Given the history of lousy service I’ve experienced there, both personally and anecdotally, I was very surprised when the service guy from my car dealership called to tell me that my car was ready.
He told me that in addition to fixing the exhaust my wiper blades had to be replaced in order to pass the VA inspection, so I ended up having to shell out $20.55 for new wiper
I’m not certain how they came to that figure, as the total charges actually added up to a few cents less than that.
Oddly enough, one wiper blade cost about $2 more than the other, Even so, when added up, the price was somewhat less (just a few cents) than the final cost that was listed.
Maybe the rest of it was to cover the cost of the empty Minute Maid Lemonade bottle that somebody left in my car.
Today has been a long, torturous day filled with weird and irritating issues that I’ve had to (unsuccessfully) deal with, and which have prevented me from finishing and posting this entry (I started on it at around 9 am).
Still, my day is almost over, and tomorrow I’ll be working another station and won’t have to deal with this particular nonsense.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Sorry, Mom; It WAS A Shitty Job
So far today, like most days, has been pretty uneventful.
I talked to my mother, who took exception to me referring to my grocery store job as being a shitty one in yesterday’s entry.
“It wasn’t that shitty,” she told me.
I disagreed and pointed out that she wasn’t the one going there night after night and dealing with the shittiness.
For reasons that have never been clear to me, my mother has always seemed to become personally offended whenever she hears people complaining about their jobs, past or present.
The best I can determine is that it has something to do with gratitude; you should be grateful to have a job, any job, and that you should just go in, do your job, and keep your mouth shut about it.
What that fails to take into account is that people complain about their jobs no matter what.
It’s what people do. It’s pretty much expected.
Setting aside the fact that my job at the grocery store was a shitty one (low pay, lousy hours, tedious, repetitive work, having to struggle to get in at least 32 hours every week, being tired all of the time because human beings aren’t meant to work overnight: the list goes on and on), and the fact that my mom was just as glad as I was when I got out of that dead-end job, I probably would have complained about it, at least every once in a while, even if I’d loved it.
Consider my current job. Apart from the fact that it will probably be disappearing in about a month, I really don’t have anything to complain about. I make a lot of money for not much work, I only work three days a week and I accrue more vacation time than I can actually use in a year, I have access to all kinds of training, much of which I actually get paid for taking, and yet I complain about my job, just like everyone else does. Why? Because it’s my job, and people complain about their jobs, period.
And it’s not like I have to make up stuff to complain about. There are all sorts of things to complain about: having to get up so early, the long, boring hours, the various irritating personalities that you encounter in the course of a day, the drama of office politics, the drive in/home, etc.
That being said, I would be complaining even more if I didn’t have the job because the irritations that accompany a job, any job, are nowhere near as irritating as not being able to make your mortgage payment or buy food.
So yes, I am grateful to have a job, and I’m especially grateful that it’s nowhere near as shitty as my job in the grocery store, my stint as a garbage man, or, worst of all, my year spent in call center hell.
And mom, I didn’t write this to pick on you or to make fun of you, I was just using our conversation as a convenient springboard for an entry.
Later today I have to bring my car in to the dealership to leave it there for them to work on tomorrow. I’m not holding out much hope that they’ll finish the work before Monday.
I also need to call Brian to remind him that I need to catch a ride from him tomorrow morning (and, of course, tomorrow evening, and probably the rest of the weekend…).
It finally seems to have cooled off a bit around here as I’m no longer existing as a semi-motive puddle of sweat on the floor.
I’ve even been able to accede to my inner cheapskate and turn off my A/C.
Tomorrow my nephew Jeremy turns 17, which seems impossible to believe. That’s how old I was when my mom and I took the train down to Texas to spend a month helping my sister and brother-in-law out as Jeremy’s birth neared.
They’re celebrating Jeremy’s birthday by my sister having surgery. Okay, the two things aren’t actually related, it’s just odd timing.
In any case, not much has happened or is likely to happen today, so I suppose that I will post this and get on with the business of not doing much of anything.
I talked to my mother, who took exception to me referring to my grocery store job as being a shitty one in yesterday’s entry.
“It wasn’t that shitty,” she told me.
I disagreed and pointed out that she wasn’t the one going there night after night and dealing with the shittiness.
