feeling when I reach for the door handle. Waiting to discover if that bastard has greased my door handle yet again. I breath a sigh of relief each time I learn that he has not struck yet again.

But, I was lulled into a false sense of security today when I opened the passenger side door without problem and then got slimed wen I want around to open the driver's side door.

This makes number five.

You get what you pay for.

I got called on the carpet today. Yesterday, just when my trainees were coming in and I was hoping manage things by breaking them up into two groups, one to be in the classroom environment and the other to be listening in on calls, there was a meeting in the training room. Some Bank people were using the space to do something and noone had told me. So I had to scramble to find spots for everyone on the floor untill they got out and freed up the classroom.

During this frantic scramble to get things organized so as to not waste people's time, I ran into the HR Person and expressed my frustration over this situation to her.

This morning I was called into a meeting with the HR Person, my Team Lead and the Education Coordinator to go over how this had been unprofessional. I should not present a negative impression to new trainees.

I knew this sort of thing would come up eventually. I have not been quiet about my growing frustration over a lot of things and figured I would step too far out of line eventually.

I apologized about my emotional outburst but said I was being asked to do something that I considered impossible to do to expectations, I did not have anywhere near the resources necessary to make it happen, I am not getting enough time to reformulate plans and adapt to changing situations (this whole project had been dropped in my lap with only a week's notice) and one needs to add to the the frustration of doubled energy costs and not having a raise in three years. It should not surprise anyone that I might get a little frustrated and emotional.

The one thing that probably kept me from saying "If you don't think I'm handling this or working to your expectations then you can find someone else" is that the Education Coordinator preempted it by saying they thought I was doing a very good job of training.

"But. . . "

In spite of the compliment, they still had their concerns and the final counter I had to that was "You get what you pay for." If they want me to perform in a professional manner then they should pay me like a professional and maybe drop a little bit of money to get the resources necessary.

I did learn that they aren't hiring the second group of eight next week. That's going to be put off for two weeks or so. Gee, it would have been nice to know that in advance. Gotta' love that proactive communication.

Once the trainees came in, things went fairly smoothly. Splitting them into two groups worked pretty well except that at the end of four hours solid of training passwords I don't have much of a voice left.

At the end of the day, I was called into the office to speak one-on-one with the new Site Manager. He's been here for three weeks and this is the first time he's introduced himself.

He started off talking about the tax issues I had way back in April. The one where my local taxes were being paid to the wrong boro and the other where I had never had my Pittsburgh Occupation Privlidge tax paid. He assured me that he was putting resolution of that on a timetable but, in all honesty, I don't see how he can apply any pressure to Corporate HR to do anything.

He said that he heard lots of good things about me and had also heard some of my recently expressed concerns. I went over them again with him and he was unable to make any committment over whether we would ever start getting raises again.

All in all, he seems sincere about his open-door policy, about being an advicate of the analysts, of working on communication issues between the leads and the analysts and all the things you would expect a new manager to talk about. But I have grown quite cynical and will believe it when I see it. Until something is actually done, until I get my job description changed or I see a new number in my paycheck, whet he's putting out is just rhetoric and empty platitudes.

Flat.

Yesterday after work I drove out to the TRM Cycle shop in Monroeville. I had special ordered some Chamois Butt'r (something to keep me from chaifing during my upcoming Youghotomac bike ride) and got some tires while I was at it. My previous tires were getting very worn to the point where the tread was begining to pull apart from the core.

I can't say I was absolutely pleased. For one, they didn't have the right size. My original tires were 700x40c. The replacements were 700x38c, a little narrower, and they had more tread than I wanted. I was looking for something smoother like those on road bikes.

Well, today after work I came back to where I had parked my bike to find my rear tire flat. There was a sizable tear in the inside of the tire near the stem so it wasn't from any sort of road debris. Maybe it was just old but the pressure that probably blown through a seam. I tried to patch it but the patch just wasn't good enough.

I had parked at Golden Triangle Bike & Skate Rentals under the First Avenue T station and the sign on the door said that they were out to lunch and would be back in an hour. So, I needed to wait so I could buy a replacement tube.

They actually came back in about half an hour but they didn't have anything close to the right size tube. We tried patching the tube again but to no avail. So, I had to walk the three miles back to my car so that I could drive back to the bike shop and pick up my bike.

I had a tube at home.

And so it begins.

Today was the first day with eight new analysts that I will have to train before another eight start next Monday. Dealing with that has very clearly shown how impossible that task will be.

There is in my normal training cycle, a time where the new analyst will sit in from of the computer, typing in information and adapting to the system while an established sits behind him actually managing the call. This goes on for the better part of a week before the new analyst starts taking calls. Typically, I will have their phone system set to take only the password issues so that the calls are relatively simple.

With eight ne analysts, there are just barely enough seats during the training hours for them to sit with established analysts and, if I were to set them to "password only" then they would receive very few calls with which to gain experience.

