On August 16th I started a new job with Marusa Marketing Inc, a subsidary of TelePerformance USA, providing inbound call support for an American cell-phone service provider. After four weeks of in-class training tonight was the first night of actually taking calls.

And I survived.

These next two weeks are called learning lab where we're to get used to taking calls and ramp up to production expecteations.

Obviously I can't can't give too many details (confidential customer data and all that), so suffice it to say it wasn't as bad as I expected. I knew how to do most of what I wanted to do, though I did have to ask a number of questions but the only real problem I had was something that even my supervisor could not fix, so I don't feel too badly about that.

Part of the job is up-selling, or, in internal corporate lingo: MAXimizing. It's where I say to the caller something like "I notice you've got this snazzy phone would you like to get the Internet package - I can give that to you free for the first bit to try it out." In the one hand we're told that we're not supposed to pressure the customer but on the otherhand we're told to try and overcome their objections. I've never worked in sales and I'm strill trying to wrap my brain around this dichotomy.

The production expectation is a MAXimize offer rate of 85% (i.e. making an up-sell offer 8 or 9 times out of ten) and a success rate on MAXimizing of once per hour or ~8 times per shift or about 1 success every 10 calls. The first part, merely making the offers, that I can handle even though I kept forgetting to do so until after ther customer had hung up. The actual success rate is something that has me anxious because of the previously mentioned dichotomy. If I'm expected to have minimum number of successful MAXimizes every day, to me that says that some pressure is used. Because how else do you overcome customer objections? And if it is supposed to be no pressure then how can I guarantee that I will get this minimum number of successful MAXimizes? We're told to think of it as customer education, but to me changing the name doesn't change the reality.

Like I said, I survived to today. Things weren't as bad as I had feared but neither can I say this was a good day. I can only work on remembering to make offers more often, pray that I will get used to doing this and hope that making enough offers will result in the minimum of successes simply through volume.

Yippee! I have had more or my excess verbiage printed in The Record and once again it was on the subject of so homosexual rights (this is getting to be a habit for me). So, for your reading pleasure I have included here both my letter to the editor an dthe original which provoked my response. Enjoy or disagree strenuously — your choice.

First, the original...

The sense in which the nearly unanimous history of human culture has viewed homosexual behaviour as unnatural is independent of statistical considerations, whether anthropological or zoological.

As The Record anticipates in its June 11 editorial, the naturalness or otherwise of human sexual behaviour has always and everywhere been tied to the great good of conceiving and rearing children. "Ah," muses our editor, "but 'most people do not believe that the sole purpose of... intercourse is procreation.' "

True enough, but procreation is a purpose, and furthermore, it is a vitally important purpose for the nurture and survival of civilization itself. Hence the nearly universal care taken by civilizations to protect and foster the fragile institution of marriage.

Clearly, not "every single act" of sexual intercourse can or even should be procreative. But the more relevant question is whether it is acceptable for every sexual act of a person to be, intentionally and with full knowledge, non-procreative. In the human race, sexuality and civilization are bound together because sexuality is the means by which civilization exists and continues its existence into succeeding generations.

It is a unique characteristic of our species that our young remain dependent for many years upon their parents for both physical and psychological development. Where the enjoyment and pleasure of sexuality is separated from the care and nurture of children, society loses its ability to transmit itself through time. Thus, whatever else sex may be about, and it is about many things, it must irreducibly be about children.

This is why the expression of homosexual desires, which undoubtedly existed with as much statistical regularity in other times and places as in our own, has never been given the sanction and blessing of society.

Philip Toman
Waterloo

...and next my repsonse

Philip Toman, in his June 18 letter to the editor, Our Survival's At Stake, has got it all wrong on sexuality and homosexuality.

Toman first says that not every act of sexuality should be about procreation, but he later says that sexuality must irreducibly be about children.

Well, which is it? Human sexuality is obviously not only about procreation. If it were, women would only be interested in sex when they were ovulating. At other times of the month they would be completely uninterested.

At the end of his letter, Toman suggests that we shouldn't sanction homosexuality because it was not done in the past.

Using that logic we should revoke women's right to vote because they never had it in the past.

What about interracial marriages? Shall we go back to the days of Ira Johnson and Isabel Jones being harassed by the Ku Klux Klan, right here in Ontario?

Just because something was done a certain way in the past does not automatically mean that way is the better way. What is important in the present is that we do what is fair.

