B365V2.128 - My top 100

       If you are wondering what this entry is all about, it is simply my favorite 100 albums (or CDs, or MP3 or whatever it is they are called these days) of my lifetime.  The only stipulation I put on myself is that I can only use an artist once, so if they have multiple albums that I like, only my most favorite is on the list.  The list is not a ranking, because my tastes change with my mood, so on any day any one of these could be my favorite.Besides, this will give you plenty of stuff to listen to until I get around to doing another blog.


1)  Jane's Addiction - Ritual de lo Habitual
2)  The Replacements - Pleased to Meet Me
3)  Prince - 1999
4)  New Order - Substance
5)  The Cure - Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
6) The Affordable Floors - Drumming on the Walls
7)  Face to Face - Big Choice
8)  Alphaville - Forever Young
9)  Big Pig - Bonk
10)  Depeche Mode - Music for the Masses
11)  XTC - Oranges and Lemons
12)  Yazoo - Upstairs at Eric's
13)  Gene Loves Jezebel - Discover
14)  The Housemartins - The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death
15)  Toad the Wet Sprocket - Dulcinea
16)  The The - Infected
17)  Dead or Alive - Mad Bad and Dangerous to Know
18)  Big Audio Dynamite - This is Big Audio Dynamite
19)  They Might Be Giants - Lincoln
20)  Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine
21)  Ministry - The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste
22)  Howard Jones - One to One
23)  Korn - Korn
24)  The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - More Noise and Other Disturbances
25)  The Hollies - Evolution
26)  Big Star - #1 Record
27)  Tori Amos - Under the Pink
28)  Sinead O'Connor - The Lion and the Cobra
29)  Johnny Cash - I Walk the Line
30)  Erasure - The Circus
31)  Modern English - After the Snow
32)  Flesh for Lulu - Long Live the New Flesh
33)  Keb' Mo' - Just Like You
34)  INXS - Kick
35)  Jesus Jones - Doubt
36)  The Smithereens - Eleven
37)  Queensryche - Operation Mindcrime
38)  Metallica - And Justice For All
39)  Living Colour - Time's Up
40)  Tom Waits -Small Change
41)  The Church - Starfish
42)  ABBA - Gold
43)  Squeeze  -Singles 45s and under
44)  REM - Document
45)  B-52's - Wild Planet
46)  Goo Goo Dolls -Dizzy Up The Girl
47)  The Cult -Sonic Temple
48)  Kix - Blow My Fuse
49)  The Pixies -Doolittle
50)  The Smiths - Louder Than Bombs
51)  Material Issue -International Pop Overthrow
52)  The Jesus and Mary Chain -Automatic
53)  Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See
54)  Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs -Show Your Bones
55)  Coheed and Cambria -No World For Tomorrow
56)  Fiona Apple - Tidal
57)  The Alarm - Strength
58)  The Police -Synchronicity
59)  U2 - The Unforgettable Fire
60)  Crayon Death - John's Dad
61)  The Soupdragons - Lovegod
62)  Arrested Development - 3 Years, 5 Months, and 2 Days in the Life of
63)  Sisters of Mercy - Floodland
64)  Dead Can Dance - Into the Labyrinth
65)  Siouxsie and the Banshees - Peepshow
66)  Peter Gabriel - So
67)  Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense
68)  ZZ Top - Eliminator
69)  Cheap Trick - Live at Budokan
70)  Motley Crue - Shout at the Devil
71) Bon Jovi - 7800 Degrees Fahrenheit
72)  Neil Diamond - You Don't Bring Me Flowers
73) Stevie Wonder - Talking Book
74)  Sammy Davis Jr - Sammy Davis Jr Now
75)  Tennessee Ernie Ford - Sixteen Tons
76)  Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
77)  City Sleeps - Not an Angel
78)  Ben Harper - Diamonds on the Inside
79)  George Benson - Breezin'
80)  Aretha Franklin - I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You
81)  Earth, Wind and Fire - That's the Way of the World
82)  The Buzzcocks - Love Bites
83)  Genesis - Abacab
84)  Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
85)  Garbage - Garbage
86) Public Image Limited - 9
87)  Camper Van Beethoven - Key Lime Pie
88)  Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians - Globe of Frogs
89)  Etta James - Tell Mama
90)  Nina Simone - I Put A Spell on You
91)  Social Distortion - Social Distortion
92)  Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine
93)  Midnight Oil - Diesel and Dust
94)  Psychadelic Furs - Midnight to Midnight
95)  The Godfathers - Birth, School, Work, Death
96)  The Call - Reconciled
97)  The Eurythmics - Revenge
98)  The Sundays - Reading, Writing and Arithmetic
99)  The Pretenders - Learning to Crawl
100)  Concrete Blonde - Bloodletting

