Randomosity

So I can’t think of one subject to try to tie this all together, so it’s just going to be some random thoughts… ah, who am I kidding? even when I try to tie it all together it ends up so far from the original point my head is spinning.

I’m going to start by my normal bitching about work… I’m still getting picked at for little things. every time I have my weekly meeting with a supervisor it’s something different. first it was my handle time. it needed to be 660 seconds. it was 662. then it was my schedule adherence. it needed to be 98%, it was 97.1%. This time it was my first call resolution. It needs to be 90%, and it’s at 89%. What. The. Hell. I’m pretty much a model employee when it comes to metrics, and they always want more. It’s really getting annoying. And to think I haven’t even been there 2 months yet.

Okay. That’s out of my system now.

So I was thinking about creationism today. I was reading an article on Kotaku about Spore and it got me thinking. Supposedly, man is made in God’s image, right? So therefore man is really, by that logic, an extension of God. Therefore man is technically God. So by this logic, should the creationists really be getting in a huff about cloning? If man is God, and is making something in his own image, doesn’t that technically make him God again? And going back further, if God made man in his own image, doesn’t that mean that God was guilty of cloning anyways?

Great. Now I’m cross-eyed.

Alright. So I was standing at the bus stop waiting for my bus to come home and I realized something. Well, not really realized, but became quite aware. People tend to make judgement calls and have misconceptions about people without possibly ever knowing anything about the other person. While I was standing at the bus stop, there was a girl at the bus stop, who had also happened to get off the other bus at the same time as me as well, and we were waiting for the same bus. As we stood there, we were probably about 5 or 6 feet apart, and the longer we waited, the more she moved away from me. I wasn’t moving, I wasn’t even really facing her, but she kept glancing at me like I was going to attack her or something. And then once we were on the bus, it was crowded and when it started to clear off, I had finally taken a seat, and she was going to sit pretty much next to where I was, and decided to move over and take a seat elsewhere, in a much more crowded part of the bus once she realized I was sitting there too. Apparently I look like some sort of psycho? I never really thought so (well, maybe in my picture on facebook, but that’s another story altogether), and I never really think I look as what modern conventions would classify as normal, but I don’t think I look threatening by any means.

That makes me think of a quote I love. “Normal is what everyone else is and you are not.” And I just now remembered what that was from. It was Malcom McDowell in Star Trek Generations.

Wow. I’m such a fucking nerd.

So I’m more than halfway through the last Harry Potter book right now, I’m really enjoying it. It seems to me this series got better as the books went on. I’ve actually got other people reading them at work right now too. They saw what I was reading and they got me to email it to them so they could too. Ended up sending out several copies of not only Deathly Hallows, but also Half-Blood Prince. So there was literally an entire row of people at work today sitting around reading Harry Potter between calls.

Alright, I’ll end this here. We’re watching the first episode of “Fringe” right now. It’s not half bad.

Patriotism and such

okay so I’ve thought for a topic ofr my latest blog entry, and I’m actually sitting here writing it in a coffee shop, however the wireless access is down and I’m having to write this in wordpad. Hopefully I’ll remember to transpose this later… Quiet Riot is play right now. How sad is that?

Anyways. To my latest topic came to me on the bus when Jenny and I were on the bus on the way downtown. We were going by the barracks and she saw the flag waving, Majestically, apparently, and she said it made her feel very patriotic. I got to thinking about patriotism and I was thinking to myself that the whole idea of patriotism seems a little archaic, and a little bit bullshitty.

My feeling here is that patriotism is about not so much about pride in your country, but more about making yourself feel like your country is better than another country. Aren’t we all really just people? In a world where people constantly talk about how we should love our fellow man and how no one is better than anyone else blah blah blah, it seems like the idea of pumping up your own country is a way to push others down. Keep in mind, I’m not talking about American patriotism (although it’s probably the one that anyone can think of first, as it’s probably the most outspoken), but patriotism in general. We have plenty of flag wavers in Canada too, but even then they’re a little more soft spoken.

