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#5233 – may you work in interesting times

the most work i did at work today was to try to not fall asleep during a 2-hour conference call this afternoon from 2-4 PM. i’m serious. i didn’t even have to DO anything in the conference call! i read through some specification documents and highlighted some things to keep track of later, but that was just busywork so i wouldn’t look like i was sitting there twiddling my thumbs.

i got so bored during the conference call i tried attaching my phone handset to my head with a large rubber band — the wireless earpiece i was given needs a cleaning before i’ll use it.

i actually woke up late for work this morning — i usually leave the house at 7:15, and that’s when i woke up. i looked in my closet for clothes to wear and quickly remembered i had put them in the laundry last night. apparently i didn’t transfer them from the washer to the dryer like i thought i did, and i can’t quite call into work and say “sorry pete [my manager and acting supervisor], i can’t come into work because i don’t have pants to wear.” and since it’s september, i can’t use time off – because it’s the end of the government’s fiscal year, september for the federal department at work is like december in the retail channel. so i went tearing through my closet looking for something to wear and came across my suit and wore that with a dress shirt that was still in my closet. so…

– navy blue pinstripe suit

– blue dress shirt

– red tie

– black shoes

– …and brown socks

yes, brown socks, my dress socks were in the laundry as well. i really need to get some more black dress socks like my current ones, but i have no idea who makes them.

so i got out of the house around 7:25 and STILL made it to work on time. well, maybe 2 minutes after 8. but we still get up to 4 minutes 59 seconds before we’re considered “late”. so yeah, my car is fast, fool!

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#5232 – hey big spender

oh yeah, so i forgot to mention. i’ve finished two weeks at my new position so far, and i’m liking it so far. this is actually true, but it might get me to start drinking (more).

they put me on a special project where we have this older billing system that’s used by a small percentage of agencies and corporations (it lets them download their invoices as zipped text files that they can run through their own software in order to break down phone charges for different parts of their organization… these are big zipped files too, ~25 MB zipped, or one of the four text files included can be about 600 MB unzipped). well, this old billing system is so crusty they’re trying to encourage these agencies and things to switch over to other billing systems that are a lot more like the online self-serve portals available for regular ol’ customers, since they can use these to do things like order equipment, or download their bill in xml and other such formats and run reports to help make more sense out of how their company uses their phones.

the thing is, this is a directive from the bigwigs that we need to get the companies using this old billing system to something that i guess is a lot more economical for us to run. it wouldn’t be as big of a problem as it is if it wasn’t for the fact that one agency using it has ~50,000 lines of service with us and so there are special contracts with them that are involved because they are so big and so dependent on the features in these online billing systems, and if we don’t dot our ‘i’s and cross our ‘t’s then bad things happen:

– we break our part of the contract

– we lose 50,000+ lines of service

– we have to tell other government agencies when we bid for contracts that we have broken a contract in the past (and it isn’t a matter of “we broke our contract, but…”, it’s more like “have you ever broken a contract? Y / N”, no room for any explanation)

– if we have to tell other agencies that we’ve broken the terms of our contract then it can prevent us from gaining other business in the future so far

– there is the potential that some (all?) of us on this project could lose our jobs if things don’t go right

but hey, didn’t they gave me a pay raise when i took this position? oh yeah, about that… when i got my pay raise info, i increased my 401(k) deposit amount by 1 percentage point, as well as my savings account deposit amount by 1 percentage point. my set amount going into one checking account for bills and the balance going into my other checking account for my personal allowance, i left those two alone.

so after my first week in the position, i got my first paycheck that included my pay for this new position. granted…

– it was only for a week of this new position (so half of the pay period was paid at the rate for my previous position, and the other half of the pay period was paid at the rate for this new position)

– i had made those percentage point increases to my 401(k) and my savings account

– they took out $15.00 out for my monthly gym membership payment

but after those changes, guess how much more this paycheck was compared to my usual paychecks in my previous position?

$4.00. four. dollars.

i console myself with the fact that i’m using every last penny of tuition reimbursement this semester for my master’s degree.

