Andrew's Blog

Death by a Thousand Cuts

2010-07-11T12:19:00.000-04:00

I work in a call center. I live in South Carolina. That is in the USA, just for reference.

This job sucks. It used to be awesome, with a great boss, great morale, speedy work being done cheerfully. Sure, we complained back then, too, but we sure didn’t know what we were getting into.

Let me lay it out for you. I was doe-eyed, getting a new job through a temp agency, something I had never done before. I didn’t even realize that temp agencies usually just get you a short term job and then another, and then another. I figured it was just a job sourcing assistance. They would help me find a permanent job.

Actually, the way it went down, I called about an ad in the newspaper. No idea that it was for a temp agency, I just called, faxed my resume, and went in. I though it was for a job at a company. But then I arrived and saw that it was a temp agency. I went inside and did their tests and whatnot. I figured I would never hear from them again.

But then they called and said that they found a possible match. I was asked to interview (again!) at a company. The job was in a call center which sounded… okay. I figured it would last a few years while I finished up my bachelor’s degree. Little did I know that there were no jobs for somebody with a Bachelor’s in psychology.

I interviewed with a woman at the company. I didn’t know at that time that I was her first interviewee. She was just recently promoted to be a supervisor. She has since stepped down from that position, although she still holds an hourly administrative position. She said that she was scared to interview me but that I seemed to be a good fit. She said that I seemed to be intelligent and could likely be a good fit for the company.

I went through a few weeks of training with an awesome trainer. He has since left the company (good thing, since he would have been pushed out, unless he actually was pushed out, which is another story) but was probably the most brilliant mind in the call center. He developed many of the tools that the call center used to monitor our progress, using Access and Excel rather than the commercial products available for call centers. He probably saved the company millions of dollars in the call center’s early beginnings. Since then, the call center has purchased all of the commercial products… but still uses his solutions for backups since the commercial solutions don’t provide some of the visibility that his Excel spreadsheets were able to perform.

Anyway, the training was fun, informative, and intense. I learned a ton about a whole new field that I didn’t even know existed. The call center works in a very specific space so I won’t disclose the type of products we support but suffice it to say, there was very specific knowledge that was imparted as part of a relatively informal training process. Since his departure, training has fallen from a supervisor level position to an hourly support position, with hourly representatives developing a comprehensive but boring two week training program.

We had been hiring temps from the same temp agency until the powers that be decided that we were overstaffed for the approximately 2500 calls that we take. When we were hiring, though, we would train approximately 6 to 10 new representatives at a time. By the completion of training, we were lucky if we would have 3 new representatives who remained through the training. This was not because we had the great model that they use at Zappos where they will buy out your contract, paying you a certain amount to quit right there. This was because the job sucks now and there are no freedoms allowed.

(I just took a call from a customer who had a radio on in the background. Sigh. That’s the only music I’ll hear all day.)

So, let me document the decline. When I started, the phones were on handsets and they rang. The phone rang and you answered it and then you talked to the customer. Since then, the phones were converted to just beep in your ear. Now the representatives are chained to a desk on a 6 foot cord. No more walking around the office, waiting for the phone to ring at your desk. No more mad dashes to answer the phone on the first ring. I miss those days.

We used to be measured on our time to answer a call. We have strived to keep this time under (wait for it…)… Actually, guess, before you keep reading. The last time you called about your phone service or your cable service or anything like that.. How long did you wait before somebody actually answered the phone? 5 minutes? 10?

We have strived to keep our hold time to less than… 10 SECONDS. 10 seconds! Imagine calling your bank and getting answered virtually as soon as the phone started ringing! What an accomplishment!

We have had situations where our hold time has been as long as 10 minutes. These are very limited and few in number but they have happened. But, the norm is approximately 10 seconds. This is ridiculous! How do we answer the phone within 10 seconds from a ring? Why don’t we get praised for this? The phone rings, a person answers. Just like that.

The other thing that we have been so proud of forever and a day has been no machines. When you call our 1-800 phone number, you get a person. Every time. No “press 1 for this, press 2 for this.”

Guess what recently happened? They installed a machine for after hours. It’s worse than “press 1 for this” when you will eventually be given to a person. It’s an answering machine! Between the hours of midnight and 8 AM, callers are driven to a voicemail where they can leave information about “non-urgent” issues. We have never, NEVER allowed there to be a machine put on the 1-800 number for our customers. Talk about horrible customer service.

The final straw came yesterday. One of the salaried supervisors came in and raised Cain because there were some lights off in the call center. When I work, I am essentially an hourly supervisor with no power. When I come into the call center, I don’t care if some lights are off. Some representatives claim that the florescent lights hurt their eyes. Fine, let the lights be off. The customers are being helped, everything is going fine. Who cares if the lights are on or off?

We also have become a place of fear. No cell phones are allowed. No personal laptops. No radios. No noise. Don’t talk too loud. Don’t wear perfumes or colognes. Do ridiculous anti-repetitive strain exercises. Document these exercises. Get nasty emails when you don’t document these exercises. Don’t use the internet. Get spoken to for tardies of more than 1 minute. Clock in on a time clock… and a phone… and a computer. Get spoken to for ridiculous monitoring requirements such as repeating EVERYTHING somebody tells you.

This last one really makes me angry. I reported back that not repeating everything back was desirable. Repeating things back makes us a robot, playing the information back that you just stated. If you have the information, you have the information. The caller’s name is Bob. Really? I have to say, “Bob? Common spelling?” REALLY? That is good customer service? Seriously? That is being a robot. No personality. No life. No spark. Just a recording or worse, a representative in a foreign country who doesn’t understand the names used in this country.

I get marked down on the monitoring skills because I don’t robotically repeat back the information requested. There is no information provided that indicates that I was unhelpful to the caller. The caller would likely indicate that they were happy not to hear all of their information repeated back to them. But there is no consideration for that aspect. Nobody cares how the caller perceives the company. All they care about are the checkboxes.

Until the time that they call customers and ask them how they feel about the company. “Were you satisfied with the help you received?” “Was the agent friendly?” Then they get low marks in those areas and they can’t figure out what went wrong.

Another part of the terror campaign is the no internet policy. We sit in front of computers for hours and hours on end. We work overtime, some of us up to 60 hours per week. And we can’t use the internet? We can’t check email? We can’t look up information that we need, such as addresses of companies with which we work? Ridiculous!

Some people resorted to bringing their own personal laptops so that big brother couldn’t spy on them for using the internet while still being tethered to the desk on a 6 foot long cord. The supervisor freaked out about this as well. No laptops allowed! Well, if you weren’t so Machiavellian and strict with the ridiculous rules, people would be happier, work would be done faster and generally the company would be better as a whole.

The internet is filtered, regardless. It’s not like we can sit on Facebook all day (or post to our blogs, ahem) while we’re at work. The filter is in place to ensure that we follow the ridiculous rules and are productive at work.

