Pack a lunch, you'll need it

 

Saturday evening

Greetings all. Not sure how this will go, I am tinkering with Open Office on the laptop, a program that I am a tad bit unfamiliar with, so I may end up screwing this up, but since I am trying to stay awake for a little bit yet, I figured I might do this while I am playing Dungeons and Dragons over on Facebook.

The adventures in the D&D game are timed, so that you have to keep checking back to see how you are doing, or you can set your potions to autoload, and they get used after certain points, like healing potions will fire if you get below 25 hit points and what not, but usually I just follow along with the game, and while it is between encounters (usually 10 minutes or so, I find something else to do. In this case, it is this blog, though I have been doing other things as well, like playing with the PS2 and working on my resume and what not.

I guess I should explain my absence from this page recently, but there isn't a real good reason for it, save that my mood recently has been very much all over the place, and I didn't want to come across as any more crazy than I normally do.

I guess I can start with the following update, I believe my desktop computer is officially on its last legs. I am constantly getting memory errors now, run time errors and just having it lock up way too much for my tastes. Virus scans and adaware scans help the problem on a very temporary basis, but usually within a day or so I am right back where I started. I can't complain, it has served me well for 8+ years, maybe it is time to move on. My luck on Ebay with securing a laptop is such that I am thinking of going the same route with a new desktop as well.

Wow, maybe I should just stick with working on this blog entry, I am getting my ass handed to me on my current D&D adventure. It is not one of my more successful outings, so to speak. Not that I am doing poorly in the game, I am a level 7 Drow Ranger after all, but this particular adventure is just not one of my finer moments. You play the game until you reach level 11, then the game resets and you start a new character, save you get to take one item with you that you picked up the last time through. For me that will be a tough decision, as I am doing quite well in the garnering of goodies department. So far my character is equipped with the following:

Circlet of Authority (+2 Charisma)

Trollskin Armor (+4 Armor Class, +10 Hit Points)

Flaming Halberd (+4 Attack)

Bracers of Rejuvenation (+5 Hit Points)

Gauntlets of Ogre Power (+1 Strength)

Cloak of Resistance +1 (+1 vs. Magic)

Belt of Giant Strength (+1 Strength, +2 vs. Giants)

Ring of Freedom of Movement (+1 Dexterity)

Ring of Freedom of Movement (+1 Dexterity) (Yes, I have two of them)

Boots of Spider Climbing (+1 Dexterity, +1 vs. Traps)

There, that info should keep the one or two D&D geeks that read this blog semi entertained.

Also in the realm of not so interesting news, I have been adding to the Neverending Thread recently. I am immersed in another book, just hot finished with it yet, so I can't add it to the thread, though I do have two more books lined up to read after I finish my current one. I could have done some reading last night, but I decided on a trip to the movies to see District 9 instead. Not that getting to the theater wasn't a struggle in and of itself. First there was the issue of work. Not that my work schedule was in the way of me seeing the movie, there were plenty of showings available, but while at work I managed to fall off of the basement steps while catching our Coke order. At the time it seemed like nothing, until I got home at least and sat down. The plan was I would come home, take a shower and change and then head out to the cinema, but once I got home and took my shoes off, it became very hard to put pressure on my right leg without a significant amount of pain involved. I hobbled into the shower anyway and washed off a significant amount of sweat (I think I lose pounds of it every day at work since the basement isn't air conditioned) and then went to the bathroom and had one of those moments where you are sitting on the toilet and your stomach just starts to think you could end up on said toilet for the remainder of the evening. I managed to push thoughts of an uninspiring evening on the can to the back of my cranium and hobbled out to get dressed. Once I got to the point where I got my shoes back on, my ankle felt a little better, just given the support the shoes offered for it, so I did get out and make it to the movie.

The film itself was okay, not as good as I had hoped, but it wasn't a waste of money either. Which is good, because I forgot how expensive movies are these days. $10 for the ticket and another $11 for popcorn and soda and I was left thinking that is at least a month of ramen noodles.

