And one more thing. On Last Comic Standing tonight, Ralphie May came out to do his act & he announced that his father had passed away yesterday. At first I thought, that's a sick thing to joke about), but then I could see he was crying. He said in honor of him, he was going to tell 2 of his father's favorite jokes. He tried so hard to hold it together, but started crying. At the end, he got a standing ovation.
It took such courage and strength to perform in front of millions of people when all you want to do at a time like that is be with your family. "The show must go on", he said and I applaud him for that. Ralphie May just got kicked up a few notches in my "he's so cool" book. God love him. Send some condolences to he & his family --- ralphie at ralphiemay.com
P.S. - Gina, thanks for the card. I really needed that insert. :) I'll write back soon.
Maybe it's just me, and I hope there isn't a hit put on me because of my opinion because I thought John Gotti was THE MAN (well, except for the killing people part), but WTF is up with Victoria Gotti's sons? I've watched the show Growing Up Gotti 2 times and I must say that they are spoiled little freaking brats! If I were her, I'd beat their asses. And what the HELL is up with their hair? I couldn't find any good pictures of them on the net (surprising since you'd think teenage girls would be swooning over them) so you'll have to settle with this:
But this doesn't really show the hair crisis that's going on. The one on the left (I can't put names to faces, but their names are traditional Italian: Frank, Carmine & John)looks like he's had too much plastic surgery already. Something just seems off about him. Maybe it's the eyebrows. The one in the middle is a little beefy, but seems normal, not too much hair gel & the one on the right? He would be hot if he'd leave his hair alone. The 2 on the outside use so much hair gel that it's disgusting. Lighting a match within 5 feet of either of them would set their heads ablaze.
I stayed home sick today. :( I'm getting my twice a year cold, I think, and I have felt crappy all day. In between napping and laying around, I'm taking a minute to post this. I found it on earthlinksucks.net and found it very interesting. Good luck with this, India. You're not fooling anyone.
A Crash Course on Irate Calls
By David Streitfeld, Times Staff Writer
BOMBAY, India — In a sleek new office building, two dozen young Indians are studying the customs of a place none of them has ever seen. One by one, the students present their conclusions about this fabled land.
"Americans eat a lot of junk food. Table manners are very casual," says Ritu Khanna.
"People are quite self-centered. The average American has 13 credit cards," says Nerissa Dcosta.
"Seventy-six percent of the people mistrust the government. In the near future, this figure is expected to go up to 100%," says Sunny Trama.
The Indians, who range in age from 20 to 27, have been hired to take calls from cranky or distraught Americans whose computers have gone haywire. To do this, they need to communicate in a language that is familiar but a culture that is foreign.
"We're not saying India is better or America is better," says their trainer, Alefiya Rangwala. "We just want to be culturally sensitive so there's no disconnect when someone phones for tech support."
Call centers took root here during the 2001 recession, when U.S. companies were struggling to control expenses. By firing American customer service workers and hiring Indians, the firms slashed their labor costs by 75%.
At first, training was simple. The centers gave employees names that were acceptable to American ears, with Arjun becoming Aaron and Sangita becoming Susan. The new hires were instructed to watch "Friends" and "Ally McBeal" to get an idea of American folkways.
But whether Aaron and Susan were repairing computers, selling long-distance service or fulfilling orders for diet tapes, problems immediately cropped up. The American callers often wanted a better deal or an impossibly swift resolution, and were aggressive and sometimes abrasive about saying so.
The Indians responded according to their own deepest natures: They were silent when they didn't understand, and they often committed to more than their employers could deliver. They would tell the Americans that someone would get back to them tomorrow to check on their problems, and no one would.
Customer satisfaction plummeted. The U.S. clients grew alarmed. Some even returned their business to U.S. call centers.
Realizing that a new multibillion-dollar industry with 150,000 employees was at risk, Indian call centers have recently embarked on much more comprehensive training. New hires are taught how to express empathy, strategies to successfully open and close conversations, and above all how to be assertive, however unnatural it might feel.
