I need some tequila first. Hang on a sec.
Mmmmm, that's better. Now, where do I start?
OK, had to go into SD today to pick up some important mail. Filled out some forms for my SSA disability and mailed them back. On the way back to Baja I stopped to apply at Labor Ready in Chula Vista.
Labor Ready, in case you aren't familiar with them, is a day labor agency. You show up about 5 AM, wait around, get carted off to a jobsite, put in your 8 hours or so, and get paid the same day. I had come here to apply some weeks ago, but didn't have a Social Security card at the time, and now I do, so I came back to take the qualification test.
This "test" is something you get one shot at; if you blow it, you have to wait a full year to take it again. I've never failed any such pre-qualification test in my life, so didn't expect to fail; however, luckily, I didn't expect to pass either. I kept my mind open to avoid stress and possible disappointment.
There are 70 questions, none of which is as intellectually challenging as "2 + 2 = ?" with 4 multiple choice answers of 4, 4444, "George W. Bush", and "Winston Niles Rumfoord". Instead they are apparently designed to assess your propensity to steal, fistfight, and take drugs, with a few tossed in regarding stress and ability to accept criticism, maybe a few other minor topics. Most of the 70 are on the big 3 I mentioned.
Since I don't steal, fight, or use drugs besides moderate amounts of alcohol, you'd think I'd do pretty well, wouldn't you? Well, you've got to take the test and see how they word things. Where they asked me if I had fought, I truthfully answered no. But there were many questions probing the circumstances under which you might be tempted to fight, and how I thought I'd do if I were to engage in a fight, and, based upon my street experience and my Hikuta training, I answered those as carefully and honestly as I could.
Anyway, as you probably guessed by now, I failed to qualify. The place is filled with jailbirds who would probably kill me for a quarter, and I'm the one who's an unacceptable risk. I took the news calmly and walked out. I started getting pissed off later.
Now here I am back in Rosarito, and I'm trying to get a refund for my customer, who sent me $102 so I could purchase the full version of dsForth from DeloSoft, apparently a gang of Russki hackers trying to make a quasi-honest living. I should have known they were going to be trouble when their FAQ showed them telling a customer who wanted a refund to cancel the credit card transaction.
Because that's what I need to do. The full version seems to have the same 120K limit on executable size as the free beta version does. And they didn't answer my email. So I'm trying to navigate fucking PayPal's site to cancel the transaction and their goddamned online forms either say the transaction cannot be contested because it's incomplete (but in fact it's completed), or, if I attempt to jump through their hoops to send them an email, after I type in all the information and hit 'submit', it blithely drops me back to my account overview.
So here I am, cursing at the computer screen, I can't do a goddamned thing to these incompetent pricks who deliberately design their systems to annoy customers and eliminate any chance that they'd have to actually solve a customer's problem. So why do I continue to use Paypal, you wonder? Because they're the only game in town! The other companies are FAR WORSE! Doesn't that suck?
I'm gonna get wasted. I probably won't get this programming job because I don't have much to show for my first 10 hours coding, and I'm not going to do any more without a commitment from the customer in the form of $1000 for the time I already spent. I'm not qualified to do day labor with a bunch of jailbirds and crack addicts. I can't get a refund for useless software and Paypal hasn't fixed their broken systems in the year or so since I last attempted to use them.
If I survive this half-liter of tequila, I'll probably update my blog eventually. Otherwise, peace out. Love ya.
last updated 2013-01-10 20:32:48. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com