Cory Albrecht
Kitchener

I recently rediscovered the Internet Oracle, a most wonderful source of wisdom (assuming the Oracle does not ZOT! you for asking a dumb question). Since I survived my first year as a youth group sponsor at my church, I decided to ask the Oracle how I should continue on for next year. Here is my question an dthe Oracle's reply:

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

> Oh wise Oracle, greatest of that delphic clan, I beg of the to answer 
> my question.
> 
> This past year I became one of the adult sponsors for the  youth group 
> at my church. Now that I have gotten the teenagers to like me, what 
> would the best way to twist their little minds to the Dark Side without 
> their parents realizing what is going on? (P.S. This needs to be done 
> on the cheap since it's a small church and we don't have the biggest 
> budget for youth activities.)
> 
> I await with supplication your gnostic revelations on my teen-control 
> strategy.
> --
> Cory C. Albrecht
> http://cory.doesntexist.com/
> Advertising (n): the science of arresting the human intelligence for 
> long enough to get money from it.
>  -- Stephen Leacock.
> 
> 
> 

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} 
} In the future, if you're going to ask advice for how to corrupt young
} minds, I recommend you don't sign your name on the bottom... Mr.
} Leacock.
} 
} I'd say America's already got their bases covered -- teachers can
} already "screen" children for possible mental problems with the help
} of an Texan ex-governor, even diagnose their supposed conditions; it
} gets them started on drugs right away.  Any goody-two-shoes you can report
} as a "possible Columbine risk" to the Pinkerton Agency or Department
} of Homeland Security.
} 
} But I understand you want to expand your base of operations to the
} world, and there is also something /genuinely/ American about a
} do-it-yourself and elbow-grease attitude.  Bravo for not resorting to
} the government to twist young minds.
} 
} Perhaps the most famous corrupter of young student's minds was Socrates,
} whose doctrine of doubt and critical thinking roused a whole city into
} a lynch mob -- well, a hemlock mob, he was an old man after all -- and
} distorted young men's minds for generations if not centuries after him.
} 
} Another example of how critical thinking can twist one's spirit is in
} the Jesuit Order: it's said that the regimen of analytical thinking that
} Jesuit priests have to go learn will either render their faith
} invulnerable, or destroy their faith utterly.  
} 
} I suggest you follow the example of history and teach these children to
} think for themselves, to scrutinize authority, and to pause for thought
} before obeying people who claim to be their betters.
} 
} You owe the Oracle some Jonestown soda-pop, or Davidian BBQ sauce.
} 

Well, I'm up early and ready to go to the Ontario Mennonite Relief Sale in New Hamburg, Ontario. I may hate mornings (bleh!) but I'd hate even more to miss the Relief Sale! I don't believe that I have ever missed one — certainly not since childhood.

I'm going to buy some fresh made strawberry pies, help the youth from my church make those pies, and look at the quilts that will be auctioned off today. In the past, the most expensive quilts have gone for tens of thousands of dollars, so I wonder what the most expensive quilt will be this year?

Last night at the Rockway sping concert my Mom, Nancy Ellen Nafziger, was honoured for twenty five years of teaching at Rockway. Yay! Here are some pictures of her standing up at the front while Terry Schellenberg, the principal and Nacy Mann, board char, say a few things in praise of her dedication and years of service.

Well, thanks to changes in the firecodes and what home insurance companies allow, my Mother had to replace the wood we've had ever sicne I was a child. :-(

The new stove is a gas one, and to me gas stoves always smell funny, even if the view of the fire inside is virtually the same. I always liked building up a fire in the old stove, seeing if I could start it with just one match. (Which meant that I had built the little "log cabin" properly out of small kindling and surrounded it correctly with larger pieces of wood.)

Here are some pictures of the new stove

In the past couple of week there were a few PPCF Youth events. The fist was the sleepover at the church on 27-28 March 2004, at which I only got two hours of sleep. The last movie they watched (Bowling For Columbine) ended at about 5:15am. I still don't know what dumb idea made me stay awake with the youth while the two ather youth sponsors went to bed at 3:00am. Though now I have verifiable proof that I need more sleep now then when I was in high school. :-) Pictures for the sleep over can be found here

The second event was the annual PPCF Easter Breakfast which the Youth plan and serve. A few weeks ago, one of the sponsors, Elgin Shantz, said that if the Youth can raise $200 dollars or more by the Easter Breakfast, the Youth could shave off his beard — which he has not been without for 25 years! Since Jacob Yantzi raised the most money, he was the one who go to do the deed. Pictures of the breakfast and shaving can be seen here.

