September 16, 2006
Job, good.
I put in my two week notice at wal-mart last night. it felt good. I have a new job for a better organization, I start the 2nd of October. My new job is a lot like my old one but this time no helpdesk, thus no phone, so it's much better. I'm sure I'll have to use the phone on occasion but it's not a primary job requirement.
Wal-mart has been burning me out. My .... escape, is timely, I don't feel that I could have taken much more of it. I'm not sure if it was the over night shift, or the borring repeitive work that gets to me. Part of it is the fact that no one at wal-mart cares about what kind of job you do. You can do something half-assed or wrong, and that's ok, as long as you follow orders without question. Chances are they'll tell you to do the wrong thing anyway, so you'll have to do something over. It's job security I suppose, you'll always get your 40 hours per week that way, but I can't help but wonder if they could pay us more if the workers were more effecient.
A couple weeks ago I read an article in the paper stating that wal-mart was raising wages through the state, but not here. Why? I can only suspect that it's due to the large number of college students willing to work for less. "Oh you won't work for $6.40 an hour? Well, we have college kids lining up outside the door that will."
I won't miss wal-mart.
Wal-mart has been burning me out. My .... escape, is timely, I don't feel that I could have taken much more of it. I'm not sure if it was the over night shift, or the borring repeitive work that gets to me. Part of it is the fact that no one at wal-mart cares about what kind of job you do. You can do something half-assed or wrong, and that's ok, as long as you follow orders without question. Chances are they'll tell you to do the wrong thing anyway, so you'll have to do something over. It's job security I suppose, you'll always get your 40 hours per week that way, but I can't help but wonder if they could pay us more if the workers were more effecient.
A couple weeks ago I read an article in the paper stating that wal-mart was raising wages through the state, but not here. Why? I can only suspect that it's due to the large number of college students willing to work for less. "Oh you won't work for $6.40 an hour? Well, we have college kids lining up outside the door that will."
I won't miss wal-mart.
September 02, 2006
The gaps in my blog get ever longer...
long due for an update... where do I begin...
I've been working at wal-mart. The wal-mart in lawrence has been converted to a super center and the grocery section will have it's grand opening in two weeks. I can't decide how I feel about the job. I realized the other day that i miss parts of my old job. Though there are some parts I don't miss. I know that when I leave wal-mart there will be more that I don't miss than what I miss. I won't miss the low wage, the contradictive management, and the P in the A co-workers.
The living arangement/job is ok.. We feel like we were given a bit of bait and switch. This job is not quite what it should be. Many of the residents here require a level of care that this facility does not provide. On top of that the boss is a pathalogical liar. If this place were what it shold be it'd be great, but it's not. Another downside we've recently discovered is time off, or lack thereof. We've had no problem filling in for others by coming on duty early or helping the regular shift, but when we want just a couple extra hours on a saturday evening forget it. A case came up recently where we asked if we could come on duty at 9:00 instead of 6:00 on a saturday so that Vernie and I could attend a school related social thing but, no, not a soul is willing to stand in for us. It's not a hard job, just sit and read, watch TV, play some dominoes with some old ladies, or all of the above. You have to answer the phone when it rings and lock the doors at the specified time. Anyway, there are some issues here and it's possible that Vernie and I will find something else before she's finished with her masters program.
Recently I got a letter from a certain car insurance company. Oh no, I thought this can't be good news. I was surprised however to find out that now, more than 8 months later, the claim that totaled my jeep is finally wrapping up. It seems like time and time again I try to do business with a company and they end up owing me or being real headache or both. I am being compensated somewhat for the corporate incompetance, redtape and whatever else has dragged this out.
If you like getting F'd around by a company just go buy something with a rebate attached to it. Vernie wanted a new computer for school and I helped her with it.
She gave me a price range and a general idea of what she wanted in a computer and I set out to find a set of parts with which to build a nice machine. I went with a mid priced intel socket 775 motherboard and a 3.2Ghz PentiumD processor. 2GB of dual channel DDR2 SDRAM, 320Gb SATA hard drive, a DVDRW drive, a PCI-E Video card with a Geforce 7600 on it and a 17 inch LCD monitor. I picked out a 500 watt powersupply and I helped Vernie pick out a case that she liked. We saved money buying the case seperately, though when we got it I could see why it was only $20. The only advantage gained from a more expencive case is convienience when swapping hardware. At the most we'll just be adding more hard drive space, and this case has plenty of empty bays. Also, it's some how easier to justify doing case mods when it only cost $20. Vernie had said something about case mods earlier but I really doubt we'll "pimp" her case any time soon, if ever.
So all the parts came, Vernie wanted to do the actual work of assembleing the computer so I walked her through it. Mounting the CPU and CPU fan was very different than the previous generation of CPUs, and now thanks to SATA, airflow is a lot better inside the case. Once the PC was assembled it was tough getting it to load an OS. Linux liked it just fine but winXP diddn't want to see the hard drive. I threw out my last floppy drive when I moved to KS, and we diddn't have any means of loading the Intel RAID drivers. I diddn't think that should be nessicairy since we won't be using the RAID feature and long story short, a BIOS upgrade should have fixed the problem. Well, we upgraded the BIOS and when we tried to install windows, we got a blue screen before we even got as far as formatting the hard drive. It turns out that it's impossible to install winXP unless the disk has SP2 slip-streamed onto the install disk. Luckily it wasn't too hard for us to find one of those and I diddn't have to make one myself. So far everything works great now that we have the software and drivers installed.
