MMXI Week 4–The Customer is Always Right

Today has been a pretty fantastic week, especially in the area of customer service. No, I haven’t been working to my very best providing a fantastic experience for customers, thankfully I am free of dealing with that horrid rabble. Instead I have had two exceptionally pleasant customer service experiences this week.

First off, I had positive dealings with Cross Country Trains. Anyone unfamiliar with them should know that they’re a train company that operates primarily out of major cities and I travel with them whenever I visit Viv in Guildford. Their website is better than most as it doesn’t give stupid connection options. For example, when travelling from Birmingham to Guildford, you should just have to change once at Reading, but Virgin Trains and many other sites insist on only giving you routes through London, involving three or four changes. Not the case with Xcountry. So, in preparation for valentines day, I purchase my tickets plenty in advance. So imagine my face when, a week after collecting them, I glance at the details and realise that rather than holding an open return for the 10th of February, the ticket says 18th of January, a date 3 days in the past. I have no idea how I managed this, but this pretty much sums it up;

I had to hold back the rage against my self for what I feared was a waste of over £25, but I resolved not to give up. On my lunch break that day, I rang their customer service line and the following conversation, paraphrased somewhat, took place;

Me – Hi, I was hoping you could rectify a mistake, that in all likelihood, was made by myself, but I obviously have no desire to pay for it.

Customer Service Rep – Sure, what’s the problem?

Me – Well, you see, I’m a ragging idiot and booked my tickets for the wrong date. Not only have I already collected them, but the train their for has gone, so the reserved seats were never used.

Rep -  Well okay then, send us the tickets and we’ll refund you in full.

Me -  ………….huh……….okay……awesome……..

That quite succinctly covers the exchange, the moral being that Xcountry trains provides a great service.

My second customer service wonder tale regards T-Mobile, my mobile phone providers. In the next few months, I would be looking at a phone upgrade as my contract was up for renewal. As I have mentioned, I have an interest in upgrading to the HTC Desire Z, the keyboard equipped phone. But resigned to the fact T-Mobile would never stock it, I was quite happy with the idea of the Desire HD. Imagine my surprise when T-Mobile called me to offer me an early upgrade! I told the representative that I wanted the Desire HD for free and asked if he could help me. Not only did he offer me the HD for free, he then offered me either a £5 discount on my current contract, or a down grade to the next tier, saving me £10 and also meaning less wasted allowance. I jumped at the chance as it was an amazing offer. A £400+ phone plus a yearly saving of £120! Then he said that would get the phone sent out to me for Saturday, three days later! How’s that for service?

My new baby!

I was so happy with both of these experiences and I now have a fabulously shiny new phone!

Pay day rolled up on Friday, the first of my weekly pay cheques. I was miffed to discover that I was still on tax code BR. What this means is that I’m not getting my tax free allowance, an amount of income you can earn before you start paying tax. I’m going to chase this up as it is costing me something the region of £60 a month in excess tax, but I believe it will be resolved soon enough.

I also got my letter from the passport office asking me to attend an interview. It seems nowadays everyone getting their first passport must prove they are themselves and not a terrorist. I’m very happy about this as it confirms that my application has gone through all fine and I’m in the last stretch.

This Saturday I decided to visit Birmingham, primarily to do some valentines day shopping, but also to catch up with all the lovely brummy people that I love! And it was a great weekend!
It started with me meeting Vivs cousin Wessie and browsing a few shops in the Bullring. We then met up with Emma, who I used to work with, and her flatmate James. We hit a few more shops then decided to go grab some food (Nandos, naturally) and then saw the Green Hornet (in the 3D). It was a surprisingly good film that I thoroughly enjoyed watching, although it suffered from the usual tacked on 3D.

After the film, we headed back to Selly Oak to catch with another former colleague, Steve. We all headed over the road to the Gun Barrels, where me, Steve and Emma had first met, and got our drink on.

From left to right; Emma (obviously), Steve and James

After setting the world to rights in the slightest of tipsy fashions, we all retired for the night around 3am.

The following day, I rose up around 9am and made my way in to Birmingham to get the train back, but not before picking up some more valentines day presents. I can disclose what I bought, as I suspect Viv may actually read this blog!
Looking back, it’s been an amazing week that I totally enjoyed. The only thing I regret is that I can’t spend more time with the great people in Birmingham.

