Excellent analysis of the Current Unpleasantness!
Waste Paper Basket » The Cartoon Blog by Dave Walker
[tags]Akinola, Jefferts Schori, Rowan Williams[/tags]
Excellent analysis of the Current Unpleasantness!
Waste Paper Basket » The Cartoon Blog by Dave Walker
[tags]Akinola, Jefferts Schori, Rowan Williams[/tags]
Boing Boing: Keyboard waffle-iron
My husband David would love it if someone would send him a box of frozen QWERTY keyboard waffles. I’m sure they would be delicious and yummy and it would be fun to “type” while eating, although it would be pretty messy.
I’m just sayin’.
[tags]BoingBoing, waffles[/tags]
Boing Boing: Rebit offers effortless full backup for Windows machines
My father is working with a company in Colorado that makes a very nifty backup appliance for Windows machines, called Rebit, which provides continuous backup without any learning curve or effort. It’s a pocket-sized USB hard drive that draws power from the USB connection (so there’s no need for an adapter).
There are no buttons or switches or setup programs to install or configure. As soon as you plug it in, a dialog box pops up asking you for permission to let Rebit go to work. You click OK, and that’s it. The software on the Rebit drive goes to work to make an exact copy of everything on your computer’s hard drive. It also catalogs old copies of your files, so you can go back to an older version of a document, if you wish.
Oooooooooh. I think David has something like this, but I’m not certain. Also not certain if the whatsit sitting right here on my desk is not doing something similar. Still, “oooooh.”
Technorati Tags: Tech
CORVALLIS, Oregon — Oregon State University (OSU) hosted the country’s largest and only congregation of Pastafarians to participate in the US government’s National Day of Prayer celebration. While the FlyingSpaghetti Monster and his high-cholesterol suffering followers are still not yet recognized by any of the world’s legitimate governments, it is still considered a more believable religion than Scientology and all its stupid Alien DC-9s and Thetan crap.
Darn! I totally missed this shit! Well done, OSU, our pants are off to you! Maybe we can all have spaghetti for dinner later and reflect profoundly on His Noodly Glory.
Well, at least I found the wonderful Uncyclopedia today. Icanhascheezburger.com cited their comprehensive section warning against the dangers of kitten huffing.
The Internets is so interesting! I’m sure the Lord FSM (sauce be upon him) had this in mind when S/he created all things.
(p.s.: I have an open mind about the Meathead’s gender, and also reject the concept of the Antipast.)
Technorati Tags: kitten huffing, FSM, Uncyclopedia
This was not one of my better weeks.
I found myself spinning in place, buried in paper, trying to adapt to this new process at work for handing a whole new division of our main client – a division that’s completely and never will be, because they won’t ever have company corporate cards. This forces us into an untenable situation – arrange travel (mostly hotels, some air, a few cars) that is completely paid for by the the division, and handle all of these reservations not by phone, but by forms that are either faxed or emailed as attachments to us.
It was described as “easy.” One person per week would be designated to handle all their requests, and the air and car portion really is easy to set up and pay for. The hotels were supposed to be “goof proof,” using a special credit card designated as for direct billing.
They are not.
Problem is, WE know it’s a direct bill card, but the hotels don’t, and a significant fraction of them require more documentation than a bit of verbiage in the reservation comment section indicating “direct bill ghost card.”
It is not “easy.” The request forms are designed to pack a lot of confusing information into the smallest possible print in the smallest possible boxes of a highly colored, backgrounded spreadsheet, and when they are printed in black and white they’re somewhat less distracting but still hard to read.
Up to six people can be booked on each form, not always for the same destinations, dates, or needed elements (some only need hotel, some need air and car too).
The admins and those travelers that submit their own forms are not travel agents and so they don’t know airport city codes. Most often, we get a hotel request with something cryptic for the location like “Hanford” or “Martinsville.” No state, no zip code. Did you know there’s a Hanford in California? I only knew about the one in Washington. One traveler typed something in the “location” box that was so long, it was truncated on the printout. The cell sizes are “locked” so anything that’stoo long is invisible unless you’re looking at the spreadsheet on the computer and click on the box.
