Amanda Unvarnished

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I guess the referral training doesn’t start until 13:30.
So I’ll fiddle around till then.
I’m in a very vicious mood today.
I hate this place, and most of the people, and the rules, and everything associated with this hellhole.
I was supposed to be on vacation this week, but my sweetheart got the “Needs of the Business” treatment from his boss, so that got nixed.
Meanwhile his boss will get to take his Memorial Day weekend off.
I hope it really sucks for him.
My ‘Net connection’s down at home, so I still have to deal with that later on.
I hope to get that fixed tonight, otherwise I’ll have two tons of email to go through.
Wait, I’ll have that to do anyway, since I haven’t gone through my email in at least two days.
This week’s dragging on, probably because I was looking forward to a break spent with someone who’s actually intelligent, capable of really deep conversation, and just plain fun and a genuine pleasure to be around.
Corporate America sucks.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I had forgotten that any form of protest is practically illegal around here.
I had taken to not wearing my badge in protest against my current situation, but apparently that’s unacceptable.
I’ll have to find something else.
It’s better than just accepting the idiocy that passes for management in this case.
I’m off to referral training for the rest of the afternoon, or most of it.
Yeah, that’s highly illogical too, since I can’t get into the damned system, but, once again, it’s the rules.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I was surfing down the XM dial, trying to find something to listen to, and I came across one of the most horrible pieces of auditory trash I think I’ve ever heard.
It was on the hits channel, and it was the tail end of a song.
The “artist” was spelling out the word “bananas” as if that was supposed to be something novel or insightful, I think.
Or maybe the point of pop music is to make sure there’s as little meaning and insight as possible.
Maybe that’s what they have to do to make sure they sell hit records.
And it seems to be getting worse and worse.
If you comb through the music of the 70’s you’ll find a lot of good stuff, as you will with the 80’s and even the 90’s, although I think the good started to be seriously outweighed by the bad by the mid-90’s.
But even now, if you really dig, you can find something worthwhile on the albums being released today by the most popular artists.
You just have to have a lot of patience, as in the patience of Job.
Is it just me, or does music seem to be getting worse by the decade?
I’ve even gone through some of the music of the 80’s and 90’s, and none of it seems as bad as the crap coming out today and being forced down the throats of the listening public by the record industry and the big radio conglomerates.
This doesn’t speak for the occasional anomalies, like Vanilla Ice, but I think it’s generally accurate.
I shudder to think of what pop music’s going to sound like in twenty years.
God help us.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I’ve finally got the site working with Firefox.
I’ve started using it a little myself, and it works, with the exception of some hangups it seems to have with Jaws.
I do like the tab functionality though.
And the cool thing is I got the errors (and there were quite a few of them) fixed in a week.
Client’s development team, you really bite hard.
You’ve had six months to fix the accessibility issues with your kloogy software, and you haven’t done a thing.
I went through thousands of lines of code, (thanks Yaakov and Heidi), and got the problems fixed.
You guys are total slackers.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m working on making the site accessible to Firefox users.
Unfortunately, that has turned into a huge nightmare.
Not only do I have to go through each line of code in the theme’s files, I also am going to have to go through the lines of code in each of the plugin files in order to figure out what code it’s generating, and what the errors are in that generated code.
I’m further along than I was over the weekend, but given that I have no idea how many more errors are going to be generated, I don’t know how much closer I am to getting the site accessible for FF users, to say nothing of other browsers.
I’ll keep working though.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I was out grocery shopping last night, and rode past a car with a bumper sticker that said: “My child was inmate of the month at the county jail.”
I didn’t think people here would even be able to resort to that level of ghettoness, but I guess I was wrong.
I really have got to find a way to either get the hell out of here, or figure out how to stop convincing myself things can’t get any more backward, ghetto or redneck than they already are.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

