Archive for November, 2005
Crime Noir – The Lady Wore….
Posted by smokingpen in On Writing on November 29, 2005
I’ve been sitting here trying to decide whether or not to update. Everyone likes updates and apparently I may have some small, nearly insignificant, talent in writing that allows me to keep this site, if not fresh, at least interesting enough for people to come back again and again and, maybe, again. Given that this surprises me I will ignore it and move on.
Changes You Can’t See
Posted by smokingpen in Odds-n-Ends on November 27, 2005
Some more changes took place last night with my website. Jack (a.k.a. number one Im giving up numbers) informed me of a plug-in to the software that hed installed this last week that would allow me to add updates to areas as a side blog where I could update a blog entry and get the desired results on the hinter side of the website. In other words, my links are, for all intents and purposes, now a blog entry that is easier to update. Have to admit I am a little excited about this. If you went to my site last night, kind of late, you mightve seen that the column on the right side of the page kept changing. Thats because I was trying to figure out how to update my blog with the plug-in Jack sent me.
Mindswap by Robert Scheckley – book review
Posted by smokingpen in book reviews on November 26, 2005
I order, received,and read a copy of Mindswap by Robert Scheckley. This is a book writing in the 1960s and published as humorous speculative science fiction. It posits that, in the future, science will discover that the mind and the body are separatable due to the ability of transferring the essence of the mind into another body. As such, long distance interstellar travel is done through swapping minds and bodies over very large distances. Instead of physically travelingfrom one world to another all you have to do is find someone who wants to switch places with you and wa-lah, youre off like gangbusters.
The Day After
Posted by smokingpen in Odds-n-Ends on November 25, 2005
Yesterday was Thanksgiving. I don’t really celebrate any holidays, and yesterday was no exception, though I did get to go and hang-out with a group of friends from New Hampshire before heading down to number fours house for lunch and to put a new brake master cylinder in my car. Dinner was all right. They deep fried a turkey, which was weird, and number four made some crannberry sauce from a recipe he got off a random website. The cranberry sauce was a little odd tasting, but then, I never really did like cranberry sauce.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Posted by smokingpen in Movie Reviews on November 23, 2005
Last Saturday I went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Number four’s significant other got tickets through her employer for four people to go so she invited me, number seven, and (duh??) number four. That morning I got up to go do a church cleaning assignment and then raced over to number sevens house to pick him up and ferry him up to the theater where the movie was being shown. We were told to be there as close to 11 a.m. for a 12:25 showing.
After finding food, standing in line, and waiting amidst a group of people I didn’t know to get into the theater, we were seated and got to wait about thirty minutes for the movie to actually begin. There are things that bother me about movies, these days, and part of the problem is shoving as many trailers and as much crap in front of a movie as possible. With that said, I got to see, for the second time, the trailer for the new Superman movie, Superman Returns. There was nothing there that made me want to go and watch the movie outside of Superman being one of those movie franchises I enjoyed as a child and would like to see the follow-up on. The trailer was not good. There were others, as well, but for the most part, they are not worth mentioning – with the exception of an CG animated penguins movie that is being released next year and sounds like it has the voice of Robin Williams.
Then the Harry Potter movie begins. I have to tell you, this one was my favorite of the lot. Love the books, hate the movies. For the most part, I feel that they spend way too much energy on being too true to the books and lose the plot and the elemements of the books that made the story great. In a book you can add a lot of easter eggs and extras because the written word does not require a direct translation to physical imagery and pace. You can add easter eggs into a movie to enhance the movie, the moving pictures in the Harry Potter movies is a good example of that kind of an easter egg; however, to take the nuances of writing and put them directly on the screen. There are differences between story and plot and both are necessary to good storytelling, one is more important to writing than the other, while the other is more important to movie making. (Hint: plot is key to movie making.)
The movie follows what I remember about the books rather well. It drops a lot of the extras the fanatics want, and makes the plot of the book central to the flow of the movie. What this means is that you add elements to a movie that are not, necessarilly, in the books. In Prisoner of Azkaban the talking shrunken heads were an addition that J.K. Rowling wished she would’ve come up with.
So, the movie dealt with friendship troubles, burgeoning relationships, crushes, and high adventure with the mix of darker elements growing and the whole tembre of the movie being much darker than any of the previous. This is the movie where Voldemort returns. He is back, the whole movie is getting him back, and by the end Harry has struggled with the process of competing for the coveted Goblet of Fire. Dangerous, we are told, with dragons and merfolk and a maze that maliciously changes as the competitors wandered through.
I’ve got to say that the director did a superb job of reimagining the imagery of the story and directed the action rather admirably. He told Goblet of Fire without including the entire story. The movie was dark and the imagery, I felt, was appropriate to the nature of the book. J.K. Rowling stopped writing children’s stories at about book three and the change in movie making is definitely suggestive of the realization that these books aren’t all meant for 12 year olds. Hence the PG-13 rating the movie got. I would imagine that this will be the hardest rating any of these movies get.
On top of the directing being right on, I also felt that the actors were definitely growing into themselves as actors. There were scenes where, according to the emotional intensity within the film, I felt that I could react to the movie as the character was reacting to the action in the scenes. I don’t feel that way very often. This movie moved me.
Granted, I am very picky about books, movies, music, talent shows, people in general and the movie had its flaws, I won’t go into them, but at the same time suspension of belief set in and I enjoyed the romp. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was worth watching and, for the first time in a while, I am willing to go and watch it again.