On another topic, you may wonder how I am progressing on my goals? Well let us tally them off, shall we?

1) Blog once a week, minimum - Well, yes, so far I am blogging once a week. (7% completion)

2) Get a job in Birmingham or Wolverhampton by April - I’m holding off job hunting in Brum/Wolvo until after April when I get back from Hong Kong, which leads to my next goal….(0% completion)

3) Get Money for Hong Kong - I most certainly have the money for Hong Kong and am definitely going, So excited! (100% completion)

4) Reach a Gamerscore of 25,000 - I haven’t bought or played any new games recently, the next one most likely being Dead Space 2. GTA IV isn’t really sucking me in, so it’s probably going to rest on Dead Space 2, Portal 2, Mortal Kombat, Mass Effect 3 and possibly Bulletstorm. (0.4% completion)

5) Complete an Entire Dungeons and Dragons Campaign – This one is currently a huge failure as I haven’t even started a campaign yet, they’re all notes and sketches. Bad dungon master! (0% completion)

6) Play more Risk and Magic: The Gathering – Unfortunately I don’t have my Risk game with me (I’m hoping to buy another version so, 2210 AD) and no one I know likes playing MtG, so this one is a bit hard to achieve, but we still have the rest of the year. (0% completion)

7) Work on a Video Game Project – I got off to a great start with this, but I’ve stalled somewhat in the sketching phase, I need to get back to work and knuckle down. (~5% completion)

8) Learn Cantonese – Not a sausage. Nothing. Nada. I have made no progress. Moving on (0% completion)

9) Improve my Blog Design – Well it’s no longer offensive red. I need to consult with my graphic design friends, but it looks a little better (15% completion)

10) Buy more Books – I haven’t bought any new books yet, not for myself at least. But with more pay cheques coming in, this should all change. (0% completion)

Overall progress.

 

As a little side note, I have a few short term goals I want to complete:

- Finish my minecraft cosplay. I’ve ordered the ink to print the design out, so hopefully this week.

- Post a review of Transformers Risk and MtG on my DnD blog

- Post a review on this blog of my new phone.

- Record an HD video tour of my minecraft world.

MMXI Week 3–Working 9 to 5 (or In My Case, 8 to 4)

Oh boy, this has been an draining week. I started my temp assignment on Monday working for Capita Total Documents Solutions. What they do, in simplest terms, is back up ‘analogue’ documents; paperwork, celluloid film etc. into digital format. I had my induction at nine thirty am on Monday morning, where they gave me a quick tour of the facility. The first thing that struck me was that it smelt like a pig sty. Not the proverbial sty, but a literal pig sty, with a ever-present odour that reminded me of my Granddads old farm.

Analogue to Digital Piggy Back Up

The smell was actually coming from the ammonia they used to clean the film in the restoration and back up area. I was grateful to be shown the document processing rooms away from the head ache inducing smell.

Work at Capita is broken down into four stages for normal document processing; Prep, Scan, QC and Export. Prep (sort for preparation) is just that, preparing the documents for scanning. This means aligning all the pages in same orientation, flattening out creases, taping down small pieces of paper, moving post it notes that obscure text and, most importantly, removing staples.
Or as I have come to know them, little shards of metallic hell.

Oh these little bastards task me!

Scan is fairly self explanatory and simple. Documents are fed into industrial automated document scanners, with the operator fine tuning the settings for best image quality. The main responsibility appears to be keeping the machine clean, as I frequently hear the hiss of compressed air ever few minutes.

QC, or quality control, is where the scans are inspected to check for errors. This can be anything from a folded corner, to a missed post it, to a whole page scanned far too dark to read. Any batches that fail QC are sent back to scan and so the process begins again.

Finally, you have export, where the scanned files, in Tiff format, are prepared to ship back out to the client. The files have to be converted, compiled, compressed and encrypted to the clients specifications, the transferred onto the media of their choice. This could be a single, multi page PDF document on DVD Rom, or a folder of hundreds of bitmaps on an external hard drive.
On a related note, I am not sure if Capita offers the WWF file format as an option. For those of you not familiar, WWF is a digital document format similar to PDF, with one key exception; you cannot, under any circumstances, print or convert it. This makes it a truly paper free format, preventing people from falling into the usual habit of printing a digital document so they have a hard copy to read, thus saving paper, therefore trees.

