Amanda CAARSON

I was listening when the news broke. Paul Johnson, after being abducted by terrorists, was beheaded. The video has already been released to Al Arabia, and will probably be on the ‘Net shortly. There are also pictures. This is sick. But the fact that, not only his family, but tens of Saudi Arabians and other Muslims pleaded for his release, (one Muslim man even going so far as to take Johnson under his protection and guarantee as a Muslim, even though he wasn’t officially a Muslim), was extremely heartwarming. Kind of makes you stop and think. We all get carried away with our individual squobbles. But Paul Johnson’s family has to start dealing with the fact that they’ll never see their loved one again, until they meet him again in Paradise. I think anyone who has any amount of sense or decency should stop and think about that for a moment, at least for today. May Paul Johnson’s family, along with the families of Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl, (both of whom died in the exact same fashion), be comforted among the mourners of Tziyon and Yerushalayim.

It’s almost five in the morning, and since I’m not asleep, I figure I’ll post. I’ve been extremely busy. I’ve worked my normal hours, as well as putting in my share of overtime to try to stem the cue. We haven’t been successful at doing that until this week, and even at that, we still haven’t managed to go more than thirty minutes without fluctuating between cue and sane call volumes. The pharmacists are pissed at Express Scripts for taking on the tricare and Triwest contracts, and are petitioning the government to take those contracts back. I don’t thinkit will happen. As a result, I’m thinking of renting my cubicle at Convergys outright. I spend more time there than I do here. I get home after midnight, so by the time I unwind, it’s two in the morning, so I go to bed, and don’t wake up till noon. Which doesn’t leave much time to get anything done. They’ve asked us to voluntarily work our lunches and breaks to try to stem the cue. Right. I’m not in to putting in charity time for Convergys. They screwed up my pay check again, but this time, my supervisor admitted it was his fault. Progress? Probably not. Anybody who’s ever been a Convergys bitch can simpathize. Feel free to share your Convergys horor stories here.

Hey all:
It’s been an incredibly long time since I’ve posted, and read, for that matter. There’s been a shitload going on here. Work’s extremely hectic, and there’s a ton of baby-mama-drama to go with the rest of the work-related chaos. We just took on 800 more companies, one of which is Tricare, which handles all the insurance for the Department of Defense. Our system’s been shakier than an epaleptic man in an earthquake with Parkenson’s disease for the last two days, and that has resulted in our being in cue constantly for that length of time. We haven’t dropped below 150 the whole time. When I left work today, we were 198 in cue. Last night, the record was 297. As far as the chaos goes at work, let’s just say that the HR manual is a joke. Jerry knows what I’m talking about. Also, let’s just say there’s been some “fraternization” between members of the chain of command, within a direct hierarchy. Jerry, if you’re interested in the gossip, get in touch. I think you’d find it quite Jerry-Springer-like. It involves one of our favorite people. I worked some overtime last week, and that pays $12 for every hour of over time. I worked six hours. More pay is good. I watched the Austin Powers movies this weekend, and saw Gold Member for the first time. It started out good, but ended really badly. Oh well. I think we’re done with the Austin Powers saga, although I have to say I liked the part where Britney Spears turned out to be a fembot, and that part at the end when she asked Minime if the kick-stand comment was true, and then begged for his cell number. Made a couple of friends at work: Crystal and Andrew. Andrew’s hilarious. He’s always making up some song, or joke, or something like that. And there are nicknames for everything: For example, fundamentalist Christians are known as “churchers.” Headaches, (which I’ve had a lot of lately, some pretty bad ones), are “Convergys cramps.” Well, I’m going to go for now. I can’t say when I’ll post next, because for the foreseeable future, the only thing that’s coming up on the agenda is work, and more work, and more work. If you have something to say, leave it in the comments. Bye for now.

I just finished reading the last book in the Left behind series. It was
good, except it was missing one thing: Some serious editing. The rest of
the series could use some serious editing too, but the other books were
nowhere near as annoying as the last one. The thing that kept going through
my mind was: Get on with it. They spend four hundred and some odd pages
covering about a week. Definitely not worth keeping on the drive. On to
the next book. Haven’t decided what it’s going to be yet. Probably
something scientifically fictional, though.

Continue reading →

New info on the job front: Hurry up and wait some more. Apparently, they want to see if their software’s goign to work with Jaws before they give us any answers. From what I was told by the NT admin a few weeks ago, they’re still using the same database and interface, so what’s the deal. Who knows. To be honest, the cynical side of me says: “You’re about to take the gree one.” But, we’ll see. We had an adventure with the keyboard yesterday. The down-arrow key on the craptop keyboard decided it doesn’t want to communicate anymore, and things looked bleak. But, I managed to get in touch with the techy from our local services for the blind, and he happened to have some stray keyboards laying around. He’s the man. Things could have been disasterous if he hadn’t had those keyboards, and wasn’t willing to bring one over. Those of you who use Jaws, try to do it without a down-arrow, just to see what a craptasm it is.