And then next week we will have another eight show up, which will completely overwhelm the system.

This is not going to work.

That's me.

I got in the paper today. The afternoon edition of the Tribune-Review has me on page 4 between an article on a shooting and another on a guy who thinks he’s Hitler.

Piddling little crap.

For some time now, Help Desk Managers have been pushing a standard for ticket description lines. What is broken, what is broken about it and where it. To drive that, they have added description line policy adherence to the incentive program metrics. For example:

This is an acceptable description line:

LOTPGH03/SERVER NOT RESPONDING/MAIN OFFICE

While this is not an acceptable description line:

LOTPGH03 SERVER NOT RESPONDING MAIN OFFICE

See the difference? Yea, the first one has forward slashes separating the elements and the second one doesn’t.

I can understand the desire to standardize for consistency but to penalize someone for not entering a forward slash is asinine. No, really. It simply a method to prevent people from scoring perfect on all their metrics and thus keep them from winning some PTO as part of the increasingly inadequate incentive program.

So, the numbers were released today. Normally there will be four to sis names on the list of those who have made their numbers and are eligible to win. This week: no one.

I never really cared about my stats. I simply do my job and let the numbers take care of themselves. That’s worked out pretty well and I have plenty of incentive certificates to show for it. But with this new policy, that’s pretty much over. I simply refuse to waste my attentions on a stupid forward slash for a mere CHANCE to win some PTO.

To live the impossible dream.

Intitally, my rant for the evening was going to be about how the Corporate Overlords, in spite of recently landing a $150 Million contract with a major corporation, had decided to cut costs by no longer matching employee's 401k contributions. I was going to go on about how they had done this several years ago after making another announcement about how well things were going or how it had been reinstanted after last years merger.

But then the shit hit the fan.

The HR Person came to me at the end of the day and essentially informed me that hell was arriving next week. You see, as part of The Bank's cost saving measures, a helpdesk specifically for support of a major financial services subsidiary was going to be discontinued. That meant that the Corporate Helpdesk (us) were going to have to take up the slack.

Next Monday, HR will be bringing in eight additional employees. And the week after that an additional eight. I will need to train them all and have them up and running by early September.

This is, of course, impossible.

It's not that I can't teach that many people in a classroom environment. We don't have a computer projector but I can get creative around that. No, the real problem is when they have to start sitting in front of a computer. The HR Person, told me that they were working to get additional space and equipment but my point was that we didn't have the mentors.

There comes a point where the trainee needs to start taking calls. There is no way that they can go into it cold so they switch places with an established analyst who listens in on the call, coaching and, if necessary, jumping. With two or three new analysts, this isn't too much of a drain on Help Desk Resources. But eight or sixteen people essentially off the phones while trainees get their feet wet. . . Hell! We have about that many people on the phones normally. Can anyone in the IT industry anywhere imagine taking their entire staff off of whatever their doing to late an entire staff of novices take the helm? What sort of lunatic would do that?

Well, apparently I am that lunatic.

I told the HR Person outright: "It's impossible. I'll do it but I'm telling you right now that I think what you ask is impossible and will not work."

As I enumerated all the obstacles, I could hear my voice rising. More that once I stopped mid sentence to start over again at a lower volume. And then, I said what she probably already knew and I was too fed up to mince words about.

"This is a hell of a lot of work to expect from someone who hasn't gotten a raise in three years."

Years ago, when I started training, I asked about having my job title and description changed to reflect these responsibilities. I knew then that it would never happen because the title of "Trainer" would need to bring with it at least another $15,000 in salary, given market norms. I pursued it for a while because I was amused at the lengths they went in avoiding giving me an answer. They could have just said no but they kept up the pretense of trying to find out.

I'm not amused any more. This is too much and while I have too many ethics to tell them to take a flying leap over this, I am thinking that when this is all over I should just say, "You know, I really cared about being the trainer, about making a difference here at the help desk. But these past years have shown that you have been taking advantage of me by not compensating me for the work I have done. So I was thinking I would cut my losses and go back to doing the job that's in my job description and that I am currently being underpaid for anyway."

No Reported Issues.

We had a widespread issue today that brought down many of the teller systems in The Bank. But what really made the life of the Help Desk a living hell was the way in which it was handled.

It didn’t take very long for us to realize that something was wrong and not much longer after that to realize that it was such an issue that separate tickets were not going to be needed, nor was there going to be a single ticket under which multiple users would be added. We could simply tell users that we knew there was a problem, we didn’t have an ETA for resolution and that they needed to use specific offline procedure located in a folder at their branch.

Now, our phone system has what is called a "front end message", that is, a welcome message which usually says "Thank you for calling the Help Desk. We have no reported issues at this time." Under situations like this, one would think it would make sense to change the message to let people know that something was going on.