For reasons that have never been clear to me, my mother has always seemed to become personally offended whenever she hears people complaining about their jobs, past or present.
The best I can determine is that it has something to do with gratitude; you should be grateful to have a job, any job, and that you should just go in, do your job, and keep your mouth shut about it.
What that fails to take into account is that people complain about their jobs no matter what.
It’s what people do. It’s pretty much expected.
Setting aside the fact that my job at the grocery store was a shitty one (low pay, lousy hours, tedious, repetitive work, having to struggle to get in at least 32 hours every week, being tired all of the time because human beings aren’t meant to work overnight: the list goes on and on), and the fact that my mom was just as glad as I was when I got out of that dead-end job, I probably would have complained about it, at least every once in a while, even if I’d loved it.
Consider my current job. Apart from the fact that it will probably be disappearing in about a month, I really don’t have anything to complain about. I make a lot of money for not much work, I only work three days a week and I accrue more vacation time than I can actually use in a year, I have access to all kinds of training, much of which I actually get paid for taking, and yet I complain about my job, just like everyone else does. Why? Because it’s my job, and people complain about their jobs, period.
And it’s not like I have to make up stuff to complain about. There are all sorts of things to complain about: having to get up so early, the long, boring hours, the various irritating personalities that you encounter in the course of a day, the drama of office politics, the drive in/home, etc.
That being said, I would be complaining even more if I didn’t have the job because the irritations that accompany a job, any job, are nowhere near as irritating as not being able to make your mortgage payment or buy food.
So yes, I am grateful to have a job, and I’m especially grateful that it’s nowhere near as shitty as my job in the grocery store, my stint as a garbage man, or, worst of all, my year spent in call center hell.
And mom, I didn’t write this to pick on you or to make fun of you, I was just using our conversation as a convenient springboard for an entry.
Later today I have to bring my car in to the dealership to leave it there for them to work on tomorrow. I’m not holding out much hope that they’ll finish the work before Monday.
I also need to call Brian to remind him that I need to catch a ride from him tomorrow morning (and, of course, tomorrow evening, and probably the rest of the weekend…).
It finally seems to have cooled off a bit around here as I’m no longer existing as a semi-motive puddle of sweat on the floor.
I’ve even been able to accede to my inner cheapskate and turn off my A/C.
Tomorrow my nephew Jeremy turns 17, which seems impossible to believe. That’s how old I was when my mom and I took the train down to Texas to spend a month helping my sister and brother-in-law out as Jeremy’s birth neared.
They’re celebrating Jeremy’s birthday by my sister having surgery. Okay, the two things aren’t actually related, it’s just odd timing.
In any case, not much has happened or is likely to happen today, so I suppose that I will post this and get on with the business of not doing much of anything.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
The Only Thing Worse Than Having A Shitty Job Is NOT Having A Job
There are certain things that will set off my PTSD (Post Traumatic Shitty job Disorder), and one of them is being in a grocery store and hearing the Seal song Kiss from a Rose.
Of course, this really only manifests in the form of me flashing back to the shitty job in question for a moment, then going on with what I was doing.
About 11 years ago I started a shitty job working the overnight shift in a 24 hour grocery store.
At that time, the movie Batman Forever had come out and the aforementioned Seal song was part of its soundtrack (as was, I just discovered, a song by Nick Cave, who seems to pop up in the most unexpected places) and was extremely popular.
The PA system in the store, when not being used for announcements, piped out music for the customers’ pleasure. The music was provided via something known as DMX, or Digital Music Express, commercial-free channels of CD-quality music delivered over cable from the local cable company.
The music channel of choice, at that time, was one that played the popular music of the day and the very recent past. It would reset frequently, so it wasn’t unusual for me to hear some songs, such as the one by Seal, as many as three times in the course of eight hours.
Another popular song of the day was the theme from Friends. That one I heard even more frequently, as it would be on the radio on my drive in to work (at the time an AM/FM radio was all that was available to me), would play three times during my shift, and would be on the radio in the morning when I drove home.
The music I suffered though was just one of the aspects of the job that made it shitty, but it was a pretty potent aspect, one that only got worse as time went on.
For example, the day after Thanksgiving the channel was switched to Christmas music, and that’s where it stayed until January 2.
