Author Archives: Shadowtwin

It’s a good thing I’m not religious

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I finally got around to watching the South Park episodes I taped during the season 10 rewind. Trey and Matt are still writing some top notch stuff.

One thing that really has me curious though is why Comedy Central refused to show the image of Mohammed. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that it is supposedly forbidden to make a likeness of Mohammed in the Muslim religion, I know that this is why Comedy Central made the decision. The thing that really has me curious is why this was the one religion that they decided to respect.

In the very same episode, Comedy Central aired footage of Jesus Christ defecating on the president of the United States. Now I know that it is not specifically written in the bible that it is a sin to draw a likeness of Jesus dumping a steaming pile on the president, but I am relatively sure that it is sort of implied. Hell, Jesus has his own Jerry Springer-esque talk show on the series, which is just brilliant IMHO, but I am pretty sure that it is a straight mockery of Christianity.

Even Scientology, while just a kooky fringe cult, has been the subject of continual mockery on the show. One episode took it so far as to lead to the resignation of Isaac Hayes, who is unfortunately affiliated afflicted with the cult religion.

Poking fun at Christianity is one of the many cornerstones that has helped to build South Park into the phenomenon that it has become. In fact one of the first episodes was a battle between Jesus and Santa Claus (which was just a remake of the very first short Jesus vs. Frosty). Since then the show has lampooned religion at just about every opportunity. Be it having Kenny wage the war of good vs. evil because God wasn’t powerful enough, worshipping an idol of the Virgin Mary bleeding out her ass, or highlighting the special relationship that Priests share with little boys, nothing seems to be taboo when it comes to Christianity.

If I were a religious person I would really be pissed off that Comedy Central thinks that it is fine to depict Christianity as a caricature on a repeated basis, yet refuse to so much as show an image of Mohammed. Comedy Central certainly pushes the envelope further than any other network (religious right wing networks not withstanding) in testing the limits of free speech, but they need to do it with some consistency; If Christianity is fair game, every other religion needs to be as well.

Granting special exclusions to any one group, religious or otherwise, is akin to letting them define freedom of speech. Last time I checked the United Stated was not a theocracy, I, for one, would like to make sure it remains that way.

Untitled

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So, you know that rambling post that I popped up here yesterday? It turns out that it was a good thing, I think.

During the course of the job interview today the guy asked me, quite specifically, what the most important qualities were for a supervisor. That was still fresh in my head from what I wrote yesterday, so unless I am completely wrong about the qualities, they should be impressed with how quickly I named the qualities along with very specific reasons why.

This is speculation, of course, so I will not go into any more detail. I will only say that this was the most comfortable I have ever been at a job interview. That I was familiar with all aspects of the business, and was able to answer questions specific to the industry. And I also don’t look half bad in a dress shirt and tie. I may not look like a million bucks, but a buck-o-five for sure.

P.s. Because the place is a financial institution I was required to take a math test as well. I missed one of the questions, and it really irks me. The question was “If an item costs $69.95 and you give the customer a 20% discount, what will the customer’s total be?” I answered it $55.95, the answer should have been $55.96. That is what I get for subtracting 10% twice instead of subtracting 20% once. At any rate, they didn’t seem all that concerned since this was the only one that I missed. I sure hope that this minor rounding error doesn’t weigh too heavily in their decision.

Slave to the grind

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Well, it has been three weeks now that I have been out of work, I guess that means it is about time I start really looking for a job. Sure I have turned in some applications and the such already, but I wasn’t necessarily trying to get a job at any of those places. I mean really, I applied for several positions with a starting salary of over 40,000. I really doubt I was qualified for them, but what if they actually hired me? That’s right, I would be sitting in butter (obscure t.v. show reference).