Come to think of it, I kind of don’t like the idea of “national pride” either. It kind of goes hand in hand with patriotism too, but it’s not as extreme. The reason being that national pride makes it seem like you have something in common with everyone else just because of the flag you were born under. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve always felt like an outcast around most people. A misfit. Never quite belonging. Who knows, maybe this has something to do with being the child of immigrants. I was the frist in my family line to be born in Canada, so I didn’t grow up in a household that was waving a flag. My mom is an American and my dad is from Scotland, and while my mother is an American, she was never a flag waver, it just seems like they too always showed a sort of apathy towards that whole idea. It never came up in my house. Sure, we celebrated Canada Day and went to see the fireworks and things like that, but I think that was more just because fireworks are elegant and enjoyable to watch.

I wonder if this is why when I was growing up people thought I was a snob. Probably a little of that and a lot of the fact that I didn’t talk to anyone. I was scared of people. Another factor might also be that when we moved to Ontario I didn’t exactly get the warmest reception. I was young and uprooted from everything I knew and put into a place where I didn’t know anyone, and to them, I had a weird accent. I don’t think I was shy when we lived on PEI, but when we moved here I went into a shell, and I don’t think I’ve ever fully come out of it.

But I digress. I think I kind of lost track of where I was going with this. Anyways. yeah. Patriotism and national pride. This almost seem like a way to control the masses. I’m not going to go a rant about some paranoid conspiracies or anything like that, but countries, especially developed nationas WANT more people to come in. It’s what they do. I think I read somewhere that Canada wants something like 300,000 new immigrants a year. And the reason? more money to go to taxes=more money for the government. And if they get people to wave the flag for them, they don’t have to do it themselves.

Personal pride and family pride are something I can believe in though. Personal, pride anyone can show on a daily basis. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, it can be done in the way you carry yourself, to the way you present yourself, not to mention if you’re working a job or whatever, just doing whatever you’re doing to the best ability you can. In the kind of job I work, as it’s been seen in my posts, I see a lot of cases of people that just seem to not have any personal pride. “Punting” customers because you think they’re stupid, or just because you don’t want to do what you’re being paid to do seems, to me, like a way to devalue yourself as a person. I go in there every day (well, most days) and no matter how much I don’t want to be there, I kick ass at my job, and I make sure that every customer I talk to gets what they need, as far as I possibly can. I just don’t understand how so many people can take so little pride in their work, but still try to maintain some sort of sense of national pride. It’s like I said before about being born under a flag. A nation is just basically people, born in the same place, that are brought together by nothing more than that. So of you’re going to feel some sort of national pride, shouldn’t you be taking this hand in hand with personal pride?

As I was saying before, I also feel that family pride is okay. If you want to be proud of where you come from, be proud of your family. I don’t just mean ancestors, I also mean your current, living family. Sure, they may not be perfect, you may not even get along with all of them, but they’re still your family, and someone in there probably has the ability to understand you better than anyone else. (OH MY GOD THEY’RE PLAYING JOURNEY NOW!! ARGH!!!) That’s really the only national pride I care about, is that little nation that you can only get into by a real birthright, and that’s blood. I have a lot of family members I’m proud of. My brother for making a life for himself halfway around the world, my sister for surviving through all the crap with her husband and raising 2 beautiful children, My parents for doing so well for themselves, my grandfather for… well… too much to list… My uncle will and aunt cathy and their 2 sons, sam and bryce  on the west coast, I don’t know them as well as I’d like but they’re all really great people… my cousin Aubree, she’s amazing and she’s gone through a lot in the past couple of years and just gotten stronger from it, my other cousin Robert, he’s got himself into school, and I know he’s gone through a lot of crap too, their brother matt, who’s totally adoreable, their mother, my aunt sherry, who has been through a lot as well, what with my uncle superstar taking off on them. I just hope she knows that even though he’s gone, she’ll always be a part of this family.