After the Christmas music, it was switched to the Oldies channel, and that’s where it stayed until the day after Thanksgiving when the Christmas music started up again.
The thing is, as irritating and repetitious as the popular music was, at least every once in a while a new song was brought into rotation and others fell out.
Not so with the oldies. In fact, by definition there would never be anything new on the oldies channel.
Other aspects of the job that made it shitty were the lousy hours, the low pay, the mind-numbing tedium of it, and of course the fact that my boss hated me.
Why did she hate me? I’ve never been sure. I suppose it’s because then, as now, I was a smart ass, and somewhere along the line, early on, I said something that rubbed her the wrong way.
That aspect of it went away about a year after I’d started as she left the company (to be replaced by my sister, who made for a much less hateful boss), but was immediately replaced by me being trained to work as a cashier.
After not quite two years I moved on to a different, less shitty job, but the scars of my time in that store (a place I briefly returned to before making my move to Tucson), are still with me, and when I’m in a grocery store and I hear Seal, they itch.
What’s the point of all this? I suppose there isn’t one, really, I’m just thinking about the many jobs I’ve had throughout the years as I consider the prospect of having to find another one.
The thing is, I don’t want to find another job. Granted, my current job isn’t the most intellectually stimulating or emotionally rewarding, but considering that it is the best-paying job I’ve ever had and that the amount of time off I have, coupled with the fact that the job itself isn’t especially demanding, it’s as close as I’ve ever come to having the freedom of being unemployed while retaining the economic stability of having a job.
Who would want to give that up?
Beyond that, though, is the fact that there really isn’t anything I want to do, no burning ambition or hopes or aspirations.
They say that to be happy you need to find a way to do what you love for a living.
That’s the problem; at best, there are only things that I kind of like to do.
Once upon a time I wanted to write for a living, but that dream, if it ever really qualified as a dream, has, if not died, at least fallen into a persistent vegetative state, and finds its only expression in these entries, which pretty much fall into the category of involuntary responses.
Or something.
When it comes to writing, anything that I have to say has pretty much already been said by other people and put more eloquently.
As for drawing,…well, for all of last month and so far this month, Heroic Portraits has had a whopping 2 visitors.
There are some who might suggest that it comes down to having faith in myself. They might be right.
But if the problem is that I don’t have faith in myself, what is the solution?
Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say.
Anyway, knowing that the axe may yet fall, I have actually been taking a look at what’s out there. So far nothing’s clicking, and more than anything I find myself just hating the thought of having to find a different job, having to get used to a different schedule, getting to know different people, and hoping that this time I’ve finally found what it is that I’m going to do for the next thirty years or so.
So even if I were to find something that I love and do that for a living, first I’d have to go through doing a bunch of stuff I hate.
Speaking of doing things, I’ve pretty much devoted today to not doing things.
Not really unusual for me, I know, but I decided that I’m absolutely not venturing out into the world for anything.
I did, at least, manage to force myself to take a shower, though.
Eventually.
And now I’m starting to think that there’s nothing finer I could do with my time than take a nap.
Now there’s something I wouldn’t mind being able to make a living doing…
Of course, this really only manifests in the form of me flashing back to the shitty job in question for a moment, then going on with what I was doing.
About 11 years ago I started a shitty job working the overnight shift in a 24 hour grocery store.
At that time, the movie Batman Forever had come out and the aforementioned Seal song was part of its soundtrack (as was, I just discovered, a song by Nick Cave, who seems to pop up in the most unexpected places) and was extremely popular.
The PA system in the store, when not being used for announcements, piped out music for the customers’ pleasure. The music was provided via something known as DMX, or Digital Music Express, commercial-free channels of CD-quality music delivered over cable from the local cable company.
The music channel of choice, at that time, was one that played the popular music of the day and the very recent past. It would reset frequently, so it wasn’t unusual for me to hear some songs, such as the one by Seal, as many as three times in the course of eight hours.
Another popular song of the day was the theme from Friends. That one I heard even more frequently, as it would be on the radio on my drive in to work (at the time an AM/FM radio was all that was available to me), would play three times during my shift, and would be on the radio in the morning when I drove home.
The music I suffered though was just one of the aspects of the job that made it shitty, but it was a pretty potent aspect, one that only got worse as time went on.
