Monday and Tuesday

Its been a couple shifts now and its slowly coming. Monday was a little rough. I kept getting half an hour calls. I had a lot of technical issues as well. Tuesday was a little better. I finally got to do some work orders and turns out a lot of them are easy. I have a feeling that once i get to do everything at least once its going to be ok. Another thing i like about the job,its not that busy. There was a couple of times last night when we were going 20 minutes between calls. It was pretty cool. It especially get dead after 10 o clock.

On a personal note I have been getting up early to take Diana to school. I'm only seeing her about 40 minutes a day. The last couple of nights i've been surprised to come home to find her sleeping on the couch waiting for me to come home.Its really melted my heart. I at least get to see her for a few minutes at night and i get to tuck her in. Its gonna be a rough adjustment for me for awhile. Anyhow thats about it for now. See ya in April.

Sad and worried Jay

Well today is the first day of a full week on 3:00 TO 11:00 PM shifts. I'm feeling kinda sad and nervous right now.

W hy am i sad? I realized i will only get to see Diana in the mornings for less than an hour,she will be asleep by the time i get home.I'm not gonna be able to read to her before bed. I will only see Kath for maybe 2 hours at night. I'm gonna need to be in bed a few hours after i get home and Kath may be asleep before that. She's going to be having long days at her job as well. We're gonna be on a crazy dinner schedule. Hell we may not get to have dinner together at all this week. I know we'll work through it but its still gonna suck.

Why am i nervous? Because today ids the first day i take calls without someone listening in. We're still considered to be in training so there will be reps running around to help us. It's gonna be scary I'm not going to lie.

Anyhow just getting ready to go soon. I'm gonna try and relax and be happy.

Geek Christmas 2

Hey gang. Time for more adventures from wizard world. Before i go any further just want to thank Nickle for all the pictures she took during the day. The one thing that did suck was that both our cameras died before the end of the day. Thems the breaks i guess.

There were a lot of cool costumes this year. I think my favorite was Hawkman. There were plenty of super hero and star wars characters this year. The costumes definately kicked ass. Oh and i forgot to mention that the deloreon and hover board from Back To The Future were there as well. Definately a huge geek moment.

So Rob knew a lot of people there. He actually knew a guy by the name of Jim Felker who wrote a comic book called Sarah Palin. The comic was so popular that it sold out and Rob bought the last copy from the writers personal stash. W e did a quick interview with him. Later on in the day Rob ran into someone he knew years ago. She has worked on a stargate online game and she is friends with most of the cast. She took our card and we may be getting in touch with some of the stargate cast. That would totally rock.

So we finally arrived at our first celebrity interview of the day Miss Liana K. You may recall we spoke with her last year and she had joined our facebook group and she's just an all around class act. Last year she was dressed as cheetara from the thunder cats this year she was the madd hatter. She must have spoken with us a good 20 minutes about her love for comics and her show 'this movie sucks' and causes that are near and dear to her heart. The whole get your geek on gang thinks she is awesome and we really appreciated her time yet again.

So then we approached one of the wizard world staff to see if Scott Thompson was free. He had been a member of the popular Canadian comedy group the kids in the hall and last year he wrote a comic book graphic novel called the hollow planet which featured one of his kids in the hall characters Danny Husk. The wizard world staff member came back to us and mentioned that scott thompson was dressed like danny husk and only doing interviews in character. Rob and i thought this was awesome and went to talk to Danny Husk. It was so cool. He made fun of my shirt which i was totally cool with. Spoke with him for a few minutes. It went great. I picked up a copy of his book and he signed it for Kath and I.


All good things come to an end. After we picked up a few shirts for Diana it was time to leave. We went to East Side Marios and had an awesome dinner and then called it a night. I am already counting down to next year. Thanks to Rob and Nickle and to the helpful staff at wizard world . What a great day, Its good to get your geek on!

Christmas for Jay and Kath

Why was it christmas for us? Well we were going to our second wizard world convention on March 19th. As you recall we had the best time at last years wizard world and we were treated like gold. Would the same hold true this year?

We had a good idea it was going to be awesome as soon as we were given notice that we would get free press passes again. So the score card now is wizard world 2 fan expo 0. So even if the day sucked at least we were going to be getting in free as legitimate press again.

We piled in the van with Rob and Nickle and Anthony and his friend Felix. Get your geek on was going back to Toronto!

We arrived shortly before 10 and picked up our passes. It was a little different this year. There was no press room and it was a litte bigger than last year. The lay out was better--all the celebrities were in one area. There wasn't a lot of vendors selling comic books but there were plenty of graphic novel dealers seeling books at discounted rates. I finally picked up the Superman earth 2 book and 3 avengers trade paper backs. Got them for 30 percent off of the american price--yeah it was a lot cheaper.

Rob and i found Jerry one of the runners of the event and asked about interviews--while we did this Kath and Nickle were having a similar experience with a woman named Andrea. We had submitted a list of people we wanted to interview. We were told that Scott Thompson from The kids in the hall and Liana K would be willing to do interviews. Billy Dee Williams was a long shot but we knew that when we wrote his name down. It was really wishful thinking. We all met up and we were asked if we wanted to interview the kid from the walking dead. We are fans of the show but we didnt know what to ask a 10 year old kid so we politely said no. If it had been anybody else from the cast we would have said yes.

