Friday, April 29, 2011

TURBULENCE! ... Just some random musings

I'm not inside my own mind today... Why is the whole world captivated by a wedding?

That's all I'm going to say about that, really.

I woke up this morning, almost with a hangover though it feels more like sleep deprivation more than anything else. A cup of coffee into me and I can now at least put two thoughts together without feeling like I'm handicapped...

The NFL Draft started yesterday, and Cleveland traded down their 6th overall pick for some insurance, trading with Atlanta who had the 27th pick, we swapped first rounders and also got Atlanta's 2nd and 4th round picks for this years draft AND next year's 1st round and 4th round picks. I was on Barking Hard which is a Browns fan forum I admin on and I was surprised at the mixed reaction to the trade, a lot of people saw the reason behind it. We're a team that's rebuilding (for like... over a decade) and we are not one player away from the superbowl... we're about 5 or 6 at least. We than traded our 3rd round pick and swapped with the chiefs (who were at 21) and drafted a defensive tackle from Baylor named Phil Taylor.

Now I'm no pro scout but I watched some his tapes this morning and I liked what I saw. He's got a lot of power and good technique. Phil has this weird bone disease where his bones grow together in his feet. It cannot be corrected with surgery, it's mostly a pain tolerance issue. The guy's pushing like 340 pounds so you gotta wonder if it will be an issue in the future. The way I see it, he's played through High School and the college level to get to this point, if the injury hampered his dreams that much he would have quit already.

I have a three day weekend, thank fuck. My job can be very stressful but it's got so many variables. It's not like a typical job where you might have one or two major vectors that cause stress. My job is kind of like an automobile. All these working parts coming together and one little thing goes wrong it fucks it all up. I took a sanity day on Monday and I don't work today so... to pardon the awful pun, I really phoned it in this week at work.

I listened to the Vancouver Canucks game on the Team 1040 website yesterday. It was cool because I can't watch the Canucks games (I don't get CBC... I'll get to that ) so when I learned about that I took advantage of it. The Team 1040 radio station broadcasts its radio broadcast of the Canucks games over the internet. I felt like I was simultaneously divulging in some vintage act of defiance while also enabling the technological prowess of today's society. Almost like I was enacting some crazy paradigm shift by what I was chosing to do.

The game was a good game, the Canucks won 1-0, I think that there won't be any meltdowns like there were aganst Chicago because Nashville is not that kind of team. This series is going to be rough and gritty and if the Canucks win they're going to need to re-focus quickly to face a more explosive team like San Jose or Detroit, neither of those teams are teams I WANT to encounter in the playoffs but I did predict a Sharks/Canucks Western Conference Final this year... we'll see if that comes true.

Back to the whole radio thing. I thought it was really cool listening to the game on the radio. Natasha told me she found it hard to follow but It's got tot to be tough when you don't know the names of the players or anything like that. I thought it was exciting, and it still allowed me to follow the action very well. The guys they had calling the game for The Team were really good at what they do. It reminds me that I would love to be a sports broadcaster and announce sports games.

How fucking cool would that be? I think it would be awesome. I would love to call all manner of sports. At least the "big 4" Football, Hockey, Baseball and Basketball. Maybe some Lacrosse or some Curling even. Who knows I'm just a sports junkie.

I had a thought today... I shouldn't say I just had it today. I have it often. I am very... I don't know, really "hateful" without even really being hateful. I say "I hate -this-" like here's a verbatim quote from yesterday when I was ranting about the Royal Wedding (and I said I was done...)

"I am so sick and tired of hearing about the Royal Wedding. I'm done with it, I'm done! I don't want to hear about it anymore!" Now this digressed into a discussion about bombing the wedding with bees. That would have been hilarious. I need to re-calibrate my attitudes. I shouldn't be so aggressively negative toward things that I don't like to the point that it completely overshadows things that I do like. I don't even know how the fuck to go about that but I am sure it involves me actively changing how I look at the world. That won't happen today I will tell you that much.