Shalom all:
As the subject says, it’s the first day of Passover, about two minutes after sunrise. I always love Jewish holidays, especially Passover. This is the first Jewish holiday I ever celebrated. I didn’t get my Menorah until after my conversion, and Passover was where I got my first glimpse of Jewish communality. I spent my first Passover and participated in my first Seder with the folks from ECU Hillel, at the organizational advisor’s house. That’s where I got my first taste of matzah ball soup, matzah, kugel, and gefilteh fish. Ah, the memories. As I said, I didn’t do anything myself for Passover, but it’s still been nice to take this time to remember why we celebrate this festival to begin with: We celebrate it because G-d brought the Jewish people out of Egypt, with miracles, so we could serve him. More later.

Well folks, looks like we get to keep the hair. It turns out that using shampoo with conditioner in it already is a bad thing, because it doesn’t really condition your hair like separate conditioner would. Got my grocery shopping done today. No Pesach items, but we’ll think of something to commemorate the festival.

Looks like I have to go get a haircut sooner than possible. I’ve got a huge knot in my hair, and I have no idea how it got there, because I always make it a point to brush my hair out thoroughly. I didn’t notice it until yesterday morning, when I got out of the shower, and went to brush my hair. I’ve gotten most of it out, but my head, neck, shoulders and back are killing me now. because of where it’s at, and because of how long my hair is, I have to flip it up and over my face to completely brush it out, and keep it from tangling. So I’ve spent the last day or so trying to get this damned tangle out, and I’m just not making very much progress. So I’m going to Walmart to get this taken care of. That’s going to cost me $19 in cab fair alone, plus the price for the haircut. I’m really hoping something good can come out of this. I may only have to cut my bangs, (which are about shoulder-length), but as long as it doesn’t get any worse than that, I suppose I can deal. Maybe they have some sort of miracle detangler or something. Everybody keep your fingers crossed, or hope, or pray, (or whatever you do), that I don’t have to completely destroy my hair today.
Pesach (Passover) starts tomorrow night, and, for the first time since I first started studying for my conversion to Judaism, I’m not doing anything for the festival. Not that I’ve ever gotten the chance to go all-out, (have a huge meal for the Seder, or Passover service which takes place in the home, around the table, have a ton of people over to enjoy it, have plenty of Passover delecacies), but to do nothing is weird. While I’m at Walmart, I’ll see if I can pick up a few things. I’ll keep you guys posted on all this. Maybe it’ll all turn out better than I’m expecting. Things do that sometimes.

Shalom all:
It’s time for me to regale you with yet more tales from the steak house, which could also be classified as bobular blunders. As the above suggests, Ray and I went to Ryans again last night, and the food was considerably better. Note to self: Don’t go to Ryans, or any other restaurant for that matter, any later than two hours before they close. we ended up going after making a trip to the Sprint Store to have our phones configured with reliable sighted assistance. Bob would not have been good for that one. Things would have straight down the drain, without delay at that point. So anyway, we get the phones configured, and then go get some dinner. Begin bobular blunders. We sit down at the table, and Bob starts to discuss the current case of the cross-burning, and oppines that a man who happened to be a witness to the crime, and didn’t stop it, got too harshly judged. Apparently, eight years in jail, where you have cable and ‘net access, and eat better than a lot of people on the outside is just too much to deal with. Then, the conversation spirals down to the statement, made by Bob, that the law is as corrupt as could be, and that someone who witnesses a crime and does nothing is not as guilty as the other miscreants involved. Furthermore, when I brought up biblical support, (Bob relies heavily on the King James translation of the Bible for the underpinnings of a lot of the choices he makes and encourages others to make), for the concept of guilt by association in a case like that, Bob promptly declared that “do not stand idly by while your brother’s blood is shed” is a spiritual law as opposed to a civil law. That tends to be the way a lot of Christians, though not all, explain away the non-ceremonial requirements, (which, consequently, make up the majority of what Christians like to refer to as “the law”), when confronted with the question of why they don’t follow the law when Jesus specifically commanded it, or when you ask them how Jesus was supposed to have fulfilled commandments like that. But, I seriously digress. The point is, a statement like “do not stand idly by while your brother’s blood is shed” is very obviously a civil law, even if one does not take the time to look the verse up within its proper context. Ray didn’t say much during this point of the conversation, which I find interesting, given that Ray has an oppinion on most things. As the evening progressed, the conversation spiraled to yet new levels of depravity. Bob decided to tell Ray and I a story about a local woman, in her late twenties, who married a man in his eighties. He extolled this as right and proper. In order to impress upon you all the complete depravity and perversity of a statement like that, (yes, Bob has a nack for special nack for taking a situation or idea that’s already depraved in and of itself, and bringing it to new and completely unfathomable depths of indecency), I need to give you a little background. It goes without saying that Bob holds some extremely screwed up views. For instance: Vlind people all have bad childhoods by default; blind people shouldn’t date other blind people because, if they get married and spend the rest of their lives together, they become ultradependent; blind people have an extra license to sin than the rest of society because we’re all frustrated, lonely people who need some sort of opiate; and so on, etcetera. So, when Bob suggested that said woman did the right thing by marrying the octagenarian, neither Ray nor I were surprised, although it does continue to shock me, at least, every time I hear views like that expressed. This stems from Bob’s view that women need to date older men because men their age are going to just screw them over. Well, OK, I can’t say that one’s totally flawed. But, the way it gets borne out is disturbing. I date older men, but there’s a limit: Namely, anyone older than nine or ten years is excluded due to the fact that the number of commonalities starts to dwindle, and at that point, we’re getting a little too close to the generational gap. “Who’s your daddy” is not a line I want to hear, especially when it’s coming from someone who is supposed to be playing a totally different role. Fortunately, thanks to the ending of dinner, the conversation didn’t have any more oportunity to downgrade any further. Ray and I got back here, and promptly tuned in to No Holds barred Radio, and listened to the further torture of Ellis 2.0. Watch this space for more on that. Because I’ve spent the last little while on this entry, and I’m not sure, after reporting last night’s episode, you can really add other, unrelated incidents to the same entry, I’ll go for now. Thanks for reading.

