In search of the relaxed

So it's my 4th day, and already I've gotten an assignment. Apparently, one of our clients need an extra person to man their help desk, so I've been tapped to provide that for them. Our sales rep for them took me out to lunch and described what I'd be doing for them. Basically, they just need a hand answering the phones. Even if all I do is take a message and write a ticket. They can handle production side items, but not on top of answering the phones. I met with them and got a basic overview of the ticketing system and the remote. Not a bad setup, and the guys there are real laid back and easy to get along with.

Ame and MC have had quite a year this month. >.>; They went out to eat, but let us know first so we weren't left wondering. When they got back we were ready to roll. And the experience was pretty sweet. We pulled in about 10k before they got tired. I understand that one. There are just some nights where you want to call it an early night. If we can stand the rats for another 3-4 levels or so, we'll be good to do the merit party puddings in Mt. Zhayolm. And we'll be skilled up for it, too.

I guess that's what I like about staticing with this group. We're all casual players and not in any big hurry. When someone's tired, it's all good, we'll just pick up where we left off next time. Two nights a week for about 3 hours a night is plenty for us, sometimes almost too much. We get our skillups in, chat and joke around, and generally just enjoy the game together. Why has this gotten so difficult to do in Soulfire?

Anyway, after static, I ran around and got the tuning forks for the avatars I don't have whispers for. I'd like to get Fenrir's key item so I can do the avatar battles with other people again. I fished a little, but the guild item was junk, so I didn't even try. Maybe tomorrow. I also bought a pair of River Gaiters. I have 18k to my name, but that is the last pair of boots for BLM that I will ever need. I need to do some hardcore money fishing sometime. I wouldn't mind doing a BCNM sometime soon, either. Wonder if I could find anyone this weekend for one.

"...and I'm a PC."

As I've said before, I was pretty much assured a nickname. That finally happened today as I was waiting for a call to come through. One of the people in the office remarked how much I look like PC from the Mac vs. PC commercials. The resemblance is pretty darned close, and it's not the first time I'd gotten that. LOL one year for Halloween, while I was working at the theater, I went to work dressed as PC. So the name stuck - I'm PC. Does that mean I can go into sleep mode at completely inappropriate times? XD

I also got notified that I'm being tapped to help out at an onsite location for the next three weeks. It's quite a drive - out in New Braunfels, but I'm hoping that it will give me a little better insight to the workings of our customers and broaden my knowledge base. One of the things that I've been noticing is that many of the issues we get in on the phones have been things that are way over my head, and they don't seem to be over anyone else. I'm hoping that I can learn how to deal with these issues at an onsite location so that when the calls come in, I can be a little more knowledgeable.

I got home and was just exhausted. Our neighbors - college kids renting a house together - have been loudly partying pretty non-stop since the beginning of Fiesta last week Friday. It doesn't help that they're having their bash on their back patio, which is situated almost directly beneath our bedroom window (yeah, the houses are pretty cramped together, but hey, we own it...) This has resulted in 3 police calls and several angry shouts out our bedroom window in less than a week, and the partying still goes on. That means D and I haven't gotten to bed until 1am or later most nigths this week. I took a brief nap while I could, before D and baby and chaos would take over my evening.

After a dinner of hot dogs, I checked my bazaar that I had set up last night filled with guild item fish. Picked clean, and I sold them at a heavy premium. I'll have to remember that when I see nearly every rank have the same fish again. Happens more often than you'd think. The fish today sucked, though, so I logged out and talked with D a little bit on what to do with the evening.

We decided to watch our first movie from Blockbuster that we got in the mail on Tuesday. It was D's pick - Perfect Blue. An anime psychological suspense/thriller. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for anime/subtitles/thriller, but I wasn't anywhere nearly as impressed with it as she was. It wasn't bad: it was well-written, well animated and had great character development. It seemed to grind a little after the first hour, but that was only for about 10-15 minutes before the climax. I honestly think I just wasn't in the mood for that kind of movie at that time. We burned it, so I'll likely see it again since she really likes that movie.