This would be entertaining if it weren’t maddening already.
I’m finding that more and more of the site I used to visit here at work are being blocked.
I understand that’s their job, and I suppose I’m technically violating the company’s internet usage policy.
It’s kind of difficult though when your only objective is to come to work and see how hard it is to keep yourself entertained for eight hours a day due to not being able to work.
I’d like to say this situation won’t drag on much longer, but I honestly have no idea.
Hell, it could drag on for a year and I wouldn’t be surprised.
I wonder if people in other corporations are actually as incompetent as they seem to be in this one?
Not all of them, mind you, just most.
Even some of the aggregatos I was using to get information for posts is blocked.
I suppose as long as they don’t block all of them, I’ll still have access to info.
If they do eventually block them all, the number of posts will drop dramatically.
At some point I need to finish uploading the rest of the Livejournal entries back up to the site, and then back up the database.
I hope to get that done this weekend.
I also hope to get the new theme working as well, because I really think the site needs a new look.
I’m just bored with the one that’s up now, but I need to make sure the new theme’s going to work with Firefox, and that’s proving difficult.
There is limited support for Firefox with Jaws, but not enough that would allow for a lot of testing.
I suppose as long as they don’t block Newsgator, I’ll still have access to some news.
God, this post is extremely random.
Definitely won’t end up in the top ten.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

If I can get this to work, then we’re back in business.
Let’s see.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

It seems as though the folks down at company headquarters have finally blocked access to the admin panel of my site, so that means I may have to blog this way, instead of just logging in and posting.
I hope this actually works.
I’m not sure if this account, which is a web account, is going to allow me to post correctly.
We’ll see.
I should have seen this coming, and actually I’m quite surprised they haven’t done it before now.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

No, that’s not a misspelling.
I meant it like that.
Michelle and her possey were arrested last Friday, and are now in jail.
I went to the police station today to pick up my DVD player.
When I asked the detective how he knew it was mine, he said he was sure it was mine because they admitted taking it from my apartment.
He also told me that Michelle said that they had come to my apartment planning to do what they did, but that they didn’t do it.
Yet, somehow my DVD player magically ended up in their possession.
I also made it a point to tell the detective that I’m not interested in any deals with the DA’s office.
The case will go there because one of the charges against them is possession of stolen goods, and that’s not a federal charge.
The detective said he wasn’t sure how the rest was going to be handled, or if they were all going to be tried together, and he also said that she has other charges pending.
The DVD player still has the sticker on it listing the suspect’s name and address.
I may leave it there as a sort of trophy.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

This morning, when I got to work, I got an email from the client, asking for yet another explanation of the issues involving the db_interface with Jaws.
I wrote out the following:

The problem with the search box delays things considerably.
Without knowing which criterion the member is going to provide, I have to
spend time scrolling through, (and waiting while the screen refreshes and
Jaws refocuses), before I can get to the next option.
This puts me in the position of having to make small talk with the customer
before I can even get the customer pulled up in the system.
As I’m sure you’re well aware, asking for a customer’s ID would not fix
this problem, as what the customer thinks is the ID could be anything from
a social security number to a prescription number.
Furthermore, referrals are also out, meaning that they can’t be done using
Jaws, and I’m sure you’re also well aware that that makes up a huge part of
what we do.
The current state of affairs does not allow me to meet the criteria set
forth by (client name deleted) for acceptable call lengths, which would effect my quality,
which effects my overall rating in general.
That’s a domino effect I’m not prepared to deal with.
I hope this is helpful.
Please keep this in your records in order to prevent re-explanations from
being necessary.

Pretty self-explanatory, right?
At least it should be to people who are supposed to know what they need to about Jaws so they can write accessible software.
Then, this afternoon, I got another email.
Now, they want screenshots of what I’m encountering.
Now, keep in mind that Jaws is a screenreader, which means that it interprets what’s on the screen and speaks it out loud.
I’ve explained time and time again that there aren’t any actual errors, as in, no error messages.
The problem is that Jaws and the db_interface do not cooperate.
So what do they ask for?
Specific error messages, and whether or not things are just real slow or can I just not use the system.
In other words, “We don’t care if it’s really slow, and you have to put up with cranky customers, and you have to try to bullshit your way into keeping them on the phone so you can argue with our kloogy interface, because it’s not our problem and we’re too lazy and stupid to fix it, but we don’t want to say we won’t fix it because then we’d look bad.”
I’d like to do my part to make sure every person involved in this clusterfuck is kicked out of the gene pool by midnight tonight.
This is a complete waste of my time.
And I should have known it was going to come to this.
“We can’t fix it, because, well, we don’t know how and we don’t want to learn, and it’s not our scores at stake so what do we care, so we’re just going to blame it on you and let you deal with it, and to hell with whatever objections and/or explanations you give us.”
These are the people running America’s companies people!
These idiots, and more like them, infest the board rooms and upper management positions of corporations everywhere.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

