I'm Stuck In Kansas

I saw War of the Worlds yesterday with one of my brothers. I wasn't terribly excited about seeing it at first; I'd never read the book and the previews made the movie look kinda boring. "Oh, no! Aliens are coming to kill us all! Again!"

Actually, it turned out to be decent. I'm not going to get into specifics about it because I don't want to ruin the movie for y'all, but needless to say, the robots and special effects were awesome. One part that bugged me a bit was that the movie had some strange and large plot holes, but in the end they didn't really hinder my enjoyment of the movie anyway.

After that, I went out to a friend's house and launched a bunch of fireworks. Fun, that, and strangely satisfying ;)

Yep, well, that was pretty much most of my day off. So today, I get to work. Yay.

My car didn't start after work yesterday, so I called AAA and a guy came over over an hour later and jumped it for me. He told me the battery needed to be replaced, since it was old as heck.

Okay, fine. Stupid car. So now I have to go get a new battery for the thing before work starts.

Rob sez the new Batman movie is good and that I should go see it ASAP. Critics seem to agree. Fortunately, I've got my paycheck here and today off; I guess we all know what I'm going to be doing later today!

So remember how I'm a student ambassador? Yeah, so I was emailed by the two leads, Tala and Jon, and was asked by them to co-MC the Traditions Workshop during ROC Week, along with another ambassador! Yes! I get to be the center of attention again!

Actually, the whole thing sounds like a lot of planning. So how about we just add "planning for ROC week" to my Long List of Things To Do Before the Summer Ends, shall we? Yay for responsibilites!

On the work front, nothing new really. Last day of On-the-Job Training tomorrow, if I "graduate". Graduating requires various things; 10% sales and boring stuff like that. I think I'll be okay. Maybe...

Podcasts are cool. They're like blogging, except audio. It's awesome. I've just started to get into the addicting habit of listening to some. Podcast Alley lists a bunch of casts (numbering in the thousands), but if you don't want to look for yourself/are too lazy to do so, you can just look into the ones I keep coming back to: Catholic Insider is an interesting podcast by a Catholic priest out in The Netherlands. The Daily Source Code is a podcast by Adam Curry, an ex-MTV vj and podcast pioneer, and the Daily Sonic is what could only be described as "NPR for hip people". Quick note: the last two have the tendancy to release the occasional explative at times- you're forewarned ;)

After two weeks of training on my West job, we finally went to the phones for the first time on Sunday. At first it was nerve-wracking- I sat down at one of the computers, nervously put on a headset, and prayed no one would call me. That didn't happen, of course. After about ten minutes of stressing out in front of the workstation, a caller came in.

There's a scripted greeting we memorized in training for when callers come in, but for the life of me I couldn't remember what it was. Now faced with a real live person on the line, all my training flew out the window. This must have been expected, though, because pinned up on the cubicle was a yellow sheet with the very greeting I had managed to forget. I took a mental breath and plowed ahead.

"Hi, thanks for calling AOL. My name is Paul, are you calling to sign up for your free trial today?"


Things got easier after that. After all was said and done, I got something like four sales that day, which is actually pretty normal for the amount of calls I had recieved. Lemmie tell ya, though, after only two days of calls I've already gotten some wierd ones. Like the lady who called in looking for eBay help. Or the people I've gotten who don't even have checking accounts (!!) to pay for their service.


In other news, I've recently discovered the band Weezer. I guess "discovered" is a bad word; I mean, I've known about them for a while, but never really listened to a whole lot of their music. Well, they recently came out with a new single, and intrigued by it, I went and investigated the CD that came with it. I was impressed! Once I get my paycheck, I'll probabally end up using part of it to satisfy my newfound Weezer needs. There goes another twelve bucks..

Looking around the internet, I came across this thing called Roadcasting. Roadcasting would let people essentially become their own mini-radio stations; the equipment would let you broadcast a music stream over some existing tech like WiFi. Any one with the recieving tech could listen to the stream and enjoy your music. Don't like your music? Then listen to what the car in front of you is!

Cool, huh? I like it, anyway, and honestly that's all that matters.

That's really it for today. Peace, brothers and sisters.