tell me, tell me how to be a millionaire. – ABC

i’ve been wanting to post lots of stuff but i’ve been busy as hell with either work or school.

i can’t wait until december 18 when that’ll be the last day of exams and i won’t have to either be at work or at school. it’d also really help if they did something like give me someplace a lot closer to work at – i’m still upset that my commute has ballooned from 20 minutes to 60 minutes, but i guess i’ll deal.

it’s just that i thought that i’d be starting in annapolis since i had worked there for almost two years, and that was where i interviewed, and that’s where i thought the posting was for, so when i was placed at laurel i was surprised but i didn’t mind too much. but now that they’ve sent me off to lanham instead of laurel i don’t like it as much. why oh why can’t i work at the baltimore store? that’s just 10 minutes from school!

since monday was orientation for all the people who didn’t have orientation the previous few weeks i didn’t have work and i didn’t have school, so it was great being able to relax a bit. i had a paper to do for my archaeology class on tuesday so i still had to do some work, but at least i didn’t have to go rushing from place to place.

tuesday i had my classes as normal, but i was really tired. we got back our math exam and… i didn’t do quite so well in it. at least the girl i know in that class who had trouble got above an 80 on it.

wednesday i had training, and all i really had to go by as for what we were going to be doing was this packet that the manager at laurel gave me when i showed up for my one day there, and it just said:

10/8 – initial wireless training – 9 am

so i drove to headquarters and told the security guards that i was there for initial wireless training and they gave me a funny look and said that it wasn’t being held at headquarters that day and asked if i was really sure i was supposed to be there. eventually they let me in and told me to check the training center area. so i go down to the training rooms and see one room filled with lots of the people i had orientation with, so i poked my head in there and they looked at me funny too until i explained that i was pretty much the odd-man-out since only one or two other people were going to do customer care in the stores (these people in the training area were going through training to be customer service people answering phones at headquarters), so the guy training them told me to head down the hall and look for this one lady who might know where i was supposed to go.

i went down the hallway, found the lady that i was supposed to find, and she said “oh! they’re meeting at annapolis junction today! you should be down there!” great. at least i arrived at headquarters 20 minutes early. she talked to my trainer and then set me up with a binder with the training info and gave me directions to the system switch where we were having our training at that day. she said that lots of people were running late that morning because of the fog, so to take my time and not really worry about it – that was good because i had to backtrack and get gas for the car before heading off to this training, so i didn’t get there until about 9:40 am.

training so far has been pretty good – all of the hawt chix who went through orientation with me are in there doing sales training, but too bad none of them have been assigned to lanham too – i’m the only one going there. ^^;; all the people in the class get along well (it’s about 15 people or so) and we have a fun time.

so on tuesday we got a tour of the switch and got an explanation of what happens where when you make a cellphone call and stuff like that. it’s amazing – the entire building is battery-powered!

i wanted to go to dodgeball club (the fraternity has started its own dodgeball club and apparently it’s doing really well – we had about 50 guys out there from what i heard playing dodgeball on wednesday!) on wednesday night, but i had too much stuff to do. like i said, i can’t wait until the end of the semester.

there was a spot of fun wednesday night when suitemate dave’s friend john from down the hall came scootering in and told us that his roommate mike was in the study room down the hall studying with some girl, so we decided to try to embarrass him, hehe. we jumped out the window with our scooters, scootered past some people outside harbor hall, into harbor hall, and down the hallway back into our room – the people outside and mike and the girl stared at us as we passed by, hehe. a minute later we repeated the same thing which really confused the people who saw us since they didn’t see us go back the opposite direction, hehehehe.

thursday was classes as normal yet again. nothing especially special. i came up with a funny little phrase for my lj’s “title” and “subtitle” on my lj info page. i figured that with the stories and stuff i type up on here, “from awful to roffle” suited me well, and it rhymed too – pretty much the only bad thing that rhymed was “milli vanilli”, hehehe.

we had a candlepass last night for about 2 hours which went well – candlepass is when the brothers of the fraternity all get together and take a candle and and basically say whatever they want to get off their chest about things that are bothering them or want to bring to the attention of the other brothers; whoever has the candle gets to speak, and when they finish the candle is returned to the middle of the circle and whoever wants to speak next takes it, and so on and so on. afterwards we went to late-night, and i didn’t end up getting to bed and falling asleep until 3 am (and i had to be up to go to training today at 7:30), so i was very tired this morning.

