Cameron's Thoughts

So, the Corecomm call center is finally coming to a close. This is one of those things for anyone who worked there have been a long running joke of when, not if, this was going to happen. I had mentioned this a bit back when LocalNet purchased Corecomm. Back then it seemed like this was going to happen much sooner. I'm not really certain why this took so long actually. Anyways, I'm super happy I have a new job now, though I do worry about all my friends still stuck back at the Core.

Today I have put in my two week notice to quit Corecomm. It's been three and a half years working here and I am so glad I can finally leave. The last six months, this company has gone to shit. They let all the engineers go that knew how the systems work, and theres a couple people left that don't really seem to have a clue. Major systems have been down for months. It's really bad. Lot's of customers jumping ship, I don't see the company lasting much longer.
So, on Sept 4th I'll be starting my new job at Liquid Web. I'm pretty excited about this. Plan to go have some drinks tonight to celebrate this.

Just saw this ad in my GMail. I've used the Express software at work, it does do wonders on a dialup, but to call it DSL is just lying to people. I guess if it brings in customers and keeps my job, I can't complain too much. But, I'm the guy they bitch at when they switched from DSL to dialup and are greatly disappointed.

So, I'm at work, and guess what shows up on my caller ID. "Superhero".

It actually was the first part of their business name, but I thought it was funny to see just plain Superhero as the name on the caller ID.
Obviously I am really bored right now and easily amused.

It seems this is now public info, but the company I work for, Corecomm, was acquired by another ISP LocalNet.

LocalNet acquisition will add new jobs here

Of course, they told us they plan to run both companies as separate entities, but, this news article seems to indicate that they are taking our jobs and moving them to New York. Plus, I hear they pay much less there, and they have already greatly cut our benefits. Looks like I need a new job quick.

So, last night at work was really slow, so my boss took me off the phones so I could do some "WebU's". These are online training courses we have. I have already taken all the actual educational ones and all the ones that are required for every possible promotion. So, now I am stuck doing things like "Word 2000 basics" and "Time Management". One I was taking last night was "Self Development - Balancing Your Personal and Professional Life". basically, you just keep clicking through screen after screen until you get to some tests that are fairly simple, it doesn't require you to actually read the previous 40 pages. Except, I came across the following question:

As you can see, I got it wrong. I choose 'A', but the correct answer is 'B' I just had not seen such a bad question. Makes no sense. At this point, I just had to take a screen shot. Plus, it was around 10PM and I had been taking these pointless tests since about 7PM, so I was in a zombie-like daze. I thought might had been losing it.

One thing to note about this site. I likely won't be posting anything about my job that would in anyway risk me losing it. It seems Corecomm is paranoid and does a number of searches on themselves using Google. I have seen a number of hits in my referrer logs from the IP of the East Lansing office where I work at with the return page being a search for 'corecomm'. So, all the pages on this site mentioning Corecomm seem to get a number of hits from someone at my work. So, unless my employment status changes, I will likely be very discrete on any job related postings.

It's been such a slow day at work today. I am basiclly posting to keep myself busy and to prevent falling asleep. I have been on the phone only 45% of the night, meaning that over four hours of my shift I have been doing absolutly nothing. And please ignore my spelling errors. I am not at home with my constantly running spell check in the background, or using my Opera broswer with built-in spell check, or even posting via w.bloggar with it's spell check. So, I am out in the open with all my spelling incompetense for everyone to see.
But, I have been learning alot about PHP recently. It's kind of my new thing to learn. I don't know why I haven't learned it before. It's so simple, very much like BASIC. I love programming in BASIC, but it's pretty outdated now. I have tried and failed very much at C++, so I never tried Java, and Perl just scares me. I did have a time when I was doing some Visual Basic programming, but that has passed. Web pages have been what I like working with recently, and I really like using Movable Type. But, it's a static system. PHP can make the pages more dynamic. Maybe soon I will find some good uses for this knowledge. I have already put it too good use by helping with the backend of managing this website.
Well, time to go home now.

I just added a resume to the side of this page now. Anyone wanting to hire my can now easily access this information and quickly hire me for a high paying job. I also finally got around to updating the family pics section of this page. Those links can be found on the side here under the section 'My Own Pages'.

Today at work I took about 20 calls or so. (I think that is what the computer said). I am feeling pretty comfortable giving people help. I think I might actually be starting to sound like I know what I am talking about because by the end of the calls I took, people seemed to be genuinely satisfied with my help. At first they just kind of seemed like, "Yea, whatever, thanks I guess." I could have taken more calls, but I had to do some training on telephone repair support and then just went over some other basic training stuff with my trainer Ruben.