Sometimes it makes sense not to put up a front end message, especially for things like notes servers. For example, if Notes server 025 went down and we put up a front end message, people on server 030 who experienced a problem might hear the message about 025, assume it was for them and hang up so that we wouldn’t find out right away that 030 was having an issue. But in this case everyone was having a problem. There was nothing to be done and we weren’t keeping track of just how widespread the issue was because we understood that it was everyone.

But no front end message was up. Hundreds of people were calling and we were telling them all the same thing. Over and over again. Because so many people were calling, they were waiting in the queue for over 10 minutes to finally hear us take 45 seconds to explain the situation to them. If they had heard the message first thing, they could have saved themselves and us a whole lot of effort and aggravation.

Normally, I’ll take about 45 calls in a day. Today I took 150 calls. The most I’ve ever taken in a day.

Why a front end message wasn’t put up is beyond me. H**** suggested that it was because the Corporate Overlords want to leverage The Bank by saying, "See all the volume we need to deal with? We need more money or resources." Personally, I don’t think that flies very well. The Bank isn’t completely stupid and could see through such a claim with the counter argument, “These sorts of days only come every few months or so. The rest of the time you have more than enough to address the call volume.”

Some of the more cynical thoughts are that the support groups don’t want us to put up a front end message so that we get bounded and look bad. We are contractors, after all.

I am in the process of training some new analysts. The person sitting with me was wasting his time. I couldn’t put him on the phone to take what were essentially easy calls because we needed maximum throughput. There was nothing for him to learn as I said the same message over and over again. He eventually fell asleep. Literally. He was out for about 20 minutes. I didn’t care. Hell, if it were me in charge I would have sent him home.

The day was a complete waste that could have been handled so much better.

Revenge of the Squicky Vandals

After work today, I was going to go to a Geocaching Cash In Trash Out event. Essentially, a bunch of cachers were going converge on a park in Moon to pick up trash for the betterment of society. Riding home, I thought about how if the guy greased my car I would have to skip my public service and go to the police to file a report. I also thoght it wouldn't be a factor because so far he had attacked only on Fridays at the begining of the month. Today was a wednesday not quite at the end of the month so I figured I had at least this weekend to try to wire my laptop and webcam up to my car battery to set up for next week.

After arriving at my car and putting the bike on the rack I spelled the grease.

Bastard. He changed his pattern and caught me for now the fourth time. On the other hand, he is clearly not going to stop and, by falling into an increasingly more frequent pattern is only going to trap himself. I may just give up on the laptop-wired-to-the car-battery option and spend the money on the sport tracker digital camera. Sure, it'll be a couple of hundred dollars but I won't run the risk of draining my car battery or wrecking the laptop in the heat of an enclosed car sitting in a parking lot all day. I'll get a higher resolution picture, too.

Thanks, now get out.

The Help Desk's current Site Manager is apparently getting screwed again. Years ago, N*** was a Team Lead. In fact, he was my Team Lead. He left for two years to essentially create a Help Desk from scratch. When that
contract was over he came back to Pittsburgh, only to find there was no job waiting for him. When another Analyst here at the Help Desk left, the Corporate Overlords changed their minds and hired N*** back.

Except that he was hired back not as a Team Lead with Team Lead pay but as a part time Analyst, with part time pay and lack of benefits.

Great, huh?

When our Site Manager left for greener pastures, they offered the Site Manager position to N***.

Great, huh? Except that it was only a temporary position until the
Corporate Overlords found a permanent replacement. I've seen the ad online. They were offering over $100,000 a year to fill the position. And today I learn through the grape vine that when N*** is replaced, there won't be anything else for him. He won't be made a Team Lead. He won't even be a lowly Analyst like the rest of us. He'll be out on the street.

Great, huh?

Meanwhile, his replacement will be easily making twice what N*** was making doing the same job.

I'll say this, if N*** gets out in the world with a Help Desk Site Manager job, I would drop this place to go work with him in a minute. Literally. If I got the offer, I would clear out my desk immediately and be gone.

Pay Day Delay

Some three years ago, our Corporate Overlords called us in to a Help Desk meeting to give us a relatively rosy update about how the company was doing. I distinctly recall a char showing where The Company rated in relation to all our competators. It was a comfortable place to be. A week later, we learned that we we loosing our 401k matching and, shortly after that, our bonuses.

So, last week when we received a press release anouncing that The Company had landed a $150 Million contract with a major client, I could see the storm clouds. While everyone else was seeing it as a healthy thing and hoped we might start getting raises again, I remained skeptical.

Today, the other shoe dropped. The Company is going to a bi-weekly pay schedule instead of the current weekly pay and they were also going to discontinue mailing paper copies of our advice statements.

Clearly, even our new Coroporate Overlords are squeezing the stone in an effort to "maximize efficiency".

The Bank, the Help Desk's client, is also likely to be engaging in some streamlining with an expected 3,000 "displacements" on the horizon.

Squicky Glass

After work I rode across the river to the "Grand Opening" of the South Side trail between 4th Street and 9th Street. There was food and music and Mayor Murphy with a t-shirt, shorts and a well-worn bike.