"We like to please," says Aparajita Ajit, whose title is "head of talent transformation" for the call-center firm Mphasis. "It's very difficult for us to say no."
Khanna, Dcosta, Trama and their new colleagues work for Sutherland Global Services, a New York firm that is one of the larger outsourcing companies here. They've been put through a three-week training session where they research hot-button issues, pretend they are American anchors reporting the latest news, and imitate celebrities. ("I am Michael Jackson," began Smitha Shetty's presentation. "I am innocent in this child molestation case…. ")
"What they know about Americans is just the tip of the iceberg," says the teacher, Rangwala. "Violence and sex, this is not what America is about. Or it's not the only thing America is about."
To underline this point, she shows movies in class. Today it's "Catch Me If You Can," the Steven Spielberg film about a real-life con man, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. She stops the film every 30 seconds to pepper the students with questions.
DiCaprio's mother has run off, leaving him and his father to prepare their own meals. "What is he making?" asks Rangwala. "Pancakes!" shout the students.
"What is today?"
"His 16th birthday!"
"What does his father give him?"
"A checkbook!"
"What's happening?"
"A divorce!"
A checking account in America is like a savings account in India, where the American version of a savings account is known as a fixed deposit. Divorce may be common in America but, as the movie shows, it's still painful. And pancakes are eaten at any hour of the day.
These small bits of information may come in handy. Just as DiCaprio's character figures out how to impersonate a doctor and an airline pilot, these students are learning to fake being American.
The goal of computer help desks like Sutherland's is to have the caller do as much of the work as possible himself, and to keep him on the phone the shortest amount of time possible — without failing to help him.
If the Indian rep has no idea what the American customer means when he asks, "What's a ballpark figure for getting my system upgraded?" a 15-minute call might stretch to half an hour. Long calls can choke the system, given that one of Sutherland's clients, a major U.S. computer manufacturer, gets 250,000 service calls a month.
This is the students' last day of cultural and voice training. Rangwala warns them that at least half a dozen are still speaking incomprehensibly and might wash out.
As they slip away one by one to make a short recording that will test their pronunciation skills, K.S. Kumar, Sutherland's director of operations for India, gives a little graduation speech.
"You're shortchanging yourself if you don't stick with this," he advises.
It would certainly help Kumar if they remained with Sutherland. While there are many applicants for call-center jobs, those who actually get hired tend not to stick around. Sutherland's annual attrition rate is 40%. Some of its competitors turn over personnel completely during the course of a year.
In part, it's the hours. Tomorrow night, as the students begin classes in how to debug a computer, they'll get their first taste of the night shift. By the time they move across the hall to the call center itself, they'll be starting as late as 2 a.m. — early afternoon in Los Angeles.
But miserable hours aren't the only reason for quitting. Talk to former employees of centers in Bombay and Bangalore and it's clear that the industry has had a lot of growing problems. Many Indians didn't adapt well to the high-tech, high-stress jobs.
"I worked in a modern-day sweatshop," says Amith Shetty, 26. "There was air-conditioning, comfortable seats, good food, but the work was tough and the targets unrealistic. To cope, I started smoking more and drinking more."
Shetty (no relation to Sutherland trainee Smitha Shetty) began working in a call center for the same reason as many young people: He was at loose ends for a few months, waiting to go back to school to get another degree.
The call center was employed by a U.S. client that sold thousands of products through infomercials — the Perfect Pancake, Ronco Rotisseries, Q-Ray Ionized Bracelets. The service reps never saw the products, but they knew when one was on TV.
"There would be 200 reps logged in, and 150 of them would be selling a Perfect Pancake," Shetty says. "I never really understood what the Perfect Pancake was."
Customers' tones differed by product. Men who called to order "Girls Gone Wild" — a series of tapes devoted to young women who doff their shirts for the camera — would make grunting noises.
