Well the new position brings with it a new schedule. For the first week I will be working Monday thru Thursday 6:30am to 5:00pm. Then, the week after, I am permanently shifting to Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday 2:00pm to 12:30am. Since this isn’t going to make a huge change other than my availablity for raids in my World of Warcraft guild, I think I’m going to enjoy this change.
Well I put my resume in for a different position. Miracle is, I seem to have gotten the job. It doesn’t bring with it a raise, that would almost be too much to ask for. What it does do is get me into an area of the business that I think I am really going to enjoy. Real Time Analyst. What I’m going to be doing is monitoring the operations of the facility and ensuring that business runs smoothly.
I believe I’m going to enjoy this mainly because it is something that I believe would be good for me to have experience in. Any type of analyst position, especially real-time would show well when looking for a job. I guess I’ll have to see how this works.
At a press conference this morning, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) set up his staff to take the blame for the Mark Foley scandal. Asked if he was satisfied with how his staff handled the matter, Hasert said, “I understand what my staff told me. And I think from that response, they’ve handled it as well as they should.”
Between you and I? I think that it will be attitudes such as this that will lead to the Republican party losing their majority in the House and Senate. I would love to hear a reporter ask the current set of politicians what their opinion of the Magna Carta is.
I came across this today, and have been completely floored by it’s brutal honesty. Keith Olberman, from MSNBC, lays down the gauntlet concerning how out of touch the President and Vice President are when it comes to reality. Just click the read more link to read the article, and Digg it if you want to show your appreciation of this wonderfull find.
I’ve been trying to weigh in here on what has been going on with the recent revelations concerning Rep Foley (R-FL). The extensive coverage of this appalling incident, and the complete spin being applied to this travesty, only draw focus on the bias of many of the major news organizations.
Over here at a blog called the Daily Kos, they are reporting on an incident where the Fox News Channel completely inaccurately portrayed the Democratic party as trying to ignore Foley E-Mails to preserve their house seat. Last I looked, Rep. Foley was a Republican member of congress, which would have meant even more reason why democrats would have wanted to expose vs ignore any scandal. Especially if they could then draw inference towards the Republican congressional leadership somehow being complicent in these crimes. And this is not even the first such mistake on the Fox News Channel. Earlier in this saga, it appears that on Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News also had a proof-reading problem in their studio when they displayed this image here:
Enough about Fox News however. This horrible situation has been made even worse as reports keep flooding in from from various news sources that the Republican congressional leadership actually knew about this, or had it reported to them YEARS before this scandal broke. That’s right, YEARS! Over at SFGate, they’ve posted up an Associated Press article regarding this issue. Here are some choice qoutes:
Among the Republican explanations during the night:
_The congressional sponsor of the page, Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., said he was asked by the youth’s parents not to pursue the matter, so he dropped it.
_Alexander said that before deciding to end his involvement, he passed on what he knew to the chairman of the House Republican campaign organization, Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y. Reynolds’ spokesman, Carl Forti, said the campaign chairman also took no action in deference to the parents’ wishes.
_Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., chairman of the Page Board that oversees the congressional work-study program for high schoolers, said he did investigate but Foley falsely assured him he was only mentoring the boy. Pages are high school students who attend classes under congressional supervision and work as messengers.
_The spokesman for Speaker Dennis Hastert, Ron Bonjean, said the top House Republican had not known about the allegations. Shimkus said he learned about them in late 2005.
I don’t know about you, but this is just pure scary. I’m going to leave off for now, while I simmer on this for a bit. I’m almost too disgusted to continue on.
Well it was a great feeling to be home before 10pm today. I got to spend time with Jess, and that made the difference in an otherwise bland day. I’ve missed just sitting on the couch with her, her head on my shoulder, and just being together. We don’t get the opportunity often enough to enjoy some quiet time together. But to sit there tonight, holder her in my arms, that was all I needed to claim the day as a success.
At work, it’s a different story. I’m frazzled with the way things are running, constantly being bombarded with calls where I have to switch from providing technical support to providing only troubleshooting/general care. I’m beginning to be affected more and more by the uncertainty of how to deal with each call, unable to predict in what frame of mind I need to be in, that it’s becomming more and more stressfull. I know it’s affecting how I treat each call, making each call take longer and longer because I am getting so confused about what ‘rules’ I’m supposed to follow for each call. Although, I have to say that the new bonus structure coming out will help. According to what we’ve been told so far, our Call Resolution Times will no longer be a factor in our bonus. Considering that I didn’t make bonus last month because of a sudden jump from 100% CRT to 107% CRT - in one day! So I’m sure there is a problem in the math there, unless they’ve been incorrect all through the month and only NOW are fixing it. We’ll see when I can get my hands on the numbers to look at for myself.
I’m going to head off to bed, and cuddle with the wife for a bit before I nod off. Us two damaged people, who somehow managed to find each other, and fall in love. All I do know is, is that of all the people I’ve met in my life (and it’s not that many), she is the only one that I’ve managed to bare my soul to. The fact that she didn’t run away screaming is a definite plus!
Well, my trials and tribulations with our laptop have taken another turn. We just got the laptop back late August from being at the so-called Best Buy Geek Squad Service Center Best Buy Geek Squad Service Center. Now that it has been back in the house for approximately one month, the screen has decided to die on us. This is kind of one of those ‘Oh Shit!’ moments where you start adding up the dollar signs of the repair bill in your head. But, I must say, our little gamble with the overpriced Service Plan that Best Buy sells will at least let us avoid having to shell out any cash on this repair. And, if their sales people can be believed, it will invoke their ‘no lemon’ clause since this is the fourth time that it has had to be repaired under their plan.
This means that I can take a look at what is available in terms of new laptops that they have for sale. Since their no-lemon clause ensures that I have a replacement of equivelant performance not to exceed the original purchase price (about 1300$), I’m taking a look at some of their 1200$-1300$ models. The one I had purchased used an upgraded graphics card (the Radeon Express 6000), and since my wife is a graphics artist, I’m looking for one that has the best graphics in my price range. Now all I need to do is spend time figuring out which is better, the ATI Express 1150 or the Intel Mobility Graphics 950.
