… she just gets cuter every day.

But there are rules to the thinking.

I have three questions, one I think I’ve asked somewhere before, two that occurred to me this week. You are to choose one question to answer. However, you cannot Google. Or you can, but you won’t get as much fun out of it.

Choose ONE question only. If you know the answer off the top of your head (exact names, numbers, etc, not required, just general answers), you can give that answer. If you don’t know the answer to any of the questions off the top of your head, you are to make up the most ludicrously fake answer you can, but it still needs to sound real. Basically, bullshit like it’s your job. For the record, I don’t know the answers to any of them and don’t plan on looking them up.

1. Do you think the guy who invented the deck of cards was crazy rich? How long do you think people have been playing with the standard kind of playing cards, you know, 2-10, J, Q, K, A? Do you think that before that there were OTHER kinds of decks of cards, or one day some guy drew them up and said “HEY THESE HERE ARE PLAYING CARDS” and it took off from there? You think it started with just one deck some guy carried around to fancy parties, or did some company decide to just make them and sell them and they became the standard?

2. How come when you’re watching the opening credits of a TV show, take seaQuest for example, it shows actor name, actor name, actor name, actor name, and then last, it says “and actor name as so and so,” like in my example it starts with Roy Scheider, then Jonathan Brandis and at the end it says “and Stephanie Beachum as Dr. Kristen Westphalen,” and she’s the only one whose character is listed? I think it was like that on Gilligan’s Island as well. I know that in most shows, the ORDER of the credits has to do with star power and/or alphabetical order and/or the size of the role, but I’m curious about that last person being the only one to have their character listed.

3. How high can your average bug fly? And how far? And how far can a bug go before it’s like, completely lost and no idea how to get back home? Do they even have homes? Do they get tired of flying and like go go go go and then have to rest, or is flying just like, their thing? And you know how if we, as people, go really high, like up a mountain, the air is thinner and it’s harder to breathe? Does that happen to bugs, and would it happen for them at, like, the top of a hill? Would you ever see a fly loose in the top floor of the Empire State building? How would it get up there? Fly? That’s pretty far. Take the elevator?

And lastly, this question is a bonus opinion question and open to everyone.

If you read the comments on my last entry, you’ll see my new boss commented, and that she doesn’t like the word boss. I was aware of that, but wasn’t really sure what word to use to communicate her role - she owns the company, she is the one in charge, but from all you’ve heard me say about Antharia, you know it’s pretty non-standard in general. It’s not the typical boss-employee relationship where she hands down orders from on high and we all perform; however, I was at a loss what kind of word to use to best describe her so I used “boss” for simplicity of communication. So you tell me what you think a good word is, and that is what I will use from now on.

Ok, ok. I will write about my new job. But just for the record, you demanding, bloodsucking fiends, I promised nothing!

Anyhoo. I didn’t write about it right away because I’m not too sure what to say. I mean, in a general sense, it’s just a job like any other job. In a more specific sense, it’s WAY different from my last job, but I rarely talked about my last job, so comparisons won’t make much sense to you.

I’ve only got two days there under my belt, but I’ll do the best I can, in cop-out list format, as is my habit.

1. The Commute. It’s longer. It’s way longer. But it’s also kind of not. To get this, really, you’ll have to be familiar with the Maryland area, but I’ll say it anyway. I live in, and previously also worked in, Montgomery County. I would leave for work between 6:15 and 6:30 in the morning, take 270, and get there just a bit before 7am. Now, I’m going from Montgomery County to PG County. And if you ARE familiar with Maryland, you’ll know that this is my least favorite part of the whole deal. Not the drive, but the fact that I am now actually spending time in PG County. Oh, the things we do.