So yeah, as you can tell, even though we don’t always get along, see eye to eye, or sometimes even necessarily understand each other, that’s where my pride and my heart are. With my family. I don’t get to say it often enough but I love each and everyone one of them with all my heart.

Wow. looks like I kind of went away from the original, point of this post. Ah well, I think it turned out pretty well, and I think I’ll leave it on that note. Pity the wi-fi is down, otherwise this post would be going live right…………. now.

A trickle sometimes gets through the writers block…

So, if my last post wasn’t indication enough, I’ve had the itch to write, but I still don’t know what about really… there’s something inside me I need to get out, and I think writing will help, I hope. I need some sort of direction in all this, especially since lately, things have been changing, and it’s not been a whole heap of fun.

So for this post I think I’m just going to ramble about pretty much anything… like right now, for instance, we’re watching pineapple express. It’s actually pretty good. It surrounds a lot of pot smoking, but there’s a LOT going on, I think I like the fact that I stay sober, especially when watching something like this, it needs somewhat of an attention span to watch.

So it’s been a while since I bitched about work, so I’ll take this opportunity. Today I realized yet another aspect of this job I hate. I’m too good at it. I’m way too good. I’vew realized, even though I’ve only been taking calls for a few weeks now, that I’m already better at this job than people higher up than me. Escalation teams and supervisors included. I got into an arguement yesterday with a supervisor about a technical point to do with modems being in standby, to do with the IP address when it’s in standby. He told me it was one thing, when I knew it was another. And it came up today when I was helping another agent – quick, anyone out there know what happens to an IP when the modem is in standby with cable internet?

Speaking if standby, I had a call today that was only about 4 minutes. This gentleman had called in *4 times* over the course of a few hours, told he was in an outage, hung up one, and just plain not helped. When he got to me, his modem was in standby and it was corrected in seconds. I just want to know why the hell people can’t do the simplest aspects of their job. Yes, it’s not a great job, but things like that aren’t hard. Have some fucking pride in your work. I don’t care if you hate your job, I hate my job too, but I still take pride in my work, because it only makes me look bad if I don’t. Not to mention, not to sound arrogant, I’m fucking brilliant at cable internet support. I’d say I’m one of the best. Not that I’ll ever be able to advance in one of these jobs, which sucks, because I refuse to kiss ass.

There. That’s done *deep breath*

So I think some time later this week, I may attempt to do a vlog or 2 using the new webcam on this computer. I still haven’t had much opportunity to use the webcam, which is a little depressing, considering I was so looking forward to using it.

So does anyone else look at american politics and just shake their head? it’s like a circus, or some sort of TV  show on Fox or NBC… just a constant, ongoing, never ending drama. And the problem is, the outcome of any american election has direct consequences on other countries, canada included. I really don’t want to go too in depth right now, because my mind is kind of mushy. Does anyone else kind of wish we lived in an alternate reality where the british empire still ruled supreme? that’s kind of interesting to think about… what WOULD it be like if the americans hadn’t staged a violent revolt because they didn’t want to pay their taxes? would the collective IQ of the american nation be higher? (I’m not saying that to offend, I know a lot of very smart americans… and what I noticed is the ones with brains between their ears mostly want out of the country) would the currency be worth more? what would foreign policy be like? I’d love to hear some thoughts on this, and for once, I can see people actually looked at my blog (welcome anyone who is new.) but people need to COMMENT! I can’t exactly create thoughtful dialogue on my own, as, as I keep saying, I’m not very creative.

