Sentient Domain: Chapter 20

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Anaea Lay

This chapter is eligible for winning bonuses in the Sentient Domain Game. An index of all relevant posts can be found here.

Pavi became aware of her surroundings well before she regained consciousness. She could sense Aliph and Bett sitting near her, and she could hear the station computer chattering away in the distance. Even further away, at the very edge of her perception, Pavi could hear Mike.

<Welcome back, Admiral Valshorn.> Pavi heard the voice in her head, though nobody spoke.

<Is this a dream?> Pavi asked.

<No. You’ve integrated with the colony of nanites. We are speaking across the network.>

<I can’t feel my body,> Pavi said. Continue reading →

OMG, Never Let EVS Ford Random Lake Get your Contact Information

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Anaea Lay

I’m car shopping. It’s not fun, and I’m bitter about it, but my first couple trips to dealers were actually pretty nice. The sales people were pretty good at their jobs and had me feeling better about the whole ordeal. I enjoy working with sales people who are good at their jobs. And I am, admittedly, very short on patience for sales people who aren’t. I’m glad the first couple experiences were positive, because things started going downhill with the fourth dealer I visited. And then they went completely off the rails.

After my first non-awesome experience, I found out Costco has an affiliate program. Awesome! I love Costco, largely because they’re so good at customer service. So I sent out requests to all the types of dealers I still needed to visit. This included Ford. And, apparently, their nearest affiliated Ford dealership is EVS Ford Random Lake. A nice guy named Jason called me. He actually qualified me (asked me questions to figure out what I need) before pitching a car. He asked me about my budget and time lines on the decision. The part where he really impressed me was when he was mentioning a manufacturer’s rebate that expired at the end of the month, then specified that for them, the end of the month isn’t until June 3. (There are schools of sales that say he should have sat on that and pulled it out as a hero card later. They’re bad schools.) I got off the phone pretty enthusiastic about trying out the car he suggested. He sent along a follow up email with the information we’d talked about, which was awesome. This was May 9, a week ago.

May 11 brings a phone call from Jason. He never asked me how I wanted him to follow up. This is a problem, because I didn’t want him to follow up. And if he had asked I’d have told him that email is much, much preferable to phone. I hadn’t gotten out of bed yet and only answered the phone in case it was a client or something else actually important. It was just Jason, being insecure and clingy. He wants me to know about another thing that might work for me. ”Email it to me. Do not call me,” I say. I feel a little bad for being short with him when I hang up. I was short with him, and he didn’t know that calling me at 11am on a Saturday was nearly the most obnoxious thing he could have done until he did it.

Car dealerships are not open on Sundays in Wisconsin. By law. Sunday was blessedly quiet.

Monday brought an email. Subject: Dealerships must be contacting you! I quote it below.

Hello [redacted],

We spoke last week regarding an interest in a vehicle. I’m not here to hound you as I could tell your demeanor changed drastically the second time I called. Other dealerships must be filling your cell phone with messages and calls.

I appreciate your interest and I’m here as a tool for you to get what you want…A VEHICLE! Let me know how to help so I can take the load off your shoulders. That way you can focus on work and life while I get the necessary information to make the best informed decision for you.

Thank you for your time,

The bolding is mine, because it’s more or less the line that makes both this email and everything that follows utterly unhinged. Yes, I was short with him, he can tell I’m getting fed up, so he deals with that by…contacting me again. Some more. Since my complete non-response to his email on Saturday was clearly a cry for more attention. Or something.

But wait, it gets better.

I ignore Monday’s email. I have an infinite capacity for ignoring email. Since it didn’t have any information I wanted, it was probably in my inbox less than a minute total. And Jason must have realized that, because he changed tactics.

My phone does it’s hiccough-beep thing while I’m using it for work on Tuesday. When I finish with the call I check to see which notification got choked. It’s a text message!

Still looking for a vehicle? Jason from EvS Ford…I know your busy plz keep me in the loop!

Because text is totally a communication medium you should employ without consent from the person you’re communicating with. It’s not like those ever cost people money to receive or anything. (I have a text package. But I also never assume my clients do. Because that’s how professionals behave)

If it hadn’t been Tuesday, I might have just continued to ignore him. But Tuesdays are more or less the worst days ever, and this one was special. Also, despite still being in bed at 11am on Saturday, I’m kinda fuzzy on when the last time I took a day off was. In short, I had no patience left with which to swallow my wrath. Jason got a not very polite email.

