Tech Facepalms

I have been working in my new capacity as an Apple mobile device tech for the last three weeks. In any job, one finds moments and customers that make one question one's faith in humanity as a race, but also how certain individuals manage to operate and live their lives without befalling some hideously-moronic tragedy. Tech support workers, however, are typically considered to have a higher number of these using their service, as theirs is a business of resolving problems that have arisen due to ignorance, idiocy, or a combination thereof. For example, most of the civilized world (by which I mean the non-brain-dead portion) considers the traditional tech support opening question of "Is the computer plugged in and turned on?" to be ridiculous and unnecessary, but tech support employees will swear that it is simply amazing how many times this simple question fixes the problem.

These moments are often referred to as "facepalm" moments - situations in which the sheer magnitude of the ineptitude or stupidity causes an observing participant to cover his/her face in shame of being even in proximity to such idiocy. One of my co-workers, for example, tells a story of how a middle-aged woman asked the following question shortly after the iPhone 4 was released: the woman was contemplating the higher-capacity model (32 gigabytes), and towards the end of the conversation she asked the following question: "As I put more music and stuff on it, will it get heavier?" This was asked with an utterly straight face, as the woman was apparently very concerned with the weight of her GBs and whether or not it had the wifis. I remarked that the tech should have sent the woman to Walgreens (YouTube is your friend).

We have all heard such stories from people in tech support sectors and other places (including an insurance call center rep who had the bad luck to ask me if I had a spare tire with me after I told her that I'd blown the rear tire on my motorcycle - let that one sink in for a minute) Today, however, I finally witnessed a tech support facepalm for myself first-hand.

A customer checked in with a phone that he said was taking blurry pictures, so I immediately looked at the lens. It did look a bit cloudy, but more pressing than the cloudy lens was the small, translucent plastic tab sticking out of the space between the gentleman's phone and its case.

"Oh, surely not," I thought, incredulous. "It can't be."

I probed as I entered his serial number: "Has it done this since you got it?"

"Yes. From day one."

"And how long ago was that?"

"Three or four weeks. I don't remember."

Had he not been right there in front of me, I would have facepalmed hard. Instead, I asked him to remove the case and hand the phone to me. He did, and the tab came with the phone.

I then proceeded to pull the tab away from the phone. The tab pulled a thin piece of plastic from covering the back of the phone, including the camera lens. The poor brain-dead gentleman had left the shipping protection in place, even though it completely covered the camera lens and flipped over the charging connection at the bottom of the phone. How he'd thought it a good idea to leave it all in place was beyond me; "This is a really poorly-designed back protector - I have to bend it back every time I charge my phone."

I turned the camera on, took a picture of the customer, turned the phone around to show off the shot, and proceeded to ask, "Does this look better?"

His response: "Oh."

MIM (Not As In Mad Madame)

Brittany is blessed with a regular 40-hour week at her job, which allows for a normally-predictable schedule: work Tuesday-Saturday, off Sunday and Monday. My schedule, on the other hand, is not nearly so stable. As a new employee, I am relegated to part-time status and only average about 28 hours per week on varying days. This makes it somewhat difficult for us to coordinate time together, especially when we want to get out and do something together, so when an opportunity presents itself we tend to jump on it and maximize it.

One such opportunity came last week, where we managed to both have Monday completely off. Knowing this ahead of time, we planned to take the day for ourselves and get out to try new things in Phoenix. Traveling, discovering new places and finding new places to eat and things to do is a favorite hobby of ours, and we made an excellent find last Monday: Phoenix's Musical Instrument Museum.




I happened across the museum one night while working for Zingo, and when I pitched the idea to Brittany, she was very excited to go. Both Brittany and I greatly enjoy music and we both have participated in orchestral groups in the past, so this seemed to be something that we would both enjoy. This is the first museum of its kind in the States, and is a unique concept in the world at large, as it is exclusively devoted to music and its various implements from around the world (shockingly enough).

My initial thought about the place was "Oh man - that place has got to be loud," as the idea of packing that many items and artifacts into one place - items whose sole purpose is to make noise - seemed like a chaotic din waiting to happen. Fortunately, the designers and curators took this into account and came up with a very clever way to use technology to fully show off the museum's collection.

