Your having a good shift when

you have a couple of sales in a 4 hour shift totaling anywhere from $120-200. That's a good 4 hour shift. I don't like the office lay out. I took a negative look at it the first day we moved in December 13th. Ive had so far 15 days there and it's an office that's hard to get used to. There's a lot of things I don;t like about the office: Firstly, the lunchroom. Lets begin there, which is about the size of hour living room. There are 4 tables from the old office, which can seat about 9 people. Then there are these little cuby hole areas about 5 of them. So roughly about 14 people can sit in the lunchroom. before I get a chance to get a seat, there are at least 8 people already there and the rest of the staff occupy whats left over. People are moving all around in the cramped little area. Plus there's a camera watching everyone. Most time's I've been reduced to sit in the stairwell and the elevators are shut down after 4:30pm to even use the bathroom. Secondly the lighting in the office is bad enough and hard on the eyes. We're all in these little pods. It's not very comfortable.There's no place where one can get away for a bit of privacy. it's not so much the office it's the work. We're using VOIP to do the calling and many times if you want to perform an action on the calls by using the "hot keys" there's a slight delay. The office looks like it was put together on a budget. I don't like  using a mouse. At the end of the day, I've got a headache.

I meant to head out over to "Alberta Works" (AW) yesterday morning but I didn't sleep very well from about 7-10am. Before I do this though, I'm going to ask that lady if we can get down together to help do my resume before. I'm thinking Saturday at break that way she can print me off a copy and I can have soft and hard copy to work with. If we can get together to do this Saturday and I can get my copies next week, then I can get down to AW for the 23rd and at least get the ball rolling. I'd love to get a nice little "Security Guard Job" (sgj) in an office building where I'd be a bum in a chair. I'd get myself the laptop and a cell phone, to call Anne. Also, this will buy me some time to see if iM would pay me the raise on the next check. If iM doesn't pay me the $1/hour raise, then they're telling me it's time to take a hike. On the week of my resume, I'm checking out a couple of guard companies and I'll put my name in and see what happens. I'll even take the same wage I'm getting now. But if Friday they don't give me my wage increase, I'm out of iM as soon as I can get another job. I'd rather work for Pizza 11-7 because when Lodge is light I can go to Lodge right after work Anyway, it's back to Hell today. That's all for now.
  

I thought the two were unrelated

so I did some checking around on how to delete a New Volume partition on my laptop with Windows 7. I went through the steps. Lets turn off the computer and see if  I got more hard drive space. I get the opening Acer logo and then a command line: Grub recovery (waiting for a response.) Fortunately for me I still have my desktop Xp system (slow). Ten minutes later I was checking the web for this Grub recovery and discovered its a Linux recovery application for when Linux (running beside my Windows 7) gets removed by accident or shut down without being prompted to do so. Great way to start off the New Year! 
When I go back to work tomorrow I'm going to ask Vinay or Keith or anyone of the "brown guys" as James calls them, how do I get back to Windows and bypass this Grub recovery. If I could do it from here today, I'd remove Linux altogether. 

Today I have a day off but no hockey, the Oiler's don't play again until I think on Wednesday. The good news if they can get on a roll and healthy and with a winning streak they might make a run for the last play off spot but that's a lot of if's. 

Today, I'm relaxing and reading. I've got Monday night Raw for this evening. Since I can't get into my laptop I can't make any beats. I was thinking about going down to LM and pick up Komplete 8 if they have it there but I don't like shelling out all that money when my job unlike last year was more or less safe. This year, it's a new company and anything can happen. We don't have taps yet for HDI as this campaign we're on now is realativley new so for the most part were calling cold. Other offices have our good campaigns. Anyway, that's about all for now.

I can breath a bit easier now

for a bit. I did a lot better sales wise yesterday. I was beginning to think I couldn't sell anymore.

At first I thought well this is my Sunday in but upon looking at my calendar, my last Sunday was last December 18th. On the 25th and New Years (Sunday's) I was on holidays. Technically this is my Sunday off but next Sunday I go in for the 15th because I have Lodge on the 21st (3rd Sunday) So I'm ok for a couple of days off.

I'm still thinking about that laptop. It's a quad core i7, which is about the best out there. The version I was looking at is has 8 Ram and a 750Gb hard drive for just over $600. It's a sweet deal but I'm sure something better is out there just around the corner like the 6/8 cor with 2.27 transistor count.

Now I'm not entirely on board with this story (considering where it came from ) but this week it was mentioned that as a young man in his early 20's Obama was part of a secret CIA project to explore Mars. The future President apparently was teleported there, along with the future head of DARPA in 1981-1983 and he went twice. US President Obama with help from the CIA was of all things, teleported to Mars! However the White house denies the story. Question: Why would the White house even deny the story? Read more>>>

Anyway, I hope to get a lot of reading done this weekend on A game of thrones. Anyway, that's all for now.

Its been a rough start to the year

for me to say the least. I just got back from a 10 day leave and hadn't even put in a full day except my first day (Tuesday), so it's been hard to gather momentum. Wednesday and Thursday we're also half days and yesterday my 2nd full day getting back was bad for everyone yesterday for the firrst half and then 6 of us are doing another campaign with WW2 Veterans. So this week was hard for me to get things going sales wise. Yesterday I had no sales but the boss wasn;t expecting any of us on the new campaign to actually get anything as this was just the learning curve part of it thought it was kind of disheartening because out of us six I was the only one with nothing on "the board" at the end of the day. I'm sure it's going to pick up today. I like the new campaign.

