The Best and the Worst of 2008

It’s that time!

CDs

5. Sarah McLachlan - Closer: The Best Of … I’ve always loved S.M. I used to joke with Sam that I have a “Sarah Sense” because I’d always seem to find her music on the radio. She has probably been the most consistently admired and loved singers since I was like 10.
4. Josh Martinez - World Famous Sex Buffet …I love a little hiphop
3. Mr. Scruff - Ninja Tuna
2. Bright Eyes - Cassadaga
1. Girl Talk - Feed The Animals …I read an article recently about “girl talk killing music” because he uses clips of essentially illegal bits to make his music…but gets around it because they’re all online samples and stuff. …His mixes are amazing.

That category is always the hardest, other bands who released beauties: Tokyo Police Club, cat power, tv on the radio, the walkmen, mates of state, british sea power, …and others. sigh.

Movies

5. The Dark Knight - I’m still having a hard time deciding if I like this movie because it was so entertaining and so like…comic book looking, or if its because Heath Ledger died so there was a huge hype around his acting. I’ll say this - he did a great job. But some people were saying he should be given an award for it…even though he’s dead. I don’t really think that’s necessary. Anyway, I think the movie was really good. It was dark, but it was also a lot like the Batman with poison Ivy in it - it had that cool comic book feel to it.
4. The Strangers - this movie was weird.  …I love Liv Tyler and it scared me to death.
3. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - i think CON are really cute stories. Despite the obvious religious undertones to them, I really really like them.
2. Sex and the City - much anticipated and not disappointed …although I don’t think I’ve ever cried so much in a theater as I did when I saw this movie. It may have been the fact that we were drinking wine in the front row, so we were a little tipsy, or it just could have been that it was so tragic to see the girls is such sad situations. Sigh.
1. Wall-E - not only was it mine and John’s first date movie…it has a great message about the environment and mocks our consumerism. Which I always like It was by far the best movie John and I could have seen on a first date. Robot love? Seriously, it doesn’t get any better.

Books

5. In Search of Time by Dan Falk
4. The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
3. A Madman Dreams Of Turing Machines by Janna Levin
2. Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg
1. Factory Girls by Leslie T Chang

Gadgets:

5. Nokia N95 8 gb - My new phone! 8 GB worth of space, Wifi, 5 mp camera with carl zeiss optics, radio, mobile e-mail, vision tv/radio, a gorgeous screen with DVD like video capabilities, 35mm headphone jack, 8 gb internal memory, gps with preloaded maps… and best of all, it doesn’t have a full keyboard. I was so sick of the full keyboard, bulky shape and “smart phone” look of my blackberry. The Nokia looks like a normal phone, but totally does more. Its great.
4. HTC Diamond - my brothers phone… it’s sleeker and more easily customizable thank the iPhone. The only reason I didn’t get this over my phone is that it is a touch screen. They seem to be all the craze right now, but I just don’t like them.
3. Flip MinoHD - a tiny HD camcorder for only like $200… mostly because it only has 4gb worth of space…
2. The nikon D90 - *drools* an HD camera. …
1. Optoma Pico PK-101 - the MP3 player projector… I really need to get me one of these. Its the size of a regular iPod, plugs in and plays your movies on the wall. …awesome.

Games
I dont really do a whole lot of game playing…

5. Wii boxing…i played it once
4. Rock Band …I pretty much rock at everything except the drums. But…i’ll get to those in 2009
3. I started playing WoW a couple days ago, i’ve played twice
2.Sims!…one of the expansion packs came out this year, i dont remember which one. But thanks to john i have ALL the expansion packs and have WAY too many options. Its awesome.
1. Spore…. cooool

Hits of the financial crisis:

5. AIG’s credit fiasco
4. No more Fords and Chevys - the Detroit big three went belly up! the earth is happy, but hummer drivers are not.
3. Citibanks 75 000 job cuts
2. Greenspan - people are living in tents!
1. Iceland …is broke, needing to take billions of dollars from the IMF, Sweden, Germany, Denmark and Finland.