Okay, I have Nascar Angels on TV, and once again TV is just pissing me off. For those unfamiliar with the program, viewers submit suggestions for people that need their car repaired and based on who has the best story, they come out and fix up the winners car. They have a group of mechanics that go over it and get the car back into running order. It is sort of a poor man's Pimp My Ride. The thing was the winner this week is a guy who bought a car for $500 and the mechanics said that the list of repairs was so great that they just bought him a new van. Then what the fuck are the mechanics for? Christ, they could have just taken him to a car lot and had him pick one out and save us 30 minutes of programming.

Not that that is the only thing on TV that has irked me recently, it is just one of many things. Especially commercials. If I ever meet the dork that plays Justin Case on those Safe Auto spots, I am inclined to punch him in the face. Likewise, there is a spot running for Cedar Point, an amusement park in Ohio, where you have a bunch of douche bag idiots trying to prove how hard core they are because they ride amusement park rides. At one point in the commercial a girl says, and I quote, “I was born on a roller coaster”, to which I say “How fucking stupid were your parents?” Your dad didn't have the common sense to take your mom to the hospital when she was in labor, but rather opted for a natural birth at an amusement park?

Sunday afternoon

Sorry, I snuck in a little nap, if by nap I mean from 5am till 9am. I managed to stay up fairly late, which is good since I am on overnights this week, but bad in that I still woke up relatively early. I might try to get an afternoon siesta in to rest up for tonight's festivities. Still, since I was up I figured I might as well go to breakfast and then pick up a couple of things at the grocery store. I had one of those brushes with what passes for Pittsburgh greatness while out, I saw Cyril Wecht at the grocery store. Part of me wanted to congratulate him for being found not guilty in the case brought against him by US Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, a case which looked more like a witch hunt than an actual trial brought about to correct a wrongdoing on Dr. Wecht's part. I have had some dealings with Dr. Wecht in the past, having booked him a number of times for radio shows that I work on, but I wouldn't classify us as friends per se, truth is he probably doesn't even know who I am, and given he was grocery shopping I figured it best not to bother him.

I must say, I am kind of liking using Open Office over Word Pad to write my blog entries. So far everything has worked okay, and I am not fond of just writing directly into Multiply, too many chances of things going wrong and me losing an entry. Given how little I have blogged recently, losing blog entries is probably the last thing I need to be doing. If I were to lose an entry, there is no saying I would even waste the effort to go back and try to recreate it.

Page three according to Open Office and I haven't said anything of merit yet. I would say that is just about par for the course.

Thankfully football season is underway again. Even if it is only training camp time and preseason games, anything beats baseball around here. The Pirates had their annual purging of talent, taking any players of value and trading them away to other franchises in lieu of prospects, minor leaguers that may or may not develop into professional players. The problem is, as soon as any of them develop, the Pirates trade them away again for more prospects and the process just repeats itself. The magic number for the club is now at 12. usually a magic number is the number of wins a team needs to secure a playoff spot, for the Pirates it is the number of losses they need to assure themselves of another losing season, their 17^th consecutive one at that, and a record for American sports franchises playing in any sport.

I did get another goodie from work the other day. Ed gave me a $20 cigar, which I haven't started to smoke yet. I want to save it for later this week. Maybe tomorrow to relax after my first overnight shift. One good thing about working overnights is that it should help the change meter a little bit, not that it has been terrible recently, but since I stopped being register guy it has been harder to come up with loose change. I mean, since the last blog entry I still have gathered another $1.80, so the total now is $104.50, far beyond where I thought I would be at this point, but it has slowed considerably since earlier in the year.

