so i officially tore the piss out of my back. i pulled it again today lifting a case of chocolate covered raisins. i went to urgent care because i thought it was just something i did... but the doc said it was workers comp... a case of overused muscles or something. so then i had to go to my works doctor... that took all gotdamned day. i took a vicodin, 800mg of ibuprofen got a shot in my ass and went to physical therapy.

naturally my work doctor cleared me to work... so i'll be back in the saddle tomorrow. it hurts when i think. but i was jacked up on enough drugs today that it was ok for the bulk of the day.

***

i played A LOT of Williams Pinball Hall of Fame for the Wii. A lot. i love that game. i can't quit you WPHOF!

Waking up to 'Cemetery Gates' is a good thing.

***

I have like 10 safety speeches to give, and only 4 hours to do them... besides my regular workday. I don't think this is going to happen.

Everyone at work has been sick and/or hungover, so we've been on one hellva skeleton crew.

Poll #1168077
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

TuTu

***

Looks like we're probably not going to California next week. Didn't get the time off. I'm going to appeal it, so maybe we'll still get it. Still, what kind of asshole makes you wait until the 11th hour for an answer on this kind of thing?

Poll #1155113
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Music Week

winners this week will advance to the next round (if i get around to it).

***

Today at work was sweet. Everyone only works six hours (well, i guess some people work longer, but most full timers only work six) but since it's Sunday we all get time-and-a-half, so i worked six, but get paid for nine! Also, I had three shipments of product to deal with, but it wasnt bad. We got a new batch of discount Wii games in! Actually some ok titles too. Someone who hasn't been very kind to anyone for the past several months, and who just came off of a suspension, had a no-show no-call.

so yeah... i slept like crap last night, but today just felt like a holiday or something. everyone was quiet, and i guess i'm officially in charge of the radio at work, because everyone asks me about it, so i put it on Ethel today... my favorite station at work that isn't blocked. i'm getting a bit sick of it, but hearing the occasional spoon or interpol track perks me up.

going to be another busy day today...

So on the 360, there is an xbox 'news' tab. It's the very first option on the very first screen you see every single time you boot up your system.

Now... in this news section there are anywhere from 8-20 articles (ie. ads) about new content on the xbox. every day or two they add a page or two of news. at the bottom of each article is a link to the product they are hawking, or a link to the view they are talking about.

they had an ad for the new Lewis Black TV show as one of their new pages. instead of offering a link, the offer the instructions 'go to shorts, got to recent, then download'... gee... thanks. then in the marketplace, they have a major tab for shorts... they dont mean that tab. they mean to go under television, then under shorts. but that doesnt matter because...

THE VIDEO IS NOT POSTED!

i looked all over, even alphabetically.

way to go. nice. right on. ok. thanks. great. yes.

in general, i have no complaints about the 360, so maybe i'm just bitching for no reason. its just that they went so far out of their way to promote something thats not there... much like EVERY WEEK IN THE CIRCUIT CITY ADS. see a great deal in the latest CC ad? well you best forget about it because they never even carried the gotdamned thing and will call you an asshole for even asking about it.

***

CD

Michael Showalter - Sandwiches and Cats

***

i found an even worse job than lugging around shopping carts as a lot attendant... and that job is... Gas Station Attendant! B to O to the RING.


***

Fotini went to see 'Juno', so Call of Duty 4 it is! i'm tired as hell tonight though...

I found a new job that I hate the most at work. well, i guess i dont hate it the most, but its no fun, that for sure.

Today i labeled 1,192 packages of cheese. They all went to half price, and they are priced by weight, so they all had to be weighed and relabeled. I didnt have much to do, so i went over to help out the deli. that was my first mistake.

at around 570 packages, i realized that the guy i was helping had not changed the date on the label machine, so it looked like they were all EXPIRING today...

after i changed the date on the last 50 packages, i got to go back and re label 570 packages of cheese.

it didnt take long for me to figure out that i could weigh a package while i was labeling another. i could just see some one standing there putting a package on the scale. waiting for it to get weighed and print a label. attaching the label. grabbing the next package. it would have taken FOREVER. as is.. it took about 40 minutes each time. so an hour and a half probably... standing in the meat cutting room... listening to classic rock. it smells like meat and sanitizer in there... which isnt a bad thing. it smelled clean and tasty.

the meatcutters have always been like the... jocks of the jobplace. they make crude jokes. do everything quickly, but sloppily. they're manly guys and act as such.

either way... i could never sit at a punch press all day every day doing that kind of work. i saw a video of a netflix factory a few weeks ago... this one lady does something like 3000 movies an hour (i think... i cant find the video now), and its just the same movement... all day long... over and over... they get exercise breaks every hour or so.

gotdamn... i'm so unfocused and all over the map today.