Indians who did outbound telemarketing tended to have a particularly difficult time. "We were told the Americans were going to be angry," says Aarti Angelo, 24, who sold long-distance plans for AT&T. "Some would take you to the end and then hang up. Sometimes, you would break down."
That's when things could get really ugly. "There are some reps who would yell back," remembers Dexter Fernandes, Angelo's friend and former colleague. "Or they would say, 'I'm from the FBI; you have to take this plan.' "
Fernandes was allowed to keep his real name, because it sounded American. Angelo became Lisa James. Both were instructed to identify themselves as students in Salt Lake City.
Other call centers tried to keep the whole thing vague. Shetty, who took his phone name, Andrew, from a favorite Erich Segal novel, told customers he wasn't allowed to specify his whereabouts.
Some figured it out anyway. "They became slower, patronizing," Shetty says. "They'd say, 'My name is John. That's J.O.H.N.' " After Sept. 11, 2001, many Americans calling to order tapes and bracelets assumed the Indians were Arabs, providing a new impetus for unpleasantness.
Not all the callers were coarse or abusive. But if you're answering 100 calls a day and five to 10 of them are obnoxious, it becomes wearying.
"Americans always feel like they're being cheated. They want more for less. And they're not very patient," says Shetty, who now works in a bank.
The starting pay in call centers is about $350 a month, roughly equivalent in spending power to 10 times that in the U.S. But that relative fortune often creates its own problems.
"Call centers have put money into hands that were too young to handle it," says Angelo, who is studying to become a social worker. "It's caused a lot of degradation of values. People spent the money as fast as it came in, in pubs or on grass."
Angelo was earning more than her mother, who had been a teacher for 27 years. When that happens, she says, "the parents lose control. I don't think the centers should hire anyone who hasn't finished their studies."
One reason why so many employees like Angelo, Fernandes and Shetty have been quitting is that there's nowhere to move up.
To get a more stable workforce, the call centers know they have to expand their range.
"Don't expect us to just sit here and take people's lousy work and leave the creative work to the U.S.," says Mphasis Vice Chairman Jeroen Tas. "We have a lot of well-educated, smart, ambitious, eager people here, and they all want to move up."
The creative work that Tas wants is now being done in the U.S. by 350,000 people at independent call centers and another 2.5 million employed by in-house operations.
These folks resolve complaints and sell things. Sometimes they do both at once, recommending an improved (and more expensive) financial or telephone service than the one the customer is upset about. It's called up-selling or cross-selling, and it is one of the holy grails of marketing.
Mphasis, based in Bangalore, has started doing collection work, a job that is considered highly creative.
Originally, the ever-agreeable Indian agents had a hard time getting people to pay bills that were six months overdue. Too often, says trainer Deepa Nagraj, the calls would go like this:
"Hi," the Indian would say. "I'd like to set up a payment to get your account current. Can I help you do that?"
"No," the American responds.
"OK, let me know if you change your mind," the Indian says and hangs up.
Now, says Nagraj, the agents take no excuses.
Like Sutherland, Mphasis is basing a lot of its hopes on training. Indraniel Ghosh, an Mphasis trainer, gives refresher courses to reps who handle customer-service accounts for a big credit card company.
One rep says he recently was helping a customer change his card data because his wife left him. When the rep expressed sympathy, the man cut him short, saying he hadn't really liked his wife.
"In case you empathize and then you see they don't want your empathy, move on," Ghosh advises. "This is someone from another culture. That increases the complexity tenfold."
Parts 2 & 3 of the Princess Diaries (thanks Tony) are completed. This completes the series. Remember to read bottom to top, please. :)
Links are to the left.
Hey - 2 great comedians are going to be on Comedy Central Presents in September. If you have a DVR - set it right now!
