Let's talk about shoelaces again. This time though, let's talk about them in a purely literal context and not in the figurative context which I have associated shoelaces with.
Ever since I was a child, I always tied my shoelaces in one way. This I do by creating two loops and then criss-crossing them. This is more popularly known as "bunny ears."
I never tried tying my shoelaces any other way even though I have seen other people do one loop and slip the other lace in the loop magically creating the loops and the knot. This is more commonly known as the standard shoelace knot.
The reason as to why I never tried another knot is that I did not know how. Yes, this I say even though I was a scout all through grade school and high school. I know several knots for ropes such as the cross knot, square knot, sheepshank, dog shank, bowmon's knot, fisherman's knot, etc. but I have only tried tying my shoe in one way.
Anyway, a girl friend at work saw me tying my shoelaces and she giggled, saying I tie my shoelaces like a kid, creating two loops and with my tongue sticking out in concentration. I then said, this is the only way I know how to do it. Now I finally know how a standard shoelace knot is done.Yey!
There was then a random post at Boing Boing about sixteen ways to tie shoelaces. Tried a few and was amazed on how simple some other knots are. In particular, I'd say his favorites, the secure shoelace knot and the fast shoelace knot have to be the best. The secure one being perfect for sports and the fast knot for being fast.
Now I know more than one way to tie my shoe. I feel so good and accomplished now.
I want to talk about the Silent Hill movie and Kingdom Hearts II, but my arm is already aching and I need to sleep as it's my last day at work tomorrow. Last day before another two days off.
If I wasn't so tired and lived closer to work, maybe I'd discuss them. I really want to move to a closer place.
Forget what I said yesterday about having three straight days off. A new schedule was released again today with changes to the day offs. Apparently, my day offs have been moved to Tuesday and Wednesday instead of Sunday Monday.
Nothing too much to complain about. The three days off seemed quite impossible with all the luck I've been having. At the least, this Tues-Wed off is definitely better than the first schedule they released which had my offs on Fri-Sat.
Luckily, I did not fly out of the country or go to some isolate island upon hearing the 3 days off.
This just means no Summer Slam tonight, but am still planning on playing Kingdom Hearts II the whole day.
They are just giving more and more reasons to seriously think about resigning once I hit 3 years.
I was going to blog yesterday about changes at work but I was so freaking tired, I opted to sleep instead. I think I slightly past 8 in the evening and woke up at 1:30 in the morning. Hmmm. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 5 bloody hours. This would have to be the longest amount of sleep I've had ever since I was moved to the 4:30 am schedule. Amazing.
Pretty lousy week at work. I may have failed in my average handle time. Bah! Who cares, I was just simply bored and tired.
So changes at work. If you've been reading this blog faithfully, you'd know that things can change on a whim.
I previously mentioned how happy I was with knowing my schedule for the whole month of May then they said it would be change. The change does not simply encompass schedules, it also includes changes in the team rosters, major changes. Shoelace-change-inducing major.
When the final rosters where finally released, I found myself as the sole survivor to be retained with the team. There is another but he already filed for his resignation. Every other teammate has been moved to another team, time. No shoelace changing this time around but this is quite something since for some of us the bond in the team is the only thing left which keeps us interested in coming to work each and every freaking day.
Maybe this is why I slacked off this week. Nah, it was just a bad week for me after all of those good weeks.
Anyway, I was going to blog yesterday on how tired I am, more so that the schedule I knew off yesterday would me on off today but returning to work on Sunday. No fun in that. New and final schedule was released today and I also have Sunday and Monday off. Yes, including Saturday that would be three free days. Amazing.
The missed blog yesterday would have also mentioned that I have finally procured an English copy of Kingdom Hearts II which works on my PS2. I purchased it from a different store, since the girl who promised to message me once she has copies seems to have moved stalls. As soon as I arrived home, I popped it in and everything was good. I have never felt happier. Actually, I have but that was all in my mind.
This is going to be an interesting weekend, Kingdom Hearts II all the way. Am still thinking if I'd go out and watch Slither and Summer Slam. Let's just see how engaged I'd be after playing the game for half a day.
The Customer Is Not (Always) The Source Of All Evil
An extremely unusual time at work today. Only had 9 calls which would be okay if they took less than 20 minutes, but by the end of the day, the average handle time was at 43 minutes. Insane. It easy ate up the 21 calls at 16 minutes I had yesterday.