No, it’s not the World Wrestling Format; piledriver 2.0 compatible

I’m unsure how I feel about WWF, as I can see the sense in making a format that doesn’t lead to unnecessary use of paper, as PDF often does. But on the other hand, sometimes you need to print a document off, say if you’re going to use it in an environment where there’s not computer, or maybe you want instructions for fitting your water cooling system, which just so happens to need your computer to be switched off while you fit it. But then again, with the proliferation of portable devices capable of reading digital document formats, maybe this will become a moot point.

But back to my first week at work. During the first two days, I was on QC, sat at a computer wearing out the down arrow key. I would basically browse through documents looking for mistakes in the scanning process. Rapidly I learned to apply my knowledge of keyboard shortcuts, reducing the amount I used the mouse to an absolute minimum. It was almost painful to watch people who had been working there much longer than me using the mouse to rotate an image when you could use Ctrl + R to do the same job in a fraction of the time and with much less effort. But that’s probably just a matter of preference. It wasn’t too bad work, very similar to scanning through the hundreds of photos I’d take as reference images for uni work. Good, good, good, rotate, delete, rotate, good, good. You get the idea.

For the rest of the week I was working in prep, which was marginally more tedious than QC, and left me with sore fingers from using the staple lever. The only interesting part was nosing through the various documents. You see, if you put text in front of me, I can’t help but read it. So here I was, reading about bilateral breast enhancements, anti social behaviour in council houses and various other snippets of what I presume to be fair confidential information. Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t ‘intentionally’ reading these documents, it’s just my brain can’t help but pull every bit of information from text in front of me.

I got a really great bit of news at the end of Thursday that at the start of the next week I would be trained up on scan. This is the department I have the second greatest interest in after export. I will make sure I have a note book to hand as I’m absolutely petrified of breaking what I presume to be a very expensive piece of equipment.

In parallel to my work, I’ve been trotting along on two side projects. one of which you already know about. I've done a couple of pages of concept sketches for my level design project, but more importantly, I’ve done a mind map of the ships systems. I reasoned that if I was going to produce a plausible ship design, I would need to include ever possible element of ship systems, from life support to sensors to crew quarters. I did this using a very esoteric method. I lay down in my bed and closed my eyes, imagining I was the captain of this ship on a simple cargo haul that went wrong, narrating what would happen and every time a new element of the ship came up, I noted it down. I then listed all these sections on my mind map.

As you can see, it’s full of a lot of techno-babble and pseudo-science, but I like to think that using bad science is better than using made up science. My plan is that by the time I’m finished I will have created such a complex and in depth level, you’ll be able to spend ages walking around before you realise it’s not actually a game. One of the key aspects I’m really focusing on is variable gravity. There are currently three main gravity wells I’m focusing on. 'Standard’ gravity (one unit of earths gravity relatively downwards), cyclic gravity (one earth gravity towards the center of a toroid) and zero gravity. This will create very different environments, and I may even include areas of inverse gravity or even multiple gravity zones, say in the engineering sections where it would more useful.

My second project is something fairly new, my cosplay project for the MCM midlands anime expo in February. If I showed you this image, would you have any idea?

How about now….?

 

If you haven’t guessed it, I’m planning on going as the ‘Minecraft’ guy, otherwise known as Steve.

I was heavily inspired by this previous cosplay design, partially due to it’s simplicity, but also because I own a t-shirt of that exact colour worn by Steve the Minecraft Guy

I’m currently waiting until I can order some more printer ink so I can print off the artwork to cover my ‘head box’ with. I’ve also got a fairly large diamond pickaxe to print out and make, so hopefully I’ll have a really good costume. I’m just worried I’ll get people coming up behind me at the convention and going ‘ksssssssssssss!”

