Last Tuesday we had to go on a tech ride-along at work. For those of you who don’t know, I work as a telephone customer service representative for Comcast Cable Co. And I thought this was something very interesting that I learned that nobody else will find interesting. But if you have cable in your house go ahead and look behind your TV for a white cord going from your cable box to your wall (or from your TV to your wall, or it could go through a VCR or DVD Player, etc)… Anyhow this is called a coaxial cable and it usually looks something like this:

Anyhow, most of the techs have 600+ feet of this white cable in their truck at all times and they have some useful tools to make these. I learned how to make these cords at any length during my tech ride-along. I also got to see the tech troubleshoot in some beautiful homes along the beach, but I found this much more interesting! Maybe it’s because I got to make the cords. Here’s the tools used to make these:

 So first you take your wire cutters and cut a length of the coaxial cable. Next you have to use the specialized stripper for your RG6 cable to strip away the outer sheath from the cable and the metal inner sheath a little bit higher than that. And above that you’ll want only the copper wire showing through. RG6 is just a size of coax wire. It’s the most commonly used for cable indoors.

So after you have both ends of your cable you need to fold back the metal part so only the white is showing. Next push an F-Connector over the wire so that the inside is flush with the white part on the cable. Next slide the F-Connector on the cable into the connector compressor (if that’s what it’s actually called) and cramp it all together and repeat on the other side of the cable.

Now you have your customized coax cable! No, I don’t expect anyone to actually do this, I just felt that I hadn’t written in here for far too long.

I’ve been working. I now know so much about cable that I never knew before. I also have my free cable hooked up so I’m very happy for that!

We’re moving out of this apartment and into a smaller one in June! I believe it’s June 1st. I’m very excited because the rent will be cheaper. We don’t need as much space as we have anyway! The cats are going to be sad when we move, though. They didn’t take moving too well when we moved into here. Luckily the guinea pigs and lizard are way too stupid to even realize when they’ve moved. I’m going to need to enlist the help of my big strong father to help move a lot of this furniture though. Good thing we’re going from an upstairs apartment to a downstairs one. I can’t imagine dragging all this furniture down stair then having to bring back up another set of stairs!

I guess I got pretty much fired from Things Remembered because my manager got fired. She said she wasn’t sure what the new manager would do with me when she started working there. Then when she handed me my paycheck she said, “This is your last one!” like it was some huge good-bye or something. I’m not sure if I should read too much into that… she is a huge idiot and she’s getting fired for a reason. I wish I could figure out why she’s getting fired and how it happened. I’m just nosy like that.

My new coworkers at Comcast are amazing though. The new-hire training class I’m in is full of brilliant people. With the exception of one dimly lit light bulb in the bunch! But she’s catching on… everyone has their own learning pace. The instructor is still very good and sweet.. and pretty darn pregnant too! She’s having a baby girl which means I am sooo jealous! =P Not that I want a kid right now. I want to wait until I’m married and have a house. [= Alex is taking forever though. And I say this like we’ve been dating any more than a year and a few months.

Well, I’ve also decided that I need to go back and edit all my old entries because I was doing the graphical table in the beginning and now I hate that. I’m going to alternate the colors of my entries and I’m also going to change my layout. I still think that we should be able to code our own layouts.

I think that once I save up some money and have my own computer built that I will buy my own domain and continue this blog on there, since I will be able to draw my own graphics and layouts for it!

Any how, I really think that’s it! [=

Well, as the title says, I was chosen for the beta testing! Which also means that I’ve had many e-mails from SanrioTown stating that people have been trying to reset my password all day. Even though they censored out the last three letters of my e-mail. A lot of people know my e-mail because my video was pretty popular. I also update the blog regularly and I’m on the forums frequently as well.

Any way, I’m very excited for the MMO! At work today we covered order entry, which is when you use the customer database and billing program to enter in new accounts. It’s so difficult to do. I was actually one of the ones who caught on a little bit quicker than others, but it still took me a loooong time to do a simple order entry. And it was only on Cable TV… we haven’t even covered home phone service or high speed internet!

Well, that’s about all the updates for now. Thank you very much!