Another Day, Another Entry
Posted by smokingpen in Odds-n-Ends on November 22, 2005
Well, last night I skipped out of the ward family home evening to go home and write and, instead, discovered that I had four packages sitting on the kitchen table. Instead of being diligent and setting up to write I sat down and started opening packages. Books, books, and more books. The unfortunate part is that two of the three books that arrived were books that I’d already owned (past tense) and were replacing because I’d somehow misplaced/lost them, or so I’d thought. The rub to that is that number seven is getting one of the two books I already own because I’d ordered it before really looking at what was on my shelves; which is why number seven is getting two of the four books I ordered a couple of weeks ago.
The fourth package was a movie.
After that (in case you’ve missed it) I altered the colum to the right of the entries to have links. If you were on last night and, for some strange reason, went to the effort to refresh a few times you might’ve noticed that things kept changing. Not entirely certain what I had in links, though I do know there were several things that were there I may not be adding in again. Still, there are some changes I think I want to add in that may further enhance what I want this site to be. Maybe that makes little, or no sense; I’m not 100% certain what it is I am trying to accomplish. I do know that I am beginning to think of this site (and a couple of others I may register) as repositories for writing and the ideas I am having; I am beginning to think that this may become important again.
On top of that, these changes also allow me to go through and re-update the FAQ (INAQ). I am sure there are people out there who totally want me to update that thing. Had a friend read it the other day and she asked if people really did ask some of the questions in there. Just so you know, I created all of the questions and then answered them.
Changes are a comin’.
Number 5
Posted by smokingpen in Odds-n-Ends on November 21, 2005
Well, number 5 is no longer alive. That’s right, after what seems like a very long time of no seen mice number five was stupid enough to wander over a glue trap and get stuck. It was still alive when I found it. Not positive, since I haven’t really observed the traps as frequently as I should, but I did decide to look at traps today and found that one was caught. At the same time the mouse or mice flipped one of the box traps and moved one of the boxes of Decon Mouse Pellets that were put into one of the closets. At least, the roommate tells me he put the box in a very conspicuous spot in the closet and I can’t find it at the front end. I haven’t gone digging for it.
On Saturday I purchased some snap traps and another box of Decon for under the counters in the kitchen. So, here’s fingers crossed that the mouse problem may be finally taking care of itself. Five dead. Five mice have encroached upon my living quarters and now they are no longer in mortality. Can’t say I am happy about the dead mice, but at the same time, they came into the habitation and they are now dead.
Just call me the mouse-slayer.
Out of Sync
Posted by smokingpen in General Essays on November 21, 2005
It’s Monday morning a little after 7 a.m. and I am at work. Oh joy! This is not what I signed up for, this is not what I wanted for my Monday mornings, or for that matter any mornings ever. Think about it, I live about an hour away, I take about forty minutes to get ready in the morning, I have to get up pretty stinking early to drive and even earlier to ride a bus. I drove this morning.
I drove this morning because I get to work until 6 p.m. One of the things that constantly seems to amaze me is the idea that an employer can just force you to work overtime with little in the way of recourse. They say you work and the Hollywood answer is that the employee, me, comes in to work on the schedule forced upon the person. Granted, I am sure this happens all the time, and I can see it happening all around me right now, but I never thought I would be somewhere where the “boss” subjectively says, “Come in to work a couple hours early. Oh, and we’re going to have to ask you to stay a couple of hours late as well. I’m sure you understand.” No.
This seems insane. People don’t have lives, in my experience, where they can alter everything about their lives and come in early, or stay late, whenever the boss says so. Most employers learn that there is often a high level of turnover in the lower ranks when this happens and suggests a lack of ability and skill for managers when they insist upon it. Those managers probably don’t last very long and don’t have a future at that company. And yet, with Fidelity, that very trait seems to be an attribute. I don’t know that I am, now or ever, comfortable with that.
Part of my problem is service levels and training. Before I came to work here there were X number of employees between two sites taking, more or less, the same calls with an average service level in excess of 90%. This is pretty good as Fidelity’s Employer Services Company sells themselves on certain service levels. However, because of attrition the company is constantly hiring new employees. When you hire you have to train because there is a very small base of people who are already investment potentials. As a result, training, I would think, would be a priority so that you had more people with all of the skills necessary to answer all of the questions.
In New Hampshire training was the highest priority. Same company, different division, different priority. There, training was protected; here, training is subjective. Basically, service levels are based off the speed calls are answered and not the ability to assist a customer. Therefore, to increase service levels the priority is to throw as many people on the phones as possible because the mere act of having bodies on the phone is enough – regardless of the frustration people may encounter as a result of not getting to someone who can actually help them. Sounds backwards.
The outcome is that this division had X number of employees and hired Y more for a total of X+Y meaning that they had more employees now than they did previously and that the service levels should improve. Right? Wrong. Basically, people wait until a new class is coming on and then, before the class is ready, bail ship to other divisions. People quit because Fidelity requires more time and effort than they want to put into the job, and people demand off phone activity before the forthcoming group is ready. On top of that, they only train employees so far before throwing them on the phone. Give them the absolute basics and then watch as they flounder so that, during future trainings, they can be pulled out of training to go back on the phones because the MOST IMPORTANT thing is answering the phone and not actually helping the customer.
I guess what gets me is that I am working for a group that appears to be very short sighted. They don’t look at long term needs because the group is very reactionary rather than proactive. The various sights don’t seem to talk to each other enough that they know what is going on and who is supposed to be in training and as a result the entire division of the company seems to be faltering around looking for footing. It’s no wonder that this place seems out of sync with the other divisions I’ve dealt with.