This is the final straw. I’ve essentially been demoted. The supervisor calls it “increasing my opportunities for variety.” I’m being fired, slowly but surely. They are monitoring my phone calls for which I have not been successful in the past. This is after a 6 year lull in not monitoring my phone calls for robotic repetition. Yesterday, I was set up to not have sufficient staff in place. They remotely monitored the computer systems which were purchased to document agent performance and noted that there were calls waiting to be answered (no more than one minute wait times but with the ridiculous 10 second wait time requirement, that was unacceptable) and agents were apparently not taking calls. However, the reality on the ground was that I was unable to babysit the agents who were not taking calls. I was taking supervisor level calls myself. I had IT help desk agents calling and updating me on the status of applications which were taken off-line. I had tasked other agents with the job of re-entering information from one computer system to another (this is a ridiculous requirement which I will document at a later time) so they were unable to take additional live calls at that time. I had not called a supervisor at a distant location which was closed (unbeknownst to me ahead of time) to inform them that there were issues with the system shutdown and restart (the IT person did not inform them but informed me, a lowly salaried worker who has specifically been told that it is not my role to be a supervisor). However, it all fell on me.

I’m on my way out. I’ve worked here for 10 years (I got a $50 cordless drill for my 10 year anniversary present… thanks!) and I’m being unceremoniously dumped. But, that’s okay. I’m ready to move on. My bank account will take a hit, of course, and I don’t have enough savings to really take the hit in the pocketbook but I have a second job and I can likely get a third job lined up, once this job goes away.

I’m not really sad, honestly. It’s a nice time to go. This place has been falling apart for years and I’m just standing in the way of letting it go. The construction equipment is in place and I’m standing there, chained to the oak tree. The steamroller will just roll over me.

Switch pitcher promoted

2009-06-28T18:11:00.000-04:00

The title is the link. This is really cool - I got to see him in one of his last performances with the Charleston Riverdogs on Father's Day. He has an amazing delivery and was used very interestingly as a closer. He would pitch the same hand to the same handed batter. So he would pitch right handed to a right handed batter and left handed to a lefty. It was something to behold.

Linkback

2009-06-24T09:04:00.001-04:00

I will clean this up when I find the time but I’m trying out Infix’s PDF editor from www.iceni.com/infix.htm I recommend it.

Most recent inanity from an outdated tech guy

2009-06-16T15:46:00.001-04:00

The national organization that I am a member of – National Association of School Psychologists, or NASP, has an article called “Tech Corner.” It is written by a past president of the organization, Bill Pfohl, NCSP, who is probably an outstanding school psychologist. However, he is less well equipped to be a technical journalist. Here is his June 2009 article. I will be going through some of his older articles as I go through the backlog of information I have sitting in my office as I prepare for next year.

Are We Too Connected?

As the school year closes, it has caused me to look back on

technology over the year. What I am most struck by is a philosophical

query. Are we becoming too connected? This year

saw headlines of viruses “that will shut down the Internet on

April 1” (Conficker). Young teens were criminally charged for

“sexting” by sending nude self-photos to others on cell phones.

A teen female recently committed suicide after her boyfriend

re-sent her nude pictures to others on his cell phone. A recent

survey on teen Internet use of Facebook yielded that teens reveal

a great deal of risky personal behavior about themselves:

41% on substance abuse, 24% on sex, and 14% on violence.

Well, I was going to cite the study but I just learned that there are a list of banned search terms here at work, including “Facebook” and “sex.” Awesome. The proxy service that I use is also blocked here, by blocking all https traffic. W00t.

Ninety percent of teens have access to the Internet either at

home or school. Cyberbullying is near epidemic as it can replace

hallway confrontations. Facebook wants to sell information

about its members. Members’ protests stopped them.

Colleges and employers are now checking Facebook pages for

clues about admissions/employability. It is amazing what is

found there on Facebook.

Yeah. Amazing. Also, totally cool. And the future of the internet.

Some people are so hooked to their e-mails that a delayed

response brings a tirade (I saw that somewhere) from the

sender that makes me wonder if we are too connected. Our

new President has been a “crackberry addict” (those using

Blackberry devices) for most of his professional life. He protested

loudly when the Secret Service tried to silence him due

to national security. In numerous settings, I have observed

two or more devices sitting in front of an individual, while

they write and wait for the next e-mail, even on airplanes.

New data suggests multitasking is not all it is said to be, as

all tasks get done “less well.” The average person takes up to

20 minutes to refocus after answering an e-mail.

Interesting data. Based on what information?

Apparently this is a “fact.” I found a little information regarding it here. The article itself is:

Rubenstein, J. S., Meyer, D. E., Evans, J. E. (2001) Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27 (4). Retreived June 16, 2009, from http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/xhp274763.pdf

Okay, I get that. But still. That’s what we do now.

Students and clients now Google their professor/therapist

before registering for class or seeing them. Is this a balanced

or fair evaluation of a professor/therapist?

No. But that’s the point. We all have opinions based on what we know of anybody or anything. You get personal recommendations, you get advice, assistance, etc. Information that is collected is based on opinions of others. It’s what we do.

Will this new information potentially damage or negatively influence

their decision?

No more so than any other opinion which “potentially damages or negatively influences their decision.”

Are university training programs supposed

to monitor graduate students’ Facebook or other social networking

pages to see if they are “professional” or represent

the program/university appropriately?

No.

What are the limits?

Do you stop students from talking? I mean, is this even a serious question? The internet is no different from real life. The only change could be anonymity. However, Facebook is not burdened by this limitation.

Do I really need to know how drunk they were at the end

of the semester?

No. If that bothers you, de-friend them. Why are you your student’s friends on Facebook anyway? That seems like a limitation in your choice of friending.

And finally, I have observed—in the men’s

restroom—cell phone use as we do what is supposed to be

private. Females too? I hear: yes.

Okay, I agree with you there. That just needs to stop.

Are you a “tweeter”—using Twitter to keep everyone up

on your every move? Do you follow your favorite celebrity?

Ashton Kucher is the most followed. Do you really care?

Sometimes (I’m not as good as I should be with it… mainly because, like Facebook, it’s blocked everywhere I go.) Kind of. My tech celebrity. And do a degree, yes. But of course, this is not something I obsess about. Or write articles about for newspapers.

As I write this, Time magazine is conducting their annual

Internet survey on who is the most influential person in the

world. Ever hear of “moot” aka Christopher Poole of 4chan

.org? He had over 16 million votes, far outdistancing anyone

else. He is a 21-year-old blogger college student. I had not.

Me either. But, I know what 4chan is and it represents the ability of people to speak out en masse and anonymously against horrible atrocities, such as the Church of Scientology.

A parent recently told me of a cell phone bill for her 14-yearold

son for the month: $560—all texting his friends and girlfriend.

(Now on the unlimited plan.)

Two problems here. Lack of communication to the child (you know that texting costs 20 cents a pop, right? And lack of utilizing the unlimited plan. I’ll let ride the question about the necessity of a cell phone at 14.

He was upset that the parents wanted him to work it off or help pay it.

Yup. The parents didn’t put him on the unlimited plan or have a conversation about it ahead of time.

I see students in college bring laptops to class, not for notes, but to

check Facebook pages or respond to e-mail.

Multi-tasking. Get used to it.

Texting is totally out of control on a college campus. Twitter or texting is used

for cheating too: helping others with exam or quiz questions!

Proof?

When will the first GRE or LSAT scandal happen?

After they stop letting you take electronic devices into the room. I’m pretty sure that’s a rule. I had to leave my cell phone in the car. And this was about 10 years ago when it was just a phone.