Starting yesterday I actually began applying for jobs that I really am qualified for. As a direct result of that I was called for two interviews within twenty-four hours of applying. I am going to go to one interview tomorrow at 10a.m. and the other one is scheduled for Thursday at noon. I don’t really plan to go to the one on Thursday because 1)I fully expect to get the first job offered to me on the spot and 2) the other job is in Tucson.

The thing about looking for a job right now is that it has been so long since I have had to do it. I haven’t been to an actual job interview in more than a decade (not counting the one I went to last week at 84 lumber), and I haven’t actually made a resume since I was a sophomore in High School. I hope that what I lack in recent experience can be overcome by my sheer confidence.

Working where I did for so long gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of people in entry-level positions at their companies. One of the guys that I remember most is Larry. Larry was a route salesman for Budweiser[1] some twelve years ago. Heck of a nice guy, he went so far as to give me a gift on my twenty-first birthday -the only one other than my mother to do so- . Larry went on to become the supervisor of his division. Why did he get promoted instead of someone else? Two reasons: 1) He had an extremely good attitude. When it comes right down to it your attitude is the most valuable asset that you have. 2) He never hesitated to make a decision.

There really are two different types of people in the world. There are those who will make a decision based on the available facts, then there are those who will tell someone else the available facts and ask them to make the decision. I used to believe that everyone had the ability to make a decision, it took me years of interacting with people to find out that some people just can not do it. The only reason I can come up with to explain this is that they are afraid of making the wrong decision; If they do not make the decision they will get none of the blame. While this may seem like a great idea on the surface, it is certainly not the way to go to advance your career.

If you look at an industry like Fast Food, for instance, you will notice that every store has one general manager, several assistant managers, many shift managers, and a whole heck of a lot of peons. If you have ever had poor service at such an establishment, you will know that out of all those managers the only one that will make a decision is the General manager. The shift managers and assistant managers will back away from it like the plague. Do they really think that they are going to get reprimanded for giving you another cheeseburger since the first one had a rat head in it? Probably not, but they (evidently) don’t want to risk it anyway. Thus they are actually nothing more than peons themselves. Given a shiny new title after scrubbing the same deep fryer for five years or so. (That is not speculation either. I can base that on my experience working in a chain Fast Food place in my teens. I may not have recognized it at the time, but it certainly is true).

When I first started working I was the same way. I would really hesitate to make a decision for fear that I would make the wrong decision. It wasn’t until my last job that I started to change that, and the reason why was simple. After I had been working there for about six months the owners went on vacation for a week. This was long before the cell phone gained popularity, hell few people even had pagers. I was left to run the store on my own. And I did a HORRIBLE job of it. I tried my best to keep from having to make a decision. I put aside papers for when the owners returned so that they could be the ones to make a decision. As a result of that we ended up running out of a lot of DSD items because I wouldn’t let them send anything without the owner’s consent.

Twelve years later that had all changed.

I am now confident that I will make the right decision, and so I make the decision. It is sometimes the wrong decision, but it is a decision that has to be made. Someone once said, though I can’t remember who, “often wrong but never unsure”, and that is sort of how I am now. It is extremely important to be able to make a decision without hesitation. It is important because the people who work under you need to know that you are confident. Whether your decision turns out to be right or wrong is far beside the point. A leader simply must be able to look at the available facts and make a confident decision[2].

Of course none of this matters one bit when it comes to my interviewing for a job. I will have to work somewhere for a while before my supervisors see that I do have the ability to make decisions. What they will see in the interview is confidence. Not confidence in a smug way, but the confidence that can only come from years and years of real life experience. I may not have a BA in accounting or Business management, but I do have confidence. Confidence is something that you really can’t learn by reading scenarios out of a textbook. You can read about situations with unruly customers all you want, speculate about what you would do on Easter Sunday when the freezer goes out and thousands of dollars or merchandise is at stake. Until you are actually in that position you simply can not know that you would have the confidence to make the right decision.

Do I really expect to walk out of that interview with the job tomorrow? Hell yes I do. And if I don’t get the job I will go to my next interview with exactly the same attitude.

