Because I jabber on the phone for over 7 hours a day minimum 5 days a week, it would appear my body can't deal with this and the corners of my mouth are becoming all dried out and cracked and all sorts of shit. What the hell? Talk about weird call centre injuries!

FYI tonight wasn't a bad night on the phones, mostly good calls and didn't seem flat out.

So I was in the supermarket the other day and they had no mach3 turbo razor refill thingies, so I saw the shick quattro thing and thought "Hey why not?" and folked out the 9 bucks to buy the razor and two razor heads. I was saving up shaving for today (I never shave on my days off) and was pretty excited about trying out some of this 4 blade madness, would it be better than 3 blades? Could it possibly give me a better shave than the fairly good mach3?

Oh how I couldn't be more disappointed.

For some reason it seems like they didn't test the product very well, or maybe they tested it with people who don't have much facial hair or people who shave twice a day or something, 'cause basically it was pretty bad. The razor heads themselves aren't designed very well, they have the good idea of 4 blades, but they also have these metal lines going down across the blades which sorts creates these comparments for the facial hair to pack into, not good, getting the barstard clean after every swipe across the face requires much banging against tiles, and for some reason it really makes a loud bang compared to the mach3. The quattro heads also have built up hard plastic around the sides of the head, which obstruct the very sides of the blades touching the face and also probably cause some irritation, which means that i have to put blade to face more times than i do with the mach3, which equals bonus irritation for my face.

Apart from those two problems it didn't perform badly, I thought the shave was pretty close and no invasive, however when I got out of the shower I realised I had two nicks, only small ones, but that was still pretty annoying, I also had noticeable extra irritation which also pissed me off. I feel like almost throwing it in the bin except that I am a reasonable man and hate to waste money so I'll keep shaving with it until I have used up the heads good and proper and maybe next time I'll learn some special quattro secret that will allow the head to perform better next time. I have also seen on the internets that the quattro people have released some new head thingo that is to rival the mach3 turbos, maybe I'll try and find some of those and see how they go.

Rargh, I have to go to work and I just can't be bothered today! I'd rather sit here and play Jagged Alliance 2 : Gold Edition (comes with Unfinished Business!) that I just acquired.

Watching 24 is basically 90% of the time watching people either a) inform each other on what the current situation is. b) explaining the new plot c) Talking on mobile phones. The other 10% is action sequences.

So why can't I stop watching this series? Probably because its on the TV whenever I seem to watch it at night time.

*HoNk* Tonights shift was pretty good, learnt some more interesting stuff that can get my job done quicker, the queue was dead from about 10pm onwards, although it picked up about 11:30pm, good thing I was leaving! Ran into an old mate of mine who use to go to TAFE/Uni with me, he works in another division in the company, he hates it and wants to get a different 9 to 5 type of IT job, he told me about some other decent eating places around the local area so I don't have to eat McDonalds every time I don't bring dinner to work. Proper.