Here's something I have liked... NETFLIX Ahh yes! I love it. There's a lot of really cool movies and TV shows on netflix and I love that I get a free month to test drive it. There's a few shows and movies and doccumentaries I really want to see but I gotta wait until I have some solo-time where I don't feel like playing Xbox. Show's like Mad Men I really want to check out.  It's 8 bucks a month and there's a lot of content. There's something for everyone and they have a great assortment of content for all the genres that they provide. Sci-Fi, Action, Comedy, Drama, Documentary, Cartoons/Anime, Childrens Stuff, etc. They have a well rounded selection. It's worth checking out if you have an Xbox/PS3 or Wii or use your PC to watch TV shows to begin with.

There's also the new Mortal Kombat but that deserves it's own blog entry so I'll definitely give that to you guys soon.

I'm out of things to say, until next time...

PEACE!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

How Hard Is It To Do Your Fucking Job?

(I originally wrote this on 03/31/11 during the Tumblr experiment, I will post about the Tumblr experiment and my thoughts, probably today or tomorrow.)

I'm not inside my own mind today... and I'm going to try and write this without using the "C" word (and no, the C word isn't cunt).

My job can be very stressful. I'm dealing with frustrated doctors and hospitals who just want their money. Claims worth tens of thousands of dollars, and usually people want shit taken care of right fucking now.

I work with lots of people from all over the world, I get to deal with Indians, Philippinos and even Texans. The most frustrating thing in the world is when somebody doesn't do something that they are SUPPOSED to...

ONE little thing can set the process back, literally months. Let's take appeals for example. The standard time-frame to process a claim appeal is 45 days. When the appeal isn't addressed, we have to send it down. There is a template we must fill out with the appeal that really isn't that difficult to fill out, it takes at most a couple of minutes. When you send a task down, it takes fifteen business days, reset the 45 day process. You can see where this might get a little frustrating if SOMEBODY DOESN'T DO THE JOB THEY ARE FUCKING PAID TO DO!

It is difficult to tell a provider, who is already pissed off at you because you're not telling them "Oh your claim is paid!", that you must take the time to fill out a template to send their appeal, because the previous representative they spoke with did not do this and that they must allow another 45 days, plus 15 business days, when they submitted their appeal to us back in December... three months ago.

How hard is it to just fucking do what you are TRAINED to do?

It's just bullshit because the call center I work at is under enough fucking pressure as it is. Every TINY aspect of my job is scrutinized. Call handle times are scrutinized, after call is scrutinized (after-call is the button you  can hit if you do not want another call to come in RIGHT after you've completed a call), call quality is scrutinized. You can literally fail a call because you document a telephone number wrong. A fucking slip of the finger can cost you. Because my job is outsourced, my standards aren't even dictated by the company that I represent, they are dictated by the company that I work for. It's ridiculous... that's a different rant for a time where I have, perhaps, different employment.

All this added up, and some fucking asshole doesn't take ONE FUCKING MINUTE to do his job properly two months ago when the ball was in his (or her) court to TAKE CARE OF BUSINESS then, and now I've got to talk down someone and do the job RIGHT and then ask them to allow a few more weeks for shit to get taken care of.

One of my favorite phrases at work is "I'm just a middle man" and it's the truth. I just handle claims and benefits. That's it. I don't even deal with the common folk, just health care providers and sometimes it's a blessing, other times not so much. It's tough to tell someone who want's shit dealt with right fucking now that they need to allow another three weeks for their claim to process that's from 2009...

My one wish is that people would just fucking do what they NEED to do. I can't say what's happening. I could blame management because the call center agents are not purely to blame. I could blame ineptitude, I could blame language barriers, I could blame this and that but really it's just so fucking infuriating that I see repetitive issues coming to fruition over and over again and these are things that are ENTIRELY preventable and yet, here I am, cleaning up the fucking mess while I've got managers in my ear about this bullshit and that fucking statistic.

It's like Office Space, without Lumberg... Fuck sakes. I can't continue this, it's lost steam but you get my point. My job is bullshit, blah blah blah, suck it up princess? right?

Right.

Just Blink, Another Goddamn Federal Election

(I originally wrote this during my tumblr experiment on 03/30/11)

I don't think I'm inside my own mind today... Another federal election? Really Canada?

Did you fuckheads in the house spend the last, what... TWO years bickering over the merits of a coalition government to finally push the non-confidence notion on the Conservatives... for what? The opportunity to push ANOTHER minority government into control of this country, AGAIN?

Let's face the facts here. There have been FOUR elections in the last SEVEN years... In a sane country, four elections would happen over the course of SIXTEEN years... over TWICE that amount of time!