Anyway, I leave at about 9ish now (actually, for two straight days my boss has grilled me about what time I left, because she already has one workaholic in the office and is trying to quash my former habits from the accounting firm of getting to work obnoxiously early for no good reason) and I’ve gotten to work at about 10 of 9 both days. It’s a pretty long drive, but it doesn’t FEEL that long. If you’re familiar with 495, you’ll understand that I had mentally girded my loins for the commute of death (I used to do PG County to Montgomery County and it was about 90 minutes each way due to traffic), and while this IS a long trip, since it’s after the worst of rush hour, it’s not bumper to bumper slow going, it flows pretty well, so it just doesn’t feel that bad. In serious traffic, this trip could easily take me closer to 90 minutes. I’ve been informed, though, if I am ever driving to work, come to a dead stop in traffic, am stuck there for a long time, and am closer to home than work, to call them and tell them I’m going to work from home because fuck that. That’s nice. Should the same thing happen at the accounting firm, I’d be expected to code the time I was late to leave, or work through lunch, or work late. Not that the way the accounting firm does things is wrong, it’s just a nice perk if you’re familiar with the schizophrenic traffic on the DC Beltway.

2. The office. Compared to the high-rise 6 floor building I was working in, the office park I now work in is really different. It’s one of those ones that kind of looks like townhouses, or maybe a motel? I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. I’ve not really seen too many like it. There’s a bunch of medical offices in the same complex. We have, I think, 3 suites combined into one. It’s not even the size of one of the floors we had possession of at the accounting firm. It looks a lot like my bedroom, really. It’s dimly lit (floor lamps instead of using the overheads), the walls are painted bright colors, including Antharia orange. There’s a fully stocked kitchen, though I still haven’t broken the habit of carting around my own diet soda. Down at the far end of the office is the developer section, where there are three developers. The tall one, the brilliant genius one, and the junior one. That’s what we’ll call them, I suppose. Coming along the room, there are then two desks for interns, and we’ll have a new intern, a developer intern, I believe, starting in August. Then, across from the door and ping pong table, is the desk that will be mine, but for now I am working in the class room side by side with my new boss, basically so she can teach me things and I can have questions answered. She has an office, but she also likes to work in the classroom for more room to spread out. Between the desk that will be mine and my boss’s office is one more desk, for the project manager, who I met on Friday at the lunch/Batman event, but she is no longer with the company. There’s also a small conference room where every morning there is a short meeting called the staff huddle where everyone basically says here are the top three things they’ll be working on today, and everyone is together for questions and such about the status of different projects and issues.

3. The work. At a big corporate firm like the one I was at, with 300+ employees, your job and areas of responsibility are pretty divided and regimented, and once you kind of master your part, well… I guess this is the hardest part for me to explain. On the first day, my boss got me set up with a temporary laptop and got my email set up, and my task list, as that’s how they manage things for the moment, tasks passed back and forth between each other. Upon opening both, I had 40+ emails and 20+ tasks. Some were training tasks, some were follow up calls/emails with clients, and lots of other things. Basically, completely hitting the ground running, I guess. The area of responsibility with this job is pretty huge. With such a small number of employees, three being developers, one being a project manager and one being the boss, all of the more administrative work is really left to one person. I don’t know if I could even really list all the stuff I’ll be responsible for because I don’t quite know it all yet. Basic admin stuff - answering the phone and the door and getting the mail, light filing, minor HR stuff. Planning for conferences and travel to some extent, following up with clients that my boss has contacted, scheduling demos of our products, eventually running demos of our products, keeping track of the schedule of classes that we teach, and on and on. I guess the best way to explain the difference is that I’m going from a highly managed, supervised position where my responsbilities were limited and closely watched to a “just, you know, do stuff” position. There’s a lot a lot to be done and it has, initially, been overwhelming. I expect it will continue to be for a few weeks until I feel like I’ve got a grip on the day to day flow of work, and 4 billion emails, and etc.

4. Stuff I’ve done. I know that the job totally sounds awesome, and it really is, but as far as like, the day to day stuff, it’s the same as anywhere else. I’ve ordered pizza, I’ve carried a bunch of boxes to be recylced, I’m struggled with the filing system. I’ve answered the phone and totally pretended like I knew what I was talking about. I’ve learned how to work my email, my task list, and the ticketing system. I’m starting to learn all our products which are, as I’ve said, completely awesome and I’ve enjoyed totally nerding out about them. I found out that I’m going to be in San Francisco next spring, and likely in Arizona in a couple of weeks. I’ve repeatedly chased a dog away from my lunch and taken pages upon pages of notes. I’ve had minor doubts about whether or not I can do this followed by moments of “OF COURSE I FUCKING CAN.” I’ve been told that my title, Production Coordinator, is made up for the position and my boss doesn’t care what I call myself.

