I love the passing of time

Here’s the article that DH showed me, that got us looking for where/how we could help: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16776882/site/newsweek/

If there were a magic bullet, though, it might be something like dichloroacetate, or DCA, a drug that kills cancer cells by exploiting a fundamental weakness found in a wide range of solid tumors. So far, though, it kills them just in test tubes and in rats infected with human cancer cells; it has never been tested against cancer in living human beings. There are countless compounds that can do the same thing that never turn into viable treatments. But DCA has one big advantage over most of those: it is an existing drug whose side effects are well-studied and relatively tolerable. Also, it’s a small molecule that might be able to cross the blood-brain barrier to reach otherwise intractable brain tumors.

One of the great things about DCA is that it’s a simple compound, in the public domain, and could be produced for pennies a dose. But that’s also a problem, because big drug companies are unlikely to spend a billion dollars or so on large-scale clinical trials for a compound they can’t patent. So Michelakis and his colleagues Stephen Archer and John Mackey, with the support of the University of Alberta and the Alberta Cancer Board, are embarking on the process themselves, hoping to interest foundations or private philanthropists in underwriting their research

Dr Michelakis’s DCA website is here: http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/
If you scroll to the bottom of the page, there’s a place where you can Click to Donate.

We’re going to donate $20. It’s not much, I know. But, if you and I both donate $20, then they have $40. And, if you convince someone else to do it, they’ll have $60. So, the big drug companies aren’t interested? That’s fine - I understand - they’re businesses, not charities. Doesn’t mean we can’t do it ourselves, though

DH just IM’d it to me. It’s perfect in every way (so is he)

Lyrics - I Started A Blog Which Nobody Read by Sprites

I started a blog, which nobody read
When I went to work I blogged there instead
I started a blog, which nobody viewed
It might be in cache, the topics include:

George Bush is an evil moron
What’s the story with revolving doors?
I’m in love with a girl who doesn’t know I exist
Nobody hates preppies anymore

I started a blog, but nobody came
No issues were raised, no comments were made
I started a blog, which nobody read
I’ll admit that it wasn’t that great
But if you must know, here’s what it said:

One hundred of my favorite albums
Two hundred people I can’t take
Four hundred movies I would like to recommend
Ten celebrities, four of whom I might assassinate

I started a blog, I sent you the link
I wanted the world (you) to know what I think

I started a blog, but when I read yours
It made me forget what I had started mine for

I want them to learn how to make their own rules

We work at a call center. We are mostly inbound, catalog orders, information collecting, brochure fulfillment, no-pressure calls.

We have, in the past year, and really building up in the past couple of months, added some more high-pressure inbound calls that require the rep on our end to do some ’sales’ work, trying to convince the caller to buy.

The client likes to see good ‘conversion’ rates on these calls. The operators are given incentives to make these ‘conversions’. Reps with good conversion rates are given bonuses, overtime, accolades. They are seen as kind of ‘golden’ and, somehow, don’t seem to get monitored as closely as the other operators. There is a kind of competition between our call center location and the other call centers locations in our company, to see which location has the highest overall rates.

A conversion is when a call gets ‘converted’ to a sale. The conversion rate is determined by comparing the number of calls that an operator ‘dispositions’ to the number of them that turn out to be orders. The operators are supposed to mark down (’disposition’) every call that comes to them. They mark whether it was a valid call, a hangup, a wrong number, etc.

Now, 3rd shift, where my husband is supervisor, always had lower conversion rates than the other shifts. He & his staff would get lectures, pep talks, re-education on the proper selling procedure, disciplined, in order to try to get their conversion rates up.

After the latest pep talk, a rep who was formerly on 2nd shift came up to my husband & told him that she was told by a supervisor on 2nd shift to only ‘disposition’ calls that she thought were going to be sales. Leaving non-sale calls out of the calculations for conversion rate. Therefore making the conversion rates absolutely meaningless.

DH looked up some stats on our ’switch’ - which counts the actual calls coming into our building & tracks where they go, to which operator & found that this was true. The operators with these amazing conversion rates were leaving a large percentage of their calls un-dispositioned. Some had over 50% of their calls not dispositioned. The conversion rate for some of the top sellers, if they had been recorded properly, would have shown them to be among the worst sellers in the building.

So, what do you do with this info? According to the rep who told him, Supervisors were in on this little subterfuge. The same supervisors who would be handing out the bonuses to the top sellers knew very well that they weren’t actually the top sellers at all. The same supervisors who would give negative monitoring forms (which can lead to termination) to the people with lower conversion rates knew very well that their ‘top sellers’ should have been monitored as closely, too. The same supervisors who sent lower converting sellers home early & kept top converters late knew that it was completely unfair.

And, how high did this go? Did the managers know? How could they not know? The numbers were so obvious. And, what about the other call centers? Is it going on there, too?

Jim checked with a 2nd shift supervisor, asked him if there was some kind of new policy about dispositioning calls that he didn’t know about, or if he even knew that this was going on. The supervisor said that he did know, but didn’t care because it made his numbers look good - made our location’s numbers look good - made our company look good to the client.

Now, what?

Well, last night, at about 4:30pm, he sent out an email explaining his concerns about all of this to the deparment manager, the call center manager, the office manager and the head of HR.

