Limping Along

 My work continues to be intense.   This past week I was assigned as part of a small team to handle Severity 1 cases.   These are cases where the sky is falling for a customer due to an issue that potentially may be affecting revenue streams.   There's a lot of pressure from management to quickly reach out to the customer, get the impact statement, and determine whether or not it's truly a Sev1 or not.   There are times when it's not deemed a Sev1 but there's no convincing the customer to lower it to a 2.    Thankfully we do have support staff that works all across the world so true Sev1 cases can be handed off to the Sev1 teams in Asia Pacific and then once that shift is done, they can pass it to European region and then ultimately it would return back to U.S region.    Depending on the issue, that cycle can happen again and again.

Sev1 duty is mostly despised by support staff due to the pressure given by management to get it resolved.  On top of it, you still have to maintain your existing case load and assist other cases in what's called SWARM channels.   The process behind swarming is that folks are placed in a channel and any pressing cases can be reviewed by other members of that channel.   In theory it's supposed to help get other perspectives on complex cases.   But it winds up that only a few people in the channel assist while other folks just sit back expecting you to resolve their cases on your own.    

I have this one person that even direct messages me to look at stuff without swarming it.   It pisses me off to no end especially since they never bother to help on my issues.   Needless to say I have to force myself to step away from my work laptop, unless I find myself working all day.

Sally told me that I would sometimes long for my Amazon days.  I thought she was lying.  But I have many days where I do wish I could do a mindless task like packing or picking items and once my shift is done, I don't have to worry about it again till my next shift.  I find myself constantly thinking about cases even after my shift is done and on weekends.

But I do love my salary at my current job a lot better than the one I got at Amazon.   I guess those are the trade-offs.  Mental drain vs physical drain.   The mental drain pays a lot more...*LOL*.

Speaking of work (some more...*LOL*), I scheduled myself to take another crack at the Salesforce Business Analyst cert next Saturday, February 25th.    I picked up another cert yesterday, the Associate cert.   That one is a new cert that Salesforce added that is a pre-cursor to the Administrator cert that I've already obtained back in my training days.    I easily obtained that one since the questions were pretty basic.   Still nonetheless passing that cert gave me a boost that I'm hoping I can carry into getting that Business Analyst cert finally.

I'm hoping once I get that cert, I can use it to parlay myself into a different role at my company.   I am very grateful for the opportunity my support role has afforded me to get my life back on track.   In fact, my salary along with a small boost from my parents' inheritance, has allowed me to almost knock out my primary credit card debt.   I'm also finally done paying my medical debt for the kidney stone emergency I had over a year back when I didn't have health insurance.   So I am grateful indeed but I know that support is not where I want to end my career.

In the meantime, life has a funny way of throwing monkey wrenches into our best laid plans.   Dom and I were planning on have a date night last Friday after work at a Japanese restaurant we hadn't been to in years.   Our Church was also having a "movie" night that we were planning to attend after dinner.   But Dom sprained his ankle while he out at Costco and needing to put air in a tire.   He basically bent down for one of the tires and he felt his ankle popping and then he fell back on the ground.   Luckily he didn't hit his head and he said a lady helped him get up.   He was also hoping to go to Church today (for the first time in awhile) but needs to stay home to heal his ankle.   It is healing for him thankfully even though he has to slow it down.   Thankfully too he has Monday off for President's Day so we're hoping by Tuesday he'll feel better enough to go back to work (even if he is hating his job and looking to go to a different school next year).   

I wound up picking up dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant we also haven't been to in awhile.  My intention was to attend the movie night on my own afterwards but laziness took over and I wound up staying home.   But yeah life is a trip.

Devil's Punchbowl

 I was this many days old when I learned about this atrocity against African Americans.   We always hear about the cruelty that the Jews faced by Nazi Germany during World War II when they were rounded off and placed in concentration camps.   We may have even remember vaguely hearing the story about how the U.S. forced Japanese Americans into camps by a policy enacted by then president Franklin D Roosevelt in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

But besides forced slavery of blacks in America, I never knew that some blacks were forced to live in a concentration camp as well.    And this pre-dated both of the previously mentioned incidents.   According to this article featured in the African American Registry, the makings of the incident took place shortly after the Civil War ended and enslaved blacks were declared free.   A group of freed slaves made their way to the town on Natchez in Mississippi.   The white residents there grew fearful as the population of black folks went from 10,000 to over 100,000.   Fearing being ran over, a concentration camp was built by the Union Soldiers (the very ones that are always depicted in our history books as fighting against slavery) to encamp the freed slaves.

The camp was known as Devil's Punchbowl because of the shape of the location.   It was chosen as a way to trap them via a man-made wall so they couldn't get out.   Women and children were locked behind the walls and forced to starve.   Many wound up dying from smallpox.   The men were forced into hard labor.   Conditions were so bad that some of the folks were heard saying that they'd go back to their plantations.   

This is yet another example of man's cruelty towards one another.   Of course, there were no reparations given to future descendants of those affected by this tragedy.   There aren't any accurate numbers to denote how many blacks died from the camp since there was no record keeping that was done.    And this is not discussed in the history books.    One point Dom made when we talked about history was that the powers that be would mostly highlight historical events that ultimately puts the majority in a positive light.  Stories like these and the Tulsa Massacre where a whole town of self-made African Americans was burned to the ground would not be mentioned.   It's truly disgusting.  I wanted to blog about it so I would never forget.