***

also... a 3 year old explains Star Wars...



Don't talk back to Darth Vader. He'll getcha.

***

and also again... a rant about thost gotdamned unskippable warnings at the front of every dvd... yeah, the guy is right about a lot of things, but he leaves a lot out too.

NReallySFW( Read more... )

The new podcast is official. It's got its own feed and everything. Should be up on iTunes for subscription anytime soooooo.... yeah. I'll post the iTunes link when it comes up, as I designed it for iPods, with pictures and chapter breaks. I forgot to throw in some page links, but eff it... 4 of the 5 bands I played have broken up, so their sites probably suck anyway.

It's pretty rough, I'd say. I still hate my voice. But I really relaxed and let myself ramble. I want it to have all the stuff I like about podcasts, which is a lot of natural background information. The hosts just riffing about whatever. I love that, so I let myself do it without overanalyzing myself or trying to stay too focused. So expect lots of random facts about the bands, and a lot of me going 'uhhhhh... ummmm...'.

Also, I repeated a lot of stuff... on purpose. I hate when I miss one word on a podcast, and I'm lost and have to rewind. So, you'll hear the title and artist before and after each song.

The theme this week is One Hit Wonders of the 1990's... It's not the hits though, its other songs on the hit album. I'm focusing on deep album tracks.

The first link is just a quicktime feed. Its got the pictures and everything, but its streaming so no chapter breaks. It'll just play in your browser.

And the next is imeem!



And the ugly website... Spoilarz!


***

Also, we were listening to 'The Blend' on XM at work today... The host Larry London was talking during a break, simply stating that Billy Joel's wife is releasing a cookbook soon... Then he said 'So leave that tender meat alone.'... He said it totally seriously and with a very dry tone.

He didn't say the name of the song. Or who it was.

I just started laughing. WTF? Leave your meat alone? I kept laughing as he played 'Leave A Tender Moment' by Bob Williams.

It was a kinda clever pun, but man.... what a thing to hear at 5am... I wish I had a recording of him saying that... he was just so stoic about it... like hearing your grandpa say it while having his heart broken.

Dear HP...

Sit and spin.

Love,

Don

***

I love that it took SEVEN tries before this document printed correctly... On a six month old printer.

This is the third 'letter of interest' I've submitted to SMart this week. Three jobs applied for, only one of which I'm qualified for, and that one has a lot of really good employees gunning for it... And my interview for it sucked.

Someday...

***

We watched the 'Dead Like Me' pilot... pretty good... interesting... but it left me with TONS of questions... of which I'm assuming will be answered throughout the life of the series. It has a lot more humor than I expected. And it's almost nice to see that hairball Rebecca Gayheart off the pipe and working. Well, she was back when it was on the air anyway.

Jasmine Guy is looking CHOICE.

WTF is up with the Rock Band version of 'El Scorcho'? It SOUNDS like the original, but one of the lines of lyrics is wrong, and the solo is HORRIBLE. I mean waaaaay off. It didn't say it was a cover version (indicated by an asterisk), so... is it a re-record or what?

It sucks either way.

***

CoD4 needs an online ranking and stats system a la Halo 3. a la Halo 2 at that.

Every game ever needs an online stats system for that matter. the CoD4 servers kick the Halo servers asses anyway, might as well toss in some stat track stuff. You can't even look at the match you just played to see what kills you got and who killed who and all that. That's my favorite part of Halo (outside of the Theater mode).

I leveled up a lot today... finished a couple challenges (by accident) that gave me a lot of points. I finally unlocked the M4, but it has no decent add-ons... so I'm in the boring/bad area of the game where I'm just trying to level up to get the red dot scope.