Why, yes, that is correct. Here is the information about what you cannot take into a testing center:

Personal items other than identification documents are not allowed in the testing room. This includes cell phones, PDAs, BlackBerry® devices and any other electronic or photographic devices. You will not have access to your personal items during the test or during breaks. Before the test, you will receive instructions from test center staff regarding where you must deposit personal items. You will be required to follow the procedures set by the test center for storage of your cell phone or any electronic or photographic device you bring to the test center. If you take personal items into the test room, they will be collected by the test center staff. Personal items such as hats, scarves, jackets and outerwear that are taken into the test room are subject to inspection by the test center staff before being admitted to the test room. Failure to comply may result in dismissal from the test and/or cancellation of scores. If you fail to follow the directions of the test center staff, you will not be permitted to take the test. Any violation of this procedure during the test or breaks may result in cancellation of your scores, dismissal from the test center staff or banning from future testing. Test centers and ETS assume no responsibility for personal items or devices that you choose to bring into the test center.

Parents now text their child to come to dinner. I was

“called” to dinner.

It’s a method of communication. I call my children to dinner. It’s hard. They say they can’t hear me. I get a ton of “WHAT?” back in response. If I could text them, I might.

Two 9-year-old friends were texting in

the back seat of the same car … to each other.

I can’t defend that. Although it is quieter than a whisper.

While I have embraced technology readily, I have to ask are the “people to

people” aspects of socialization becoming out of date? Is life

now going to be virtual? I am seeing on my college campus a

push for online courses. I have heard the pros—many—but

the cons also strike me. If I were sitting next to a person at

Starbucks using the free WiFi, would I even know they are in

my class and discussing the topic in real time with me online

and we have much in common? I doubt it.

While I understand the need for “people to people” communication, there are two different places for it to happen. One is online. Another is in person. What’s the difference between knowing people online versus in person? For the most part, there is no physical contact – maybe a handshake – so that’s not it. The method of communication changes from verbal to written but not always – you could watch a Youtube video. So what if you didn’t know that the person sitting next to you was taking the same course as you were?

Also, the wifi at Starbucks is not free. You can get limited access, blah blah blah.

I have little control over these issues but do think, as many

psychologists do, that we are definitely in a new age, similar

to the Industrial Revolution. Do we recognize it? I hear

about how social networking does keep people together and

informed easier and more in real time. Certainly this has advantages.

It is the overwhelming reliance on technology without

the personal face-to-face interaction that strikes me as

the difference in our newfound connectedness. Oh, yes, I do

video Skype with my new granddaughter every Sunday. Overall

my conclusion is we are too connected by technology. I

prefer face-to-face interaction.

Fine. But understand that it is a preference. Your granddaughter – there’s a place where physical contact could be important. Depending on how new, I’m sure it would be nice to hold her or feed her or otherwise interact. But for the most part, we can communicate just fine over text and/or video.

Are all CDs the Same?

My wife bought me a new technology piece that converts LP

(yes, vinyl long play albums) and my audiocassette collections

to CD. (LPs are making a comeback.) The question came

up whether a music CD is the same as a data CD. The new

machine wanted a special music CD to copy to. After some

Internet research, I found that it really does not matter! A few

stand-alone machines may require the specially formatted

CD disks. However, all regular computer CD players (read/

write units) can use any data CD without loss of fidelity. So

you are paying extra for the music CD label but are not gaining

higher audio quality.

Duh.

Windows 7

I have been consistent in my reluctance to recommend Windows

Vista in this column, as have many in magazines and

tech articles. Vista is frequently referred to as the new Windows

ME—another Microsoft snafu! Vista was bloated, not

compatible with other devices, and took a great deal of memory

to run it—if it ran at all. Microsoft said that it sold over

180 million copies and that 90% were satisfied with the Vista

product. I do wonder about the “spin” to this data. By the end

of this year, Microsoft will release its new operating system,

called Windows 7. The initial reviews are highly positive. It

has the feel and ease of use of Windows XP but can use the

new high powered 64 bit CPUs and new multicore processors.

If you are daring and knowledgeable, you can download

a Beta copy to review for Microsoft. It should be available by

December holidays. If you are thinking about a new computer,

it may be worth the wait.

Wow.

1) Alright, he’s right about Vista. 2) Any numbers are spun by anybody. On Windows Weekly (a podcast on the TWiT network that I love dearly), Paul Thurrott reviewed the numbers of PCs sold. Basically, you’ve had to purchase Vista if you’ve purchased a PC for the past year or so, since XP has not been offered recently. Just by the virtue of the number of computers sold, that many copies of Vista were sold. 3) Vista has a 64 bit capability as well. 4) This is just a style thing, but “… you can download a Beta copy to review for Microsoft. It should be available by December holidays” just doesn’t work. The beta (no capital b in beta) is available now. The final version will be available by December holidays.

Laptops, Electronic

Devices, and Travel

A new directive by the Department of Homeland Security

allows them to confiscate your computer or any other electronic

device without giving a reason at any airport boarding

area or border crossing. There is no obligation to ever give

it back. They can look at the hard drive, transfer all files to

the government’s computers for scanning, or look at stored

e-mails and messages. This is seen by many to be a civil liberty

issue, but the government sees it as a security measure

to prevent terrorism. So iPods, flash drives, cell phones, beepers,

or video or audio tapes can be confiscated at the whim

of the agent. Federal courts have upheld these new directives.

This is another issue to worry about as we travel within and

outside the USA.

This is all the space he gives to this subject? He spends the whole first half of the article talking about the lack of face-to-face and then he drops this in here? Really? This is huge. It’s also ancient news.

Have a great summer! ■

You too.

Edit!

2009-06-03T12:41:00.001-04:00

I just followed the link from the South Carolina story. Below, it says 46 states joined the coalition.

<a href="http://www.nga.org/portal/site/nga/menuitem.6c9a8a9ebc6ae07eee28aca9501010a0/?vgnextoid=263a584a61c91210VgnVCM1000005e00100aRCRD">Here</a> it reads that 49 states signed on. Guess which state didn't.

Again, W. T. F.

WTF Governor Sanford

2009-06-03T12:39:00.001-04:00

Seriously. WTF?

Keith Olbermann has been working on his WTF segment on Countdown (it left a few days ago after the recent abortion doctor murder) so I thought I would give it a quick shot.

I just got a notification in my Google Reader that South Carolina will informally participate with a multi-state coalition to develop national norms for English and Math standards. Sounds awesome - we, as a nation, are having difficulty keeping up with other countries in their education, so let's have national norms.

Governor Sanford is one of 4 governors who refused to co-sign the application with the State Superintendent of Schools, Jim Rex.

In fairness, Governor Sanford is a Republican, Governor Rex is a Democrat; however, this can't be the only state that has this mix and I'm sure that there are more than 4 states where a similar disparity exists.

Governor Sanford, South Carolina is one of the lowest performing states in the nation, depending on the information you solicit. Nearly half of our high school students will drop out rather than receive a high school diploma. Let me understand - you don't believe that we need to make any changes around here?

If I were you, I would be grasping at anything that would help us make our schools better. It is clear, sir, (see how I did that? Just like Keith!) that you are grandstanding for a shot at the White House. You are interfering with children and their learning. This is the wrong place to take a stand, Governor Sanford.

I'll be glad to be rid of you from the state level once you fail out at the national level.

W. T. F.

Filters

2009-03-15T09:59:00.001-04:00

I'm getting tired. I used to be able to come to this job and surf around and catch up with the world. For the longest time, they didn't have a filter on the internet but then they put one in. Okay, fine, block porn. I get it. Then they started blocking some other things - minor to begin with. Games. Okay, I get it. Maybe we're using a lot of productive work time playing games.