When they are faxed, the most critical information is most often a black or dark gray block, completely obscuring the sender’s contact information and email.
Quite often, the same form is sent again and again, with minor changes that are not highlighted in any way. Notations about the changes needed are in the cover email, which most often is NOT printed along with the attachment.
The designated agents find themselves calling on these request forms a lot to clarify confusing information or to advise that a hotel choice is sold out. That’s where they bleed off a lot of time, chit-chatting or waiting on hold or leaving voicemails and waiting for them to be returned.
Late last week, after a month of handing the duty around to just a few designated agents, we started to identify a lot of problems and hear a lot of complaints about the hotels not letting guests check out without charging their personal credit cards. So we kept changing the verbiage we were transmitting to the hotels, which has to be typed manually. This was to avoid having to stop and fax something on letterhead that my team leader had put together. I’ve since modified the form a lot – the letterhead imagesand copy are still there, but now there’s a table into which you can copy and paste hotel address, phone and fax quickly from their property record in the reservation system. The travelers change hotels constantly – CONSTANTLY – either because they don’t like them and check out, or they finish their install or their sales presentation and check out. So I’m seeing the same guys’ names for the same or similar dates, over and over again, for different hotels.
Plus there’s disputes where I have to call the hotel, persuade them to transfer their charge from the traveler’s personal card to the “ghost card,” and fax them the authorization letter. This is mostly for those reservations made before the middle of last week, which was when we realized we really needed to fax every hotel until the great majority of them became used to our process. Previously, this division was using a different agency just to do their direct bills – and the hotels don’t have our documentationon file.
It’s a bother.
Did I mention that we have to use the “new” booking software (I’ll just say it’s a highly programmable graphical interface with many bells and whistles) to do these in? Because this interface is so feature-rich, it’s a total hog on system resources, and proceeds with all deliberate speed (which is to say, not much). Also, the hotel part of it is the worst in terms of finding the properties you want. You have to know where it is to find it, basically, and for all these little rural podunkpodunk, that’s atrick. Even with the fancy global-positioning package it uses to locate hotels by town name, it often comes up blank when my “old,” reliable reservation software finds it fast and truly easy.
The generic template for this division is set up with the special “direct bill” credit card but needs some tweaks. Also, it’s a slow process at the best of times, and these booking forms are so time-consuming to digest and translate into reservations. Much of the time, the hotel specified is not available, and although we’ve got a disclaimer saying “we may substitute a less expensive hotel within policy or book elsewhere due to availability” we’ve found that in practice, the admins don’t really READ theemails we send them and assume that we’ve booked their techs at the hotels the specified
This means that techs are driving up to the wrong hotel, and have no idea they should have gone to the hotel we booked. This would have been avoided had we picked up the phone every time we booked a tech somewhere other than specified, but the whole thing was sold to us as “just book what they tell you on the form, no need to call them, just email them the itineraries.”
So.
It became clear that the single biggest thing driving the problems we were hearing about was some hotels wanted documentation of the direct billing that was more than just a comment from us to direct bill the card used for the guarantee. And they were hassling the techs at check in, at check out, and in between. Since we didn’t know which hotel required it, we were stuck with printing and faxing every single hotel a direct bill authorization letter, on the account company’s letterhead. And as the weekwent on, I took that on, very much to the detriment of my own work.
Meanwhile, I was covering for 1, 2, or 3 people all week long – another reason I couldn’t do my own work.
Monday – covered for groups agent, ticket support agent. Did not get everything done.
Tuesday – covered for ticket support agent, got well stuck in with hotel faxes. Apologized to groups agent.
Wednesday – covered for team leader, support, groups agent again, faxed hotels. Day from hell.
Thursday – covered for team leader, support, faxed hotels. Gradual progress on my own backlog.