This morning I'm starting the day off fresh with a bite to eat at Tims and I'm taking my insulin along with me.

Last night I got my first check with my back pay and vacation pay. I don't have my vacation pay on my check like most of the staff do. If it wasn't for the uncertainty of my job I would have gone out after work to get he new laptop but because of my job situation, I'm kind of holding off that for the time being. I'm considering quad core 1Tb situation with 6-8 Ram. But I can't justify the laptop at the moment. If the job situation was ok, then sure but as it stands now I'm on a bit of a tight rope.

Today I've got 6 hours ahead of me and I'm making the most of it. This morning it's down to Tim's for some breakfast and then I'm going hard on the job today. After work if i had a decent day, I'm going out with the guys across the street to BP's I'm buying a picture of beer and after that it's home have a nap and watch the Oiler's game as I'm back at it for 5 hours Sunday. Anyway, that's all for now.

We had a small crowd

at Lodge last night. I think we had 17 guys there including 2 guests.

I got another 8 hours ahead of me. This campaign has got to be the most toughest yet. The script is way to long. Most of the people I was able to reach, fell under these categories: Seniors on fixed incomes, "I don't think my politics are any of your business,"(lots of those) as soon as I get that attitude, I hang up right away, lots of unemployment, gatekeepers, lots of wrong numbers, lots of answering machines, lots of "not homes" No English, a few deceased, moved, and after all of the above, I might be able to pitch to maybe about 10% of these and not even the tax credit motivates these people. $50 the cost to them is like $12.50. I get a lot that say "Can you send me information?" "I can't make a decision without my other half." And maybe in a 4 hour shift, I might be able to get one sale. After all of the above, they want a $55 line hour? My first day I got a $200 sale and I got a $100 this week, but by and large this is a tough campaign. Id much rather do C4K cold, or even "Oldtimer hockey" then this. And they should give us a choice. For those that have a total,keep them on the politics, for those that are struggling,put us over on something else. I got 8 hours of this today, 6 hours of it Saturday and 5 hours Sunday before I have a day off.

I'm thinking about going to Edmonton #7 Tuesday. They have crib night and finger food. Should be a good time and they are a York Rite Lodge as well.

If I have a job by the end of the month,I'll be very surprised. Anyway, that's about all for now.    

Those 10 days

sure go by in a hurry. I’m back at it today in the office at noon, uggh.

This week I’ve got lodge and I’m going to set up a time to have one of the people at work, work with me over a resume, something I can just copy and past in an email. If things don’t improve with the job, then I could be forced out to look for something else. I’m going to wait until they through me out, I’m not going to quit.

Other then that, it’s going to be a lame week folks. Not a great way to start off the New Year. Today I’m at the office from noon-9pm same thing with Wednesday. Thursday I’m off due to Lodge night and pay off my Lodge dues and that‘s going to be a huge chunk of coin but at the same time its going to be the best part of the week. Then I’m working noon-9pm Friday and Saturday 10am-4:30pm. That’s going to be a long 30 hours, but I’ll have stat pay in there as well.

Well, finally the Oiler’s won one on this road trip. About time. The boys head into Buffalo tonight and I won’t be able to catch that. The game probably starts at 6pm and I could run over to BP’s and catch the score. Because Anne is working Wednesday night I think after work I’m going to pop in for about 40 minutes and have a beer and head out in time to be able meet Anne on the way home. Sounds like a plan. Do that once a week will never hurt me. Anyway, that’s about all for now.

Happy 2012 Bloggers!

Happy New Year to all my blog readers, family, coworkers and colleagues. Oh and even my few friends This is the first time I had to ring in the New Year, without Anne since t day we got married 11 years ago. Nothing serious, Anne is working at her call centre job taking Pizza orders. She’s working from 7:30pm last night until 4am this morning. There’s some perks that come along with the hours: Firstly, she gets paid double time from Midnight to Four am and the company will pay for her cab home, which is Ok. Bus service is running until 3am this morning and its free all day.


Usually local TV networks here show the last 5 minutes of the year and we see the last of Edmonton’s “First Night” especially the showcase being the fireworks but out of the 5 local networks, CFRN and CBC were absent. Channel 7 was showing a feed from Calgary of all places and Global was in Niagara falls. WTF? So we see no fireworks this year, nice to be on the ball guys. Thanks for the insult.


This year wasn’t a good year for me book reading wise: I read 5 books this year. “A game of thrones” will be for net year. But here are the books I read last year, taken from my webcam. That's Sparkey sleeping the New Year away.

This year, I plan on reading 1 book/month, well that’s the plan/ I’m going to read a lot more then this though. The best book I read this year was A. Lee Martinez “Automatic Detective.” The next book I plan on reading is “Space Vulture” Wolf/Meyers. But that’s after I’m done reading “A game of thrones.”

Hard to believe that if dad was alive today, he’d be 89 years old. He died at the age of 72 born January 1st 1922. I never met my grandfather. Mom or dad and one thing I’m going to do before I pass on is to do some genealogy since my family wont help me.

So it looks like I‘ll be able to pay off my Lodge dues for 2012 after all. At first I wasn’t because I figured, I’d be looking at about $60 and Anne said she’d give me $10 to help cover the cost of the dinner last night. It wasn’t necessary but it means I’ll be able to do that and have $20 left over to get me by until Friday. Also, WM emailed everyone and said how the EA candidate wont be able to make it for Thursday. I’m going to have an easy night Thursday, good stuff. Anyway, that’s about all for now.