However, we work in a call center. Work comes to us. We don't call out - the calls come in. We started out with ringing phones but they changed that, too. Now we have headsets that beep when a call comes in. That means you never know when it's coming - you're sitting there, talking to your neighbor and your ear beeps. The caller hears the last 1/2 second of your conversation because the Pavlovian response isn't quite strong enough to respond within 1/2 second.

So, there is downtime, when people aren't calling in. Can you believe that they told us to use this time to study? Study what? The codes that we use everyday? That we memorize because we use them 20 times (or more) a day? What's to study?

Then they started filtering more. Image sites, for the most part - tinypic, photobucket, etc. You know, the places where most people post images for their blogs because that's what these services do. Then they started blocking more sites - more image sites - Flickr, etc. Then even more. Now they're up to Blogger and virtually every site for "Personal Backup and Storage" which is just about everything.

Facebook, Twitter - blocked. Virtually everywhere you go on the internet, you can't get to.

WHAT IS THE POINT?

There is this awesome service called Circumventor which is done by the Peacefire folks at Peacefire.org. It's great. I can get just about anywhere. But it's not perfect - it's running things through a proxy so Flash games don't work and sometimes there are some quirky things. Peacefire also has a program you can install and put on your computer at home to make a local Circumventor. I had it set up at one point but it's relatively difficult to run.

Now I'm off to call people in to work because the people during the week can't schedule for the weekends. This is the 3rd? week in a row that I've had to call people in. I don't understand why they can't schedule more people to work. In fact, I just looked yesterday and found that somebody THAT THEY JUST HIRED TO WORK THE WEEKENDS WAS MOVED TO A WEEKDAY ONLY POSITION. WHAT. THE. FUCK?

Can you tell I'm angry?

Thursday run

2009-02-20T18:22:00.001-05:00

So, I haven't been getting in the runs I wanted to. Tuesday night was crazy, Wednesday night the family goes to church and has cheap food (and fellowship for the non-atheists in the family – namely everyone but me). Marlana had me go grocery shopping after that while she and the kids did the fellowship thing. No running that night.

Thursday, I got to go for a short jog after I got home. It ended up only being 20 minutes because I had to take our trash to the dump (ah, the joys of living in the country) after Marlana got home with the SUV with trailer hookup. I maybe got ¾ of a mile in.

I plan on getting home relatively early tonight so I should be able to go for a run. We'll see, though. I have a ton of work to do and I've been procrastinating all week.

I've also been thinking about posting rebuttals to a column in a trade newspaper I get. This guy is a fool about technology and he's supposed to be the expert. It's behind a paywall so I have to think about if I want to break that paywall (copy and paste his column) or what. We'll see. That's just one more thing that I don't have time for.

My wife got on my case about spending too much time plugged in to headphones or the computer, so we'll see about that, too.

First run of 2009

2009-02-16T20:14:00.000-05:00

I woke up in the middle of the night with a horrible charley horse so I thought, "this will be great - I can get out of my first run that I blogged about here yesterday." Then it felt better throughout the day, so I went for a jog while my wife slept and the kids played. I put my run up on Mapmyrun.com. Apparently I did better than I thought - 4 miles, 11 minute pace.

I broke the rules pretty solidly from the ideas I was sent by Raulgonemobile. Oh well. I plan on running tomorrow depending on how sore I am from today's excursion.

Brain dump

2009-02-15T20:23:00.000-05:00

So, these are things that are like Twitter posts or Facebook status updates but I have too many to really utilize the service efficiently.

They took away coffee cups at work. O RLY?
I'm going running tomorrow. Considering that I'm getting to that point where I have to breathe hard just to move about, I'm not optimistic. Somebody's gotta keep me to task.
Overheard at my call center job: "If you want this done right, you'll stay on the phone with me. Otherwise, another customer comes in." I love high quality customer service.
Overheard talking to a customer: "Did you hear what I asked you? DID YOU HEAR ME?" Way to treat the customer.

I thought I had more than this but I don't.

Oh well.

Dilbert was funny but this is hilarious

2009-01-26T06:00:00.000-05:00

(Be sure to read the alt text - hover your mouse over the comic)

Dilbert nails it (of course)

2009-01-25T08:11:00.005-05:00

Hahaha.. My weekend job is actively pursuing a Best Places to Work award. So far, we've gotten more expensive health benefits and free health screenings (poke!)

Sponsorship

2009-01-12T06:47:00.000-05:00

Dude.. So my buddy at Raul Gone Mobile just got a sponsorship for his blog. How awesome is that?

Post via Email

2009-01-07T22:14:00.002-05:00

This is a test post from my email. Checking to see if this will work. W00t.

Edit: Indeed it does. Yay.

New Era ads

2008-12-28T11:24:00.000-05:00

So I've seen this ad twice now in the MLB Insiders Club Magazine (it's kinda a scam... don't join). I thought it was cool that it referenced a local team (the Charleston Riverdogs) and that I love the Yankees because I'm a jerk from New York. Anyway, turns out they made one for each team. If you go to http://www.neweracap.com you can see the images change (that's where I stole this picture from - I kept refreshing their Flash until it came up). I meant to scan it and blog it before now but I haven't.

Oooh!

2008-12-07T10:36:00.000-05:00

I've been horribly deficient in writing here but I just thought of something....

I bought a new cell phone because I'd been using my work's cell phone and they're not allowing personal use (I don't know that they did.. I had been using it for personal reasons... Better to ask for forgiveness than permission, right?).

Anyway, my new phone has a camera. Yay for more photo bloggy posts.

Slow Learners

2008-10-16T20:57:00.000-04:00

So, in my day job, I'm a school psychologist. My job is to test kids to determine whether they need special education assistance. Some times, it's clear that students need additional assistance - students in wheelchairs, students with significant behavioral problems, etc. However, there is this large group of children (statistically, 14% of the population - that's part of the way this stuff works (look up the bell curve)) that doesn't qualify for special education that needs additional assistance.

I went to a conference on Wednesday where the presenter talked about these students as a group. There are lots of difficulties for these students because they take longer to catch on to the rules of education (not the actual item, but the general rule).

The presenter's name is Steven Shaw. He has a website with a paid podcast. This really sucks. He should have these things available for free.

So, what I want to do - start a school psychologist podcast. Free. Post it online. Free. Maybe run it with ads if necessary to pay for servers or something.

That's my goal. I don't know if I can make it happen but I'd really like to.

Limiting Freedom of Speech

2008-09-20T08:12:00.000-04:00

So, this is an email I got at work:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

With the elections being right around the corner, there has been some political discussions and emails circulating throughout the building and not just in the CCC. Please understand that work is not the place for politics. Many discussion are heard throughout various departments, in the hallways and the breakrooms. Please be mindful that others may take offense to your views and political opinions. These views and opinions can sometimes come across in the form of harassment. We encourage everyone to vote and be involved, but please do so outside of the work environment.

So, that's legal, right?

Southpaw Light Beer - Pretty Good

2008-07-28T12:41:00.000-04:00

So, my friend over at raulgonemobile is a bit of a beer connoisseur (Thanks FF built in spell check!). I was leaving him a comment and I've been thinking of making this post for a while... We have a new house and a new house payment so I'm being stingy (my wife is trying but it's hard). I went to the grocery store for a few things and picked the cheapest beer at the store - Southpaw Light. $6.99 (regular price) for 12 bottles.