[1] Technically it is Golden Eagle Distributors, which is a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch. Thing is I doubt that I know how to spell Anheuser-Busch, and Budweiser is more recognizable anyway.

[2] As I am writing this I can’t help but think of George W. Bush. He too is not afraid to make a decision, and he too is confident about his decisions. BUT he is not looking at the available facts before doing so. Has to be a package deal. Being confident about a decision that does not consider the facts at hand is more foolish than not making the decision at all.

Untitled

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Well, it has been a while since I have thrown anything up over here, so here goes.

Being unemployed is a lot of work.

I have been taking the time to do some stuff around the house that I should have done years ago. Not little things like taking out the trash either, I am talking major construction projects. In the past week or so I have re-tiled the floor in the Arizona room, replaced the plumbing in the entire house, installed a garbage disposal, installed a new water purifier, added electrical outlets in the kitchen, replaced rotting lumber under the kitchen sink, replaced the kitchen sink, installed a new vanity, faucet and medicine cabinet in the bathroom, replaced the light fixture there as well, re-tiled the floor in half of the bathroom as well as painting it, removed the tile and old lumber from around the bathtub, put new lumber around the back of the tub, and probably a bunch of other stuff that doesn’t come to mind immediately. Oh yeah, I also had to re-route some of the plumbing so that I could put the washer and dryer together in the corner of the back room. Oh, and I serviced our evaporative cooler.

Anyway, I have found a lot of stuff to keep me busy while I anxiously wait for calls about the various jobs I have applied for. Truth be told, I didn’t even start applying for them until Monday, since I was going to take a week off anyway (not likely to get a vacation this year). I did do a resume thing on Monster.com though, so I actually had an interview on Monday for a job that I never applied for.

The interview was at a place called 84 Lumber, which I had never heard of, but it is a 3.6 billion dollar a year business. The job was not what I was looking for; since I was not willing to relocate I would not have been able to get the management position. There is no way I am going to take another grunt job. I am far too experienced and getting a bit too old for that.

Well, that’s it for now. Check back another day for more riveting mundane crap.

Burning bridges

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Well, I always knew that it was going to happen eventually. Today became that day. After yet another bitching session at work, I grabbed my cigarettes and walked out the door. I doubt I will ever walk through those doors again.

That answers the question though. It turns out that I can be treated like a doormat for about twelve years before I have had enough. Or, to be more precise, I can be treated like a doormat for about three months without using alcohol as an escape. Now I know.

Time to start looking for another job.

If you could only see

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While on my way to Coolidge today I was flipping through the radio stations looking for one that didn’t have a commercial on. That is usually a fruitless effort as there seems to be some sort of FCC rule that they all go on commercial break at the same time, that or the stations do it on purpose since you are less likely to switch the station if they are all on commercial break. I got no idea.

Imagine my surprise to find that there was actually a song playing on Mix 96.9 the best mix of the ’80’s, ’90’s and today. It happened to be the Whitesnake song Here I Go Again, which I was a huge fan of back in the day. I cranked the radio up to 28 (that is not an exaggeration. For some reason these new-fangled stereos don’t think 10 is a high enough number), which is about as far as I can get it without it turning into a horrible, crackling cacophony.

I only caught the last minute or so of the song; just long enough to do some of the worst karaoke you would ever care to hear, but thankfully won’t have to. While the radio went to commercial I found myself thinking of the time I was in when that song was popular. I was thinking about those awkward days of High School, trying to fit in with the “cool kids”, but still too young to realize that the “cool kids” were really just doing their best to fit in as well.

I thought about all of those times when I was really in love, for sure this time, only to be let down a week later when some guy with a cooler car came along. Here I Go Again would be forever in my tape deck, “’cause I know what it means to walk along this lonely street of dreams.” It was usually replaced fairly quickly with Is This Love?, since the average lifespan of any relationship or lack thereof seem to be inexplicably linked.