But afterwards, I returned to my car parked at the Children's Hospital to find that not only had the passenger side door been greased but there were huge globs of the stuff on the windshield.

Clearly an escalation. So, I went to the police station in Squirrel Hill and filed an official "malicious mischief" report. I'm thinking of getting on of those digital game cameras, the ones that hunters use to take pictures of deer along trails. Properly set up, I could get a photograph of the vandal and seal his fate.

Attack of the Squicky Vandals

As I returned to the trail parking lot at the end of the Eliza Furnace Trail (There was rain predicted so I parked there instead of in Squirrel Hill), I was approached by another bicycle commuter. He asked if I too had been slimed. He was referring to occasions when I, and now clearly others, had automotive grease placed under their door handles.

The prime suspect is the owner of the adjacent Childrens Hospital parking lot. He apparently wanted ownership of the parking lot now owned by the city and provided free for trail users and when he didn't get it he began a campaign of petty vandalism in an effort to drive people away. I guess he figured that if he could drive people away he could claim that the space was under utilized and thus claim ownership because his neighboring lot is often full to capacity. It must gaul him to see those empty spaces that he could be making money off of.

The way he was caught (though there isn't any proof about the sliming) is that he left a note on someone's windshield saying that they couldn't park there all day and that his car would be towed. He signed the letter "Property Owner" and the phone number was that of the neighboring lot's owner.

The police have spoken with this guy and apparently the vandalism has ceased. . . for the moment. I have no doubt that he will attempt some other tactic to get what he thinks should be his. "Why should my taxes go to pay for an parking lot for bicyclists when I could be making money off of each space?"

The Fun Never Ends.

Last week, I signed up our sci-fi organization for web space at iPower. On Friday I investigated having the .NET domain we had point to the .ORG webspace as well. I was confused by the pricing structure and used the online chat to talk to someone at support. We danced around it because it didn't seem like he was sure what I wasking but he eventually said that it would cost $10.

Today, however, I learned that I had been charged $45.40. A $10 set up charge and a $2.95/month for 12 months charge for. . . something. I wasn't sure what.

I immediately got back on to the online chat and was told that the pricing structure had changed. I asked if that had happened between my request for additional service and the processing of my request and he indicated yes. He wasn't able to adequitely answer what the $3/month was for and referred me to the Additional Services department.

I called that phone number, got some running around and more insufficent answers and eventually got someone in Sales who explained that a redirect costs additional bandwidth for which there needed to be an additional charge to "deter" people from over using this service. I still wasn’t convinced but he was, at least, able to provide me alternative courses of action. One was to move my domain registry to iPower, whereupon the domain pointer redirect would be free. Second was to contact my registrar in that perhaps they could manage the redirect. In either case, he said that he would refund all of my money and cancel the redirect if I chose. He also made much of iPower’s high reputation and that it was not in their interest to jerk customers around over $10.

I contacted Network Solutions and was able to set up the forwarding for a $12/year charge.

I called iPower again to take the sales guy up on his offer to cancel the redirect and refund all of my money and was told that it was not possible. I asked for a supervisor and told that she was off the floor, apparently going over to the Sales department
to chide the sales guy for having offered me a refund.

When I finally got ahold of the manager, I was unable to convince her to agree to the terms that Sales had. Her manager was out of town. That person's manager, the CEO, was out of town. This struck me as a typical attempt to stifle the discussion so I confirmed names and the business address.

I've sent a letter to the company CEO. When someone tells me a service will cost me $10, I expect that it will cost $10. When someone tells me I will be refunded for a service who’s cost I was misled about then I expect to receive that refund. When a website says, "We make sure you’re satisfied, or your money back", I expect
that they will at the very least make an effort to resolve my problem.

Return of the Ping

The .ORG domain that I have been struggling so hard to lay claim to aggain is now mine. I almost immediately contacted iPower to purchase some web space and shortly thereafter applied the DNS settings at Network Solutions. Out science ficton organization web site is back on the air.

The Dam Breaks

I had an important e-mail waiting for me when I got home. This was from SnapNames.com, the apparent registrar above Bulk Register. It had the words "PENDING TRANSFER" which I assume means that my sci-fi group's domain will soon be transferred.

Time Warp

I just received an e-mail from Bulk Register:

BulkRegister received notification on 2005-06-15 7:52 PM ET that you have requested a transfer to another domain name registrar.

The curious thing is that I downloaded this email at 5:50 PM ET.

Is this some sort of time travel thing, are their clocks wrong or are they lying about what time zone they happen to be in?

Ghost Towns

This link was mentioned on the Geocaching.com forums:

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html

It is a photo log of a Ukrainian woman’s motorcycling travels through the "Dead Zone" that surrounds the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. As I saw photo after photo of abandoned cities, poisoned and uninhabitable for the next half a millennium, I felt a terrible sorrow. The idiocy of the Soviet regime that imposed such a shroud of secrecy that people living in sight of the disaster had no idea about what was going on. By the time they were evacuated, it was already far too late. Hundreds of thousands died.