This beer is good. It's cheap so you'd think it would taste like Bud Light or something but it doesn't. It tastes much closer to a Yuengling which is currently my favorite beer. I also like Molson, Heineken and other light colored beers. But at $6.99 for a 12 pack, the value of Southpaw can't be beat. Even Bud Light was $9.99 for 12. That's ridiculous.

And like I said - the beer is good. It's given me more lower gas issues than I normally get with beer (I couldn't see anybody else complaining about this problem in a quick Google search... maybe it's just me) but otherwise, not bad.

Link dump

2008-07-26T20:23:00.000-04:00

Flobots' Handlebars. This is a great song. First off, it's just a nice, smooth song, then you start listening to it, thinking about it and watching the video and it just devolves into the United States. Wow. Just.. wow.

Editor's note - I spent half the day figuring out how to make that movie not autoplay (no, autoplay=false didn't work). Had to use a different flv viewer. You're welcome.

Kevin Smith's new movie (nothing's here yet but it will be)

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog This really deserves more than this mention but it's unavailable online now. You have to pay. So, yeah, I missed the boat.

Banking crisis sucks

2008-07-26T19:26:00.000-04:00

WTF is up with the whole banking crisis? The feds stepped in and bought out two more banks on Friday (July 25, 2008). This follows them propping up Freddie Mac and Fannie May and taking over IndyMac.

Interesting story - we recently bought a house. We were talking with a mortgage broker about how to do a land purchase and she went over our options with us. This company was good, this one was better and by all means avoid IndyMac. Why? They couldn't close a deal worth a crap. You'd get to the table and they would demand an extra $1500 for additional closing costs or something. They would find a way to screw you over. This was about a year ago. The rank and file knew about the problems a year ago. I bet if I talked to that broker now, she would flip out.

Oh well. I'm broke so I don't have to worry. My money's covered under the FDIC (technically a different branch or something since I'm in a credit union but still covered). {{It's the NCUA.}}

Randy Pausch has died

2008-07-26T15:29:00.003-04:00

I figured I needed to make a post on this. Randy Pausch, a professor who knew that he was going to die, has passed away.

I happened to catch his appearance on Oprah, which is weird.. I never watch Oprah.

Anyway, not much else to say. His was a very inspirational story.

Update: Found this linked at the bottom of the story. The website for his last lecture.

Stickam support.. doesn't

2008-07-26T13:43:00.003-04:00

So, Leo had posted a Twitter update a few months ago. Last month I emailed Stickam about it, to see if there was any progress. I especially like this screen:

"...in some cases it may not be possible to get back to you." Guess what happened. So I emailed them again today. And I'm blogging about it. And I'm saying that Ustream would have been a better choice. Leo has said that he didn't accept $100,000 but I wonder.... Why won't anybody say anything about this?

Just found this before I posted. Mashable.com says that these are the terms, including revenue sharing.

Update: Here's a quote from Leo:

Mark, you should have asked me - I would have told you the truth. Stickam has _not_ sent me any check. We have a revenue sharing deal that I hope will generate MORE than $100,000 a year, but I'm not buying that Bently any time soon. Streaming video numbers are much much lower than audio podcast numbers, at least for now.

Watch twitlive.tv for 10 minutes then tell me I chose the wrong provider!

My response:

You chose the wrong provider. Sure, it looks slick but it doesn't work...

Unforgotten Realms Video Series - Hilarious

2008-07-26T13:35:00.000-04:00

This is how I wasted my Saturday. This is a hilarious video series of kids playing D&D. It's animated and very funny.

McCain Green Screen Challenge

2008-07-26T13:17:00.003-04:00

I especially like the Poltergeist head movements (ie. when he does a twist, his head stays facing forward).

Rush playing Rock Band

2008-07-26T13:11:00.001-04:00

I'm blogging this for my buddy, primarily. He used to be (if not still is) a total Rush nerd.

Stephen King's new project

2008-07-25T11:41:00.002-04:00

So Stephen King has a new project. Or, well, some people are doing a daily video thing of one of his short stories. It's available at NIsHere.com. They have an embedding option which I have included here.

Just for Men - Touch of Gray

2008-07-21T10:14:00.000-04:00

I don't know if that link will work or not but this is just ridiculous.

"Just for Men - now works less well!"

Seriously? A product that used to completely mask your gray hair which now "lets you keep some gray?" Wow. That's... weird.

So.. here's their commercial - caution - plays automatically with sound. One of the lines in the commercial - "Don't trust anyone over 90." Yeah. Okay.

Epic. Fail.

Pearls Before Swine doesn't know the Fonz

2008-07-16T08:02:00.002-04:00

So, yeah. Unless this is some humor I don't get (Pig is stupid, but he's not that stupid), they screwed up. Everybody knows that the Fonz says "Ayyyy," not "Heeey."

Housework - whoo hoo

2008-07-09T08:17:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was a weird day - Marlana was kind of sick for most of the day, so the kids and I got up and started playing computer games (they love casual games and i-am-bored.com in particular. No, they don't get to go there on their own but I help them find games that seem to be fun for them.

Hung a giant fricken' mirror, our college diplomas and some really cute pictures of the kids in the bathroom. Didn't get the bathroom pictures straight, though.. gotta try again. That sucks.

We also started our Netflix subscription last night. We watched 27 Dresses (meh) and Semi-Pro (less meh but still not great). The Bucket List is up for tonight.

When I was working in the yard two days ago, I got bit like crazy. Couple of ant bites and at least two spider bites on my left hand. They itch like hell.

Full day of work

2008-07-08T01:10:00.000-04:00

Put in a full day of different kinds of work -

I need to get some pictures, but I planted some crepe myrtle trees. One came from my wife's grandmother's home but then we found 5 others on our land. That was pretty cool - free trees.

My wife also picked up border grass, so that went in across most of the front of the house. We also have some other plants from her uncle that we had planted in a corner of the land to keep them away from the construction crew. I moved a Magnolia and two Camelias to other places in our yard.

Then I came in and worked on some files. I have to get these done by the end of the week. I counted 19 and I think I got 5 done tonight (I lost count as I was doing the mad dash all night (it's 1:15)).

Trying again

2008-07-06T13:48:00.002-04:00

I'm going to try, for the umpteenth time to become more active with posting and tweeting, etc.

I don't have much to say but I suppose I should say it. I have a lot of work to do. Maybe I could post about that. That's actually not a bad twitter idea.

Rudy Park blows it on Tim Russert

2008-06-29T06:31:00.002-04:00

Rudy Park, like nearly all other comics is probably produced six weeks in advance or more. Today's comic mentions Tim Russert and the "deceased corpse of... Peter Jennings." Oops.

What I find interesting is that I can't find anything about it - no apology, no mention of them trying to hold the comic, nothing.

Spring Break

2008-03-29T06:54:00.000-04:00

Guess what I did over Spring Break?

Mild improvement

2008-03-18T06:06:00.002-04:00

For today, I did slightly better, down a pound. Still above my running average, though.

Ugh

2008-03-18T06:05:00.003-04:00

Old post

2008-03-18T06:05:00.001-04:00

Yuck.

Slow to post

2008-03-18T06:04:00.000-04:00

Posting updates from the past couple days - I've been bad.

