Safe and Sound and Having Fun!
Topic: London
I don't have enough battery life to do a full update on things, but just know that I have arrived in London safe and sound. I've been having a lot of fun walking around and hanging out with the cool people I've met on the trip. Tomorrow we leave for a 5 day tour of England which includes York and Cambridge.

Anyway, once I find a way to charge my laptop and find some more free time, I'll give a full update.

Also, I decided that I like Livejournal better so please see http://www.livejournal.com/~mandyinlondon for further London news.

Bishop's Peak
Now Playing: "Free" by Mya on NoAlbum
Topic: Personal
Last night I went hiking up Bishop's with Nick and Dave. We started at about 7:15 so the sun was setting as we hiked up. It was beautiful. The sun was gone by the time we got to the top but while we were up there, we got to see the moon rise out from behind this hill. It was funny because at first we just saw this glow and we were trying to figure out what it was. I thought it was a fire until Nick pointed out that it was moon. It was also really cool because we were above the clouds. Just as we were starting to make our way back down, the Men's Colony disappeared beneath the clouds. Then on our way down we saw two deer. It was the first time I had seen any wildlife on the hike (the mouse that crept up to us when we were on the rock at the top does not count as all mice and rats must die). The hike was beautiful as always.

Packing
Topic: Apartment
The good news is that that I'm out of boxes. The bad news is that I feel there is still so much more to pack.

Man, have I acquired a lot of shit. I'm such a packrat. Am I wrong to keep things that were given to me as gifts?

I just finished box #15. In my defense at least 4 of the boxes I've packed have been kitchen stuff. And one box was just tiny ass. I just also need to remember that when I moved in 3 years ago, it took my car and my mom's to move everything up. And I have been throwing stuff away or will be donating it or attempting to sell it (stuff for sale, hinthint).

So I figure probably about 5 more boxes plus London which probably constitutes, I dunno, 5 more boxes and my entire life can be summed up into 40 reasonable sized boxes. About 10 of which is just memories...Boy am I a packrat.


SD days: 9
SLO days: 11
USA days: 18

Topic: Personal
Work days left: 11
SLO days left: 15
USA days left: 22

...But who's counting? ;-)

I dislike training
Topic: Work
Let me rephrase. I dislike training brand new employees. Like I liked training Kim and Leigh to be leads but I'm not a huge fan of training new employees.

Monday I started training Paula for the Service Desk. She had previously been Vera's assistant and also worked as operator. So on Monday, since she was staying from 9-5, we went through the training manual. All of it. Oy. When it got busy, we also answered calls. More like I answered and she listened in. Needless to say, my throat was very sore come 2:30 or so. Fortunately, I skipped my lunch and got off at 4 so I got some rest from 3-4. But yes, throat hurt a lot and my voice became scratchy.

Yesterday we had it where I answered the calls and Paula filled out the Remedy tickets. Mainly they were students who tried to activate their accouts too early. I would really like to hurt whomever refuses to listen to us the past 2 years about sending that email about the account being ready the day after the student registers. It takes 2 days to be created. So they activate them too early which just causes a bigger mess. Anywho, it went pretty well.

Today, I had Paula answer the calls and I just listened in. A couple "huh?" things like PINs acting weird and Illustrator refusing to save a file but mainly the same account activation crap. You know, I didn't even realize that I needed to activate my account until I moved into the dorms. But it was all different back then. Anyway, I was pretty bored all day. Paula has the account activation questions down so I just helped her on the other half of the calls. I even let her answer by herself for the last 45 minutes while I did some lead stuff on Leigh's computer.

Tomorrow I had planned on letting her answer calls on her own but we're actually full on Thursdays. Paula would be the 5th person on at 9am and our 5th station is inoperable since it has no network connection. The port was used for the new Dell printer. The computer next to the operator station has a network connection but no phone next to it. Not to mention that that computer is extremely slow. I talked to Jim about it, and he said that he needed to work up a new schedule anyway. I offered to start reducing my hours to allow time for others to pick up more to cover me once I leave and for Paula and Jen to get more time. Jim said that quite the contrary he wanted Paula and Jen to get as much of me as possible and that for the meantime I'll just listen in to Paula tomorrow.

So bringing my leisure book tomorrow.