It's gonna happen. There are going to be movies that she really likes that I think are the pits and I KNOW there are going to be movies that I love and she thinks are dumb. I can think of a few in particular in our queue that I don't think she's going to like all that much. That's not the point, though. It's giving us something to do together that's not sitting around in game. She said on our forums that she is planning to come back once the drama around all the attendance cools down. We played too much...

Midday tomorrow I'm heading out to the onsite location in New Braunfels. Strangely enough, I'm really looking forward to it, despite the drive. Thursday is also static night. Which reminds me, I need to make a post for it so Capt knows we're still going.

"Man, he needs a nickname..."

The order of the day was orientation today. I got my handbook, paperwork, a two hour orientation session and full tour - the whole nine yards. I also got set up on the phones and granted the rest of the access I'll need to do my job. On my way out, I picked up a set of uniform shirts.

My name may very well get in trouble. The lead tech's name is Jason, and it seems everyone wants to talk to him. So when someone asks for "Jason" I of course think they are talking to me and respond. It'll get more interesting on the phones because most of our clients know Jason and if they hear Jason called for them, they know something's up. I'm going to try to get into the habit of giving my last name. :P I was told during my interview that, if hired, I would have a nickname within 48 hours of starting. Nothing yet, but I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

As for gaming tonight, we gathered in Whitegate, but Ame didn't show up until about 8. Keri didn't want to call her, in case she was busy doing something important. I used that time to head to Nashmau and get 38 Fishing, take my guild test and rank up. Which was nice, since the guild fish was complete trash for the rank I was leaving, and gold for the rank I was going into. I hear the 40s are a pain, though. I'm starting to take the mindset of going after fish that are profitable, and letting the skill points come as they will. I'm making a steady flow of cash just by selling catches to NPC's, much less when I actually get a stack of something worthwhile on the auction block.

Don't really know what's up for tomorrow night. We might watch the Blockbuster DVD we got in the mail, I might hit Dynamis. No big plans.

Beginning Chapters

My first day at my new job was exciting. After I got there and put my lunch up, I got the quick tour and shown to my desk. The machine was cleaned off, but there were still a lot of personal items from its former resident that I wasn't sure what to do with. I ended up just throwing them away after I learned that he was not coming back. The guy they had me sit with had to go on an outcall, so I went with him to fix some printer issues. I was able to log into my machine when I got back, but unable to do anything else yet. So I spent most of the day on the forums, listening in on phone calls and getting an idea of how the new ticketing system works. After having FCR and ITIL pounded into me at Valero, this is a real change of pace. Not so much of a focus on getting the issue resolved on the first call, but more of a workflow documentation focus. All time spent on an issue is logged for billing, for example. It'll take some getting used to. So will my new hours. I thought navigating 4pm traffic was bad, San Antonio is bonkers at 5.

After dinner, I got some guild fishing in and folded laundry while DeAnn started a workout. We bought a new bathroom scale with a fitness tracker on it so she can watch her progress. Before I get the "Nice present, hubby - a scale" comments, I'd like to point out that it was her idea. I'm really glad that she is taking this so seriously.

I am, however, really starting to get a bit fed up with the awkward feeling I have around my wife now. OK, so we don't play together anymore. Instead of there being a certain scheduled order of things, now it's a guessing game. Does she want to spend time with me? Does she want time to herself? She'll never tell - that would ruin the surprise! And heaven forbid that I should choose the wrong one, or I will have one sad panda on my hands for the rest of the night because I haven't perfected my mind reading skills yet. So I try to stick to the safer of the two choices and assume she wants to spend time with me.

Well, this evening it was the wrong choice. After showering, she asked me what I wanted to do with the evening, so I thought I could bring her into a game. She got all upset and emo when I asked her where she was going when she walked away. It's not that I mind having some time to myself. I had a 'blast' playing Halo without having to worry about Colin complaining about the computer or Neopets and Clara trying to steal the remote or game controller or turning off the TV or console. What I do mind is her getting bent out of shape about things that she doesn't communicate with me. It's still all new to her, too. I guess I need to follow my own advice and talk with her about it.

