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I am definitely not looking forward to going to work today, only to do the same thing I’ve been doing since the 8th.
I shouldn’t even be able to put any time limit more than a couple of days on this, yet it’s turning into a two-week, possibly longer, phenomenon of stupidity.
I’m going to call in again this morning and see if I can get any information, and the permission to just stay here instead of going in and sitting on my can.
I’ve got a ton of laundry to do, and even if I didn’t, I could spend at least part of the day watching Star Trek, which is infinitely more interesting than watching the antics that go on at work.
They should be lucky I’m not world dictator.
All the idiots would be gone in one fell swoop.

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Not that I want to bring it up again, but the execution of Tookie Williams has, due to its media attention, rekindled the debate on whether capital punishment is a just penalty for crimes like murder.
Both sides seek to bolster their claims by citing Biblical passages, and it seems the favorite of the opponents of the death penalty is the following: ” … Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord … ” (Romans 12:19).
The verse quotes, (or rather, paraphrases), Deuteronomy 32:35, part of the well-known Ha’azinu.
It is used in the Christian Scriptures as support for the position held by Paul that Christians should not take vengeance against their enemies, and reassuring them that God will do the avenging.
But can this verse be used as a prooftext against the death penalty?
It is my aim, throughout this article, to demonstrate that this verse has nothing to do with the death penalty, and that both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures distinguish between vengeance and state sanctioned punishment of criminals,

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I never thought I’d say that about my job.
Stressful, exhausting, demanding, unrewarding and unfulfilling, definitely.
But never boring.
Then this week happened.
When I got to work this morning, I performed my now ritualistic walk to the operations manager’s cube and asked if there was any news.
I think after Tuesday’s melt-down, he’s been avoiding me.
Basically, after my post deploring the extreme lack of logic inherent in attempting to take calls when the system still wasn’t working, I attempted to convince myself to get on the phone, and ignore the fact that this wasn’t going to work, and just take calls and feed everybody a line of crap while I fought with the system to try to get it to work even though I knew it wouldn’t, but there was no convincing.
So I decided to take the course of action that wouldn’t get me in to trouble: talking to John about it instead of the more desirable yelling at the client’s minion.
John managed to get the management pukes to leave off having me take calls, but there’s been no information since.
So when I went to the OM’s cube this morning, he said he’s going to “push some buttons” today.
And what exactly has been going on all this week?
I seriously considered not coming in to work today.
It was raining, 30 degrees outside, and I would much rather be home, getting stuff done and watching Star Trek.
What makes it worse is that the OM said he actually probably would have aproved the request for paid time off.
This whole thing sucks.
This is an open trackback post.
You know what to do with it.
Send me a trackback, and link to this post, and you’ll be linked.
Enjoy.

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I want to know exactly what these people who have managed to get promoted according to the level of their incompetence are missing that would make it sink in that Jaws 7.0 hasn’t fixed the current database interface problems, and isn’t ever going to fix them.
We’ve already tried the upgrade, with no difference in usability, I’ve submitted all the accessability information, and everything was done in vain, because I was just told to try to take calls for the next hour or so and see how it goes.
I even illustrated, by turning on the monitor and literally letting the operations manager watch as I have to go in and out of forms mode in order to navigate the drop-down box in order to pick an option to use when searching.
He still says take calls.
I’m so pissed.
I’ve got half a mind to go to the client’s minion’s makeshift office, and yell at him, even though I know that wouldn’t accomplish anything but getting me fired, or at least in some real trouble.
I can’t believe he’s actually that stupid.
Or that he just doesn’t care that much, and is interested in forcing this God-forsaken new design come hell or high water.
I told the operations manager that we had a working link, and that theasiest way to fix the problem is to restore access to the link.
He says the client isn’t willing to do that until they see that the new version isn’t working, which has already been illustrated numerous times.
I really don’t know what to do anymore.
I’m sick and tired of pounding my head against a wall for nothing.

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I woke up this morning with a raging headache.
Not good.
I haven’t even gotten to work yet, and as of yesterday afternoon, still no solution.
I talked to Cary last night, and he says he’s taking calls, but he’s asking the callers to hold three or four minutes at a time while he wrestles with the interface and Jaws.
Completely unacceptable.
We can’t afford to keep doing that.
I don’t understand why they had to kill the link in the first place.
If they have to upgrade, fine.
But if they’re not going to involve us in testing the thing to make sure it’s accessible, then don’t kill the link.
It’s that simple.
I know I have a lot of sighted readers, but this is one of those times when sighted people really prove how inconsiderate they can be.
To the ones who have been helpful, I sincerely thank you.
But to the rest, please stop making my life difficult.