Now I get off the intarnets and go to sleep. *H0nK* zzzzzzzzz

So lets talk about yesterday, my first afternoon to midnight shift. Had to leave home early to go to uni and chase up people about money for my old society thingo, that didn't take long as no one useful from the student union were around to help me (a very common occurence). Went to Roll-A-Day for cheap/awesome subway like lunch, then I decided to jet to the city early as I couldn't be bothered going home and waiting around for work time to roll around, also I needed to be at work early so I could figure out who my TM is and bother him. Got to the city on a VERY VERY slow but relaxing train ride, was hella early so I walked up Elizabeth St and went to Mag Nation to read Atomic (Something I never read anymore but really should, although now it is $8.95 to buy!) and browse at all the other stuph of mags they have in that place. I discovered that they have free wireless to use and there was plenty of people sitting in there and mooching off of it so maybe if I ever get a decent portable wireless device I could use it before work. Proper.
Next up was EB and as usual whenever I enter that store I had straight for the bargain basement games area, usually not much was there, but I found two games I thought I'd actually like to buy, one was Close Combat V : Invasion Normandy, I played the 4th one to death and always meant to get this one, and since the usual red-ant is $9.95 that is usually not a bad deal, however EB seem to be having some sort of sale where it is anything up to 60% off these games so it works out to be something like $4, bargain! So maybe I'll grab it today on the way to work, although I hardly play any games apart from what I have on MAME so hrm.
So I went to work, was very early so I sat around in the lunch room reading the paper and watching Judge Judy, finally started work, couldn't find my TM straight away so I had to wait until I had a break to harrass him about being able to leave work 5 minutes early each night so I can catch the last train to transcentral (12:08pm). So work was alright, had some lovely calls like from the old people, they are always great, so friendly and really appriecate the help, I had some bad calls (well only 1 really) and it was from a Mac user, started out alright but when I couldn't give him a solution right NOW he was all getting annoying and wouldn't hang up (we have to let the customer end the call) just kept on gas bagging about MacMail this and Graphic Design that. Apart from that call everything was pretty good and I only had to ask 2 questions to my TM that was out of my realm of handling all night, that was pretty good.
I had an El Maco meal for dinner, it was pretty tasty, sorta like a Taco in burger format, I ended up leaving 5 minutes early and got to the train station in about 5 minutes flat so I got the last train, huzzah.
On the way home there were hella goth geeses in my carriage, they were two young girls and they were acting like loud twats and talking about how such and such didn't say that Haggis McBlackMoo could go after Donnie McFreakzoid, and she should have asked 'permission' etc. Then they were trying to weird out people that go on trains, except people would just talk back to them normally and carry a conversation, I don't think that was the reaction they wanted, they wanted people to ignore them so they could make a big fat black emo fuss, get all ragey or try to make people feel uncomfortable, MISSION FAILED GIRLS! Then they tried to smoke between carriages but some train nazis got on the train and they high tailed it to the other end of the train, jerks.

And that was that, I think doing this shift is going to take some getting use to, it is more relaxed at night but still very busy calls wise, I think i'd rather work during the day for sure. 5 or 6 years ago I would have LOVED a job like this but now it just doesn't appeal to me.

Ok gotta get ready for work!

So this week was the last week of training before we hit our regular rostered times to work and before we assigned to a team manager and the like. Basically the training this week consisted of actually just taking calls, all day, just like we would when we are training, except this week we all get to sit together in one area and have one or two experienced guys walking around helping us with any queries we might have about things, and oh boy, did we have questions!

The first three days were really draining, so much to take in and remember, the logging systems at work could really use a giant work over, and to be honest when I think about what would need to be done I don't see any major road blocks in fixing it up, except for the big two, Money and Time (Although the time factor would be not as big as people think) then there is the retraining and so on, which would be another M/T thing, Oh well. ANYWAY first three days really wiped me out a bit, the last two days were better, not so busy with large queues and I started to be able to handle most problems on my own, and able to finish all my logs without having to stop between each call I take.

The bunch I guys I work with are really great, no personality clashes or anything like that, everyone is always willing to help someone else out or to have a chat about whatever, I hope when we get assigned to teams that the people I work with are the same, I get the feeling that it may not be so good as it is at the moment but as long as I get a good TM it should be cool, I have this funny feeling that I will not be getting a good TM, there is this particular TM that everyone really dislikes because of the way he interacts with people, think pushy, overbearing and condesending, for some reason I think I will be in his group, I sure hope not!

So Monday i'll be starting my afternoon to midnight shifts, should be interesting to see how it goes adapting to that working time since I've been geting use to 9 to 5 this week. Least I'll be earning more money for these shifts so that is something, I hope they aren't as busy as the day shifts however I've been told they are pretty busy until about 10:30pm at night when things go quiet.

WarGames is on at 1:15pm today! Something decent on Sunday afternoon television for once, whoop!

So this week in training wasn't as good as last week, not because anything bad happen, just because the shine had worn off a bit and the stuff they were teaching was pretty darn boring, well the last two days of this week it was, oh man I feel bored right now just thinking of it.

But the start of the week was good, we did lots of lab stuff on wireless and VoIP, which has made me consider getting VoIP for myself considering these days I make a lot of STD calls, however I am a bit against the ATA locking to a particular provider.

