Multiply 365 Day 22 - Yesterday was shorter

Guess who's back? If you guessed anyone but me, you must go back and start again. For the rest of you, it is indeed me and we have lots to get to so let's begin shall we.

First, sorry about the abbreviated entry yesterday, as I explained I ended up napping and then waking up late and in order for an entry to be done within the time frame of one per day I had less than 30 minutes to do something. Once I start talking, or typing, 30 minutes is not going to be nearly enough. Plus I was using Open Office for typing, just because my mistypings stick out there as I am doing them, rather than Wordpad where I have to wait until I copy and paste into Multiply and then track back. Well Open Office was saying that an updated version was available, so I figured I would just to a quick entry and then go about updating. All seems to have went well, I am now using Open Office again as I type this and I haven't had any problems yet, though it is still very early.

The nap was a bad idea however. Not that I planned napping, I was sitting in my recliner watching the Simpsons when I saw a promo for Monk come on TV. The station I was watching airs two episodes of Monk on Friday night so I was thinking to myself I will have to get up and change the channel, and that is really the last thing I thought because I was out like a light within a minute of having that realization.

Problem is when I finally did wake up I couldn't get back to sleep. I putzed around on the internet, first heading over to Facebook where at midnight my Madden app resets, so I started playing off a few games there, then over to Pogo to play a game to work on a badge, then back to Multiply to do a couple of hockey videos, back to Facebook at 1am to catch the Super Scratch Off reset, play off my Booty Slot credits, then to Swagbucks to collect my free daily bucks, where I found out my Shop and Earn bucks were credited from the TV I bought from Walmart for Christmas, so I had enough for another $5 Amazon gift card, which meant I had to go to Gmail to confirm my order. Then I decided to get off of the web for a bit and played some Diablo 2 on Battlenet. I finished a quest there and it is like 3am, so I decide to appease the lesser angels of my nature and brew a pot of coffee. Caffeine in hand I went and checked a couple of message boards I post on (I don't only write here after all, what you think I only did this? Really? Back to the top of the page for you). I also was listening to the radio, Fox Sports was coming in locally without other programming mixing in with it so it was tolerable, and checked on my fantasy hockey team. I am still in third place in that league, I flirted with first place for a couple of week just before Christmas but then I got the fantasy lump of coal in my stocking and was relegated back to third. Third would still be good for money (I paid for this league, unlike football) but I would just be basically getting my entry fee back. I made one move on the free agent wire, looked at a trade that was offered to me (I didn't get to act one way or the other, the trade offer was pulled before I could decide). Then I headed over to Scratchix, where I have been faithfully sending out my tickets daily, even if I haven't been scratching them all that much. I had over 2000 tickets accumulated, so I decided I should scratch off a few, I burned off a little over 800, I won one more token for an Amazon gift card and one ticket for $2, though given I expect to never be paid anything I am not all that excited, as evidenced by the fact that I let myself get over 2000 tickets to begin with. By this time it is nearing 6am, so I just decide to stay up and go to breakfast at Pamela's. I know I have a breakfast planned for Sunday at DeLuca's. But I was up and I had money so what the hell. Besides, I had to go into work anyway, so I might as well stop and have some good eats along the way.