My new job is so good! It’s probably the best job I could’ve wished for. The benefits are amazing and I just love it! My trainer is VERY nice and everything. And I feel the need to say this: I care about this job a lot and as you may or may not know, I am a customer account executive at Comcast. I love Comcast as a company. I know that I have (and if I haven’t then I will) say something on this blog that is offensive to you, or others. I want to say that it has nothing to do with my company at all.

I think that everyone who has a blog uses it to vent from time to time and venting can be offensive. So I felt the need to say that so nobody gets the wrong idea of Comcast. Comcast rocks!

In other news, my boyfriend bought me Chibi Robo: Park Patrol today! It’s such a good video game so far. I must say that it’s getting very difficult due to the smoglings turning all my flowers black. A tip to anyone playing that game: if you pick the black flowers with your sheers, you can give them to the flower shop owner in exchange for happy points! Since they’re going to die at the end of the day anyhow, it’s probably the best way to turn a bad situation good. And to those of you who don’t have it, you should get it! If you don’t have a Nintendo DS, then you should buy one! Haha.

My weekend off hasn’t been much of a weekend off until this point. I had to babysit my little sister and her friend yesterday, and I spent most of the day today watching my dad’s buddy’s little boy. The kid was so cute though. Inbetween that I found the chance to do some eBay shopping! Look at what I found!

Totally cute, no? I love it so much! I can’t wait until they arrive. I’m learning Japanese so I’m hoping that the Japanese in the book is a little bit easy to follow. If not, I’m sure I can figure out how to fold!

Well, that’s all the updates. Thanks for reading! I go to work tomorrow, yay! The boyfriend just ordered pizza and we’re going to rent a movie from Comcast’s Video on Demand! I feel so Comcastic!

PS: I’m still awaiting the word on Hello Kitty Online. I check every day for updates. Anyone else hear anything?

I’m feeling much less worry-ful (?) today! I did get the job! Training got pushed back to Monday the 10th instead of the 3rd. That would be why they hadn’t contacted me on time. Phew. So money’s not going to be a problem for me any more! Thank God!

But that does mean that I have to work in the Naples Things Remembered a little bit longer. But that’s okay, too because that also means more money for me since they pay for my mileage there and back!

I’m so excited for this new job though! It’s going to be so much better for me. Oh, and the benefits are to die for… Medical, vision, dental insurance. 401k, life insurance, and a little bit of free cable. Oh, I don’t think I mentioned where I’ll be working. Well, I will be a telephone customer service agent for Comcast. Okay, I know that it doesn’t sound glamorous, but the $10.75 is completely worth it.

But honestly, the money isn’t why I really want the job. The truth is that my boyfriend doesn’t want to be with someone who has a part time job. He wanted me to move on and get a better job for so long now. And since I finally have, I have a feeling that we’re going to get along much better now. Especially since we won’t have to worry about where money for gas and everything is going to come from.

The only thing that I’m worrying about right now is how I’m going to pay my car insurance since it is $400 and it’s due April 4th and I don’t know if this new job is going to hold the first paycheck until I complete a certain number of hours or what?! When my boyfriend started working where he works he didn’t get his first paycheck until he had been working there for five weeks.

But that’s not even a big deal. Because I will have about $300 for it, and if I absolutely needed, my dad would loan me $100. I’m just so friggen excited for this job!

In other news, I had the best weekend ever with my boyfriend! We went out to eat at PF Chang’s and it was soooo good! Then we watched Jumper, and we were the ONLY ones in the theater. It wasn’t a very good movie. Then on Sunday he bought me a video game and I layed on him and played the DS while he played the Xbox 360 all day. It was perfect.