Ton's of people calling in at work today complaining of getting e-mails from us saying we are going to cancel there service. I guess someone thought making a virus with an encrypted ZIP attachment looking like it came from people's ISP would be funny.

Today was my first day at CoreComm. It started off with a three hour orientation going over all the benefits and policies. The benefits are actually a lot nicer than I was expecting them to be. So that will be nice. The rest of the day went pretty smoothly. Was shown around the building, received my ID badge to access the offices, and started my training. Got to listen in on some calls with a guy named Ruben. He is going to be training me for the next few weeks. He showed me lots of info and where to find the info in the future. Looks like I won't really know how to do everything at first, but at least I will know where to find what I need.

Tomorrow morning will be my first day of work at CoreComm. I will need to be there at 9 in the morning, which will be different for me. I never worked that early at McDonald's in the last couple years except for few exceptions. I guess I will be working 9-5 all week long during training. Not sure exactly what my schedule will be, will find that out tomorrow. It's strange not really knowing when I need to be to work for sure when this week has already started.

Sunday is my last day of work at McDonald's. Going on nearly six years of working there it is going to be a big thing leaving there. It is hard to imagine how well I know some of the people I work with. There are a number of people who have been there since before I started as well as a number of people who have worked quite a bit of that time. Many of these people I know almost their complete life stories and how they feel about so many things. I know these people better than my own family. So it is hard to just say "Bye" and just leave. But it needs to be done. I have to remember that this is just a small phase of my total life. While right now, this job seems like everything there is, many years from now those six short years will seem insignificant. I can tell this as when leaving high school almost four years ago, at that time it seemed so crazy not to see these people that I had spent the past 13 years with no longer. But only a short time later, school seems like a distant memory and I really do not miss anyone. I still am friends with Patrick, and I still see a few other people from time to time. But that's it. All just a distant memory, as my years at McDonald's will still be.
Anyone who is reading this might be wondering why I am reflecting back at my years at this fast food job almost in a positive way. Well, I am, but not the actual job itself. It's the co-workers who made it a great place to be. Not all of them, and probably not even the majority. I guess eventually you just block out the negative and the whole crappy work day is hidden from long term memory. I mostly just remember the good times, and the funny times. There are so many things that happen there, involving employee's or customers. Lot's of unbelievable stuff. And no, there is no memories of people spitting on food, or picking up food off the floor and serving it. I have never seen anything like that happen.
Maybe I will post some of the memories that stick out, but not today. Today the whole thing will me leaving has really started to come to reality. Today was the last night that I would close, which is what I usually do. It was also the last time I would work with some people like Bob and Pat. It's weird to think I will never work with them again. So, this is all really coming to reality inside my head, and I have to get ready for the next step in my life.
Future, here I come!

I will be starting a new job soon. I will be working as phone technical support at CoreComm. I will be starting there on the 24th. I don't know if I'll like the hours though, I will probably be working 12 noon - 8PM. That will basically take up my whole day. But, at least I will be working somewhere where I can move up and advance my career.

It's not very often the little town of Charlotte see national news, by today my place of employment, the McDonald's of Charlotte was seen on the front page of FoxNews.com. The story can be seen here.

I had a couple of interviews at CoreComm back in October. I probably mentioned it here, don't remember. They told me there were no openings, but Brian Oakley (he's my wife's step-mom's brother, not really related, but kinda) told me that I was at the top of the list when they had an opening. He has been helping me get this job there, and I really appreciate him for it. Anyhow, I was expecting there to be an opening sooner, but for some reasons that I can't really say, they couldn't do any hiring for a little while. But, today they called me and asked if I was still interested in the job. Of course I still was, so they said it would be one to three weeks while they did some background checks and let the paperwork run through the HR department. I am pretty excited. McDonald's has been a shit job recently (well, it's never been great, but now is worse than normal). Let's just say it's been going on two years since I have seen an increase in pay. And now they are working our asses off. Not sure if I can quote the expected labor percent McDonalds policies expect a store to follow, but I can say that we have been running WAY under the correct labor rate. At some times the labor percent is half of what it should be (each person is on average doing the job of two people, and when you figure in the lazy asses you can barely do their own job, some people are doing the work of three or more people). Ah, so is life. At least the owner of the store is able to spend more time on vacation in Florida than at home. And that's no exaggeration either. The first two months of this year he is going to be in Florida over six weeks, and last year he was down there at least half the year. At least my lack of raises has been going to good use.

Ahh! Today I start my weeks vacation from work. I'm not going anywhere or doing anything special, but I don't have to go into work, and that's all that matters! I will get to spend a lot of time with Hailey, though, and that will be great.