The museum is divided up into exhibits by continent, and each continent then has several smaller areas devoted to its countries and their musical and cultural styles. At each display, visitors find a collection of instruments, photographs and costumes which together provide a snapshot into each country. Most stations also include a video screen which shows off footage of the instruments in action along with dance or other cultural pieces, and this is where the technology comes into play:

At the entrance, each visitor is given a set of headphones connected to a small receiver. As the visitor approaches an exhibit, a wireless transmitter hidden in the exhibit plays the audio for that station's video footage, fading it in quickly so that the visitor is in sync with what is on the screen. As the listener walks away, the audio fades out gradually and seamlessly - no static, no abruptness, and no crossing of signals. In some of the closer-placed exhibits, I deliberately tried to get the audio from one showcase to play when I neared another, but the system simply would not do it. The exhibits are so strategically-placed and the transmitters' frequencies so excellently calibrated that the signals only extend a certain distance and will not cross each other.

This allows for a very personal feel in the museum, and it makes the rooms very quiet when everyone plays by the rules. As we sat on a bench between continents, we were both amazed at the silence of the place. There was one large group of senior citizens there at the same time we were, and while they had a live tour guide (also a senior citizen) talking about everything, the entire museum was otherwise dead silent. This leant a sophisticated, elegant air to the building and significantly added to the overall experience.

On the other end of that serene spectrum, however, comes this:




This, boys and girls, is part of the "Experience Room," as I believe it was called. Located in a presumably-soundproof room at the far end of the museum, this room is filled with drums, guitars, xylophones, harps, and yes, a huge gong. All of these are fair game and can be played to your heart's desire except the gong, which is annoyingly limited to one strike per guest. This is best taken in at the end of the day, perhaps to bribe any otherwise-rambunctious children into being good for a few hours. While hammering that gong was quite satisfying in an inner-child-pleasing sort of way, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor volunteer senior who had to watch over the room. There were no school groups there that day, but heaven only knows what sort of mayhem would ever be wrought if a busload of kindergarteners ever got their hands on that room. Time for grandpa to put the hearing aid on "Mute," I would imagine.

All in all, though some sections were a tad dry and repetitive (there are very few differences between the music of Niger and that of Nigeria, for example, and once you've seen one drum with feet, you've seen them all), if one has even a passing interest in music or culture, the Musical Instrument Museum is certainly worth a visit. If you enjoy nothing else about it, go to the Experience Room and let loose your inner Animal. Just please don't eat drums, though. Beat drums. Beat drums.

(Note: for pictures of some of the more bizarre pieces of MIM's collection, check out my photos on my Facebook page)

Greenpiece of My Mind Part Deux: Electric Boogaloo

Somewhat unexpectedly, my last entry drew a decent response on Facebook, in person, and via email. Most responders agreed with me, though there was one person at work (I'll call her "Ms. Greene-Earthmother) who took exception to my criticism of the Green "movement," as she called it. She accused me of being insensitive to the "growing environmental crisis" facing our planet and snidely remarked that I as a gearhead just wanted to use up all the resources I could and leave none for my grandchildren after I died. To this, I would respond that I will be Greener than ever after I pass away, as I will have little choice at that point except to leave my body to compost.

The problem with today's Green technology in the automotive sector is a simple case of dollars and sense. The technology is simply not advanced enough or cost-efficient enough to make it an acceptable return on investment, so it ends up being more of a gaudy "look how awesome I am" sort of fashion statement, like a bedazzled Ed Hardy T-shirt or a "diamond" encrusted "Princess" choker. Case in point: the loudest reason by far for hybrid ownership is the fuel savings; this seems reasonable enough - everyone wants better gas mileage out of their vehicle so that Big Oil takes fewer dollars out of their pockets. Honestly, that line of thinking is fine, so long as the analysis stops right there and goes home for the day. Dealers know this - in fact, they count on it.

With hybrids having swiftly become Green status symbols, dealers can afford to slap an elevated price on their windshields as compared to the conventional versions because their elevated fuel efficiency makes them special vehicles to the under-informed. In fact, a common reply that I hear from the Greenheaded - and from Ms. Greene-Earthmother herself - in regards to hybrids' pricing is that "The money I save on gas more than makes up for the difference in price."