9/4/04 3:00am (ET) Mitch Hedberg
9/10/04 11:00pm (ET) John Heffron
I was messing around in Haloscan tonight & found some comments I hadn't seen posted before. I believe I've gotten my first commenting troll and while I should ignore "her", I'm in the mood for an argument, so without further ado, I present "Suzanne" and her ignorant beliefs about Outsourcing (yes, I said ignorant, it is, after all, my webpage):
"American brothers who lost their jobs due to outsourcing should not crib about losing your jobs to India. You may have to start working on your skills.
India does not have to depend on America.India is in its own way of becoming the next Superpower.India is a self sufficient country. Infact it is America which is gaining from outsourcing. If you refuse to change then you may well be on your way to disaster. suzanne | Email | 07.21.04 - 1:47 pm | #"
"Suzanne", I see by your IP Address that you're actually from India. While pretty much saying you're better than us, your lack of the English language plain as day in your post helps me prove my point.
1. Why should we not "crib" (I believe you meant CRY) about losing our jobs due to outsourcing? Many of us in call centers like what we are doing and are doing a good job. Yet we're being kicked to the curb so a corporation can save money and provide a lower class of service to it's customers. That's not right.
2. No one ever said India had to depend on America. Interesting that you should bring that up out of the blue.
3. This outsourcing fight is certainly not about our skills vs. Indian skills. It's about money and that's it. You can bet your ass that American companies aren't outsourcing to India because you're *BETTER* than we are. They're doing it to save a buck, or in this case, multi-bucks. Perhaps if the techs in India would learn to solve problems outside of what their training manuals tell them we would have an argument about skills, but for now? No way.
4. America is gaining by outsourcing? Gaining what? Unsatisfied customers? Customer Service & Tech Support people who can't fix a problem, yet have the GALL to try to fool us into thinking that they are American because they use fake American names? If you think anyone is fooled by that, you're stupid. Just because you call yourself John doesn't mean that we don't know who you really are. Your lack of being able to deviate from the manual is what tells us.
5. Good luck with that whole superpower thing. India's politics are based on the theories of divide & rule, casteism, and religious bias. Not to mention the heat, the pollution of inflated cities with the largest number of most hazardous vehicles fuming poisonous gases, bad customer service, cheap, shoddy defective products-producing businesses without any control and unlicensed drivers killing anyone in their range.
Luckily for us all though, the tide may be turning: India's outsourcing industry is showing signs of becoming overheated and less competitive in important respects for American companies looking for the advantage of lower costs. Capital One recently decided not to renew it's call-center contract with Indian Outsourcer Wipro. Lehman Brothers and Dell have also withdrawn operations from India.
I've worked with outsourcers from India, the Philippines and the US and I must say that I'd put the Indians in dead last. The Filipinos can handle a call better than you can.
So, "Suzanne", thanks for the fun evening. Have fun reading your manual to fix the problem of the customer you have on the phone. Maybe when you run out of scripted answers you'll find someone with ingenuity to help you.
("her" comments were posted on 7/21/04 regarding my post from July 3.)
So I know it's 12:30 in the morning, but I'm not ready to go to sleep yet, so I've started putting old diary entries online. I'm putting them in a separate blog so those not interested don't have to be subjected to them. If you're interested, the link is to the left. I'm not promising they're interesting, some entries are downright boring, but if you're bored, it's something different at least. :)
Happy 25th Anniversary to the McDonald's Happy Meal!
P.S. - I updated my Atkins blog. Check it out if you care - link's on the left.
Today my life finally took a turn for the better! Tom got offered a job at Wells Fargo's phone bank and of course he accepted. :) He starts August 30 which happens to coincide with the day his unemployment runs out. Once again God has taken care of me (thank you, Jesus). :)
To celebrate we went to Wal-Mart and bought me a new CD player for the car (yes, I'm so 1980s that neither of our vehicles has a built in one). It makes Live sound even more fabulous & it has a cute little remote control too.
