My colleague and Thanksgiving Day

Last month, my manager decided to give a task to a colleague. I had to supervise her.

This colleague is a contractor. When I first trained her, I noticed that she couldn't follow a procedure properly. She'd do a few steps, skip a few, and resume doing a few.

I didn't get it.

With this assignment, she had to write a document from scratch. She had to poke around a software application on her own and ask questions if she didn't get it.

She isn't good with self-exploration. She never asked for help from software developers. It was to the point where I had to point her in the right direction within the application.

When it came down to incorporating my changes, she couldn't do that successfully. She is not great with details.

My manager asked me to copy him on all my exchanges with her. He was not impressed.

The company is downsizing its staff. Her contract will be terminated at the end of November.

It's bittersweet. As a person, she's okay to hang out with. As a colleague, she is horrible. I have spent a lot of time making sure that she has incorporated all my suggested changes. I shouldn't have to.

The crazy thing is that I recently did a presentation where I told writers to not copy and paste everything you get from developers. What did she do? She copied and pasted everything a developer had provided to her as feedback and didn't bother to at least reword it.

One word: ugh!

It is Thanksgiving Day right now. I am thankful that I have the day off.

Yesterday, I made a Thanksgiving meal for my parents and me. They enjoyed it so much that we all took a nap afterwards... haha!

I love leftovers and look forward to using them up in creative ways.

My colleague needs a lot of help

Earlier this year, I trained a woman who was supposed to replace a writer. It turned out that this woman was equally as bad. Our manager decided to terminate the first writer's contract.

This second woman's birthday is three days after mine. Yet, we are so different on so many levels. I call her the fake Cancerian, as she does not express a whole lot of empathy towards anyone and doesn't exhibit any traditional Cancerian traits. Everything is also centred around here, which is not Cancerian in nature, either.

I noticed during training that she was not good with details. She followed steps 1 through 4 in a procedure, skip a few, then do steps 7, 9, and 12. I found her lack of following sequential steps to be odd.

My manager recently gave her a task to create a document from scratch. I would be supervising. 

She isn't the best communicator. When we had our first demo session on the application, I asked questions. She didn't.

When I looked at her first draft, it was incomplete. She was given a playground to create and delete items -- literally play around with the application in a safe environment. She never did that. She simply used the data that others had provided. 

I noted a typo in a screenshot and asked her to replace it. She couldn't create a new item to fix the typo. It was almost as if she was intimidated to explore.

She called a meeting with the software developer who provided the demo. He called a few other folks. She didn't ask any questions. It's her downfall.

I have provided constructive feedback on her first draft. I have yet to see her incorporate my changes. I don't get her. I don't know why she is reluctant to make the changes.

She just sent her second draft out. She claimed that she included all topics. I didn't see that. Neither did the developer.

Our manager revealed to team leads yesterday that there will be a staff reduction. She is the one who will be let go. It's mainly because she does a mediocre job with tasks and she has poor communication skills. She is also under contract.

I don't know when he will break the news to her that she will be out of a job. Perhaps she knows that her time with our department is coming to an end. She applied for a job with the company in Ottawa.

I know the hiring person. I hope that she seeks an account about this candidate from me or my manager. She will face the same issues with this writer as we are.

It's interesting that this post was not the one that I had intended to post. It is nice that I have this outlet to share some weirdness going on. It also motivates me to write here more frequently.

I'm back!

Hello! It has been a while.

I spent the last ten days in the Twin Cities. I ended up not posting a thing.

I should get back to writing about having one of my social media accounts hacked. A local business with cool owners reached out to me yesterday when I returned. Their business account got hacked and wanted to know how I got mine back.

Getting you account hacked is scary and frustrating. More later.

Have a great day!

Loans and my debt

Here's an update on my financial situation. It'll be a medium post in length.

A couple of years ago, to repair my credit rating, I decided to take out a secured loan. Looking back, I shouldn't have done it. This loan company alleges that when you make regular payments to a secured loan, it helps your credit rating. Although somewhat true, repairing your credit rating takes time and dedication. It's not a quick fix like this company had implied. I didn't need to take this loan out.

Luckily, its term is only three years. I was closing in on two years of my loan. On Monday, I received a text message from the loan place saying that I could take out a cash loan thanks to my positive payments on my secured loan.

Now, I didn't want a cash loan. However, it allows the equity for the secured loan to get deposited back into my account and close that loan account. He said that I could pay off the new loan immediately. I decided to do it, as I just want out of both this secured loan and this cash loan that I never wanted.

The guy that I was dealing with was a pain as the process unravelled. I wanted the smallest loan amount possible, which is $2500. His confirmation text said $7500. Huh?

