Customer Pop

Just when you think you're done walking through snow, bang.... it snows on March 17th. Not cool. I'm sick of snow. I want to see my brown grass turn green. I want to pick up 1,200 dog turds in my back yard. I want to smell the exhaust of my lawn mower and weed eater. I want to grill and light up tiki torches. I want to get back to shorts and t-shirts. I want a clean truck.

I don't think that's asking too much.

In other news, the only TV that's operational in my house right now is a 19" SHARP that I bought when I was in 10th grade. Perfect for watching March Madness, the single greatest sports event in the world. Both of my big screen TV's decided to fry the lamps in the same week. I just got off the phone with Customer Support and they said there's a known problem with a faulty balast in both of my TV's (They're both exactly the same model, only difference is their screen size), and they'll replace the lamps/balasts for free. I'm supposed to be getting 8,000 - 10,000 hours off of one lamp, so watching TV for 6 months doesn't really add up to 10,000 hours. They're also extending the standard 1 year warranty to 2 years, just in case.

To my surprise, replacing the bulbs is a "do it yourself" job. I took the old lamps out in about 20 seconds each. It consists of taking one screw off of a little trap door on the left side of the TV, then removing the bulb contraption by it's easily accessible pull handle.

Something that I thought was a little odd, is when the customer service rep told me to email my receipts into customer support, and in the subject line I need to put "Customer Pop". I guess that's the sound the lamp makes when it blows up.

Work is going really good. Like, beyond good.... good. For those of you who know where I work, you know that we're a company who relies on loaning money to sub-prime customers as our main source of revenue, to the tune of about 100 billion in receivables, give or take a few million. My company is replacing it's origination and servicing system (which are the systems the loans are booked and serviced on) starting in a couple of months. My database team has been chosen to lead the reporting conversion, and it's causing quite the disruption throughout the Chain of Command.

Since we're not officially under "IT", the entire technology group is wondering why they didn't get to take on this high profile project. Well, I got news for you IT nerds.... you're too nerdy, and you take waayyy too long to get things done.

This is going to be a really good project to showcase the skills of my team, and show the company how talented we are. If this project goes well, or I should say, when this project goes well, it will open up a lot of doors for my team. We've already been gaining some fantastic recognition lately, and this is just icing on the cake.

I also have a new guy hired who will be starting on the 26th of this month. He's much needed and I can't wait for him to start. I have 1 more opening to fill, and then I'm done recruiting. For awhile hopefully.