Okay, I am back, tried napping a little bit. Might have closed my eyes for a half hour or so. Not sure if it is the heat or just the fact that I am not used to working overnights, but I couldn't manage any decent amount of sleep. Oh well. At least I am up in time for the Scratchix reset on Facebook. Scratchix is an application where you scratch off online lottery tickets trying to win prizes. There are three types of prizes, tickets, merchandise or cash. Tickets are by far the most common and all they to is give you more tickets to scratch off. Merchandise and money are about equally rare, the prizes come in the form of tokens, that is you have to collect a specific number of tokens to claim the prize. The prizes are pretty cool too, like a Wii, Apple Iphone and Amazon Kindle are examples of the prizes you can win. So far I have won two tokens, one for the Wii and one for the Kindle, though it takes usually between 50-90 tokens to actually claim a prize. Last are the money prizes, of varying denominations, anywhere from $1 to $1000. The cash prizes can be cashed out once you get to $25, and submitted to a Paypal or Spare Change account. I have won a total of $3 on there, and rather than save up to cash out at a later date, I just bought more tickets with it. Anyway, the game resets every day at 6pm EST and you get three daily tickets + 1 ticket for every friend you have that sends you a ticket that day (sending tickets to friends is free). If any of the tickets you send out, or you received from someone win, then you both win that prize. Anyway, it is scratching time, so let's see how I do. There is a limit to the number of tickets from friends you can receive, I am not sure what that limit is because I haven't sought out enough friends that play to find out if I will ever hit that limit. I know I have 50 friends that play, and 2 of them were already maxed out, so 48 of my friends got a free ticket from me. Lets see if I can win anything.

My last friend ticket to scratch off was good for 3 free tickets. Woohoo! So far it has not been a good day for me. Okay, one of my daily tickets was good for..one free ticket. This is not going very well. Wait, one of the tickets I sent out won 3 free tickets, I am up to 7 free tickets for the day. And I jjust picked up another 3 tickets from another friend that brings the total to 10. Okay I am out of tickets, no big winners today. I might get some more as the evening progresses, other friends logging in and sending me tickets, or some more of the 48 I sent out winning, and me getting to share in those winning. Not everyone logs in at exactly the reset time, just those of us with no life. And in that regard, I most definitely qualify.

Great, I just turned on the Tv and started flipping through channels and saw a promo for “more to Love” which is really nothing more than the “Fat Bachelor”, a fat guy trying to pick up a fat chick. Which means that a couple dozen fat women, who probably already have issues about their weight get to find out that even a fat guy won't date them. Great, just great.

Well, that is something new, Scratchix just informed me that I was in the top amount of people to send tickets out today and awarded me an additional 25 tickets. That makes 35 tickets I have won. Just haven't won anything with them. Check that, another 10 free tickets, that is 45 today. Woohoo, 10 more tickets. This is actually par for the course with this game, lots of tickets, little else.

I actually did win some money on Friday. It had nothing to do with lottery tickets, poker machines at the bar, or even the new casino that opened downtown this past week. Rather, I went to my mailbox Friday on the way to the bus to go see the movie and there were two envelopes in my mailbox. They were from someone called Beverly Settlement. I saw them and first thing I thought was that it was probably a bill collector of some sort, but since I needed something to read at the bus stop I figured I would take them with me. As some of you know, I had a brief WalMart career about a year ago, I was there for a few months, but the travel to get there while I was working a full time job was too much so I ended up leaving there. Nothing against them, it was an okay place to work, just couldn't get my schedule to work around theirs. Anyway, apparently they were part of some sort of class action suit and the two envelopes were checks that were my share of the settlement, a whopping $100.06. I am not complaining, free money is free money.

Another update from Facebook, another of the tickets I sent out won 1 ticket. That is 56 freebies that I have won today. And another one, that is 57. The hits just keep on coming.

Monday Night

Well, made it through the first overnight shift, though I will be honest, around 5am I definitely hit a wall. The worst part was that I was almost falling asleep when I was counting out my drawer for the night. It wasn't all that busy, which I guess is a good thing, as it made counting out the bank and the lottery sales all the easier. As I was getting to leave I saw that one of the stock people due in in the morning was late, and someone at one of the other stores had called off, so I quickly scooted out the door before they asked me to stick around even longer. I had planned on going to breakfast after work, but by the time I was done I was so tired that I just hopped a bus and went home. I was home probably less than 30 minutes before I was out like a light. I am hoping I will be a little more awake this evening, I managed to sleep until 4 this afternoon, so I guess I got about 8 hours in, which is better than I usually do.

I was right, the change meter would pick up with me on register. That is because many people we deal with are either drunk or in a hurry to get drunk, so they end up just leaving their change behind. One night in and I picked up $4.16. That makes the total now $108.66. I have three more cracks at adding to the total this week, though I am trying not to get my hopes to far up.