$180 later...
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Personal
...and I have a fully function computer. Well almost. Here are the notes from the store that installed the CD drive:

Computer missing 75% of screws. Bracket securing optical drive cable missing. Added screws to hold optical drive in place. Computer in poor condition.

I draw your attention to the part in bold. The auction listing:

This is an ibook 12" 800mhz laptop with a 12" xga lcd screen. with airport wireless connectivity, bluetooth wireless connectivity, 100gb hard drive with 8mb cache (apple O.E.) and an Apple O.E. cd drive! the laptop is in flawless working condition with a new 3.5hr battery, os x tiger 10.4.2, all updates ilife 05 and iwork 05. also alot of other apps!the screen's right hinge is just a tad loose but does not affect it at all, it also has a Torx screw missing from the bottom, also i doubled the factory ram wich makes it much much faster. see pics, it was a wonderful laptop for me for a long long time and it will be good to you too! thanks for looking and happy bidding, also feel free to e-mail with questions, thats what i am here for! Radeon mobility 7500 with 32mb ddr sdram Faster than my ibook G4 1.2 in everyhting i tried! I might add the only reason for sale is i need a car and selling my powerbook and ibook are enough to pay for it! i reserve the right to sell locally! PLEASE GIVE ME BEST OFFERS I TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY! also buy it now has been lowered 50 dollars U.S.

I again draw your attention to the bold parts. For a "flawless working condition" laptop, I've paid a lot of money to make it functional: $50 for the charger, $30 for the replacement CD drive and $150 for the labor to replace the CD drive. Sometimes I wish Ebay left more room in feedback. That way I could have included the poor packaging he did. Yeah, I left him negative feedback and he probably will do the same for me but I don't care. I was going to make it neutral until I saw what the store wrote about it being in poor condition.

The iBook Saga
Topic: Personal
As I've mentioned before, my CD-drive stopped working a week or two ago. When I told my dad he was outraged saying that the computer should be guarnteed to work completely properly for 30 days and that combined with the fact that the computer didn't come with the charger, I should ask the guy for my money back because I was taken advantage of. I told him that it wouldn't happen because the guy who sold it did not mention in the auction that the charger was included, said that all sales are final with no returns or refunds and the computer arrived to me working and broke while in my possession. My dad said that it shouldn't matter because "obviously" this guy sold it because it was about to go bad. My dad said that Ebay should protect me from such things and that I should ask for my money back from the seller and some how explain my situation to Ebay and see what they say.

Well, since I hadn't gotten the stupid bluetooth module that was promised in the auction, I emailed the guys saying it still hadn't arrived and that I would rather just return everything because of the reasons above. Guess what he said? He said exactly what I told my dad. Oh and the module arrived yesterday when I got home. I told my dad that the seller and Ebay are very good about covering their asses about this but he still went all "it should to guarnteed to work for 30 days." Before I even contacted the seller, my dad was saying "well if you had asked me I would have said to just buy a new one." I could have sworn that I asked for his old Powerbook for London when my desktop started to die but I guess I didn't since he gave it to Justin. And they didn't make any mention of buying the $1000+ computer for me so excuse me for attempting to save a little money. As of right now, even if I take the iBook to a store with my replacement part and it cost $100 for them to put it in, I'd still have saved about $200 off of a new G4. Yes, the G4 has a faster processor but I haven't noticed any difference in the speed of performance between this and my desktop. Or I could attempt to save that $100 and replace the CD drive myself but...yeah, I think that's a very bad idea.

Lesson learned here: don't buy big purchases off of ebay.

ESP
Topic: Personal
I was on my bed in and out of a nap. Then suddenly I decide to get up and begin walking towards the other side of the room. Then BAM! My cell phone starts to ring.

Although it was Bridget and as I picked up she went through a bad spot and we got disconnected, but still. Weird, huh?

A first
Topic: Work
I called the Service Desk, or rather Operations, to report a problem. The MyCalPoly Portal wouldn't come up for me. As I tested it on IE and checked System Status, I debated calling 7000 and reporting it. I mean I 'm sure they would have been aware but just in case....

So I called and it turns out it was down...and so was everything else. Apparently there was a big power outage over there and they were bringing systems back up but the Portal wasn't one that was up yet.

Boy that was weird.

Cryptic, part II
Topic: Personal
Well it's about time my feelings stopped getting trampled on. But it's going to take more than one time to repair them.