I need writing topics!

ok, sometimes I feel like I’m in a continual state of writers block. I say sometimes I’m not a creative person, I really don’t feel that I am, but at times it just feels like I don’t have the correct inspiration, like I’ve had writers block for the past 28 years…

wow, I just coughed so hard I was unable to see… that was fun… stupid dry air..

anyways, where was I? oh yeah… not being able to come up with any decent topics to write about on here… that’s part of the reason there was almost a 2 week gap in posting (which by the way, I think it got mentioned once I hadn’t been posting ) I mean, I know I’m not terribly interesting, I tend to keep it that way, but I don’t want to spend my entire blogging existence complaining about how I hate my job. That would seem rather one dimensional. I mean, sure, I’ll continue to bitch about work (I really hate call centres. I really really do. really. really really.) but I need to come up with more topics… my post from last night I was quite proud of, and I would love to be able to have more rants like that, something that seems… I don’t know the right word… meaningful?

I really hate it when my keyboard slips into french mode.

That, and I don’t want to seem like I’m being selfish or self-centered (although, I Think the idea of blogging is more for personal need than anything else), I’ve had a couple of reality checks recently, and the main thing I’ve taken away from it is 2 things: life is way too precious to not try.. try to live every day as full as you can because it can be taken away at a moment’s notice; and the other is that sometimes I need to shut up and listen, because by not listening and just talking I can alienate the people around me, which I hate. My friends are probably the most important thing I have.

If anyone reading this (and I know you aren’t… when I log into wordpress it shows me all my daily site traffic… almost every hit I get is me checking to make sure my posts look right ) has any topics you think I might be good at ranting about, let me know. Anyone who knows me knows I enjoy at least a few topics… gaming, technology, politics, sometimes religion (those last 2 can be touchy in the wrong company though… sad that they’re so intermingled), movies… stuff like that… or even something that wouldn’t be something I might know about… I’m in a mode right now where I want to learn more, as much as I can… if I know nothing of the topic that’ll give me a chance to expand my horizons

hmmm. I’ve noticed all I’m listening to these days is the Foo Fighters. that’s it.

oh! I had a possible idea for a second tattoo… I was thinking, on my chest, on the left, over my heart, a human heart, but broken in two… not saying I’m heartbroken, but just kind of meaning that the heart is something real, and it’s very fragile (both physically and emotionally, hence the broken realistic looking heart thing) so let me know what you think… I personally love the idea, and I actually came up with it myself!

I need to find more people to play rock band with. I really do. The more people I’ve ever played it with, the more fun it’s always been. and Apocalypse Lincoln really needs to have a reunion

Anyways, I need to get ready for work, I have to leave in like 10 minutes and I’m still sitting on my bed completely undressed (feel free to start freaking out and running away at that mental image)

I can’t save you from my poor brain… ready? ok!

soooooo…

I don’t think anyone’s reading this any more, or at least I’m not saying anything provoking enough to warrant a comment.. but that’s ok, I still love me

things have been alright the last couple of days, nothing out of the ordinary, things have been a little more settled than they had been at the start of last week.. this i good because uneventful is better than bad news

So I want to rant for a little bit. This is something I’ve seen on another couple of blogs I read and I want to put in my own 2 cents:

There’s a game about to be released on Sony’s PS3 system, and it’s probably the most anticipated title they have this year. It’s called LittleBigPlanet and it looks amazing, and it’s a thinkpiece of a game, a real work of art.

However, it was supposed to be out this week, but it’s not going to happen. Delays are fine, they happen all the time, as a gamer, I’m used to it. The problem is the REASON the game is being delayed.

Apparently, it was recently discovered that one of the songs that is was being used in the background in one of the levels contained some arabic that was passages from the qu’ran, which as we all know, is the Muslim holy text.

My problem here is that it’s not like it’s being used in an offensive way, and it just goes to show that nothing in the world is free from censorship. I understand that religion is very important to many many people, and it’s everyone in the world’s divine right to be offended by something if they choose to be. But why is it, that because someone is offended that we should just sweep everything under the rug and act like nothing had happened? Isn’t it a good thing to be exposed to cultures different from your own? doesn’t that open peoples eyes, make them more understanding? How about instead of censorship we use things like this to create a dialogue?