I've learnt to enjoy talking to nearly all of the guys in my little training group, they are decent people and really get into their technical stuff which is fantastic.

So next week I will be taking calls on the phones, it is still considered training so like we'll be in our own little area being tutored, but we will be taking live customer calls. I might be a little nervous on Monday morning, I think I just want to get that first day on the phones out of the way, hopefully everything won't be too bad.

I also got my roster, I'll be working 4 to midnight everyday except Wed and Thurs. Which at the moment I'm fine about, must of the other rosters were worse, with people working split weekends or not having two rostered days off in a row. I was 1 of 2 people that got to work both weekend days which pay pretty well, that is something to be happy about I guess. They only thing I am worried about is the fact that I finish at midnight and the last train to my house leaves the station 8 minutes later, it really gives me no time for error and will probably result in my running for the station! I've been told you can talk to your TM about leaving a few minutes early if you finish at midnight and have to catch PT, hopefully when I chat to him it isn't a problem.

Today was a good day, first I found out I passed all my subjects for the semester and kept my average. Hooray! my undergrad degree is really finished!

Then I passed my last test at work which means they can't fire me, huzzah!

I also got paid today, huzzah!

Then I went out for dinner with astro and had yummy treats after, huzzah!

Other random things about work:

1. I'm pretty much right next to the ASX open public room thingy which has the big wall of info and computers which have rad charting software, I can tell I am going to spend quite a few of my breaks in here. Yes I find stockmarkets interesting.

2. Yesterday I found a Nando's really close to my work, I went to one earlier in the week which was a real hike from work and really really busy, guess who is going to get really fat now?

3. There are two really nice suit type places right near where I take my breaks, I've already been looking at this overcoat through the window that I really like, I've never thought of owning such a nice big warm coat, guess who is going to go really broke now?

4. I work just down the road from this guy's place of earning a living.

5. There are a lot of "tech nerds" where I work, although most of them are 20% tech and 80% nerd, that is a bad ratio.

6. They have a lame thing of calling the new recruits "newbies", now hardly anyone actually says it, and if they do it is sort of in an endearing way instead of insulting, because they've all been in that position before. However there is this one dude (see point 5) that comes out and waves and says in this goofy voice, "HELLO NEWBIES!", I felt like responding in kind by taking up his posture and screaming "HELLO!" back and waving madly with both hands. I think I managed a "errr, Hi?" back to him. What a cracker.

7. 10 minutes, it is the magic number, if I leave work 10 minutes early I reach the station at 5pm, I then can catch trains half full of people that will take me home and I'll be inside my home by 5:30pm on the dot, if I leave work at 5pm+ I will get to the station at about 5:15pm and will be in a sardine packed train ride that will get me into my home at roughly 6:05ish. Balls.

argh, fuck you blogger, and fuck you browser for blocking pop ups, now through my stupidness I ate a post about my work, maybe i'll do it tomorrow.

So how have I been? I don't even know where to start.

This week I've been in training for my TS role, everyone has been very nice and the guys in my group are a friendly bunch even if a few of them are a little annoying (and refuse to leave me alone during my breaks!), one dude has no legs from the knees down and no thumbs, NO OPPOSABLE THUMBS! (*mind breaking* ok not really).

The training has been decent, not great but decent, the guy that trains us is a year younger than me, and although he is very knowledgable and a great guy, he doesn't really train that well (although that could be to do with the changing of the training structure recently). Also we get free fun-size kitkats during training, I have been chowing down like a giant fatty.

I've don't the usual stuff like double jacking (listening in to calls), learning about all the products, internal systems, troubleshooting internet connections etc etc. It is very surprising the amount of work these people actually do, we have to log two tickets in seperate systems almost every call and no one takes breaks between calls really, its just bang bang bang and finishing old tickets while starting a new call. Supposedly its not always like that but still it will keep me pretty busy while I'm starting out.

The working conditions look pretty nice, so that's something to be happy about.

Anyway, maybe more later, going out!