Training Underway!

I've spent the past four weekday mornings in training for my job with J. Lodge. Suffice it to say that even though I've only started, I can't even compare the two; I'm getting "good vibes" from J. Lodge that simply weren't there with Alpine. It's hard to explain, but I feel like I matter there, as opposed to being some nameless, robotic lackey who bore the brunt of customer frustration.

I was wrong about which client I'd be analyzing calls for; it's not Road Runner. While I can't say which company I've been assigned to, I guess I can say it's a technology company, much more up my alley than "peddling pansies," as one of the 1-800-FLOWERS supervisors at Alpine used to say. The training is not only significantly more extensive than Alpine's was, but it's also self-paced and very relaxed.

The whole thing even reminds me, in a very broad sense, of how my favorite software company, Sierra, used to operate "Used to" is the key phrase here, unfortunately, since the company doesn't truly exist anymore. Anyway, Siera was a "mom-and-pop" company, as is J. Lodge (to the point that the CEO was the one who hired me). I can't explain it, but it's also obvious that J. Lodge cares about its employees and its business in a way that Alpine did not.

It's also quite nice that the company whose calls I'll be analyzing has much more realistic and flexible guidelines for its agents to follow. For instance, FLOWERS agents had to follow the (poorly-worded and unnatural) scripting in their terminal programs verbatim. They also had to explicitly verify customer information for customer service calls, even if the customer already told the agent a required piece of information wthout having been asked. In the words of the woman who's training me now, "That's unfair." Oh, well.

Getting back to J. Lodge reminding me of Sierra, I finished Gabriel Knight 1yesterday. In one word: AMAZING. It definitely gives King's Quest VI a run for its money. I see "Project WAMM" in GK1 all over, albeit indirectly, of course. It's inspired me and given me ideas where there were once few or none. Rick has the game, but has never played it. In short, guess who's going to be pressured to play it now? Hehehe... I'm embedding the "Making of Gabriel Knight" video included on the game CD for everyone to see. I know I included it in my MySpace blog a while back, but the video is so cool and inspiring that I thought I'd include it again here. I can really see myself doing this, especially with someone like Rick. He's most likely going to visit again soon and probably spend the night, so we'll have plenty of time to truly start planning this story out and getting it into a "tellable" form.

Hired!

First of all, I come bearing welcome news: I have a job!

I just received and accepted an offer from J. Lodge, a New Jersey-based company. I applied for a position with them in October, but didn't hear anything from them until the day before Thanksgiving. To make a long story short, nothing came of those initial discussions and I didn't hear from them again until I sent in my résumé a second time. In the interim, I began to think J. Lodge was bogus and wasn't very hopeful.

To make a long story short, this wasn't the case, and one thing led to another fast; I have been offered a position, which I (obviously) accepted, and training should start on Wednesday.

Most of you remember that in December and January, I worked for Alpine Access, a call center outsourcing company in Colorado, taking calls for 1-800-FLOWERS to help with their holiday overload. I thought that would be a great job for me, but such was not the case. In general, I simply couldn't make my body move and react to situations fast enough to meet Alpine's standards; my disability got in the way, and I discovered that the need to think, listen, type, and speak--simultaneously--was simply too much.

J. Lodge essentially works "on the other end" of companies like Alpine; they provide quality assurance and monitoring for other companies' phone, e-mail, and chat support and sales services. In the first place, this means that I will only have to listen to calls and fill out needed forms based on those calls, which should significantly increase my speed and comfort level with the job. Secondly, it looks like I'll be auditing for Time Warner's cable Internet service, Road Runner, which is right up my alley expertise-wise.

The situation didn't look quite as promising initially, though. When J. Lodge's representatives and I first started to talk, and I told them I had Verizon's FiOS Internet service (essentially DSL delivered over fiber-optic wiring, producing cable-like speeds), I was told I would need cable. Something didn't seem right, particularly after I ran some speed tests and discovered that my throughput was just ans fast as a cable connection. Apparently, J. Lodge's employees with traditional DSL were sapping too much of their corporate bandwidth, forcing them to get another T1 line installed. I asked to have the chance to "test connect" to J. Lodge's systems, but my request was essentially ignored. I resigned myself to accept that I was going to need to spend about $45 a month to get cable access in my room, despite the fact that I knew I didn't truly need it.

