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		Exploding Garrmondo Weiner Interactive Swiss Army Penis
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the quiet fox's

Toshiko Koshijima (left) and Yasutaka Nakata in "Retro Memory"

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Nov 28, 2007 - 10:47 PM

Job productivity and other goals: a shamelessly motivational entry

It takes me about 10 minutes, on average, to proofread a submitted shop. In an 8-hour workday, minus an hour for breaks and lunch, this equates to 6 shops/hour * 7 actual work hours = 42 shops total. I generally do not hit this number, instead falling around 25-30 most of the time. This is for a few reasons: some shops take longer if the shopper writes a lot that's relevant, leaving me more to proofread; some shops are either filled out wrong or have some other confusing aspects that make me waste more minutes on them; and sometimes I just slack off for a few minutes because the work does tend to get boring. Working at home admittedly makes it very easy to just open a new tab in Firefox and waste time.

We've been falling behind in the queue, so the backlog of shops to proof has been gradually increasing. I decided to make it my goal to drastically improve my productivity because, well, it's just a generally good idea. Today I proofed 40 shops, which pleased me. I want to aim for 50 as my next immediate goal; once I can do that comfortably, I'll go for 55-60, and then we'll see how things progress. 60 shops in a day is 7.5 minutes a shop, which seems reasonable. I think this is a goal I can expect to hit fairly soon if I work at it.

This will have several positive effects should I manage to accomplish it. One, additional mental training for myself, since I have some trouble focusing when performing repetitive mundane tasks. Two, obviously the backlog gets cleared faster and this makes the company look better. Three, I'm not sure how fast the two other proofers work, but judging by the speed of the queue they aren't hitting anything close to 60 shops a day... which means I will look a lot better if I can pull it off. And y'know, I want to look good.

I've also been noticing a lot of little things on the form itself which shoppers fill out. In particular, there are a number of discrepancies between the language of the form and the actual standards (decided by the bank) by which I proof the shop and edit as necessary. What I'd like to do is compile a detailed list of these discrepancies and see if I can get them to someone in authority at Fifth Third. The hope is that maybe I can effect some sort of change, which will again make me look good (maybe) and have the additional result of getting shoppers to fill out the forms more accurately, meaning less editing work for me.

I know I am talented and possessed of a good work ethic; however, I have not historically taken much pride in my work. I want to change this, because I want to value what I produce for people, even if it's as simple as a clean and proofread report. If I can do this, it follows that with time and practice, I can learn to better value the things I produce for myself - something I desperately need to work on. Here's hoping.

Addendum: Also, proofing more shops means more chances to write sentences like "Beth serviced me behind the teller counter." They sound fine in context but I always giggle when I write them. >.>

Currently Playing: Boom Boom Satellites - Easy Action (Coburn's Sleazy Action Remix)

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[public entry #12]

Nov 26, 2007 - 09:48 PM

the shifting boundaries of alcohol tolerance

I was out with my mom and my brother on Wednesday night, since we were all in town for Thanksgiving, and I had a couple of beers with dinner. I am an extraordinary lightweight when it comes to alcohol; this probably has something to do with the fact that I weigh 120 pounds. Anyway, I was talking with my brother about how two beers was coming close to knocking me on my ass, and he laughed and said "Good for you, man."

After further investigation, I think I can extend this to just having one beer. I had an extra bottle in the fridge and drank half of it with dinner, the other half while sitting here on the internet. Now I'm tipsy! It's an odd feeling. I can almost liken it to caffeine, but somehow I feel more hyper and potentially giggly (I just laughed at something that really wasn't that funny) than I would if I'd drank, say, a Code Red or something. Maybe I've built up more of a caffeine tolerance.

I am wondering now how I managed four shots of absinthe at the Maine meet and still ended up more in control of myself than Radez or Sass. =o Well, maybe that's not accurate (I recall being loud and saying something potentially inappropriate to Alice), but I wasn't going "GIVE ME MY CIGARETTES" or reading Shakespeare, now was I? WAS I?

Yeah, I'd never post something as pointless as this without alcohol.

Currently Playing: boom boom satellites - 4 a moment of silence (trapezoid mix)

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[public entry #11]

Nov 15, 2007 - 07:23 PM

Why does iTunes sometimes do this?