I also didn't want insurance protection, as I was going to pay the loan off immediately. At least he got that detail correct.

I have to call a special department to have my loan completely paid off. Fun! I wanted a specific day to have automatic payments come out of my chequing account to coincide with my payday. Nope, that didn't happen. It's the same special department that I need to get that changed. Even though I am not making regular payments, I'd rather be safe than have money taken out of my account that I have not budgeted for.

He asked for my bank statement overs the last three months. Since we were texting, I sent them that way. He then asked for them sent to his e-mail account. Why not say that to begin with? I actually had to download the statements from my laptop and transfer them over to my phone. I could have avoided the extra work.

During this process, I felt like this guy wasn't clear and upfront. He wanted a pre-authorized form filled out with my banking information. I put the company name in. When he got it, he wanted it blank. Well, why not tell me that upfront? I'm sending you a document with my banking information through the Internet. How safe is that it have any person take that information and authorize taking money out of it when the company name is blank?

Yeah, I had it. I told him off that I didn't appreciate these missing details, including the loan term. He frankly wasn't understanding my point of view. I told him so and said that we need to move on. I was tired of texting him who had the listening skills of a brick wall. I'm sure that I hit 100 text messages just to this guy by the end of this loan setup.

In the end, the loan money has been deposited to my bank account. My secured loan has been closed. I am waiting for the equity to get deposited. I'll call this special department to pay off this loan and close this account later on today.

What I am not thrilled with is the fact that having this loan company do a credit check on me will temporarily make my credit rating go down. It's sad that I simply couldn't pay off the secured loan without opening another loan. Then again, the secured loan was at a higher rate of interest and it's really not worth going through the loan for another thirteen months.

Other than this weird loan situation, I am thrilled that I can make more payments towards paying off my debt and improving my financial situation.

Working with colleagues who annoy me

At work, I seem to work with people who have interesting personalities, issues and, quirks. I wish that I didn't have to collaborate with them. Luckily, I don't that often with most of them.

Well, there's Diva. She enjoys texting me on our messaging app. I, on the other hand, cringe when she contacts me. We spent forty minutes texting. Why? First, she types slowly. I end up moving onto other work and getting back to her messages. She should consider writing an e-mail instead, as her issues are never urgent. Second, she isn't clear about what she is conveying in her texts. They are confusing for me because she doesn't consider whether her audience will get what she is saying. Third, the reason why I didn't understand her was because she messed up performing a procedure, which caused my work to appear somewhere it shouldn't have been. It was nice pointing that mistake out to her again.

As mentioned a while back, she and another colleague have taken on roughly half my old workload. I always felt that they took what I did for granted. I did and still continue to do a lot. She, in particular, is paying the price for being sloppy.

There is a software tester that I worked with several years ago. He moved on to another position within the company, which was great. I didn't like working with him. Sadly, he's back. He hasn't changed a bit. He has bugged me unnecessarily three times. I finally had it, even after giving him an example of asking a software developer technical questions instead of me. I had to explicitly tell him to copy that developer and me together. Ugh! He, too, enjoys texting. It's not my preferred method. Nothing is that urgent.

Finally, I have been working with a female software developer in a focus group. She was nominated to lead it. Sadly, she talks a ton. She does not let people speak. She seems to thoroughly enjoy hearing herself speak in circles. She talks up such a storm that I just tune out. A meeting that she had set up for thirty minutes yesterday with a group of twenty people got extended to an hour because she took up 37 minutes of it with her gibberish.

Thank goodness it's Friday. Here's hoping that it's a quiet day without dealing with these characters.

Getting a cold and getting paid early

I feel like I'm getting a cold. It's sucks. My throat is sore and I'm drinking lemony water to soothe it.

I get paid every other Thursday. What I love about my bank is that it deposits my pay on Wednesday night, just after 10 pm. It gives me time to pay my bills at home, rather than waiting to get home on Thursday night to do it.

Little things make me content.

Noticing details about data plans, travel, and jet lag

I feel like I have been living in some secluded area for ages. I have noticed details that I have never really paid close attention to.

Let's take my Internet plan at home. For years, I was on a monthly plan that gave me 300 GB of data. The nice, crazy part of this story is that my Internet service provider dropped the price that I was paying each month. I recently noticed on my bill that it also gave me unlimited data and I have been paying the same price. Where have I been?

It comes in handy. I stream a lot of programs these days. I cut my cable cord well over a year ago. Netflix and a bunch of programming on my Roku have filled in the void nicely. 

These days, I am in travel-planning mode. I am bringing two suitcases with me to Shanghai, simply because I can without paying extra. I have three sets of travel adapters. I actually appreciate the fact that I am that prepared.