Will, I sprinkled comments throughout your site tonight (including an explanation and apology on the post about me), so be sure to search for them. :)
My mom is coming down in October. I'm not sure if I mentioned that or not, but I'm so excited. I haven't seen her since January.
Doesn't appear the whole read-my-diary-from-eons-ago poll is going too well. Only 2 of you have voted! I don't blame you really, it's mostly stupid little girl stuff.
I saw the game Evan keeps raving about and I almost bought it tonight until Tom told me that you have to "level up" like in Dark Age of Camelot. Leveling up bores me. In addition, I'm saving my hard drive space for Sims 2 which comes out 5 days after my birthday.
Anyway, nothing else exciting. Tom getting a job topped anything else that could have been considered exciting to me!
I'm the first to admit I don't know a gosh darned thing about Politics, but of course that doesn't stop me from spouting off my opinion. :)
Tonight at Denny's we had the luck to be seated next to four of the most obnoxious people I've ever had to sit next to in my life. They were democrats (this isn't bad in & of itself, everyone's entitled to their opinion), but they were LOUD and didn't hesitate to throw around F-this and M-F that. One went so far as to say that his wife gave someone else a b-j and swallowed (Hello? I'm trying to freaking eat here). In addition, we were treated to a 40 minute debate on the evils of George W. Bush. I swear they had just come from seeing Farenheit 911. So, the following is my rant for the 4 rude ass people we had to suffer through tonight:
1. "Iraq wasn't doing anything to us, we should have just left them alone." #1 - Iraq was thumbing it's nose at us for 12 YEARS by ignoring the terms that they agreed to at the end of the first Gulf War. #2 - No WMD's? Then what about the Iraqis who have told us that Saddam had a system of dispatching his trusted Iraqi Intelligence Service to the Syrian border where they would send border inspectors away? That was followed by the movement of trucks in & out of Syria suspected of carrying materials banned by U.N. sanctions. Once the shipments were made, the agents would leave and the regular border guards would resume their posts. (Read it
here)
You also stated that Colin Powell had no idea about the war in Iraq until it was decided (which I find hard to believe in & of itself). The reason for this, you said, was because "someone who knew what was going on would have tried to convince Bush that this was a bad idea". If that was the case, why did TOMMY FRANKS himself say that "Given the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, this (the invasion) was a sensible request."? Mr. Franks *also* stated that the leaders of Egypt and Jordan told him that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons. Why is it so hard to believe that Iraq had them & that they were clever enough to hide them from us? We got sucker-punched by Al-Queda, why can't we be deceived by Saddam?
2. "Why are we invading countries that haven't done anything to us?" Let's see. Perhaps it's to try to stop another terrorist attack BEFORE it happens? Would you prefer, instead, that we sit back and hang out here at home until another 9/11 happens, and *THEN* go after terrorists? Oh, but wait. Even then we couldn't go after the countries that harbor these terrorists because these countries technically "Haven't done anything to us" (other than allow terrorists to plot their evil)- countries like Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia (I don't even want to go into what problems that freaking country has), countries that *support* what they are doing. Should we just sit back waiting for them to plan their attacks? No. We should take the offense for once and disrupt these attacks, with whatever means we have at our disposal.
3. "Bush didn't do anything to prevent 9/11" First of all, he was only in office for 9 months prior to the attacks. Not sure how much he could have done since NO ONE expected what happened to happen. As Heather MacDonald says "For two years now, left- and right-wing advocates have shot down nearly every proposal to use intelligence more effectively—to connect the dots—as an assault on “privacy.” Though their facts are often wrong and their arguments specious, they have come to dominate the national security debate virtually without challenge. The consequence has been devastating: just when the country should be unleashing its technological ingenuity to defend against future attacks, scientists stand irresolute, cowed into inaction." I'm all for civil liberties, but you know what? If someone wants to search my purse, go ahead. If you want to force me to show you my ID when I walk in a mall, go ahead. Metal detectors? Bring them on. I have nothing to hide & I'll feel a little safer because of the measures being taken to protect us. Besides, what did Clinton do to protect us from 9/11?