I mentioned earlier some TV shows and commercials that irk me. I wish I could say that those were the only ones, but sadly they are not. Octomom is getting a special on Fox, Fat Camp is coming back to TV this fall and even the normally useless cable channels are getting in the act with suck offerings as “Man V. Food”, where the host goes around the country visiting restaurants that have huge food offerings and seeing if he can finish them. That is right folks, we have fallen so far down the evolutionary ladder that we will now sit in front of our idiot boxes to watch someone else eat. Not that the fall looks to be any more promising, most of the show promos are just completely uninteresting to say the least. Thankfully between Hulu and Surf The Channel I can just pick what I want to watch and leave the rest off of my radar screen entirely.

Even some of the shows I like have been utterly disappointing. “Hell's Kitchen” in particular. One would think a reality show where the winner gets to be a head chef at a restaurant would involve people that can actually cook, but I guess that wouldn't make it nearly as entertaining as making a show with a cast of utter buffoons. Two weeks ago the skill set of those involves was so bad that they were relegated to making pasta for a group of firefighters. One would hope that this group could pull off something as uncomplicated as spaghetti and meatballs, but no, they were busy fucking up such complicated fare as garlic bread. Then this past week one of the two teams was so awful that through the course of an entire dinner service they couldn't sent out a single entree, leaving the other team to not only serve their entire dining room, but the other team's dining room as well.

I am looking for a new breakfast diner to frequent. With the closing of the Steel City Grill downtown and Ton's on the South Side getting remodeled and looking less and less like a cool greasy spoon, I need a new place to go to. I know some locals would suggest Ritter's Diner, but the few times I have been there I was highly unimpressed. I have a couple places I want to check out, maybe Wednesday morning after I get off of work, since I am not due in Thursday night and I have to come back into work to pick up my paycheck anyway, so sneaking out to find a breakfast diner might be a good use of my time.

Notice how good I have been about not talking politics in this entry? I don't know, there is just so much bitterness out there, and I have plenty of my own without importing that of others. Trying to weed out those with legitimate arguments and concerns over those that want to yell simply for the sake of yelling is just too time consuming process for me. We saw it when Bush was President, and now we see it from the other side with Obama in office. And I am not the one to police the concerned people from the idiots. I had my share for 8 years trying and not succeeding in keeping my own party in order. Far to often people will add to their side of the aisle simply for numbers sake, not for one moment considering just who it is they are actually adding. It was like when the war protestors would add any group they could find when organizing a a march, not realizing some of those groups were doing more harm than good. Prime example from a few years back at one of these parades, one of the largest organized war protest parades the city would have, at then end of the parade there was a stage set up and some speakers were doing that which occurs at such an event, when some slam poets took the stage. All of a sudden it was a “fuck this”, “bitch that” and a list of curse words that would only lengthen this blog entry. The problem is that because the event was widely publicized anfd on a weekend, many people went as families to partake in the march and at the conclusion, it was their kids that were subjected to this nonsense, leaving them to wonder just what lot of people they just roped on with. Now we see that from the other side, with fools like the “Birthers” stealing credibility from those that have legitimate concerns. As long as groups fail to police their own, it is their credibility that suffers. Look at Cindy Sheehan and ask yourself if her argument was more powerful as a grieving mother camped outside the President's Texas home, or as one of a number of people that took that message and turned her vigil into more of a state fair type atmosphere. Simply adding people for the sake of numbers doesn't make a message more powerful, far too often it dilutes it. A person asking a legitimate question regarding proposed health care reform right now is getting drown out by those that would rather scream at their representatives and exhibit behavior that if tried it as a kid with our parents, we would have gotten our asses beat.

The sad thing is, as I make this argument I realize that for the most part it falls on deaf ears. Which is why other than the last little bit of a diatribe, I am not wasting my time on such an argument. Nobody wants to be introspective, so no sense in me trying to convince them otherwise.