Block lifted. Again. Maybe.

I received an e-mail from Jeff at Bulk Register saying that the block was lifted. I’m at home now so tomorrow when I get to work I’ll fax the Change of Registrar request to Network Solutions again.

Never in a Million Years.

I hadn’t gotten a response from Bulk Register yet so I first tried to contact them through the on-line chat. The question was simple enough: the guy I had spoken to had told me that he was going to ask his manager and technicians to lift the second block (that was not TransferGuard). I was simply asking if that had been done. The person I got today said that such a thing didn’t exist and that the account was expired.

I knew that. I said that I had to submit to MongoHosting’s extortion to have ownership of the domain transferred to me but that they didn’t actually do that. She said that the domain had been transferred and I countered that my name was one the account but I was completely powerless to do anything with it. It was like being sold a car but never being given the keys. Without the ability to change things, I don’t really own it. She said that my ONLY option was to pay them $20 to be placed on some sort of hold list. I responded that I had already been ripped off by MongoHosting and Bulk Register wasn’t going to get a dime. She also said that there was no record of my second transfer request. I said that I had an e-mail from Network Solutions saying that the request had been rejected by Bulk Register so there should be some sort of record as to why and when that occurred.

I had been told that a block was going to be lifted and that this would resolve my issue. If that was not the case then someone either didn’t know what they were talking about or someone was lying. In either case, that answer was not acceptable. She transferred me to Jeff, the guy I spoke to last week.

He said that he hadn’t received a response from his manager or the
technicians and that he was going to send the e-mail again. I asked again for his assurance that once this block was lifted there would be nothing preventing the transfer of the domain. He said yes, there would be no reason for the transfer not to go through.

Echoes of the Past

Yesterday’s hiking debacle affected me so significantly that I decided to call off of work. Sure, I was sore but it was my emotional state that kept me home.

I lived with my Grandfather for the last 13 years of his life. I watched his decline from an independent, capable and active senior citizen to an angry, bitter, enfeebled old man. One of the things I saw during that transformation was an inability to change his lifestyle when his capabilities changed. And in that I saw a direct parallel with D***’s behavior.

When one gets older, the body looses fat and the skin thins out. This change allows body heat to escape more easily, which is why old people often complain about being cold and, in the case of my Grandfather, can wear long sleeve shirts and not sweat even in the hottest weather. Because they don’t sweat, they don’t think they need to drink as much water. Also, older people do not process the water they drink as well as they used to, leading to more urination. These two things, not sweating and more urination, lead them to think that they don’t need to drink as much water. This is not true. Seniors are at an even higher risk of dehydration because of both the physical changes and the changes in their behavior brought on by a misinterpretation of those changes.

My grandfather did this all the time and it was a challenge getting him to drink enough water to keep him from getting dehydrated. The biggest roadblock was his own stubbornness in that he didn’t want to spend so much time in the bathroom.

D*** was doing exactly the same thing on this hike. He didn’t have enough water and paid the price. And what’s worse was that J*** was being an enabler by saying “He does this all the time.” I learned out that D*** also has circulatory problems and diabeties. Eventually, D***’s luck is going to run out and he’s going be in serious or even life-threatening trouble. And half a dozen miles back in the woods, it’s not going to be an easy rescue.

And here I was, having made a number of mistakes that could have been the difference between life and death had it come to that. I was angry with myself for not being prepared. I was angry and D*** for putting us in that situation. I was angry that I hiked back up the mountain for nothing. I was angry that, when it was all over, D*** still had no concept that he had put himself at risk. I was frightened that my lack of due diligence could have contributed to someone’s death. I was emotional because I was seeing echoes of my Grandfather’s self-destructive behavior and was powerless to do

A Walk in the Woods

I went hiking along the Whitetail Trail today with other members of the Sierra Club. The plan was to start at North Gate of the Quebec Run Wild Area and travel north to Lick Hollow. There were plans for a stop at Pine Knob and D***, the hike leader and senior citizen, had mentioned the possibility of a side trip to White Rocks, making the total for the day around 13 or 14 miles.

I had purchased a new pair of FRS radios and had thrown them into my
trail-end bag along with a clean shirt and a 32oz Nalgene bottle of extra water. I asked if we wanted to bring the radios along but no one else was interested. I was to learn later that this was a mistake. We started on the trail at 10am and it was 80 degrees with almost 100% humidity. I thought maybe my 3-liter Camelbak might not be enough for the day but also thought the 32oz Nalgene bottle might be more weight than I wanted to carry. I left it behind. Another mistake.