This is supposed to be one album, but the first and last tracks are sorted as separate entities. I have had this problem before, and what it usually comes down to is one or more of the tracks having a different year in the file info, or missing the "track X of Y" designation, or other stuff like that. In this case, I've looked over all the files, and their info is all identical. No trailing spaces or anything like that either. I can't get it to sort properly and it's bugging me.

Currently Playing: capsule - music controller (piconova mix)

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[public entry #10]

Nov 14, 2007 - 09:19 PM

Working from home/self-confidence struggle #2,453,547

I've been out of training at my job since last week. On Monday, my supervisor came in and told me that since I'm now finalizing my own reports, there's really no reason for me to have to come into the office every day (since I do everything online). So I spent today and yesterday working from home. I've never done this before and wanted to see how well I took to it - luckily it seems I am disciplined enough to do it well. I plan on going into the office at least a couple days a week to keep up my visibility, but otherwise I'm pretty damn excited about cutting out the commute and potentially saving over a hundred bucks per month (conservative estimate) that would otherwise go to gas.

Today was somewhat marred by waking up with the mother of all stiff necks. I guess I slept on it wrong or something. I spent the whole day pretty much not being able to look to either side of me, so I'm glad I didn't have to drive in the morning. I took some Advil but all it did was make me drowsy as fuck, without reducing the pain, so that was awesome.

And now for something completely different: I continually feel that my talents as a writer and as an artistic/creatively-minded person in general are inferior to people who are more left-brained and specialize in the sciences, mathematics, etc. Why is this? I wonder if I'd feel the same way if the situation was reversed, with me as some sort of brilliant physicist but unable to write an interesting sentence to save my life. *shrug* I keep telling myself that I'll feel better about this stuff once I'm successful and farther along in my career path, but when these moods hit it's awfully hard to take comfort in a future that sometimes seems so distant.

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[public entry #9]

Nov 7, 2007 - 10:36 PM

Smile, I'm rewriting you.

My new job is as a proofreader for a mystery shopping consulting firm. We work exclusively with banks, and our corporate goal is to help these fine financial institutions get their employee conduct in line with their ideal standards. To that end, we hire mystery shoppers to go into a specific bank, conduct a specific transaction, and send us back a report detailing what happened. This pays, on average, about $5-10 per report, and I'm not really sure why people even sign up to do it, but that's not my concern. As a proofreader, the shoppers' reports go into a queue where I examine them, edit the original writing for clarity and content, and finally stamp it "finalized," at which point it gets sent to the bank.

Now, when I say "edit the original writing for clarity and content," you might envision me touching up a paragraph here and there, trimming irrelevant trains of thought, gently nudging the shoppers' thoughts into a nice neat package that looks good while preserving the original intent behind the writing. No. Fuck no. SOMETIMES I can get away with just doing this, when I get a particularly well-written report that doesn't need much work. Most of the time, what I am actually doing is unsheathing my claws and MAULING the original writing, sometimes producing a final report that looks nothing like the original did.

You see, people are stupid. "Yes, fox, we know, we're on GFF/the INTERNET and we look down on everyone as a rule." Okay, but bear with me, because most mystery shoppers are a special kind of stupid - the kind that cannot follow directions that say "Write a detailed paragraph, at least 4 to 5 sentences about the transaction and any employee interactions that you noticed." I get reports that take that prompt and write a two sentence abortion like "She was niceand helpful . I think she did a great job." This is when I bang my head against my desk and use obscenities, or at least I would if I didn't have a nice, quiet Latina girl working in the same room as me. On the other end of the spectrum are the chatty shoppers who will write paragraphs and paragraphs of limp, floppy prose like "I gave her the check and she asked for my ID. I said I didn't have it and she asked for my account number. I said I didn't have one. She asked so you don't have an account with us. I said no. She said well I can't cash the check if you don't have an account with us. She gave me the check back. I took it and also took my drivers license. I said that I..." blah blah fucking blah.