255 - hooray!

2008-03-14T05:46:00.002-04:00

I didn't do anything - in fact I was bad - had two Slim Jims and a packet of Trail Mix on top of three full meals - but here we are again, under the rolling average. Hooray!

258

2008-03-13T05:44:00.004-04:00

Ouch. Wrong way, dumbass.

256, again

2008-03-13T05:44:00.001-04:00

Sigh.

256, still

2008-03-11T05:40:00.003-04:00

Well, this is discouraging... I've been at 256 so long that the average curve is above the trendline. Bummer.

However, on the positive side, I got rid of the red YOU WILL DIE message for my BMI:

256

2008-03-10T19:25:00.002-04:00

Whee.

256

2008-03-09T06:57:00.002-04:00

Up a pound. I gotta stop eating cookies and go running.

Also, happy Daylight Savings Day.

255 again

2008-03-08T06:54:00.003-05:00

I got weird results this morning - 258 at one point but I think I had the scale on the carpet. I got 255 when I moved the scale off the carpet.

Yay for 255

2008-03-07T18:27:00.004-05:00

Way too much work to be playing on the internet but guess what I'm doing? Reading Valleywag for gossip. Whee.

Current weight loss

2008-03-06T20:40:00.004-05:00

Whee. Back down around 258.

Leo's out of work

2008-03-06T20:36:00.002-05:00

Leo Laporte just had his TV show cancelled. I think he knew it was coming... he's been talking for a few weeks about firing up Twitlive.com . (That un-link doesn't work.)

Interesting.

281

2007-12-19T06:13:00.001-05:00

Sigh. Up a bunch since the last time I measured.

Restarting the blog

2007-12-18T21:42:00.001-05:00

I keep bitching to myself that I need to restart my weight loss. I always pick dumb times to do this, though - heading into the holidays - guaranteed to make me fat. Anyway, away we go.

Weight loss - 265

2007-05-15T06:04:00.000-04:00

It's been depressing to have a bunch of 268 days, even though I've been doing mostly the right thing. I just started doing the Hacker's Diet Exercise plan, rung 1, on top of 4 times a week of going to the gym and doing some cardio/running.

Finally a little bit of a payoff, although it's hard to see.

Weird sky day today

2007-05-13T19:29:00.000-04:00

Weird sky day today - it's about 1900 and the sky is very dark for so "early."

Hacker's Diet Exercise Plan

2007-05-13T17:39:00.001-04:00

I'm totally starting the Hacker's Diet Exercise plan tomorrow. As soon as I get up. I guess I'll start on rung 1. I'll keep this updated.

Terrorism at work

2007-05-13T17:30:00.000-04:00

Hey, look. A new sign on the refrigerator at work. I wonder what's going on? Usually these are promotional or saying that they'll be cleaning out the refrigerators.

Whaa? Suspicious activity? What? Are people poisoning other people's food? What in the world? Is this like See something, Say something?

Stickam, uStream and port blocking

2007-05-12T17:46:00.000-04:00

Bad day at work today and not because of the actual work part...

I have been watching Leo Laporte do his radio show for the past few weeks on ustream.tv but it wasn't working for him today, so he went to stickam.com. Well, I tried to follow him over there but I couldn't. Apparently whatever port they use for the video is blocked here (in my experience, they block every port except for port 80 and they also have a content filter. Apparently they're paranoid here.)

So, it was very frustrating to be in the chat via ircatwork and hear people talking about him bouncing on an exercise ball and generally being goofy and being one click away from being able to see and experience the interactivity. He also would answer questions from the chat via audio which I also couldn't hear.

Stupid port filters. Very annoying.

Oh, and some weird 15 year old girl was IM'ing me for no reason. I told her to go away and she wouldn't. I wonder if it's Chris Hansen? Entrapment! I'm calling it first.

School Psychology News

2007-05-12T09:39:00.000-04:00

I'm a school psychologist in real life... Interesting news for us psychologists: AGS Pearson is buying Psychcorp from Harcourt. This could be a huge monopoly power in the psychoeducational world but I'll reserve judgement. This would essentially create one place for us psychologists to get the best tests for our job. This could then allow for increased costs for already *very* expensive tests. I recently asked our school district to buy 2 books for $1000. And they did.. What choice did they have? It's the best thing available.

Of course, I understand that there is research and development costs and that the services I provide are very expensive on the free market. I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the idea that my tax dollars (and yours) fund research for this company. I'd like to see an open source type movement come about for these types of psychoeducational tests. I don't have the brain for the actual research and development and testing that occurs but I could at least help out by understanding the GPL and providing backend support like that.

Ostensibly, we have that. The idea behind psychological research is that it is published and freely available. It would be very difficult to ask psychologists to conduct research for free but it already happens. There are grants available from a number of organizations.

In addition, DIEBLS is a new, free, alternative for some of the psychoeducational evaluations I conduct. We should expand on this idea with intelligence tests and other types of psychoeducational batteries. I'd like to see something like that occur.

268

2007-05-12T09:38:00.000-04:00

257

2007-03-04T08:19:00.000-05:00

256

2007-03-02T05:45:00.001-05:00

256

2007-03-01T05:47:00.000-05:00

Baby steps... Down a pound.

257

2007-02-28T06:00:00.000-05:00

Good day for the most part yesterday... Then I blew out around dinner time. I'm back under my average weight, though, and my average BMI is back under 35 which falls in the red "you will die immediately" section.

262

2007-02-27T05:45:00.000-05:00

I didn't weigh myself until I was fully dressed today. I'm not entering it onto the weight tracking chart below because it would throw it off.

I did well yesterday. I could probably stand to drink some water to help with weight loss but I didn't really snack at all yesterday.

259

2007-02-26T05:44:00.000-05:00

I was really good at work yesterday, avoiding temptation. I only walked about 1000 steps, though. Such a slack job.

261

2007-02-25T10:26:00.000-05:00

So, I'm reading about the "Fatblogger" movement. I think I'm the winner in terms of weight but I'll let that go for now.

I really like the physicsdiet.com charting ability and I think it would work in well with the proposed fatblogger idea.

Pretty good Sunday so far

2006-11-12T08:16:00.000-05:00

Last night I was bad - I had a slice of pie and a bowl of chips after dinner but again, my weight doesn't seem to be affected. Although it's stopped going down, so I guess there is an effect.

Today, so far, I was good. I had my usual - 3 eggs, 1 slice of cheese and a bagel with creme cheese. All of that is only like 500 calories. I have a 2000 calorie diet I'm trying to maintain, so 500 calories for a meal isn't bad.

I'm thinking I need some coffee, though, which is empty calories. The thing that kills me is the creamer. That stuff is worse than the sugar.

Other things have been going on for me - I'd been locked out of my Gmail account - it has since been fixed but I had to complain a lot. I can't really blame the Gmail guys - I think bad stuff has been happening since every time I went to report it (I was reporting it daily for a while) there was a different way to get to the place I needed to go to report it to a person.

I changed from Bloglines to Google Reader last week or so because they fixed it to expanded view with automatic flagging of posts as read as you scroll past them. I also integrated it with Gmail through a Greasemonkey script. This is pretty cool but it doesn't do expanded view. The guy who wrote the script is actually a Google employee who works on Reader. He said he had to fix something in Reader itself to force it to List view so I don't think the Greasemonkey script can force it back to Expanded view but I've asked a programmer friend to take a look at it.