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I just talked to one of the techno-shepherds, and he told me that the client wants me to use the lates version of the screen reader so that my “testing environment” is the same as theirs.
I’ve already explained several times that the Java support hasn’t changed from V5 (the version I’m using) to V7.
All they did as far as internet applications is concerned was add support for Firefox.
They added some other Jaws-specific features, but no change in Java support.
And what the hell is this about a “testing environment?”
Yet another line of crap.
I was just given a link that goes to “the page cannot be displayed.”
We’ll probably have this thing figured out by the end of the month, just in time for them to break it again.

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I got in this morning to find that the link I use to access the database interface has been killed, and to top it off, the new interface doesn’t work with Jaws.
This is exactly what I thought was going to happen.
And as if things need to be any worse, the person who has all the information about who to contact in order to get the link operative again has been fired.
She wasn’t forward-thinking enough to pass on the information.
Probably wanted to keep it to herself so she could feel important.
There’s the client’s man, who’s perfectly happy to accept the declaration of accessibility handed down from the developers, and then there’s the HTML Specialist, (yes, that’s her actual title), who’s in his pocket, so the results will be pretty much the same from that end.
This is what happens when idiots get put in to positions of power.
We’ve gone through this before, I’ve made it a point to make suggestions and recommendations to the developers to make the damn thing accessible, and no one seems to listen.
Now we get to spend however long arguing this point all over again.
Well, at least this time, I have ‘net access.
I’m not too thrilled about sitting around here serfing the ‘net though.
That’s not why I’m supposed to be here.
I didn’t get up, find out that the conditioner I bought isn’t really conditioner, (not Andrew’s fault, probably some idiot put shampoo in the same place as the conditioner, and he just grabbed because he knows where the conditioner is supposed to be, and assumed that it would be there), then to spend most of the remaining time trying to get a comb and brush through my hair without doing any damage, just to come to work and find out that everything’s been totally screwed up because of someone else’s stupidity.
Why does stupidity have to ruin everything?
I’d love to find a way to make stupidity illegal.
To be fair, I realize that making changes to tons of code is very expensive, and that there are only two employees who require the changes.
But I don’t think it would require a complete overhaul of the system to make it accessible.
Java can be made accessible, it just takes a little consideration to do it.
Given my past dealings, the impression I get is that accessibility really isn’t a concern for more than financial reasons, and they’ll just continue to feed me lines because they think I’ll believe them, and because I really have no choice but to at least act like I do.
What else am I supposed to do?
It’s not like I can just expose some major scam and get the changes made.
If I go making too many waves, it could cost me my job, and I’m sure there’s something they could hide behind to make sure it doesn’t look like a discrimination case.
I’m definitely a proponent of capitalism, but there’s making a profit, and then there’s greed.
Based on what I’ve seen, I firmly believe that both the client and the company I work for are acting as a result of the latter, and not the former.
I wish I was wrong on this one.
The Business Of America Is Business,

TMH’s Bacon Bits, Liberal Common Sense, the Conservative Cat, and MacStansbury.org link to this.

Convergys, accessibility, Express Scripts, computer, MYSQL, database

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I’ve got some woman on the phone who ordered two different strengths of a medication, three months ago, and now claims she never ordered it, and we’re just supposed to credit her for it because she never got them.
The replacement policy is that you have to call no earlier than twelve days and no later than forty-five days after the prescription has been shipped in order to replace the order.
She didn’t, so we assumed she got it, and charged her.
Of course, she wanted to speak to my supervisor.
Somebody needs to tell her it’s too bad, she has to pay for it anyway.

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I got to work this morning, and found that they had turned the heat off last night.
I’m not kidding around.
They actually turned the heat off, and it’s still in the 20’s.
The people who worked the overnight shift litterally had to wear gloves to type.
John says he put in four service requests to have the heat turned on, and one to turn the air on when it gets to eight thousand degrees in here.
I can’t believe it’s really that hard to keep the temperature somewhere near normal.
Idiocy at work.
They released the new upgrade to the database interface today.
I’ve been instructed to use the old link, (which is running very slow today), until the client’s minion comes out, declares that the new version is accessible, and tells me to try out the client’s latest attempt at bestowing a gift on creation.
I get to be the guinney pig again, and that’s a direct quote from John.
I hate being in this positiion.
Why do I always have to be the guinney pig in these situations?
I know I’m the only one who uses a screen reader around here, but it feels like I’m the company’s experiment or something.
“Let’s set up some obstacles, and see if the blind person can make it work!”
Or is it just extreme ignorance.
Who knows.
I didn’t get the support position, or the supervisor position, so I’ll be on the phones a while longer.
There’s got to be a way out of here.
In the meantime, I’ll settle for a little heat.