Side note: it turns out that responding to this statement with even the mildest snark ("Were you told that there would be no math?") tends to end the conversation, not that there was anything profitable to be gained from it in the first place. People do not take kindly to being educated about their own idiocy for some reason, but it is a mere matter of fact: crunching a few figures - using no post-5th grade math - shows just how efficiently a hybrid sneaks the buyer's money into a salesman's pocket and does little more for the consumer than allow them to start conversations with "Yeah, it's a hybrid." Though for most buyers, this seems to be enough.

With no direct competitor for the Ms. Greene-Earthmother's Prius currently available on the market (no gas-only option, and no comparable model made by a competitor), let's turn the mathematical microscope to the Lexus RX350 SUV, which has both a conventional and a hybrid version available, and is a favorite of the dreaded "soccer-mom" variant of the species. Its front-wheel drive hybrid trim carries an MSRP of $43,560 according to Lexus, which is rather pricey for a smallish SUV. This trim line is roughly equivalent to its front-drive base trim, which presents the buyer with a conventional six-cylinder engine, mostly-equivalent standard features, and a $38,500 price tag. Remember those numbers, as we'll be coming back to them in a minute.

Using the same given numbers as in the previous entry (12,000 miles per year and average gas price of $3.02), we now note that the hybrid's average fuel economy is 30mpg, while the conventional version manages 22mpg. Over the 12k miles in a year, the hybrid uses 400 gallons of fuel for a cost of $1,208, while the conventional version racks up 545 gallons for a cost of $1,646 per year. Edge: hybrid by $438 per year.

Now factor in the cost of the vehicle itself: excluding taxes, interest, and so on, the hybrid RX (referred to as the "RX450h" in Lexus-ish) costs $5,060 more than its conventional sibling. When divided by the average fuel savings per year - again, the most-oft-cited reason for buying a hybrid when the buyer doesn't want to simply come out and say "Because I'm better than you" - we find that it will take 11.6 years for those fuel savings to recoup the price difference between these otherwise-identical models. Most people don't even keep their cars that long. Heck, most people don't even keep their pets that long. Sorry, Molly.

Our next example follows the same basic pattern. The Honda Civic Hybrid commands an MSRP of $24,550, while the closest equivalent conventional model has a price tag of $19,155, but eschews the hybrid model's CVT for a traditional automatic transmission. The hybrid pulls an impressive EPA average of 42mpg, while the conventional version manages 31mpg; this is a difference of 11mpg out the gate, which is fairly substantial. Over the course of the 12,000 miles, the hybrid drinks 286 gallons at a cost of $864. The conventional version gulps down 387 gallons over the same distance and racks up a tab of $1,169 in the process. This results in a difference of $305 per year in favor of the hybrid, but once again, the difference in MSRP proves to be a very wide gap. With the hybrid costing $5,395 more than its conventional counterpart, the $305 that the consumer would save on fuel will take a staggering 17.7 years to make up for its price difference.

To put that in perspective, it only takes slightly longer to give birth to, raise, and finally send a child out into the world. And just like all the money you spend on that child over those many, many years, you will never see a full recouping of the money you spent on that hybrid either.

The next Greenheaded statement is usually something to the effect of "But I drive a whole lot more than 12,000 miles per year. I'll recoup my money much more quickly." Again, snark will not prolong the conversation, so statements such as "If ignorance truly is bliss, you must be happy all the time" are not generally acceptable responses. Unfortunately, neither is a rational presentation of the facts, apparently.

Going back to the RX450h, the hybrid version costs $5,060 more than its comparably-equipped conventional counterpart. To make up for that difference in even the life of a standard car loan, the driver would have to be a prolific road warrior, because in order for the fuel savings to break that mark over five years, you would need to drive around 30,000 miles a year. Even more astoundingly, it would take the Civic owner roughly 45,000 miles a year to do the same thing. While Ms. Green-Earthmother might consider her weekly latte-in-hand errands to be the stuff of vehicular legend, I can assure you, dear reader, that the only way she would reach this mark would be under the following set of circumstances:

McKenna's gymnastics classes would need to be in New York, little Bayden's soccer practices in Seattle, their playdates would have to live in Los Angeles and Miami, and mommy's weekly mani-pedi (heaven help me, I didn't have to look that one up) appointments would have to be in Texas. Even then, I doubt that the mark would be reached, as I overhear Scottsdale trophy wives complain from time to time about having to drive "all the way to Chandler" for one reason or another (for the Google-impaired, Scottsdale and Chandler, both in Arizona, are separated by about fifteen miles of straight freeway. A grueling drive, to be sure).