I’ve decided on Deputy of Awesome.

PS - Yesterday I wore my Julia Nunes shirt from Josh (see his show write up here if you missed it) and today I am going to wear my squirrel shirt from Bellwether!

That’s why I am DEPUTY OF AWESOME and you’re not.

PPS - Tonight I’m going to put up the “Hi TJ!” pictures I’ve gotten recently, and right NOW I am going to remind you to get yourself a camera and a damn sharpie and make my damn day!

So, I have a San Disk Sansa and my mp3 player of choice, and when I bought it, it came with 3 free months of Rhapsody Music Service. I used the three free months and I really liked the service. I’d never used a paid music service before (ahem), so it took some getting used to. About $14.95 a month, and I could keep as much music on my mp3 player as I wanted and change it at will. If I want to buy tracks, to be able to burn them or whatever, it’s like like $.89 a track. I never did that, though, because 1, they come with all this DRM protection and 2, my mp3 player plugs in right into a port in my car, I never really had the need for the music to be anywhere bu on my mp3 player.

There were occasional problems with the service, most notable usually that every once in a while, maybe once a month or once every two months, it wouldn’t recognize my user name or password, and I couldn’t log in. This was annoying, but I usually just waited until the next day. The only time it was a real pain was when it had been a while since you connected to the service - you have to connect at least once in every 30 day period so it knows your music is paid for, otherwise those songs wouldn’t play.

Anyway, after I’ve had my new computer for a couple of days, I’ve got to plug the mp3 player in to charge and stuff, so I went ahead and downloaded the software onto the computer so I could update my tracks at the same time. Or at least, that’s how I thought it would go. I tried over and over to log into the website and it kept saying they had no record of my user name or password. I checked my bank statement, and since I had the payment on auto-debit from my account, I was paid up. So I left it for the night. Next night, I try a couple of more times, and it finally works and lets me download the software. Except, instead of accessing the account that I’d been paying for for like, a year, it used that email address and password and created a free account, where I was allowed 25 plays a month and that was that.

See, now THAT is a problem. If I am logged into a free account, and plug my mp3 player in, it’ll deauthorize all the tracks I have that are, if you recall, paid up for the rest of my billing cycle. I can’t get anything new, I can’t authorize the tracks I do have, and NOW I am pissed. More than that, when I log into my account, it thinks it’s a free account. My payment for the service is set to auto-debit from my account, so I couldn’t even get into my account to stop the payments. Because to them, the account didn’t exist. Nice, huh?

So I log into their live chat dealie and talk to a nice gentleman named Mark, who tells me that unfortunately, he can only find a free account under that email address, and am I sure the email address is correct? I was very sure. Absolutely positive. I know a lot of these customer service things come down to the customer having done something stupid, but I swear I had the right email address. So, Mark tells me there’s nothing else he can do for me, and asks if it would be okay if he escalated this problem and I would get an email from their Tier 2 support within 24 hours. I said sure, go ahead, but do you have a phone number I can call anyway, because I’m going to.

So I get off the live chat with useless Mark and call the customer support number he’d given me. After spelling my email address to the non-English speaking tech support NO LESS THAN 5 times, I am informed oh, guess what, we only have a free account in that name. Yeah, no. That doesn’t work for me. So she offers to look it up by my credit card number. I give it to her and sit on hold for maybe a minute or two, and she comes back and says “I see you do have an account, and this is a known issue. It will be fixed within 2 days.”

Hooray!

Well, on Tuesday, I am sitting at work, the issue not really on my mind at all, as the 2 days wouldn’t really be up until that night. But then, I got an email from the Tier 2 support who supposedly was going to respond “within 24 hours.”

Basically it says, I’ve been following this issue closely and there’s only a free account with that email address. So send us your alternate email addresses and billing information and we’ll investigate further.