This blogging week finished in Oxford, as I was on the never ending gamer pursuit of the ‘special edition’. This time I was questing after the Dead Space 2 Collectors Edition. What makes this edition so collectable you ask? Well, apart from the steel book case, art book, soundtrack and dlc code, it comes with this:

Pew Pew Pew

For those of you that haven’t place the original Dead Space, that’s a full size replica of the plasma cutter, the most reliable gun from the original game. Now I have a pretty bad weakness for collectors editions, but when it comes to life size props, I get a little silly in the head. But this tale does not end in joy and rainbows, as you see, retail is often filled with incompetents.
After phoning HMV Oxford twice the day before to confirm that yes, they are taking pre-order deposits for Dead Space 2 and yes, that is the collectors edition, and it would be a £10 down payment, I arrived at the store to be told that there was a suspension on pre-orders, but I could call on release day to get one set aside.

Fortunately that wasn’t my only objective for dragging myself and my good friend Amanda into Oxford. I also visited T-mobile, to be told that they wouldn’t ever be getting the HTC Desire Z in stock. As my phone contract is coming up to its renewal, and I have a thing for both Android and physical keyboards, the Desire Z is ideal for me. It’s the keyboard equipped version of the Desire HD, which T-mobile do stock.

It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine!

Having been defeated twice, me and Amanda set of in pursuit of culture. That’s one of the things I love about being older, I can appreciate museums finally. It also helps that I act like a little kid around anything dinosaur related! I wouldn’t be telling a word of a lie if I told you that on more than one occasion I interrupted my own sentences with the exclamation “ooooh! Dinosaurs!” When me and Viv travelled to London to see Blue October, I used up all the battery I was saving to take photos at the gig in the natural history museum dinosaur displays. Not event the whole museum, just the dinosaurs.

Terrible thunder lizard he may be, but that doesn’t change the fact he looks cross eyed!

On several occasions during mine and Amanda's visit to the Pit Rivers museum I embarrassed/impressed myself with my ability to recognise the more obscure dinosaur species on display. Then again, I successfully recognised cuneiform script, which I think made me look pretty erudite.

Well this has been quite a long blog entry, I’m certainly impressed with myself. I’m undecided if my next entry will be early (Friday) or late (Sunday or Monday) as I’m planning on spending the weekend in Birmingham and as such, probably won’t be able to blog on Saturday night as I usually like to do. Until then, switches and ores!

MMXI Week 2–The Power of Stock Photos

Wow! What a week, only the second one of this year and man, it’s been eventful. Pull up a comfy chair, put your feet up, and let me tell you all about!

I’ve managed to either stick to, meet, or make serious progress towards some of my goals for this year, which is fantastic. Straight off the bat, one of the most important ones has been nailed, and that’s going to Hong Kong. Let me tell you how this veritable miracle occurred.

Last week I got a phone call from my girlfriends mother, who I affectionately call Lychi. She got this nickname after I picked up some post from the front door one morning, and it occurred to me in a sudden spark of daftness that Lai Chun Lee, her name, when read quickly, sounded like Lychi, a small and sweet fruit. I pointed this out to my girlfriend, who immediately commented that that was appropriate as her mum was small and sweet. The nickname stuck from then on, it was distinctly better than ‘Mrs Lee’ or ‘VIvs Mum’. But back to my story.
So I received a phone call from Lychi, asking how I spelt my name. This is an issue that occurs frequently as I have a penchant for spelling my name differently to how it is legally recorded. According to the law, I am David, but I greatly prefer the aesthetic of Davyd, with a ‘Y’. I was curious and she informed me that she was reserving seats for the flight to Hong Kong as even though payment wasn’t required, the seats would still need to be booked. This put a pit in my stomach as it meant I was under even more pressure to somehow find the funds for the holiday. But this worry was to be short lived, as I found out when I spoke to Viv on the phone that night. You see, Lychi had not only booked my seat, but she was covering the cost of the ticket, until I could pay her back. This was amazing and mind blowing news, as it guaranteed my first intercontinental holiday, the only time I have ever been so determined to go on holiday (I am not normally one for holidays). As soon as I could, I phoned Lychi up to thank her profusely! I am now going to Hong Kong! I still have to find money for passport and spending, but that will be covered as you will find out if you continue to read.