For example, the day after Thanksgiving the channel was switched to Christmas music, and that’s where it stayed until January 2.
After the Christmas music, it was switched to the Oldies channel, and that’s where it stayed until the day after Thanksgiving when the Christmas music started up again.
The thing is, as irritating and repetitious as the popular music was, at least every once in a while a new song was brought into rotation and others fell out.
Not so with the oldies. In fact, by definition there would never be anything new on the oldies channel.
Other aspects of the job that made it shitty were the lousy hours, the low pay, the mind-numbing tedium of it, and of course the fact that my boss hated me.
Why did she hate me? I’ve never been sure. I suppose it’s because then, as now, I was a smart ass, and somewhere along the line, early on, I said something that rubbed her the wrong way.
That aspect of it went away about a year after I’d started as she left the company (to be replaced by my sister, who made for a much less hateful boss), but was immediately replaced by me being trained to work as a cashier.
After not quite two years I moved on to a different, less shitty job, but the scars of my time in that store (a place I briefly returned to before making my move to Tucson), are still with me, and when I’m in a grocery store and I hear Seal, they itch.
What’s the point of all this? I suppose there isn’t one, really, I’m just thinking about the many jobs I’ve had throughout the years as I consider the prospect of having to find another one.
The thing is, I don’t want to find another job. Granted, my current job isn’t the most intellectually stimulating or emotionally rewarding, but considering that it is the best-paying job I’ve ever had and that the amount of time off I have, coupled with the fact that the job itself isn’t especially demanding, it’s as close as I’ve ever come to having the freedom of being unemployed while retaining the economic stability of having a job.
Who would want to give that up?
Beyond that, though, is the fact that there really isn’t anything I want to do, no burning ambition or hopes or aspirations.
They say that to be happy you need to find a way to do what you love for a living.
That’s the problem; at best, there are only things that I kind of like to do.
Once upon a time I wanted to write for a living, but that dream, if it ever really qualified as a dream, has, if not died, at least fallen into a persistent vegetative state, and finds its only expression in these entries, which pretty much fall into the category of involuntary responses.
Or something.
When it comes to writing, anything that I have to say has pretty much already been said by other people and put more eloquently.
As for drawing,…well, for all of last month and so far this month, Heroic Portraits has had a whopping 2 visitors.
There are some who might suggest that it comes down to having faith in myself. They might be right.
But if the problem is that I don’t have faith in myself, what is the solution?
Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say.
Anyway, knowing that the axe may yet fall, I have actually been taking a look at what’s out there. So far nothing’s clicking, and more than anything I find myself just hating the thought of having to find a different job, having to get used to a different schedule, getting to know different people, and hoping that this time I’ve finally found what it is that I’m going to do for the next thirty years or so.
So even if I were to find something that I love and do that for a living, first I’d have to go through doing a bunch of stuff I hate.
Speaking of doing things, I’ve pretty much devoted today to not doing things.
Not really unusual for me, I know, but I decided that I’m absolutely not venturing out into the world for anything.
I did, at least, manage to force myself to take a shower, though.
Eventually.
And now I’m starting to think that there’s nothing finer I could do with my time than take a nap.
Now there’s something I wouldn’t mind being able to make a living doing…
Monday, August 07, 2006
In This Case "PC" Stands For "Pointless Claptrap"
When I was starting college, Political Correctness was the hot-button issue of the day.
Then, as now, it served primarily to promote divisiveness, which is ironic considering that, ostensibly, the point of it all was to promote inclusiveness.
Those who were in opposition to the notion of being PC believed that caving in to the pressure of being “correct” would have a chilling effect on the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and that, while the ends might be good, or at least well-intentioned, they were not justified by the means.
I was, not surprisingly, one of those people who was opposed to the notions of Political Correctness.
After all, I was in school to study the language and the ways in which it can be used to express ideas – any and all ideas – and was, and still am, firmly of the opinion that only good can come from the unfettered flow of intellectual expression through language and that only bad can come from any attempts, however well-intentioned, to stop that flow.
That being said, there are words that I choose not to use in my life and ideas that I do not feel deserve to be expressed. No good, for example, comes from the use of hate-filled rhetoric, ethnic and religious slurs, or the promotion of gender stereotypes.