Sciencey Stories:

5. The Invisibility Cloak
4. Bigfoot is a rubber suit with dead animals inside of it
3. a squid with elbows
2. something tugging at the universe
1. The Large Hadron Collider

Absolutely Hilarious

5. The McCain green screen challenge - McCain did an interview in front of a green background, prompting Colbert to challenge his audience to come up with the best scenes to put McCain into
4. Letterman to McCain “You don’t show up for me, America doesn’t show up for you!”…after McCain stood up Letterman, and was shown at another interview instead, it was the core of Lettermans jokes for weeks.
3. The writers strike… so many late night talk show hosts were SO strapped for content. …hahahaha suckers.
2. is america ready for a woman president? - Samantha Bee as Carrie Bradshaw
1. Tina as Palin…and she didn’t change any words.

Personal Worsts:

5. Working in retail - even though I was the boss, i hated it. i hated bending over backwards for jerk ass customers and seeing people spend 800 dollars on clothes. I hated fitting plus women for bras in the summer when they smelled funny and I hated answering to my overly bitchy and micromanaging district manager. She treated me like a moron. I hated that job.
4. I miss a lot of people including Shaneka, Mark, Caitlin, Torrie, Ashley, Dan, Patrick, Karl and family
3. My currently housing situation - my roommates are annoying, they turn the heat up to over 30 (literally!) and leave messes in the kitchen all the time. My door doesn’t really lock and I’m an hour out of the city. I can’t walk around with no pants on and I have to pay to wash my clothes.
2. The York U strike…dont even get me started
1. My grandma died and it was the sadest of all sad.

Personal Bests:

5. Working at acculink where I met Christine and Stacey - two of the best women I’ve ever met in my life. Plus it made me value the 4/10hr shifts a week thing, and loved being on midnights.
4. Moving to Toronto in June. Although I had to shack up with Allen for quite sometime, I love living here and will be sad if I ever have to move out of the city.
3. Getting a job at CFI… my job is to advance science and secularism in society. How cool is that?
2. I’ve lost 20 lbs in the past 2 months! woo!! i love weight watchers…except now the skin on my belly feels really weird, like loose. its kinda gross.
1. June 24th - John and I had our first kiss and were a “couple” by the next day. awe, <3

So…turns out sunday nights are pretty stellar to work… I’ve been sitting at my desk playing with my phone for the past 20 mins.

Plus the girls I work with are pretty awesome, despite no one from my training group being here.

I’ve also learned the value of taking my break at 330 to watch colbert. He gives me a nice break in my 10 hour shift. But I’ve also learned that old people bitch too much…especially ones that think they should be in management. Like…shut up. You have to start at the bottom like everyone else. You can’t walk into a company and expect them to see that you’re management potential.

What’s not good at all is that its only 130 and I’m tired. 6.5 hours to go…bummer. I like the fact that I only work 4 days a week - but nights are slow. Real slow. Days would go faster because I could be taking calls. No one calls at 2 am. Sacrifice, I guess.

<3 work = school. School = travel. Keep the end in mind, nes pas? Oui oui.

Work in retail.

oh, it also belittles your intelligence quite well.

Future Shop Guelph - 631: Grand Opening

I started working at Future Shop just about 4 months ago. It seems like much longer than that, but that’s definitely not the case. It didn’t take me long to start standing out in my department as someone who has their head screwed on properly and can accept more responsibly without compromising their performance. I loved working at Future Shop. I loved that I was working for a store that had values and guiding principles all set out for the employees so that we all knew we were walking into a company that really cared… here are some of those guiding principles and values?

- have fun while being the best

- learn from challenge and change

- respect and integrity

- begin with the customer in mind

There are others, but I can’t remember them all right now. I keep speaking in past tense. This is because it was up until yesterday that I loved working at Future Shop. Sure I had my down days when I didn’t want to be there - but that’s only because I work on the floor and I think I’d have made a much better customer service specialist.