Static tomorrow. Yes, static. It's one of the few things D still enjoys about FFXI, so we're going to do it.

Weekend Intelligence: Ending Chapters

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." - Semisonic, "Closing Time"

In one fell swoop, my game time, my free time and my work time have all turned upside down. Its exciting and nerve-wracking all at the same time. I'm really looking forward to it all. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

House and Home (and game?):

To back up a little, on Thursday, DeAnn decided to "quit" FFXI. Without getting into a very long-winded story, there has been extreme drama over my BLM static, and it goes back to very old issues and the relatively new issue of poor linkshell attendance. She doesn't find it fun anymore and has not logged on since. This has made my free time even more fragmented: I now have to juggle work, family, wife and recreation time. Despite this, I still advised her (as I've advised everyone over the years that loses interest in the game) to quit.

So when Friday night rolled around, normally we'd FNLE and do some campaign. I had agreed to do the 18-man avatar battles, but now I've lost my campaign partner. She was in the same room, but it felt very awkward talking to her about it instead of her actually being there. She's signed us up for Blockbuster by mail rentals. She'd like to do a movie night with me every so often, and I think it would be a nice thing to do together, considering we have nothing set up now. After I'd finished up my ingame promise, we sat together for a bit and started building our movie queue. There's lots of movies I want her to see, and even more she wants me to see. There are some that we've both seen and want to see again together, and some we want to get for the kids. We're starting with the "one movie at a time" plan, with a maximum of 2 movies a month. I honestly think we're going to have to up that at least to the unlimited movies a month plan though, if not more than one at a time. The queue is enormous. More on that likely to come.

Saturday started off a bit rocky. I don't know why, but D and Colin are really hard to get going in the morning. No mercy whatsoever - I'm just trying to get the day started! Anyway, once breakfast was had, I set up the gates so Clara could play, then asked Colin to help clean the living room, crush cans for recycling and do the dishes. Colin finished his tasks in a timely fashion, so I let him go goof off with friends. D started pulling weeds outside, and I was resolved to mow the lawn...

At this point, I think its appropriate to have a flashback moment to about this time last year. We had just clawed our way out of a near-fatal financial crisis, bought our first house and D just got her job. The thought then hit us that we were now homeowners, meaning we now had to mow our own lawn. We weren't in the financial spot to drop a ton of change on a mower, so we bought the cheapest one we could find that was adjustable and would bag clippings (which proved to be the most worthless bagger ever). It was a piece, but it did the trick.

Fast-forward to Saturday, with me stooped over this piece of junk priming it for the first start of the season. I hadn't run it since, like, early November. I primed the chambers, checked the gas and oil, and made sure the plug was in place and connected. Pull, Pull, Pull! Nothing. That's ok, it's gotta be a bit gunked up, right? It's been sitting around for months. Try again. Nothing. Reprimed and checked the spark plug. Everything checks out. Try again. Nothing. Now my arm is starting to hurt. Try again. It's dead. DeAnn notices that I'm having a hard time with the mower, and she tries. Nothing, and now her arm hurts. -.- So it's decided that the time has come for a new mower. We made a quick trip to WalMart and picked up what we'd wanted the first time around, but couldn't afford: an electric mower. After about 10 minutes of assembly, the mower is running and cuts through the tall grass like a hot knife through butter. No pulling, no priming: just pull a lever and it starts and let it go and it stops. Immediately. The other spiffy thing was that it weighed about a quarter of what the old mower did. After mowing and pulling, we just basically hung out the rest of the day. I gamed a little, but it still felt very awkward, and I did nothing of note.

We slept in late on Sunday and missed church. D had a bad headache anyway. Hit WalMart for the upcoming week's supplies. We got a nap somewhere in there, too. I did Dynamis - Jeuno in hopes of completing my WHM relic, but no dice. We finished off the evening by redying D's roots before bedtime.

Tomorrow is the first day at my new job. I'm very excited and maybe, just maybe, a bit nervous, too. I'm sure I'll do fine - I like the what I've seen and heard so far. But I will miss all the people I've gotten to know so well at Valero. I wish them all the best.