I have absolutely no objection to the advance of technology, and certainly don't see anything wrong in aiming that technological telescope at fuel efficiency and other Green tech. My objection to the Green movement lies in the fact that for the true benefit of the consumer, a product's Green-ness should not come at an elevated price premium or at the expense of common sense, and the vast majority of today's Green tech fails on both counts. Until this is fixed, hybrid technology is little more than a fad and a marketing cash cow - yet another trendy way for the self-important to be proud and for snobs to be snobbish. As Hetfield mused, "Arrogance and ignorance go hand in hand."

Greenpiece of My Mind

Being a bit of a car nut, chances are that if you are talking about anything automotive while I am within earshot, I am very likely at least casually listening in. I don't mean it in a stalker-ish sense, but the automotive world is inherently interesting to me, as are people's ideas, likes, dislikes, and misconceptions about it. Recently, my interest was piqued at lunch as I overheard a couple talking about a friend's new car.

Apparently said friend was very excited about and proud of her new car. While I didn't hear what kind of car it was, it was patently obvious that the couple in question likely couldn't be troubled to care any less about it. If anything, they seemed annoyed by their friend's exuberance, as she was apparently very proud of its newness, its style, and its green-ness. The lady remarked that the friend wouldn't shut up about the great gas mileage, and how it was a "flex-fuel" vehicle, which apparently made it more special.

Clearly confused, her husband asked. "What's that mean?"

"I don't have any idea," the woman said dismissively, "but she says it means it gets better gas mileage."

"Oh. Like a hybrid."

It turns out that people take offense to random strangers correcting their misconceptions in public without solicitation, so I refrained from doing so in this case. I just shook my head at the unfortunate commonality of it; while this couple wasn't the issue, their green-brained friend was - so caught up in her own Earth Mother smugness that she somehow misplaced her grasp on reality. Or at the very least least her ability to fact-check.

In the last decade-plus-a-few, car companies have stepped up their approach to vehicle efficiency and economy by several orders of magnitude. While this has resulted in some great technological leaps, there has also developed a sort of "Green Ideal" that is creeping into every aspect of society. Everything is Green - or at least it's supposed to be, and if it's not, some poor baby polar bear is crying on a slowly-melting iceberg in the north Atlantic, and it's all your fault.

The automotive industry is not the only guilty party these days, as every industry and market sector seems eager to bank on the Eco-Fad. Some computers, for example, are now being marketed as "environmentally-friendly" based on the amount of power they use and the construction of their GBs. A certain potato chip company, as another example, is now bragging about the fact that their bags are made from plants and as such are biodegradable. Several restaurants, fast food and traditional alike, heavily hype the fact that the cows used to make their steaks were served hormone-and-additive-free menus and not confined in holding cells. All of this is supposed to appeal to our ingrained desire to save the planet and make Mother Earth sing happy songs of joy. Or something like that. Your fanaticism may vary.

The problem with all this is that there is so much hype and haughtiness caught up in the whole "Let's Be Green and Save the World" ideal that objectivity suffers on account of it. The computer company neglects to mention that their Green Computer Box is priced like - or higher than - its competition but offers about half the performance of some of those competitors. The potato chip company's product tastes like eco-friendly cardboard, the same as it always has; given the hype surrounding the bag, though, perhaps I should try eating that - it certainly couldn't be any worse. And finally, despite claims that the animal was treated better and had a better life, the restaurant's non-hormone-addled cow was still led into a slaughterhouse and ended up dead on my plate in the form of an A1-drenched T-bone. Green perhaps, but still not very fortunate for the cow. The bottom line is that there needs to be more thought and reason behind our consumeristic decisions than falling into the Green trend just for the sake of being Green. The earth isn't going anywhere for a while, and contrary to popular belief, the planet will not be saved by your boycott of the KFC Double Down.

The automotive industry has a lot of these traps in it, mostly thanks to its occasionally-brilliant marketing departments. They come up with ways to entice the public into believing that "Green is good" (apologies to Gordon Gekko), that it is easy being Green (apologies to Kermit the Frog), and that you are a lesser man if you are not a Green Man (note: I will not extend apologies to Jim Belushi, as he should apologize to humanity as a whole for 'According to Jim.' I do apologize, however, for even making a passing reference to it).