There are basically two sides to this battle, with a third wheel attached crudely fighting for respect.

You've got the Conservatives on one hand, led by Stephen Harper, by far my FAVORITE politician maybe EVER.. *SARCASM ALERT* With his robotic nature and his unimaginable inability to emote like a normal human being, he has thrust himself as the face of the PC's and the "Harper Government" and arguably the face of Canada for the past 5 years which is a scary ass thought in of itself.

On the other hand, you have Michael Ignatieff. The leader of the Liberal party. The guy who had to clean up the scraps after Stephane Dion was removed from his post as leader of the Liberal party, a party that really has had absolutely no standing since Jean Cretien retired from politics. Ignatieff is painted as a false Canadian with far too many American sensibilities. I'm sure those who are goaded by the attack advertisements are already put off the idea of voting for him.

Then you have Jack Layton, NDP Leader. He looks like someone you'd run into at Church every Sunday. He, frankly, embarrasses me and he should embarrass anyone that even gives a damn about Canadian politics. Jack Layton has been the head of the NDP party since 2003... He's lead that party for the past 3 elections and social stigma for the NDP party aside, the party has gained ZERO ground under his influenced...

The often ignored fourth wheel in this political circus would be Elizabeth May, the leader of The Green Party. She has been shut out of the upcoming political debates to much controversy, I don't expect this to stand. The funny thing to me is that she's American born, she's such a small fish in a large pond, so to speak the Conservatives wouldn't waste their money or energy attacking her in their ad's. I like Elizabeth May, but the Green Party is too small to make a splash.

Now, really, I think this election will go to whoever is most aggressive, which is why favor is in the end of the Conservatives, they've been aggressive with their pricey (publicly funded) advertising campaigns. They have probably given themselves the early advantage.

The one thing Ignatieff is doing is reaching out a large variety of people, winning over as many demographics as he can is probably his best strategy right now. I think that may help him but will it win him the election? I think he will have to pull a rabbit out of his hat, so to speak, to take this.

Layton's NDP election is centered around Canadian Health Care. For a country with free health care, you would think, why is health care such a big deal? Truth is, it's not "free" we get taxed out the ass for it and a lot of times, you get what you pay for. I've seen the Health Care both sides of the country has to offer and it's bleak on both ends. If Layton can grasp the people and convince them that the NDP Health Care platform is something to believe in, he might snag some votes.

The Green Party's approach is a bit more down to earth, their initiative revolves around a 'common ground' campaign (their words) that wants to cut down on political trash talking and try to engage voters... their words again. To quote an exerpt I found on the Green Party website:

The Green Party of Canada launched its "common ground" campaign in Sidney, B.C., on Monday, urging federal parties to create a "better atmosphere" for Canadians by stopping the political mudslinging and focusing instead on issues all parties can agree on in the lead-up to the May 2 election.
"For the fourth time in seven years, Canada finds itself in a federal election. I know that Canadians feel this is an unnecessary use of taxpayers' money and they are sick of the mudslinging and the personal attacks," said leader Elizabeth May. "We are saying, let's try to engage the voters. Let's try to show them that, once in a while, we can agree on important policy issues."

To be honest I wish the other parties took note but I'm not convinced this will be a big enough impact overall to really make a difference in the election or in voters minds but who knows.

I will be voting Green Party because they represent what I want. They represent something different. I've seen what the Liberals, the NDP and The Conservatives have had to offer Canada and to be honest, I think a change of guard is necessary. With Voter interest at an "all time low" and voter turnout mirroring that sentiment, time will tell if yet another election will warrant any change. I'm not convinced that it will.

I am just so sick of the bullshit. I am so sick of Canadian politics. This revolving door of elections to lead to more Stephen Harper/Conservative political games at the expense of Canadian Tax Payer's dollars, it's got to stop. It won't stop unless someone like Ignatieff, Layton or May step up and kick Harper in the balls, so to speak and show that they have the passion and the vision to take Canada back.

Edit: In the weeks since I've written this, my bitterness toward the election has grown tenfold. My worries of another (possibly majority) Harper Government have me absolutely THRILLED to think about Canada's future and really, as he put it in the debates this past week, we're probably just going to have another election in a couple of years anyway so who gives a shit right? He didn't say the 'who gives a shit' part... I did.