It was just one tough call followed by another. When I mean tough, I am not talking about the customers. Customers are easy. They can be manipulated at your own will plus if you do get frustrated, you could shout at them. Not.
The real tough calls are those where in the problem you are trying to resolve is completely out of the blue, something you have never encountered before and is totally insane to pinpoint what exactly is going on. These calls are actually easier when coupled with irate customers because they'd get frustrated of troubleshooting within 30 minutes or so and would demand out of this world requests which normally results into a best guess effort on our end or an installation, hence ending the call earlier.
There are instances though, such as today, wherein the customer you'd get is so bloody patient that they are willing to do any troubleshooting step you ask them to perform short of sticking their fingers in a wall socket. In theses cases, you are really compelled to help and really try to get to the bottom of the problem in order to make sure that the problem would be resolved during the call, or by verifying a part which is failing and would resolve the problem once replaced.
Another thing which makes calls longer is this new process they implemented when you would need to consult higher level technicians for tips and resolution. The process of creating a ticket number, calling their queue and waiting for them to figure out a resolution easily adds 10 minutes to a call, at the very least. There are also instances wherein they are totally oblivious to the issue and what can be done.
-----
Wow. Now, that's a friend. Am referring to Andy's bubble in the last panel.
Day-off yesterday but there were plans for the SHIFT to play paintball at Gotcha! near Tiendesitas.
A SHIFT is a group of teams at work with each team having at least, 8 members. There are around 5 or 6 teams in a shift. Let's say there would be 2-3 persons per team who would come, that would total to 10-15 players, at the very least. Right?
And so we though since there were already 5 in our team who would be playing. Imagine the mayhem.
Much to our surprise, there were only three other players, another team leader and her husband plus the shift manager. A grand total of 8, which in a way divides squarely into 4 players per team.
Now on to some numbers.
Games played = 4
Games our team won = ZERO
Bullets Fired = 85
Frags (Hits) = ZERO
Deaths = 2 (both in the head!)
Times Run Out Of Ammo = 2
The feeling of pumping lead (paint) at another human = priceless
Yes, I shoot like crap. Worse even, but I did not have my glasses on.
It was helluva fun except that it was quite expensive. The initial charge was 250 Php with 50 bullets included as well as the equipment and gun (duh!). This was reasonable, but when you start getting the feel of things and you start reloading, it's 4 pesos per bullet. With every bullet fired, you could hear a counter just ticking and increasing. Fine, I did not pay for anything, but one could imagine if that were the case.
As for the pain, I got hit once on the arm but it did not pop but the ones to the head did, thankfully we had masks, so I did not feel a thing. Plus, the second hit was more of a splash damage after the ball hit the wall.
The playing field was quite small. It would be good enough for 10 players (5 in each team) as there are only a few nearby places for cover, unless you are feeling gutsy and run straight into the middle of the field. There was this one funny incident when 3 of us ran towards one concrete structure. It did not seem funny at the time, but when we were talking about it, it was funny as hell.
The gear.
The battefield. The big structure in the left is not included in the playing field, that's the billboard at the corner of C-5 and Ortigas Extension.
Team WiFi all geared up and ready to rock.
Finally, this freaking dial-up connection connected at a decent speed and actually pulls up sites at a reasonable speed.
It made me go through hell yesterday to the point wherein I just gave up, which is now quite a common thing I do, giving up.
Anyway, I was frustrated as hell yesterday as it was so bloody hard to connect. In the rare chance where it did, the connection was so unbearably slow were some sites would pull up initially then quit.
I decided to quit before my head exploded. There were people downstairs so I could scream so I punched a plywood wall. Made a little dent on it. It actually feels better to punch plywood, if I exerted the same amount of force on concrete, my knuckles would be swollen.
So thank heavens it connected today at a decent speed. I already waste too much time traveling and every minute I waste on mediocre things frustrates me more.
I am currently thinking if we should just try to upgrade to DSL.
Previously, they said we were out of reach, but am not sure about this now though I still doubt our place is unreachable. Sure there is SMART WiFi but it needs line-of-sight with a SMART tower and I could not see any. There is one but I have to climb to the top of our hill to see it. No way I'd put an antenna all the way up. Besides, attenuation would kill the signal before it reaches the house.
Then there are the experiences I've heard from my friends who have DSL. Sure,
it is not perfect, far from it actually, and any kind of downtime would
seriously kill me as it would happen at the time I would need want it the most.
