08.05.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:19 pm by Cruciare
It’s been a long while since I have posted anything here at all. Mainly due to the fact that updating this thing was so low on my priorities when there was so much more going on. My last post was almost 2 years ago. Quite a bit has happened since them.
First off - working for Florida Pest Control … that was an experience to say the least. Its a great company and all, but they don’t pay all that well. What they do however is give you LOT’S of time off. It’s time off you cannot use, but it’s there if you need it. Also, since you cannot use all that time off they allow you to sell it back right before Christmas so you have extra cash to spend on Family and all that good stuff. That was one of the best benefits of working there. The people there are crazy and good to work with but with my background, there was only one other person there who I could talk to about computers who would not have their eyes glaze over when I say words like “Hard Drive” “Optical Drive” or “RAM”. Don’t get me wrong, these are not stupid people, they are just not tech minded.
Being in the general household pest area I was the guy that came to your house and sprayed either in or outside depending on what you want. FPC liked you to do just outside since it was more effective (and it is - if they die before they get in … ). There are some people however that because it was new … they didn’t like it at all. You know, the people you can chase around the block holding a handful of nickels because they are afraid of change. But I digress.
Being the “Bug man” was different. I was used to coming to people’s homes and thus I dealt with them just fine - what was different was how I was treated. At least initially. I found that rather than people hanging on my every word and listening to me as I explained how to use Windows a bit better or if my diagnosis was “I’m sorry Ma’am, you have a virus.” people tended to treat you with some respect. Showing up at someone’s home with an FPC uniform on however, it turned from respect to “Hey, it’s the bug-guy - make sure you spray good” and then typically you get ignored. At least that’s how it was supposed to happen right? Right?
Wrong.
Most bug guys develop a nice rapport with their customers, some of them to the point to where they are like a visiting relative once a month. Most customers like it when the bug guy shows up and gets rid of the nasty critters that creep and crawl. There are some however that teat you like … well, like the hired help that no one is supposed to see and if they do see you they get all embarrassed. Rather amusing actually. At least to me anyways.
So I worked at FPC for just a little over a year. It was not bad, you drive around, play with chemicals and try and meet the sometimes odd schedules your customers give you. On top of that easy part is you must attempt to sell more services. You must try and sell them anything they will buy. Even the poor folks that can barely afford your service in the first place, you MUST try and sell to them. While I understand this on a business prospective, I just found it difficult to really sell things like that to folks who don’t need it. In short, if you need it, I can sell it. If you don’t - then I won’t.
In layman’s terms, I suck at being a salesman. I can live with that I think.
Despite my lack of salesmanship, I was approached with being a “Route supervisor”. In layman’s terms again it meant dealing with all the crap no one else wanted to deal with in addition to running your own route. I was the second most junior bug guy in that department and they ask me this. There were 6 other bug men there who had years of experience. Why ask me? I brought this question up to the others and they simply laughed and told me what would happen.
1) I would get ALL the crap jobs
2) I would be promised an increase in pay AFTER so many months - to see if I could handle the position of course and I was told that no raise would happen at all unless I performed miracles … miracles like selling LOTS of stuff on top of doing all the crap work, m own route and making the other bug guys sell at miraculous levels as well.
3) IF I got a raise, it would be around .25 and they would say how great that is and how appreciative I should be.
4) With this new position comes high scrutiny from the main office. No big deal right? Well, these guys seemed to think so. I wonder just exactly what that meant.
Well, against my better judgment I went ahead and the shop manager that I would indeed start that part of the job. Sure enough, I got lots of junk jobs that no one else wanted and got to fix bug issues (like ant infestations) that the techs could not figure out how to fix.
I will say this - I am a great toubleshooter and I could ID insect’s pretty accurately so I did well in that area. The extra work was a pain in the ass but not so much as dealing with the folks who had the issue - I got the get all the crap for the previous tech not being able to handle the issue. In short I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off from sunup to sundown and yes, I still had my route to do on top of that. The manager was kind enough to let me hand out my most time consuming work to other bug guys (they didn’t like that at all) to cut down on my work load (the manager and I got along really well) but even with all that, I will still swamped.
Now when I left Auglink and started being a bugman, I was always on the lookout for a new tech based job. Tech is what I excel at and so of course I was keeping my options open. One of those options was a very close friend who started his own business and needed a junior programmer that could assist him with making his database better. This friend also helped make this site, and has been pestering me for YEARS to learn programming and has in fact been telling me about this new company for months and months saying that he may be able to hire me soon.