I'm actually kinda pissed... this guy kept killing my whole team. So I finally killed him, while he was killing more of my team (and he nearly killed me), and I ran over to his perch and took his gun and it's BADASS. I don't know what it is though!!! It's not quite a sniper rifle, the scope isn't as good, BUT the scope is still really really good and its got very little recoil and fires a quick three-round burst. It's wonderful. I went bonkers and filled a trench with corpses for a few minutes with that thing. Then a RANDOM GRENADE (thanks killcam) took me out. Oh well... I've got to find out what that gun is.

Also, it looks like the troglodytes from the Halo3 camp are finally invading the CoD4 lobbies. We did a game on 'Wet Works' which is just a very narrow map (you're on a ship... in the rain) and after the match this little kid was all excited:

Kid: GUYS! You should all just throw grenades on that level! (no duh) I got 8 kills in the first 3 minutes just from grenades! I killed their whole team at the same time at one point!

Some asshole: SHUT THE F%CK UP! NO ONE CARES!

Kid: but... it was... cool... and the grenades...

Douche Baggilo: HEY LITTLE KID! NO ONE GIVES A SHIT SO SHUT THE F%CK UP!

Kid:...

awwww.... he was just excited! Remember when you were a kid and you found some secret room on Mario Bros, or whatever, or you figured out some new combo on Mortal Kombat and it was really awesome and you wanted to tell other games so they could check it out? Well in this new age of online connectivity, there's always some asshole there to shoot you down.

Meanwhile, there are spree shootings in Lane Bryant stores and coffee shops and whatnot every week. Right on America!

***

weird day at work today. I confronted a co-worker about their poor work habits (leaving trash for others to clean up) and they went apeshit like it was my fault. This isnt the first time this has happened with them (though it was the first time it happened to me). I confronted them first to give them the benefit of the doubt, but after that reaction, i reported to a manager so they would know what was up. It's the fifth complaint filed against that coworker. They're going to have a talk with that person. We're too short handed to not be working as a team...

Home from work... it was... weird. its weird going to lunch at 3am. its also weird getting panicked because its nearly two hours after lunch and no one has cleaned up their area, but then realizing you still have FIVE HOURS before doors open.

it was ok. i was just about to leave after my scheduled shift when i was roped into counting the steel. it was fun though. i partnered with mike v and hes cool, made it fun and i learned a lot about SMart too.

inventory is a bee eye itch.

so, it turns out the worst part about going to work at night is that teh intarwebz haven't updated for friday yet. so all the deals i find in abundance at 3am aren't even posted yet. and there is no new news. drag.

***

i went to bed a little after 4pm yesterday earlier today, didnt fall asleep until between 6 and 7, woke up at 10 and faked it until 1057pm. i feel awake right now, but not a good awake, a shaky, wtf awake. everyone is going to be so cranky today... haha...

***

my dad did the nicest thing! i had a package delivered to his house, and he left it in my car ... tonight or whatever.

its the Hammer No More the Fingers CD! i forget the title. i am SO going to play it at work. that and Nada Surf. if i hear Taylor Swift bitching about some guy one more time i'm going to cut somebody.

Today I get to go to work twice! not in the regular way, of working a double shift, but rather two different shifts, we're all just coming in four hours early. i'm going to work now, at 4am, then again at midnight! working midnight to 7 or so tomorrow... thats the plan anyway... i can see them keeping some of us all day though.

what a mess. can you imagine going to your job FOUR HOURS early? i guess if i worked at 10am, and had to be there at 6am, that would be fine, but when you're used to getting up at 3am, and now i'm going to have to get up at 11pm... thats a bit weird... in bed around 4pm today... sheeeeeesh.

then saturday, my day off, i'm coming in at 6pm for a mandatory inventory count. 6pm is one hour before my regular bedtime. we wont be getting off until around 11pm. the same time i'm going to be waking up tomorrow.

my schedule is so jacked this week. oh well, at least i have a good job, and i'm off probation.

***

last night i had a horrible nightmare. i woke up at 2:11am, and i almost said 'eff it' and got up since i had to get up in a half hour or so anyway, but i decided instead to try and fall back asleep... thats when i had the nightmare. i was working, at home, while serial killers watched me through big windows, and i cleaned up millions of living insects. awful.