Regarding the exuberant friend's "Flex-Fuel" vehicle, like many Green consumers, she was an easy mark for some marketing sleight-of-hand. "Flex-fuel" by definition denotes a vehicle whose engine is built to run on either regular gasoline or an ethanol-blended concoction known as E85. Of every gallon of E85, 85% of it is ethanol (a corn-derived alcohol) and 15% is gasoline. The Green argument is that these cars, by using E85, are using considerably less gasoline and therefore helping save the poor, crying polar bears on their melting ice floes.

While a good idea on paper, the practicality of this argument is offset by a few factual issues. The first is the availability of E85 to begin with: of the thousands of gas stations in the country, there are only 1900 or so stations that carry E85, with most of those being located in corn-rich states in the Midwest. As you might imagine, Arizona does not make that list, so it is doubtful that the Green friend had ever touched a drop of E85 (or for that matter, likely even knew of its existence or its necessity for her Greenmobile to live up to her hype).

Then there's the cost, both on the vehicle itself as well as the consumer's wallet. Ethanol by nature is a less-efficient combustor, which means that each combustion event generates less energy than its gasoline counterpart. In real-world terms, this means that overall fuel economy drops considerably compared to regular gasoline, even in engines specifically built for it. For the average consumer, this means that though the cost per gallon is lower, the vehicle will require more gallons to cover the same number of miles, meaning that you are paying more for the privilege of having lower fuel efficiency.

OK: math time.

As an example, let's use the Chrysler Town & Country minivan - bane of the suburban parent for fear of losing whatever coolness and dignity that may have been remaining in life. The standard gasoline-only engine is rated at an average of 20mpg, while its flex-fuel counterpart weighs in at an average of 13mpg while drinking E85 - that's a 35% difference right out of the gate. According to AAA, the average American motorist drives about 12,000 miles per year, so we'll use that as a baseline number. The standard Town & Country covers that distance using 600 gallons of gasoline, while the E85 version needs 923 gallons to do it (divide 12k miles by average MPG to get that number). From there, we can extrapolate the price over that distance: with an average gas price of $3.02 in Arizona at the moment, the standard version's 600 gallons of fuel cost a total of $1,812. With E85 fuel currently averaging $2.60 per gallon nationwide as of this writing (a price difference of 14% less than gasoline), the flex-fuel vehicle's 923 gallons ring up a yearly tab of just a few pennies under $2400.

Conclusion: while the E85 vehicle uses 85% less petroleum per gallon of fuel, it gets 35% less mileage per gallon and costs the consumer 25% more per year for the privilege.

Paying more money for less efficiency simply does not make financial sense, and until E85 engines can be built to at least match their conventional cousins' efficiency per gallon, they will serve as little more than feel-good Green options with more bark than bite.

And depending upon who your friends are, that can be a loud, annoying, smug and misguided bark to be sure.

Job Squad

In case anyone reading this isn't aware of my current status, I am extremely dissatisfied with my job with the truck reseller and am actively seeking a new one. The owner is very self-assured and cocky and has some shifty ways of doing business, and the shop foreman took exception to the fact that I was hired without his knowledge or consultation, which is subsequently taken out on me. When talking to the owner originally and in listening to him talk about his company, I was sure that I would be getting loads of experience - engine troubleshooting, suspension modification, and diesel engine mechanics, just to name a few. Unfortunately, when trucks are brought in for refurbishing, anything requiring diagnostic testing or anything more complicated than "bolt off, bolt on" is shipped out to another shop for work. This company is little more than a glorified parts-changing business, and the only real experience I've gained lies in the fact that I can now Armor All like a champ.

Fortunately, I have some new opportunities on the horizon. I recently went on a ride-along with an established motorcade company and got to know their business pretty well. This one (unlike MVP, the previous company I worked for) has been around for 15 years and does a good amount of business. The owner, however, is a bit tight-fisted - the per-job pay is almost half what MVP paid, and when he found out that I was an MMI grad (Motorcycle Mechanics Institute), he tried to recruit me as his main technician for what was actually a very laughable rate of pay. I'd take it on as a part-time or as-needed job, but certainly not as my main source of income.