Tonight was the finals for the Waterloo Regional Improv Games in which the top five teams from last week's qualifying rounds compete. Rockway's team was in round three last week, and after that they were in first place but dropped to second after the four teams in round four performed.

The winning team gets to go to Ottawa to compete in the Canadian Improv Games against fifteen or so teams from other high schools across Canada. And guess what? Rockway won the regionals! Woohoo! I'd love to go to Ottawa to see them compete, but I'll just have to settle for wishing them all the best.

Just like last week, I had my trusty digital camera with me and took a whole bunch of pictures. Again, thanks to the no flash photography rule, most of the pix are rather crappy, but here are some of the better ones:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Yay Rockway!!! (I wish we had had things like this when I was in high school, way back when... :-) )

This week was the first round of the Waterloo Region tournament of the Canadian Improv Games, so I went last night to see how the team from my old high school (Rockway Mennonite Collegiate) would do. And you know what? Heading in to the finals they are in first place – woohoo!

I took a bunch of pictures with my digital camera (72, actually), but because flash photography wasn't allowed, most of them turned out rather crappy. :-( But there were a few good ones, and I'm in the process of uploading the whole batch to my website right now. (Oh how I do hate dial up!). Since so many of them are crappy, here's a list of some of the better ones featuring the RMC troupe:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

That isn't the entire list of the good pix, so go and look through the thumbnails to find the others.

Yes, it is true, I have had another letter to the editor printed in my local news paper. This time it is about photo–radar, which almost every seems to be complaining about. Personally, I don't see what the problem is, as I say in my letter.

Bring back photo radar — it's not a big deal

I don't see what the big hoopla over photo radar is all about.

The biggest reason I heard in the public outcry back in 1995 when the provincial government cancelled photo radar was the same one I hear today: "What if that is not me driving my car?"

Well, that is just an excuse, and a poor one at that. If it wasn't you then it was a family member or a friend to whom you lent your car. If your family member or friend gets a parking ticket with your car, then they hand it over the next time they see you along with a promise to pay it back.

If they are not honest, and you don't find out until several months later when the second notice arrives in your mail box, then you go to them and ask to be reimbursed. And perhaps you will be more responsible about whom you lend your car to in the future.

We can deal with photo-radar tickets in exactly the same way. I wonder if the people complaining are the same people who get angry when they get a ticket for parking in a space reserved for the disabled?

I have little (if any) sympathy for people complaining about photo–radar. Don't speed, keep to the posted limits, drive safe. Oh, and be responsible to whom you lend your vehicle.

On 9 January the PPCF Youth group went to the Canadian warehouse of Ten Thousand Villages in New Hamburg to learn a little bit about what Then Thousand Villages is for and to help pack some of the items which will be sent to outlets across Canada.

Ten Thousand Villages provides vital, fair income to Third World people by marketing their handicrafts and telling their stories in North America. The people make beautiful, high quality items from jewellery to flower pots to wicker room dividers and much, much more. Single craftspeople and cooperatives earn money to support themselves, their families and quite often to contribute to their community. Here in North America Ten Thousand Villages relies a lot on volunteers to do things like repackaging into single units the lots that have been shipped from the artisans as well as filling out orders as requested by the local stores. This helps to keep costs low to the consumer yet still provide the artisans with a decent return for their work.

We were repackaging flowerpots for shipment to local stores, and in my Pix blog you can see pictures of us at work.

#1 is Stephanie, Kathy (one of the other sponsors) and Jacob. #2 is Elgin (another sponsor), Jacob, Tyler, Steven and our supervisor for the evening. #3 is Steven showing off the mess on him from the styrofoam packing peanuts, and #4 is that mess on the floor.

Since I got a digital camera for Christmas — a Kodak EasyShare CX4230 — I have decided to display my amazing photographic talents to the world. :-) In the right hand column you will see a new sub-blog called Pix which will showcase the pictures I take with my new little toy.

The honour of the first picture goes to Nathniel Walker, born 22 December 2003 to my friends Ken and Heather. Isn't he cute?

I hope to add at least one new picture every week to this blog.