We did a bit of shopping and unfortunately Kath's knee gave out so she sat on a booth near the entrance. She insists she was ok with this and spent the day people watching and texting whenever celebrities showed up. She was also sitting where everyone was taking pictures. Long story short she was in a lot of peoples photos.

Rob and i did some interviews with some sci fi organizations. We spoke with some people from the polaris con thats coming up. They will be featuring Ben Browder from Stargate and Adam Baldwin from Chuck at their con this year. We were told we could probably obtain some press passes and take part in the press q and a. We probably wouldnt get any 1 on 1 time with the celebrities but it would still be cool to be in the press room asking questions.

Several interviews followed with the firefly fanclub and ad astra--another sci fi con coming up. Then Rob decided he wanted me to see boobs. So we went and interviewd some women running a medieval role playing game where people dress up as knights and battle each other. There were women in corsets to that Rob wanted me to check out. Rob is a good friend so what was i gonna do say no? This was followed by a trip to interview the Toronto roller derby girls. They were skating around all day and rob being the good friend he is had me speak to a few. Nickle took some pics of that interview that i can't wait to see.

By the way just so you know i was going out to check on Kath every few minutes and she claims she was having a good time. Rob and i were about to conduct our 2 celebrity interviews. More on that next time true believers!
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Still alive

Ok i'm here to say that i made it home alive after the first shift--barely. It was rough. Almost all the calls were tech calls. I think i had 1 billing call. I managed to fake confidence on the calls which was amazing. I had another rep listen into my calls and he said i did fine. Monday i'm on my own for the first time. So I'm gonna take the weekend to relax and not think about work and just hang out with Diana. Sunday Kath is actually off so we will get a rare day off together. I can't wait. So I'm calling it an evening. I'll be blogging this weekend about last weekends wizard world convention. Finally!

Nervous Jay

Holy crap I am nervous. Tomorrow afternoon starting at 3 i have to start taking calls for the cell phone company i now work for. Training is done. I know i have worked in a call center for 10 years now but I'm doing something different and its not all billing related. There's some technical stuff involved as well. Not sure if i'm up to doing tech work. I have my fingers crossed everything will be ok. It's still considered training for the next 2 weeks. I know i'll be raising my hand quite a bit. I just hope i don't vomit. I'm going to bed now. I'll keep everyone up to date on what happens.

Kath gave me the finger

I forgot to tell you all about Kath's sweet anniversary gesture. So we just celebrated out 10th wedding anniversary. I came home from work and my beautiful wife surprised me with a tattoo of my name on her ring finger. So i guess now she's stuck with me--unless she finds another Jason. I love you Kath!

Yet another Barney Bentall show

Just realized i forgot to blog about the concert we went to on March 11th. My mom was kind enough to get us tickets for Christmas to see Barney Bentall and Kevin Fox. The cool thing is the concert was the day after our anniversary so we had a nice dinner out at wimpys with Diana. We dropped Diana off at the babysitters and then traveled to Brock University for the show.

We'd seen Barney many times before. It was our 6th time seeing him together. It was my 17th time seeing him since 1990. Yeah i'm a big fan what can i say. Kevin Fox we had seen as part of a band called Shaye.He's a really good guitar and cello player. Yes he plays cello in a rock band.

The show started around 7;30 and we were really surprised that Barney played first. He was featured on all the advertisement for the posters so we figured he was the headliner. He played about 12 songs including a really cool piano and harmonica version of one of his hits- Come Back to me. He was solo and acoustic like the last few shows we had seen. Kevin Fox came out and jammed for a few songs. Following a short break Kevin came back out and played about 12 songs--Barney came out for the last 2. He was really awesome as a solo peformer and we were impressed. We kinda wish they would put out a cd together. During the encore they played a kick ass version on the Beatles Norweigan Wood. It was a really cool show. Afterwards they did a q and a in the hallway that was pretty interesting. Thank you mom for the tickets we had an amazing time and it was an anniversary to remember.

Random crap

Wow i am so behind in blogging. The training is still ok. I start taking calls on the floor on Friday. I'm a little nervous. The cool thing is we will still be in a special section for the people who were in training so we will have a lot of help if we get stuck. It;ll be ok.

Our internet and phones was out yesterday. Cogeco cut the wrong people off. So that was nice. Not. Obviously its up and running now.

We're gonna go see the new Simon pegg/seth rogan movie tonight. It's about an alien name Paul and the movie is called Paul. My mom is coming tonight as well.

I'm glad i get another Saturday off this week. Did i mention i'm not looking forward to the new shift once it kicks in? I think Diana and i will take our first walk to Macdonalds of the year. They have young Justice toys. We already got Superman and Super boy and Batman and Robin. Perhaps its kid flash week. I am such a nerd.