So I get to be creative in my new job. If I get an unworkable report from a shopper, I will delete all of their writing and construct an entirely new paragraph. Shoppers are asked to fill in a bunch of yes/no radio button questions detailing various facets of how the employee did their job before they get to the writing portion; my new paragraph thus takes any number of these responses and strings them together into something that a human can actually read. (Sometimes I also have to correct the radio buttons they've chosen, mostly when there's a third "N/A" option, because shoppers ALWAYS choose N/A even for a strict yes/no question. DID THE EMPLOYEE NOT DO THING X? HE DIDN'T? OKAY, ASSBRAIN, THAT WOULD MEAN YOU MARK IT "NO.") If I can, I will try to salvage bits and pieces of the original - sometimes even the most moronic shopper has a nice turn of phrase, and I like to save it if I can. But I can't always do this (especially if it's offensive, which I have to take out due to policy, after I've had a good LOL), so a lot of the time I am effectively nullifying the shopper's entire experience and replacing it with one I made up.

I have mixed feelings about this, but there's literally nothing else I can do in many of the cases; 99% of the reports I receive would be unacceptable to banks if submitted in their original format. So I shrug and continue hacking away. It gets boring because, while I'm being creative, I am restricted by the report template in how I can express myself. I'm essentially creating the same paragraph with minor variations over and over again, because most reports are positive and each form asks the same questions. HOWEVER, the higher-ups at my office LOVE what I am doing. I was told several times today by several different people, including the company president, that I'm doing a fabulous job. It's my sixth day of work (I didn't work Wednesday or Thursday of last week) and I'm almost done with my training, which apparently would normally take "weeks and weeks," so I'm clearly ahead of the game here. This makes me happy, and I hope it means good things for my job stability.

So that's my new job in a nutshell. I also hate my commute, because I have to drive on 93 for a few miles in the breakdown lane and that is SO dangerous. It freaks me out, and when I leave at night it also takes me 15 minutes to drive 2 miles, which I'm not fond of. Luckily, I'll be moving sometime soon, hopefully to someplace more manageable.

Currently Playing: capsule - Plastic Girl

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Oct 26, 2007 - 04:55 PM

Korean dude gets all up in my grill

Last day of work in Milford today. Sayonara, Thermo Fisher; hello, success!*

*"success" is, most likely, a few intermediary jobs away, counting the one I start on Monday; regardless, I am CLOSER

My security badge, which I kept although I don't think I was supposed to. I wonder how long it'll keep letting me in the building, since I didn't have an ending date on my contract. (I have gotten a haircut since that picture was taken, and am overall much much hotter now.)

Unfortunately, my last day at the office is also sort of a tale of woe. So this morning I got to the office, walked upstairs, went into my cubi--wait a minute, my boss is sitting at my desk with this Korean dude. Cubicle is full! I stand awkwardly in the hallway while chairs are rearranged, and am introduced to Korean dude, who is my replacement and was in the middle of being trained when I arrived. Korean dude is quiet and mildly attractive in a nerdy way, probably 18 or 19, and is wearing decent clothes with the exception of an old pair of sneakers, which puzzles me. My boss leaves to go to a series of meetings, turning the training session over to me.

So I sit down and walk through my processes. Training in total takes about 10 minutes, because a circus monkey could do my job. I engage in small talk with Korean dude while I let him try working on the database for a few minutes; conversation does not flow very well, since his only response to my attempts at humor are a monotone "Riiiight" (not sarcastic, just drawn-out and flat). Whatever, I think, he'll be gone and off doing his own thing in a few minutes. OH WAIT. I then make the unpleasant discovery that, since Korean dude will be working in my cube once I'm gone, he HAS nowhere else to go, so I will be spending the day with him. "Oh well," I think, "how bad could it be?"

Well, throughout the day I am completely on edge because I now have no personal space. Korean dude sits behind me, watching me work, at least at first. Then he gradually starts looking around my cube and exploring things. He picks up and examines the magnets on my desk drawer, gazes lazily at the piece of paper on my desk which has some of my personal information written on it (whoops, I would've thrown it out yesterday if I'd known I was going to have a visit from fucking Curious George), and looks through the notebooks I have next to the computer. Later on he reaches into his big Neiman Marcus handbag, which I'm trying to figure out why he owns, and pulls out silverware (ACTUAL silverware, not plastic) and some sort of meal that I think may have been from McDonalds. He eats his lunch. It is very quiet in the office, so I can hear him loudly chewing and swallowing every morsel of his salad or whatever the fuck he has. At around noon I ask him to take over and do some of the contacts while I go get lunch; I say "have at it, sir" as I leave, and that, for some reason, gets a belly laugh as a reaction. I take a 45-minute lunch break and come back to see Korean dude browsing the Internet; when he sees me he flips the page back to Google and closes it, and then says he didn't have any trouble doing the contacts. I certainly hope he didn't, anyway.