Dear Jason,

I have gotten both your emails, and now your text. When I said I’d be making a decision at some point in the next month, it was because I was planning to spend most of the month doing my research and pondering the decision. I am well and truly fed up with your aggressive follow up, which you know because you acknowledged noticing my “change in demeanor” in one of the emails.

If I want to talk to you, I will contact you. Until then, leave me alone. You’ve pretty well talked me out of doing business with you at this point just because I’m reluctant for you to see any kind of positive return on your sales style.

Sincerely,

I also went ahead and filled out the survey Costco sent me about my experience with the program. I only filled it out for this dealership since I’m not finished with the others yet, so don’t yet know everything I might want to say. I am, at this point, very done with EVS Ford. One of their questions is about whether I need somebody to contact me about my experience. I say no because I know that this isn’t Costco’s fault and I’ll probably just cuss at whoever calls me.

I think I must have accidentally started dating Jason or something, though, because he was deep into bad boyfriend territory. Somehow a curt email telling him, essentially, to fuck off and die, warrants the following response a few hours later.

Perfect [redacted]!

Since I was unaware of your timeframe that helps out a lot. I appreciate the communication and that’s the reason for the 2 e-mails and text. I will wait to hear from you and have a wonderful day!

Thank you for your time,

I’ve been told that sometimes I’m too subtle with my exposition in stories. I have never been accused of being too subtle while irritated. Well, not until this email. This email is full of, “What? I didn’t hear your frothy rage. I am a clueless twit who will not be deterred! Love me, please!!!”

At least that’s the end of it, right? He’s going to wait to hear from me. Who cares if he missed the point, I have achieved my goal. Right? Right???

Situations like these leave me wondering whether I have an optimist buried deep down under my cynical shell. Those sorts of thoughts distress me.

I get a form-ish email from Costco. They have their Member Advocate looking into the issue. They take their member’s feedback seriously and will have a response for me within a few business days. Here’s how I can contact them if I like, and I shouldn’t hesitate to. Costco, I still love you because you know what? I lied when I said I didn’t want you to contact me about this. I didn’t realize it, but this is exactly what I wanted you to do. Good on you for seeing that. Love and cuddles to Costco, I feel better about the whole situation. Which I am shut of. Because I’m living in delusional optimist land.

Wednesday. Six days after first contact. The only day of peace was the one LEGALLY MANDATED. But I’ve been rude. I’ve sicced Costco on them. I’m leaving the house for evening showings and not a peep from EVS Ford. Victory!

Guess what came in about the time I’m unlocking the first house?

Hello [redacted], My name is Curt Miller and I am the General sales manager at EVS Ford Random lake.I hope during your last contact with us you were able to get all the information you were looking for.Did you?

Is there anything I can help you with? Are there any questions I can answer?

I’d be happy to help. Just reply or call me at 920-994-4376.

Thanks for your time.

I didn’t actually check this until after my showings, which is good because that particular client hasn’t signed paperwork committing to me yet and dissolving into a spewing pile of frothy, cussing wrath might have sent them running. Justifiably. My clients expect a particular brand of crazy from me, and that’s not it.

My response:

There is one question you can answer for me: Since stating explicitly the last time I communicated with EVS Ford Random Lake that I wanted to be left alone and this is the second contact from you since then, what exactly do I need to do to get you to stop checking in with me? In six days I’ve had two phone calls, five emails and a text message. At no point past the initial phone call did I invite further contact.

But just in case I was somehow unclear in my prior communication, allow me to paste it below. This time I’ve bolded bits that were really important. If I buried the important part in too many words, I apologize and hope I have now clearly communicated my displeasure.

I bolded the “well and truly fed up” clause and the “leave me alone.”

I suspect a reasonable, patient person would wait to see what happens from here before letting loose on a public blog. But you know what? Fuck that. And Fuck EVS Ford. This is absurd, and I don’t really care how apologetic, penitent, whatever they wind up being. This has been absurd and the entire world should be warned: Do not let these people get your contact information. Do not talk to them. Don’t make eye contact or sudden movements near them.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh.