The problem is, and I say this with no disrespect the the muslim faith, extremists. I’m not saying all Muslims are extremists, I’d be willing to bet the overwhelming majority are relatively moderate. But look what happened in Denmark a couple of years ago. A cartoonist made a cartoon, which caused rioting and deaths for days, if not weeks. Now this guy is living in hiding because these people want to kill him. I can kind of understand what was going on there because he made the comic in order to be inflammatory. But rioting does not solve anything. I don’t care who you are or where you are, it just doesn’t work. It makes the public look down at you, it makes others who share your beliefs look bad. It’s a terrible public image.

with LBP it’s not being used in an insulting way. It’s being used as background music. A piece of art within a piece of art. It should be something everyone should be allowed to be exposed to if they choose to be, and if you don’t like it, don’t play it, or turn the sound off.

It seems some molehills are always destined to be mountains. Maybe it’s time we brought this mountain to Mohammad.

Wow. that was a pretty good ending, don’t you think? I pulled that out of my head at the last second. sweet.

(edit: this is a video of the “offending” song):

I’ve got a new toy

So I went out and did it. I got a laptop. And even better, it was cheaper than expected, and it’s the exact one I’ve been looking at for weeks. Managed to catch a 3 day sale. It’s got a webcam built into it, so it may be easier for me to make some vlogs with it, if I can’t ever incline myself to do so. Hopefully I’ll get some use out of the camera, as it was one of the requirements I had in the laptops I was looking at. The damn thing took 90 minutes to set up though, it kept having to configure and restart… I’d never seen so many restarts in my entire life, and I used to do tech support for computers.

This week has not been great. I’m not going to go into too much detail, as much of it has already been outlined, but I’ve not exactly had the most fun. I’m feeling rather stressed, and I need to find some way to deal with it on my own….

anyways. that’s all.

Rest In Peace

*sigh*

not a good day. I somehow knew it wouldn’t be. Things were fine at first, save for the bus being a bit late, but when I was at work, about 2 hours into my shift, a couple people I knew, that I trained with, got up, signed out, went home, and were in tears as they left. I go for my lunch break and I run into Suki, who wasn’t working today, outside, who was also in my class. This is when I find out one of our fellow classmates died. He had left work on monday night and was walking with Terence (the guy who trained us), and apaprently they were goofing around and having fun, but I guess some time after they parted ways Jeff collapsed on his walk home. Suki had apparently seen the ambulance. The last I saw him was that night too, he smiled and waved at us as we drove off. He died Tuesday around noon, of a brain aneurysm.

Jeff was a good guy. A really good guy. Everyone liked him. He was shy and quiet, but if you opened up to him, he would open up to you. I sat next to him every day for almost 2 weeks, we had definitely become work friends. He was also a hell of an artist. He loved to charactures of people. He did one for Jenny, I know, I’ve seen it at her desk when I was at Stream. He was really smart, we would talk about politics, technology, science, school, old TV shows… anything you could name.

I couldn’t stay at work after that. Nor could a bunch of my other coworkers. He was 46 years old and he was only living in london working a shit job because he was taking care of his sick dad.

He will be missed. I only wish I’d been able to know him better.

Rest in peace.

I have reading ADD

OK so I have yet to finish off the Narnia books. I’ve gotten all the way up to Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and I just… stopped. It’s what I always do. I get partway through and move on to something else, and by the time I build up enough new interest to go back to it, I’ve forgotten the rest and have to start over. I’m reading some of the Harry Potter books now… I polished off Half-Blood Prince in 2 days (that was my weekend last week) and now I’ve started on Deathly Hallows. I’m only about 50 pages in, but I really do want to see how it ends.