We actually have some work-related, non-Jaws-help-quotation news.
Unfortunately, it didn’t pan out.
The client sent a URL for me to try, but the syntax is bad.
They had spaces throughout the whole thing.
I tried replacing the spaces with %20, (you can’t have spaces in URLs), but that didn’t work either.
I learned that you can’t have spaces in URLs way back in my “intro to Windows” (it was actually Introduction to Computers), in my freshman year of college.
If this was passed to the go-between by the actual programmers, then we’re in big trouble.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I promised you all the back story to yesterday’s nasty little shock, and now seems as good a time as any to tell it.
I’ve been sitting on it for the last week or so, because it was just too traumatic to really go out there and tell the world about.
But I figure I should go ahead and put it out there as a warning, because this site’s going to probably get a lot more offensive to some people.
I was robbed and assaulted last Sunday night, (for those of you who are Jewish, the Sunday before Pesach, and for those of you who are Christian, Palm Sunday).
This time, it was at the apartment.
I got a knock on the door at about 11:30 at night, and, being half asleep, was more annoyed at being disturbed than at the fact that there was someone at the door I went out to the livingroom and asked who it was, and a man’s voice asked for me by name.
I opened the door to see what he wanted.
When I did so, the man stepped just inside, and asked what was up.
Someone else walked past, and that definitely bothered me, but in the sense of “Hey, I didn’t give you permission to just waltz on in,” not in the sense that something was about to go down.
I told the man I didn’t know who he was, and I wanted to know who he was looking for.
He told me he was looking for me, and that we were “real close friends”.
I told him again I didn’t know who he was, and that he needed to make sure he had the right address.
I assumed he was just drunk, because other people have come by looking for people while drunk, although never me, and they only knocked on the door before they realized they were at the wrong place.
The man pulled out a piece of paper, saying he needed to check the address.
He had said he was looking for apartment “letter-of-my-building”, and I told him that this entire building was that letter, and he needed a specific number.
He looked at his piece of paper, and said he had the wrong address.
He and his “friend” walked out, and I went to shut the door, but as I did so, the man grabbed me and threw me to the ground.
He put his hand over my mouth so I couldn’t scream for help.
I thought he was either going to rape me or kill me.
He asked if I had any money, and removed his hand just enough for me to say yes or no.
I told him I didn’t have any, and he told me to be quiet, and got up, and took the TV off the stand, and took the DVD player, wires included, with him.
As soon as I got the door shut and locked, I dialed 911.
The police came, took a statement, and did a report.
I also had them call my friend Andrew to come over because I was totally freaked out, and because I needed someone to catalog what was missing.
It also turned out that my cell phone “walked” out, along with my keys and all my identification, and bank card.
The police, and everyone else, think this robbery is connected to the other one I was involved in, the one where an ex-coworker stole $320 from me.
They think she might have been the other person in the place, since she didn’t speak at all, most likely because she knew I would recognize her voice.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Now, I’m trying to deal with it, and that’s where the blog will get very politically incorrect, not like I made an effort to be pulitically correct in the first place.
As a result of this, I’m feeling several emotions, in no particular order: Fear, anger, and a certain degree of powerlessness because of not being able to make any identification.
And, to top it all off, I think the man is here at work.
I can smell the cologne he was wearing, along with the cigarette smoke smell that hung around him.
I think he’s made it a point to cross my path several times today, because he knows I can’t identify him.
Friday, that freaked me out really badly, and I went home and drank a lot.
Today, it really pisses me off.
I really hope the cops manage to get these bastards.
They took my bank card, and tried to use it fourteen different times in one day, several of which were major attempted purchases at 711 type stores, and some attempts to get gas, (which, if my bank account is any indication, they got), and some ATM attempts, even though they didn’t have a pin.
Someone had to have seen them, or gotten video, or something.
I just can’t believe that anyone could get away with something like this.
And if they do, I hope they die a really horrible death or something like that.
I mean, I hope that happens anyway, but I at least want them to know they’ve been caught and will have the book thrown at them.
I think this is one of the lowest crimes one could commit, alomst down there with rape and child molestation and domestic violence, and I firmly believe that they should be punished.
Not by going to jail where they have cable, I mean a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison, where they can become prison bitches.
Quite frankly, I’d like to have a hand in their punishment, and death if possible.
I don’t think they have any rights left.
And, in case anyone’s wondering, I’d say the same thing if they did it to someone else.
It’s very clear they used my blindness against me.
Not just took advantage of it, but actively used it as a weapon against me.
It’s really enough to drive a person to the very far right when it comes to oppinions on criminal justice, and I’ll post some articles on that later.
Right now I’m just trying to work through all of this, and I think this is one of the better ways to do it, because this is going to color my life for a while in one way or another.
I think this has been the most difficult post to write.
It’s taken me almost two hours to do it.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

