"I AM A MUCOUS MAKING MACHINE!" "Can we discuss this later? Like WAY after dinner?"

[dolari]

I am sick as a dog. The one bad thing about working in a call center with hundreds (well 50) people at a time is you get sick REALLY quick. Sunday night I started noticing I wasn't feeling too well, but we'd just had a front blow through and I figured it was allergies.

Monday I still didn't feel too good, but because of the really stupid and fucked up point system at work I came into work anyway (3.5 points and you're on probation, 4 and your terminated - three weeks in and I'm already at 2.5). I worked four hours before I turned into a coughing aching sneezing sniffling zombie unable to work.

That's when I got the call. A store in Anchorage called in and I did my opening spiel. In the background I heard "Hey, guys! They have a guy named Jennifer working there!" and I snapped back before I could stop myself. "No, I'm a woman named Jennifer, and have been one since 1997" and hung up on them. I fucking HATE that kind of rudeness, and I get it every day, multiple times a day. I just snapped. Hanging up on the customer is a Big No No. I only hope they didn't call back and complain about something they brough on themselves.

I went to my manager to ask him for the rest of the day off (I looked sick, and wasn't so hot). Before I could tell him anything, he told me my weekend (Tue-Wed) was being split and they wanted me to come in Wednesday. Good: In the evening. Bad: When it comes close to the weekend, I'm on the verge of burnout. Right then and there, though, I just asked for the day off. I needed to leave, I was ill, I was mad, I was frustrated.

Went straight home and just got ILL. I'm still a nasty mess this morning, but at least I got a 1 1/2 day weekend. I hope they don't split weekends.

Anyways, the reason for the (possible) split weekend and evening shift? Five people up and quit in the last week. Considering how roughshod the scheduling is there, and the overtime, I don't blame them. I would, too, if I didn't so desperately need the money.

And why do I have to be so good at a job I despise so much? I swear this will be my last phone job, ever.

Today I hope to get some comics done. And it's going to feel good to go to bed at 4AM. :)

I started the shift over last night, getting to bed about 1AM. It was nice to see Adult Swim again. :D

Oh, made my first honest-to-goodness DVD last night, using the new DVD burner. Gwen wanted some of my Space Ghost episodes, so I took the DivX ones I had from the mini-marathon the other night, blew them up to 720x480 and burned them into a DVD. With a nice little SGCTC menu and everything.

The image seems a TINY bit over blown up (Am I supposed to blow it up to 720x480 or 640x480? The manual doesn't say), but other than that, they came out really really nice. Much better than VHS! However, it seems I can only get about 1 1/2 hours on a DVD in MPEG 2 format. If I just burn DivX format data files, though, I can get hours and hours and hours on a DVD.

Anyone know a good DVD authoring program? DVDBuilder is nice, but forces you to do so many silly things to get a good looking DVD.

Comments

Ewww... a sickie!

[inefficient.livejournal.com]

*Makes Chicken Noodle Soup and loans Jen his copy of "The Princess Bride" novel by William Goldman*

I'm sorry you get dealt such aggravation on a daily basis. I'm sorry that people are so rude.

By the way, 640X480 puts you into TV's 4:3 ratio. 720X480 is 3:2 which, I think, is too wide for the height... But that is my guess on the matter, and I don't know for sure...


Cheers for first comment

DVD Resolution

[max-volume.livejournal.com]

Hey there - The proper resolution for American DVD's (and any other digital NTSC video, for that matter) is 720x480. The fact that your video looked over-blown-up is a result of the fact that compression artifacts get blown way out of proportion any time you resize video. The macroblock errors that were okay-looking at 320x200 all of the sudden look enormous at 720x480. Another thing to think about is the fact that DivX compresses the video a little differently from run-of-the-mill MPEG-2. As a result, when you re-encode DivX video into MPEG, things can get squirrely. I've seen some truly ugly looking hi-def pictures that were made that way by running two different encoding schemes in line...

/nerdspeak

I enjoy your journal, glad I could finally contribute! I've seen you on misc.transport.roads, too. Small world, eh?

Max V. (aka Pete)

[max-volume.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah... difference between the 640 and 720 pixel horizontal resolutions: square pixels (as you see on a PC screen) and rectangular pixels (as viewed on an NTSC screen). They do both end up being 4:3. The real viewable number for NTSC is 704, but the extra 16 pixels allow for overscan, which you don't have to worry about on a computer.

Re: DVD Resolution

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

Actually ,I figured out the problem: I don't watch enough TV on my TV. :)

I use a video card with the overscan turned ALLLLLLL the way down (you can see that black bar at the top on my system). I fogot about that till you said "Overscan." :) I wasn't used to seeing stuff on my TV anymore.

My TV card has the overscan turned all the way down, so you can see the whole screen (including the black bar at the top), and that's how I encoded the video to DivX. When I popped it on the TV, that overscan was back, and I thought there was TOO much overscan. It's just fine - the DVD plays perfectly on the PC. I'm just not used to having overscan anymore. :)

Welcome to the journal! ;)

[inefficient.livejournal.com]

I knew I didn't know what I was talking about...

should have stuck with the chicken soup and Princess Bride. Surefire sick remedy.

I should learn more about audio-video-PC stuff. I love playing with cable configurations when hooking up equipment, but I can't quite bring myself to start involving the PC... There is a clear line of demarcation in my house. :)