I’m still working on that Dream Studio movie I talked about in the post before this. But here’s my bitch for today:

Since I won’t be able to work in Naples much longer, my manager has started to have to make the drive to there too. Well I closed at the Naples store yesterday and so I needed the only extra key the Naples store had. Well my manager opens there tomorrow and I told her that I would drop the key off at the Fort Myers store some time today. Then she called me at 11:00 am and told me that I had to have the key at the Fort Myers store no later than 1:00 pm so she could go there and get it. Well, when she called me I was in the car with my boyfriend and his mom was driving us out of town for the day. So when I told her that I wasn’t the one driving and I had no way of controlling when I got back into town she completely went berserk. I’m glad that I don’t need that job any more. So she said to not even bother to bring the key that she would call the Naples store and find out if there was another way to open the store. I knew there wouldn’t be but there was no use telling her that so I just hung up. So then about an hour later she called me again. I didn’t answer it because I was having fun and I didn’t want her to ruin it so I just let her leave me a voicemail that I was to drop the key off any time tonight. She’s so dumb, because she honestly expected me to drop whatever I was doing and to bring her the key at the exact time that she wanted me to. That is completely outrageous because even if I was in Fort Myers, what makes her think that I’m going to rearrange my entire day around her life?

In way better news, Alex (my amazing boyfriend) bought me a video game (the one mentioned above). It’s called Professor Layton and the Curious Village. It’s a mystery-point-and-click adventure with TONS of brain-bursting puzzles. I absolutely love things that make me think my brains out. It’s a perfect game for me and I’ve almost beaten it. I’m about 13 hours into the game and I’ve done every side-puzzle I’ve come to and I’ve completed almost all of the collections. It’s a great game! Good job to Level-5 Inc!

That’s about it for now. Sorry that these entries are getting so long. I’m taking too long between entries so I have too much to talk about, haha.

I think I’m going to make a Dream Studio movie… what’s it about, oh you will just have to wait and find out, now won’t you? Any how, while I’m on the subject of things I’m working on, have you ever found yourself planning too many things at once? Well I am right now.

I know that training for this place that I’m supposed to work starts on Monday and I haven’t gotten a call back from the place to tell me what time on Monday yet. I’m beginning to think that maybe they aren’t going to select me for employment. But they are conducting a background check on me, which costs a lot of money, and they also had me take a drug test, which costs money. So why would they be spending all of this money if they aren’t going to give me a job? I interviewed so well, the woman who interviewed me even said so. So why haven’t I received a call. Have they over-looked me? I even called the person who originally called me to schedule the interview and left a voicemail and still no word. I’m beginning to get very anxious and scared. I need this job more than I’ve ever needed anything in my life. If I don’t get it, I’m pretty positive that I’ll die. Really, dead!

Any how… as of other things I’m planning at the moment, I’ve been wanting to open a business for about a month now. I’m very good with working with graphics, and I think that it would be fun to start a business where I could make yearbook-style books for people and digitally process their pictures of whatever event they want documented. I would be able to do it for pretty cheap because I don’t want to make too big of a profit off of it like most other professional book makers do. Also, I have so much experience with editing pictures and and making page layouts since I was on the yearbook staff at my school. So I think it would be a fun idea to have a business like that on the side. Of course, I wouldn’t want to do it as full-time work. Just sort of a hobby that makes me money.

Another project I have in the midst: building my PC. I have about half a computer sitting in my closet. All it needs now is a monitor, CPU, motherboard, video card and RAM and it’s good to go. Oh, and I suppose that now it needs a hard disk drive since my boyfriend gave mine to his mother. Boo! But he needs to replace that. I suppose that I have most of the outer-parts of the computer done, now it’s just on to the simple stuff. Yeah, simple…

And I’ve been thinking a lot about Japan. I want to learn Japanese so if I do ever marry my boyfriend, we can get married in late March so we can go to Tokyo on our honeymoon and see the cherry blossom trees. Then we could play Pachinko all night. But how am I going to play Pachinko and get around Japan if I can’t speak Japanese? I’ve seen a lot of software that teaches Japanese, but it’s all very expensive, besides one that I saw on Amazon.com today. It’s called Human Japanese. I’m going to look into it a little bit more. Might be the one for me since it’s only $30!

