Tautology of the Skeptical Sinner

I like to keep track of the blogs and sites I run across, this way I won’t forget later which site was useful/funny etc. etc. Occasionally I remember to share them.

Hair of the blog on the values of entering into discourse with service industry employees http://smellmyfinger.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/listen-i-heard-you/

I failed a geek test spectacularly over at the Taoist biker
http://taoistbiker.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/quick-dork-test/

The Generation Gap regenerates for Gen 2k over at A Tale Told by an Idiot
http://ianheath653.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/and-so-the-generation-gap-regenerates/

(And I potentially identify another one of Her Royal Majesty’s exports to The Colonies)

The “I Can’t believe it got through the Filter at Work” site of the week.
(And close contender for the most amount of smut and/or profanity in the smallest space - well done!)
http://emergingontheotherside.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/sugasm-139/trackback/

I found the above looking for the aforementioned ex-pats, not surfing for smut at work (I do that purely at home, thank you very much) on this search I also located:

http://calvininjax.wordpress.com/about/ Who I was obliged to type back a reply in a deep northern accent (Typing in accents is always a challenge)

and

http://bardsworld.wordpress.com/ Who reminded me of an old TV Show I hadn’t thought of in years called “The Crystal Maze“

I think it would be neat to have a little Ex-pat blogroll on the page, and through the magic of Wordpress. BING! Look Down and to the right… for my next trick…

Found this over at De-conversion the original survey is here http://religions.pewforum.org/reports and coverage by  The Dallas Morning News

This is not a puzzling survey result.

As we all know, Atheists tend to be smart asses(Go on deny, dare ya). And Survey takers tend to not give a crap, especially about the little things like… thinking etc.

Question 1: “Sir what is your religious Affiliation?”
Atheist A: “I’m an Atheist”

Question 2: “Sir, would you say you believe in a personal god?”
Atheist A: “… Yeah… definitely…”

Question 3: “Sir, What do you call your personal god?”
Atheist A: “I pray exclusively to the flying spaghetti monster”

So the question begs, are they lumping Pastafarians into the Atheist camp? If so, those BASTARDS need to issue a retraction. I say we storm embassies and hold large chanting get-togethers (we could make smores) - on second thoughts, lets not… we don’t want to be copycats.

… or maybe they outsourced the survey takers to India.

During my day to day work, occasionally I’ll get an escalated call from our Indian call center.

“This customer only wants to speak to an American”

I take the call and I’ll always start off by saying “Thank you for your patience, your call has been transferred to me for further assistance. I am located in the U.S. but I am, in fact, English. I hope this is not a problem”

So far, it hasn’t been. And the caller will often say “I’m not racist, but I have a very hard time understanding those people” or “I’m not prejudiced, I just don’t trust those people with my personal information”

Newsflash: You are being racist. But is it justifiable?

I like a large number of my Indian Customer service reps. A good 10 or so have very good accents (One, Rachel, has a deliciously exotic accent that makes my toes curl), are extremely sharp and customer-focused people, almost to a fault. Yes, it’s true, some of the others make me want to stab myself in the face with an icepick. It’s not that they’re dumb… most have college degrees, but the cultural divide is SO vast that it sometimes feels like I’m trying to teach a dog about quantum mechanics.

That’s on the “front end” i.e. the customer service representatives who talk directly to the customers, but what about the “back end” - those outsourced employees who handle account research, mail handling and payments? Well - from the company’s perspective, the bottom line looks healthy. But in my unbiased and reasoned opinion, they’re a bunch of F&^#tards who could barely find their own a$$ with two hands and a flashlight.

How I know this is partly because of my role as escalated customer service. Our customers aren’t calling in to say “Hey! I just wanted to say that I’ve had my card for 6 months with no problems. Thanks! <click>” no… our customers are calling in to know why we F&&^ed up their account. Guess who? Bing.

But the straw that broke the camels back for me was when our own escalated research team were approached to clean up thousands of accounts the Indian team had chronically hosed. The real plum - they had to work “on project” - i.e. no credit for doing the work would be traced back to them, it would be like India miraculously woke up one evening morning and all of their f&c#-ups had vanished!

The real kicker - They allowed the research team to do it during time-and-a-half overtime. Yeah. That’s really saving money. Dumbasses. Once again, Classic Corporate Mentality: Penny Smart, Dollar DUMB

Skep

Probably not safe for work. Depending on your work that is.

Being the perv I am, I don’t normal miss any references to things spawned by the great god Eros. But I swear if it’s always been there, I need to get new glasses.

Craigslist has always had some dubious posts on, but trolling through all of these new posts of women selling themselves, is proving very entertaining - this girl knows how to dirty talk!

