Europa Bound

Well it's official, i have my tickets and i will be in Europe from September 6 till October 11. Of course the first reservation i made was for a hostel in Munich during Oktoberfest, after that i got around to finding a flight. Currently i am planning on visiting London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Munich, Zagreb, Split, Interlaken, Venice, Milan, Nice, Barcelona, Bordeaux, Lyon, Paris. If you have been to any of these places let me know what you liked and didn't like, and if you have any recommendations. Or if there are any other places or cities you have visited that you would recommend.

In worse news, my explorer was broken into again. This time they used some device to knock out the whole lock part of the driver door(where the key is inserted), then they ripped a bunch of cables from the dash to cut power to the car and turn off the alarm, then they broke open my locked glove compartment, and stole my ipod, cd deck and face plate. Oh and the car was parked right off north ave, by Ma Fishers in a very well lit, well travelled area. i basically felt like Jodie Foster in "The Accused", only less sore.

This and That Photographed

Olive Trees

Traveling to a Flatball Tournament

a Wiper Wiping

a random glance down

a present i left myself

red red net(that's pink)

pink green white dandelion

picture of a net with increased color saturation,

picture of a net without increased color saturation.

some grass, some different grass, and some other grass

spooky grass spokes

grass pipe

from sushi restaurant at mall food court

mall art

art at same mall

same mall with similar art

ribbed

camera shaken at playground

midwest and west

where i drank most of my water growing up

...

red light, blue night

night light

Radiohead fan behind me tired of being photographed

light from lighter

hello

terrorrist?

the (Glowing) Gloaming

b burmeister beaming

disgust and disappointment

clearly blurry lights

an excited front row

1

Sorry i've been a bad blogger,
still in an odd funk,
but still having funky fun,
deceided that i am going to backpack in europe yesterday,
currently planning said trip,
feel invigorated again.

good news and Bad news

Well it's been a while since i wrote anything and this is due mostly to my bad news. The Good news is that i will have more time to edit my photos and post them, the Bad news is I got Fired. This happened last week Wednesday, but let me explain some of the events that led to it. 4 weeks previously everyone had their mid year review, i had only been there 2 months, but i still got a review. Out of approximately 20 categories i met 15 expectations, and exceeded 5 others expectations, i thought i was doing pretty well. Then a week later they called me into their office and told me that i was not closing enough tickets each day, we are expected to close 20 tickets(or problems) a day, and i was averaging in the high teens from 15 to 20 closes a day, and that i had 2 weeks to improve and close more tickets. On most days a little less than half the people get over 20 closes and the rest get between 15 and 20 closes. I was no where near the bottom, i was right about average with the number of closes i had, but my managers wanted me to close more ticket, so i planned too. The meeting had the feeling of a coach yelling (they weren't yelling) at me to get me to work harder, they were simply trying to inspire me to do better. So i worked harder, busted my ass, and after that meeting three weeks ago i closed over 20 tickets everyday since, during the 2 weeks after, they did send me at least one bitchy email a day about something they thought i did wrong, and just about every time it wasn't actually my fault and i explained that to them.

For example, one day i was assigned a ticket by one of my managers to call a facility in Pennsylvania, to see if their computers were up and running cause they had lost power but our system showed that we were connected. So i called and they were up and running, all their computers worked, and they were able to connect to our network, but they were running on generators. So i closed the ticket, then the manager that assigned it to me sent me a really bitchy email that i can't close the ticket cause they still don't have power and are running on generators, so she reopened it and sent it to the telecommunications group who originally had the ticket, they then reassigned the ticket back to me 5 min later, but i didn't know what else to do since everything worked but they just didn't have power. So i left it in my queue for the rest of the day, the next morning my other head manager sent me a bitchy email about why hadn't i closed this ticket. So i sent him the email the other manager had sent to me about this ticket, and explained that i wasn't sure what i was supposed to do since the other manager specifically said i cannot close this ticket. I had a situation like this just about everyday, where it felt like they were trying to find a mistake or setup a mistake.

But i kept busting my ass, and doing the best i could and closing over 20 tickets a day like they said i needed to do, my managers even sent me an email a week and a half after the meeting about closing more tickets and said that i was closing enough tickets and doing a much better job. So i thought i was doing a good job, i kept closing over 20 tickets, and the 2 weeks they had given me to improve had passed. i thought i was safe, but on Wednesday of the week after they asked me into their office and said that I was fired. They said i was closing enough tickets, but i wasn't closing tough enough tickets. We then argued back and forth for about 20 minutes in which time they had no other arguments for letting me go. It also seemed like their might be some corporate problem that had nothing to do with me, and the word was given from up high to let someone go. They said my documentation wasn't good, but i know more documentation was longer, more complete, and more explanative than a lot of other people i worked with, so i asked them to show me an example but they would not. They said that i had gotten more training than most, but i informed them that each person who trained me greatly exaggerated how long they trained me, one guy told them he trained me for a whole week, when he only trained me for 2 hours one day of that week. Furthermore, their was another women next to me that started 2 weeks before me that got ridiculously more training than me, but i understand this is since we were an IT company and women are few and far between so there is a lot more desire to have and keep women working for you in the IT field. They also said i should have come to them to ask them each time i had a problem or question after the meeting we had about closing more tickets, but i informed then that was right after i hurt both my legs and it was difficult to walk across the office the ask them a question when i could ask someone in one of the cubicles around me. Basically they kept coming back to the lame excuse that i wasn't closing hard enough tickets, furthermore, i argued if you tell someone you simply want them to close more tickets obviously that will be their main goal, and the only way to close more tickets than you previously were is to try and close easier tickets, and spend less time trying to solve a tough problems.

But i will quit bitching now, go and submit some resumes, and continue having a pity party for myself. It really is staggering and surprising how much this affects your self-worth or self-esteem, since i don't feel like it was my fault at all that i was fired, but yeah that's a whole other topic.