If I do ever end up in Japan, there’s three things I want to bring back with me:

1. Pachinko balls, just a few, and maybe a prize that I won at a Pachinko parlour.

2. Lots of Hello Kitty and Sanrio things for me and my sister and all my good friends.

3. A cherry blossom spray.

I don’t think that’s too much to manage. Seeing as Hello Kitty things are cheapcheapcheap in Japan. I should get stationary and every Sanrio thing I can get my hands on! I’ll have to bring an empty suitcase with me to Japan so I can have room for all the Hello Kitty things I’m going to buy. =3

But this is all only if I marry Alex. Which will happen… the question is when? He’s so reluctant to take any responsibility for anything. We currently live with his mother in an apartment. I want to get our own place so badly, but he doesn’t think we’re financially ready to make that move. So in his mind we would constantly be fighting about money if we lived on our own. The truth though, is that his mommy takes care of him and he isn’t ready to grow up yet. The woman still does his freaking laundry and he’s twenty years old. On top of that, she also runs all of his errands, cooks him food, and insists on doing all the grocery shopping. But I’m finding it impossible to live with her for several reasons.

I said that she insists to do the grocery shopping. Well, half the things she buys are absolute CRAP that rats wouldn’t even eat, and the other half she writes “NO” and “NOT ALYSE’S” all over in big huge ugly annoying Sharpie marker. So why would I want to live in a house where the only good things to eat aren’t mine? And on top of that, half the stuff she writes all over goes bad before anyone eats it.

And she never lets me throw away expired milk! EW! She says she’ll make pudding out of it or something! But what the hell? It’s expired for a reason that’s just gross.

She’s also sooo grumpy when she wakes up, which is often because she sleeps so much. I’m never really grumpy unless someone works pretty hard to get me grumpy so when Ogre (her) walks out of her bedroom all pissed off at the world and she stomps on Fairy (me) until Fairy’s wings break, then what am I to do? She’s an ogre and I’m the fairy… See, it’s her apartment, not mine, not Alex’s… hers. And whenever she wants to she can decide that she doesn’t want me here any more. Then what? I move in with mommy and daddy? See I’m not Alex I can’t just live happily ever after with my parents. My parents don’t let me be a slob and mooch off of them.

Many of my problems would be solved if Alex and I had our own place, for one:

All of our CRAP! We have so much stuff and it’s all confined into one small room. If we had our own place the guinea pigs and the bearded dragon could go out in the living room, then we could properly store all of our things (instead of having them on the floor all the time). But nope, it’s not our living room, dining room, kitchen, or bathrooms… they’re his mommy’s.

It’s got to be the stupidest living situation ever. And in two month’s we’re renewing the lease! I have fifteen more months of this! If I put up with this for another fifteen months and he still doesn’t feel like growing up, I swear to God himself, that I will leave! I hope he grows up, I do love him so much!

So I went to my job interview today! They had us sit in this room with a lot of computers in it and we took two different tests on the computers. Then, if you passed the tests you got to take an interview with one of the managers.I passed the tests then I talked to this manager and she asked me all of these questions about my current job. She was impressed and I think I got the job. She handed me this form and directions to a clinic where they check you for drugs. So I had to go urinate in a cup (ew) and I know that I’m going to pass. So I’m assuming that when they get the results that I passed the test back, that they’ll hire me. She told me that the training starts on March 3! So I’m very excited. I told the Naples store that I wouldn’t be able to be there any more starting that day and I’m really sad because I love that store. Francis, the assistant manager there is so sweet. I hate to leave her there alone because February 29 is supposed to be the only other employee’s last day. Then my last day is the third of March.

And about the last post of mine, just ignore it. I have a feeling that Juanita_12 is only twelve years old and it’s not worth trying to reason with someone so young about commenting blogs. She’s probably just a bored little girl much like my younger sister who runs her blog just to keep track of all the things she likes and she probably just wants people to go to it so she can make new friends. It was a bit out of line for me to call her out like that, but I do hate those copy & paste comments so freaking much! They’re the most annoying things ever! But to you Juanita, if you’re reading this I’m not gonna say anything else about you, although I do not feel like I need to apologize because I didn’t say anything really bad or untrue about you and your blog.

Any how, I’m going to call the place I think I just got hired tomorrow to see if they got the results from the clinic, and what the status of my pending application is… or however I’m going to word it.