Oh lord, I am tired. Just tired. Those asses had the gall to compare Bush to Hitler. HITLER! *sigh*
One last political related thing before I go. John Kerry can't even decide what he's for and against! Take a look:
Welfare Reform: 1988 - voted against a proposal to require at least one parent in any two-parent welfare family to work a mere 16 hours a week, declaring the work requirement "troublesome to me." 1996 - Voted for the stricter welfare reform law that Clinton signed into law.
Mandatory Minimums: 1993 & 1994 - Voted against mandatory minimum sentences for gang activity, gun crimes, drug trafficking, and drug sales to minors, explaining that long sentences for drug dealers who sell to minors would be "enormous injustices" and that some convicted drug offenders were "so barely culpable it's sad". He also said congressionally imposed mandatory minimums made no sense. Today - strongly supports mandatory minimum sentences for federal crimes, including the sale of drugs to minors.
Affirmative Action: 1992 - argued that affirmative action has "kept America thinking in radical terms" and helped promote a "culture of dependency". Today - His website vows to "Preserve Affirmative Action," noting that he "consistently opposed efforts in the Senate to undermine or eliminate affirmative action programs, and supports programs that seeks to enhance diversity."
Death Penalty: 1996 - during one of his debates, ridiculed the idea of capital punishment for terrorists as a "terrorist protection policy," predicting that it would just discourage other nations from extraditing captured terrorists to the U.S. Today - still opposes capital punishment, but now makes an exception for terrorists.
Health Care: 1994 - said Democrats push health care too much. Today - calls health care his "passion".
Tough on Castro: "I'm pretty tough on Castro, because I think he's running one of the last vestiges of a Stalinist secret police government in the world, and I voted for the Helms-Burton legislation to be tough on companies that deal with him." TRUTH: Kerry voted *against* Helms-Burton along with 21 other senators.
See for yourself.
The Patriot Act: Kerry voted for the Patriot Act. Today - Denounces the act and states the American people must stand up to protect the Constitution.
And this is the man we want in office? At least Dubya's lies are consistent!
Another spelling atrocity located, this time in a headline:
Naked News Gows to Parliament
*sigh*. At first I thought there was someone on NN named Gows, but after reading the article, it seems that there's not and they actually meant to say "NN *GOES* to Parliament"
Howdy ya'll (especially Bunny for checking up on me). I just got back from a week in Tucson. I went out there with Patty for work to check out a vendor. Can I just tell you that aside from the mountains, Tucson is yucky? I know it's a desert, but Yuck. It was all brown and yuck. And all that crap about a dry heat? Uh yeah. When it's 104, it's still hot as all get out! I did love looking at the mountains (Tucson is surrounded by them) and the palm trees, but I am definitely glad to be back home.
I made sure to watch Last Comic Standing while I was there since it was finale week. I'm happy to say that John Heffron won. He was hilarious every single time I saw him. It doesn't hurt that he's a cutie patootie, but I promise that's not why I voted for him. Wow. I just discovered he has a CD out. Anyway, you should check him out. Here's his site -
John Heffron Industries
Let's see. What else is going on? Oh yeah. Congratulations to Ed & his wife on the birth of their 2nd daughter on August 5th. Not that he reads this site or anything, but I just thought I'd mention it :)
Not much else is going on I'm going to spend a relaxing weekend at home doing laundry & swimming before it's back to work on Monday. :)
Oh yeah - I forgot. We finally got to go swimming this year. :) We hired some guy to get the pool clear, now we're maintaining it ourselves. It's great to come home from work and go swimming. I'm working 12-9 now, so today will be the first day I get to swim in the daylight. :)
Also, I heard on the news that there's been outbreaks of gang violence in Ft. Worth this week. Gangs don't surprise me - it is a city after all, but the news said there are over 400 (!) gangs in Ft. Worth alone. I wasn't expecting that statistic, it seems so high, makes me almost not want to leave the house.