But before I continue forward I need to take a step back. After all I am leaving out all of yesterday by simply saying that I napped too much. I did have one of my “snappage” moments. Snappage is when, in a relatively quick period of time, my concerns for someone or something change to a complete opposite degree. It isn't a jump the shark moment, because when something jumps the shark there has to be an investment ahead of time. So when Fonzie actually did jump the shark, part of the problem is that there was significant investment in time prior to that moment that made that moment all the more depressing for the viewer. For me that would be the wiping from existence of the Peter Parker/Mary Jane marriage in Spiderman, at that point the book jumped the shark and I haven't been back. Snappage is different in that there is no prior investment. Anyway at work one of the packages I ordered finally arrived, the laptop for our other store. Because I have been nominated as tech support guy, that meant I had to go to the other store and at least get the fundamentals out of the way, taking the old one out, putting the new one in. I don't have access to the actual store software they use, so I couldn't install that, but I could at least get the new laptop up and running and connected to the internet. All of that happened in relative short order, so once that was done I stepped outside and had a cigarette and when I did I noticed something in the doorway. It was a weekly bus pass for the Port Authority. Usually I buy a bus pass for myself, so at first I thought maybe I dropped it when I went to get my cigarettes, but my bus pass was still in my pocket, so now I have two of them. Not that a second one does me much good, it is only good for the rest of Friday and Saturday before it needs renewed, so it isn't like I could even sell it to someone for more than like a buck or two. Then, as I am standing there a female comes out of the store and she starts checking her pockets like she has lost something. The angels of my better nature said that she might have lost her bus pass, the angels of my lesser nature say finders keepers. I caved in to my better angels and asked if she lost something, to which she doesn't reply, she is just yakking on her cell phone and furiously checking her pockets. So I ask her again if she dropped something and she yells at me that I can't help her. Literally, just yelled and at that moment snappage occurred. Whether she was missing the bus pass or not I didn't care, I was actually hoping she did lose it because she was never going to get it back from me. For all I could care she could walk the rest of the week, and given it was 0 degrees outside this morning, hopefully freeze in the process. Instead I took the bus pass back to our main store and gave it to one of my coworkers to use for the next couple of days, maybe save them a buck or two (a ride on PAT is now $2.25, so if someone used it for one day of work that is still $4.50 they don't have to spend, not including any other place they would choose to go with it).

My books that I have been blogging about both have and have not arrived. Yes, there is a story with that so allow me to explain. We being with the tracking information on my order. See if you can see what is wrong with this picture.

Date Time Location Event Details

January 22, 2011 03:35:00 PM Pittsburgh PA US Delivery attempted

January 22, 2011 03:35:00 PM --- Available for pickup

January 22, 2011 03:34:00 PM Pittsburgh PA US Delivered

January 18, 2011 09:50:00 AM Pittsburgh PA US Out for delivery

January 18, 2011 06:40:00 AM Pittsburgh PA US Arrival Scan

January 15, 2011 02:10:44 AM Fedex Smartpost Leetsdale PA US Departure Scan

January 14, 2011 11:03:36 AM Fedex Smartpost Leetsdale PA US Arrival Scan

January 12, 2011 02:05:00 AM US Shipment has left seller facility and is in transit

First I should note that the facility in which the package originated is in Lexington, Kentucky just in case you were curious. Now again I ask if anyone has caught the problem yet.

For those that haven't figured it out yet, here is the answer. The distance between Lexington, Kentucky and Leetsdale is 288 miles, a distance that was covered in 2 days. The distance between Leetsdale and Pittsburgh is 14 miles. So my package (which was not express or any other quick delivery for those that are asking) went 288 miles in two days, then took 3 days to go 14. And then, even after actually being in the proper city of Pittsburgh, it took 4 days to deliver to me. Well hold that thought, because they really didn't deliver to me at all, they left a note in my mailbox saying I could go pick it up at the local post office. As you can see that delivery was made at 3:35pm today (Saturday), but the local post office is only open for customers until 2pm on Saturday, so a package that was actually in Pittsburgh on the morning of January 18^th can't be picked up ion Pittsburgh till the morning of January 24^th. Apparently we have opted around these parts to go back to the Pony Express or carrier pigeon or something, because I think if you give me 6 days to get there, I can pretty much walk to any post office in Pittsburgh and just grab the damn thing myself. This my friends is another fine example of government work. If you had done this poor of a job at your local place of employment, trust me, your ass would be out in the street.

Just hopped over to Facebook and received a message from my aunt, DeLuca's is on for tomorrow at 8:30am. I hope she knows what she is doing, I expect there will be a line by that time, not that I mind waiting in the cold, the thoughts of a good DeLuca's breakfast will keep me warm, but I doubt we will be seated as soon as we get there. Between the normal rush that would happen on a weekend and the fact that the Steelers are hosting the AFC Championship game later that day, I expect the Strip District will be buzzing tomorrow morning with people out buying Steelers paraphernalia and what not.

With that said I should probably call it a nite. Sure I could pontificate on Keith Olbermann getting fired from MSNBC, or ending his contract or however it is getting spun, but really it is just one less gas bag out there, and that is a good thing. Now if only we could rid ourselves of a few dozen more maybe we will not have to talk about global warming as much.