However, those are choices that I make; they are not decisions that are forced upon me.
To simply forbid the use of certain words or the discussion of certain ideas will not make those words or those ideas go away, and attempting to create inoffensive substitutes for them is a lazy, inauthentic attempt at dealing with the actual issues that serves only to gloss over the problem.
In a perfectly PC world we would public discourse would consist of the use of idiotic buzzwords that convey no real meaning.
Of course, it’s not as though it would matter; language is a living thing, and it adapts according to the needs and desires of the people who use it, and as such even a PC language could be twisted in such a way as to give voice to the simmering resentments that human beings feel toward other human beings.
As it’s only an attempt to deal with a symptom, Political Correctness will inevitably fall before the underlying disease.
And I’m of the opinion that this is exactly what has happened.
The real impact that Political Correctness has had on society has not come through the evils of censorship that it implicitly supports, but rather in the backlash of people reacting against the pressure to be PC.
Because being PC has become something viewed to be bad in the popular mind, it would seem to follow that not being PC, to an extreme, is good, and it seems to follow that if being PC is bad, the whole idea that gave birth to the notion of being PC in the first place must also be bad.
Any attempts at encouraging legitimate sensitivity are immediately dismissed as acts of PC thuggery, and suddenly some racist asshole can consider himself to be a freedom fighter for unapologetically spouting off his beliefs about the inferiority of a particular ethnicity.
After all, he can tell everyone that he’s “not politically correct,” and suddenly it gives him a free pass to say what he wants without fear of contradiction, because any attempts at criticizing him will be dismissed as the ravings of the PC crowd.
Comedians in particular are guilty of this kind of behavior, wearing their political incorrectness like a badge of honor.
“I’m not politically correct,” they proudly proclaim, and no one will stand up and tell them, “Yes, but you’re also not funny.”
That there ever needed to be any discussion of “correctness” in the first place goes to show how colossally stupid we as a society can be as we worry about the most trivial things and are so retarded that we can’t be trusted to exercise restraint and sensitivity when interacting with each other.
*Sigh*
Oh well, it’s not like I’m going to do anything to raise humanity’s level of intelligence here, so I suppose I might as well move on to more standard fare.
I woke up this morning sometime after 8 and was about to get up, but then I thought, “No, screw that; I’m going back to sleep.”
I managed to make myself sleep until nearly 10, at which point I got up, had a hearty breakfast of a protein bar, showered, shaved, dressed, and headed out into the world to do some grocery shopping.
While I was there I couldn’t shake the feeling that people were staring at me to the point that I felt the need to check to make sure that I’d remembered to wear pants (I had).
Not sure what was behind it, whether it was just a random odd feeling or people actually were staring at me. I can’t imagine why they would have been, but who knows?
Still while it was mildly disconcerting, it wasn’t enough to make me want to break out the tin foil hat or anything.
On the way out of the store I had an odder experience, though, as this rather large woman walked in front of me as I was pushing my cart toward the door and, looking straight at me, she decided to just stop dead in her tracks, forcing me to do the same in order to avoid slamming into her. WTF was up with that?
Because I was in the neighborhood I decided to stop at Quizno’s to pick up an early lunch, as I’ve been meaning to give their new sandwich a try.
However, they don’t open until 11 and it was about 10:52 at thatt point. I decided that I didn’t want to let all of my frozen stuff melt as I waited, so I just headed home and eventually made myself some paninis for lunch.
After that I did some catching up on Ultimate Spider-Man, reading about 25 issues in all, which is a hell of a lot of Bendis dialogue to squeeze into one day, and which amounts to maybe 15 issues’ worth of actual story thanks to the extra-large panels, two-page spreads, and page after page of nothing actually happening punctuated with the occasional fight scene and decent one-liner.
Saturday night and part of Sunday I devoted to rereading some issues of Lucifer before reading the remainder of the series.
Overall, meh. Some good stories, and an interesting take on the Devil, God, and the nature and meaning of existence, but nowhere near as entertaining or thought-provoking as the series that pretty much gave birth to it (The Sandman).
Those of you out there who subscribe to Threshold (all 8 of you at this point), may not be receiving updates and I’m not sure why. Everything checks out on Bloglet, so they should be going out, and yet they’re not.
