In the Reeds

I've been feeling bored lately, mostly because I'm starting to get pains in my wrist - I think caused by too much Diablo 3. I've decided to take it easy on my wrists for a bit in order to be ready for the Company of Heroes game with A1 and A2 over the weekend. I signed up for Amazon's MTurk today - which is where people can submit HITs (Human  Intelligence Task) and people are paid to do them. Most of it is pretty boring stuff, clicking on stuff, and you only get paid around $0.10 per task. Plus, since I don't live in the US, I can only get paid in Amazon gift certificates.

I mostly figured, I spend so much time clicking stuff in games for free (or in some cases, I pay to click in those games), why not make it something profitable. The tasks themselves aren't that taxing, the only boring part is filtering through all the crap tasks, and tasks that don't seem all that ethical (one task was to block a certain result in the Google search results, which I'm guessing is a competitor of that company). I think I made about $1.30 today (assuming the tasks I did get approved). Though I know I'd make more money if I was doing work at work and claiming overtime for it, so it doesn't feel that amazing.

One of them was kinda fun. Someone had a list of company executives, and you had to find out whether they still worked for the company, and held the title they had listed. Albert and Grad Daniel keep calling me a stalker because I can find information about people. I don't really consider myself stalker-like anymore, as I don't spend time looking up information about someone or something unless someone else is after the information (the exception being Grad Daniel, before he started, because I wanted to make him feel welcome, so I read his blog). I don't think my Internet searching skills are all that amazing, though I'd like to get to Tom Gale's level some day. I just think that in comparison to the less technical minded people I know at work, I am more adept at navigating the intranet and looking for things with Google. Plus, my first rotation was in a support team, and I had to learn how to find/contact other people in order to resolve issues. 

Add to that what Albert calls my "freakish memory", which is not really amazing memory, but the fact that I don't see a lot of people outside my team very often, so I tend to remember the few things I learn about the people I meet. I'm starting to get the feeling that he is a bit scared of me. I also say things to him that I now realise are quite mean, even though my intention was just playful teasing.

So inspired by Darren's One Year to A Better Me challenge, I've decided to set a little challenge of my own. I'm trying to go 30 days without saying anything mean to anyone. I've already failed twice (yersterday and today - once with Intern Daniel, once with Grad Daniel, I'm so weak during lunch. T_T). So I'll start the countdown again tomorrow. Wish me luck!