I have to work in the Naples store tonigh, boo! Then I have to open there in the morning tomorrow. So I will get off work 9:30 pm tonight, then get home around 10:30 pm. I will probably get to bed around 11:00 pm. Then I have to wake up at 7:00 am, get ready and be at work by 9:30 am tomorrow. Booo!

But tomorrow night I’m going to a partay with my cousin! Woot! I’m so excited to get out and actually do something! It seems like it’s been so long since I went out and had fun. It has been so long. It’s been about a year and a half now.

Thank you sososo much for reading! Do have a great day!

EDIT!!

Something that I hate more than real peoples’ copy & paste comments are business’s copy & paste comments! You, Ms. Bitch who commented this blog, did not get to this blog from Google! And if you did you must have googled, “Alyse Parson’s boring old life.” Which you didn’t. Ugh.

I’ll start with the bad news. My boyfriend and I got in this big stupid fight last night, and for no real reason either!

See, when I left for work yesterday, I asked him to put my clothes away after the dryer was done running. He said he would, but when I came home, all my clothes were in the dryer still and completely wrinkled. So I got a bit upset. He went into completely defensive mode and made me cry. Then I just asked him to come to bed, and I guess he thought I was nagging at him, so he picked up his keys and left. He was gone for almost a half hour… He went and drove up and down the interstate.

I overreacted, I’ll admit, because I did yell at him just because my jeans were wrinkled, when I just could have put them back in the dryer for fifteen minutes and that would have fixed it.

Well, we made up and we’re still completely in love. I just get really bitchy once a month, you know? Time to break out the Midol.

In better news, I applied for a million and a half jobs the other day on Career Builder. And I got two calls back! One is for a marketing firm (ew) and one is for Comcast Support. I’d answer phone calls about peoples’ cable getting shut off and temporary lapses in service mostly. I’m glad that I might be getting the job though. I go to the interview Thursday. They start out at $10.75/hour which is perfect for me.

I’ve been working in the Naples Things Remembered for about a week now. I’ve helped the assistant manager there with the new floorset, and she’s so nice. I hope that if I do get the job at Comcast, that they won’t be starting a new training class for a few weeks, so the Naples store can get a few new employees. The only other employee there besides the assistant only has one week left, then she’s moving out-of-state. I would feel so bad if I was forced to leave that store in such disarray. Their manager just up-and-left her job one day without any notice at all. So I have to drive two hours every day just to go there and take care of the store she left behind. It’s bullshit! I don’t care what type of little personal problems she’s having (rumor is she’s going to see her husband who kicked her out of her house years ago) it’s not worth leaving a company you’ve been with for so long right in the middle of a floorset and while you only have one other employee there.

Any how, wish me luck in my interview for Thursday. Now I’m going to bed because I’m completely exhausted from work today. I worked nine and a half hours straight, without food or a break. I can’t wait until I leave Things Remembered! I love the store, so when I do find a full time job, I may stay on at Things Remembered part time. Maybe five to ten hours a week there.

And if you don’t even know what Things Remembered is, then you should seriously go check out their website. They actually have some really neat gifts.

So I work at Things Remembered #412, Fort Myers, FL. I suppose that the manager for #429, Naples, FL, quit so now they are short an employee. That store is an hour away from my house, but they want me, out of all the other stores in the region, to go to work there. I don’t know what’s so special about me? I just got in trouble for counting out the cash in my drawer early a few nights before closing.

So now, I was supposed to go to a party tonight and it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. And I was supposed to go to my aunt’s house before that, and that’s not going to happen either. But they are paying me forty cents for every mile I drive, and my car only uses sixteen of those cents per mile, so I’m going to have a little bit of extra money. And on top of that, I’m getting more hours. So, honestly I’m grateful for that.

I just wish that I didn’t have to go to work tonight, of all the nights in the world. I may still go to the party. You’ll know tomorrow because if I do, there will be a picture entry!

I hate how life just throws shit at you all the time. Am I allowed to say ’shit’ on Hello Kitty’s adorably juvenile website? If I get yelled at by Sanrio moderators then I guess I’ll find out, right?

Heh, thanks for reading this boring old post.