The trail was in many places almost completely obscured by overgrown ferns but the blue blazes kept us on the trail. Mid-June is the time for the Mountain Laurel to bloom and there were explosions of white and pink flowers all along the trail. At a point we needed to decide whether to go down to White Rocks or not. The D*** clearly wanted to go. My first thought was to stay on the trail because I was using my GPSr to map the trail for posting to LocalHikes.com but I thought it was selfish of me to vote to stay to the trail for only that reason. Instead, I said that I didn’t care one way or the other so the vote was to go to White Rocks.

On the way down the old logging road we encountered a black bear on the trail. We watched him while he sat down and watched us. Eventually he grew bored with us and wandered off. It was the first time I had ever encountered a bear in the woods.

We arrived at White Rocks and D*** laid down for a rest. He pulled out an 8oz Diet Pepsi to rehydrate and I started to get the willies. His water was gone and I could tell that he wasn’t carrying a third of what I was carrying. And a diet soda is a bad, bad thing to drink under these conditions.

After a rest, we went around and climbed to the top of White Rocks where he took another lie down. I was getting genuinely concerned.

On the climb out of the hollow, I began to realize that D*** was starting to have trouble. He was very slow coming up the hill and when he stopped to take a break I asked him if he was drinking water. He said he had plenty.

I had a 3-litre Camelbak and I knew I was beginning to run low. Anyone who claimed to have plenty of water was not drinking enough. Thus, the conspiracy began. Myself and two others took the lead and as we climbed the hill we started planning on what we should do. Way back in Boy Scouts I had dealt with a similar situation of an extremely hot day and running out of water. The plan was for us to press on to Lick Hollow, stock up on water and then to return to re-supply the second group. This was when I was truly regretting not bringing the FRS radios.

We got to the next turn where D*** had wanted us to stop. The three of us debated and decided to press on after leaving a note. We didn’t get far before we heard them coming up behind. The others had gotten him to take off his hat, which was causing him to overheat, and someone else was carrying his pack. He was making much better time but still didn’t look well. We decided to wait at Redstone Creek for them to catch up.

J*** spoke with me. He told me that the D*** did this sort of thing all the time. But from experience, just because he does this all the time doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

At the Redstone Creek crossing it was decided that three of us would go on ahead and D*** and others would go to the end of Pine Knob road and wait for pickup at the gate. That would cut several miles off the hike. I ran out of water and the two women that were with me ran out a short time after that. It was two hours to finally get to Lick Run. We stocked up on water and drove the waiting vehicle to the gate.

Except that they weren’t there. We got really worried. They should have been there by now. Another mistake: we should have exchanged cell phone numbers (if the second group had cell phones) in lieu of not having my FRS radios. Two of us took the water and started hiking the road but she turned back because her ankle couldn’t take it. At the road that turns off to Pine Knob itself, I left one of the water bottles to make sure that they didn’t get past me and went to be sure they hadn’t make a sightseeing detour.

When I came back there was a bear sniffing around the water bottle I had left. He heard my approach and made his way into the woods. Night fell and I continued up the road. At 9:30 it was decided to call 911. It turns out that the D*** had gone to the other end of Pine Knob Rd. where it meets Skyline Dr., not the end that we were at much closer to Lick Hollow. That miscommunication was yet another terrible mistake in a day full of stupid and careless mistakes.

I had thought to bring my FRS radios but didn’t. I had thought of taking extra water but didn’t. I had thought of bringing my microfilter water bottle but didn’t. I thought about staying on the trail but didn’t.

Block Party

BulkRegister has done it yet again. Network Solutions has responded that Bulk Register has again denied my request to transfer my sci-fi club domain to myself. So, I call up Bulk Register and this time get someone named Jeff.

Jeff again gives me the story about contacting the host, MongoHosting and I again say that they refuse to respond to any of my e-mails and their WHOIS database is full of lies. I tell him that I have been at this for a month and have an authcode and the TransferGuard has been lifted, why is the transfer still being refused?

Each time he offers another platitude I cut him off saying that I've already jumped through that hoop. He uses the standard Help Desk response that "This is the first time I've dealt with this issue."

"I have been dealing with this issue for a month and have talked to at least three, now four different people at Bulk Register. Each one has told me something different and neglected to tell me some vital piece of information that has prevented me from obtaining posession of my own domain."

He said that he would send an email to his manager and the technician (Dip and Ming) to have the block lifted. I ask if this last action will finally allow me to have to domain transferred and he says yes.

I am going to hold him to this and if in a few days I don't get a positive response I am going be tracking down this Dip.

Return of the Squicky Vandals

When I returned to my car after work I discovered that some bastard had again greased my door handle. Now, instead of a one time incident a few months ago, I've got someone who will grease my door whenever the opportunity presents itself. I looked around and no one else seems to have been targeted. So what is it about a green Honda Accord with a bike rack that attracts such unwanted attention? What the hell is wrong with people?

It was raining today so I thought I would park at the Children's Hospital lot instead of in Squirrel Hill, cutting my ride in the rain in half. I suppose I'll just have to start ignoring the weather and riding the longer distance no matter what the weather. And the forcast calls for showers and scattered thunder showers all week.