 

 

That was what I presumed to be the high point of my week, which was pretty accurate, but also that it couldn’t get any better. In that regard I was very wrong. Under the not inconsiderable pressure of my mother, I ventured into ‘town’, I use the quotes because having lived in Birmingham, to which I have oft referred to as town, calling Bicester’s high street ‘town’ seems demeaning to the word. But I ventured none the less and went in search of the fabled temp agencies. Having had an interview for one to put me on the books, I received a phone call scant hours later asking me if I was interested in a 3 month assignment. It was basic work, checking paperwork, but I could listen to my music and, most importantly, they would let me have the time over February off that I had booked for seeing Viv and going to the MCM Anime expo. I accepted and the guy, a lovely chap by the name of Bruce, told me I’d start on Monday! Epic win! I now had a temporary job which meant I’d have money to save for Hong Kong, get my passport and take Viv out for valentines! Plus it will count as office experience which will most certainly help me in getting a job in Birmingham and moving back.

Fingers crossed this won’t be me!

Speaking of moving back to Birmingham, I have decided to revaluate one of my goals, getting back to Birmingham by April. At the time of writing that, I wasn’t too sure I’d be going to Hong Kong, so the least I wanted was to be in Birmingham for my birthday. Now that I am going, it is more logical that I leave trying to get a job and a flat until after I get back from Hong Kong. I don’t know if I will mark this as a failure to complete a goal, we’ll decide on that later.

I’ve made progress towards four other goals; redesigning my blogs, blogging once a week, producing a game concept item for my portfolio and reaching 25k gamerscore. As you can see, I have chosen one of the default blog styles, as it was distinctly more aesthetically pleasing that then red nightmare I was using before. Also, if you’re reading this, you will see that I have blogged constantly for two consecutive weeks. Yay me!
With regards to the game concept item, as I consider level design one of my main skills, I have decided that I am going to work on a level design, probably one of my most in depth and comprehensive designs to date. I don’t want to give to much away as I am as of yet undecided if I’m going to blog the complete design and development process, or keep it under wraps. But basically I’m going to try and design an immersive and plausible space ship, featuring holographic interfaces, variable gravity, differentiated environments and an overall plausible feel. I think it will be a good exercise and I’m going to commit myself to the process.
As for my 25k gs goal, well I managed to hit 20k. This may not seem like a big deal, but I did it without breaking out a new game. I scoured all my old games, finding incomplete achievements so I could make my score up to exactly 20,000.

Add me if you have an xbox

This satisfied my OCD side, as I like reaching the 5k multiples exactly (on my facebook I have pictures of 5555, 10k, 15k and now 20k). Now I have to complete just five games to my goal gamerscore, which I’ve started with Grand Theft Auto IV, a game I’ve never been interested enough in to commit money to, but my brother has a copy, so I’ve nicked it off him. I think Portal 2, Dead Space 2, Mortal Kombat and Mass Effect 3 will most certainly help, but I will probably need a few more games to get the five thousand points I need. I’ve only got two full games at 100%, out of a total of 40+ games played.

Well, that’s everything for this week, I doubt next week will be as eventful as I will be entering the daily toll of full time work. Well, it’s money (a large cut of which my mother has her eyes on) and it will be nice to be able to buy things for a change. Ta ta for now my lovelies.

MMXI Week 1 - What Have Accomplished So Far?

Well, to be honest, not very much. Couple of job applications, come back to Bicester (unfortunately) and played a lot of video games. I’ve powered my way through the two remaining dlc packs for Mass Effect 2, man, I’d forgotten how amazing that game was, and ground my way through five achievements on Green Day: Rock Band, in pursuit of my goal of reaching 20,000 gamer points without playing a new game. This is a small step in my greater goal of reaching 25k. Speaking of which, you may be wandering (or, more likely, absolutely not wandering) how I am progressing on my objectives for 2011. Well seeing as it’s only been a week, I haven’t got very far. I haven’t learnt any new cantonese words. I haven’t started designing my game. I haven’t found a job. Hell, I haven’t even thought about redesigning my eyesore of a blog. But fear not my imaginary followers, for I have a plan. Well, more accurately, a plan for a plan. You see, my ‘metagoal’ for January is to plan out how I’m going to reach my individual goals each month. So fingers crossed.