When we bought the parts for the computer, there were about $160 in rebates divided among 3 parts, all purchased from TigerDirect. Long story short I don't think we'll ever get that money. I went to the onrebate.com website and filled out the online form as instructed, and that's where I reach a dead end. I'm required by the terms of the rebate to submit the rebate form within 30 days of purchase, but they won't give me the rebate form. I searched online and I'm not the only one with this problem by far. So, If you ever think about buying something from TigerDirect or any of their sister companies, automaticly assume that you will NOT get the rebate. TigerDirect has a good selection and some good prices, but their rebate system is crap.
long due for an update... where do I begin...
I've been working at wal-mart. The wal-mart in lawrence has been converted to a super center and the grocery section will have it's grand opening in two weeks. I can't decide how I feel about the job. I realized the other day that i miss parts of my old job. Though there are some parts I don't miss. I know that when I leave wal-mart there will be more that I don't miss than what I miss. I won't miss the low wage, the contradictive management, and the P in the A co-workers.
The living arangement/job is ok.. We feel like we were given a bit of bait and switch. This job is not quite what it should be. Many of the residents here require a level of care that this facility does not provide. On top of that the boss is a pathalogical liar. If this place were what it shold be it'd be great, but it's not. Another downside we've recently discovered is time off, or lack thereof. We've had no problem filling in for others by coming on duty early or helping the regular shift, but when we want just a couple extra hours on a saturday evening forget it. A case came up recently where we asked if we could come on duty at 9:00 instead of 6:00 on a saturday so that Vernie and I could attend a school related social thing but, no, not a soul is willing to stand in for us. It's not a hard job, just sit and read, watch TV, play some dominoes with some old ladies, or all of the above. You have to answer the phone when it rings and lock the doors at the specified time. Anyway, there are some issues here and it's possible that Vernie and I will find something else before she's finished with her masters program.
Recently I got a letter from a certain car insurance company. Oh no, I thought this can't be good news. I was surprised however to find out that now, more than 8 months later, the claim that totaled my jeep is finally wrapping up. It seems like time and time again I try to do business with a company and they end up owing me or being real headache or both. I am being compensated somewhat for the corporate incompetance, redtape and whatever else has dragged this out.
If you like getting F'd around by a company just go buy something with a rebate attached to it. Vernie wanted a new computer for school and I helped her with it.
She gave me a price range and a general idea of what she wanted in a computer and I set out to find a set of parts with which to build a nice machine. I went with a mid priced intel socket 775 motherboard and a 3.2Ghz PentiumD processor. 2GB of dual channel DDR2 SDRAM, 320Gb SATA hard drive, a DVDRW drive, a PCI-E Video card with a Geforce 7600 on it and a 17 inch LCD monitor. I picked out a 500 watt powersupply and I helped Vernie pick out a case that she liked. We saved money buying the case seperately, though when we got it I could see why it was only $20. The only advantage gained from a more expencive case is convienience when swapping hardware. At the most we'll just be adding more hard drive space, and this case has plenty of empty bays. Also, it's some how easier to justify doing case mods when it only cost $20. Vernie had said something about case mods earlier but I really doubt we'll "pimp" her case any time soon, if ever.
So all the parts came, Vernie wanted to do the actual work of assembleing the computer so I walked her through it. Mounting the CPU and CPU fan was very different than the previous generation of CPUs, and now thanks to SATA, airflow is a lot better inside the case. Once the PC was assembled it was tough getting it to load an OS. Linux liked it just fine but winXP diddn't want to see the hard drive. I threw out my last floppy drive when I moved to KS, and we diddn't have any means of loading the Intel RAID drivers. I diddn't think that should be nessicairy since we won't be using the RAID feature and long story short, a BIOS upgrade should have fixed the problem. Well, we upgraded the BIOS and when we tried to install windows, we got a blue screen before we even got as far as formatting the hard drive. It turns out that it's impossible to install winXP unless the disk has SP2 slip-streamed onto the install disk. Luckily it wasn't too hard for us to find one of those and I diddn't have to make one myself. So far everything works great now that we have the software and drivers installed.
When we bought the parts for the computer, there were about $160 in rebates divided among 3 parts, all purchased from TigerDirect. Long story short I don't think we'll ever get that money. I went to the onrebate.com website and filled out the online form as instructed, and that's where I reach a dead end. I'm required by the terms of the rebate to submit the rebate form within 30 days of purchase, but they won't give me the rebate form. I searched online and I'm not the only one with this problem by far. So, If you ever think about buying something from TigerDirect or any of their sister companies, automaticly assume that you will NOT get the rebate. TigerDirect has a good selection and some good prices, but their rebate system is crap.