Soon. I heard that a lot from him. However, in August soon turned into “October 1st” and well - I wanted to warn my current employer without getting fired. So I simply dropped a hint that I may have a prospect opening up “soon” (it felt nice to tell that to someone for a change!). Needless to say while he was happy for me, he was pretty freaked out that I was leaving. Seems that even though I had been there just over 18 months, I was doing a better job than many of the older techs. At least that’s what I was told. I happened to know that many of the bug men simply lost their motivation at the increasing pressure to do nothing but sell and get very little in return for it. I could understand that one perfectly. Lesson to be learned here folks - keep your employees happy and they will not lose that motivation. Happy employees = good employees.
Well, as the day for me to put in notice loomed closer I had a chat with the branch manager and he more or less found a replacement for me within the company itself. That was a good thing – it let me know that I was not leaving the company at a bad time and not screwing over any of the other techs by suddenly dumping my work load on them. That was important to me.
So the day comes and I put in my two week notice. Manager is not surprised; he has a months’ notice and was able to quickly put in a plan so no one got extra work. Made him look damn good to his regional manager and the cooperate folks in Gainesville. The regional manager, how to describe him? Well, for one he played favorites like nothing I have ever seen. If you puckered up, he took care of you, even if you didn’t do your job that well. If you didn’t pucker up, you got all the shit work he could send your direction. He also played with the local funds like it was his own personal piggy bank. As for appearance, let’s just say the guy didn’t miss too many meals.
Well, anyway – I put in my notice and the office is abuzz with the info. Some are surprised, but most are not. They knew I was not going to be staying long. I had far too many tech skills to remain a bug guy. Cooperate folks that came for visits learned of this and said that thought it was great that I was bettering myself. The regional manager… that fat fuck acted like I stabbed him the in back and would not look at me nor talk to me. It was almost amusing. During the first week there were no cooperate folks there so he didn’t care who saw how he treated me, or lack thereof. However, when cooperate folks were visiting; I made SURE we made small talk with them present. This was VERY amusing for me and all the other folks in the office. It was very evident that conversing with me made him uncomfortable. I never did find out why he reacted that way. Sometimes I wonder about it, but for the most part, I don’t care. I’m just Mr. Personality that way I guess.
On my last day there I said my goodbyes and that more or less was it. No more bugman … it was time to get into programming and all the long hours and frustration that goes with it.
Or so I thought.
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10.25.06
Posted in Cruciare post at 1:25 pm by Cruciare
Having working the computer field for the past 9 years it’s difficult when you must take that nasty step of a new job that has nothing to do with what ever it was you did.
In my situation, a mom and pop internet company was more or less forced out of buisness by southern bell and thier lovely billing system. I worked for said company and found myself in a small town with no tech work available. THe only thing left was to continue working at the small ISP until it’s death is complete. However since my wife also works there as a tech, I started job hunting and found there to be many jobs out there but most of them were low pay, low intellect jobs. This is not to say that I would not take one if things got really bad. I am just saying that even though there are jobs out there, they are not all that great to begin with 
I began researching some local companies that have been around a while and found a local pest control company thats been around for 50 years plus. With some more digging I found that the guy who goes from home to home starts off around 400 a week. This is just slightly less that was my old job could afford so … off I went to be … a bug man.
The interviews went fine … with the exception of “what the fuck are you doing here?!” question I got from both the local and district managers.
Before I go on, let me first say that before one can even get the job, you have to pass a drug test, have an exellent driving record (if you have more than 2 pts on your liscense, dont apply) AND have decent credit. The last part suprised me, but from what I understand this is fast becoming a policy many companies are turning too to make sure thay hire “quality” employees. I guess if you have good credit, your more reliable and resonsible. I dont know if I agree with that logic completly, but whatever works I guess.
The job is easy. Very easy. Too damn easy and the only excitement I get is when I stumble accross a paper wasp nest unexpectedly. THen I get some exercise and perhaps some stings for my lack of observation 
What really made the job for me was the people there. Good people one and all from the folks who work in the office too the guys who bust thier ass doing termite service. I must admit that the manager and assistant manager work just as hard as everyone else AND somehow find time to manage that chaotic place as well. My hats off to those guys.