The Power of Persistance.

I got a response today that my request to transfer my domain to myself was rejected by BilkRegister (oops, BulkRegister). So, I finally got ahold of someone online. First, they told me what I already knew, that the account was expired and that the Transferguard was still in place. I told them that I had spoken with a technician three days before and he said that he was putting in a work order to lift the lock and that it would take two days. That time had passed and it was still locked.

Domain Support: Are you a bulkregister member?

Geis: No I am not. And, before you say that I need to contact my reseller, I must reiterate that MongoHosting has refused to respond to any of my requests to release the lock for three weeks now.

Domain Support: Why dont you sign up with us. So that you can manage the domain yourself.

Geis: Because MongoHosting already blackmailed me into paying them for two years of hosting to get the domain transfered to me. All they did was change the name on the admin and did not release the transfer lock.

Domain Support: But if you sign up with us you can manage the domain totally.

Geis: If you release the transfer lock, like the technician I spoke to on Monday said he was doing, I can transfer the domain to another registrar and manage it there.

I could see where they were going with this as I had seen it in a number of previous e-mails and I will let the domain die rather then pay them a dime of blood money.

They tried to direct me to a phone number that didn't answer. They tried to refer me to MongoHosting who I again said had not been responding to me. I described my experience with MongoHosting in detail using words like extortion, blackmail, hostage and thievery. They tried to refer me to another number and I told them that wasn't getting through either. Then they told me to wait two days (I assunme for the lock to be lifted). I said I had already waited three days. In fact, I had already waited three weeks and have gotten nothing but the run-around.

All told, this conversation went on for an hour and a half with several long pauses as I'm sure the technician consulted with her manager. I did not let them go for too long with each pause, asking if there was a direct number I should be calling to actually talk to someone directly who could resolve this issue. I wasn't going to go away.

Finally, the word came back: "The lock is realeased"

I immediately re-faxed my transfer request to Network Solutions.

A temporary solution.

The backup domain I’ve purchased is set up. I’ve contacted my personal hosting service to add that domain to the DNS resolution so that people going to that URL will end up at my website. My website has been changed so that users will read that this is a temporary situation and that they can click on one of several links to get to a streamlined version of the website. Now, I have to disseminate the new domain address to all the search engines so we can minimize the damage.

Ten kinds of wrong.

Japan and China have been in a war of words recently over perceptions of the Second World War. It involves Japanese textbooks that do not admit atrocities committed in China. It involves war memorials that honor all of Japan’s war dead, including war criminals. Mostly I think it involves posturing and saber rattling by China to counter Japans influence in the region both politically and economically.

Well, a posting to a newsgroup has tried to defuse the situation. The posting was a photograph of a pouting 11-year old girl saying "Please stop these anti-Japanese hijinks. If you don't, I won't like you anymore."

It’s a clever personal appeal. Well, actually it’s somewhat contrived because the girl, model Saaya Irie, didn’t actually say what she’s quoted as saying. Even so, suddenly, the discussion groups went from China-bashing and Japan-bashing to conversations about how cute this girl is. But, what made it really work and what makes this so wrong is that this particular 11-year old girl wears an F-cup. Yea, the little child is completely stacked.



I recently saw an anime called Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan (which roughly translates and “Beat-to-death Angel Dokuro-chan). A time traveling angel lives with a middle-school boy and regularly knocks the top of his head off with a big spiked bat. That’s pretty messed up but what really makes it wrong is the reason. It seems that the buy is destined to discover the secret to immortality. The side effect however is that girls will not mature beyond age 10 and the angel has been sent back in time to murder him and prevent this pedophile’s paradise.

And if the school girl fetish wasn’t disturbing enough, I found a copy of a Japanese print that is the precursor to the tentacle porn genre. It’s titled "Octopi and the Maiden" by Katsushika Hokusai (c. 1814) and portrays a woman being molested by an octopus.

I’m sure it is a cultural egotism and our nation’s puritanical roots that have me believing that the Japanese are messed up beyond all reason. Evidence shows that these disturbing behaviors occur in all cultures and have probably always been going on. In fact, evidence shows that even animals engage in what would be considered deviant behavior so maybe these sorts of things are really deviant at all. What we consider "normal" is merely an arbitrary central point in a broad spectrum of behaviors. That central point moves back and forth from time to time but the full spectrum remains.

This is not to excuse pedophiles for their criminal behavior but perhaps we need to clearly understand the foundations of what’s going on. It is normal behavior for males to seek out the best females. In nature, the best females are typically young and healthy. In early humans, these females would be "claimed" as soon as they became reproductively viable. Perhaps, even earlier to guarantee that the alpha male had first dibs. Puberty in modern humans begins at around age 8 or 9.

