Just Like (a) Human » Work http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net If our world was... just like a human, would we abuse it so? Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:07:33 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ It’s Saturday. http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2008/03/15/its-saturday/ http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2008/03/15/its-saturday/#comments Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:33:19 +0000 Justin http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2008/03/15/its-saturday/ Dang, it feels really nice to have a Saturday off for once, even if WFO screwed up my time off request by giving me the whole day instead of just three hours.

I’ve been in bed all morning, enjoying the lazy time.

Time change still has me a mile off of the ordinary, though.

]]> http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2008/03/15/its-saturday/feed/ Xial - AOL + Dell = Pay Raise http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/09/20/xial-aol-dell-pay-raise/ http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/09/20/xial-aol-dell-pay-raise/#comments Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:04:11 +0000 Justin http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/09/20/xial-aol-dell-pay-raise/ I could let the title of this entry be the entire content, but I think I owe you all an explanation. Hopefully, this one’s not against the old NDA I was under (hence the lack of real meat in my work posts).

Basically, the company I work for here, doing tech support for AOL had to lay all of us off, due to… extenuating circumstances. This was something I knew was coming two months ago, and I was prepared and ready. I was planning on using my time off to claim unemployment, and search for a job with similar pay, or even go back to my old job.

On our last week there, I get a phone call just before I could call in with my doctor’s note, telling me that there is an opening available for me with the same company, but doing support for Dell. They tell me it involves a pay raise, which I was pleased as punch to hear, so of course, I went for it. :)

Therefore, I’ve spent all of THIS week off from work, and will be working next week, by doing over a month of proper training.

I’m glad, too. It means I get to keep benefits, and might be able to make some necessary progress.

]]> http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/09/20/xial-aol-dell-pay-raise/feed/ Chinese Gold Farmers. http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/05/04/chinese-gold-farmers/ http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/05/04/chinese-gold-farmers/#comments Fri, 04 May 2007 16:51:48 +0000 Justin http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/05/04/chinese-gold-farmers/ A random topic for a random post, or so it would seem.

I’ve spent my days at work playing Nowhere Else and Beyond, simply because I’m waiting on phone calls to come in. All I do when I’m not bothering with quests, is farm for ingots of raw material. The ingots I farm for get sold to someone for large chunks of in-game gold, which makes me happy as a clam.

I use that gold to buy better equipment and spells so that I can go longer in my quest for thousands upon thousands of ingots. By thousands and thousands, I do mean that I farmed up 2050+ Iron ingots alone yesterday. I don’t even remember the gold or platinum count, and I know that I need to switch dungeons to farm up any mythril. It’ll happen eventually. I’m even playing the mini-game that deals with running a mining rig, and I’ve got 5th or 6th place for everything, on average.

What saddens me is that I’m basically being paid to play games while waiting for phone calls. I sort of feel like I’m one of those Chinese Gold Farmers we joke about in most MMORPGs. :P

I actually hope for more phone calls today, and I hope they’re the short kind. A whole mess of 10 minute calls would do wonders for me. :) I mean, back to back to back to back 10 minute calls.

]]> http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/05/04/chinese-gold-farmers/feed/ blarg http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/04/09/blarg/ http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/04/09/blarg/#comments Mon, 09 Apr 2007 15:25:11 +0000 Justin http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/04/09/blarg/ i r ded

… or at least, that’s how I feel right now.
Struggling to figure out how I’m going to get a place to sleep tonight, since I work that funky 15:30 to 0:30 schedule.

I’m not sure what’s going on right now.
I am just hanging onto it for dear life, though.

]]> http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/04/09/blarg/feed/ Level up! http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/04/05/level-up/ http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/04/05/level-up/#comments Thu, 05 Apr 2007 22:16:01 +0000 Justin http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/04/05/level-up/ Well, Today marks my fourth full day on the phones at work, and while I was in the middle of a call, one of the assistants stops by my cube, and says “Justin, sign this.”