B365v2.127 - Two down, one to go

I had mentioned the other day that I would be left in charge of Smithfield News all by my little lonesome for a couple of days, Brian was going to be out of town and Ed made his winterly sojourn to Florida early this year. One the management flow chart that left yours truly at the top. Now I haven't gone drunk with power the last two days, in fact I have been scrambling trying to keep the ship from sinking. Allow me to explain.

I got into work about a half hour early Monday morning. I figured I would give myself some extra time to deal with the weekend paperwork and what not, get my ducks all in a row and tackle the day. Except it didn 't go quite like that.

I had the lottery banged out in decent time Monday morning, and I was at Brian's desk working on the sales numbers and listening to Spotify. It was dare I say, going swimmingly. But if there is anything I learned about swimming this summer is it is just a few feet from drowning. As I am at the desk I see Spotify say that it went offline. No big thing, Brian's computer probably is riddled with viruses. I have no idea what he opens back there when he views his email, but at least once a week he does something that calls for my attention because something it has stopped working. So I reboot the computer, but that doesn't solve the problem. I find out that in fact all of the computers in the building have went offline.

This isn't my first time tackling this rodeo either, we have the name and number of a Verizon tech guy filed away for just such emergencies. The last time this happened, it wasn't an us problem, Verizon had a local outtage. So I am following the steps they tell me to take on the phone and lo and behold, they tell me I need to reset the modem. That made things worse, not better. We called Russel to see if he could solve our problems and he did, as well as saying that everyone that called Verizon to get back lonline he was being forced to visit that day because it was simply a local outtage and nothing wrong with any one locations equipment. Had they just told us to wait, everything would have been fine as soon as service was restored. So I am thinking again, this could be a local outtage issue, I don't want to call them and fuck with the equipment needlessly, so I call Russell, see if he knows anything about an outtage. I get his voicemail, but that is all. Now us losing internet service is a big thing because that means we lose our ability to do credit and debit transactions. So I try unplugging all of the modems and routers and plugging them back in (but not resetting anything) but no luck there. I figure if this is a local issue, that would explain why Russell hasn't gotten back to me yet. Finally I call him back about 3pm after he hadn't returned my call. He had good reason not too though, he took the day off to take his dog to the vet. But he walked me through a couple of things to try, which didn't work, and promised he would stop by in the morning to look at things himself.

So I come in this morning, figuring that I would have to deal with the credit/debit issue as well as get my order ready to put in with Sledd. The thing is, I use the internet for that too, so I had to go the backup route there and send the signal audio wise down a phone line. It only took three attempts before that worked. Meanwhile, Russell shows up and he starts doing his once over with things and I have three vendors show up looking to get paid. And life is all about getting paid after all. I dispatch with them, Russell finishes his work, the computers seem to be all online but the credit/debit processing still isn't working. Now I am looking at a register issue, because those cards get swiped on the terminal. So I call Roth cash register (they are better than the people from “I am Your Retailer God” fame, learn the blog, learn it, live it, love it) and explain the problem, the back office seems to be online but I can't process card tranasactions. They do their remote thing via logmein.com, during which time they decide to download all of the windows updates. There were like nine of them, but it means the back office must be rebooted when it is done, which takes all of the registers offline upstairs. We go through that process and after the back office reboots, everything can't connect to the internet again. It was like Groundhog Day, I have already lived through this once. The funny thing was though that Brian's computer was working fine, the rest of them sucked ass. So they tell me maybe we have a loose cable someplace, and perhaps we do. I begin pawing around at different cables and what not when I see a modem hidden away behind the tower for the back office computer. I replugged that in and everything came back. And on the 8^th day, Matt gave us internet and it was glorious.

