Multiply 365 Day 98 - Hmmmmm

So I am sitting on the laptop again, nothing wrong with the desktop, just being lazy and typing while lying down. Which as it turns out, isn't nearly as comfortable as one might imagine.

As I type this I am trying to pay some attention to the Philadelphia Flyers - New York Islanders hockey game tonight. Sadly it isn't on TV anywhere where I can get it, and Yahoo didn't pick that game to broadcast, though they have two other games on later on tonight. What makes the game interesting for me, neither a Flyers or Islanders fan is that it may affect where the Penguins go in the playoffs. With one game remaining this season, both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are tied in points, though Philadelphia has the tiebreaker. I am not sure how that process works, it has something to do with games won in regulation and what not. But the scenario plays out like this, if the Flyers win tonight then Pittsburgh is the #4 seed in the NHL playoffs and will host Tampa Bay in the first round. If something else should happen, Pittsburgh could get the #2 seed and play host to Buffalo. Should the Flyers lose in regulation, Pittsburgh would only need a win or an overtime/shootout loss for the #2 spot, if the Flyers manage to garner a point by at least making the extra session, then Pittsburgh would need a regulation win tomorrow for the #2 spot. Since the division winners are seeded 1-3 regardless of points, there is no way Pittsburgh could get the #3 spot (currently held by Boston) and they trail the #1 seed Washington Capitals in total points, so the best they can do is the #2 spot. Not that even a #4 seed is bad given how short handed they have played this year because of injuries, but if you were to poke me with a stick in order for me to say which would be the better matchup for Pittsburgh to make the second round of the playoffs I would have to say it would be Buffalo.

While I was typing that long drawn out explanation I should say that the Flyers and Islanders are tied 3-3 in the first period. That is the type of game I wouldn't mind seeing on TV, though I imagine the players would prefer that their respective goaltenders make a save every now and again.

Really that is about all I can hope for from hockey this year. The fantasy team has officially be taken out to the barn and put down. I am still putting in my daily lineup, but with two days left in the season I can't see me making up a couple hundred points.

Sorry, hopped over to facebook to tweak my Madden team a bit. I am close to leveling up again (102 for those keeping score at home) which I should complete some time in the next couple of hours. Also while I was away the Islanders scored again, its NY 4 PHI 3 in the second period. Though because I was using the Yahoo scoreboard feature, the score kept bouncing back to early in the first period. Wake me when Yahoo actually does something right.

I am still rolling in Swagbucks these days. I got an Amazon gift card on Thursday, another $5 for my account and on the same day I cashed in enough bucks for a new card. Plus, while I usually am disqualified from most of the surveys there, recently I have actually snagged a few for 50-75 swagbucks a piece. Two I got during the Swagbucks team promotion, anyone that uses Swagbucks could opt into a contest where the entrants were divided into two teams, Team Swag and Team Bucks. I know, not very original, but then neither is this entry so far. Over the course of 5 days, any time a team member did a survey or a task, or completed a special offer, those bucks would get credited to that team and whichever team had the most bucks at the end of 5 days got an additional 20 swagbucks. I was on Team Bucks and I am pretty sure we won, we had a 40,000 buck lead on the last day and I actually contributed a bit to the teams total, with about 150 bucks that I earned all on my little lonesome through a couple of surveys and just doing free offers. I have done paid offers on their site before, I have bought flowers from Proflowers.com through them and I used their link to WalMart to get my parents HDTV for Christmas, both of which kicked back some bucks for me, but usually I just to the free offers like videos for 2 bucks and what not.

Philadelphia scored and it is 4-4 in the second. Goaltending is indeed a 4 letter word. It isn't nail biting time by any sense, the Penguins are in the playoffs after all, but it would be nice to get the two seed, and a new banner for the new arena as division champions.

I would like to take a moment to explain yesterdays entry, which garnered two compliments, two more than I usually get I might add. I would like to say that I had some great idea when I sat down and had it all but mapped out in my brain where I was going to go, but I really didn't. It was almost all just top of the head stuff, and once I picked a path to wander down it just went from there. Sure picking on Donald Trump is easy, it is low hanging fruit after all, but once he opened his pie hole the other day, they he also once again opened himself up to ridicule. The fact he views his television show as somehow being the piece that is holding the NBC ship afloat, when in fact it has been relegated to Sunday nights because if it were put up against week night competition it would get crushed (just as it has in the past) goes directly to the ego of the man. To him, it is just Donald Trump's world, and we are allowed to live in it. To most everyone else he has become a cartoon character, a buffoon who will say anything as long as it garners him an iota of publicity.

I did add another book to the shelf off to the right. While it was good, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it because much of the information in it is dated, at least by today's standards, which is saying something because I think the book was written about 5 years ago. But if you get past the statistical stuff, many of the players mentioned no longer even play football, and the numbers cited about the growth of fantasy football are below current day levels in such areas as participants, revenue, leagues, blah, blah, blah, the writing itself was very good and anyone that has the balls to quit their job to spend an entire year in hopes of winning his fantasy league title (spoiler alert, he failed) as well as taking the time to write a book about it is either incredibly smart (I don't know what the book sales are to know if he made more at his old advertising job or not) or clinically insane. I will say that it was better than the documentary I watched, "Fantasyland", about a guy in a fantasy baseball league, where the author/subject was too much involved in his project, so much so that he came off as more of an ass than anything else.