Apparently, I have officially passed training, and am therefore officially accepted as an agent on the floor. :D

Now all I have to do is make sure of how I’m going to manage going to and from work next week, since I work an inverted schedule: 15:30 to 0:30. :)

]]> http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/04/05/level-up/feed/ Metempsychosis. http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/03/30/metempsychosis/ http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/03/30/metempsychosis/#comments Fri, 30 Mar 2007 11:07:12 +0000 Justin http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/03/30/metempsychosis/ Well, today is the last day of our training in the classroom.

On Monday, we will be moved out onto the phone system once and for proper, in our endeavor to assist the members of America Online^W^W AOL with their AOL Software issues.

I expect to get a lot of people who don’t quite understand that AOL isn’t responsible for things such as their cat being lost, or Windows managing to issue them a Blue Screen of Death™ because they moved their mouse, or their beloved World of Warcraft account having all of its stuff looted by a skr1pt k1dd13 (lolol!!!!!1!!1!1).
I expect to be able to direct these members to the appropriate forms of assistance (Local Animal Services, Local Computer Technician, Microsoft, Blizzard, whatever it may be).

As for the ones who have actual issues with AOL, I expect to be able to help them to the best of my ability.

I’m actually ever so slightly nervous about this. :)

]]> http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/03/30/metempsychosis/feed/ First week of work, in a brief recap. http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/03/17/first-week-of-work-in-a-brief-recap/ http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/03/17/first-week-of-work-in-a-brief-recap/#comments Sat, 17 Mar 2007 20:45:51 +0000 Justin http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/03/17/first-week-of-work-in-a-brief-recap/ I survived my first week of work, though training has been a relatively harsh mistress to me.

Because I must be at my bus stop by 5:01 am each day, I’m up by 4 in the morning.
I get to work just before 6, eat breakfast, and sit through hours of training material, pretending to not be bored out of my mind by the constant reviewing of it, starting at 7 in the morning. Being a kinetic learner, I learn better by doing something after being shown a few times. This is a bit slower for me to pick up, as a result.

I also know that I must reel in what knowledge I already have, and try to adapt to using their tools, rather than suddenly blurting something like, “Download Spybot S&D, then run that. You need to do this, because you’re loaded with spyware.”

When we leave at about 3:55 pm or so, I have to get to the bus stop as quickly as possible, only to wait, since the 4:01 pm bus never seems to come on time. :P

So, if I skip the library and the store, I get to the Salvation Army lodging at about 5 pm. Else, I get in about 7 pm.

I just need to make it through the next three weeks.
Tomorrow, I guess I’ll go to the store, and get myself some of the imported Red Bull with my plasma money. I want to see if the import tastes any better, since I can’t get my hands on my Bawls.

I know I can do this job, but I just need to actually try to do it.

Finally, a public note to a specific reader:

Alvein, thanks. :)

More to come later.

]]> http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/03/17/first-week-of-work-in-a-brief-recap/feed/ First day of work. :) http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/03/12/first-day-of-work/ http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/03/12/first-day-of-work/#comments Mon, 12 Mar 2007 10:40:02 +0000 Justin http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/03/12/first-day-of-work/ Well, I’m sitting at work right now, in the breakroom. I’ve got my new badge on my hip, and I’m sitting at a Windows 2000 box (it’s true: without a patch, Windows2000 will not update its time to meet the correct time), writing up this post.

I’m somewhat nervous, but I’ve got this momentary calm rolling through me, letting me know that gee, it’s gonna be okay after all. It’s just me being a nervous wreck.

Heck, given that I work for an ISP, I get access to the Internet at work, for free.