Don’t know what’s up with it and can’t do anything about it. Sorry.
Yesterday I was flipping through the channels and caught the tail end of VH1’s I Love the 90s.The year was 1996 and the topic was the band Oasis.
I always remember a time back in 1997 when my friend Eric’s fiancé Sally had come over to use my computer to look up a few things on the Internet and print some stuff out in preparation for the wedding.
She suggested that I put some music on and asked me, “Do you have any Oasis?”
I responded, honestly, “I don’t know who that is.”
There’s no real point to that story, but whenever I hear a song by Oasis (I eventually learned who they were) or any mention of them, that always comes to mind.
These days I tend to be a little more “up” on what’s going on in popular culture, though I’m not entirely sure how or why, because in many ways I’m actually a little more isolated than I was then. I suppose it’s because I spend more time online.
Again, no point, just an observation.
In any case I suppose that I’ve rambled on more than enough for one entry, as per usual.
Then, as now, it served primarily to promote divisiveness, which is ironic considering that, ostensibly, the point of it all was to promote inclusiveness.
Those who were in opposition to the notion of being PC believed that caving in to the pressure of being “correct” would have a chilling effect on the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and that, while the ends might be good, or at least well-intentioned, they were not justified by the means.
I was, not surprisingly, one of those people who was opposed to the notions of Political Correctness.
After all, I was in school to study the language and the ways in which it can be used to express ideas – any and all ideas – and was, and still am, firmly of the opinion that only good can come from the unfettered flow of intellectual expression through language and that only bad can come from any attempts, however well-intentioned, to stop that flow.
That being said, there are words that I choose not to use in my life and ideas that I do not feel deserve to be expressed. No good, for example, comes from the use of hate-filled rhetoric, ethnic and religious slurs, or the promotion of gender stereotypes.
However, those are choices that I make; they are not decisions that are forced upon me.
To simply forbid the use of certain words or the discussion of certain ideas will not make those words or those ideas go away, and attempting to create inoffensive substitutes for them is a lazy, inauthentic attempt at dealing with the actual issues that serves only to gloss over the problem.
In a perfectly PC world we would public discourse would consist of the use of idiotic buzzwords that convey no real meaning.
Of course, it’s not as though it would matter; language is a living thing, and it adapts according to the needs and desires of the people who use it, and as such even a PC language could be twisted in such a way as to give voice to the simmering resentments that human beings feel toward other human beings.
As it’s only an attempt to deal with a symptom, Political Correctness will inevitably fall before the underlying disease.
And I’m of the opinion that this is exactly what has happened.
The real impact that Political Correctness has had on society has not come through the evils of censorship that it implicitly supports, but rather in the backlash of people reacting against the pressure to be PC.
Because being PC has become something viewed to be bad in the popular mind, it would seem to follow that not being PC, to an extreme, is good, and it seems to follow that if being PC is bad, the whole idea that gave birth to the notion of being PC in the first place must also be bad.
Any attempts at encouraging legitimate sensitivity are immediately dismissed as acts of PC thuggery, and suddenly some racist asshole can consider himself to be a freedom fighter for unapologetically spouting off his beliefs about the inferiority of a particular ethnicity.
After all, he can tell everyone that he’s “not politically correct,” and suddenly it gives him a free pass to say what he wants without fear of contradiction, because any attempts at criticizing him will be dismissed as the ravings of the PC crowd.
Comedians in particular are guilty of this kind of behavior, wearing their political incorrectness like a badge of honor.
“I’m not politically correct,” they proudly proclaim, and no one will stand up and tell them, “Yes, but you’re also not funny.”
That there ever needed to be any discussion of “correctness” in the first place goes to show how colossally stupid we as a society can be as we worry about the most trivial things and are so retarded that we can’t be trusted to exercise restraint and sensitivity when interacting with each other.
*Sigh*
Oh well, it’s not like I’m going to do anything to raise humanity’s level of intelligence here, so I suppose I might as well move on to more standard fare.
I woke up this morning sometime after 8 and was about to get up, but then I thought, “No, screw that; I’m going back to sleep.”
I managed to make myself sleep until nearly 10, at which point I got up, had a hearty breakfast of a protein bar, showered, shaved, dressed, and headed out into the world to do some grocery shopping.