So I’m trying to think about how I can get this laptop on friday… I want to get one before there are none left, I live the idea of being online and actually mobile… I mean, I COULD carry my computer around, but I’m sure I’d have back problems after a while… we’ll see what happens come friday, I guess

I’ve decided the best thing about having a dog is the greeting when you come home. Especially my dog. Even if I’m only gone for 30 minutes, he FREAKS when I come home… he runs around, howls at me, grabs a toy, shows it to me, runs around in circles, all with a giant smile on his face… I love my doggie

I really want to do a new vlog, but I don’t have any topics to talk about… I’m not a creative person, which sucks. I’m really really bad at coming up with ideas. I’m good, however, at being given an idea and running with it. Give me an idea, and what needs to be accomplished, and I’ll work the shit out of it (if it’s a painting or something like that, don’t bother, I’m no artist ), but coming up with my own ideas, not good. when I try, I always draw a blank. One of my greatest regrets that I had no control over was not taking drama in high school. I wanted to. I really did. My parents wouldn’t let me, said I was too shy and I would hate it. I don’t think I would have. I didn’t enjoy visual art. I liked some of the people I was in the class with, but I wasn’t a fan of the course. And I wasn’t that great at music. I mean, I was ALRIGHT, but they never let me do percussion, which is what I wanted.

Have you ever realized how freeing it is to not be wearing pants? I love nothing more than coming home, going up to my room, and taking off my pants after a long day.

That was random… who was that masked man?

Yes. I know. I’m trying to be funny, but I’m not. I get it

anyways. that’s it. just random thoughts for the night. keeping it about as deep as a kiddie pool.

yet another work related rant…

…only this one is about the problem with work related rants

mostly because I’m tired of having a job where I become the job, the job has no way of becoming me. This type of job ends up encompassing your entire life, where your entire life has to revolve around this job, which really really really sucks. Really. A lot of it has to do with what I bitched about last time, in that you don’t get to see family and friends that work real jobs because they’re all at home when you’re working and vice versa.

And then I just end up bitching about that job, complaining about it pretty much all the time. It shouldn’t be like this. No job is worth it. Mostly I just want to be content with what I’m doing. Not even happy, necessarily, just content. And a lot of that contentedness would come if I could work the hours the rest of the world works. I’d get to see my family. I’d get to talk to friends (not that I really have many, but still..). I’d get to do things in a normal time frame.

Supposedly, I work a skilled trade. But I don’t get treated like a tradesperson in my employers eyes, or in the eyes of the rest of the trade community, I’m sure. Nor do I get paid like the rest of the trade community, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyways, that’s all I have to say for now.

/rant

PS oh yeah, and LBP is out next week! woohoo!

Holidays don’t exist, apparently.

So I’m kind of getting really sick of call centers. Really sick. They all seem to be under the impression that everyone who works there, unless you’ve been there since the damn place opened, was no family, no friends, and no life outside of work. Jenny and I BOTH have to work on thanksgiving. Over the years usually at least one of us has had it off, and it’s been years since we both did. At least if one of us has the day off we can go to her grandma’s house for thanksgiving and bring a plate back for the other in the very least. this year, as I said, we’re both working it, so thanksgiving doesn’t even exist to us.

Christmas has lost a lot of meaning to me since the first time I had to work on Christmas day. I don’t see why the hell getting some redneck’s internet working so he can jack off to midgets vomiting into each other’s mouths should take priority to seeing family (which, quite honestly, I don’t get to see enough of). It just seems ridiculous that any business should have its employees working on Christmas day. And as far as thanksgiving is concerned, there’s pretty much one canadian center handling this contract. have the fucking americans and phillipinos deal with it for one fucking day. let us see our families. I’ll never ever ever get enough seniority to be able to have any holidays off.

And on top of all this, my schedule is set up so that on Sundays, I have to start working at 12:30. This seems good in theory, because it means I’m off work at 9 and can take a bus home. In theory. In theory, communism works too. However, Sunday is the only day my mom and dad are ever in the city, and guess what? they can never be to my house before 12:30 because they come into the city to go to church. So now not only can I not see my family on holidays, I can’t even see them for the rest of the year either.

Fuck this shit. I need a new job.

/rant