***

last night we watched 'Music and Lyrics'. for a romantic comedy, it was pretty good! i'm a bit tired of Hugh Grant playing the same character in every single movie. does the guy ever play someone with a job? in this one he's a washed up 80's pop star ie. the other guy from Wham!. he's in a band called Pop! in the movie. he writes a song for britney spears and finds love.

EW is right, that song 'Pop Goes My Heart' should have been up for an oscar... its damned catchy.

either way... it wasnt painful to watch, it was pretty entertaining. a damn sight better than all the victorian drama crap fotini likes.

***

time to make the donuts.

oh yeah... he new Nada Surf came in the mail yesterday

Nada Surf - Lucky

and the NEW copy of the Forza 2/Marvel Ultimate Alliance disc game i ordered for $16 came in. its a lot cheaper than gamsh!t, which is selling it for $89.99... isnt that incredible? thanks amazon! forza is great, but is kicking my ass.

Poll #1118493
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

KT Tunstall

Terry... should I go ahead and vote for you?

***

had lunch with Cave today for the first time in at least six months... sheeesh.

after lunch i went to an SMart across town. one that i'd rarely been in, and didnt pay much attention to when i was there. holy crap. no knock on them, its a much older store than ours but hells bells... our store is a billion times nicer. theirs is all dark and dingy, ours is pretty well lit. they have old, crappy plywood fixtures everywhere, we have nice formica covered crappy particle board fixtures.

what a difference... seriously. everything was just jam packed everywhere. i should have taken comparison photos of our media sections. ours has some big gaps in it, while there is just JAM PACKED. they want our tables to be packed, but man... it just feels... gross. too cramped. i'd rather have some room to breathe. i dont know... i feel like a gotdamned P.I.M.P when you look at the two sections. my section has looked bad to me the whole time we've been open because i still have so much christmas stuff everywhere, that it's not as neat and organized as i like. either way, its a damn sight better.

just weird. i was expecting it to be REALLY NICE and give me lots of ideas on what to change.

i will give them credit for having a lot of product out on the tables though. they have at least twice as much of everything OUT as we do. i just keep my backstock hidden... theirs is hidden in plain sight. we use cases similar to this: http://www.displays2go.com/images/WCCD2bt.jpg (only black, and larger and with a much bigger step... but you get the idea), and they have their stuff in them as well, but instead of displaying the items like in the picture, one on top one on bottom... they then stack MORE stuff on top of that bottom item, blocking out the top item (in this case, blocking the natalie cole cd). if that makes since. they might as well just put a bunch of stacks of dvds in a box, flea market style, because it looks the same.

i dont know... i guess i just figured they would better use what they had. they could NOT jam everything packed full, you know? i mean... even if the store is old, it doesnt have to look bad.

i wonder if their media person has been to our store yet... i wonder if they've looked at my tables and wrote in their blogs something like 'damn! they had NOTHING out. just a bunch of half-empty tables!'....

hmmm...

i'm eating cereal right now that could cause me great bodily harm. as well as the possibility of harming anyone near me for the bulk of the day.

***

after work today i need to:

- watch flywheel
- spread hay
- relax
- play zack and wiki

***

anyone down for catan after church tomorrow? i'm going to try and get fotini to go to the late service. i'm working, so i'm not going either way, but she needs to give a dvd to jon.

i'm writing a very boring entry right now.

So... For the last few weeks I've been forgetting to bring some mix cds to work to listen to in the morning. we put on cds on a big stereo system in the sales area... i've only had Peter Bjorn & John in my box at work, and that got old fast. another guy brought in a bunch of Blink-182 and dashboard... *cough.

so i just went through and dumped a bunch of crap into a playlist, hit shuffle, and burned it onto a few discs. i tried to find stuff that wasn't too weird, as to piss people off and have them turn it off, but catchy, easy stuff. rocky stuff too, so we can wake up and work. i just used stuff from my iPod, i didnt rip anything... so some of the bands arent best represented... anyway... heres the list if anyone is interested... its a mess since its a copy paste from iTunes... anyone know an easier way of converting iTunes info to text?