Friday – covered for team leader, support, faxed hotels. Spun in place but made progress late in day.
At all times during the week, I was interrupted numerous times or had to break off and do something completely different from what I was doing at any one time, and multitasking was not an option due to the way various tasks do not play well together. I can’t run file finishing programs on records, for example, and do anything else on my computer (email, print faxes, etc.) because the file finishers take focus.
Here’s a list of the kinds of things I can be interrupted for at any time, sometimes several at a time:
I’ve got several ideas for how this ridiculous process that I saddled myself with could be semi-automated, and one of them has to do with the email program we use at work. As it happens, David runs a discussion list for users of this program who are also programmers on the midrange computer that is his area of expertise. He will put the word out to find out if there’s a way to get the file attachments to print automatically. I’ve already got it set up to filter the emails from a generic inbox to my own and myteam leader’s inboxes, but then all the emails have to be physically opened to and then the attachments opened in order to print them, and that’s the tedious part. I can “batch print” the cover emails all at once, ,but most of them don’t have special notes so it’s a waste of paper.
Another thing is if I didn’t have to make the trek halfway across the office to the printer, it would be less wear and tear on me and the carpeting. My TL has her own printer and originally was doing all the printing, and then I cover for her when she’s out but have to use the “shared” printer that’s between my desk and the even more distant “shared” fax machine. I told her Monday it was ridiculous for her to spend all her time printing requests and authorizations, so here I am doing it – and it really isan all-day job. Today, someone brought me a printer to be directly connected to my computer – oh joy of joys – and it’s a fax printer too. However, it’s missing the power cord and the phone cord, and it’s somebody’s castoff and I’m told the “fax part is busted.” Maybe Monday, I can find the needful things to hook it up. I’ve got the cable for it, at least.
If we could get this old and busted fax printer hooked up and working, that would be a huge time saver. Based on what I know of the new division, buying a new fax printer is probably not in the cards, so I’ll take whatever I can get for now. If it only prints, that’s a help.
If we could get or have access to a fax-to-email program, for those happy few, those band of techs that don’t have email with which to submit their approved travel requests, I would be one happy agent. That would solve the problem of the illegible faxes that get scuffled into the “general” pile and buried at the shared fax machine.
There was no file system for the sheets in place when this began a few weeks ago, and they are in a pile that is now 10 inches high. We are waiting for some fancy file thing that my TL ordered. It’s probably the box that’s been sitting at her desk since just after she left. She has a number of completed sheets and “problem” files stacked all over her printer and monitors. I had found a numbered accordion file for her, and it was still unused, so started putting just the faxed authorization sheets (with “ok”transmission acknowledgements) in each numbered pocket by arrival date. It’s to be cleaned out monthly, ie., when we reach June 1, all the sheets for May 1 will get filed in a 12-month file. Or thrown out, as the case may be. There’s not room to put the request sheets and all the fax acks together in the accordion file, I think. I was originally taking the time to collate them all together, but can’t do that and get anything else done.
Now, the agents are putting all hotel records they book on a holding queue. I print the authorization letters from there, and move the records to a second queue as I go. Anything in the second queue has been printed and is being faxed or waiting for the fax acks to print. I document and remove from the second queue asacknowledgments fax acks come in. When I manage to work efficiently and not send to a wrong number, the records are in the same order as the letters, as are the acknowledgements. It allcomes together beautifully in the end, and then the letters and acknowledgements are stapled and put in the date file. I’ve learned to keep the acknowledgements because sometimes the hotel wants a re-fax if we call them to extend the tech’s stay. ARGH. Why you do this?
A small, a very small number of hotels have refused to honor the request for direct billing in the reservatiion comments, and also refuse to honor the faxed authorization letters, and have to be called and cajoled. Most of them eventually agree to the arrangement, though they may ask for a slightly different authorization letter to put in their permanent files or binders. A smaller number of THOSE require that we fill out a form of their own that they insist on faxing to us. Some of them flat refusethe direct billings in any way, and the techs will remember the agony and embarassment of having to pull out their personal credit cards knowing that it’s a pain to get reimbursed. However, the admins won’t remember those specific hotels are to be avoided and won’t warn against them on future requests, so we’ll have it all to do over again with some other hapless tech that happens to stay there.
