Went to bed about when I planned to. Woke up at 11pm. Alas. Tried to get back to sleep. Read for a while. That failed. About ten spoilers and a complete modem & router reboot later (a friend's collecting spoilers from anything and everything) I'm actually feeling tired.

Effective now until my schedule changes: if you see me on IRC past 9pm on a weeknight for the next three weeks, or past 8pm on a work night starting the 2nd week in August, you are perfectly within your rights to smack me and tell me to get my ass to bed. (That's GMT -7, for non-locals.) However, I'll be getting up at 5-something for training, and 4-something for work, so some of y'all may see me up anyway.

And speaking of spoilers, a heads-up on one of the latest twits amusing themselves at the expense of the HP spoiler-sensitive.

Well, I'm up, then. I'm heading off to work, armed with cherries, extra pens, a great honking mug to be filled with Livewire, full makeup including eyeshadow and nail polish, and that cheerful attitude that you only get after you've been up for a few hours on not that many hours of sleep.

I anticipate a calm day interspersed with my frantic antics.

Oh, and I need to drag out my Access and my SQL manuals. Probably behind the roommate's desk. A little light reading. Oh, and talk to my satellite manager about a four-day week, because five ten-hour days a week is seriously doing a number on my mental health. (I've been carefully guarding my physical health, which is why there haven't been so many plasma trips lately. Got to have that downtime.)

"any port in a storm"; this would make a very bad punchline to some kind of computer pun. Couldn't find a setup to fit it, though.

The other one is someone who's got file-sharing apps using ports 1000-10,000 all busily downloading pr0n -- he's got a girl in every port! (Unless it's gay male, but we're not going to go there for the purposes of this pun, though it would make a slashgirl's heart oh-so-very-happy.)

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Monitoring. Right now is that lull between midshift and nightshift, when all midshift have been monitored and nightshift has not showed yet.

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New structure means that the new sub-managers get the minuses, not the Main Dude. There is no Shift Ops Supervisor as of next week.

Cinderella is the sub-manager on duty, and is a little annoyed that she has to do all the minuses given that no other sub-managers are about.

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New hires. Driveway nuts.

.... zomg wtf driveway nuts new hire mania bad wrong scary not verbatim not even remotely connected to reality or professionalism. To quote the Princess: "He's a pain in the ass."

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The Definitive Old Lady (she of the red wide-plaid sweater and the white-to-pink hair) is out. I may wind up picking up some of her interviewers... or not. Since I may well be engaged in monitoring up until my time to go home, and I plan on bugging out at the requisite time.

---

My time of exit is 7pm. Break is typically at 6pm for most phone goons. I have 1/2 hour of mandatory cleanup to do. So whatever I'm not done with by 6, unless they feel like they want to get me to stay, I'm OUT!

(There's a thing with "Whoever needs help, I'm OUT!" at the workplace; it's short for "Unless anybody else needs help, I'm OUT!") It's very badly clichéd.

I'm probably going to be late to writing group next Wednesday, the 22nd. Work called this morning and wanted me to come in for a client call. I'm a supervisor, and I'm still one of the first people pulled out of the woodwork off their regular schedule when the $ISSUE_SIDE_JOB clients are going to be listening to the survey.

I'm not going to be saying no to the client call bonus and extra hours. I'm very good with $ISSUE_SIDE_JOB. I monitor it very well because I can nitpick. I can recognize that the proper response to a "Nobody here" is not "ah, that means no one in the demographic category lives in the household -- NEXT!", it is along the lines of "Do you mean someone of $CATEGORY lives there, but isn't available right now, or do you mean that there is no one of $CATEGORY that lives there at all?" There are different categorizations for the "not home right now", the "they do live here but I won't let you do a survey with them", "no one fitting that description lives here at all," and (my favorite), the "you've got to be on crack to think that someone of $CATEGORY lives here, because this is an $INCOMPATIBLE_BUSINESS!" (My favorite incompatible business combination has to be "teenagers" and "strip club".)

Called the blonder half after I got out of work for the day. Said blonder half was not in, but his mother was.

Grumbled just a teensy little bit about the difficulty of getting actual time with aid blonder half.

This may or may not have any results. They may or may not be good results.

But.

Sometimes he does listen to his mother.

I go to bed now. I'm tired.

Work has eaten my life, with no foreseeable letup until gods-know-when. In fact, it's likely to get worse.