I suppose I should be thankful that my memory (everyone’s?) has a way sugar-coating a lot of the time I spent being on the wrong end of a relationship. Well that’s not true, I still remember it with crystal clarity but time has faded the emotion of it. I can now listen to all of those old songs and think of nothing but happy memories, well mostly anyway. I still have a song that runs through my head on occasion that makes me sad; it’s more just a melody with the only line being “Your greatest legacy is the song that I can’t write”. A song that I have tried, many times, to write in memory of my father, but can’t complete, probably never will.

When the radio finally came out of commercial break I was instantly torn from that time in my life to a time much more recent.

After my parents divorced I made a decision that I wasn’t going to get married, so when I began living with my wife girlfriend back in 1997 (I am pretty sure on that) I didn’t think much about it. It’s not that I didn’t love her, didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with her, more that I just didn’t think I needed a piece of paper to prove my love for her. I guess it was about more than the piece of paper though. We did get married of course, and still are. Our fifth wedding anniversary is coming up later this month.

So, as I was listening to, and singing along with, Tonic’s song If You Could Only See, I was taken back to that time. A time that is also pretty far back, but a time that still has a lot of emotion. All good emotion.

The thing about that song is that I really don’t know what exactly it was intended to mean. I know what it means to me, what I have made it mean to me, but the actual lyrics don’t really mesh with what it has become to me. To me it is an anthem singing the praise of my love for my wife, that is all that really matters I suppose.

The song was still in my head as I came into the house today, and as such I did a little thing that I do from time to time. It is a silly little thing that I do, I just look in my wallet to make sure that it is still there. She gave it to me so many years ago, you see, long before we got married. Being the sap that I am I have kept it in my wallet ever since. So from time to time, though usually when I am feeling down, I take it out and look at it, it is amazing how much better it can make me feel. While it is nothing of any value, it is the most precious thing that she has given me.

It has become a bit tattered over the years (something that the scan of it doesn’t really show), but it still means as much to me as it did the day she gave it to me. I am not sure if she knew that it would become so important to me, but I suppose we all put different sentimental values on all the things around us. To me this is everything.

Usually I look at it, then the song comes to mind. Today I heard the song and the card came to mind. But that was good, it has been far too long since I have taken it out just to look at it. Far too long since I have had the line “If you could only see how blue her eyes can be when she says she loves me” stuck in my head.

Really, how often can you look at something so simple and feel like the luckiest man on earth?

“If you could only see the way she loves me, Then maybe you would understand”.

Where does the time go?

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It has been a while since I slapped anything up over here, so I am just here to let you know that I am still alive.

Lately my time has been consumed by playing far too much Guild Wars. Then, when my wife got into an argument with our Guild Leader, I had a new project to work on. It is called Jade’s Misfits, a website for her guild ( a guild which was started long before aforementioned argument, but I didn’t feel compelled to build a website until she severed ties with her old guild). Being far too cheap to actually pay for hosting on another site, I just put a folder on this site to host it then bought then registered and redirected the domain. I’m cheap like that.

The website is far from complete, but it is now at least functional enough to look at. I got the forums up and running and designed some flashy buttons, banners, etc. About the forum: if you have never had to deal with the chmods on files and folders, stay away from hosting your own, it was really tough to get that all working properly.

Anyway, I am off to play some guild wars.

I need a six pack of Glad bags and an alibi!

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Because I can never seem to answer a question without making some smart-ass remark, that’s why!

Working where I do for as long as I have, I have seen hundreds (possibly thousands) of people come and go (I’m talking employees). As a result of this I try not to get too personal with them. Of course I am courteous and friendly with them; I just don’t talk a lot about myself, and hope they keep to themselves as well. I have become pretty good friends with a couple of them over the years, but that is the exception, certainly not the rule. So many people come and go from this place that I honestly don’t even bother to learn their names until they have worked there for at least a month -that is not a joke.