But the job itself, I am not sure how long I can do this and remain sane …
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06.21.06
Posted in Cruciare post at 10:05 am by Cruciare
I personally would like to thank these companies for shutting down most small phone/internet buisness in the Saint Augustine and Jacksonville area. Obviously you fuckers don’t like competition. You cant take it. YOu fuck up the billing … sometimes the errors are in the thousands of dollars EACH MONTH. ANd yet when small buiness complains, you simply say this “Pay the bill or be turned off. We will review your bill and if and error is found, we will credit your account.” What you dont say is that it can take between one and THREE years to get that money back you took in the first place! In the meantime the bills add up to the small CELEC or Internet based company that gets bandwidth through your monopoly and eventually has to default on payments … of course, since they now owe YOU money, you shut them down immediatly with little to no warning.
Funny how when you owe a company money for OBVIOUS errors it took you THREE years to cough up the cash. BUt if anyone ows you … you shut them down. Not only that, but lets just say that if a small phone company has a customer with an phone problem - your techs are VERY fast in saying it’s an internal issue and that the small company MUST send thier own tech or Bell will send thiers and charge the company 80.00 per visit.
Whats even funnier is when said small company tech gets there and proves is a BELLSOUTH issue then the Bellsouth trucks roll (the next day usually) and 9 times out of ten say they fix the issue (they dont) and close the trouble ticket. The customer of course STILL has no phone and calls back - small company again calls Bellsouth tech and they again say that its and internal issue on the customers end. Small company tech goes out AGAIN and proves AGAIN that its a Bellsouth issue and once again Bel rolls its truck and this time it MIGHT get fixed.
Now lets say the reverse happened, lets say it WAS an inside issue - the small company gets billed 80 for the Bellsouth techs time that went out there. Can the small comany bill Bellsouth for wasting the time of the small company’s tech? Hell no! Therefore, said tech runs about very often PROVING Bellsouth issues and wasting company time -
I have spoken with several retired Bellsouth techs - this is standard unwritten practice. Its also standard unwritten practice to cause issues in slicks to create a need for telephone repair. Similar to garage mechanics tactics of making things look bad when they are not.
And if you think what I wrote is incorrect, guess again. I was a tech at a small telephone company and everything I just wrote is true.
The antitrust suit against AT&T did help at first - now they dont matter anymore. THere are so many things Bell can do to avoid paying for thier fuckups while making and other comany pay out the nose for thiers. Fair? It sure is - but not the the customers (who are caught in the middle) and sure as hell not fair to small buisness. Bellsouth thinks its fair, and so do all the politicins and lawyers they doll out money too.
Ok, that last part may not be true … but damnit - it sure seems like that is exactly what is happening.
I for one have heard SO many complaints about Bellsouth its not even funny. THe folks here in Saint AUgustine are SO fed up with Bell that they are willing to go to any other option to not use them since thier customer service sucks so bad that they are just about ready to create a singularity right here on earth. THe only worse customer service I am aware of is AOL - but if they suck too bad all you lose is internet, not your phone service.
To add insult to injury to the people of Saint Augustine Florida, as soon as the local phone provider went belly up, they raised thier rates. Twice. And recently raised them again now that there is NO competition there.
Yep - no monopoly. NOt Bellsouth, noooo - never. At least its not coast to coast anymore - but from what I understand, that may soon change. ANd if any service techs from Bell read this - I dont have issues with the individual Techs - but your corperate folks (Lawyers, sales etc) need to have something really bad happen to them. I can only hope the Karma has a field day with them.
Thats my rant - hope you enjoyed my impotent raving :/
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06.07.06
Posted in Cruciare post at 4:17 pm by Cruciare
My son got an Xbox from a friend last Christmas and he’s made pretty good use of it. Despite the factr that not many good games come out for it and that the Xbox360 will kill the old version - gotta love that. Planned obsolesence.
For my sons birthday he went out and spent his ill-gotten wealth on a few new Xbox games. Got home, turned on the Xbox and wallah - no Xbox.
It tries to start, but to no avail - even with no CD in the dvdrom, the basic screen starts to lock up and all sorts of lines and squiggles appear and the surround sound lets out squeals that sound reminiscent of dying adsl modems.
Lovely, less than six months old and this thing craps out? Then I find that the repair would cost almost as much as a new Xbox. Even better.
To try and cut our losses we asked EB Games here in Saint Augustine if he could at least trade in his Xbox version of the game for a Playstation version (which has worked well for the past 3 damn years - you hear that Microsoft? no problems for THREE years. No wonder no one wants to buy your shit. You folks would not know decent engineering if it reached out and kicked you in the balls … just ask Xbox360 owners who had to put their 360 out when they caught fire.). Well, Eb Games declined - no even trade. Nope, not at all.