Let's not forget about the lock-in period of one year, which just sucks. I am still not sure if I'd be staying for a year in this country, let alone in this place. It's quite likely that if I find a compelling reason to stay, I'd move from here to a more convenient place. I doubt I could transfer the account. PLDT is so lame.
Still no Kingdom Hearts II this weekend, the sales lady said she did shop
from her dealer but apparently the stock of KH II cds they had was still in
Japanese so she did not get any. Sad. Three weekends have already been wasted used
up due to this fiasco.
I was too lazy to look elsewhere as other shops may also get their copy from the same supplier plus none of the shops in Ever Gotesco have demo units so I can test. I am certainly not taking their word for it.
So what did I do this weekend? Nothing. I decided to just suck it up and play Resident Evil 4 which I bought ages ago together with a copy of Shadow of the Colossus which is another game I have not yet completed. "Played" would be the better word to complete that sentence.
The last RE game I played was RE3 (duh!), and this was way back on the PS1, give or take 4 years ago I guess. They release Resident Evil Zero but that was on the Gamecube and Resident Evil: Code Veronica which was on the Dreamcast. RE:CV eventually made it to the PS2 but the game was a little too hard and I was already working at the time so I did not have the patience for it. Plus, I started the game in the wrong direction and used up all my ammo.
Since I had nothing else to do aside from a pile of DVDs I recently purchased, I decided to give Resident Evil 4 a whirl. It's nothing short of an amazing game, hell, when it was first released on the Gamecube it was heralded as the bringing the series back from the dead (or undead). The amount of improvements they have done is astonishing. No more zombies this time around, but you have something much more creepy. These guys would walk, then run when they want to then call out to friends, in Spanish, which just delivers a chill down your spine.
The graphics are just so pretty and the sound effects are done just right. There are a number of instances that I just jumped out of my seat. It's creepy and it is very stressful when you die. This is RE done right.
Played the game for around 10 hours with save game time at around 5 hours. I am halfway through the game and already in the castle wherein I died, hmmmm, a number of times. It just came to a point where it was too stressful for me. In RE, it is normal to die a few times the first try since you do not know what to expect. This would be the creepier yet more fulfilling run. Once you complete the game, you'd play through it faster and with more finesse.
So I stopped playing and opted to watch DVDs instead. I am not sure if I'd be playing the game again on my off. This is not the kind of game I could play for an hour or two because I would not get anywhere. If I still do not have a copy of Kingdom Hearts II maybe I'd play it some more next week and try to finish it asap.
The problem with adventure/action games is that I die too much. Learning curve and familiarization come into play, and with games like these they take longer than RPGs for me to complete. I once played POP 2 on and off for two months and I still not have finished it. God of War took me around 3 months (or more) before I completed it. Well, I did skip a few months of not playing it at all. When it comes to RPGs like Wild Arms 4 and Grandia III, I merely spent slightly more than one month on each.
There is one RPG laying around here, Shadow Hearts: Into The New World, but I want Kingdom Hearts II first.
The last day of a very tiring week is almost upon me. Just one more day and am off. Yes, I am just about to go on off on Monday and have been working each day of the Holy Week. No big deal anyway as it does have some benefits like holiday pay and free SIL slots. Imagine a pay period that has 4 holidays in it. Now, that is something to look forward to.
The week is more tiring mainly because of my doing. I refuse to sleep early. The earliest I have slept was at 9 in the evening and this was only yesterday. This translated to 4 and a half hours of sleep. Wonderful. I'll be sleeping for the most of my off. I doubt this lady would be giving my copy of Kingdom Hearts II tomorrow. I might as well try buying another copy.
Work itself is actually more relaxed, again, I am the one who makes it harder and more stressful by losing patience so easily. It's amazing how a little thing like patience shows how things are really going on inside my mind, heart and soul.
It's a love-hate relationship with how the new scheduling system works. Sometimes, you would get the short end of the stick and would have to wake up in the wee hours in the morning. Then there are those times wherein things get as perfect as anyone could wish.
With more than half a month to go, we already know our schedule for the month of May. The schedules are drawn by lots and teams are ranked according to performance, and we did fairly well and was able to pick first so I doubt there would be another fiasco wherein we would suddenly be informed that we would have to come to work earlier like what happened in April due to DST.
