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| message board February 2014
THis is what life has to offer: - frustrating, impossible-to-watch online TV and Internet content because Buckeye Cablevision fucks me ... and there's much more of the bullshit to list but of course I'm running late and have to rush into the shower so I'll get to work on time so I can face more bullshit and more completely horrible people throughout every waking minute of every single day. This is what it means to live. This is what the future holds for every day. Hurrah. Posted at 8:14 AM
FUCK Buckeye Cablesystem! If only I had ANY COMPETITION that I could use (and I suppose I do in the fact I could use AT&T U-Verse, but since I already have an Internet service that doesn't work for shit and makes me ready to explode, then it isn't really any kind of alternative now is it?). I hate this. Posted at 7:49 AM
... and as will come as no big shock to anyone, my fucking Internet service is running even slower than ever now ... Posted at 7:13 AM
Buckeye Cablesystem SUCKS! Seriously -- how is it possible to have Internet service that is this slow EVERY MINUTE OF THE DAY without actually being a total stoppage of service, just constant bandwidth but at the most minimal speeds possible. And why? I was fine all of the time I lived in Sandusky and had the same company overseeing Internet feed. Even my first couple weeks here were fine, but ever since? I initially had whole days of no service at all at least once a week for three weeks and had slow speeds during all of the morning hours for a week - but ONLY the morning hours. And then it went to what it has been - SLOW SPEEDS ALL THE TIME, EVERY DAY. Calls to service met with no help and with my work schedule with us at our busiest time of year I can't give up a day to wait for the multi-hour "window" when a service tech might be scheduled to come here. Honestly, though, what a service tech would do here I can't imagine. If I had a total outage and no service I could see it, but this continuous slow service seems like something larger scale. I'm pissed off about this. I don't have time to have a tech here but I similarly don't have time to wait for each page to load and some things to not load at all when I have little time to spend at the apartment when I'm at work so many hours during each day. Seriously ... I have never had so much disrespect for a company, and that's sad considering up until a little over a month ago I would have given glowing reviews. Sadly that time has been reliquated to distant memory. Posted at 7:13 AM
My "short" work day, Sunday, was yesterday, and yet I still had no real time to myself. The closest I came was talking to my mom on the phone for an hour while I tidied up and checked e.mail, but there was no chance to rest, relax or enjoy anything. I suppose it was better than last Sunday when I was rushing around getting laundry done amid everything else I was preparing for the next work week, but it's hard to be appreciative when the best I can hope for every day is enough sleep over night to not be left tired and jittery, even though it's never as much sleep as would make me feel well-rested. There's still no doubt -- death would be preferable rather than this pointless, arduous, and painful existence. Posted at 7:34 AM
As if there weren't already too many chiefs with a three chief to four indian ratio, now there is yet another chief - and they are all equally in charge and equally sure they know best! If this is a recipe for good management and smooth operations then I'm the Pope. Posted at 8:07 AM
THe slightly higher temperatures of the last three days and the rain that came with it have melted some snow but not much. Now instead of hard-packed snow covering the parking lots and sidewalks we have thick solid ice that is going to take a long while to melt - even if and when the temperatures get higher which is not happening now as temps drop to the teens again for the next week and a half at least. Oh what fun. Posted at 8:08 AM
Thunderstorms and rain with temperatures in the mid-forties ... Is a break in the below-freezing months-long temps and the constantly building, never-melting mounds of snow a fair trade when it brings flooding ? Probably yes except that the temperatures will dip back down again tomorrow, getting colder and colder again throughout the following week, almost immediately back to below freezing and with various snow events coming. Not only will there have been the flooding but only so much of the snow will have melted ... and much of what is left is thick sheets of ice that will just get harder and thicker as the temperatures drop once again. Oh goodie. Posted at 7:24 AM
... and now Ron's out sick ... when we already needed three or four of him ... Posted at 7:47 AM