As society has gotten more complex, so too has the time necessary to
develop the ability to make decisions in that society increased. For a primitive human girl concerned with subsistence survival on the African savanna and might not expect to live past the age of 30, hitching up with a male at the age of 8 would be an easy and wholly appropriate decision. But to a modern girl in elementary school who is a decade away from entering the workforce and could expect to live into her 80’s, it’s far too early to be making those decisions for the rest of her life. And it’s always too early for an older male to be making that decision for her.

Does it sound like I’m defending these guys? It shouldn’t. Pedophiles are some of the worst kind of human filth I can think of. But it’s not because they are sexually attracted to young girls because we are all genetically programmed for some level of that. It’s because they prey on their youth and inexperience for their own selfish desires in violation of all the rules of modern society.

End Run.

One of the first things I did today is purchase another domain at Network Solutions as a backup for the one that’s expired through MongoHosting and BulkRegister. It’s not going to help too much as our our sci-fi organization flyers and publications have the old .ORG domain but if I can get the DNS entries changed and the new information out to the search engines we won’t be completely down.

The second thing I tried was contacting MongoHosting by telephone. As I mentioned before, the WHOIS information for Robert Dunbar of MongoHosting and Silvercities is incorrect. In one place it’s an outright lie. In another it’s merely disconnected. I tried calling directory assistance and searched on a few things and the one entry I found turned out not to be the person I was looking for.

Next, I called Network Solutions to see if there was anything they could do. Indeed, there was. Since my name is the Administrator of the domain, it should be an easy thing to transfer to myself. They looked at the entry and said that even though it was expired, the domain wasn’t locked (BulkRegister said it was) and they should be able to do the transfer. It couldn’t be done on-line, however. I needed to sign forms, provide proof of identity and fax the documents. It could take ten days, however.

One of the things on the form was something called an Authcode. This is apparently required for transfers of .ORG domains. I called BulkRegister directly and was able to get the Authcode from them. They also said that the domain WAS locked and that they would enter the work order to have that listed. Interesting, because in all their e-mails of the past two weeks they were saying that only MongoHosting could lift the lock. The discrepancies between what they say via e-mail and what they say when cornered on the phone are all the more reason to get the hell out of there.

Off the air.

I noticed that the website I had hosted at MongoHosting was off the air today. I’ve been trying for two weeks to get in touch with MongoHosting and they have not responded to any of my e-mails. Bastard. And BulkRegister hasn’t been helpful either.

Unfortunately, there isn't much I'll be able to do until Monday.

The rest of the story.

When the systems started having problems yesterday, the Help Desk got a call from a support person who said he was going to do something to try to resolve it. Because it was a production issue, he was told we would have to open a high severity tracking ticket. He said, "No, I'll take care of it."

Then it really went bad.

Whatever he did brought the whole system crashing down.

ID10T indeed.

We all fall down.

Because I'm still training, I don't get my lunch break until 2pm. It makes for a real short afternoon and isn't too bad except that it messes up my feeding schedule. I'm generally eating only one meal a day.

Anyway, on this particular day, shortly after coming back from my lunch, things went south. The Bank experienced a problem with the teller system causing users to go off-line. Our call volume went through the roof and stayed that way. At one point, we received a pop-up message from the Function Desk saying that the system "Should be back up in 10 to 15 minutes". Of course, that didn't affect the call volume.

As that deadline came and went without resolution, we received another message from the Function Desk: "If you get a branch on the line and they ask you how long it will take the system to come back up..... DO NOT TELL THEM 10-15 MINUTES..... YOU'RE NOT THE SUPPORT GROUP.... STOP IT IMMEDIATELY BECAUSE USERS ARE CALLING BACK STATING THAT THEY WERE TOLD 10-15 MINUTES."

But, wait. Didn't you just tell us that it should be up in 10 to 15 minutes? Don't you give us this information so that we can pass it on to the users who are clambering for just this kind of information? This problem came at the end of the day and the tellers needed to balance their drawers. They needed to make a decision as to whether they should stay after closing time 10 or 15 minutes to get the systems back up and balance things or just assume that it wasn't going to work at all and go to their backup procedures.

Now, that having been said, I rarely believe these ETA messages anyway. Usually they are based on the mistaken belief that a simple reboot of the servers will resolve the issue. In my experience, that is seldom the case. Whenever I give out these ETAs I do so with the qualifier that support says that it SHOULD be up in X-amount of time. I also usually say that if it's not they the user's are just going to need to continue with the specific interim procedures I've just given them.

Ugh. In any case, I took over 80 calls for the day, half of them in the last hour.

Two Minute Warning

So, the HR Rep come up to me at work and says:

"Did I tell you that you're training a new analyst tomorrow?"

"No. You didn't."

"You're training a new analyst tomorrow."

"Ah."

If this were a sit-com, that comment would have been followed by a cue from the laugh track. Unfortunately, there was no punchline and her comment was followed by a simple stare from me.

"Is that OK?"

"Whether it's OK or not is irrelevant. At this point I don't have any choice in the matter."