I’m still officially waiting to find out if my promotion at my work has gone through, and so the last week and a half has been stressing and tiring!! I had my interview on wednesday with my potentially new banking center, which went well from what I understand. But now I have to wait for a phone call to tell me whether it is going through or not, and lets just say answering the phones at my banking center is difficult to begin with. First of all, customers who have taken the time and gas to get to the banking center deserve first attention. We cannot simply interrupt an interaction, or hold up the line for a phone call. Secondly, and this is generally speaking: banking centers can’t give out personal information!!! That is what banking by phone is for!! They have tools, such as caller ID and access ID codes that they can use to determine your identity. We don’t have that at our banking center, nor do we have it in any banking center in the area. We can’t verify your pin numbers, we don’t know from which phone you are calling, and we get so much fraud, we can’t truly tell if you are the one calling or not. And for you people who get checks, we can’t verify funds in someone else’s account over the phone or in person!!! Would you like it if I gave your account balance to someone you might or might not have given a check to? What if the person stole your checkbook and needed to find out how much money you had that they could take? What if someone edits your check to clean you out? Banking institutions and credit unions have set procedures set out by Congress and the Federal Reserve on how to process checks and money orders, and believe me it does not begin nor end with the teller. We spend so much time answering phones for questions that common sense dictates we cannot answer that most of the time we simply cannot answer the phone to begin with. So on that rare occassion that we are expecting a phone call for an important matter, it can be sometimes not answered in expectation that it is another person asking for information we cannot give. The recruiter may have called on Friday, but I don’t know about it. I’d tell them to call my cell phone but I can’t answer it at work and they don’t call after hours. Which leaves only my home number, which I am not there to pick up. And I seriously doubt they’d leave all the information with my mom.

Anyways, enough of the rant… I went to the bookstore the other day after seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and I saw a commercial for the upcoming The Golden Compass which is a book by Phillip Pullman and which is now a movie with a huge cast of stars including Nicole Kidman, my current heartthrob Daniel Craig (The New James Bond boys and girls!) and Eva Green (who was Vesper Lynd in the new James Bond!)… and its in my genre Science-fiction/fantasy. Oh yeah, there is no not-liking this movie, and the visuals look simply to die for!!! So I got on the website, and played around a bit, and here is the only thing you could really do quiz-wise, but always fun to do!

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nerdy

What I am going deaf listening to::
Empire~ Orson Scott Card (Audiobook)

How many of you know out there that Memorial Day was created in the aftermath of the US Civil War? Or that Memorial Day was created to memorialize all those who died in the internal conflict, to re-unify the country in the late 1860s and 1870s? My coworkers often call me the living encyclopedia at work, maybe because I take five minutes and research something that might be of interest to people. In fact, according to some of the sites I’ve visited, there is a big movement to reinstill the importance of Memorial Day rather than a holiday for the beginning of summer.
Rather than a massive copy-paste mess, I’ve simply included some decent links that will help you to remember the holiday as it was supposed to be.

• US Memorial Day.org
• History Channel Minisite: Memorial Day

So on Monday, celebrate those who have fought for us, and remember those who died in that struggle. You don’t have to support a war in order to support the troops and honor the fallen. If you see a military veteran or active serviceman, thank him or her.

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somber and respectful

What I am going deaf listening to::
Keep Holding On ~ Avril Lavigne

Learn something new about The Plague

Plague is an infectious disease that affects animals and humans. It is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. This bacterium is found in rodents and their fleas and occurs in many areas of the world, including the United States.

Y. pestis is easily destroyed by sunlight and drying. Even so, when released into air, the bacterium will survive for up to one hour, although this could vary depending on conditions.

Pneumonic plague is one of several forms of plague. Depending on circumstances, these forms may occur separately or in combination:

Pneumonic plague occurs when Y. pestis infects the lungs. This type of plague can spread from person to person through the air. Transmission can take place if someone breathes in aerosolized bacteria, which could happen in a bioterrorist attack. Pneumonic plague is also spread by breathing in Y. pestis suspended in respiratory droplets from a person (or animal) with pneumonic plague. Becoming infected in this way usually requires direct and close contact with the ill person or animal. Pneumonic plague may also occur if a person with bubonic or septicemic plague is untreated and the bacteria spread to the lungs.
Bubonic plague is the most common form of plague. This occurs when an infected flea bites a person or when materials contaminated with Y. pestis enter through a break in a person’s skin. Patients develop swollen, tender lymph glands (called buboes) and fever, headache, chills, and weakness. Bubonic plague does not spread from person to person.
Septicemic plague occurs when plague bacteria multiply in the blood. It can be a complication of pneumonic or bubonic plague or it can occur by itself. When it occurs alone, it is caused in the same ways as bubonic plague; however, buboes do not develop. Patients have fever, chills, prostration, abdominal pain, shock, and bleeding into skin and other organs. Septicemic plague does not spread from person to person.
Symptoms and Treatment
With pneumonic plague, the first signs of illness are fever, headache, weakness, and rapidly developing pneumonia with shortness of breath, chest pain, cough, and sometimes bloody or watery sputum. The pneumonia progresses for 2 to 4 days and may cause respiratory failure and shock. Without early treatment, patients may die.

Early treatment of pneumonic plague is essential. To reduce the chance of death, antibiotics must be given within 24 hours of first symptoms. Streptomycin, gentamicin, the tetracyclines, and chloramphenicol are all effective against pneumonic plague.

Antibiotic treatment for 7 days will protect people who have had direct, close contact with infected patients. Wearing a close-fitting surgical mask also protects against infection.

From The Center for Disease Control (United States of America)

For More Information:

• World Health Organization: Plague
• Wikipedia: Black Death
• Wikipedia: Bubonic Plague
• Plague in the Ancient World
• Eye Witness to History: The Black Death 1348

Word of the Day: Obscurant

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Pensive