I keep trying to get ahead of dropped-off tax returns at work rather than letting them build up. I keep trying but I'm constantly pulled away from working on them to do other things. The less? Never try. Posted at 7:39 AM
It isn't enough that a new snowfall - complete with white-out conditions and slick, quickly-piling mounds everywhere - fell last evening and overnight, but I had to deal with a crazy lady for the last two hours of the work day, barely getting her to leave when it was closing time. And if that wasn't bad enough, she'll be coming back again tonight!! Agghhh!!! Why doesn't that massive heart attack I've been waiting for arrive? Posted at 7:52 AM
Have I grown this jaded over the past decade or are people actually this much more horrible than ever before? Posted at 7:14 AM
... and then there was the time I thought the customer service department could help me fix the problem ... Posted at 8:33 AM
My mom is constantly telling me she's worried that I'm alone and don't have people to interact with (despite the fact that for the most part I do prefer my solitude and would prefer to choose any company selectively). She shouldn't worry, though: my painful, long-lasting headaches rarely leave me, so I've always got company - right in my head! Yea. Posted at 7:03 AM
What will be next to be fucked up and problematic/painful? Hmmm??? Any clues in the short time before it becomes readily apparent? Posted at 6:54 AM
... and then the wife of our most experienced tax preparer other than Ron got a torn aorta and naturally her husband will be gone indefinitely, leaving us with simply a pool of trainees and only one Ron ... Posted at 8:05 AM
Of course work has been frustrating, stressful, and generally upsetting in a whole variety of ways, but I've also had the slowest Internet speeds possible for the past week or so. Buckeye Cablesystem was fine in Sandusky (where they operate as Erie County Cablevision), but I can't say the same here. When I first got hooked up in this apartment I had a few outages of service for a few hours on a few different days, and I lived through it and just accepted it. Now, however, I have web pages open at a crawl and, with my limited time in the apartment, have had to leave or go to sleep before I've looked through the sites I have visited every day for years now. And don't even get me started about streaming. I haven't been able to watch even a short YouTube video let alone a streamed TV show. This whole situation pisses me off (on top of my frayed emotions from work), and since I work during nearly every waking hour I have no time to call Buckeye Cable to wait on hold and finally talk to a technician who will undoubtedly do what they always do and try to blame it on my computer, walking me through endless changes of my settings (but, of course since this also slows down my updating of apps on my phone and iPad it clearly isn't just a problem in my computer is it?). So I'm just fucked. I can't get it to work and I can't get it fixed because I don't have time. And with the stress I'm getting from work I really need to have the Internet to relax and wind down before and after work. Otherwise I feel like exploding, which is how I feel now and felt last night and most of the past couple of days. Yea. Posted at 7:28 AM
Posted at 7:58 AM
Yesterday was my "short" day of the week - only six hours rather than twelve in my seven-day a week nightmare. And yet, around fixing lunches for the next week, cleaning the apartment minimally, clearing away snow from around my car, and fielding the first phone call from my mom in a couple weeks, I had no time left to relax or do anything for me at all. Next week will be nearly a repeat except I will somehow have to add in cleaning my three or four loads of laundry somehow. And this is only the beginning ... this lasts until at least April 15th ... Posted at 7:46 AM
If the snow and cold don't give me a serious cold, the chaos at work doesn't overwhelm me, or the bills ruin me, surely the renewed barrage of quite horrible headaches will cripple me. Of course none of these things will kill me, just make me more miserable. But really, I'd prefer just ending this to enduring more misery every day. Posted at 8:04 AM
The only way for the office to have more chaos would be for the molecules to all separate into atoms and randomly disperse. Posted at 7:02 AM
Wow. With twelve-hour days every day I have even less of a life than I've had in eight years! Who would have imagined that was even possible? Posted at 6:58 AM
<Sigh> When will this 'life' end? Posted at 7:20 AM
All of this freezing cold, dangerous roadways, and random gun-shootings and such and yet I'm still alive. Why do people die from all sorts of these things that could be prevented and I - who don't want to be here - remain alive? Bad luck doesn't seem to be a good enough explanation. Posted at 7:22 AM