PHI 5 NYI 4 Still in the second period. I guess I should probably call it a night. I get to sleep in tomorrow, again no breakfast is scheduled, though I am thinking of scheduling one with my aunt next weekend. We just have to dot the i's and cross the t's and it is a done deal. And I am thinking about checking out the Pittsburgh Burger Company sometime this coming week, it looks like it will be delish. If I can find a menu online somewhere I will add it to the page. Until next time......

Multiply 365 Day 97 - I am your retailer God

 

Back on the laptop this evening because I am running a system defrag on the desktop. Been having some issues with it locking up on websites and not moving as fast as it could, hoping this will help with the problem, though I'll be honest, my preferred method would be to go all “Office Space” on it, but while I am sure there would be a brief feeling of relief but I am not sure how good repairs with a baseball bat would actually turn out.

So today was day one of the Ed regime at work. Thankfully he was distracted on a few other side projects, which meant that at least for a day I wasn't getting yelled at. Not that that will not happen, but it just didn't happen yet. And for the time being it would seem that our register system is once again functional. There are still a few glitches in it, but those are bugs that hopefully can be ironed out over time. But the main problems seem to have been worked out. Since I need a good blog entry, it is time to revisit the history of our dreaded cash register system.

Many, many moons ago, men did not populate the earth. The land was full of flora and fauna, and there were animals here and there. It was at this time that the original program for our register system, Ultimate Retailer, was born. As evolution began to take hold, man was first part of that process, but as humans began to procreate, those that did so were called Birthers. Everyone else was a Middle Eastern terrorist.

As Birther begat Birther, and terrorist split like amoebae to create other terrorists, a store was born in downtown Pittsburgh, called Smithfield News. As the store grew in size and business, it was deemed that something better than the abacuses in the back would be needed for counting the monies that flowed freely into the coffers. The first plan was to just hire one of the money counters from the temple, but as things go with the church, he did not want to be paid in cash, but rather in first born sons. A bidding war ensued, but eventually the money counter from the temple was hired by the Catholic Church, who offered him as many first born sons as he could fondle.

With the money counter plan a failure, the issue of finding a way to keep track of the revenues remained. Until that is, a man in a suit said he had the Holy Grail of all that counts monies, Ultimate Retailer. He looked all official and even had business cards with the words SCR Technologies scribbled on them. Of course those words were written in ink, and just below the scribbled out words “Used car salesman”. He even offered to demonstrate his product by pulling out his Commodore 64 and making the screen fill up with an continous line of zeros. When asked how this happened, he exclaimed it was the magic of Go To commands, the most powerful commands in all the English language. And for just a small pittance he could have this program work miracles. The Smithfield people rejoiced, there was dancing in the streets, and there was even rumor of a golden calf involved in the festivities.

Shortly after the annointing of the new system however, things began to seem off. Error messages came where before the magic of zeroes once occurred. Customers began wondering why it was taking longer than in the olden abacus days to simply buy a beverage or a newspaper. So sacrifices were made, chickens slaughtered, incense burned, anything that might bring back the the SCR god. On occasion the SCR God would send a message, usually it was either “You have forsaken me” or “The warranty is only good for 20,000 miles”. But the problems persisted. It got so bad that the abacus salesman would crank call, he wouldn't say anything, he'd just hold up his phone and let everyone hear the sliding of beads back and forth.

While all of this was going on, Donald Trump decided that he wanted to be a Birther too. The only problem to that plan was he couldn't announce he was a Birther until someone admitted actually giving birth to him. Otherwise he was just a amoeba splitting terrorist is sheep's clothing, even if that clothing cost more than most people's homes.

As for Smithfield, all seemed lost. Lines of both Birthers and terrorists got longer as everything pretty much ground to a halt. Machines that originally spit out zeroes, then error messages, now just issued taunts like STFU, when they worked at all which wasn't all that often. They instead formed a union and went on strike, demanding 75% of any transaction they recorded. It got so bad that people from miles around would come and gaze in wonder at the spectacle, rather than actually purchase goods.

Okay, so maybe things didn't go down exactly like this. They actually happened more like this. About 5 years ago the store purchased a new register system, Ultimate Retailer and they purchased it from a local vendor, SCR Technologies. The system was bug riddled almost from day one, and the service that SCR offered in fixing said problems usually amounted to showing up on site, saying everything was perfectly fine, issuing a bill for their time and then leaving, without ever really doing anything at all to fix the problem. The problem was magnified by having people use the software without any idea of what they were actually doing, so now the problem is two fold, the software wasn't being serviced by the people who sold it, and the people who used it had no idea of what they were doing. It was even more complicated because there was never a manual given on how the software was supposed to run in the first place. The problem had gotten so bad that I actually hopped online and looked up the company info for Ultimate Retailer and we just started dealing with them directly, rather than through a third party vendor. Turns out since the software was sold to us there have been three upgrades, none of which SCR ever told us about, and there were mistakes from when they first installed the software anyway. Plus the issue of things not being done properly was also addressed, and hopefully by Monday I will have an actual manual to refer to if I have any questions, and the system will not be brought to a grinding halt any time I go to make a simple price change or delete an item we no longer carry. Yes, it isn't nearly as colorful as the Biblical turn of events I started the story with, and while I certainly stretched the truth in some of the things I said, the registers didn't actually form a union after all, there is still no proof anyone willingly admits to giving birth to Donald Trump.

Multiply 365 Day 96 - Sleep

I am just taking a break between naps here.  I went to bed around 6pm only to just wake up now at 10pm, so I can either be up half the night or just go baclk to bed nopw when sleeping might still be an option.  So sleep it is.