Tuesday night

Okay, back again and adding even more to this page or pages as the case may be. Managed to do a little better last night, made it through the entire shift without getting all sleepy eyed. As a bonus, I put the NFL Network on at work last night, so I got to see the rebroadcast of the Dolphins – Jaguars game. I have become a fan of that channel at work. Usually we have some annoying news channel on, whether it be Fox or CNN (rarely does MSNBC get selected) but I just find all of those channels annoying, whereas I can watch football pretty much any time, and we me in charge I get to make that call.

Of course tonight I am not sure I want to watch. I hope they have a game on, but I have a feeling that it is going to be non stop Brett Favre crap. One would thing after his recent failings that nobody would be stupid enough to sign him to their roster, but if the Minnesota Vikings want to throw their season away, all I can say is better them than the Steelers. I know it isn't an opinion shared by many, but face facts, Favre has only one Super Bowl victory to his credit in two appearances, and since his last appearance, a loss to Denver, his playoff record is 3-6 in 9 playoff games and has thrown more interceptions than touchdowns in those games. And certainly the more recent history of last season with the Jets, where the team was in control of it playoff fortunes until Brett Favre threw the season away down the stretch, with 9 interceptions in the team's final 5 games, going from AFC East front runner to watching the playoffs at home. The Jets were smart to rid themselves of him and his “I'm retired, I'm not retired” antics that have taken place for the last few seasons now. Now the Vikings, with one of the better defenses in the NFL and Adrian Peterson in the backfield, arguably the league's best running back, will throw away a season entertaining this washed up has been at quarterback and everyone on the roster will have to wait another season to possibly contend for the NFC's spot in the Super Bowl, because Favre will certainly throw this one away.

I'll admit, I didn't plan a football rant, but sometimes things happen through the course of making a blog, especially when one takes the amount of time that I am in putting one together. I would have been just as content talking about the checkered shorts at work or something, but this things has really just taken a life of its own, and I am just along for the ride at this point. I am starting to think maybe I should blog on a more regular basis, to keep things like this from happening again, but I know how lazy I have been recently, so chances are that won't happen. At least I am taking the opportunity here to also work on my D&D character.

I should note that Lynn's first show for the Pittsburgh City paper was today. I listened to a little bit of it, she was on with Chris Potter, the editor of the City Paper and one of my favorite guests to book back in the day, regardless of who the host was. He has a political leaning, left for those wanting to know, but he doesn't come off as abrasive as some with ideologies do, and actually can be quite funny as a guest, something sorely lacking from the political claptrap that passes for talk these days. Anyway, I listened for about 15 minutes of the hour long show, I had to download and install WinAmp to get the audio up and running, making it the first program for me to install on my laptop.

I am still thinking of getting a new desktop, but will probably wait until later in the week before hopping onto Ebay to make that purchase. I want to see how cheap I can get away with it, since I am all about being cheap, but at the same time realizing that I would rather have my laptop solely for portable usage and not my main computer.

Dinner has arrived. I tried a new place tonight, Andy's Gourmet, just to see how good or bad it would be. They have mostly Chinese food, and not that my standby, Chopsticks, is bad or anything, but I wanted to just try a new place for a change. As a added bonus, the delivery person was female and kind of cute, which makes parting with money a tad bit easier on the eyes if not the wallet.

I think Hell's Kitchen is on tonight. I am wondering how bad these alleged chefs can screw up this time. It is sad that my TV viewing has come to this, enjoying the failure of others, but what else to you expect when you offer little outside of “reality” programming.

Thursday afternoon

I am going to try to make this the last entry in this particular missive, it has gone on far long enough. Last night was the third overnight in a row that I had to work and normally that would be followed by me coming home and going straight to bed, but the thing is I have to work Friday morning, technically this is a day off, even though it is an abbreviated one. But because of the turnaround in schedule, I am trying to stay up a little later today so I don't wake up and be up all night later on.

Yesterday was actually a busy day, at least by overnight standards. I did over $1000 on my register alone, plus the normal cleaning and organizing details that fall to the night turn crew. The lottery was especially busy yesterday, what with the Powerball prize in the ballpark of $230 million. We ended up selling over $2300 in lottery tickets through the course of the day. Yes, I threw $5 bat it, won $3 and with that type of financial planning I would like to think my career in politics is assured.