MMXI Week 0 - 'New' Year Objectives

Well, just like the little planet that could, the earth has completed yet another whole revolution around the sun without us humans wiping ourselves out. And as is tradition, I'm going to set myself some targets this year. I refuse to refer to them as resolutions, as the term is both trite and also one that I reserve for discussing monitors, tvs and printers. They will be goals, objectives, targets even, but not resolutions. So here they are:

1) Blog once a week, minimum - I have two blogs (the other being The D Twenty, my DnD blog) yet my posting is quite 'irregular'. I have a terrible habit of being exceptionally enthusiastic, then the enthusiasm dies like an unwatered house plant. As such, I am aiming to post one blog per week, either on a Friday or Saturday, simply detailing the events in my life.
Likelihood of completion - 4/10

2) Get a job in Birmingham or Wolverhampton by April - Some of you may no (but more of you may not), I recently had to move back to my home town of Bicester, after my hours were dramatically reduced at my last job, and as such, I had to resign and move home because I was unable to make ends meet. Now I am unemployed and living in one of the worst places I can imagine. I am far from friends, Viv and the bustling metropolis of Birmingham. By comparison to where I am now, Brum is positively Utopian. As such, I am going to desperately search for a job which will allow me to move back, either to Birmingham, or Wolverhampton, as home is where the heart is and mine beats heartily in the West Midlands.
Likelihood of completion - 7/10

3) Get Money for Hong Kong - Late last year, Viv told me that their family trip to Hong Kong, which happens once every 3 years, would be occuring in April, over the last 3 weeks, over my birthday. I was obviously invited as it was a family trip and I am considered one of the family. Needless to say, I really want to go, but this will not be a cheap endeavour. As such, I am going to have to man up and ask my Grandfather for the money as probably the biggest birthday present in the history of my life, past, present and future. This will most likely be a once in a lifetime opportunity, to spend my birthday in such a great place.
Likelihood of completion - 6/10

4) Reach a Gamerscore of 25,000 - This is a pretty self explanatory and probably quite easy goal. I'm almost at 20,000 and as such, 25,000 should be fairly obtainable. This will translate most likely to about 6 or 7 new games, perhaps less if I can wrap up a few achievements that have been sitting around in my game library.
Likelihood of completion - 8/10

5) Complete an Entire Dungeons and Dragons Campaign - I currently have one incredibly large dungeons and dragons campaign outstanding, which isn't really within sight of finishing any time soon. But in order to fill my time in Bicester until I can move back to Birmingham, I'm going to start another campaign. I am aiming to complete this campaign, in a satisfactory fashion with an engaging story, inside of the year.
Likelihood of completion - 7/10

6) Play more Risk and Magic: The Gathering - This xmas, Viv got me Risk Transformers Edition, which re sparked my love for the bored game. Additionally, we began playing the trading card game Magic: The Gathering, which I have developed a parallel addiction for. As such, I am hoping to play considerably more games and improve my skill.
Likelihood of completion - 8/10

7) Work on a Video Game Project - I would like to point out that I haven't lost sight of my true life goal, working as a game designer. It's simply that sometimes you have to make sacrifices and prioritise. In order to not lose sight of this, I am aiming to work on a small project, showcasing my ability, and see it through to completion. I may set myself monthly goals in order to prevent myself from becoming complacent.
Likelihood of completion - 5/10

8) Learn Cantonese - Everyone has one of these loft goals for the new year. Considering my distinct lack of affinity for foreign language, this is a suitably ambitious target. Hopefully Viv and her family will be able to help me with this.
Likelihood of completion - 3/10

9) Improve my Blog Design - I never have been happy with the appearance of my blog, and as such I am going to consult with people I know who have more aesthetically pleasing blogs and get their advice.
Likelihood of completion - 5/10

10) Buy more Books - It wasn't until I move from Birmingham that it hit me how wonderful the Birmingham library truly is. I was at a loss when it occurred to me that I couldn't simply nip into the city center and find a book of interest. This especially applies to Terry Pratchett Discworld books, which have an exceptional re-readable quality for me. As such, I am going to try an actually buy more books so that I have a collection ready to read. The particular focus of this will be the complete discworld works, in the new covers.
Likelihood of completion - 5/10

So, there it is. My objectives for 2011, a fair few lofty goals to aim for. So wish me luck!