I'm at work at my "easy" job today and I brought a lot of work from my school job so I have a lot of reports to write, etc.

If anybody reads this, I would be excited to start a dialog and talk with you about stuff if you're interested.

Time for some motivation

2006-11-11T16:17:00.000-05:00

I have remained at my earlier weight of 255-ish for the past few months. I've checked my weight every once in a while but haven't entered it in the Physicsdiet site. I also have begun snacking again, even though that was what was so successful for me in my past. Although, on the other hand, I have not gone up even though I have been snacking again.

Anyway, why am I making this post? Because I feel that I need the motivation of publishing to an audience, even though nobody actually reads this blog. If I post and say that today I ate a small pizza in addition to my normal breakfast of three scrambled eggs, one slice of cheese and a bagel with cream cheese then I may shame myself into eating better. (I'm also drinking coffee, laced with non-dairy creamer, which is really bad for me.)

I added my weight from this morning to Physicsdiet and the updated graph is above.

Boring perpetual post

2006-08-04T20:10:00.000-04:00

I think this will be my last post for a while. This image is linked to my information at Physicsdiet. It'll stay updated everyday as I update my information there.

Sunday check up

2006-07-30T13:53:00.000-04:00

I'm starting to wonder if I should go to weekly posts or just post pictures without comments... I keep saying the same thing (look at me! I'm toggling between two points!)

Missed some posts

2006-07-29T12:27:00.000-04:00

Kinda interesting watching the stagger of the plot... flatline for a couple of days, then down one or two pounds... rinse and repeat.

Double or nothing

2006-07-26T22:34:00.000-04:00

Missed yesterday but here's two days worth of logs... Seeing some progress... yay!

Monday check-in

2006-07-24T06:02:00.000-04:00

Steady going again... Ugh.

Sunday weigh-in

2006-07-23T17:48:00.000-04:00

A little bit higher today but I couldn't exercise over the weekend... We'll see how it goes from here.

Saturday check-in

2006-07-22T10:00:00.000-04:00

Finally some movement... I guess it was those box lunches at the conference I attended this week... Once I got away from them, I saw some movement again... I didn't even exercise yesterday... Should have, but didn't.

Another flat day

2006-07-21T21:09:00.000-04:00

Blah... 280 again. Sucks.

Ugh - Still stuck

2006-07-20T21:04:00.000-04:00

Still at 280. How frustrating.. I guess those box lunches have too many calories.

Wednesday Weigh-in

2006-07-19T07:34:00.000-04:00

Back up again on the scale, even though the average continues to decrease... I think I may need to change up my eating habits but I'm not certain yet...

Tuesday transition

2006-07-18T07:19:00.000-04:00

Yay! Finally some movement on the weightloss front.... Lost two pounds according to the scale... the smoothing effects of the trend line makes it look like less but that's alright... Slow and steady and all that.

Maintenance Monday

2006-07-17T21:54:00.000-04:00

Can't exercise on the weekends, so it's good that I can maintain over the weekend... Just up a little bit... Not too bad. Looks like I'm on track to lose some weight tomorrow.. I got to jog on the treadmill for 2 miles today...

I was just reading....

2006-07-16T08:48:00.000-04:00

I was just reading about using moving averages to report weight loss. Of course, it's slower to change (because it's an average) so if looks like I'm heavier than I am but it *is* more accurate. I guess I'll start reporting that number. So far, I've moved from 287 to 284.26. Hopefully, we'll see some change this week, too. Should be easy as long as I stay away from coffee with cream and sugar at the conference this week.

Up a little bit

2006-07-16T08:30:00.000-04:00

Up a little according to the scale but still down overall.. and the trendline keeps going in the right direction, which is important, as I have been reminded.

I can see why people get depressed about these slight setbacks and I could see myself going right back up again but I won't.. I'm smarter than that... this is a lifestyle change, not a short term thing.

I'm going to read Physicsblog for some more insights.

Site I found

2006-07-15T11:35:00.000-04:00

See, now this is how this internet stuff is supposed to work... I wrote a post, figuring nobody would ever read it.. then somebody does and he harmlessly plugs his site. I visit the site, figuring it's total crap and not at all related (at Wordpress, somebody linked to their sewing site... that's so related to my weightloss issues) and it's brilliant. It's what I've been looking for for a while, now, since Weightrends.com went away.

Physicsdiet.com is a great site. I have a profile there and it lets me see how horribly fat I am (it's okay.. I'm working on it and being successful...) I think I'm going to start linking to the graphs from that site rather than rolling my own from the Hacker's Diet. Right now, because I just started, the graphs are all wonky. They'll level out as I move forward.

Stagnant Saturday

2006-07-15T07:07:00.000-04:00

Okay... big changes behind the scenes here... using the awesome Hacker's Diet stuff now (I'll add a link later).. The other stuff was too much manual labor.. this is automated but complicated... Anyway, I'm still stuck at 280... sucks.. and I'm going into the weekend which is where I am the weakest...

Edit: Link added

Friday flatline

2006-07-14T09:32:00.000-04:00

I was afraid of this, but it happened... I've flatlined... I'm at 280 again today. Maybe a little on the underside of 280 but not 279.5. It's okay, though... every time I lose weight, I hit a flat line for a while, then I start up again... just need to work my way through this temporary flatline...

It's Thursday!

2006-07-13T15:35:00.000-04:00

Down to 280.5... Went walking a mile with the kids yesterday, around the neighborhood. They rode in the Barbie Jeep while I jogged behind them. Today, I went to the Y and did 2 miles on the treadmill. Also stepped on the stairclimber... I don't think I'm smart enough to do that.

Wednesday check-in

2006-07-12T08:01:00.000-04:00

I'm at my other job where the filters are crazy - can't access Gmail, can't access the original site I stole the Excel spreadsheet from - so I'll just verbally report that I lost another pound, down to 283. Walked/jogged 2 miles on the treadmill at the Y. Won't be able to exercise tonight, as we're going out to eat with a bunch of my wife's friends. I'll be good, though - I already know what I'm going to order and I won't drink beer (that'll be tough... this is a drinking crowd) but Diet Coke.

Oh well, back to work. (I also found out that I got a raise. Pretty dang cool.)

If it's Tuesday, it's another pound

2006-07-11T06:28:00.000-04:00

I lost another pound, down to 284. The scale was jumping around a lot this morning and I had some problems reading it.. I'm also really tired and I don't know why.. went to bed at 9:30 last night.

Also went walking about 2 miles last night, following the kids in their Barbie jeep. My knees are telling me that they don't want to do that again. Tough.

I also, obviously, changed the spreadsheet some. Starting Thursday, I think, it'll have a rolling average which will be some additional information.

Monday morning diet post

2006-07-10T06:55:00.000-04:00

By *not* eating 6 hotdogs and *not* getting a Whopper yesterday, I lost 2 pounds. I was pretty hungry, though. But that's okay.

Weight loss progress

2006-07-09T14:15:00.000-04:00

Until I find a better way of doing this, that's an Excel spreadsheet screenshot, processed through Zooomr. I'm restarting my lifestyle change (not a diet) and I'll be posting updates as frequently as possible (daily, I hope).

After eating 6 hot dogs yesterday followed by a Whopper King size meal from Burger King, it's time to get this back under control. I'm going to try to stop by the Y tomorrow and get on a treadmill for a while, too.

