Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Lessons
I’ve had a lot of time during my recuperation to reflect on what I’ve been trying to accomplish with writing and the internet. My last post in May referred to Cut Throat, a zine that solicited stories from me as part of a “Survivor” type smackdown. This seemed intriguing, but I was soon enough disillusioned. One disappointment was my discovery of the amateurishness and ineptitude of the other entries. Then, just before the first month’s voting was announced, I learned my story was tied for last place.
I’d had a similar experience with Litmocracy, which also has a voting paradigm. They printed one of my stories in their print journal, but most of my other stuff was getting voted down badly. I finally understood that there was no way they could control for the number of 13 year olds who were visiting, reading, and voting, and who preferred stories with vampires.
I suspect Cut Throat had a similar problem. Anyhow, I e-mailed them that I was sick and couldn’t continue with the smackdown; their response was to take down the whole site. Lesson: do not overestimate the quality of readership on the web.
Monday, July 06, 2009
Whew
I didn't have swine flu, but I sure was sick. Spent a few days in the hospital in May and have been clawing my way back since then. But I'm doing well enough now to get back to some sort of posting.
Friday, May 01, 2009
Publishing News
My short story "Without A Program" is up at Cut Throat. This one has a gimmick: there are something like five submissions each month. Readers have the chance to vote on their favorites. The author who gets the least votes each month is effectively "voted off the island", while the others get to have another piece published the following month -- and so on. So if anyone wants to help me out, definitely follow the guidelines (e.g., vote only once), but go on over and vote for my piece! Thanks if you do.
Labels: news
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Publishing News
A short story, "The Value Of Money", will appear in the Spring 2009 issue of Paradigm.
Labels: news
Sunday, April 26, 2009
So Is It Swine Flu?
There's been a really rotten virus going around LA in recent months; my neighbor had it, and now I've been struggling with it. My neighbor pointed out the nastiest symptom: "Your legs are so sore you feel like you've run a marathon," he said. "They hurt until the fever breaks, and then you're so tired you can hardly got out of bed." I'm still in the can't hardly get out of bed mode.
Here's what puzzles me. This has been going on for months out here. My neighbor had it, I have it, it's all over my wife's office. And the media is saying eight cases here, a dozen there? I wonder what they pay those folks at the Center for Disease Control, and what they do for it.
Via Instapundit, looks like I'm not the only one with such questions. Mild variant or not, this is rotten stuff. If you get it, you have my sympathy.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Support Center -- XI
A few days later, she called him again. “Are you at a location where we can talk privately?” she asked. He found an empty conference room and sat down. “I’ve finally figured it out, how you’re doing it,” she said. She didn’t sound happy. “You’re putting yourself between the customer and the company. You’re convincing the customer our products are no good, and you’re the only one who can make them work.” That, of course, would be major disloyalty.
”The customers bring the problems to me,” he answered. “There’s no way I can convince them of problems that aren’t there. Then all I can do is try to do my job.”
”So why do they complain about the support center? They don’t talk to support themselves. That’s you.”
”We put them on speaker phone. The customer wants to know what the status is, and that’s a way to do it with no misunderstanding.”
She paused slightly at that one. “Well,” she said. “Maybe support doesn’t know they’re on speaker. Do you tell them they’re on speaker?”
”Of course.” If they still give everyone the runaround on speaker, there wasn't much Bob could do about it.
”Still, the only conclusion I can draw is that you’re deliberately doing everything you can to make the company look bad with the customer.” And that wrapped up the problem of why the customers liked Bob and support didn't. But whatever Bob could say in reply wasn't going to make any difference: the outcome would be certain.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Support Center – X
Bob ran into trouble when he tried to set up weekly flights to a customer in Iowa. Travel had approved flights for a couple of weeks running where he changed planes in Denver. It let him leave LA early Sunday afternoon and get into Iowa the last flight in that night. As a result, he got part of a Sunday with his wife and a full night's sleep in Iowa, as good a deal as he could expect. Naturally, travel found a way to screw it up.
“The next time I called to set up my flights,” he told me, “they said they'd figured out that they could save $200 if I took an early flight on Sunday, or if I changed in Chicago instead of Denver, or if I flew out of John Wayne Airport instead of LAX. It didn't matter that they'd been approving my other itinerary. They could save a few bucks if they took away what was left of my Sunday.”.
Somebody had actually written a company policy that said if travel offered you an itinerary that was two hours longer than the itinerary you wanted, you didn't have to take it. Travel could only make you take their itinerary if it was within two hours of the one you wanted. So that was what Bob told travel. They wanted him to take an itinerary that was four or five hours longer than the one he wanted. The way he understood it – for that matter, the way I understood it -- company policy said he didn't have to take it.
“Travel fixed that problem in a hurry,” said Bob. “They called Kit, and Kit called me. Kit said I was fired if I didn't take the itinerary travel told me to take, company policy or not. ‘And by the way,’ she said, ‘you're starting to get a reputation. You know that, don't you?’” At least she hadn't heard about the interview at Gold Plated Software, or at least Bob didn't think she had.