While I was there I couldn’t shake the feeling that people were staring at me to the point that I felt the need to check to make sure that I’d remembered to wear pants (I had).
Not sure what was behind it, whether it was just a random odd feeling or people actually were staring at me. I can’t imagine why they would have been, but who knows?
Still while it was mildly disconcerting, it wasn’t enough to make me want to break out the tin foil hat or anything.
On the way out of the store I had an odder experience, though, as this rather large woman walked in front of me as I was pushing my cart toward the door and, looking straight at me, she decided to just stop dead in her tracks, forcing me to do the same in order to avoid slamming into her. WTF was up with that?
Because I was in the neighborhood I decided to stop at Quizno’s to pick up an early lunch, as I’ve been meaning to give their new sandwich a try.
However, they don’t open until 11 and it was about 10:52 at thatt point. I decided that I didn’t want to let all of my frozen stuff melt as I waited, so I just headed home and eventually made myself some paninis for lunch.
After that I did some catching up on Ultimate Spider-Man, reading about 25 issues in all, which is a hell of a lot of Bendis dialogue to squeeze into one day, and which amounts to maybe 15 issues’ worth of actual story thanks to the extra-large panels, two-page spreads, and page after page of nothing actually happening punctuated with the occasional fight scene and decent one-liner.
Saturday night and part of Sunday I devoted to rereading some issues of Lucifer before reading the remainder of the series.
Overall, meh. Some good stories, and an interesting take on the Devil, God, and the nature and meaning of existence, but nowhere near as entertaining or thought-provoking as the series that pretty much gave birth to it (The Sandman).
Those of you out there who subscribe to Threshold (all 8 of you at this point), may not be receiving updates and I’m not sure why. Everything checks out on Bloglet, so they should be going out, and yet they’re not.
Don’t know what’s up with it and can’t do anything about it. Sorry.
Yesterday I was flipping through the channels and caught the tail end of VH1’s I Love the 90s.The year was 1996 and the topic was the band Oasis.
I always remember a time back in 1997 when my friend Eric’s fiancé Sally had come over to use my computer to look up a few things on the Internet and print some stuff out in preparation for the wedding.
She suggested that I put some music on and asked me, “Do you have any Oasis?”
I responded, honestly, “I don’t know who that is.”
There’s no real point to that story, but whenever I hear a song by Oasis (I eventually learned who they were) or any mention of them, that always comes to mind.
These days I tend to be a little more “up” on what’s going on in popular culture, though I’m not entirely sure how or why, because in many ways I’m actually a little more isolated than I was then. I suppose it’s because I spend more time online.
Again, no point, just an observation.
In any case I suppose that I’ve rambled on more than enough for one entry, as per usual.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Unwarranted Confidence, But Warranted Exhaust Pipe
On Thursday I went in to work feeling a little more confident about my future then I had when I’d left the previous Saturday.
That didn’t last, as during the course of the day I learned that while I’d thought that the layoffs were behind us, I was mistaken, as the layoffs are yet to come.
5,000 of them, in fact, or around 26% of the company’s worldwide workforce.
Not exactly confidence-inspiring numbers.
I’ve actually seen reports of worse numbers indicating that 50% of the workforce will be let go.
Oh well.
Beyond that the weekend was largely uneventful, though the heat and humidity remained way the hell up there.
On Thursday night I was lying in bed standing on the edge of consciousness and about to take the plunge into the canyon of sleep, so I didn’t initially notice that the A/C was no longer circulating cool air into my bedroom, though I was dimly aware of the fact that it was raining outside.
I did, however, take immediate notice of the loud beeping coming from the direction of my computer.
Recognizing this as the alarm from my UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) indicating that my computer was running on battery power, I turned toward my clock to double-check whether the power was out or if it had simply been a surge.
The clock was still on, but I realized then that the clock has a battery back-up of its own, so I got up to go into the kitchen to check the clock on the microwave.
Still a little groggy, I noticed that Munin, my kitchen computer was still on, and was puzzled when I saw that the clocks were out on the stove and the microwave until I heard a beeping sound coming from Munin’s direction and realized that it also had a UPS.
So the power was out, though for the life of me I couldn’t understand why. After all, the “storm” had already passed and had never seemed that severe.
