On the other end of the receiver...

Hour or so ago, I tried to create an on-line account management account for my AT&T Wireless cellphone at attwireless.com, but got an error. I called in to AT&T to find out what was going on, and after two or three failed attempts to navigate the voice-recognition agent ("You can ask me things" my foot), I finally waited on hold for about 10 minutes and got through to a living person. The answer about the website was about what I expected it would be, in light of all the trouble they've been having with their GSM software upgrade: more or less it's "that portion of our software isn't working yet, try back in a few days."

The really, to me, amusing thing about it, though, was the response I got when I asked the guy if I'd be able to do feature maintenance on my own account when the website was working properly. He said, more or less, "Let me check on that," and put me on hold for about thirty seconds before coming back and telling me that yes, I would be able to. Not enough time for him to have called somewhere and asked, so I know exactly what he was doing, as I end up having to do the same thing myself many times over the course of my day job: turning to the guy next to him and saying, "Hey, Joe, can you answer this question for me?" Heh.

(Well, I suppose he could have pulled the info up on the computer in front of him, but he would have had to read really fast.)

Doctor, Doctor, gimme the news...

Found out via Slashdot about a new Doctor Who Flash-animation coming out at the Beeb to celebrate the Doctor's 40th anniversary: Scream of the Shalka, starring Richard E. Grant as the 9th Doctor. Watched the first episode of it, which is all that's available so far, and once you get used to the minor hokiness of Flash, it's pretty decent. I can believe that Grant would do a good job as the Doctor. I'll be looking forward to seeing what the next five parts of it look like.

One more day of work 'til the weekend. Yaaaay. It can't come soon enough; it's been a wearing week. I think I'm having a bit of difficulty acclimating to the shorter breaks. It used to be that, in 20 minutes, I had time to do just about everything I wanted to...but there's a world of difference between 20 and 15, because now it seems I've no sooner sat down at the computer than I'm late getting back from break. And lunch being cut to a half hour? There's no way there's time for anything but eating—and barely that, if I'm lucky. There's nothing like the frustration of getting to the mall to find 10 minutes of your break already gone...and discovering you forgot to get cash out of the ATM so you need to spend more of your time doing that, and by the time you're back at the mall and have eaten, you're already late getting back! My compliance rating is an absolute mess.

At least today is mostly going to be taken up by training, and it was actually a decent training session last week so it might just be again this week. And then tomorrow I go down and visit the folks to celebrate my Mom's birthday and Thanksgiving. It'll be a good break, and just what I need.

Phone Post

[Bad username or site: robotech_master' phonepostid='3 @ livejournal.com]

Mild frustrations

Argh, I hate my internal self-censor!

I won another $20, and with $4 on my card that means I have $24 to spend. I've been banking my reward money lately, and decided that the $24 could thus be used on a little present for me. I stopped by Best Buy after work with an eye toward picking up a DVD of something—either audio (to which I allude in my recent voicepost) or video. Particularly, I'd like some sort of 5.1-mixed concert DVD in order to show off my new sound system some more. The Eagles disc is nice, but I'd like a little variety.

Anyway, I saw a few likely prospects. But...my internal self-censor kept asking me, "Are you sure you want to pay new price for that?" or "Don't you think you'd only watch that once or twice?" or "Are you sure you're not buying that just to have and not to watch? After all, you've seen it already."

So I didn't buy the Yes audio DVD or symphonic concert DVD. I didn't buy Read or Die, Stop Making Sense, or the two James Taylor concert videos. (I did pick up a free sampler DVD containing the first two hours of 24 season two...but then, that was free.)

After that, I drove to a used CD and DVD shop and looked to see if they had any of the things I wanted...but of those things they did have, the price was too high. And then I drove by Blockbuster to see if they had anything in terms of music video that I could rent, but saw nothing I wanted. So all in all I wasted about an hour, and not much to show for it but a lot of frustration at myself for not letting myself buy something.

Just now, I just got back from driving the neighbor down to a place just off of Ingram Mill Road, south of the Springfield 8—for those who know Springfield geography, it's a decent 10-minute drive either way. She asked me for a favor, and I, pushover that I am, was happy to oblige.

Finally, a bit of residual frustration from the job today: I was on hold to our financial services department for two whole hours, missing one of my breaks by about an hour and a half and thus throwing my schedule compliance out of whack. Approximately one hour and forty minutes into my hold time, the department closed for the evening—one hour earlier than the schedule I have says they close. Apparently they knock off early on Fridays. Not only did nobody ever tell me they close that early, their hold system didn't tell me they'd closed; I assume they would have let me wait 'til I got off work if a co-worker hadn't called in again and checked. Grr.

Anyway, enough venting. It's later in the evening than I thought it was, so I'm going to bed.