I’ve designated a “customer service problems” queue for my team leader to review on Monday. By coincidence, I co-opted a queue she was using for the same purpose for a previous project that has now ended.
The admins I’ve spoken with have all been satisfied once we’ve worked out a resolution – there is one lady that will be a tougher nut to crack, but we hope that the process will improve and the angst be reduced.
Meanwhile, the persistent cough is with me always. One night – one of the days from hell – it got very bad again and I wondered what the hell was going on – I was taking all my prescription meds?? Then I realized that it must have a stress trigger, too. Dammit. So amidst all of this, I have to work even harder to keep an even keel, laugh things off, and make friendly and supportive noises at all times to all cow-orkers.
This is not in my nature, the interpersonal schmoozing. I’m good at laughing things off, but can let things get away from me to that point that nothing at all is funny when constantly fielding questions, calls, and demands for action or help. I cried like a baby, a big fat blubbering baby, on Monday night. And that was with my team leader still in town!
David has been my rock. But then he was out of town Sunday and Monday, hence the blubby baby act. I went home to an empty house, getting there at about 1015pm after stopping for gas, Wendyburger, and more goddamn discount cough drops from Walgreen’s (I’m on my third bag of 100).
That’s about it. Oh – and what the hell is with the price of gas all of a sudden???
I’m going to bed.
Canada Post cowed by very threatening cat | Oddly Enough | Reuters
WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – Canada's postal system has stopped delivering mail to a home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, after a mail carrier was scared away by a "very threatening cat," the Winnipeg Free Press said on Friday.
My Seattle-based friend Kevin sent me this, owing to our mutual interest in all things Pythonesque. He imagines Eric Idle in the role of a perky, winsome newsreader describing the ferocious feline as ""8-year-old declawed Shadow loves to cuddle, and wouldn't bat an eye if a bomb went off."
Tapestry Comics: A Directory of Web Comics with Feeds
I read several comics courtesy of Tapestry's feed. It's worth a few bucks in their tip jar!
Not very impressive, now that Jim Naughton has laid it out like this. I hadn't heard the story of what Bishop MacPherson said at the recent Primates' Meeting.
The ACI further undermined itself by mishandling the Armstrong case, which is still unfolding in Colorado. As executive director of the ACI, Armstrong had mingled the bank accounts of his parish with those of the institute, which was not a legal entity, but rather, as its president the Rev. Christopher Seitz admitted—adopting the characterization of one of the group’s critics—just “six guys with a Web site.” Faced with the possibility that Armstrong’s trial would further tarnish its reputation, Seitz, Radner and their colleagues had to sever their ties with the man who was not only their executive director, but the owner of their web domain.
So it came to pass that a five-man organization that presumed to tell the 77-million member Anglican Communion how to resolve its internal difficulties had to disassociate itself from its own Web site. The ACI now has a new Web site, but credibility, unlike domain names, can’t be bought.
The steering committee’s cause has also been damaged by one of its own members. News of what transpires inside the Primates Meeting filters slowly through the Anglican system, so descriptions of Bishop Bruce MacPherson’s pointed personal attack on Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori at the meeting in Tanzania is just beginning to achieve wide circulation. Observers say that MacPherson, who had been invited to the meeting to speak on behalf of the bishops who had endorsed the Camp Allen principles, characterized Bishop Jefferts Schori as the embodiment of everything that was wrong with the Episcopal Church. The comments, observers said, went well beyond the issues under consideration at the meeting and included a general condemnation of her beliefs and her ministry. MacPherson’s remarks made those of Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, who spoke on behalf of the Anglican Communion Network, seem mild by comparison, observers said.