I supposed that an overload of some kind was possible, what with all of the A/C units running.
To make sure that it wasn’t something peculiar to me, I checked my circuit breakers and found nothing amiss.
By this time, lacking the A/C, it was getting very hot inside, so I opened the bedroom window, fully-realizing that this wouldn’t accomplish much, given that it was till like 95 degrees out.
There was a slight breeze, but it didn’t do much good. Still, it did allow me to notice that the constant hum of the various A/C units outside was gone, so I had confirmation that I wasn’t the only one affected.
It took about one sweat-soaked hour for the power to come back and another half hour or so for it to cool of enough for me to get to sleep.
The new schedule is still taking some getting used to. For example, Scott and I aren’t especially pleased with the fact that we now intersect with the regular M-F workers on two days rather than one.
I finally got an answer about whether the exhaust problem on my car is covered by warranty (it is) and made an appointment to get it fixed. Unfortunately the soonest opening was on Thursday, so I’ll have to drop the car off on Wednesday night and ride in to work with Brian. Hopefully the car will be ready by that night, but I’m not holding my breath.
Today I briefly ventured out into the world to go to Wal-Mart, which was having a “back to school” sale this weekend during which they weren’t charging sales tax on items under $100.
Unfortunately that was limited to clothes and school supplies, so it didn’t really do me any good.
And that’s been pretty much it.
I came home and took a nap, and now I’m writing this.
And now I’m done.
That didn’t last, as during the course of the day I learned that while I’d thought that the layoffs were behind us, I was mistaken, as the layoffs are yet to come.
5,000 of them, in fact, or around 26% of the company’s worldwide workforce.
Not exactly confidence-inspiring numbers.
I’ve actually seen reports of worse numbers indicating that 50% of the workforce will be let go.
Oh well.
Beyond that the weekend was largely uneventful, though the heat and humidity remained way the hell up there.
On Thursday night I was lying in bed standing on the edge of consciousness and about to take the plunge into the canyon of sleep, so I didn’t initially notice that the A/C was no longer circulating cool air into my bedroom, though I was dimly aware of the fact that it was raining outside.
I did, however, take immediate notice of the loud beeping coming from the direction of my computer.
Recognizing this as the alarm from my UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) indicating that my computer was running on battery power, I turned toward my clock to double-check whether the power was out or if it had simply been a surge.
The clock was still on, but I realized then that the clock has a battery back-up of its own, so I got up to go into the kitchen to check the clock on the microwave.
Still a little groggy, I noticed that Munin, my kitchen computer was still on, and was puzzled when I saw that the clocks were out on the stove and the microwave until I heard a beeping sound coming from Munin’s direction and realized that it also had a UPS.
So the power was out, though for the life of me I couldn’t understand why. After all, the “storm” had already passed and had never seemed that severe.
I supposed that an overload of some kind was possible, what with all of the A/C units running.
To make sure that it wasn’t something peculiar to me, I checked my circuit breakers and found nothing amiss.
By this time, lacking the A/C, it was getting very hot inside, so I opened the bedroom window, fully-realizing that this wouldn’t accomplish much, given that it was till like 95 degrees out.
There was a slight breeze, but it didn’t do much good. Still, it did allow me to notice that the constant hum of the various A/C units outside was gone, so I had confirmation that I wasn’t the only one affected.
It took about one sweat-soaked hour for the power to come back and another half hour or so for it to cool of enough for me to get to sleep.
The new schedule is still taking some getting used to. For example, Scott and I aren’t especially pleased with the fact that we now intersect with the regular M-F workers on two days rather than one.
I finally got an answer about whether the exhaust problem on my car is covered by warranty (it is) and made an appointment to get it fixed. Unfortunately the soonest opening was on Thursday, so I’ll have to drop the car off on Wednesday night and ride in to work with Brian. Hopefully the car will be ready by that night, but I’m not holding my breath.
Today I briefly ventured out into the world to go to Wal-Mart, which was having a “back to school” sale this weekend during which they weren’t charging sales tax on items under $100.
Unfortunately that was limited to clothes and school supplies, so it didn’t really do me any good.
And that’s been pretty much it.
I came home and took a nap, and now I’m writing this.
And now I’m done.
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