The afternoon is a bit more tolerable, with Korean dude at this point completely ignoring me and instead watching videos on his Archos. I notice he keeps getting up every five minutes and disappearing for a little while; when he comes back, he is always out of breath, which leads me to believe he is either out of shape, asthmatic, or furtively masturbating in a corner somewhere. Whatever. I continue working, and the relative tranquility is broken only once when Korean dude comes back from a sojourn with some chips (which he got from the vending machine downstairs, conveniently located in our OFFICE CAFETERIA which is where you SHOULD have eaten your lunch, asswipe) and proceeds to eat them at painful volume. What. Ever. I end up leaving at 4, since my boss comes over and tells me I can cut out early if I feel like it; I placidly reply that yes, I think I do. I give her my contact information and we have a semi-extended goodbye. She seems really sorry to see me go, I feel sort of bad but I still end up hightailing it out of there as fast as I can.

So yeah, I'm sure Korean dude will work out real well. He'll probably be gone in a couple days like all the other temps they tried bringing in (except for me, since apparently I'm the only one with a work ethic not approaching 0), but hey, it's not my problem anymore~ Onward and upward!

Currently Playing: capsule - Portable Airport

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Oct 23, 2007 - 09:59 AM

I think I need a new hamster wheel

For those who don't know (which is probably everyone), I'm a bit of an MMORPG addict. EverQuest II is my current drug of choice. I play a lot, but generally consider myself a casual player; this is mainly thanks to my glacially slow leveling. Anyhow, last night there was an interesting snippet of guild chat that got me thinking:

Quote:

Nemonae says to the guild, "is centaur faction good for anything at this point in the game?"
You say to the guild, "I like not getting centaur aggro when I run through TS"
You say to the guild, "but aside from that, I dunno"
Nemonae says to the guild, "Do they aggro you even in the 50s?"
You say to the guild, "well, no, but I'm not that high yet

"
Nemonae says to the guild, "What you waiting for?

"
You say to the guild, "more free time and less of a compulsion to work on tradeskilling when I do log on"
You say to the guild, "otherwise, nothing really XD"
Nemonae says to the guild, "hehe"

Nemonae seems like a pretty cool person; I've grouped with her a couple of times in the past and she's always been friendly. Anyway, the point of the entry: EverQuest II lets you level your character up to 70 (soon to be 80 when the expansion pack comes out next month), and the general consensus among players is that it's very easy to achieve this within a few months. I, on the other hand, have had my particular character since August, and am only level 33. Yeah, I take my sweet time. As I said above, I've grouped with Nemonae in the past when we were only a few levels apart, but she's since blown past me and is now working on much higher-level content. So why am I such a slowpoke? What am I, in fact, waiting for?

My typical response when I ask myself this question has been "I don't want to advance too fast without getting a chance to learn my character." I have a constant fear of getting into a group, particularly a group of people I don't know, and performing my role inadequately. The problem, I'm now realizing, is that that statement is superfluous, for two reasons: One, when I've grouped in the past I have done okay - I'm not amazing, but I'm also not a moron, and I generally know what I'm doing. Two, I play solo 95% of the time anyway. I'm comfortable with soloing over grouping because I can work towards my own goals, as opposed to the goals of five other people about whom I don't particularly care, and do so at my own pace; additionally, I still have social interaction through chatting with my guildies, offering help to newbies on the public channels, and other stuff - I'm actually a pretty helpful guy. I'm overall content to play and socialize in this fashion.

Given all of the above, it's apparent that I have a good handle on my class, and an established playstyle. Moreover, I do want to level faster. I'd like to hit level 70 before the expansion comes out so that I can join my (mostly higher-level) guildies in exploring the new content. "So what's the problem?", I hear you impatiently asking. It really comes down to my overall lack of self-confidence. I don't have any problem playing EQ2, but my mind insists that I must, because I fail to value myself and my abilities. And yeah, this issue of mine extends to many different areas of my life - it's interesting to see how it creeps into my leisure activities too, hence this entry. I think Nem's comments in guild chat served as a bit of a wakeup call, and while I'm not naive enough to be like "YAY EVERYTHING'S ALRIGHT NOW!1", I feel a renewed interest in putting on my running shoes and getting back on the hamster wheel so I can get my ass leveled up. It really is about time.

