"I don't think I even want to know the answer to that, Morte"

Ok it's been a week since my last posting. At least that is better than the three of four weeks I had been doing. I'm still not sure I really have anything to write about. So I'll start writing and hope it's worth-while.

First of all I have started reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Actually I had already read the first half of the first book a few months ago and didn't much feel like going back and reading it again. So I read a few pages leading up to the second of half of the Fellowship of the Ring and started reading. Reading this book has made me appreciate how truly difficult it must have been to adapt such a thing for a popularly-accepted movie a broad range could enjoy. As I was reading I could see in my mind why they changed and re-arranged what they did in the way they did for the movie. And believe it or not I think they did a pretty good job for the adaptation. I should have The Two Towers finished by a week from this Sunday if I keep up my reading schedule. I'm still trying to decide if I want to go into the movie knowing the ending and how it goes for the third one. Truly this is one of the greatest epic series of novels ever written.

I have also rented a couple movies this week. The first one was a relatively low-budget one called 28 Days Later. It was pretty successful, I'm sure you've heard of it. I was sitting there trying to figure out all the symbolism that I am sure is there. Of course there was the director commentary track I could have turned on while I watched the movie a second time but I didn't go and do that. I hardly ever rent DVDs any more, I have so many movie channels on cable. Too bad few to none of them play anything worth watching. Oh but where was I? Right. 28 Days Later is indeed a very, very good movie. I'm not sure I would really describe it as "scary" however, unless of course you're on edge from the hype of it being scary and possibly chicks I guess find it scary. My sister seemed to anyway. Anytime any kind of music change happened she was up out of her seat freaked out. And the ending? I'm not quite sure about the ending. I expected something much different from what it was. The "alternate ending" was a little more like it but still not what I would have expected. And I'm still trying to figure the symbolism. Pfff. Whatever. I'm sure there was hardly any Freudian symbolism. Probably.

The other movie I rented was The Matrix: Reloaded. I'm still trying to decide if I really liked this movie or not. I mean I think I did but I'm still thinking about it. If they had just cut out that rave scene and the unnecessary sex scene the movie would have still worked and not lost anything for it. Also all that confusing stuff just for confusing sake was starting to get annoying. And what's with all the Biblical references anyway? I mean I'm not anti-bible or anything but how about some subtleties or something? And the ambiguous ending of course. What was up with that ending? What a rip. Still for a truly great experience so far as stunts and traffic scenes go this movie simply can't be missed. Not to mention no fewer than two saving-in-just-the-nick-of-time action sequences. Thos are always the best. And the choreography for the fighting sequences? Nothing short of perfection.

What enough fun/pointless stuff already? Well I did get that job interview I mentioned some how postponed or something. The earliest I could start now looks like sometime in December. What's the deal with that? So I guess I get to keep going on the MCSE course I've been taking this semester. I mean may as well continue learning while I'm searching for employment, right? I got an A in the first half of this MCSE course even though I missed 17 out of 80 questions on the final. I had a week to complete it and it was take-home/open-book. And I do nothing outside of class. Not much excuses for the not studying, eh? But I got an A so whateveh.

On the day of the final for that course I ended a meeting with the recruiting people I mentioned in the previous course. Actually my car was in the this repair place who had boxed me in and lost my keys. So I had a choice between dropping off my final for this 9-week course or going to the recruiters to see if I could get the job. Having little faith I would actually get this job (why should this one be any different?) I opted for the final/class thing. But got out soon enough I wanted to try and make it. The open call or whatever it was had been scheduled for a Thursday between 2:00 and 4:00 which was the time of my class. My Dad was driving since I didn't have a car. But he managed to come back and pick me up about 3:30 so we tried to make it over there. I had printed out directions from Map Quest and we followed them. Unfortunately they were grossly inaccurate and did not arrive at the recruiting office until about 4:15 or so. The trip, we soon realized, should not have taken us more than 20 or 25 minutes at the most.

But after looking over my resume the two women working there decided to let me sign up anyway. So I took an extremely lame technical assessment of some sort and filled out a bunch of stupid information on the computer followed by yet more paper work in the form of tax information and agreements to be good or something. But my appointment gets postponed. Some how the recruiting office didn't know my assigned time had been cancelled in favor of more interviews at a later date. Hopefully they'll call me back! But what am I to do between now and sometime in December? Kind of hard to plan around. Annoying also. I just hope my group members in my class don't get too peeved around my leaving. I've been trying to warn them I could find a job at any time and have to drop the class for the last few weeks. I am fairly advanced for such a class as this after all and my group seems like they're actually learning stuff and having to study. Ah those were the days! Easy classes rock :-).

I was just thinking about this whole job thing the other day. It seems kind of like I was really working my up to a particular place over the past 10 months or so. I mean last January I was an intern, unpaid though it was I did learn about the workings of a private company and deadlines and having to get out of bed and do stuff. From "the company" I learned what go so, so wrong in an environment but at least I worked my way in to that whole 40 hour work-week and how to do deal with difficult customers. So now, at this point (assuming I haven't lost what ever I think I've gained), it's like I am finally ready for a real job, with real training and a real building. If I'm lucky I might even have a bathroom with running water...and soap! But lets not be overly optimistic.

Now in an effort to partially prepare myself for this interview I may or may not have coming up I am going to try and recall some of the more memorable calls I had at the last job. Wow, what a great sentence. Who couldn't love writing?

Ok so there was this one call from a guy who sounded really great in his voice and was incredibly willing to work with me as a tech support type person. He was living in Vallejo and telling me about the lack of local numbers. Then about calling the local Telco and getting the explanation about truck lines and the weirdness of how the lines work into that area. At some point I had to ask if he was some sort of radio personality of some sort. He said he had been in the past and that now he was into HAM radio. I made a reference to a CB radio and he promptly compared a toy truck or a monster truck as an analogy (or something like that) demonstrating the two are nothing a like. So that was like some kind of a celebrity meeting or something.

Then there was this other call where the guy kept referring to IE as if it were a web page and I kept correcting him. Ok maybe I should stop with the correcting part. But finally he asked why I kept correcting on a seemingly minor detail so I tried to explain it as the Internet working like a phone. When he dials up this is like having the phone hooked up, IE is like picking and the receiver and getting a dial one and typing in an address is like dialing a number. The web site on the other end is like the answering person communicating back. So can you talk before dialing or dial without a dial tone? As with connecting to the Internet you cannot load a web site on the Internet without first dialing a number and connecting. I think that did finally work as an analogy.

Oh and there was this one woman who wanted a copy of IE 5.5 for Mac on CD because she couldn't very well download it. No being very familiar with Mac software I looked at the Mac IE site and found there was not IE 5.5 for Mac even available, thus I could not send her a copy on CD. This only served to make her more angry and upset. She threatened to cancel her account and find an ISP who would send her a copy of IE 5.5 for Mac on CD. So what is a poor tech support to do in such a situation? Keep explaining the impossibility of the requested task until the irrational customer hangs up on me perhaps. Ok that one I failed to help the consumer. But it did teach me how to deal with difficult customers, or at least what "doesn’t" work.

Well I could continue on for hours but it's already late. Looks like my entries are starting to get long again. How nice.

Bye the way, the title of the last entry was from an episode of The Family Guy. Also it was really funny. Point out how superior they are and how them and the rest of the world so embrace socialism and then complain about the money and prosperity of the USA. Apparently they can have it both ways.

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