( The Songs )

Poll #1111553
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Craig T. Nelson

I swear... all those ladies who complained about no men in the polls had better vote. voting is always WAY down when i post guys and Ann Coulter.

***

So going into work at 2am wasn't so bad. it was nice to have the extra couple hours, and time did fly. everyone was cranky as hell though. the chick who does the area next to mine is dumb as a rock and much more vocal than one. she never shuts the hell up, and always asks dumb questions. a bunch of us ended up bombarding her area about 20 minutes before 'showtime' because it was a gotdamned wreck. filthy, and a mess. i'm a dick to her at this point. i just cant hang anymore.

what i love about SMart is that pretty much everyone 'gets' it. there are some annoying people, some lazy people, some lazy and annoying people, but at least 85% of the people there work hard and use their brains. thats like 45% more than any other place i've worked. usually the idiots rule the joint. not so here.

***

so, somehow i split the 'pads' on BOTH of my middle fingers. in the same spot too... the pad, towards the outside of the hand... right where they hit the keys to type...

yowch.

I woke up at 1030 last night COMPLETELY PANICKED because I thought it was the OTHER 1030... the one with daylight... and thought I had majorly overslept.

Wish it were true.

***

we're supposed to hang out with jon and nicole today, maybe Rock Band it up for a bit, hope it happens! might even torture Fotini with yet another viewing of 'The Room'.

So, I guess I shouldn't have complained about going to work at 4am on Christmas Eve... I have to be there at 2am the day after Christmas... That means I need to get up 1am... ie. in bed on Christmas Day by 5pm or so... sheeeeeesh...

Yesterday, I talked a customer out of buying a Blu-Ray player, and into buying an HD-DVD player. It wasn't intentional, but it worked out that way. I saw that he had a BD player in his cart, and I just mentioned that he should look up the '5 Free BDs' offer online so he could get some free films. He said he had heard about it, then asked me what I thought about Blu-Ray. I said that I owned both players, and that I personally preferred HD-DVD. I told him that the video quality is about equal, and the real difference lies in the small things.

Blu-Ray discs have a lot more memory, so if he wanted to watch a film in 15 different languages, that was possible, or with many different commentary tracks. HD-DVD has a more impressive menu system, more interactive bonus features, and many HD-DVDs now come in combo format, HD one one side and DVD on the other, so you could watch them in any player. The studios were divided, so some films are only on Blu-Ray, while others are only on HD. He was eying 'Pirates 3' and I mentioned that it was Disney and he could only watch it on Blu-Ray, while Bourne Ultimatum was HD only.

His wife had picked up 'Spiderman 3' and I told her about the grainy film quality on the disc, so she put it back. I kept telling him that it was up to him, and I wasn't trying to sway his opinion one way or the other. The BD player we have is $400, while the HD player is $200, and comes with 2 free discs, besides the 5 free HD offer that's also out there. I told him about amazon's current BOGO offer on both formats. I really just gave him my honest opinion and told him all the pros and cons that I knew about each player.

30 minutes later I saw him walking around with an HD player in his cart.

It felt kinda nice that I was able to go to bat for something that I felt strongly about, and was able to relate that to a stranger. I'm no salesman, in fact most of the salesmen in our store aren't much of salesmen themselves, it was just nice to be real with someone, and not worry about commission.

anyway... that was nice.

***

Having a robotic butler makes you lazy as hell. Our house is trashed, but our floors are spotless!

Poll #1105697
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Mackenzie Phillips

***

So this guy comes up to me today and asks 'what's good?' i say... 'uh... dvds? planet earth is really cool... blah blah...' so we talk about that for a while. he ends up buying a Harry Potter DVD Boxset. a few minutes later he comes up to me again and says 'so you have a ring, are you married?' i say 'yeah... uh why?' 'oh, nevermind...' smiles and walks off.

some guy hit on me! it was very flirtyish. so i tell this guy Fabio at work, and he thinks its really funny... a few minutes later Buckley (a guy who looks just like the white Jesus) says 'so i hear you got hit on. he did it to me too.' so i guess the guy has a thing for literal beards. i dunno. his partner or friend or whatever is native american (ie. beardless), so who knows? maybe i've got a career in bear porn waiting for me.