I admit, I’ll have to put all of my bias aside, to do what I was hired to do: Assist users in having a great experience with America Online. It won’t be difficult for me to do, but I have to remember to do it. :)

[tags]America Online, Stream, AOL, Technical Support, First day of work[/tags]

]]> http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/03/12/first-day-of-work/feed/ PHP5 woes. http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/02/06/php5-woes/ http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/02/06/php5-woes/#comments Tue, 06 Feb 2007 17:59:01 +0000 Justin http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/02/06/php5-woes/ I have been trying to get php5 up and running on my spare computer here (Pentium II, 400 MHz, 128 MB of PC-100, running FreeBSD 6) for the past two or three days now.

Unfortunately, it’s been a constantly uphill battle. I can’t get a damn thing done with it, due to the torrential amount of errors I’ve dealt with. As soon as I clear one batch of errors, another one appears.

I’ve become increasingly frustrated with trying to set this up, despite googling for answers (This includes using the special google.com/bsd search to focus my results a fair bit more).

Right now, all I want php5 for is to test Habari on my little box. Everything else that I’d like to play around with can probably be easily done from php4.

Instead, I get this:

PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/bz2.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/bz2.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/curl.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/curl.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/gettext.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/gettext.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/gmp.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/gmp.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/iconv.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/iconv.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/imap.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/imap.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mbstring.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mbstring.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mcrypt.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mcrypt.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mhash.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mhash.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mysqli.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/mysqli.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/ncurses.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/ncurses.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/openssl.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/openssl.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/pdo.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/pdo.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/pgsql.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/pgsql.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/readline.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/readline.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/recode.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/recode.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/simplexml.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/simplexml.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/snmp.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/snmp.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sockets.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sockets.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sqlite.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sqlite.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sysvmsg.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sysvmsg.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sysvsem.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sysvsem.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sysvshm.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/sysvshm.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/dom.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/dom.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xmlreader.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xmlreader.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xmlrpc.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xmlrpc.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xmlwriter.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xmlwriter.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xsl.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/xsl.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/zip.so' - Cannot open "/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/zip.so" in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: [tag]PHP[/tag] Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ‘/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/calendar.so’ - Cannot open “/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/calendar.so” in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ‘/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/dbase.so’ - Cannot open “/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/dbase.so” in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ‘/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/fileinfo.so’ - Cannot open “/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/fileinfo.so” in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ‘/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/ftp.so’ - Cannot open “/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/ftp.so” in Unknown on line 0
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ‘/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-[tag]debug[/tag]/gd.so’ - Cannot open “/usr/local/lib/php/20060613-debug/gd.so” in Unknown on line 0
I’m rebuilding the extensions at the moment to see what will happen, but right now, it’s doing all sorts of irritate-the-crap-out-of-me.

What I need at the moment is:
A solution to the [tag]segmentation fault[/tag]ing that php5 is doing (also, where the hell are the logs for this thing?)
A way to get [tag]php5[/tag] and php4 to coexist, so I can at least move forward on that front.

I also need a temporary job that I can commute to and from via the bus system, since my car is in serious need of repair or replacement.

This ain’t my week, baby.

]]> http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/02/06/php5-woes/feed/ Double Good News! http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/01/23/double-good-news/ http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/01/23/double-good-news/#comments Tue, 23 Jan 2007 21:26:19 +0000 Justin http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2007/01/23/double-good-news/ It is with great happiness that I inform everyone of these news tidbits.

First: I have been struggling with my practice exams, with the Superman class exam consistently knocking me on my arse.
It is with great delight that I inform you of my passing that practice exam on Sunday. :) I am currently waiting for my paperwork in the mail, so that I can move on to take the state level exam for becoming a [tag]Life Insurance[/tag] agent. :)

Second: This one pertains mostly to you LiveJournalers, and anyone else that participates in OpenID.
Thanks to the WPOpenID plugin, I am now able to support users using OpenID for comments. :)
I’ll need to update my comment form slightly to show support there, but for now, please use the sidebar to log in via [tag]OpenID[/tag]. You may comment this way, with relative ease. :)

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