We've had on-and-off problems at work with the server and the tax software for the whole time I've been there. Work has been done on both for almost the whole time I've been there with mixed results, but with the added usage as we've run into tax season both the program and the network have suffered: slow-downs, freezes, lost access to shared files, and outright crashes of the server and/or the tax software, most of the time able to be restored fairly quickly. On Saturday I was trying to use the 2010 tax software for a customer and had a massive crash of my individual computer and the 2010 tax software on the server became unusable to anyone. I had crashes with the 2011 software (for the same customer, who hasn't filed taxes in three years) and basically had a customer waiting for well over an hour while I tried to get things working. Eventually, after apologizing profusely, I sent the customer away with promises to work on his prior-years taxes before he returned again on Monday. Well, yesterday was Monday, and I didn't have time until Monday to work on those files, but I did get the 2012's mostly done, then had to have the server guy rebuild the 2011 software because it had completely crashed into unusability. That took until after 4 PM, and even then I had to work on the server itself in the cramped server closet since the 2011 wasn't stable enough to run on the network. I got that done, too, and I found a work-around for the man's 2010 taxes since I couldn't use the 2010 software, so I was expecting to get his 2013 documents when the client arrived and work up the 2013 and finish everything ... except I didn't expect the 2013 software to crash at about 4:40 and take two and a half hours to restore (and it wasn't even restored in a properly-usable state). The office was a mess with waiting customers that we calmed, sending some home and having them leave their documents for us to work up as a drop-off and some waiting until we could hurriedly try to process through the somewhat-crippled software. By the time my returning client came in we were just getting on top of catching up (although we had half a dozen client files that had been left as drop-offs), and I was able to work out his 2013 taxes ... mostly. He had to bring in a list of his business expenses to me that he didn't have, but I also needed Ron, the head guy at the office, go over some tax forms I was less familiar with to work with me and the client to get him the best return possible - but Ron was busy with one of the client's of ours who had had to wait, and Ron' s next appointment was already waiting for him while he finished with the earlier client, so I had to apologize and send my client on his way again, asking him to soon return with the missing documents and that I would - again - work in his absence on finishing his taxes for all of the years with Ron's help, and then I would arrange to have him come back to go over everything with him. My client was very patient (as were most of our clients in the chaos of the server crash), but it was a frustrating day where I felt bad about not giving our customers the best service. The server and software issues remain ongoing, and while there is promise for a better time in the future as the new server is finished, set up, and put online, we are not there yet and have no idea when we'll be there ... and it's tough. So there's that. Yea. Posted at 7:52 AM
Even Sundays - Superbowl Sunday no less - are leaving a chock-full schedule and with people who do not show up on time for their appointments (and not just one person here or there, either; there are all sorts of people arriving late or coming at a completely different time, two hours later or sometimes a day later). The tax prep itself is complicated but something I can do, but doing the taxes for three people at the same time because they are there and ready - one early, one on time, and one late - is simply impossible, and for these people to get upset if they have to wait is only valid for the guy who was on time who is delayed by the guy who was scheduled before him but was late (but rest assured, it's not the guy before them they're upset with - it's me). Ain't life grand? Posted at 7:38 AM
The full tax season has now begun now that the IRS was finally opened up electronic filing, and if yesterday was any indication, these twelve-hour days will be non-stop crazy. Yea. Posted at 8:44 AM
Temperatures at freezing and a degree above! Melted snow! ... and of course the temperatures dropped again and new snow has come in waves. : ( Any reprieve is short-lived and unnoticeable within twenty-four hours. Joy. Posted at 7:29 AM
Journal, by Paul Cales, © February 2014
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February 28, 2014