Also, I thought I'd share this in-game screenshot with you guys. I was conducting a broker transaction on my alt, and I noticed this piece of tail (literally) next to the broker stall...

OMG, fabulous~! (That's my alt on the left. Yes, fox is a furry. Go fuck yourself.)

Anyway, I have no idea if anyone on GFF plays EQ2, but if anyone does, look me up - Kazaaki on Antonia Bayle. We can kill some orcs together. ^_^

Currently Playing: Duran Duran - "Drowning Man"

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[public entry #6]

Jun 21, 2007 - 09:52 AM

My name

is "the quiet fox." Obviously it is not my real name, but as an internet handle it has pretty much been a constant since about 2001. I like it, and my using it for this length of time indicates I am comfortable with the name; it fits me.

Having said this, I must pause for a moment to muse upon a particular reaction that has been unusually prevalent here at the meet:
"Wow, the quiet fox sure is quiet!"
!!! Why, you don't say!
Well, all right, let me back up for a second. I have no problem with the realization in itself, as I am indeed extremely quiet and speak only occasionally. I also do not have a problem, really, with people mentioning it - it was in several journals after the Boston meet last year. It DOES bother me when people say it with a particular tone, and with particular emphasis, such that it becomes very much like observing "Gee, the sun is awful bright!" It bothers me EVEN MORE when people feel the need to tell me this MULTIPLE TIMES, sometimes in the SAME DAY, because it then becomes less of an inane tautology and more like a genuine expression of surprise. Is it so shocking that the name I came up with six years ago, and have elected to continue using since, is appropriate to my personality? Is it really?

Anyway, I don't have anything dramatastic to say, since that's not how I roll. I expect tonight to be pretty chaotic, which I'm honestly not looking forward to, but hey, that's what delicious absinthe is for. <3 GFF orgy like whut~

Currently Playing: na naaaaa nanananana naa naa na katamari damashiiiii

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[public entry #5]

Feb 22, 2007 - 12:00 PM

"decision" IS NOT A VERB, FUCKERS

Christ. I've only just started to get over people using "action" as a verb - "We'll have to action that!" - when yesterday at work, listening to a webinar (don't get me started), I hear this:

"...provides the user many fields to decision off of."

WHAT HAPPENED TO THOSE NICE WORDS LIKE "DECIDE." OR, IF THAT'S NOT TO YOUR FANCY, HOW ABOUT EMPLOYING THE CLEVER PHRASE "MAKE A DECISION." WE DO NOT NEED TO MAKE UP NEW WORDS JUST FOR THE FUCK OF IT. ARGH.

I don't know why these things still get under my skin, since we've been degrading the language for a long time like this, and it's not like ranting about it on the interweb is going to change anything. Rawr.

(Avalokiteshvara was all like "you should come back to GFF" and I was all like "no u" but then I ~~decided~~ decisioned making a stupid post in my chocojournal wouldn't hurt.)

Currently Playing: Neko Case - The Needle Has Landed

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Jul 8, 2006 - 10:15 PM

This type of entry is so pointless without pictures, but too bad

I got rid of my bleached hair today; it's back to its natural dark brown (though I still have highlights) and I have to say I think this looks better; maybe the whole Napoleon Dynamite thing will just go away now.

I should have gotten it cut while I was at the hairdresser's mercy, but I was running late and didn't have time... maybe sometime next week.

Speaking of hair, I have this awful stress habit of pulling it out, sometimes in significant quantities if I get mentally distracted enough. I'm not sure it's even really a stress habit anymore, since I was doing it while playing World of Warcraft earlier and I was just auctioning shit, which is hardly stressful. I really need to stop, but I think the only way I'll be able to is if I find some other action to replace it, because it's been going on for a long time now. Any ideas?

Currently Playing: m-flo loves Emi Hinouchi & Ryohei - Summer Time Love

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