Sean's all better! ...kinda...

Sean beat his fever finally. After three days at 103 degrees, we finally decided to take him to the doctor. When the nurse took his temperature, he was at 101 degrees. Once we finished talking to the doctor (who told us that it was just a virus and that we need to just wait it out), Sean's fever broke. And that, as they say, is that. He still has a really bad cough, but it seems to stem from post nasal drip...

We Suck Again!!!

Well, chalk up another loss for our team. Today, we played against the West Milton Field Office in Softball. These are the guys who supervise us at work from the shadows, noting our mistakes and deficiencies. This was our chance to strike back against them at the ball field.

We choked.

The end result: 21-7. Terrible! They kept hitting the ball into holes or over the outfielders' heads. We couldn't get it together. We had a great first inning, but after that, we stunk. Hopefully we'll straighten up next game.

AOHell

About a year ago, we finally got rid of AOL. Juri loved the program, and had it for a long time, despite my hatred of it. When it came time for removal of the program, I went through an hour long discussion with the customer service guy in order to finally get the account cancelled. What a pain! The guy threw everything that he could at me: discounts, special deals, "faster" service, etc. Of course, I managed to get the account cancelled in the end, but it cost me an hour of my life that I'll never get back.

Now, someone named Vincent Ferrari came across the exact same problem. He recorded his conversation with the AOL customer service guy. The AOL dude managed to harass him by the end of the conversation and, thankfully, Vincent put up with it and got his account cancelled. So, Vincent posted the audio clip on the Interweb, which is now spreading like wildfire. I managed to find out about this story from MSNBC, who interviewed Vincent.

Here is an account of a former AOL customer service rep and why they are such douchebags:

About 5 years ago, I worked in the 'retention' department of AOL through a third party vendor (I was desperate, it paid 2 bucks an hour more then the job I had, and I had to change jobs ASAP for reasons that have nothing to do with this post). As it was so long ago, I don't remember the exact numbers, but there was a very strict quota in how many people you had to talk out of canceling the account (I believe it was close to 65%).

I worked through the FOUR week training period, and 1 hour on the actual floor.

There were several very strange things about this job.

1. The trainer was this very perky guy who reminded me a lot of a zelous[sic] religious motivational speaker. He was straight out of the Frat House, and had that real "Yes Man" attitude. He jumped up and down a lot, and was VERY excited to be part of 'AOL's WONDERFUL team'.

2. If you were late, be it coming back from a break, lunch or first thing in the morning, you were forced to stand up in front of the class (there were about 35 people in the class), and sing silly songs like the Theme from SpongeBob Square Pants. Not only was everyone else forced to listen to this, you were also forced to participate. So, essentially everyone got in trouble. If the whole class did not sing along, we kept doing it over and over until everyone did. Remember, this is a class of fully grown adults.

3. We were told very specifically that if a customer wishes to speak with a supervisor, to do ANYTHING possible to make that NOT happen. We were instructed that we should say they were 'at lunch' or 'on another call' or anything we could think of so the supervisors did not have to speak to the customer. Often times, other reps would get on the phone and pretend to be supervisors.

4. There were several 'steps' that you HAD to follow in the call flow process. It had some silly little catch phrase so that you could remember it. Over 75% of your calls were monitored, and if you did not follow this process 90% of the time, you were fired.

I managed to make it through the four week long training process. Oh, something else I forgot to mention, no matter what kind of abuse the customer gave you, you could not hang up on them. You had to just sit there and take it.

My 10th or so call, the woman on the other line called me a Cee U Next Tuesday. I hung up on her, got my things, and walked out.

Being homeless and/or jobless wasn't worth my pride.

I remember when AOL was first picking up in prominence as a major ISP. My computer geek friends and I would refer to it as AOHell, after the name of the hacker-created program to harass AOL customers as a pretend moderator. Now, it seems like AOL is really in Hell!

Happy Father's Day!

Yesterday was the fifth year that I have been a father. The time has seemed to really fly past, now that I look back. Juri made me more Father's Day album pages again this year. She always does such an awesome job at them! It really lets me know how much she loves me when I see the effort she puts into those scrapbook pages. This year's theme was "Before I Was Daddy." Juri dug up old pictures of us from high school and beyond, just before Sean was born.

In more unfortunate news, Sean has come down with a horrible fever! He has been 103 degrees going on the second day today. The poor guy! Medicine doesn't seem to be knocking down the fever at all. His body must be working really hard to fight the virus he has. I hope that he gets better tomorrow.

Sean's Five Year Physical

Sean has recently gone to the doctor for his five-year physical prior to Kindergarten. He also got some booster shots, but he did very well with them (just a little bit of crying). Sean's doctor had him do all sorts of different things to test his physical abilities, such as bending over to touch his toes, and hopping on one foot. He even spelled his name and did a great job at the eye chart! His doctor told me that she feels that he is at the level of a four year old now and that she was very astonished at the level of progress he has made over the last year of school. It is very nice to hear that about him! I'm so proud of him!

Kids Day

Yesterday, I took the day off of work to attend Sean's school's Kids Day. With the rainy weather we'd been having lately, it was a bit worrisome that it might rain on us during the event, but the weather managed to cooperate. It was pretty cold and windy though. Anyway, the kids had a blast jumping on the bouncy houses, playing in the playgrounds, eating popcorn and cotton candy, seeing the teachers, and getting a balloon from the clown. Our children were pretty wound up on sugar and fun after Kids Day was all done. So, we decided to go to the Drive-In to see Cars. With the cold winds and threat of thunderstorms, we decided to watch the movie in the car only. Usually we sit outside with the kids in the trunk. This time, I pulled the back seats down so our legs stuck out in the trunk, and we rested our backs on the front seats, and we watched the movie through the back window. It worked out pretty well, though Juri's butt fell asleep at one point and my back was sore near the end. The movie was pretty good too!

Spiders!!

Just a few minutes ago this morning, Sean and Maia saw a spider sitting on the wall near where they were sitting on the couch. Maia got scared, because it was a big, nasty looking black spider. Sean told me, "Get the spider, Daddy." So, we go get the vacuum cleaner and attach the extension on it. I hand it to Sean and say, "Here you go." He turns it on, puts the extender up right by the spider, and sucks it into the vacuum cleaner! I couldn't have done better myself.

As I'm putting the vacuum cleaner away, I'm talking to the kids about spiders, and how most of them are as scared of humans as humans are scared of them. I told them that the majority of spiders will only bite a person if they are provoked. Maia then tells me, "Uh uuh... Spiders no have a mouth, Daddy."
"Yes they do, baby. That's how they eat and bite people."
"No, Daddy. Spiders no have a mouth. Duhhhh!"

Softball and Electricity don't mix

Our very first game of softball was yesterday, after all the cancellations that have happened so far. Of course, as soon as we arrive to the field, we find out that the game is cancelled! So, we still have no actual games played! We were supposed to have a game today too, but the team forfeited. Because of that, our team (the Shipwrecks) is now 1-0. We decided to scrimmage since we had enough people show up for two teams of nine. During the game, a thunderstorm was approaching. So, we only played for three innings. It was a lot of fun though. Juri and I even got our jerseys.

In other news, we had a severe thunderstorm on Tuesday. I came home from work early that day so I wouldn't get caught in the storm. While getting ready for dinner, the thunderstorm was getting pretty fierce outside. So, being the funny guy that I am, I said to Juri, "I hope we lose power tonight." As soon as I utter those words, the power goes out! Go figure. Juri was pretty pissed! =)