My first comment

2006-07-08T17:40:00.000-04:00

In the post below, A good day to (re)start a blog, none other than Thomas Hawk made the first comment on this blog. How awesome is that?

Now, of course, he works for Zooomr and that is my Zooomr post to get a pro account with them (I still don't know what I get for that) and I submitted it to Zooomr, but still. Pretty cool.

Okay. I'm going to get off my fanboy phase now.

(Fine - this is less cool now that I'm migrating back to Blogger but still... it's pretty cool - but I have no proof as I deleted the comment. Which is fine. Because Wordpress was too limited... I'll make that post shortly.)

Amateur weatherman

2006-07-08T11:58:00.000-04:00

My high school physics class (of all places) taught me some amateur weather forecasting. I still use it to a degree. I stepped outside earlier (had to get another Diet Coke) and it was beautiful. Not too hot, nice breeze blowing. Now I need to see if I can explain it. I'm betting there's a high pressure system either directly over us or slightly to the west of us, causing a clockwise spin of air, bringing cooler air from the north down to us. Let's see if I'm right.

Well, I was kinda right. The high pressure system is over Ohio which is only a few states to the north and west of South Carolina.

A good day to (re)start a blog

2006-07-08T10:52:00.000-04:00

I was surfing around Hacking Netflix today and saw that Zooomr is giving away free pro accounts to bloggers. In their post about the program they answered the obvious question about what kind of posting record do I need to have. "None!" they reply. Oh how they don't know me. :P

Here is my obligatory Zooomr picture to link back to Zooomr for the free account:

The Smoking Gun prompts question

2006-07-08T08:30:00.000-04:00

My completely unused blog is going to start getting used. Maybe.

So, I was going through my email and hit upon a subscribed newsletter to The Smoking Gun. I know... how 20th century, when we have RSS to help us out. I know nobody cares but the reason I choose to read The Smoking Gun via email is because they filter it. I'm of a personality type that I have to read everything that is pushed at me. If I subscribed to their RSS feed, I would be overwhelmed with junk, I'm sure.

So, here are some questions about the most recent stories they have. Since when is 29 pills of Viagra worth $1? On the customs form from his recent arrest, the value of the confiscated item is listed as 1 bottle of pills, containing 29 individual items, value - $1. Isn't the street value like $10 a pop?

I'm such a follower

2006-03-12T17:12:00.000-05:00

So, my last post was inspired by Wil Wheaton - this one is by Chris Pirillo. I'm such a fanboy.

Chris is starting a weight loss thing and has started a mailing list that I joined... he presented it for bloggers to join. I'm not a blogger but I joined anyway. I don't think I'll get the boot but I may.

He also suggests that public disclosure seems to be best. I have to agree with that.

You wouldn't know it by looking at me but I weight 272 pounds. There used to be this wonderful program which created trending graphs but I think it's gone now. That totally sucks because it was wonderful. I'll see if there's anything out there like it.

Writing Exercise

2006-02-05T10:29:00.000-05:00

Wil at wilwheaton.net has posted some interesting thoughts about the need to just purge your brain of crap and move on to the real work. He suggested that you sit down in front of your blog and just spew everything out there. So, I will.

My real work is writing psychoeducational reports which are confidential, so I can't share any insights here. I don't particularly want to do anything with them, especially on a Sunday, but I have too much work to do on the other days that I can't really get anything accomplished without using my weekends as well.

Let's see... another thing that Wil talks about was the feeling of validation of having people read his blog. I know that nobody out there reads this blog or cares or knows of its existence, but that's okay. Maybe I can use this as just a 10 minutes mind blowing technique. Just flush the crap out of there and have it free to run amok on my real work.

This is my first real experience with wordpress. I don't know if I like wordpress or blogger better. I like how clean this interface is and how effortless it is to just type away. I suppose Blogger would be like that after some work, too, though. Just the thought of all of those little tags and Blogger specific dealios was just daunting. Maybe I'll go back but I don't think I'll need to.

Hmmm.. What else? I'm waiting to get in on the Yahoo! Beta. I've been waiting since something like August, I think. Maybe if I bitch about it in private, something will happen. Yeah, right.

My wife and I are working on painting a portion of our downstairs this beautiful deep red/maroon color. It's gorgeous. But red paint sucks because you have to put like 3 coats on to cover the white from before. I don't know what the deal is with that. It seems to be very watery as compared to the other paint I worked with to fix little boo-boos from installing a wall section.

So, how cool is that? My father-in-law came by and we put up a 5 foot section of wall to break up some of the openness of the downstairs. The wall gives us more floor space, allowing us to do some cool furniture arranging.

But, there's another problem with our house-I think we may have some water damage in our upstairs bedroom. How we got water damage there, I have no idea. It would have to come in through the roof, run down some studs or something and then pool in on particular place. Very odd.

But we did see that we have some water damage from our shower. I need to fix the shower door which allows water to run out when we bathe. I've been taking a shower in the hall bathroom for a couple of weeks now and that sucks. Stepping on bath toys at 5:30 in the morning is no fun.

Well, I will assume that after figuring out how to post this, I'll be way over my 10 minutes. Back tomorrow.

10 Double Lives.mp3

2005-04-24T10:29:00.000-04:00

07 Quitting.mp3

2005-04-24T10:26:00.000-04:00

04 Vacations.mp3

2005-04-24T09:16:00.000-04:00

Podcast Link

2005-01-02T16:04:00.000-05:00

My brother just started working on his blog again. I've decided that I'm going to lose weight and that my blog will be my motivation tool.

It'll be a while before I can really get into it but when I do, my blog will be the motivator. Whoo!

2004-04-30T11:29:00.000-04:00

I went to the doctor yesterday for some rashes that I have. One appears to be a heat rash that I get from working in the garden. It's been in the 80's here for at least the past week. And it poured one day, so my bushes and whatnot are doing really well, considering. Anyway, one's a heat rash.

The other one, the doctor was stumped by it. I was told a long time ago that it was a vitamin deficiency but my current doctor thinks that that is crap. So she gave me some steroid cream to rub on both spots. Whoo.

Then I planted the last bushes I had. Now I have to work with some edging. We got that black plastic stuff. If you leave it out in the sun, it's supposed to be relatively easy to use. I hope so.

2004-04-28T14:05:00.000-04:00

I live near Charleston, South Carolina. The big story in Charleston right now is a local middle school where teachers are complaining that school administrators aren't listening to their complaints. The story was picked up in the upstate of South Carolina (here) and in North Carolina. There is a lot more to the story than what is portrayed in the initial news reports. The Charleston Post and Courier has been publishing follow up stories, but registration is required, so I didn't link to them. Basically, the school principal has responded that the teachers need to learn how to control these inner city children. The same thing is being said by the superintendent, that these students are difficult but that it's not their fault.

I'm torn on this one. Yes, students cannot be held responsible for their actions (although this is a middle school so these students are beginning to enter the realm of responsibility). Yes, teachers need to be responsible for the safety and operation of their classroom. However, the school administration does need to be responsive to teachers who ask for help. Office referrals should be followed up on. Teachers should be supported, not ostracized. Administration needs to be very careful to help staff, not support an uprising against "bad" teachers.

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I weighed myself and was surprised to see that I lost a couple of pounds. The graph should start to look better now that I'm keeping up with it. I wonder what will happen when we roll into May.