I wrote back and said, you know, obviously you haven’t been following this issue closely at ALL because I talked to someone last night, was told it was a known issue and that it would be fixed within 2 days. My email address is correct, and I’m not sending you my cilling information through email. Basically, fuckin fix it. Except I didn’t say that part. I was just summing up.

Anyway, I also said to go ahead and keep looking into it, and not to close the issue, but that I was going to go make a phonecall to customer support again. Unfortunately, I ended up getting really distracted at work because they had cut of my direct deposit sooner than I thought they would, my bank account had fallen into the negative, I had to take a paper check to the bank, I was stressed out and way frustrated, and I just ended up not calling that morning.

And I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t.

Couple hours after my pay check fiasco, I get an email, FROM Rhapsody, TO the email they CLAIM has no paid account attatched to it.

“Hi, blah blah blah, we tried to run your credit card three times and it didn’t work so we’re cancelling your account!”

Well, Rhapsody, I’m sorry my bank account was briefly in the negative, but tell me this - WHY were you running a credit card on an account you claimed repeatedly was a FREE account? You manged to send that email to the correct email address and everything, but weird you’d pick that email address out of all the email addresses in the world, since you were so adamant that that particular email address had never paid a damn dime for your service.

HMM?!?! Sure straigtened up fast when it looked like the money was cut off!

So really, that’s just funny. Hugely inconvenient, I’ll lose all my music, I’ll need a new Rhapsody account, true, but they DID save me the trouble of cancelling while money is a bit tight, and honestly, the whole thing was just comical.

ESPECIALLY because TWO WHOLE DAYS later, I got this:

Dear [TJ],

Thank you for writing back to us.

I understand that you are unable to sign in and access your Rhapsody paid account.

I checked our database using the e-mail address ‘[blargh@blarghco.com]’ and found that you have “Downloads Only” account. You need not pay a monthly subscription, but will be charged for the burning that you make at $0.99 per track.

Rhapsody 25 or Downloads Only is a free service. Each month, Rhapsody 25 gives you 25 free streams (also called “song plays”) from the Music Guide. You can play one song 25 times, 25 different songs one time each or any combination. You also get access to 25 premium radio stations for free.

If you have any other account, please reply with the username and e-mail address that was used to sign up for the subscription. Once we receive this information and locate the account, we can assist you with your inquiry.

Anand
RealNetworks Technical Support
Tier 2 Escalation Department

Oh, Rhapsody. You have to be fucking kidding me.

Well, Internet, it is my first official day at my new job and I am, of course, awake way too early. On Friday, I had been talking to my new boss about how sometimes I would end up at the accounting firm at 6:30 in the morning because I’d get up too early, be ready too early and then just leave because for work, you know, what else am I going to do? As I was leaving to come back home after the movie, she sternly reminded me to stay home until 9am! Leave for work at the proper time, like a normal person!

So I decided, well, I’ll sleep til 8 and then it’ll be the perfect timing to leave at 9 and I’ll be all set.

Sleep til 8. Yeah, right.

I woke up at 3:30am, 5am, and then woke up again in a PANIC at 6:30am because of the way the sun was coming in through the windows - my alarm hadn’t gone off, but previously, if the sun was coming in the windows like that, I was LATE and it was time to wake up in a FRENZY! Except I wasn’t late at all, but I was already in a frenzy, so here I am. Awake. I’m still attempting to prevent myself from starting to get ready until 8am, though. I can learn to sleep til 8, I know I can!

Anyhoo, so Friday, right, I had to go down to College Park to carpool with my boss and another employee down to DC. I lived in College Park for a lot of years, but I took directions with me because… well… trust me. I needed to. So I get down there, I’m making good time, traffic on 495 wasn’t bad at all, the directions are going well once I get off the highway, but right near the end I made a quick mistake, as one turn came immediately after another and I wasn’t quite prepared. No problem, I only had to go around the block, but then… I saw a road I used to live on. So… I drove on it. Because I make no sense. So then I was quite lost. BECAUSE I MAKE NO SENSE.