Now, though, I have two new opportunities. Yesterday brought me a solid interview with a property management company - actually the same one that Brittany works for. Incidentally, the interview was supposed to be on Monday, but I was caught up in traffic and was a bit late, by which time the manager had already left. Before leaving the property, I sat down and wrote out an apologetic email to the manager explaining what had happened - I had explained that I would be leaving from work at 4:00pm and wouldn't be able to get there until about 4:30pm at the earliest on account of traffic. Unfortunately, Phoenix traffic reared its ugly head and kept me from getting there until about 4:45pm or so, missing the manager by just a few minutes. She wrote back and thankfully gave me another shot, adding that she wouldn't be leaving until 5pm that day. The interview was good, and she said that pending the usual battery of checks (background, drug, credit, etc) the job was as good as mine. The commute is a bit long, and the starting pay is not spectacular, but given what I've been doing, I'll take it. Besides, the growth opportunities is excellent, and there are many bonuses and commissions to be had, so there is a lot of potential here.

My other interview (which I am currently waiting on right now) is with Apple. I am sure to get a good deal of flak for it, especially from my techie brothers, but there is a strong chance this will work out well. Most of you know that Brittany and I are heavy iPhone users, to the point that we don't have a regular internet connection in our apartment - 98% of our internet needs are met by the iPhone. I have also read up on and played around extensively with the iPad, which operates very similarly to the phone, and I have come to know my way around them rather adeptly. My hope is to become a specialist or tech support worker (referred to in Apple-speak as "Experts" and "Geniuses", respectively) for either of the two mobile products. The first group interview went well, and I am waiting now on a personal interview. I could definitely have fun with this job, and it would also provide a bit more flexibility with its schedule, which would allow me to (hopefully) work the motorcade business as well.

Time will tell how things progress, but I'm excited for the future.

Mismanagement

This has been a bit of a whirlwind week for Brittany and I. She has now worked in the same industry and at the same apartment complex for nearly three years, and has been through two property management companies during this time. On Tuesday of this week, however, she received a call from a good friend of hers who had previously been her manager here at the complex - this manager was taking a new job at a new company, and she had an opening for Brittany. The catch, however, lay in the fact that the job needed her to start on Friday, as the new company was taking over a new property effective that day.

We thought it over for Tuesday and most of Wednesday, and both of us decided that accepting the job would be the best option for her and for our family. She was tired of the old company's archaic record-keeping methods, its inability to do anything fast or process requests in a timely manner, and its hands-off approach to her property except to tell her to show the property to as many as five different prospective buyers per day (the company managed the property for a bank, and due to its being actively marketed for sale, it received very little attention as it was not a priority to maintain a property that would soon be sold to another buyer). She also would be getting paid nearly as much as a leasing agent as she currently was as a property manager, and the opportunities for advancement seemed much more plentiful at the new company. So, with all that in mind, she wrote a simultaneously thankful and apologetic letter of resignation; she thanked the company for the opportunity and for all that she had learned, and she apologized for the very short notice, going on to explain that the job offer necessitated her starting on Friday. She sent it off and later called to speak to one of the main managers about it and to apologize again for the short notice.

The company, however, was supremely unamused.

The manager regaled Brittany as being malicious and unprofessional in her resignation and berated her for even considering leaving so soon. She said that she was appalled that Brittany would have the nerve to do such a thing after everything the company had done for her, including considering her husband for a job, and that she was surprised that the new company would even hire her after not giving two weeks' notice. The tone was very vindictive and bitter, and it left Brittany in tears, shocked at the reaction of the manager.

It was very apparent that no one read past "I resign my position effective at the end of business on Thursday," as Brittany apologized for and explained the reason for the extremely short notice. In regards to my being offered a job, I had submitted a resume and application, but no one had ever said a word to me or replied to my many emails on the matter. If I had even been considered for a job, their followup on the matter was atrocious.

As a final parting shot, Brittany tried to work it out so that we would be able to stay on the property for another month at the full rent amount (we had previously been receiving free rent as a part of her compensation) but the manager would not even entertain the idea. She told Brittany that she was extremely unprofessional and that the company had no reason to help us since she was turning her back on them. She then said that we needed to vacate the premises in 72 hours, which effectively killed our plans to go to Utah for the weekend.

