10/10/03 Why are bumblebees so cruisy? Because they're HIVE positive. today's news Turns out that punch card ballots actually work when they are used by people who have two brain cells to rub together. Poor Florida, you're America's little third world country. A single state whose population is fifty percent illegal aliens knows how to poke a hole in a punchcard. People in the Broadmoor neighborhood around Cheyenne Mountain were inconvenienced when a new security and communications tower was erected and subsequently jammed locks which are only accessible by keypads along with automated garage doors. Check the story out for yourself. I know that I'm nowhere near the Broadmoor neighborhood but I've always noticed that my calls get disconnected at the oddest times or my computer will suddenly shut off with no warning despite being connected to a reliable power source. I blame the military. From the I-Could've-Told-You-That-Department is this gem. Related articles are here and here. Being jilted by a lover or potential lover causes as much stress in the brain's pain centers as an actual, physical injury. The evolutionary basis stems from being ascended from apes, social animals, where the need to be included is integral to survival and well-being. Don't worry, I only get crazy, shrill and dramatic when my anterior cingulate cortex is being negatively influenced by my simian desire to be loved and included. I remember a couple of months ago there was an article that stated humans who aren't socially included end up degenerating into idiots. Sadly I can not find the URL. accentuate the negative, eliminate the positive Work went swimmingly for a Thursday, in fact the call volume was low and I was already ahead of the game with four upsales in my first hour. After the first hour had finished my department manager came over and said that I was going to be in collections. What the fuck? My first reaction was to grab my bag, the calculator I brought with me from Jersey and walk out that fucking door. I made top performer for three months and came in second place for a couple of months. My only issue is when customers are being really stupid then I start talking down to them in order to get the various concepts through their thick skulls. The irritation in my voice is quite evident and apparently they don't like being treated like children. Perhaps if you didn't handle your finances like a god damned child you wouldn't be needing our business. Well I remembered that there's a little white cat with black spots waiting at home for her stupid houseape to come home and rip open a packet of Whiskas about fifteen to twenty minutes after four in the afternoon. Of course there's all this "world trip" and "fixing the car" business but a gentleman has to respect his priorities. I've always viewed collections as being the fast track to termination. Last year and some of this year there was a high turnover rate in collections which made me want to avoid that department like the plague. Being a creature of habit I like keeping things the same until I decide that there ought to be a change. My reservations were voiced to my former department manager and I believe they may have been heard. What bothered me was when she said that it's either this or being laid off because business is so slow. Business is slow because the company president intentionally cut back on advertising because of some alleged limit of two million dollars in transactions for a year. There's a small nugget of animosity that's slowly growing smaller, denser and blacker inside me. This is not a good thing. Good Thing (tm) or otherwise. If I got out more then I could easily express this in a passive-aggressive fashion. At my first opportunity I went over to the auto title department to see if the position was available or still available but got some wishy-washy response of how he's waiting to hear back from the company president. Don't call me, I'll call you. The upshot is the potential for bonuses is greater but I believe that the bonuses are harder to come by since you're required to collect $24,000 a month and get 45 refinances for a $900 bonus. That's the bare bones minimum bonus too. The two people I spoke with during the remains of my first break kept going off on this aspect but it really smacked as being more candy than meat. Folks in collections seem to be nicer than the people over in processing and less cliquish but time will tell. I started my training with this one woman who just breezed through shit and left me wondering what the fuck was going on in the first place. When she had to do collections for the auto title department I was switched to a different woman who took her time and was quite informative about what I had to know for the position. She was Harvard compared to the community college instruction I had earlier in the morning. Lunchtime rolled around and not only did I see the bunny but I also saw the little bubanella ground squirrel scampering around on the pavement. That made me very happy. Later I spoke with one of the women from processing about the switch. She mentioned that the diversity could be a good thing since it'll make me more valuable. The fact that I'm an established hard worker who is reliable may have led to the change in departments. Collections recently lost two people, they were absorbed by the other company that loans 1000 bucks instead of just 500, to another collections department. The woman I spoke with at lunch said that they chose me because I was something they could bank on with my speed and low error rate rather than taking a gamble on someone off the street who might fail or flake out. Maybe. I just would've appreciated a little advance warning or a discussion rather than having it dropped on me. The former department manager told me that my pay rate is going to remain the same, I will still receive my bonus for being top performer in September and this makes me more valuable to the company (or companies) as a whole because I can do so many jobs. Too bad I wasn't given any realistic choice in the matter. Plus she said that the change wasn't permanent. When I spoke to my "Harvard" instructor during our second break she told me most likely it's permanent and don't buy into their line of bullshit. Of course she didn't use so many words. Now I'm stressed and I'm feeling tired because I'm stressed. My mood did swing from anger to fairly neutral but it's inching back to irritation towards anger if I am pushed hard enough. Now that I'm home I'm listening to my mp3s, writing up tonight's entry and being thankful that the weekend is very close. Sunday will be a resume day, no doubt about that. In Yer Dreams! Last night's dream was staged aboard a shoddy pirate ship fresh from the set of a B-movie. The ocean around the ship was a dark blue backdrop, the winds were noisy since they were generated by giant, offstage fans and the water spray was far from being believable. People aboard the ship were having a grand old time, brawling and wrestling in a fun way that didn't bruise anything except the odd ego. Folks would rip off pieces of the boat and smash the bits against their laughing opponents. Standing along the railing of the ship's stern was a naked chick. She was trim with short blonde hair. That was the thinner, younger version of the person I've never spoken about on this site. See pic for reference. Yes the image was received with no head so technically the image could be anyone. Oh yes, for the retarded shopteacher's handful of women who have sent me tit and nudie pics I'm not about to post yours anytime soon or ever SO YOU AND YOUR BOOBS CAN REST EASY. This chick was standing by the railing of the ship's stern, butt naked and arms akimbo. I noticed she was standing in front of a gap caused by the ruckus and decided that I'd bull-rush her, sending her overboard and hopefully to her doom. A bunch of rowdy revellers rambled over in my direction getting me caught up in their ruckus so my plan was foiled. After a long battle to get free of their bodies I found another naked chick who was a dead-ringer for the person I never mentioned on my site. Mm, okay maybe not a dead-ringer but close enough for my purposes. She was the new assistant manager of collections who, considering my distaste of their breed, I wouldn't kick out of bed for eating crackers. The two naked chicks had found each other and started posing themselves in lesbian situations, pointing tongues, grabbing boobs and general posed chicanery. I was disgusted and yanked a wad of bills from my pocket, "Hey, I've got a hundred bucks for both of you if you actually follow through". That eventually finagled itself into paying them to have a threesome with me. Unfortunately it never occurred but I had a raging hardon throughout the entire dream and when I woke up that morning. Just before I woke up my dream decided to have a game of truth or dare where the two blondes were in attendance with Dee and a couple other people that I did not recognize from waking or dream life. The scene ended up with Dee accepting a dare to make out with me while I fondled her bare boobies. The End Oh yeah. Postscript to the dream. I felt awfully weird in the collections department after this dream. During the last hour of work I spent it with the new assistant manager which was distracting and embarassing. Thankfully I didn't have any wood. Funny bit is when I went to leave at four the little post-it which had the outline for this dream fell from my backpack. She picked it up and read it before giving it to me. Luck was on my side because I had left out the juicier bits. The End (i mean it)