Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Everyone! How did 2008 treat you all? I certainly had a mixed year, there were definitely highs and lows. But on we go to 2009 and I have a good feeling about this one. But to help things along I've got a few resolutions...

• Do a little programing at least 3x a week.
• Work on my research project at least 3x a week.
• Make a blog post at least once a week.
• Get a new job.
• Be more organised and tidier.

That's all I have for now. Can anyone think of any more I should have? What are other people going to do?

Shorts: Busy Day

So far I've been at work over 9.5hrs, and only taken 20 calls, each one lasting less than about 2 minutes. 20 minutes to go.

My Perfect Girl

Update: OK I can't really update this just now. There's been so much going on lately, I've been meeting a lot of new people, had some changes in relationships with current friends and... I'm ashamed to admit I'm not 100% over an older relationship so I really can't write this just now.

I was going to do another update today, but I'm so tired with work that I can't even remember what I was going to do. Hopefully I'll remember tomorrow.

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Who is my perfect girl?

All will be revealed soon at some point. ;-)

How young is too young?

Before you panic no I'm not suddenly dating little girls, or even thinking about it. This is more a follow up to a point made by my (female) flat mate regarding the age difference between men and women.

As mentioned in my previous post, there are some very attractive women working with me at Tesco's Dundee CSC. In particular there were 4 very nice girls on our training team. Now for the sake of anonymity* I'll call them A1 and A2 for the two 21 year olds, and T1 and T2 for the two 17 year old. Now just from the naming convention you probably already have some insight into my views on this but allow me to continue anyway.

I'll admit that the first girl I noticed when I arrived was T1. In my defence her age is quite hard to place, and she pretty much ticks all my boxes, even optional ones like red hair, and strong sense of her own style. The next girl that caught my eye was A1, a small blonde girl, with a very attractive face and figure, wearing a slightly too tight top. Then there's A2, who is more subtly attractive (blondes always catch the eye first regardless of the competition). A2 is probably my favourite not just for looks but personality too. T2, I have to be honest, didn't really grab my attention till I realised she was checking me out. She's a very sweet girl with a nice smile, very quiet though.

So it was T2, and perhaps to a lesser extent T1 doing the same thing, that originally got me thinking about this. 17 to me seems _really_ young. Even 21 seems to be pushing it for me. But perhaps this is just me. At the end of the training week T2 pulled someone my age (25). Further more, according to my flat mate, when she was that age she was going out with a 26 year old.

So how young is too young? Is 21 too young for a 25 year old? Is 17? I'm not saying I'm interested in the T's, beside something pleasant to look at. I personally would definitely feel uncomfortable with that. I guess I'm just thinking aloud.

What do you think?


* If you happen to be in that training group and reading this you'll easily work out who is who so please keep it to yourself. ;-)

Work Angst

So by now most of you know I've started work at Tesco's Customer Service Centre in Dundee, though you may not have heard the specifics. My job, as much as I would like to glorify it, is simply to be a human switch board between Tesco Stores and everyone else.

Over time, Tesco are slowly switching over all their stores phone numbers so that instead of ringing a phone in the store, it rings the Customer Service Centre (CSC) in Dundee (or Cardif but who cares about them :p). Any how, calls come in, a number flashes up on our phone, we type it into the computer and it tells us who they're trying to call. From there we can either deal with the call ourselves if its a simple query or product enquiry, or get them straight through to whoever they need to talk to.

The idea of all this is a) Stores don't have to waste time answering mundane calls, b) Customers get a quick response rather than the phone ringing out because the store is busy and c) Any contractors, etc, get through to the right department as quickly as possible. This is great... when the system works.

Today however, not so good. All the CSC's tools were absolutely crawling today. The main problem is that most of them are web based and some won't allow you to use them until every part of the page has loaded. The problem on Store Reception is that we can't find out what store they're trying to call until the page updates so today we had more than a few calls that went something like this...

"Good morning, Tesco Customer Services, Daniel Speaking, How can I help"

"Hello, is this the Dundee Riverside store?"

"Erm... I have no idea"

What made today even more fun was my angry customer. Now I've had angry customers call me before, and they're generally pretty easy to deal with. Normally, give me 5 mins with and angry customer and I can cheer them right up (one woman I had to day was even laughing and joking with me before I passed her to the duty manager to help her). However what do you do when someone is angry because they cocked up?

For example I had a guy call today and insisted that the store had a currency exchange facility. I explain that I didn't think it had but I would check. He tells me angrily that he walks past it every day. I try to call the Customer Service Desk in store, but get no answer. I let the man know and he started getting really cross. So I call the Duty Manager, he says there is definately no foreign exchange at the store. I let the man know and he starts going balastic. Oh its definately there, he walks past it every day. Are you sure its this store, I ask. Of course he is. This is Cheshunt Metro (or whatever it was). Oh... says the man. Its the wrong number.

Any normal person would at this point be apologetic at this point for wasting everyone's time, but oh no, now it seems to be my fault that he called the wrong number and he's demanding I tell him the right one. Leahill Valley he says, he already told me he alledges. I can't find that store on my system. Now he's really cross. Whats your postcode I ask. He doesn't know the store postcode. You're postcode I ask, I can find the nearest store. Oh his postcode... Totenham.

Angry people are easy to deal with. Normally Tesco did something wrong and you can truthfully apologise. But what if a customer is cross, and worse, taking it out on you, because they did something wrong.

"I'm sorry you're an idiot sir" probably won't go down so well.

Bah. Oh well.

Apart from that things are actually pretty good, and better than that I recently had an interview at GAME that went very well, so I'm hoping to get a nightshift there. Everything seems to be going better recently, I've even started meeting some nice girls, which is... nice. :-)

Quick update - Moldova

I've put my Moldova pictures up on Facebook. You can see them here.

I'll get around to blogging about it as soon as I... can be bothered (oh thats so bad. :( ).

Spore Creature Creator

Okay okay I know I'm getting bad about updating my blog again. I mean I still have loads to tell you about my friends wedding in Moldova, but today I just want to add a short update.

I've recently been playing around a bit with the Spore Creature Creator (who hasn't) and I'm really blown away by how flexible it is. While sometimes it can feel a little repetitive, and just now my inspiration and motivation is lacking, I have created over a dozen unique creatures. There is still quite a lot left lacking however. As flexible as it is with the few parts it gives you (even in the full version), it can sometimes still feel a little restrictive, which is a strange thing since this is possibly the most free form game ever created. Also Maxis / EA's current Spore community system is seriously pants. At the moment there is no way to add friends and very little you can do with your personal page (except see your creatures). This really needs to be developed further so that friends can be added, helping you download their creatures more easily.

Anyway, bellow you can see one of the very cool little tricks of the community which is my Spore Widget. It displays any creatures I'm currently sharing. Feel free to play around. Note that creatures containing parts from the full version currently don't appear to show up, hopefully this will be fixed soon too.

Visit Spore.com