At Future Shop we offer something called a Product Service Plan. I don’t sell a whole lot of product service plans, because I personally see them as a rip off for some customers. When you’re buying a $99 camera, it’s hard to see the reasoning behind getting a service plan that is $30… 1/3 the price of the camera, to protect a camera for 4 years that will be more than obsolete in 4 years. It doesn’t make any sense. Anyway… I had had a few meetings with my managers about needing to get my psp up, which I understood. It’s hard to keep the companies numbers up and look good when your full timers aren’t selling the products.

What I didn’t know is how heavily this PSP weighs in on our job. Yesterday I was pulled into the office and told that if I didn’t have 10% PSP on Saturday and Sunday that on Monday I would be relieved because there would be no place for me on my managers team. (The company goal is 8%…)

Huh.

I’m down right pissed off about it. Using scare tactics to get me to sell something… and the only reason they want us to sell so much is because the company makes so much damn money off the things. I don’t think that this method was going to help me have fun while trying to pump out my best. I also don’t think it upheld any sort of integrity or respect. And I definitely don’t think it began with the customer in mind. Instead it begins with the number in mind. I spend all morning avoiding customers terrified that they weren’t going to get PSP.

I later decided to just have fun with it and started skewing my numbers by walking customers who weren’t getting PSP to the front so someone else would ring them in and just ringing in accessories, none of which are eligible for PSP, thus wouldn’t bring down my percentage. … I ended the day at 29.1%, but made a point with that… I can get any number they want me to do. Hell, I could have gotten higher than that, but I didn’t shitty quality sales on my daily sales, and horrible customer service.

Tomorrow I plan on following the program, ringing in all my sales, and just seeing how it goes. If I don’t get 10%… then I don’t get 10%… I’m just going to see what naturally happens. But I sure am angry. This was a company that I stood up for on a daily basis telling people that it wasn’t like other companies… that they actually care. That because my managers and I are best friends, then it must be different. I would tell all my hippy friends that it is a great place that isn’t 100% focused on the capitalistic nature of the world, but it is. And that really makes me quite sad.

Someone needs to mention to our managers that their employees aren’t sales. The use the same technique on us. They make us their friend, gain our trust… try and make us believe that they actually care about what we need to do our jobs, try to make us believe that they are actually qualifying us for the positions that we’re in… and then they ask for the sale (the 10%) and if they don’t get it, you’re not even worth their time anymore.

One thing that really bothered me, was when my manager brought me into his office for the initial “you’ll get fired” meeting he drew a graph. On one side he listed what Future Shop gives me, and on the other what I give future shop. He listed about 11 or 12 bullshit things on the Future Shop side (like 30 million in product to sell and a community…) and only listed four on my side.

Why did this piss me off? I spend ounce of energy, time and creativity that runs through me on Future Shop. I helped plan the Christmas Party, I’ve slowly become the leader of our community outreach board, I merch my department, I keep my guys in my department on top of things and organized, I trained our new hires, I have more product knowledge than most people… I bring so much in there every single day - but because I don’t have 10% PSP… I’m not worth the company’s money.

I used to blog? Yeah. Those were the good ol’ days. I also used to hang out with my friends more often, and got more sleep. I also used to be in school. Yeah, that’s right… I’m a drop out.

I forgot to pay my tuition, so they deregistered me. Lame, eh? So I just didn’t end up registering again and will start again next year. I was stupid to be doing school and full time work anyway. After work I always just want to kick back and watch a movie, or go out with some friends… Not write essays and read redundant textbooks. So I’m taking a break from school. I’m happy about it, it’ll be good. This is the first time in like 15 years I haven’t been in school, so it’s also going to be a bit weird.

Other than that, nothing else is going on…really. I work. Today I had the day off but went to work anyway for about 6 hours. I’m supposed to be meeting friends in about 5 minutes, so it looks like that is going to fall apart. Silly work. I’m going to a conference in NYC in November, more on that later. It’s with CFI, so I’m sure you can guess what it’s about… All us atheist hippies gathering in one spot. I’m not sure if I want to go or not.. mostly because I’m not sure what I believe anymore.

Anyway, thats goign to be about it for now. My plan is to write stuff tomorrow (and not go to work! a real day off!…) and not just this update stuff… something real. I need to get my brain working again… (and make an appearance at eco-chick. eeek.)

<3