While I can understand the company's irritation at not receiving the usual two weeks' notice, they did not even attempt to understand or empathize with the situation and overreacted like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Brittany could not give two weeks' notice because she simply did not get that kind of notice herself. The unprofessionalism here falls on the old company and its overreaction to the situation. I can only imagine how its employees feel internally knowing that its management force conducts itself in such a manner - I've been through a "motivation through fear and paranoia" sort of company before, and it is not pleasant. Hopefully we're past that now, though.

On to the move. Bring on the future.

Just Deserts

Arizona is an intriguing place. It is one of few places on earth that has the distinction of having barren, scorched wasteland and lush, green forests within an hour's drive of each other, and it is home to some of the world's most spectacular sunsets and night skies. It is certainly not my ideal home, but it still manages to make me grin from time to time.

Asphalt is a substance that, under extreme heat, is able to be spread like ribbons of frosting on an earthen cake. The machines required to manipulate it into streets are large, messy and expensive, but like toothpicks or exacto-knives shaping a cake, certain smaller implements can be used to manipulate it on a smaller scale.

Today, due to a very sore back, I left my bike in an open parking lot in favor of Phoenix's light rail system. Today's high was close to 110 degrees, and without realizing it, I had parked my bike facing west; this gave the steel kickstand a constant solar exposure and heated it up like a knife over an open flame. It also had a similar effect on the pavement, and where the two items met, another familiar maxim played out:




Like a hot knife through butter.




By way of explanation, that knob-like extension (meant to catch with the rider's heel to raise and lower the kickstand) is a little more than two inches from the ground. Warm asphalt + hot kickstand + 550 pounds of pressure = 2 inches of sinkage. Physics is occasionally fun.

Insomniac Punditry

As an unfortunate side effect of my recent gig as a full-time designated driver, my internal chronometer has been turning Japanese (I really think so). I've always been a creature of the night, but in the face of a job that will require me to start at 7:00am, I find myself unable to get to sleep any earlier than 3:00am lately. This will not do me any favors come Monday.

Last night I tried Tylenol PM in an attempt to start me on the road to dreamland, but it was ineffective. Looking at the timestamp on my previous post should validate that claim. Late-night TV, I've found, has little to offer the insomniac, whether in the form of actual entertainment or sufficient catatonia-inducing boredom. Televangelists are too amusing (if unintentionally so) pundits are too entertaining in their single-mindedness (again, likely unintentionally so), and I just can't stomach infomercials without BILLY MAYS YELLING AT ME. Even the dryness of the news doesn't help - I just get bored and change the channel before anything can take effect.

Late night television has led me to a solid disillusionment with the state of the news in general and politics in particular. Though all parties claim to be unbiased with the constituents' best interests in mind, their viewpoints on any and all issues tend to follow one of two standard, predictable responses. No matter the issue, the opposing side (whether Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, Anarchist, Totalitarian, Green, Labor, or whatever flavor you prefer) will emphatically preach hellfire and damnation about how the issue in question will doom us all with its passage and plunge the country into war/socialism/revolution/poverty/etc. The affirmative side, on the other hand, will insist that the issue in question is full of singing unicorns, dancing fairies, and manna from heaven that we as a country can feast upon without fear for or children or their future, as through its passage we will have saved our civilization in its entirety.

While I don't mean to rehash the old Rodney King line of "Can't we all just get all just get along?" I would like to know what happened to compromise, cooperation, and above all civility? Instead of referring to opposed legislation as "an abortion" or a "road to socialism," or opposing something strictly along party/pundit lines, why not offer productive alternatives or compromises rather than simply "trash it and start over"? Instead of lambasting one's opponents as baby-killers, impediments to progress, and attempting legislative tactics to bypass them, why not attempt to compromise with the opposing sides and find solutions that - while not whimsically ideal - at least address the concerns of both sides?

Nonsense like this is why I refer to myself as "politically agnostic:" I believe that the ideal politician/party cannot exist in any one form and that man in general is incapable of ever meeting that ultimate ideal. Use your own brain and not Beck's, Limbaugh's, Olbermann's, Maddow's, or (for the love of all that is holy) Stewart's or Colbert's.