Ed was there last night when I got in around 10:30. Usually he is gone long before then, but apparently it was busy enough that he wanted to make sure everything ran okay. The first thing he said to me when I arrived was how much he missed having me on dayshift. I can't imagine, simply because I haven't seen what all has and hasn't been done in my absence. It may make for a long Friday morning. Still, it is nice to be appreciated for what all I do.

I sent Lynn an email to let her know that I caught some of her first show. Things seem to be running okay, but I can tell she is somewhat flummoxed at times, as she is responsible for lots of things that previously weren't a concern for her. Things like levels and taking unscreened calls, stuff that I would normally take care of, but things that she is now running by herself.

Anyway, I mentioned earlier that I was going to go look for a new greasy spoon to have breakfast at. I tried that this morning, heading over to the city's Strip District to try out DeLuca's Restaurant. Many people, including some friends of mine have said that they have the best breakfast in Pittsburgh. And since I was looking for reasons to stay awake today, I figured a jaunt over there would be a good way to kill some time and get some coffee in me as well. It was a little bit of a hike, probably around 20 blocks or so, but if it was going to be a good breakfast I figured it would be worth it. Sadly, that wasn't the case.

Upon arriving I first noticed a sign that said please wait to be seated. No problem. In short order a waitress saw me and asked if I was by myself, which is almost always the case, and the just pointed to a booth and said I could sit there. Hell I could have done that and saved them the trouble. On the plus side they were quick in getting my coffee and menu to me. I wasn't sure what to order, the breakfast menu took up probably 2 and a half pages of a 4 page menu. Not sure what to get, I opted simply for the breakfast special, two eggs, hash browns, meat, toast and coffee. I opted for over easy on the eggs, spicy sausage, and white toast. What I got was less than good. The eggs were okay, but the hash browns seemed like they had been on the grill for a few hours, the sausage patties, if that is what they were, were dried out and had the texture of hockey pucks, and the toast wasn't white bread, but wheat. And the toast didn't even come out with the meal, the easiest item to make took the most amount of time to get to my table. Plus they didn't butter the toast, but rather had those refrigerated butter pats that when you try to butter your own bread you end up ripping it to shreds. Highly uncool. They were highly attentive on my coffee which was good, but the food was less than spectacular. It won't be my hang out for breakfast, though I may go back and try something else from the menu at a later date, just no time soon.

I mentioned earlier in the blog that I have been playing Scratchix on Facebook, Just got a message today that one of the people I sent a ticket to won a token for an Amazon Kindle, and since I was the offending party, that means I win one as well. I now have 3 of the 70 tokens needed to claim the prize. It can't be worse than the last prize I won, when the other day I was putting in more Coke Reward points and thought I would check out what prizes were available. One of the prizes was a $5 coupon for Campusfood.com. I use that service when I order in, they have a list of many of the restaurants that deliver to me, so it is easier to go to that one page and look for what I want than to sort through dozens of phone numbers and websites trying to place a delivery order. After claiming the prize I went onto the page to order dinner and every restaurant that I tried redeeming the $5 with didn't accept it. It was just maddening to win a prize and realize that I have absolutely no use for it.

I think I complained about the show Hell's Kitchen earlier in the blog, though given how long this is I can't really be sure, but I did manage to sit through another episode on Tuesday and despite the show being 5 weeks in and presumably the 5 weakest cooks having been eliminated, they still couldn't manage to make it through a single dinner service where the customers actually got fed. I swear they don't pick people to compete based on their ability to cook, but their ability to look like complete and utter buffoons on TV. The winner of the show shouldn't be given the job of executive chef at a restaurant, they should be given a cookbook so they can learn how to do whatever the fuck it is they think they are actually good at, because right now it just looks like the only skill they bring to the table is utter incompetence.

Well I am going to wrap this up, not because I can't ramble on, but because it looks like it might storm outside and I want to get this posted before anything crazy, like the power going out, actually happens. I will have to save the shorts story for another time. That's okay, it gives me a reason to blog again someday.