Blog: Ramblings and Rants

This is Strawberry Blonde posting on Pariah’s behalf. He is currently in Huntsville, Alabama without internet access. As a result, the Saturday Slant will not be posted this week. He apologizes; this was an unforseen event. The Slant will return next week from Chicago.

Enjoy the weekend!!

There’ll be a new Saturday Slant tonight. I promise.

Life’s been hectic and work has been busy lately—all for the better, though.

So, for now, I’m off to brave the ravages of the morning. Later, there will be a new Saturday Slant.

So far, the flight is interesting… With the potential for discomfort.

Against the window I sit, watching the random and tumulous clouds drift by in all their myriad arrangements, ranks, and files. Beside me a girl of perhaps fourteen listens to inf-flight music and writes in her journal with my borrowed pen. I would never pry into anyone’s writings, much less a teenager’s diary entry, but certain phrase caught my attention as she scrawled. Phrases like “learn about Wicca” and “read more about the paranormal,” under the entry title of “Things I Want To Do In Life.” There are a half dozen other items on the list, though I do not read them.

NEW YORK (AP) — Friday July 16, 8:25 am PT — Domestic icon Martha Stewart was handed a prison term of just five months Friday for lying about a stock sale. After asking the judge for leniency, she emerged defiant from the courthouse to say she was being persecuted and declared, “I’ll be back.”

“I’m not afraid. Not afraid whatsoever. I’m very sorry it had to come to this,” she told a crowd of media and supporters afterward, speaking in a strong voice on the courthouse steps.

Trying to book a flight and hotel room on Orbitz is un-fucking-believably painful. My reservations have been inprocess (and unconfirmed) for going on three hours now.

After an informational dry run last night, I went to Orbitz early this afternoon to make my bookings. I went through the search, and, from the list of available flights, chose one, and clicked the “Book It”.

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Current Mood: Determined, adrenalized.
Current Music: “I Won’t Back Down” - Tom Petty; “Fighter” - Christina Aguilera

A few interesting updates from this past week…

SOMETHING FOR SATURDAY: Alcohol

1. When did you first start to taste alcohol, as a child? teenager? etc…
As a child, actually. I was passed-out drunk at five years-old. It was my mother’s wedding to my step-father. I was blitzed on wine my aunts and uncles kept feeding me.

That amusing story being said, alcohol was never a taboo in my house. Wine we drank often with dinner; my mother let me taste her mixed drinks (usually once per new type of drink). Consequently, I never had a strong desire to drink as a teenager or young adult.

I’m pissed off. It’s been building for a while. A few things here and there have been snowballing. Now I’m pissed.

Make a Wish kid makes a game to fight cancer - Joystiq

Ben is a 4th grade kid who had cancer. His doctor told him to visualize the disease going away, so Ben and his mom came up with the idea of using Pac-Man. This Pac-Man would run around inside him and eat the disease. The idea became a game, designed and built with the help of Lucasarts employee, Eric Johnston. The kid hopes the game will help other kids with cancer deal with the ordeal. It’s a fun one and it was created from the heart. Give it a whirl.

My god! Can you imagine the terror she must have felt for the following six months? That poor woman!

Woman who got wrong sperm wins suit - PittsburghLIVE.com

WILMINGTON, N.C. — A jury awarded $435,000 to a woman who was accidentally inseminated with unprepared sperm at a fertility clinic.

The award to Kelly Chambliss — $85,000 in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages — could later be reduced because of state limits on punitive damages.

“We’re pleased with the courage of the jury,” said Chambliss, 37. “We hope this never happens to anyone else again.”

In August 2002, Chambliss became violently ill just after a nurse practitioner inseminated her with the contents of an unlabeled syringe at the Coastal Area Health Education Center.

Two days later, Chambliss said clinic officials told her that she had been injected with “unwashed” sperm, which was left over from another client’s procedure two days before and had proteins that had caused her uterus to contract.

Chambliss was also told she could have been exposed to diseases such as AIDS or hepatitis and wouldn’t know for sure for about six months.

Over on Seth’s Blog is this interesting post:

The thing is, every single person who walks into the Lost Baggage office is annoyed, disappointed, upset or angry. And the hurdle that American has to get over is trivial.

“Hi, guys. You look like your luggage is lost. I’m really sorry. Would everyone in the family like a lollipop?”

What would happen if every single AA rep said that (with as much sincerity as they could muster) when each rightfully annoyed person walked in?

He makes an excellent point. A tiny, trivial amount of good will goes a terribly long way in customer service. This is especiallly true of upset customers.

Though I had learned it years ago as supervisor of a 411 installation in the Tampa, Florida area, my experience training and supporting Adobe’s Technical Support team reinforced—with so many other shades and tones—my firm belief that angry people mostly need to know they’re being heard. With Adobe I took the occassional escalated call because the customer wanted/needed (I’m not minimizing customer needs with that) to speak to “someone higher up.” On those calls I was often asked for a price break on an upgrade, free software, and remuneration for time lost—these last requests usually came from those who weren’t using the product correctly and felt that Acrobat’s inability to edit images ala Photoshop was the subject of false advertising, that Adobe was directly responsible for the customers’ current predicament, and that the hours lost to trying to figure out how to edit images in Acrobat should be billed to Adobe. None of these requests or demands I ever granted, of course. Despite my refusal (and, in fact, inability by way of policy) to grant such requests for free or discounted software (the remuneration for time lost is just plain ridiculous), in nearly all cases the customer hung up the phone with me satisfied that s/he had had a good experience. When I was done speaking with the customers, they felt good about their experience calling Adobe, regardless of whether they got the thing they called about.

How did I make irate and sometimes absolutely furious customers happy? How was I able to turn around the attitudes of people so angrily abusive that they had reduced technicians to tears? Because I listened and empathized.

If the customer was a creative pro, well, that’s my world. I’m a creative pro. I know how to talk to them in their own language. Some had even heard of me from my work in the design field. To the rest, to the non-creative pro, I was just someone who listened to them vent, then expressed understanding of their emotions.

“I completely understand, Bob, how infuriating that can be. Let’s be frank and direct: I’m going to do my very best to help you, but first,