Anyway, the team picked the morning schedule again, from 6 am to 3 pm which is just lovely since it is May and we all know that this is the start of the Summer Movie releases. In May, we have Mission: Impossible 3, Da Vinci Code, and X-Men: The Last Stand. But wait, there's more. To fill in the weeks, we would also have Poseidon, Over The Hedge and Scary Movie 4. This is just wonderful.
It does not end there though, I get Friday-Saturday offs which is all good. Now if I could only get myself off this couch and watch a gig or see friends, then that would be great. Pabida!
Ack. This post is so mixed up. I'm trying to do too many things at the same time.
With nothing to do (read my last post about Kingdom Hearts II) and with my camera being around, I decided to finally clean up my room(s).
Of course, before I started I took pictures. I just had to.
This is from the room I currently sleep in. I just had to number the items to give a more detailed explanation.
1 -- Lord Of The Rings Extended Edition Box Set
2 -- PSP
3 -- Firefly: Complete Season Box Set
4 -- A Bible. Plus Alamat ng Gubat and some UMDs
5 -- Pile of PS2 games, pirated DVDs and more
6 -- Drape to keep the room dark
7 -- 27-inch JVC TV. Nothing to brag about.
8 -- Pile of burned audio CDs
9 -- Pile of recently purchased PS2 games. Also includes games I am currently playing
10 -- PS2
11 -- My brother's basketball card collection plus magazines
12 -- Mini-4WD boxes with cars inside. Also belonging to my brother.
13 -- Pirated VCDs
14 -- The pile in front is for original audio CDs purchased that do not have a place in the other room (yet). The tall pile is for pirated DVDs again.
15 -- JVC stereo component which skips audio tracks when turned up too high
16 -- Philips top-loading DVD player
Then of course there is the other room where all the CDs/DVDs go to.
1 -- Silverware
2 -- Audio CDs for Foreign Artists. The last 10 CDs on the right are local artists as well.
3 -- Audio CDs for Local Artists
4 -- Starwars 1-2, 4-6 VCD Box Sets, Sex Pistols and various Windows CDs
5 -- Original Movie VCDs
6 -- The better lot of the pirated DVDs
7 -- Original DVDs
8 -- Christening give-a-ways, perfume and other random stuff
9 -- 2004 Musiclaban poster
10 -- Papers from work and more original DVDs
After more than two hours of tidying things up, we have this to show.
Pretty neat and tidy, right? Photo taken from around the same position as the first one. Decided to place the PS2 on the make-shift table and placed the better lot of DVDs underneath. The cables stay though as it's hard to reach around the back to unplug them every time I need to switch from gaming to watching movies. The box on the left contains the PS2 games which I would most likely be playing plus the UMDs and PSP itself, as well as the bible.
Now the biggest question arises, where did all everything go? Underneath the bed was already packed with the 100s of PSOne CDs we have. So I tossed everything in the cabinet just below the TV set.
Nicely packed and arranged, right? Not. As long as you do not remove this first layer of DVDs, you will never see the horrors behind it.
Now here's a shot from the other room, where the original stuff goes.
Not much of a change except for the right part as the posters are gone. The stack of papers from work are still there so I won't have a hard time locating them once they ask me for it when I resign. Yes, they ask any paraphernalia given to be return. Confidentiality issues. I (will) need it for my clearance.
The top center row of CDs represent the Foreign Artists, just got a little space before it would fill up.
The second center row has the local artists together with box sets of LOTR: EE, Star Wars, Sex Pistols and Nirvana. No more space left there, eventually the Star Wars VCD box sets are going.
The third row still contains the VCDs. As you can see, there is no more room for more.
The two rows on the right contain Original DVDs I purchased, a mix of Region 1, 2, and 3 discs. No space for growth here either as copies of Smallville Season 3 and an extra copy of Pi are placed on top.
It looks nice, tidy and organized. Each row is arranged in alphabetical order, I am not like Niche who does it by color.
Arranging stuff was the fun part, the more tedious and tiring part was sweeping the floor and cleaning the carpets. Carpets are hell to clean if the vacuum cleaner that's around does not have the correct nozzle available. I had to hang them outside and beat them with a broom. One could not begin to imagine the amount of dust which accumulated in them.
We use the carpets which we've had ever since we arrived in this country. We are to cheap to tile the floors in these two rooms.
Enough of this, I've wasted too much of my day-off already. It's time to watch some boobies. I mean, movies. Movies.