Podcast: Hiding on the Red Sands of Mars

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Anaea Lay

So, this week’s podcast is, uh, my story. And apparently Julia thinks it’s a great story for Mother’s Day. When I found out, I did the sensible thing and immediately texted my sister. (My sister has not read the story). Her response was, and I quote, “I think I just burst one of my guts from laughing so hard.”

Yeah. There’s something wrong in the universe. You should check it out to see just, precisely, what.

Sentient Domain: Chapter 19

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Anaea Lay

This chapter is eligible for winning bonuses in the Sentient Domain Game. An index of all relevant posts can be found here.

“Admiral Valshorn, we don’t have much time. Wake up, please.”

Pavi’s chest hurt. It didn’t just hurt, it felt like she’d been crushed. Every breath she tried to take, and she couldn’t actually make her lungs work, sent sharp splintering pains through her whole body. She was queasy and thirsty and so tired that consciousness was painful. And through all of that, she was wide awake.

“What…” she couldn’t finish her sentence.

“You were shot. We pulled you onto the shuttle and left the Harper’s Cry three hours ago. The first aid kit on this shuttle contained a substantial dose of nanites. Admiral Valshorn, if we leave your care to the nanites, you will die.” Continue reading →

Pudding!

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Anaea Lay

Sometimes, after making a tasty dinner (first grilling episode of the year!), you’re feeling greedy. It’s not that you didn’t get enough food. You just need something else. Something sweet. Something chocolate. And in this case, something pudding.

I’ve mentioned here before my general fondness for Bruce Weinstein’s Ultimate Recipe cookbook. I poked at several cookbooks, and briefly flirted with doing pots d’creme or chocolate souffles instead. But no. I wanted pudding. Largely because it was the easiest way to double the recipe and hold some back for Sunday’s crit group meeting. Yay, planning ahead!

Since I was doubling the recipe, and since we had packets of chocolate meant for hot chocolate lying around, I got a bit creative with my choice in chocolate. For half the chocolate I used chipotle hot chocolate, then went for standard unsweetened baking chocolate for the other half.

The really nice thing about doing a pudding instead of the other gloup-y chocolate options is that it’s unpretentious and easy. You have to beat the egg yolks seperately, and since mine started frozen that took a bit of patience, but other than that, it’s really all about throwing things into a pot and whisking until you have pudding.

This is what everything but the yolks looks like when you’ve been whisking for a few minutes. Most unappetizing hot chocolate ever, yes? That’s okay. Keep whisking.

Mmmm, better. This is the “let bubble and thicken for 30 seconds,” stage. Which means it’s time to pour our hot pre-pudding mixture into the egg yolks so they get cooked.

And here’s what the yolks look like with half the chocolate mixture whisked in. I found the logistics of pouring a “Slow, steady stream,” from the pan into the bowl a bit challenging. I’d recommend either having another set of hands nearby, or using a pan with a spout. Or being a ninja. Ninja skills would be super useful for this.

Everything goes back into the pot for more…if you guessed whisking, you win! The book said to do it on low for about three minutes, at which point it would be bubbling. After five minutes it was not bubbling, so I started cranking the heat, and did that slowly until it was bubbling. Then I let it go a touch longer, just in case.

Unrelated note: glass top electric stoves are about the worst stoves ever invented. They’re very pretty and sleek looking. They’re also crap at evenly heating all but the perfectest of perfect pots, and a serious pain in the ass to keep shiny. Do not buy stoves because they are pretty. Buy them because they’re useful stoves. (This one came with the house.)

That is the bowl of chocolate pudding I’ll be serving on Sunday. The rest when into a different, less pretty container for consumption in the mean time.

And since everything else went so smoothly, gremlins intervened as I was pouring pudding into serving containers, and this was the result. It’s very Jackson Pollack, if I do say so myself.

The Virtue of Trick Questions

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Anaea Lay

My maternal grandparents are sales people. Literally. The story of how they met and got together is an epic about travelling magazine salesmen, complete with loved-and-lost-and-found-again elements, nefarious sales managers, and buying a top of the line car with coupons they’d been trading for while on the road. As I get older, I get more and more details, and it becomes more and more obvious how very much I’m cut from the same mold. I’m sales-people, too. I’ve already got enough hind-sight to look back and things and go, “Yeah, that there should have been a clue. This is just how my brain works.”