Naturally, my guy is so used to travel that it's second nature to him. The only exception is jet lag. He is horrible at flipping over.

The last and only time that I was in Asia was Hong Kong. It took me a couple of days to flip over. We'll see how I do this time around. Here's to melatonin to help make the transition easier!

Fixing things to make things right and having them run smoothly

It would be nice if things ran smoothly all the time. Sometimes, they do. Other times, they go horribly wrong.

As you know, I changed cell phone providers in late October. Last month, I noticed a number of issues with my first bill:

• I had asked for unlimited Canada-wide long-distance calling. It wasn't applied to my plan. As a result, my talking to my guy over the phone for a month racked up $31 worth of charges.
• I was promised a $10 per month discount on my monthly rate. It never got applied either.

So, I called the company on a Sunday. I spoke to a guy who was helpful on the whole. 

He was great to reimburse me for the long-distance charges and added unlimited Canada-wide calling to my plan. My guy and I are roughly a two-hour drive away from each other, so it makes sense to have unlimited calling since we chat a lot.

I was advised that the second point could be fixed if I switch from being a business customer to a residential one. I have a corporate discount, which is why I ended up being a business customer. Still, it's ridiculous to transfer my account over simply for a discount.

I told my guy about the whole situation. He was annoyed. He has also dealt with similar issues when he changed to his corporate account. He's used to it, unfortunately.

Last week, I contacted my sales rep. She advised that she was driving. She asked that I call her. I was about to have lunch, so I didn't.

I remembered to call her today. She checked. Sure enough, the discount was not applied. She is having that slapped on. I will also get reimbursed for the previous month.

And then, there's work.

Whenever we have a software release, our user guides need to be uploaded to a special repository for folks to access at any time. In the past, three of us would upload each guide one at a time. The work was not difficult. Rather, it was extremely time-consuming.

This past weekend, I tried a new tool that allows you to upload all guides at once. The catch is to load the details correctly. You then press a few buttons and everything runs smoothly.

I triple-checked my information. On Monday, I uploaded all 117 user guides. No errors! 

My colleague then kicked off another build to order the documents in our repository. In less than a day, we were done.

I told him that it was the most stress-free upload that we have ever worked on. He commended the fact that I was meticulous with all details, which helped. Everything ran perfectly.

It was a good day. Let's hope for more of them.

Play-by-play video scenes and turn-ons

My guy and I talked again over Skype today. It was obvious that we missed each other as we both continue to recuperate from various ailments.

He had a surprise for me. He had searched online last night for a short porn flick that would get us both off over the phone. He played the video on his laptop and provided me with commentary. It was definitely a new experience for me.

The video had a young woman in her early twenties. She was a maid who worked for a fifty-something-year-old man. She was a maid in a typical outfit. She decided to stop working and to masturbate. She thought that no one was looking, but her boss was.

Her boss came over and spanked her over a chair with his hand. She wasn't wearing any panties, so it was a bare-bottomed spanking. Later, they both pleasured each other and eventually had sex. They then put their clothes back on, looked presentable, and carried on with their regular activities.

I liked the flick in that it wasn't the stereotypical maid-boss setup. The boss didn't point out that she had missed dusting a spot on the mantle and decided to spank her. Instead, she caught her doing something unconventional under the circumstances and spanked her for it, telling her so while spanking her buttocks.

We both eventually got off. I did first, but not during the video commentary. He had wondered why I didn't reach orgasm then. He eventually got me there by saying that he wanted me sitting on his lap while he caressed my breasts. He then wanted me to do something, but I had refused. Instead, I got spanked until I caved in. That scenario turned me on.

The commentary by my guy revealed a lot about him. The night when he first spanked me, we took a brief break, and he had commented on how smooth and pretty my hands were. A week before that, he had noticed that I had fingernail polish on. A week after my first spanking, he had noticed that my nail strengthener that I had on my fingernails had a light shade of pink. Today, he indicated that the maid had nicely manicured fingernails.

I had to ask about whether manicures turned him on. He said yes, but went one step further by saying that hands and feet are a huge turn-on for him. It made sense. When he had visited me in the hospital, he touched my right foot and ran his hand up the side of my leg. The following day, he had commented that I had pretty feet. I am fortunate to meet his standards for hands, feet, and nails.

I also noted his reference to stockings that the maid had worn. He likes black stockings that are mid-thigh. I told him that I'd get a pair and would put this task on my to-do list. He didn't have to ask. I just wanted to.

I've learned a lot about him and his preferences over the past three days. Even though he won't say it, I can tell that he appreciates how attentive I am. He's a detailed person. I am, too. We strive to please each other.