My haul from today’s excursion to Yongsan Garrison.

As mentioned in my previous post, among the petty annoyances I’ve been experiencing was a non-functioning printer.  I rectified that this afternoon with the purchase of the HP Deskjet 1512 pictured above.  The printer was the cheapest of the lot I looked at ($49.95), but it prints and scans and that’s all I require.  Of course, the connecting cables sold separately ($7.95) and I went ahead and bought an extra ink cartridge for $23.95.  It’s astounding that the ink costs almost half as much as the actual printer. The other items I brought home are gas canisters for grill, eyeglass wipes, DayQuill, a box of Popeye’s chicken and a Whopper Jr. for Jee Yeun.  Not pictured is the strawberry shake I enjoyed on the way home.

Basic, but functional.

With the printer assembled I was able to scan and email all my tax documents to the accountant back in South Carolina.  So that’s one less thing to worry about.  Until it comes time to pay at least.  Last year my federal return was almost enough to pay my SC taxes. We’ll see.

I called the insurance company again about the claim on my parent’s house (see previous post for details on that cluster fuck).  Got directed to voice mail yet again.  Called back and spoke with the receptionist.  Told her I’ve been trying to reach Ms. Sheehan for two days, she cut me off and said I’ll transfer you.  Of course, it went to voice mail.  So, I called back more than a little irritated and said this is a matter of some urgency and Ms. Sheehan is not answering her phone.  She said let me transfer you to the manager.  And you guessed it, I got his voice mail.  I left a message with him, but I don’t expect he’ll call me back in Korea.

At least my job is not stressful, except when it is.  Four months in and I’m still not able to access the computer network.  The big boss isn’t happy and told my boss he wants it resolved.  My boss emailed me and basically said get it done.  I’m not sure what the fuck I’m supposed to do about it.  When I took the initiative to get the printer fixed it backfired.  I was working with the IMO (Information Management Office) and they were unable to resolve the issue.  For some reason, the IMO contacted the big boss and he didn’t like being blindsided.  My boss told me to keep the big boss in the loop in the future, and the big boss told me not to contact the IMO again, just let him know and he would deal with them directly.  Bottom line, I still don’t have a functioning printer in the computer lab. Which means I regularly have to disappoint soldiers who come to use our facility.  I’ve always been customer service oriented so I find that extremely frustrating.

Otherwise, the job is a pretty sweet gig.  Twenty hours a week at next to no pay and no real responsibility.  Boring as hell though.  If the other job comes through I may very well miss the easy working life as the King of the K-16 Multi-Use Learning Facility.

The company I work for sent me this nifty name tag. It’s the little things that matter. Like spelling my damn name correctly.

It occurs to me I’ve not worn a name tag since I was an 18 year old convenience store clerk.  That job was somewhat more challenging in that I worked graveyard shift and occasionally got robbed.  Well, once I got robbed then I quit*.  I decided $2.00 per hour wasn’t enough to put up with threats to kill me if I didn’t hand over the cash.  Robbers can’t get past base security at K-16 though, so I’m golden.

*Actually I quit a couple of days later when the company wanted to give ME a polygraph to see if the robbery had been an inside job.  They were suspicious because I had failed to do a cash drop and had $60. in the cash drawer as opposed to the mandated maximum of $30.  I told them fuck you very much.  Literally.