August 5, 2004 (ORLANDO, Fla.) — Lina Morales has a beef over pork. Morales claims she was fired for eating pork products in the lunchroom of Rising Star Telecommunications, a Florida-based firm.
Company officials say they have a policy against pork because of their many Muslim workers and clients. But Morales' lawyer says there's no written policy concerning dietary restrictions.
The company says Morales was repeatedly warned about the no-pork rule and was fired for insubordination after eating a BLT at work.
I just think that is totally ridiculous! You ban pork in the workplace because of the muslim clients and workers you have? What about the non-muslim workers & clients? Anyway....I'm going to Tucson for a week. I leave on Monday. Patty & I are going to meet with a vendor. I can't wait - I love free trips, especially if they're in the Continental US. :) Our trip to the Philippines got shelved - thankfully. I'm not sure I'm ready for all that yet. Anyway, I'll have minimal access to a computer while I'm in AZ, so no updates until I return.
BTW, Watch Last Comic Standing on Tuesday night (8pm et)and vote for either Gary Gulman or John Heffron as the Last Comic Standing - they're my 2 favorite and I'd be happy if either of them wins.
One thing I meant to update with this weekend that I forgot.
Remember I had tickets to the Madonna show in Philly on 7/4? Well, I had to sell them due to lack of funds to travel up there. My mom sold them to someone at work. She told me Friday night that when the lady & her husband got there the people at the gate told her there was a problem with the tickets. They were duplicate tickets and weren't valid. I immediately jumped in & told my mom that those were the only tickets sent to me. She said that Ticketmaster made the error - printing up 2 sets of tickets for some seats, so they moved the purchaser of my tickets to the 10th row ON THE FLOOR! I could have died when I heard that! Whoever she is, she sure was lucky.
The Lori Hacking case has taken an interesting turn. Below is an article I found. I will put what I think is the interesting part in bold:
SALT LAKE CITY -- Authorities in Salt Lake City said they would comment on Sunday on what is said to be new information in the Lori Hacking case.
Hacking is the young woman who disappeared three weeks ago allegedly while jogging in a park.
The families of Hacking and her husband, Mark, faxed statements to news agencies late Saturday saying that Hacking has provided information that makes a volunteer search for his missing wife unnecessary.
The statement did not say what Hacking revealed and, as of late Saturday night, police said there was nothing new in the search for the woman.
Family members reportedly took the information to police.
Mark Hacking has become the sole focus of the investigation.
Soon after he reported his wife missing, the lies he had been telling family and friends about his life began to surface. It turns out he was not a medical student and never finished college. Police said his timeline also crumbled.
Not long after her death, he was hospitalized for psychiatric evaluation after he was found running naked in the street.
(While I guess it's safe to assume that after 3 weeks, she's dead, I don't believe the media has ever publicly stated this. I'll bet the families called it off because he told them he killed her. We'll see.)
His father said doctors are trying to "sort out what is going on in his mind."
Salt Lake City television stations are now showing a tape of Mark Hacking joking with friends and lying about his education. He said, for example, that he earned a degree in psychology.
When Hacking was supposedly studying for medical exams -- the story he told his family -- he was often hanging out at a neighborhood store.
Friday we were very short handed at work. I ended up jumping on the phones for 4 hours. I was nervous at first - I'd never really taken a collections call. But after about 30 minutes I started to enjoy it. I ended up taking 62 calls. I don't know how much money I collected, but I hope it was a lot :)
Saturday we saw I, Robot. It was *very* good. I would highly recommend it. On the way home from the movies, I asked Tom if I ever let Molly in. *sigh*. For the first time ever I forgot my dog. She was outside for about 3 hours. It was 96 yesterday. Luckily it didn't kill her. I was so upset when we got home that I cried. I'm just glad she's alright.