I’m also very much a writer, but that’s not something I had to figure out. It just was. I have never at any point seriously contemplated making my living off writing – I enjoy it far too much to turn it into work – but the fact that my brain is wired like a writer’s has always been something I’ve known.

What’s fascinating is looking at how the two things feed and reinforce each other. I go about being a particular kind of sales person because it’s what appeals to my sense of narrative, to my expectations about how the series of anecdotes that collect together to form the story of my life ought to go. And I approach writing in a certain way because it’s how my brain assesses the world. I’m sensitive to a certain kind of problem, and prone to a particular tack for solutions. Which details are salient to me, which questions are important, how the consequences of a thing play out, my instincts for them are all completely warped by my sales brain.

Here’s an example: I spent a lot of time in high school figuring out where I was going to go to college. A whole lot of time. I got serious about the search in sophomore year, and did a tour of nearly a dozen colleges the summer after. (This was also, conveniently, a tour of hitting all my relatives flung across the coastal Southern states.) This was great, because it meant that when I figured out that my initial assumptions about what a college I wanted to go to looked like were HORRIBLY WRONG, I had plenty of time to start over and try again. But it also meant I got really, really good at the college interview process.

Before the Great Southern College Tour, I read up on what one should do when touring colleges and having admissions interviews. One bit of advice was always that you should have questions specific to the school to ask. For most of the schools I didn’t really have any specific questions – they were sorta all the same on paper and I lacked all kinds of information for establishing a baseline that I’d need to think of questions. So instead I came up with one question I’d ask every school. And then, in my College Spreadsheet of Doom, which I’d developed with a detailed scoring rubric (I was considering about 130 schools at one point), I had a column for recording how colleges did on that question. It was pass or fail, and worth more points than any single other criteria other than the “Fuzzy gut instinct” column. One college passed (University of Chicago). One got partial credit (Queens in NC). The rest were dismal failures.

This was the question: What do you think of Charles Dickens?

This was a malicious trick question. ”I like him,” is the wrong answer. ”I don’t like him,” equally wrong. Responding to the question as if I care at all about Charles Dickens is the wrong answer. The right answer was to use that as an opportunity to talk about English Professor X, or required course Y, or Program Z, or, really, in any way tie the question into an opportunity to talk about something that person liked about the school. The wording of the question is about a verbose British hack with inconsistent quality that should have prepared us for the way Stephen Moffat likes to abuse us, but what it’s really asking is, “Tell me what’s awesome about you and why.”

You can’t, of course, just ask them that question. They think they’ve answered it already with their brochures and their prepared spiel. But that’s marketing. It’s bunk. I didn’t care about their marketing. I wanted them to sell me their school. I wanted to know, not just that they loved it, but that they loved it for reasons that would appeal to me, too. I needed to know that the school had enough sincere advocates on hand to train the ones who were good at it into being their recruiters. In short, I wanted a look at how the sausage of their sales department was made. It’s the question you ask the customer to get the answer you really need, instead of the one you ask to have them regurgitate what they think they want.

But it’s also a question that delves into the narrative of the school. Every school has story it tells about itself, and identify for what it thinks it is or aspires to be. The marketing brochure is the “As you know, Bob,” exposition. The malicious trick question is the natural point you look for to demonstrate your world-building and character development. Give your customers the opportunity to accidentally tell you what you need to know. Give your characters the opportunity to show the reader who they are and how the world they live in works.

Whichever brain you’re using, sales or writing, always look for opportunities to ask trick questions. And really listen to your answers, and what the answers tell you.

Strange Horizons Podcast: Hear the Enemy, My Daughter

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Anaea Lay

How do you make a podcasting linguistics nerd happy? You give her a story with an alien language full of glottal stops, and then have your main character ask the right questions, and not the silly ones people doing stories about language tend to. How do you make it more awesome if the nerd in question is Anaea? You also explore how fundamentally creepy children are.

Conveniently enough, this week’s podcast does just these things. You should check it out.

Anaea Lay

Dead cities, snark, and parrots