Interesting statistics from Jun 20th: Las Vegas has too many to count, New York has an equally impressive number(I didn’t say “good” statistics). Kansas City - 87 (I guess the Midwest really does heat up in summer), Salt Lake City, Utard Utah, 3. So very sad, if anyone needs quality professional “service” providers, it’s the denizens of SLC.

I wonder if while the economy continues to be a suck fest, we’ll see more people working the oldest profession, pun… not… intentional.

I just got asked this at the liquor store. If I’m at the liquor store, you know it’s not good.

I work for a major credit card company. I answer the phone, I get yelled at a lot. My company is a pretty good company, but lately, their decisions regarding their customers has sucked. This has resulted in me getting yelled at a whole lot more.

Obviously, the calls are recorded, so I can’t tell them what I really think, but I can tell them to go somewhere else for better rates and service. Yes. That’s how retarded my management are.

Obviously, some customers are more desirable than others, but if they’re generating revenue, why the hell would you want to alienate them in this fashion?

I’ve asked this question a lot, and my immediate management shrug, and say “That’s business”… people in higher pay grades are dictating the rules, and frankly, I think they’re assholes.

But I’ll do what they say, I’ll keep on excelling at being a corporate peon, and I’ll keep challenging the WTF decisions in a corporo-correct fashion until someone gets some sense and says “hey, this decision is retarded, let’s rethink this”

In the meantime, for all you customers we’re screwing, royally, I really do apologize for the inconvience.

Given the amount of confused comments I experienced while trying to figure this out, I’d like to share my not quite so famous five minute install. If you’ve already purchased a domain from GoDaddy, just skip step one.

How to create an independant, non-regulated blog for fun and profit!

Step 1: Click here and choose a plan (Be sure to choose Linux!!) from GoDaddy (www.godaddy.com), purchase that plan remembering your customer number and log-in password. (They will email it to you almost immediately)

Step 2: Log in using your customer number, and once logged in, from the top left portion of the GoDaddy account page, click on “Hosting Account List” which you will find under the “My Products” bar. (Click “My Products” to expand)

Step 3: In the central portion of the account page, you’ll see your domain listed… right next to that is “Manage Account” - I recommend right-clicking to open that console in new window.

Step 4: You’ll see big friendly buttons - click the one that says “Your Applications”

Step 5: Almost there. You’re at the Go Daddy Hosting Connection. On the right part of the screen, you should see WordPress listed, if not search for it in the search box in the top right. Click on “Learn More”.

Step 6: You’re now at the WordPress application info screen. Click on the gold “Install Now” button.

Step 7: Select your domain with the Radio button, hit the gold “Continue button” at the bottom right

Step 8: Choose a description for your blog, this is for your organizational needs only - so its okay to call it “First Blog attempt”. Set up a password - be sure that you follow the password requirements. And then click next.

Step 9: Choose the folder. This is the important part. it’s important because your blog’s URL will end up being at www.yourdomain.com/what_you_choose_in_this step/ if you want it in the root (so your blog is at www.yourdomain.com, just delete the text “wordpress” from the box and click next.

Step 10: Set up your Admin name, passwords, email address and the name of your blog. These are all VERY important to remember. Click Finish, and you’re just two steps away from being done!

Step 11: Go to the bathroom (wash your hands), go grab a soda or cup of coffee and check your email. There should be one from “support”(Go Daddy go!) saying: “Installation of Wordpress X.xx Completed”. Open it up.

Step 12: Click on the link, and there’s your shiny, brand new blog. In the bottom right of the blog, under META will be “admin”. Click on that, your log in and password will be what you chose in step 10. Your user ID is NOT “admin”, unless thats what you chose in Step 10.

You’re now all Blogged in. Set up the site as you see fit.

I hope you’ll come back and tell me what happened and how long it took you.

If you don’t want GoDaddy to install WP for you, this tutorial from Mel is easy to follow

 Thanks for the extra link goes to the racing geek.  Hopefully all you GoDaddy bloggers will get done nice and easily!

Peace

Skep

One that involves me emerging into the Blogosphere as an infant emerges from its mother, screaming and kicking and thinking “What the SMEG just happened??”.

After doing a lot of searching on how to get WordPress up and running on my GoDaddy service I am finally here, and I really do feel like I’ve just been pushed through a person… sheesh.

Having said that, the support staff at GoDaddy were awesome, and even had the courtesy to give me a follow up call the same day to check everything was ok.

So, here I am, the Skeptical Sinner, here to examine, rip apart and simply point out the “nuh-uh” in some of the crap we get force fed daily, and to try remind you to have a good time, while you still can.

Love and Licks

Skep