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Since a good number of you read this blog via your friends pages on LiveJournal, I’ve decided to introduce a new feature to the site in order to acquaint you all with some of the blogs I have on my personal blogroll, as well as blogs I happen to find while browsing.
This morning, while looking at the Open Trackback Alliance blogroll on my sidebar, trying to pick which sites to visit in order to shamelessly promote myself, I found Less People, Less Idiots.
I’ve been sneaking peaks at it all day, (whenever I had a break during work), and I’ve laughed every time.
During lunch, I spent enough time reading it that I laughed so hard I cried.
It’s a mix of satire, black comedy, and political commentary, but you can’t really place this guy on any particular side of the debate.
And that’s what’s so cool.
He appeals to just about everybody, unless you’re thinking of Pat Robertson, who he makes fun of as well.
No one’s left out.
This site deserves your attention, no matter what side of the political battle you’re on, or what faith you belong to.
And in case you’re looking for something deeper, he doesn’t just make fun of people for no reason.
There’s always some message he’s trying to get across.
So give it a look-see, and leave him some comments.
Everyone’s bound to find something at least slightly amusing, and if you say you haven’t, you’re just ashamed to admit you did, and you’re feeling guilty about laughing, and you’ll probably be making an appointment with your shrink.

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If only we could have seen it on TV!
According to the AP via Yahoo!, things got pretty rowdy during the latest phase of Saddam Hosein’s trial.
Hosein’s defense team staged a walk-out, Saddam yelled at the judge, and the first witness testified concerning the random arrests and torturing that went on during Saddam’s regime.
Former U.S. Attorney General turned part of Saddam’s dream team threatened to take his toys and go home, but Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin informed him that if he and his colleagues walked out, then new defense lawyers would be appointed.
Way to go!
And now, some wisdom from Saddam: “You are imposing
lawyers on us. They are imposed lawyers. The
court is imposed by itself. We reject that.”
Something worth pondering, about as much as pondering whether or not chalk has a soul.

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I just got done taking a call from a woman who had to be half-baked.
She was completely confused, babbling on about wanting this particular manufacturer’s brand of Hydrocodone, and how she had to have all these special numbers on the back of her prescriptions in order to send them in, and how she was going to find the person who gave her misinformation.
FYI: Members can’t choose the manufacturer of a drug.
It’s not like going to the grocery store and picking up your favorite brand or something.
And why does someone need to take three different strengths of a narcodic like that, along with Alprazolam (the generic for Zanax)?
Really scary.

Shamelessly promoted at: Blogin Out Loud The Land of Ozz Committees of Correspondence

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While browsing the blogroll, I found a link to a post which reports that the White House Christmas card is out, and contains no reference to Christmas, but does contain Psalm 128:7 on it, taken from the Revised Standard Version: “The LORD is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts; so I am helped, and my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.”
If you’re going to include a Biblical verse in a Christmas card, you might as well refer to Christmas.

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As stated here, the caller told me the prescription had been called in on the twenty-fifth, which would put it at a perfectly normal processing rate.
When she got on the phone with my supervisor, (actually the Asc member taking supervisor calls), she said that it had been called in on the twenty-third.
How about you get your story right!
I’ll be the first one to admit when I’ve made a mistake, but there’s nothing I hate more than a caller who just wants to get me in trouble because they don’t like what I have to tell them.
She should have given me all the information in the first place.
I could have helped a little more then.
Now, I told her we wouldn’t wave the expedition fee, and then she gets to a supervisor, provides the rest of the details, and gets the fee waved, making me look like a total ass.

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I’ve got a member on the phone who thinks that, even though prescriptions called in normally take twenty-four to forty-eight hours to appear in our system due to their being entered by hand, and even though prescriptions normally take three to five business days to process before they’re shipped, she’s supposed to just magically get it the next morning after her doctor calls it in, and that we’re supposed to expedite the shipping for free because, (according to her), we screwed up.
I explained that the prescription is going through the normal processes, and that there isn’t any way to speed things along, and she wants to speak to my supervisor.
I really hate it when these people act like they own the world, and they’re going to get me reprimanded because they can’t get their way.
Know what that sounds like?
“I’m telling on you!”
“Mommy, she didn’t give me exactly what I want, so I’m going to throw a temper tantrum!”
Get over yourself!
You’re not any better than the rest of us, so quit acting like it.
OK, done ranting now.

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