The first work week for April finally comes to an end. I am so drained like butter spread over too much bread.
For the first two nights, I only slept for 2 hours which does not include the twisting and turning before I actually fall asleep. It was my fault though since I really wanted to watch CSI which finishes by 11 and me waking up around quarter to 2 in the morning. The following nights, I decided to sleep earlier and this meant, around 9 in the evening, which would equate to barely 5 hours of sleep.
This is one reason why I prefer the day-shift, nothing beats sleeping at night even for a couple of hours I can survive a whole day without getting sleepy. Temper is another thing though.
The stress and weariness just piles up and by the end of the week, you really feel so used.
The last day of the work week was actually quite notable as it was quite different. It was actually quite fun and relaxed. This could most likely be attributed to seeing my crush at work the first thing in the morning. I almost bumped into her as I was turning a corridor. Thing is, I should have bumped her on purpose. Bummer!
So, what plans do we have now that it is our day-off? Actually I have none. I originally wanted to burn the hours away playing Kingdom Hearts II but I was unable to secure a copy.
Last Sunday, I saw a copy at Ever Gotesco Ortigas and I immediately bought it together with Shadow Hearts III. Since I know the English version was release on March 28, I did not bother asking if it was indeed English. Plus, they had no demo unit and I had faith in them since every game I have purchased from them works wonderfully on my PS2. Lo and behold, when I popped it in, it was in bloody Japanese. It was also my off after that so I was not able to return and exchange it.
The following day, Monday, I was in the Sta. Lucia - Robinson's Metro East area. Bought myself another copy and this time I demo'ed it and it worked on their PS2 and of course, was in English. When I got home late that night, I popped it in and thought my heart was going to share into a million pieces like it always does. The game booted past the PS2 splash screens and showed the Kingdom Hearts II main screen, but locked up right after. I really could hear the sound of my heart shattering. I tried every position available and still nothing, it simply would not go in. No luck, like I ever had luck anyway.
Sta. Lucia is quite out of my way from work, so I decided to just return the copy I bought from Ever Gotesco. This was back on Wednesday. Sadly, she had no more copies in stock but suggested to replace it with any game and then exchange it back for Kingdom Hearts once her stocks are replenished. She even wrote all the details on the receipt. Picked Fatal Frame III since there was no other reasonable game to pick. I haven't even removed the game from my bag.
Dropped by today, hoping that a copy would be present so I'd have a splendid weekend in Disneyland, but alas still no copy. Remember those pieces which shattered earlier? Now they were pulverized.
I decided to just shake this off thinking this would be the perfect opportunity to do some other things like cleaning my room since some cousins may stay over for summer.
When I got home, I realized I would be unable to clean my room since my camera was not around as my mom borrowed it. Yes, there is a connection between cleaning my room and my camera.
This new schedule at work is driving me insane. Actually, something else is driving me to that but the schedule is not helping.
My place is not exactly close to work, in fact, it is insanely far away and a login time of 4:30 in the morning translates to waking up before 2 and leaving slightly after 2:30. I usually arrive a good 20 minutes before the login in time, but adjusting the time I wake up would increase the risk of being late for work. Being far from work means I should have enough time to spare for any shit which may come unexpectedly.
The trip home is no fun either. At 1:30 in the afternoon, the sun is scorching hot and could easily fry an egg on the road. Sure, there is hardly any traffic problems but people are not yet going home at these hours which leads to long waits for the hundreds of half-filled jeeps. This annoyance deserves it's own post.
Then there is the amount of pollution pilling up in my lungs. Dust, smoke, carbon monoxide, nicotine, tar, etc. I'd say a return trip chips around 5 minutes of my life, or maybe more. It maybe even better if I smoked cigs instead, but that's a matter of personal convictions rather than concerns about health.
The saddest part is the fact that this is 5 hours of my day down the drain. It's not like you could use it for anything productive such as reading a book which would be bad for my already poor vision or sleeping when the jeep is speeding down the zigzag slopes of Antipolo with the conductor screaming, "May kalaban sa likod!" (Kalaban being the term they use for another jeep travelling the same route).
On average, normal people would spend 2 hours traveling. Imagine what I could do with those 3 hours. No need to answer that. For me, it simply means more time to play video games.
This should be enough for now as to not bore you more than I already have. Believe me, there are so many things I am annoyed with right now, and the bloody weather is not helping. I need something keep me happy, one which does not end when the loading screen suddenly comes up.