Luckily, though, I held out until I got the chance to speak with Mike, J. Lodge's CEO (who made the final decision to hire me). When I explained the situation, he confirmed that all they're interested in is the speed of the connection, not what type it is. Phew.

Anyway, I'll fax back the application and other forms in the morning. As far as I know, training will start on Wednesday. Once I'm trained, I could make about $12 an hour, paid per audit. I'm excited, to say the least!

On to the video at the top of this post. A few days ago, Travis sent me the first two Gabriel Knight games, which I had never played. I have the third, but only because it was Sierra's "last hurrah"--its last adventure game to date, and probably ever. Most of you know that for most of my life, I've been a huge adventure game fan, to the point that my career goal through much of my childhood was to be a designer for them. I resigned myself to accept that it would never happen, particularly after Sierra's lamentable downturn in the late 90's. However, through an interesting and often bizarre series of events, I think the dream is within my reach again. For the past 5 years, I've been working on the story for a fantasy adventure game with Travis and Rick, and have more recently started to develop connections in the gaming industry (with Himalaya Studios and Infamous Adventures). The idea for the game slowly morphed into a novel, but now that I know Rick, it has a chance of becoming a game again. We're not sure whether it'll be just a game, or first a book and then a game, but we're nearly positive it'll be a game at some point or other.

What's this have to do with GK? Well, GK is a deep, heavily-story-driven game series, largely unlike Sierra's flagship games, King's Quest. The story we've got up our sleeves combines the fantasy atmosphere of KQ with the depth of GK. I've really taken a liking to the GK games, and have even begun to feel the wheels of inspiration turning in my head. To whet your appetites, I've embedded the introductory video to the first chapter of the second game.

I was hoping to get together with Rick last week, but the plans fell through for some reason, and hopefully we'll be able to see each other this week instead. I did, however, see Eddie last Saturday, which was certainly a treat. We've resolved never to grow apart again, and something tells me we can truly manage that now.

Pre-Copernican Theory Still Taught In France!

Hi, everybody! Here goes my third (and hopefully final) attempt at starting and keeping a blog. I started with Xanga shortly after my graduation from college, then got a MySpace account last September. I closed down my Xanga page long ago, but I still use MySpace to keep in touch with people. The thing is, I've found MySpace's blogging abilities to be less than impressive, and Blogger is much more capable and versatile. So, here we are!

Both my previous blogs essentially concerned life events and random thoughts. While this will no doubt be the focus of this blog as well, I felt compelled to start things off a little differently this time around, particularly after finding the above video on Google Video yesterday. A lot of interesting stuff has been happening to me lately, and until I saw this, I was inclined to say much of what was going on was "weird," but the video gives "weird" a whole new meaning.

Most of you know I've always been rather interested in all things space-related, to the point that my ulimate career ambition through much of elementary school was to be an astronaut, however unrealistic the goal actually was. I still try to keep well-informed of shuttle launches, the progress of interplanetary probes, and things like that. I also took two semesters of Astronomy in college and enjoyed it a lot. I have, of course, also been keeping abreast of the situation surrounding NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak and her being accused of attempted murder. Weird, right? Not compared to this clip!

Anyone who knows me even remotely well also knows that I speak fluent Spanish, and can also understand other Romance languages to varying degrees. This obviously includes French. The clip, as you can no doubt tell, is from an episode of the French edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Qui veut gagner des millions? ("Who wants to win millions?") which aired last July.

The question reads, "Which revolves around the earth?" Choice "A" reads "the Moon," "B" is "the Sun," and the other two are self-explanatory. Not only does the guy lose, but the audience is evidently so disgusted with his stupidity that 56% of them choose the wrong answer, no doubt on purpose. The expression on his wife's face is priceless. I wish I could understand more of the interaction between host and contestant, both before and after he locks in his final answer. The fact that he won 1,500 euros also makes one wonder, "What were the previous questions like?"

My next entry will be more "normal," but in the meantime, we can be sure that the word "dumb" has a new definition: "Hénri."