Warning: Blog Cliche Detected

I realized today that it has been nearly a year since I've written anything in my blog. Therefore, I apologize for not keeping up very faithfully (and that gets the cliche out of the way). Brittany (new window) has become the more prolific blogger, and while I am very proud of her for it, seeing her success and satisfaction at her writings has made me realize that I need to do better at it as well. I'm not jealous of her abilities or extensive posts, but rather motivated and wanting to get my own e-pen back to e-paper, so to speak. The silence ends now.

Things have changed quite a bit since I last wrote at the end of summer 2009. Brittany and I are no longer aiming to return to Georgia in May 2010, obviously. Brittany landed a very good position with he employer and is now managing our apartment complex. There is a possibility that she will be transferred to another complex, as the property where we currently live is bank-owned and up for sale. Should the sale go through, she will be moved within the management company to another property. She enjoys the job, but she feels a lot of pressure associated with it and is just now learning to cope with this sort of stress. Brittany, however, is a very determined individual - for better or worse, it is a family trait - and I know that she will overcome the stress and will succeed in her new role.

On my end, I became fed up with my day job at a Phoenix call center (mostly medical) back in January and decided to quit. Brittany stood by me in the decision to do so because the stress and negativity from that job was beginning to leak over into my home life - I would come home angry, frustrated and just in a foul mood, and it came to the point that I wanted no more to do with it, despite what I was being paid. There were a number of factors that prompted my burnout, but it all boiled down to getting tired of corporate BS and lack of human decency.

The company's management style was one of "motivation through fear and paranoia" and communication between the Operations Managers and their subordinates is generally limited to negative reinforcement when errors were committed or complaints were made. Positive reinforcement was rare-to-non-existent, and casual conversation could only be had if the Ops Manager was the center of the topic at hand. Despite purporting to have a "family culture," very few employees actually were able to feel that way because there was a very clear line drawn between management and employee: hourly employees were passively made to feel inferior.

Beyond that, the company's business practices were often "shady" at best. For example, on the surface, the company assures its clients that annual reviews are done on their accounts so that contract adjustments can be made if usage needs change. This was the responsibility of one of the Ops Managers, who coincidentally was the owner's adopted daughter, but was never done so far as I know - at least not in the case of my client list. This manager would tell renewing clients that after a "thorough review of their usage history," it was determined that their current package fit their needs exactly, and that their new contract would reflect the same usage. In reality the review was blatantly never done, because if it were, the disparity between contracted amount and actual usage would have been easy to spot. This was apparently done in the hopes that the clients wouldn't be keeping close enough tabs on their after-hours calls to notice the fact that they were paying for time that they didn't need.

One of my smaller-volume clients, however, did keep track, did notice the difference, and surreptitiously installed an automated system to take over when their contract expired. We didn't notice the system until a check of the lines was conducted and the new system was discovered. The business manager, in response to my inquiry on the matter, angrily informed me that we had basically "forced [their] hand on the matter" by presenting a contract offer that he felt was clearly meant to make the most possible money at the expense of the "stupid doctors' office." When I reported this to the Ops Manager in question, the response was "Oh. Wow. I guess I didn't check them very thoroughly. Please call them and apologize for me, because it probably wouldn't be a good idea for me to talk to them at this point."

On another occasion, a high-volume office discovered that they had been billed for twelve months for a service that they had never used. As one would expect, they requested to be credited for the erroneous charge. When this was reported and the credit was requested, this same Ops Manager told the Customer Service Rep to offer them a "refund of three months or a free year of [the service] moving forward." The client was understandably furious at the offer and replied that anything short of a full refund of the service fees would adversely affect the two companies' future relationship. At this point, the Ops Manager took over and through a wall of e-mailed corporate double-speak said that only three months were initially offered because that was all she had approval to do at the time. I was dumbstruck that a company would try such a tactic and decided that it was time to go.

I initially signed on with a funeral motorcade company as a motorcycle escort, but the company folded after just three months of operation. I then had the fortunate opportunity to drive home the owner of an aftermarket truck dealership in April. As we talked on the way home, he said that his company was looking for a porter/mechanic apprentice to do grunt work around their shop. He said that they would provide training as well to increase my skills, and I said that I would gladly take on the job. I start that gig next week, and am very glad to finally be headed into the mechanical realm, even if it is working with trucks rather than motorcycles. It's experience either way, and I'll gladly take it.