Sunday, December 10, 2006

Unit Conversion and a Party

QB and I went to her company's holiday party on Friday. It was held in the main banquet room at the Historic Del Monte Building in Sunnyvale. The place was nice, and the staff there was very good overall.

The company also hired a professional photographer (who I wasn't all that impressed with) and also a close-up magician that would go from table to table doing some pretty cool tricks. For the most part, you would be able to make an educated guess at how each trick was done, but they were pretty neat for what they were.

The food was buffet style, but was of very high quality. They had a little bit of everything from salmon to vegetarian eggplant pasta to very fine tasting tri-tip steak. And, there was a very wide assortment of desserts to choose from at the end. I ate too much, and could barely finish a couple of drinks throughout the evening.

Also, there were some decent raffle prizes. They did three rounds of raffle drawings. Each round consisted of 5 prizes. The worst prize was a $100 gift card to Amazon. The best prizes were pairs of unrestricted airline tickets to anywhere in the continental U.S. Too bad we didn't win anything. All in all, her company did a fine job with the party.

--------

Now, many of you have probably seen this already. But, I thought this was really painful and funny at the same time. I'm amazed at how this guy is able to remain calm as he explains that 0.02 dollars is very different than 0.02 cents. Even though he misspeaks a few times while arguing his point, it doesn't take much away from the ridiculousness of the situation. I would hope that I would be able to explain unit conversion better than he did, but it is quite possible that the customer service reps he speaks with haven't the ability to grasp such a concept.

Here's a taste of the conversation:

Guy: You agree that 1 dollar is different than 1 cent?
VZ Rep: Yes, definitely.
Guy: And, you agree that half a dollar is different than half a cent?
VZ Rep: Yes.
Guy: Therefore, you agree that 0.02 dollars is different than 0.02 cents?
VZ Rep: No.

Okay, here's a link to the audio: Verizon Customer Service Unit Conversion

--------

Also, a buddy of mine started updating his blog with interesting, almost-daily facts that he is calling the Programmer's Almanac. Check it out, even if you're not a programmer.

No comments:

Quantcast