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Work = kaboom.
May. 24th, 2006 04:29 amEvidently there has been mass quitting. Cute Short Chick quit. Ponytail/Metal Dave isn't going to be around. My former Opposite quit/isn't coming back from leave. Comic Pirate Super is going in the back to Fulfillment full-time, now that Sampling is going to be shutting down. The Check-In Princess is not going to be in field (not sure if it's going to the back or quit). Chaos! Panic! Disorder! Random booths disconnecting from the telnet improperly, with things that involve a possible bad situation with routers outside of the immediate building!
That last took up most of my day. I came in and started getting stuff set up. I don't think I ever entirely got the job figured. I was starting to get Spanish set up when there was a spate of red-screens and I had to start running around telling people not to panic. It goes like so: red-screen, reboot, log in again, red-screen, move.
The custom telnet screens are set up to turn bright red when they lose connectivity to the server. When they turn red at the end of the night when you're logging out, that's one thing. But when something in a router somewhere goes astray and there are router loops going out of state somewhere (according to the rather incomprehensible response to the trouble ticket that the Clean-Cut Geek wrote up) and the thing red-screens in the middle of a survey, that is a problem. It screws up the timeclock. It loses the survey info. Doom! Lots of doom!
There was lots of running around with insanity today, lots of trying to get people to be all at the right place at the right time. Outsourced dinner with the gang. Went on break at a sane time. Comic Pirate Super started out attempting to teach me Emerald City (a spreadsheet) but got called off for meetings and didn't return until right before dinner.
I wasn't watching my job properly; Mountain went high (too many surveys complete in proportion to the rest of the timezones) and then they ran out of numbers. Comic Pirate Super wound up watching it for me.
In addition to supervisor trainees, there are monitor trainees. One of them is this tiny little lady with a daughter about my age. The woman reminds me of my own mother, except Mama does not look as if you will break her if you accidentally knock her over. There have not yet been monitor calibration meetings, so there is all sorts of crazy going on. The monitors are trying to calibrate the new monitors, there is training, there are insane computer problems due to end-user error, and then the Lunatic goes more loony, because OMG END-USERS.
My general wit is getting honed at work, though it's a rather lot more punchy than had been typical. I made some sort of riff on "talk to the hand" the other day -- "All problems should be addressed here," and I indicated the outstretched hand. Then (to a new monitor, talking about a certain OMG WTF individual not much more clueful than Mike JONES, the Used Car Salesman) I mentioned that he should talk to the hand, except the hand I displayed only had one finger paying attention.
I actually went on break something like on time today. Amazing.
Comic Pirate Super eventually did teach me how to use Emerald City. Very useful piece of spreadsheet, that. Flat file turn into spreadsheet! I did not break it! This digressed into work-related geeking. It becomes ever more apparent that those around me are not particularly tech-savvy, except for a very few. Those few, I can get into serious geeking with.
Homie G Super wanted to borrow my electronic TPS Report, except it was a little more involved than he was looking for. Now that I see what's going on with Emerald City, I think I'm going to be spiffing up the sheets something fun. The more I can automate these things, the more time we save. I get so excited when I get to work on all that stuff. It's just simple spreadsheet manipulation, pulling stuff from one sheet and generating about five more, but oh, we're doing too much by hand, and we needn't.
Spent the evening restoring my missing R.E.M. songs on iTunes; iTunes and I lost most of Out of Time for a while, and I've been deprived. Living with Sis was not good for my sanity all of the time, and the times when I should have been restoring my sanity with the music, I could not.
That last took up most of my day. I came in and started getting stuff set up. I don't think I ever entirely got the job figured. I was starting to get Spanish set up when there was a spate of red-screens and I had to start running around telling people not to panic. It goes like so: red-screen, reboot, log in again, red-screen, move.
The custom telnet screens are set up to turn bright red when they lose connectivity to the server. When they turn red at the end of the night when you're logging out, that's one thing. But when something in a router somewhere goes astray and there are router loops going out of state somewhere (according to the rather incomprehensible response to the trouble ticket that the Clean-Cut Geek wrote up) and the thing red-screens in the middle of a survey, that is a problem. It screws up the timeclock. It loses the survey info. Doom! Lots of doom!
There was lots of running around with insanity today, lots of trying to get people to be all at the right place at the right time. Outsourced dinner with the gang. Went on break at a sane time. Comic Pirate Super started out attempting to teach me Emerald City (a spreadsheet) but got called off for meetings and didn't return until right before dinner.
I wasn't watching my job properly; Mountain went high (too many surveys complete in proportion to the rest of the timezones) and then they ran out of numbers. Comic Pirate Super wound up watching it for me.
In addition to supervisor trainees, there are monitor trainees. One of them is this tiny little lady with a daughter about my age. The woman reminds me of my own mother, except Mama does not look as if you will break her if you accidentally knock her over. There have not yet been monitor calibration meetings, so there is all sorts of crazy going on. The monitors are trying to calibrate the new monitors, there is training, there are insane computer problems due to end-user error, and then the Lunatic goes more loony, because OMG END-USERS.
My general wit is getting honed at work, though it's a rather lot more punchy than had been typical. I made some sort of riff on "talk to the hand" the other day -- "All problems should be addressed here," and I indicated the outstretched hand. Then (to a new monitor, talking about a certain OMG WTF individual not much more clueful than Mike JONES, the Used Car Salesman) I mentioned that he should talk to the hand, except the hand I displayed only had one finger paying attention.
I actually went on break something like on time today. Amazing.
Comic Pirate Super eventually did teach me how to use Emerald City. Very useful piece of spreadsheet, that. Flat file turn into spreadsheet! I did not break it! This digressed into work-related geeking. It becomes ever more apparent that those around me are not particularly tech-savvy, except for a very few. Those few, I can get into serious geeking with.
Homie G Super wanted to borrow my electronic TPS Report, except it was a little more involved than he was looking for. Now that I see what's going on with Emerald City, I think I'm going to be spiffing up the sheets something fun. The more I can automate these things, the more time we save. I get so excited when I get to work on all that stuff. It's just simple spreadsheet manipulation, pulling stuff from one sheet and generating about five more, but oh, we're doing too much by hand, and we needn't.
Spent the evening restoring my missing R.E.M. songs on iTunes; iTunes and I lost most of Out of Time for a while, and I've been deprived. Living with Sis was not good for my sanity all of the time, and the times when I should have been restoring my sanity with the music, I could not.