today i had more training (this time back at headquarters), and this time we were assigned homework – we had to go to an actual retail store of one of the major competitors and be sneaky spies and mystery shop and report back on monday about:

– whether or not we were greeted as we entered the store

– number of customers / number of employees

– coverage

– warranty replacement policy

after work i went to the target store in columbia to find this coffee maker i have been trying to find (i figure that if i need to be opening the store at 8:30 am, and it’s an hour long commute to work so i have to wake up around 6:30, i’m going to have my coffee!). they didn’t have it at target, so i went to the borders in the same shopping center to look for a book to use as a supplement to my calculus textbook, and i ended up finding this book that’s entertaining and interesting and does a good job of explaining things as it goes along (which was my biggest complaint about my textbook) called “calculus and pizza – a cookbook for the hungry mind”.

after borders i went to the compusa in the same shopping center to find the tungsten t2 so i could take a look at it in person and see how much i like it, since i’m considering upgrading to that sometime when i replace my handspring.

since i wasn’t able to find my coffee maker at that first shopping center, and i still had to do my sneaky spy investigation of at&t wireless (i had wanted to see their bluetooth phones in any case), so i went to columbia mall and went to every single store that i thought would carry this coffee maker (like sears, hechts, jc penny, etc) and none of them had it! 😛

when i did my mystery shop i was very sneaky about it – i even took my phone off before hand so it looked like i was shopping for new service, hehe…

– whether or not we were greeted as we entered the store: not greeted, had to go to salespeople myself

– number of customers / number of employees: 1-3 customers / 2 employees

– coverage: crap! looks like a spiderweb across the map, lots of empty / roaming spots

– warranty replacement policy: option to get extended warranty at $1.99 / month, insurance at $3.99 / month, or both for $4.99 / month. phones needing warranty repair need to be sent out, “usually” repaired and returned by the next day. phones come with 1 year manufacturer warranty, but if phone needs warranty repair within that first year and customer does not have the extended warranty option on their account they must pay $25 to have the phone repaired – so if phone has a warranty issue and you don’t have the extended warranty, you’re looking at shelling out $25 and being without a phone for at least 24 hours.

ew yuk XD

i walked by fossil but joanna was not working there today. i was going to tell her how sneaky i was doing my mystery shopping, hee hee.

went back to umbc, packed up my stuff, and headed back to annapolis. on the way home tom gave me a call to see what i was up to, and i told him i was investigating coffee makers, so since he was bored he decided to meet me at the annapolis mall. (if there’s one thing i noticed today is that malls = hawt chix population). i played the william tell overture for him as i zoomed down 97, and then i called stueypark and played the william tell overture for him too and asked if he wanted to hang out at the mall too. then i wondered who else would appreciate my wacky antics, so i called feisty_fitz to play the william tell overture too, but i kinda messed up…

me: “HEY! KELLY! LISTEN TO THIS!”

me: *accidentally hits next song button just before hitting play*

ac/dc: “TWOOOO FACED WOMAAAANNN WITH YOUR TWOOOO FACED LIEEEESSSS!!!!”

me: “AHH!!”

me: *hits back*

rossini: “BUM! BADA-BUM! BADA-BUM-BUM-BUM-BUM-BUM-BUM-BUM-BUM-BUM-BUMMMMM!!!!”

kelly: “uh, ok.”

so i got stu and we went to the mall and investigated around and didn’t find my coffee pot and marveled at borders’ lack of a math section and waited for tom to arrive. we got eats and then went to blockbuster and got “the italian job” and watched it and it’s a great movie and that brings me to this point in the post.

i checked my mail when i got back to the house and saw this letter from umbc saying “uh, we send these out to everyone, so, hey, pay the rest of your tuition for the fall by december 5 or else you won’t be living on campus in the spring!” blargh. i’ll only get 4 payments between now and then and those will come out just under $4k, and i’ve got just under $6800 worth of tuition to be paid. -_-;; looks like no powerbook for me until early next year XD;;; i’ll be able to cover it if a) i get this credit card i’ve applied for times just like this in time (and i don’t see why it wouldn’t), and just need to hope that b) it has enough on there for me to split the balance of my tuition between both salary and credit. ^_^;;

tomorrow dad is going to take the saturn to get its tires replaced with winter-y tires, and i’m going to try to get to bed bath and beyond to find that coffee maker. that’s my story, and i’m sticking to it.