He hasn’t heard anything back, yet. People are not going to be happy to have this said ‘out loud’.

I am very proud of him, though. Just wanted to brag! He is overflowing with integrity and concern for his fellow man.

As the bus pulled up this morning, Shelby jumped into line behind Eli (who was behind the girls). Darrah got in line behind them all. The bus stopped & opened it’s doors. The line started to move forward. Shelby started marching like he was in a parade.

I wonder what he was thinking then. It was so sweet & Christopher-Robin-like to watch, though.

Then, he got on the bus & sat by a window. He rubbed the frost away on his side, so that he could see out. He waved to me.

As the bus pulled away, he licked the window.

What a goofnut! What a great way to start off my day, with goofiness!

I read your emails and comments. I enjoyed them, really. I love to hear from you. It makes me feel nice that you are thinking of me. It really does.

I save your message, thinking that I want to put some time into a nice response, the nice response that you deserve. Then, it sits there in my inbox for days & I think, well, since it’s been so long, it deserves a really, really nice response. And, it snowballs from there.

((((hug))))

Sorry, I’ll try to get it together soon

Decided to get away from the computer, from the house, from feeling guilty about not working on the next house project & took the kids sledding today. Allison didn’t want to go (or, maybe she wanted me to *make her* go, but I didn’t — she’s going to have to start owning her own happiness).

Anyway, I could go into detail about it & maybe get philosophical, but I really just wanted to remember this…

Annie wanted me to go down with her, each of us on our own sleds, but holding hands. We did it sitting up a couple times. Then, Shelby got me trying to go down on my stomach (not easy when you’re a 42-yo overweight mom with way too much stuff in her coat pockets on a saucer-type sled). Annie was doing it, too. Then, she wanted us to hold hands going down on our tummies.

It was awesome. It’s how I imagine those skydiving formation people must feel, only I was looking into the face of someone I love so much she glows when I look at her. We started out side by side, but ended up with our heads close, looking into each others faces as we raced down the hill.

Damn. I want to do that again and again and again.

Also, one time, when I was going down on my tummy, Shelby was heading up. He saw me, dropped his sled & jumped onto my back! We went to the bottom together, then, did it again, starting from the top. Then Annie wanted to try. Then, we did a 3 people belly whomper, with me on the bottom, Shelby on my back & Annie on his back. We did that twice. First time, Annie fell off halfway down. The 2nd time, we made it all the way to the bottom.

May they remember the happy times like these & not the boring ones where I’m all distracted by my own things.

Shelby’s first pinewood derby was today. It was my first pinewood derby, too.

He made sure that he did every step of the car making process possible by himself. If it was something he could do, he did not let me do it.

He & I chose a design together, taking into account my sawing abilities

I rough-cut the basic shape with a saw.

He filed it into shape & sanded it. I had started with the filing, but once he saw that he could do it, he took over.

He painted it. He decorated it with stickers

A boy scout cousin & I helped him hew out the space for the weights and glue/screw them in (the back one made it through the race, but fell out afterwards). He also helped Shelby put on the wheels & showed him how to put the graphite stuff on to make them go faster.

Here is his car - it’s a fuzzy picture, but it’s the best one that I got:

He came in last in every heat that he ran. But, he didn’t really seem to care at all. He was so proud of his car & excited about the whole event. The night before, at the weigh-in, the boys before him all had something wrong with their car - weight too high, too low, bad wheel clearance, etc. When Shelby got up there, the man who weighed his told him his car was ‘Perfect’. He beamed.

We went home after the Tigers raced, this afternoon, planning on grabbing some lunch, then going back for the finals. I got grumpy trying to get everyone fed & back on time - talked to both of the little ones about the need for them to help me by listening & doing what I asked them to do (go potty, get shoes on, etc.). And Shelby & I had a nice little ‘discussion’ on the drive there, leaving him grumpy, too. I think that fed his disappointment as we watched the finals, as his back weight fell off, and as he realized that they had, apparently, forgotten to judge for the ‘Car that best shows the Cub Scout spirit’ prize. He knew, looking at the other cars last night at the weigh-in, that he was probably the only scout who followed the rules & did it all himself. He thought that he had a chance at that prize, anyway. So, despite the great sportsmanship & pride earlier in the day, he was a bit subdued on the way home from the finals.

He’s doing OK, now.

But, I know that over the next few days, and as we prepare for next year’s race, he’ll be remembering how the winning cars were, quite obviously, made by boys that had more than just a little help from their parents. He’ll have to decide whether to remain true to the spirit of the race, despite the fact that everyone else seems OK with cheating a bit. Do you stick with what you know is right? Or, do you just do what you can get away with in order to win? I wonder if that’s part of the lesson that the scouts are meant to learn in this event, or if it’s just an unfortunate side effect of the whole thing.

None of he other parents seemed obsessed with winning, but many of them seemed completely oblivious to the fact that it was insanely obvious that they had done the majority of the work on their boy’s cars.

Well, Fuschia, anyway.

I painted it on :-p

I’ve got a little bit on my hair, too - not as much as her, though. Much more subtle & suitable for a 42 year old woman, anyway. She wanted me to do it, too.

We stopped before putting it on Annie, though, just because she said she didn’t want it. Jim didn’t want any, either. We didn’t ask Shelby.

pic here: http://leaflass.livejournal.com/54871.html