We’ve received yet another email from the client, asking what version of Jaws I’m using.
Yeah, my confidence in these specimens of brilliance is growing in leaps and bounds.
At this rate, they’ll have a working version of their interface six years from now.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I’ve got a serious migraine.
I took three Excedrin earlier, probably around 4:00 or so, but it hasn’t helped.
I also went outside to get some air, because it’s nine hundred degrees in here, but that didn’t help either.
I hate it when things get like this.
Mr. Frodo came by earlier, and asked me to try logging in to the Portal interface, which I did, and have been doing, although he wouldn’t have known that.
It works.
I’m not sure what he wanted me to do that for, but we’ll see.
I got the information I was supposed to send, or rather, he was supposed to send, to the blind employee, (known from here on out as Ya’akov, just because continuously saying “blind employee” is too much to type, and I think a tad disrespectful, given that he’s really manifested concern over this situation and seems to be genuinely honest), and copied Mr. Frodo on that message this morning.
I didn’t see any need to reinvent the wheel.
Other than that, not much, but it is sort of some progress.
I like the fact it’s staying light for longer and longer.
I’m not a big fan of short days and long nights, especially when those nights are cold.
It’s supposed to warm up later this week.
I hope it stays that way, or at least most of the time.
I’m here an extra fifteen minutes tonight, so that means fifteen minutes of overtime.
I’m going to go home and do laundry, despite the headache.
It needs to be done, and it’s not going to do any good to put it off.
I have no idea what I’m doing for dinner.
I had a salad for lunch, so that’s most likely out.
Probably just a sandwitch.
I’m not feeling like a full meal.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I swear, on a stack of Bibles, I’m not making this up.
Apparently, some enterprising souls have decided to make the all-out accommodation to laziness: A really huge toilet.
I could rant about the idiocy involved here, but I think David does a much better job than I could.
I do have a question though.
What happens if a really skinny person visits someone who has one of these installed, and has to visit the “smallest room”?
Or better yet, what if Joy visits.
Does she get a harness to make sure she doesn’t fall in?
For those reading this who don’t know who Joy is, suffice it to say she’s about four foot 6, and really tiny.
So first of all, she’d probably have to have a ladder to get to the seat.
Then, she’d have to have a seatbelt or something to keep her in place.
Ponder that while you’re having your morning coffee.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

Shirah Schmitt finally brings reason back to Cross-Currents.
And so, it seems, has Ismar Schorsch.
in Shirah’s case, I’m glad someone has decided to call for an end to the mockery going on.
It’s all fine and well if you don’t agree with the derech chosen by the Conservative movement, and as long as you express your disagreement in a civil manner, I have no problem with that.
But being smug and sarcastic isn’t going to win you any supporters, nor is it going to win your form of observance any supporters.
The liberal movements cannot be expected to show you the respect you deserve if you don’t return the favor.
By being sarcastic, you only encourage more derision, and that derision isn’t going to stop unless either side recognizes that there’s no need to express disagreement by descending to the level of rudeness.
Derech Eretz is a mitzvah too.
I also agree with Rabbi Schorsch when he says that the past shouldn’t be discarded lightly.
And what is this with folks going to seminary to become rabbis in order to push their own agenda?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but a rabbi’s job isn’t to push a personal agenda.
It’s to lead a congregation, and/or make Halachic rulings, emphasis on Halachic.
If you think the Conservative movement is twenty years behind Reform, then join Reform.
Activist rabbis are like activist judges: We don’t need either.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