A woman started working there about two months ago and she is the one that I now work with on Saturday nights. Last Saturday she asked me flat-out if I didn’t like her. I looked at her for a second kind of confused before I asked her why. It turns out that she thought I didn’t like her because I don’t talk to her a lot. That is certainly not the case, as I explained to her, the less I talk to her the better: If I have to talk to the other employees a lot it usually means they are doing a lot of things wrong. I like working with her better than the other employees because she is able to do what needs to be done without me having to point it out to her, that is a very good trait.

Once this woman realized that I didn’t hate her, she began to talk to me a lot more. I have no problem with that, but I don’t really like to discuss my life with people that I know will be nothing but a memory in less than a year. So it was that when she asked me what I like to do when I wasn’t at work I told her that I was a serial killer. We then had a lengthy conversation about serial killers, mostly about Ed Gein (my all time favorite, since he was just batshit-insane), but also covering the more familiar ones such as BTK, Ted Bundy and Richard Ramirez(sp?). It was a good conversation, it is not often that I am engaged in a conversation about something that fascinates me such as serial killers do. And that was that.

A man I knew came into the store today to rent a rug doctor (carpet steam cleaner thingy). I asked him if he needed garbage bags to put on the floor while he dismembered the body (note that it is necessary to gauge who the person is before asking such a question: It would suck to ask that of a real serial killer). The woman laughed when she heard me asking the question, which was the intent of course.

Later, another man came in to rent a rug doctor. Two rentals in one day is something I have never seen in all my years working there. As I was filling out the paperwork, I said there sure must have been a lot of murders on St. Patrick’s Day. The guy renting the machine asked why I said that, and I told him it was our second machine that day. He just said, “oh”. As he was signing the paperwork, I told him to make sure to also replace the padding beneath the blood stains, and most importantly to remove the baseboards before scrubbing the walls (a lot of killers get caught because of that oversight). The man was just staring at me, he just said, “Uh. Okay. Thanks.” Then he walked out the door.

This woman looked at me now, she was laughing pretty hard. “Not everyone is a serial killer, Donnie, Just you.”

I had completely forgotten that I had told her that last Saturday. But that made it seem pretty funny to me as well. Except that I had obviously gauged the guy who just walked out the door wrong. The whole point of the serial killer jokes is to make people laugh, if they don’t laugh it may lead directly to either your own death, or a random swat team showing up at your house as the detectives are digging up your back yard. But it’s so funny when they do laugh.

Free advertising for Citibank

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Credit cards are a pretty bad thing in general; If you don’t have the cash to pay for it, you probably shouldn’t be buying it in the first place. That being said, it is near impossible to get by in day to day life without having one of the precious plastic things in your wallet/purse. Just imagine trying to make hotel/car rental reservations without one. Sure the same can be done with a debit card, but you are a far braver soul than I if you are willing to give your personal bank account information to the stranger on the end of a phone line.

True, now that the debit cards are actually subsidized by VISA they are covered by the exact same fraud protection as a normal credit card, but you have to file a claim and wait for a couple of weeks to get reimbursed for the fraudulent purchases. That is a lot of time to have to wait to get the money back in your bank account, especially if the rent is due. If your credit card is used fraudulently all you have to do is cancel it, then take care of the paperwork at your leisure. Much less stressful.

Of course I would be lying if I said that the only reason I use a credit card is to book hotel rooms. I do use them for all sorts of stuff, and I do maintain a balance on one card. It keeps my credit in good standing (funny thing about credit is if you quit using it the companies assume that you are no longer creditworthy), and is far cheaper than doing some highway robbery rent to own type bullshit.

Anyway, I cancelled a credit card in January. They decided to jack the interest rate from 6.9% to 14.9%, and homey don’t play that. So I sent in a final payment, cut the credit card up and that was that. Until today that is.