Fucking great. Now we have three new games with no xbox and no way to trade - well, they did say we could trade the games in … for alot less that what we paid for them. I swear, those numbnuts at EB Games need to get their heads right out of thier asses. At least some of them. The manager there is a nice guy and so are some of the employees.
Ah well -
At any rate - I just have to say that Xbox is a large steaming pile of SHIT with Halo the only thing going for it.
I guess thats all I wanted too say
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06.05.06
Posted in Cruciare post at 2:23 pm by Cruciare
When running a new campaign, its good to throw your players a nasty curve ball from the past. If your like me, you tend to run more or less in the same world (changing from time to time just for variety) and so you may players who have already well established characters and may even know of powerful relics and other hidden things that the new current characters have no clue of.
Last night, when running my game (this was the third sesion and the game had gotten along at a pretty good clip and they were right in the middle of a mission), I let these guys stumble across a relic (at low levels mind you) that they knew could cause all sorts of problems. Not only that, the ones that showed them said relic were old dangerous enemies of their old PC’s. Ones they had thought long dead and buried.
Mind you this I am sure is a tactic done by many, not just me. But it was the sheer length of time between thier visits that made those involved open thier eyes wide, then quickly narrow them in anger at me.
You see, it had been almost eight years since these particular problems had hounded these players, and if they acted on OOC (out of character) information, I would zap them XP and they knew it. This is a trick that works well, but works best when it’s been a long time coming. Sure, you dont have to wait eight years to pull this stunt on your unsuspecting players, but when you do … not only is it worth the hostile looks and comments, but its also worth the energy expenditure to dodge various hurled objects.
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05.17.06
Posted in Cruciare post at 12:43 pm by Cruciare
My son graduated from 8th grade today. I know, it’s a milestone and now the fun part begins. Proms, First real dates, Driving (shudder) and all manner of things that we all went through (or in some of cases - are STILL going through) in our younger years.
There were some rough times for the kid in school but he not only pulled through them, he surpassed all expectations. He even got the punch a bully in the nose Yeah yeah - I know - I’m not “supposed” to approve of that, but hey - if the kid wont leave him alone, he gets what he deserves.
While he didn’t make strait A’s this year, I know he’s more than capable as he managed to go from failing to nearly all A’s and B’s during his final 9 weeks and bringing up the average of nearly all F’s to C’s - and while he had no additional homework that I could see, it was more than obvious there was real effort going on in class for the first time since he hit junior high.
While I am VERY pround of the improvement, I must also mention that he actions at home have also taken a turn for the better. The punk actualy gets up without my prompting now and does those menial chores when asked the first time 
Academic achievments aside, I will say that the punk also got strait “A” ’s in the girlfried department - I dont think he has no less than 15-20 girlfriends this year alone! He would dump or get dumped and have another one withing a day or two. One time his mother told him to take a break so he waited a full three days Thats my boy, chip off the ‘ol block
I guess we are all pround of our children no matter what they do and how they go about it (as long as they arnt psychotic that is) and I am no different from any other parent as far as that goes. All in all, I think Ihave the coolest kid in the world that I am very proud of and I wish my son the very best life has to offer out there.
Happy graduation son, the longest part is over, now for the home stretch. See you at the finish line
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05.03.06
Posted in Cruciare post at 3:49 pm by Cruciare
This site is more or less a combination of blog, forum use, gaming geek discussions, rants and reviews. Take your pick at what you wanna look at. For now, there will not be much here as we (Aquila and I) focus on getting as much material back into the forums as possible. For a look-see at whats going on there check out the forums at www.cruciare.com/forum
Please join the forums and add your two cents in. but keep it moderatly clean and flame-free.
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04.27.06
Posted in Admin Announcements at 1:53 pm by admin
As you can see, Cruciare.com has gotten a major facelift and upgrade! We’ve migrated to a new host, we’ve migrated to the latest software and we’ve put the old custom written software on the shelf. This project has outgrown the ability of one person to write all the necessary software for it to run smoothly and still keep it up to date with current trends in the way we work online.
I hope everyone will enjoy the upgrade, not only of the blog but of the forum software as well. The new cruciare.com forums can be found at www.cruciare.com/forum/
We will now be working on getting some of the old data back from the original site.
Thanks!
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