OK, I’m sorry, but I just have to do this. This is begging and pleading for a response, in some other form than a comment to the journal in question, where the comment could be deleted.
The following is a quote from Jamminjerry’s journal:
“The next time this happens, (for those who don’t know, Jerry’s journal was visited by an annonymous poster, who decided they wanted to leave him a surprise), I will be taking action. I don’t know what I wil do, but I will do something!”
Question: How does one take action against an annonymous poster? Email the livejournal webmaster and request an IP trace for an entry that was posted almost a week ago? IP addresses aren’t usually attached to names. More to the point, it’s stupid. You didn’t lose any money, and it would have been much more prudent if you’d have just deleted the entry and all comments associated with it, and just let the whole thing be forgotten. Instead, you make a groundless threat against an unknown someone, thus making yourself look more like an ass than that entry ever did. You also showed yourself to be exceedingly arrogant and self-centered. If I recall correctly, you weren’t the one whose reputation was questioned, and you weren’t the one who was insulted. Your girlfriend was the one who was insulted. But you made no mention of looking out for her, or her feelings, and you made no attempt to repair the damage done to her reputation. In fact, you’ve shown that, when it really matters, and when really important things like personal honor are at stake, the only thing that really matters is whether or not your ego is satisfied. That speaks volumes.

It’s almost midnight, and I’m still up because I don’t feel tired, and see no point in going to bed just yet. I’m getting some laundry done, and will probably make sure to put it away immediately. I have to take a cab to the store tomorrow, because I forgot to pick up some much-needed household items yesterday while I was out. I hate that. The bandwidth’s really dodgy tonight, so I’ll probably read a book while I do my laundry.

I didn’t sleep well last night. I’ve been up since about 9 something last night, and will probably stay up today, so I can put away the rest of my laundry, do some more laundry, and some other stuff. I went to Walmart yesterday, and got some new jeans, and a new shirt. I needed the clothes, since it’s been a long time since I’ve actually went out and bought some clothes, with the exception of some kippot, and some kerchiefs. Well, I did get some clothes for work a few months ago, but I didn’t buy those, so, as far as this discussion is concerned, they don’t count. I also went out to eat at a place called K&W Cafeteria. The food left a lot to be desired. I ate what was supposed to be steak and gravy over rice, black-eyed peas, (which tasted as though they hadn’t even been washed, just shucked and thrown in the pot with G-d knows what), a roll (which was actually good), and a piece of lemon pie, (which was really runny, and had very little crust). Note to self: Don’t go there on a Sunday, or probably any other day. Someone commented annonymously to one of my recent entries, asking if the Steve I mentioned is Steve Wolf of WolfFM. To answer the question: No. My Steve’s last name is ze’evi. I just happen to like WolfFM. I would like to know who it was who asked, just out of curiosity. I don’t mind annonymous comments, except that I don’t get to see a name associated with some of them. Some, though, sign their names at the end of their posts, and I like that. It puts a name with a comment.