I got there okay, though, and off we went for lunch. We went to a tapas restaurant in DC, and I’m pretty sure the hostess hated us, but that’s ok because I hated her first. Pretty much everyone there had their nose turned in the air at us, but WE ATE THEIR FOOD ANYWAY AND IT WAS EXCELLENT. Already just having lunch with these guys, it was worlds different that the accounting firm. With just about the entire company having lunch together, plus 2 significant others, there were only 9 of us. I didn’t really get to talk to anyone in depth, but it was a lot of fun and really relaxed, definitely a good time. After lunch we headed over to the movie, and of course Batman was amazing. I’m sure a lot of you have seen it by now, but I’m sure a lot haven’t as well, so I’m not going to say anything right now except go, go see it. Nothing else really super-notable happened, except I did tell my boss that “It’s not my fault that I’m awesome and people want to be my friend,” which was repeated several times through the rest of the day.

The last two weeks going up to the end of my time at the accounting firm were seriously the longest, most stressful weeks I have ever had there. By the time I left there on Thursday I was just ready to lay in a heap and do nothing for about a month. But I don’t have a month, I start my new job today, but except for the fact that I have an hour long commute, I oddly feel like I’m on vacation. Probably because by the time I get there today, I normally would have been at work for over 3 hours.

I don’t know yet how good I’m going to be able to be about answering my email or meebo messages during the day, and with the whole new work hours and schedule, I might have to make a shift to evening blog posts, I don’t know yet. I also don’t quite have the balls yet to wear my new shirt from Bellwether to work, I know that it’s a casual place but I have to suss out their opinions on fetus thievery first, before I risk it.

AND THERE GOES MY ALARM CLOCK!

I shall be back with the first day report this eveing!

OMG thank you Bellwether!!, originally uploaded by TemerityJane.

Have I mentioned my readers are awesome? <3 Bell

Well, I’m going to have to work out some kind of new blogging schedule.

I’m sitting on my bed right now, it’s about 8am. I had to stay up WAY late last night to be able to get up this late. Adjusting my sleeping schedule is going to be difficult. You’d think sleeping in would be easy, but I’m not so good at it. My problem is, as soon as I get up, I go into my getting ready routine. As soon as I’m ready, I leave. I don’t really know what to do with myself if I’m ready too early, that’s how I sometimes ended up at my desk at the accounting firm at 6:30 in the morning.

Well, it’s 8am now and I have to leave to head down to my new boss’s house in about an hour. We’re carpooling down to DC to have lunch and see Batman. It was originally a going away party for a couple of employees, but they decided they’d like to make it my welcome party as well. I was falling asleep last night and was suddenly just gripped with this terrible panic - “Oh no, this is such a bad idea, I don’t want to go somewhere and be the weird girl all over again, I was obviously the sore thumb at the accounting firm but at least they were used to me… ” But I’ve just got to suck it up and either try not to be weird, or hope there’s someone weirder than me. Do you think they’ll care that it’s hard for me to work without a blanket wrapped around me?

The last week at the accounting firm was the most stressful, difficult week I have ever had there. It was just one thing after another. Little things, petty, cooincidental things, but they just kept piling up. My mailbox was moved, there were problems with my paycheck - but my supervisor really went out of her way to make my last day nice. They had a party for me with all my favorite foods, the ones she’s watched me eat at my desk when I’m too busy to leave for lunch - Cheetos and M&Ms, and she also made the fudge that she brings me every year on my birthday. I guess I won’t have birthday fudge anymore. Or have to work another tax season. Or get up at 5 in the morning.

I guess I better go get showered and ready to go. This is kind of a big day, I think. My first official day at work is Monday, but as I said, today is a going away/welcome party with my new company, so a whole dya of all new people. I don’t really have much else to say right now, I’m just stalling. Like if I don’t get in the shower, I won’t actually have to leave.

Except that’s not quite how it works, I have to leave regardless. Stalling just determines if I leave clean or dirty.

I am REALLY nervous. What if no one likes me, or they think I dress funny, or no one wants to sit by me at lunch! Can someone come and hold my hand please?