The new schedule blows goats

Well i got my new schedule for work and I'm not impressed. I am now working all weekend--yes even Sunday. My days off are now Tuesday and wednesday and i will be working 1pm to 10 30 pm. I was actually able to bargain a 1030 to 7 shift on Sundays so that i can still do a show. Kath says it will all work out. We'll see. Monday I'm going in with a whole bunch of time off requests. Now that i'm not getting out early i'm gonna need to request all kinds of days off. Yeeha. Yeah i was pretty bummed. I'll blog tomorrow about happy stuff.

Saint Paddys day

Happy St. Patricks say everyone. I didn't even realize thats what day it was until about 2 this afternoon. Man i miss drinking green beer with my buddy Scott. Good times.

The training is still going well. There's a few things that i'll need to get used to but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it.

Two more says until Wizard World. W e sent an email request requesting some interviews. We were told it shouldn't be a problem doing some of them. I can't believe there's a chance i can interview Lando Calrissian. I can't wait. I just have to get through tomorrow and then the get your geek on gang is headed to wizard world.

I'm a Believer

I forgot to mention that Kath and i got tickets to see The Monkees. They're doing a 45th anniversary tour and will be coming to the Niagara Falls casino. The tickets werent all that expensive. W e got our income tax back and thought we would treat ourselves. We're both big fans of The Monkees. I got to see them play in Toronto about 15 years ago and it was an amazing show. The only thing that sucks is that my favorite Monkee Michael Nesmith won't be taking part in the reunion. It should still be a cool song. I can't wait for June to get here.

Training day 1

I haven't blogged since last week and lots to talk about. Since its fresh in my mind i'll talk about my new training. I just got in from my first day of training for cell phone support. Other than getting up at 6 in the morning the day went pretty good. its different than cable tv but i think its gonna be a lot easier. The trainer wasn't boring so that was a plus.

So I'll be in training for the next 2 weeks and we'll see where we go from there. I have other stuff to blog about but i'm really tired so i'm gonna stretch out on the couch. I'll talk about my weekend next time.

10 years burning down the road

So a decade ago i married my best friend Kath. I can't believe its been that long. It sure doesn't feel like it. I had just about thrown in the towel by the time i had met her. I didn't want a steady girlfriend and i was happy to live alone with my cats. We've had our share of good times and bad and i am a better person just for knowing her. I hope we have many more years together. I love you Kathy Jo with my whole heart.

Crazy unreasonable customer

What a shitty day. There was about 100 calls in our que all day. I haven't seen it that busy in a long time.
so apparently i want to be fired before i change companies next week. I was fine all day despite how busy it was and despite the killer head ache i had. Then around 6 i got a call from an unreasonable asshole. To make matters worse i couldnt take his abuse and i felt the need to be mouthy. He called in and asked for some credits. He said he was told he could get 2 movies free because he had an issue.I have no problem with giving the credit and i asked him if i could place him on hold to see what i could do about the credit. At first glance no notes were jumping out about a credit. He said no and refused to let me put him on hold. He said i could research and call him back. At this time there was about 85 calls waiting and there was no way i'd be able to call him back. I said if he didn't have time to hold he could call back. That didn't go over so well. He said i was being demanding and asked for all my information. I refused to give him more than my first name and said all i was asking was for a minute, maybe 2 tops to do research and see what i could credit. Again he said no. Now he wanted a supervisor. Oh so he could hold for a supervisor but he couldnt give me one minute? Yeah i told him he was acting crazy. Why can't i keep my mouth shut? I told him i was trying to help him. He said i was being difficult. He asked me where i was and then i said something i really shouldn't have, I'm in Niagara falls,why are you coming here? Finally i just said fuck it and gave him a credit without looking at the notes. He was still a dick about it.

My only saving grace is that no one ever listens to my calls on monday and unless he calls back i should be ok. Four more shifts to go until this nightmare is over.

Love that weather

Lousy weather today. It rained for a good 15 hours in a row yesterday. I got pretty wet on my way to and from work. It sucked. I fell asleep on the couch around 11:30. i woke up at 2 in the morning and all of a sudden it was covered in snow. What the hell?

Took Diana to a birthday party.Lucky for us it was about 10 minutes away so we didn't have to wade through to much snow. Diana had a great time. I guess we'll be planning a party for her soon.

Just listening to our pre recorded episode of get your geek on. Its the first episode i've listened to since our new studio set up and it doesnt sound that bad. I sound rough because i'm sick but the sound quality rocks. Thanks Rob. Just spoke to Ken and he will be on next week. The week after that we will be at wizard world. I just wanna get through this week.

Crappy start to March

March has started off pretty crappy. I have a cold and for 2 days there i had a really painful toothache which flared up at work. That's what you want at a job where you get paid to talk to customers.

Speaking of work, remember how i was gonna be going to a cell phone company on March 7th? Well that changed. I'm still leaving but now we're going to a different cell phone company on march the 14th. The training is now 2 weeks instead of 3 and it looks like i'll only have Canadian customers to speak with. I was really looking forward to leaving on the 7th. My theory is there was a price increase in some of the markets so their not gonna let us leave the cable company right away because of that. Nothing like taking advantage of us right up until the end. I may be a bit bitter.