The Check-In Princess has been removed from the check-in e-mail group last I heard; she's been in the office off and on, mostly on, since the new system went live, and she may be there semi-permanently. This means that there are only two of us regular check-ins, myself and my opposite. (I haven't a nickname for her yet, because I don't work with her much; we're generally on opposite shifts.)

The shortest check-in shift is generally Sunday, and that's usually at least eight hours. With just the two of us, we're each to be working 4 shifts check-in, and someone's got to cover if the other has to be out. There is one other regular check-in trained person in the building, and that is Comic Pirate Super, who is in Fulfillment these days on a regular basis (and therefore not available to fill in). Poser-Geek was the other check-in trained person, and he's not working with us any longer.

That would be dire enough, but we're also short on supervisors who run jobs. This means that phone goons are getting pulled to be trained for supervisory duties. Groucho Marx Guy is getting pulled now; Flattop Dave is getting pulled; Ponytail Dave is getting supervisor training as well as monitor training. (He was Fulfillment about half-time earlier.)

My opposite and I were intended to be trained to run jobs as well, but due to random people quitting when we were getting trained, we never wound up finishing. We've both petitioned to finish our supervisor training so we can fill in as needed. But the training is going to take time (ours) and going to take up supervisory time (theirs, to teach us as well as running jobs).

I'm feeling a lot more confident in my ability to be a good supervisor. I remember enough of the mechanics of running jobs to have a good handle on doing it; the theoretical hooks for the actual skills are in my brain already. I could probably limp through running a job with the notes I took last year and heavy reliance on other supervisors to remind me what I need to do. The retraining will bring me up to speed. I'm hoping I get someone other than Grandma Supervisor, because she prefers to tell what to do on the system without explaining how it's done. I learn best when I know why I'm doing it, rather than following by rote.

Unfortunately, as geek, stuff that's Heavy Geekage for the average supervisor is shallow to me, and I'm going to want something more in-depth than I think most of the supervisors are capable of giving me. What I really want is to be apprenticed to the back-room geek who's currently out with his tonsils out, but I don't think that'll happen for a while. That man is highly respected around the workplace, and I have the core technical competence to hang the system details on. He knows the refinements of the system, whereas his opposite number knows the basic functionality but doesn't do the little things that make the field staff exceptionally happy. Ah, well. I can start out learning the basics from whoever happens to be around to train me, and work my way up to learning the cool stuff at some later point.

All this means hectic schedule insanity. It's probably going to be something like me pulling five shifts a week for a few weeks all check-in and her pulling five as well, three check-in and two doubled up with me getting trained, and then me doing three check-in and two training while she does five check-in. And it's going to be insane.

Did I mention I was having sleep issues? Perfect timing for those. I've got the cold that's going around, the tail end. A little congestion in the sinuses is sufficient to screw up my life for weeks. My voice gets all nasty and rusty. Oh, and I'm working this Wednesday. If it weren't already apparent, National Novel Writing Month is over for me.

To top things off in an even more interesting development...
Short Chick Super was admiring my ribbons on Saturday (I wore the Ravenclaw colors to work this weekend because I was still feeling festive), and that reminded her that she'd been searching for a cheat code on something Harry Potter, or some game or other, and she came across a website. And the person looked a lot like me.

So. It looks like my co-workers have found my LJ.
It had to happen sooner or later.
Hi, co-workers.

Shopping:
Kosher salt.
Random items of food.
Carrots.

Inform writers group about the little schedule mashup. Woo. (Intense sarcasm.)

Figure out what to do about the stupid wisdom teeth and so forth.

Per Dawn's instructions, ask Darkside if I could please have a regular repeating place on his social schedule.

The Senior Check-In is in the office this week. The other junior check-in has a dentist appointment on Wednesday. So this week I'm working Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I as check-in. (I might go in for an extra shift on Thursday if I feel up to it, but otherwise I'm check-in all week.)

But. Wednesday.

Writing group. Work. Writing group. Work. Ack.

Well, writing group can take care of themselves for a week. It shan't be permanent.

I took an extra shift today, I'm taking an extra tomorrow, and I'm working a double Sunday. I'm check-in Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday evening. Hell commenceth, with extra coffee and sarcastic commentary. Of the evening shifts this week, I'm working seven of eight. ( Table below. )