We had a health clinic at work today. I walked in for less than 3 minutes, because I loath huge crowds and people trying to get my attention for some product I don't intend to buy. I was less than 10 feet inside the tent when I was hit by three people within three minutes trying to get me to sign up for stuff. I couldn't take it and got out.

Considering that last year I forced myself to go inside, thus getting tested and finding out I needed to see a doctor right away, which led me to finally getting to a doctor weeks later and being pushed into the hospital because of the myriad of sicknesses I had, I realized I mush have been very sick to endure the canned sardine process.

OK, I know. How can I not endure a tent packed full of people when every year I can wade through Comicon with gusto, which has more than 100,000 people? Well, I remember Comicon when it was small, and as it’s grown I've adjusted. I know the shortcuts, the way to slice through a crowd and, thankfully, I'm not getting stuff shoved in my face every five feet. Last year, with all the weight of the sickness on me, I did use headphones to endure most of it. As much as I would have loved to get tested at the health fair, it’s not something I see going through again.

UPDATE: So much for famous last words! A few hours ago I got out of a meeting where we talked about the health fair. It seems there is an added incentive to make sure people go. Right now, if you are a smoker with our company, you have an extra $20 taken out to cover your bad habit. We were told that employees that take a biometric test at the fair and aren’t smokers will continue not having the $20 taken out, however those that elect not to take the biometric tests will have to pay $20 just like the smokers.

I love it how companies will try to force you to do something that’s ‘good for you’ by making you do it with a monetary penalty. Stop smoking or you have to pay an extra $20. Take the test or you will have to pay an extra $20.

At the meeting there were some that made what I considered mock protesting about the money they had to pay. I think they protested more to hear their own voice, but in the end they will go and get the tests done. I’m not sure how I feel about being MADE to go and take the tests. As an example, if I were under those conditions last year, on the one hand, like what happened, I would have discovered how sick I was. On the other, by getting the tests would my sickness be considered occurring before I had insurance, thus my hospital stay wouldn’t be covered? Would I have to pay higher money because of my pre-existing condition, even though it was months later it was determined to be a reaction to other health issues once cleared up, have my levels back to normal?

I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but the fair will be at my work location on Thursday so I may have to go back to participate.

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So I have a little over half an hour before I have to start work. I think a lot of stress I've had over the past few weeks has been due to not relaxing. When I had to talk the bus, once I was on it all I could do was sit there, listen to the Zune and just relax. I haven't been able to do that since I got a car. Just today I got boxed in on the highway and ended up going the wrong direction, then in doubling back I had to veer into traffic that didn't want to let me in. When I got to work, because of the health fair, there were fewer parking spots so there was the search for that. By the time I got into work I just wanted to be anywhere but here, especially when I saw the amount of calls coming in. Since I got here the call volume has increased a lot, so no rest there.

The silver lining to all of this has been the revamp of Chaotic Fringe. I thought by the end of June it would be ready for the face lift but now it might be another week. All the major work is done, most of the minor stuff has been fixed or, in the case of the archives, placed in a position where it can be done later, and the only tough spot is IMVN. That is going slowly but considering I have to go through over 20 video tapes, convert them to digital, edit and convert to a web friendly format, it's going to take time. Those I'm just going to add as I get them, but yes it looks like the new streamlined site will be up and running.

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It’s close to 10pm and the call volume has gone down a lot. Just 30 more minutes then home for a few days. I have to say, with a few exceptions, the past few weeks at work have been pretty good. There hasn’t been a lot of screaming customers calling up, though we still have our share of challenged customers. Those are people who want to build a website and are proud about the fact they know nothing about how to do it nor have they done any planning on how to do it. It’s like me calling a mechanic and having him talk me through changing the oil on a car. I know a little bit of stuff, but I’m smart enough to know I can’t change the oil and I should hire someone to do it.

The folks we get calling in think they can do a job and they can’t. Oh well, that’s just part of the job.