I sent in a check that was one dollar more than the total balance, thus leaving the account with a 1 dollar credit. It seems that their computer systems are pretty serious about what they consider a “balance”. I guess my contract stated that there was a minimum one dollar finance charge when the card had a “balance”, the fine print must not have stipulated that it be a positive balance, cause they charged me the finance charge on a negative balance. Now, through some sort of weird math that only credit companies can understand, that didn’t take my account balance to $0 (which it should have, -1+1=0, right?), it took my balance to $.03. Yes, three cents. Very fishy math, that.

The last statement that I saw was still showing a credit of one dollar. The next one I got was showing a balance of 15.98, without a purchase being made. The one dollar credit became a 3 cent balance, which they tacked a one dollar finance charge onto, then, then, they had the nerve to tack on a 14.95 late payment fee, even though they hadn’t been sending me statements! Yeah!

So I dialed up India (that is where all the call centers are, isn’t it?) and, after about ten minutes of navigating the maze that is the automated call center, got to speak to Apu himself. I told him I simply wanted to close the account and be done with it. I think he asked me what I was disappointed with, though I could barely understand a word he said so I can’t be sure. I told him that I didn’t appreciate being charged a finance charge and late fee on a negative balance, which he said he understood, and he would gladly close the account if I would remit payment for 15.98. That pissed me off even more. I yelled at him for about five minutes, even though I know it wasn’t his fault, simply because it made me feel better to lash out at someone.

Apu said that he was authorized to waive the late fee one time based on my good history with their company, (I could almost hear him reading it from the form letter, I bet they get this phone call a lot). But this still left me with a balance of 1.03, which I would have to pay in order to close the account. Not only that but there was a 9.95 fee to make the payment by phone. Fuck That! Okay, now the gloves were off.

You know that point where you get so pissed off that you go beyond anger and into a sort of freakily-tranquil, rage-induced calm? Where every word that comes out of your mouth is with a sort of firm staccato? I was there. “Send me a copy of every statement since December please.”

“I can do that Mr. Burgess, can you verify your mailing address for me?” He mispronounced my name, but I didn’t care.

I verified the information for him, then added “I would also like your name and the name of your supervisor…” paused for a moment, then added, “my attorney may need it.”

This was, of course, and idle threat; I would have to be insane to try to take on a credit company as large as Citibank (woops, let the name slip). Then again, it wasn’t the money that was pissing me off, so who knows. Thankfully I won’t have to know, since the moment the word “attorney” left my lips Apu wanted me to talk to someone higher up in the chain of command.

The supervisor had a worse accent than Apu, I really couldn’t understand anything she said. I did most of the talking though. There was generous use of the words “close my account”, “waive all fees”, “or else” and, of course, “attorney”. I probably said each of them a half a dozen times, basically whenever she tried to say anything. In less than five minutes my account was closed, and she had graciously offered to send me the one dollar credit that remained in my account. It was so simple.

I just have to wonder how many people just pay the fees. In my case it was pretty clear that I was being fleeced, but what if someone’s statement never arrived? Do most people simply pay the fee as opposed to going through the hassle of getting the fee removed? Do the credit card companies intentionally not send out statements to force the members to pay the fees? If I had to go through all this with Citibank (being one of the larger credit companies), what would you have to go through with some smaller bank?

Being the cynical person that I am, I believe that the majority of this is intentional. Most credit cards are not issued in the state that you live in, I think it is either Maryland or Massachusetts that most are based in, precisely because of lax regulation. Since you signed the contract in that other state, it would also have to be litigated in that state, which would be a heck of a burden for most people, especially when they could just pay the 9.95 (or whatever) and be done with it. The fact that they so quickly reverse all the charges really bolsters my case: They seem to know what they are doing is wrong, they simply don’t care. The second they are challenged on it they fold. Their actions are criminal, hell, worse than criminal, at least you know what to expect when you get involved with the Mafia.