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#5231 – shucks

From: RJLee@express.com

Subject: RE: Express

Date: August 27, 2009 8:40:07 AM EDT

To: glenn@glennfitzpatrick.com

Hi Glenn.

I was able to partner with our e-mail marketing team and they have applied the male gender option for your e-mails. If we do have a male specific promotion, you should receive it. Please note that you may also receive promotions periodically for women if there is a dual gender promotion or if there is no promotion for men at that time which is advertised.

Thanks for your patience and if you need anything further, please contact me directly at this e-mail address.

Take care,

Rick Lee

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#5230 – meeting google

quotes of the night, both from yours truly at the washington dc google meetup i went to tonight with zenmetsu:

“i party so hard, andrew wk has NOTHING on me!”

(after politely declining a third drink ticket from the marketing rep who joked that i was cut off)

“i’ve had so much to drink, i gotta lay off water for a WEEK.”

(after finding out from the marketing rep that this was the first meetup they got the google marketing team to pay for)

“well, if marketing is paying for it, then hell yeah i’ll have another drink!”

also, MAN were there a lot of cute geeky girls there. zow!

—

in less fun news, pap-pap is in the hospital with a blood infection. 🙁 i took off half the day today from work to meet up with mom at the hospital and visit him this afternoon, but he had dialysis that was finishing up shortly after we arrived and knocked him out for all but 5 minutes of the 2 hours or so that i was there. i’d write more now but i’m sleepy after my long day today and i need to get to bed. :/

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#5229 – how i managed to sabotage my good fortune

i get emails from express.com. specifically, the womens’ versions of their emails. i don’t know why, i’ve never bought anything from the womens’ version of the store (i’m an express men’s fashion guy myself), but it doesn’t matter. i don’t really care why i’m getting the womens’ versions of the emails, because:

1. there’s a lot of sexy attractive ladies in fashionable outfits in these emails

2. i actually do enjoy a bit of ogling fashion appreciation (bruno_boy would say that this is obviously a lie obviously a lie if you ever saw the way i dress, i say i have no idea what the hell he is talking about…)

3. these emails conveniently have a link to see the men’s version of the email if they have one available

see, so i have no reason to care that i’m getting the women’s versions and not the men’s because i always figure that there’s probably a similar men’s promotion going on at the same time. and it’s no big deal, i’m not purchasing clothes from express that often — i get my pants for work from there, and i’ve got a few shirts and things, but that’s about it. so: attractive ladies in my inbox, and all is right with the world….

…until i made this post on twitter.

i had previously exchanged a few tweets back and forth with lisa months and months ago, but after making this latest one i get a message from her asking if i’m getting the wrong emails, and next thing i know i get an email while i’m at work today from someone on their e-commerce team asking me to verify my email address i use for the site so they can fix it so i can get the men’s versions of the emails instead, since there isn’t an option for the end user to change their email sex (heh-heh, email sex) on their own. ARGH I SHOULD HAVE LEFT WELL ENOUGH ALONE. serves me right for opening up my big mouth.

here’s people’s reactions when i told them about it:

– cynicalscribe thought it was amusing, and figured that i would probably sign back up for the womens’ emails with a different email address. not likely, i do have some dignity.

– dad laughed

– mom thought i was weird and asked if i was on drugs

– anne laughed and told mom that i wasn’t on drugs but on “moldy grapes” (long story)

sigh.

work is going well, i made it through my first week with no troubles. it’s been a lot of conference calls that involve 90% lurking and 10% raising issues. i can see how the team members said that it was a slow position and that i’d be going nuts, though. today i was just given my first project to work on, due by the end of this week — i get to make a matrix of three of our billing systems and mark which systems contain which features. woooo, fun. no idea if this is what it’ll still be like when my supervisor returns from her surgery, but i’m liking the team and everything so far. it’s weird, it’s like being in a whole different company now but with some of the same employees: i have to learn about all these different system processes and procedures and things that i never had to worry about before when i was customer-facing, get used to a little bit of different office politics, and so on and so forth. and get used to waking up at 6:30 AM… oof! i sleep now!