They were supposed to start tearing things down on Monday in order to put in the new cubes.
They started early.
Now, I have to try and find someone to guide me through every time I want to get up and leave my seat to go to the break room.
Yay me.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

It looks like my skepticism was once again proven to be intuition.
The pilot for the db_interface isn’t going to be released next week.
Now, it’s going to be released on April 14th.
Mr. Frodo did make it a point to communicate though, which is good.
I won’t call it a step in the right direction, because he could, and probably will, regress back into the depths of rudeness and corporate idiocy.
He has a meeting with the other blind employee tomorrow, which I unfortunately can’t be a part of.
He says he’ll discuss with me afterwords though.
Once again, we’ll see what happens.
Mr. Frodo says the guy seems to be “genuine and honest,” which could mean anything from he actually is genuine and honest, to he’s really good at the corporate spin.

Originally published at customerservant.com. You can comment here or there.

I think Mr. Frodo needs to add a new specialty to his resume: Pointlessologist.
Allow me to explain.
I went into his office, and he was already in a defensive mood.
He definitely didn’t want me in there, and he definitely didn’t want to hear any of my objections to the current travisty I call my worklife.
I explained to him that I have nothing personal against him, (OK, I really do, but that’s beside the point), but that this situation has gone way past inappropriate.
He cut me off, asking what I was trying to say.
He should know me by now.
If I say something, that’s what I mean.
And that’s what I told him.
I said exactly what I meant.
He got up from behind his desk, walked out, and brought the html specialist in.
She was on the other side of the cubicle, and since he didn’t say anything to her, he must have signaled, and I’m sure there was a lot in that signal.
There usually is.
Anyway, she came in, and he asked her if she had a date on when the next pilot of the db_interface is supposed to be released.
She called the on-sight client rep’s boss, and he says next week.
We’ll see.
After Ms. Specialist left, I gave Mr. Frodo the name of the other blind employee, and he typed and sent an email, although I don’t know where he got the address from, as he’s not listed in the directory with an email address.
He didn’t read the email as he typed it, but he mumbled as he wrote, something about career pathing.
Then, I got some blather about how he could put me in an admin position, but that he feels I’m just too talented for that, with a lot of lathered on something-or-other that I think was supposed to be passion about the subject at hand, namely making sure that I live up to my potential with the company.
He really worked hard to stroke my ego.
He told me how talented I was, and expected me to agree with him.
Like I’m that thick.
He also remarked, (after misspelling Windoweyes), that I have a “slang” accent.
That’s just a nice way to say I’m trash.
Talk about inferiority complex.
I made it a point to let him know I’m disgusted in the communication situation, and I also made it a point to let him know I’m skeptical about next week’s supposed pilot release.
In the end, I never got to mention the media.
That doesn’t mean I won’t contact them by next week.
And in the final analysis, I was one hundred percent right.
Mr. Frodo is a pompous, arrogant bastard who’s so intent on being politically correct he’s tripping over his own two feet, while screaming to the world with his actions that he’s never dealt with blind people, and probably hasn’t dealt with anyone else with any other disability either.
He likes to do whatever he can to level the playing field, even if that means bringing others into a meeting in order to back up his position.
I could have pushed the media issue, but the situation would have descended very fast.
He was hoping I’d say something that could be construed as unprofessional, or insubordinate.
He was very passively aggressive, and I think the best thing to do was to not mention the media, get whatever information I could, and go ahead with that anyway.
Time will tell if the pilot gets released, and whether or not any of the issues will be fixed, although I have my doubts.
I was going to give them until next Wednesday.
I’ll give them until next Friday.
The following Monday, I’ll say go as far as the media is concerned.