But even getting the internet back didn't solve all of the problems, I had to reset the credit card processing in the back office, which needed restarted after a reboot, and restart all of the registers upstairs which were still reading offline because they never connected to the software updater and were running on a temporary license until the problem was fixed.

The thing was, with the system down I wasn't able to run an accurate sales report, or get credit card numbers from before the system crashed on Monday. So now I am rushing to get things done, because the bank closes at 4pm and I am running up against a deadline here. Money in the bank means I can cover our outstanding checks, that is usually a good thing. So I scramble and get the money counted and run to the bank I get there with literally 5 minutes to spare before they close. Meanwhile it has been raining all day, so I am now sporting the drowned rat look that will be all the rage at Paris fashion shows this fall. “See how his soaked t shirt shows off the fattness of his stomach, oooh, ahhh.”

I get back to work, go outside and have a cigarette and that was when it struck me, I looked up and saw the clouds were blocking out the tops of the buildings. The fog for the oncoming zombie apocalypse was rolling in, and on the last day of the Blood Moon no less. Don't ask me what a blood moon is, I have no idea, a moon that is having its time of month perhaps. The only thing I know is two of these days are down, one to go. Please let it go smoothly.

                                         Bring forth your zombie apocalypse.

B365V2.126 - Park-ing places

Well I meandered back to the park, for the first time in what feels like ages, but in truth is more like a week or so.  I wanted to do a little blogging, since it has been a week since I wrote from outside.  Not that I stopped going to my spot after work, I just haven't felt the urge to write there.  Like yesterday, I got there around 7:30 pm with nowhere to be, but as I sat there, the bad part about that being the coolest spot downtown reared its ugly head. While it was comfortable outside, in that park the wind, what little of it there was, was whipping about all hurricane like.  When I walked to my bus stop a block away, it was like there wasn't a breeze at all.

I went there first and foremost to do some reading.  I am loving the new Jenny Lawson book I got via Amazon.  The writing style I would describe as manic, not as an insult to the author but because it reminds me a lot of how my mind is before I fall asleep.  I have tried describing it on this page before, but the process goes something like this, as an example.  I am tired, nearly asleep and a thought of my cat I had as a kid, Sniffles, pops into my head for some reason.  Sniffles was a cat and a cat has four paws. A pause is a period of waiting, but what am I waiting for, a person or something to happen.  If it is a person do I want to see them.  If it is something about to happen, it is good or bad.  Am I going to witness a tragedy?  Tragedy was the best song ever by the Bee Gees.  By the way, whatever happened to Andy Gibb?

This type of train of thought continues until my mind settles on one and I fall asleep.  It is the same feeling I get when reading Jenny's book.  I call her Jenny like we know each other, when in fact we do not.  She has no idea of my existence, unless she spends her free time reading obscure blog ramblings on the Internet.

I came to the park tonight in hopes of seeing the eclipse, but that isn't going to happen.  It is much too cloudy.  It was raining when I got here so I opted for dryness and am sitting under the pavilion.  Of course as soon as I got here I was interrupted by one of my tanukis.  I threw him some cheese popcorn as an offering and he stuck around for a minute to eat before running off.    And somebody just parked on the road, almost directly behind the bench I usually use when I am here,  so it is like I never left.  The suspicious drug vehicles and tanukis, I don't know why I took a week off from coming here.   Probably because I have worked the last 20 days in a row.  Now I am in charge of the entire operation at work the next three days, Ed is in Florida and Brian is out of town.    The store is mine, all mine, bwah hah hah.

My night vision would be great for horror movies.  Someone just walked by and all my night vision could make out was a silhouette of them.  He could have been carrying a machete and I would have never seen it.   But if my head were to be lopped off in the park, I am sure the Pittsburgh Police would be in no great hurry to solve the crime.  Our hearing for when the store was robbed last year was delayed again.  I know if I am a defense attorney I am arguing that my client is being failed in his constitutional right for a speedy trial.  He had been incarcerated for a year now and hasn't had a hearing yet.

I came home, no sense waiting outside for something I can't see.   I will say for anyone who is thinking about "upgrading" to Windows 10, it has been nothing but trouble for me.  I downloaded it and the first few days everything was fine, then I went to start my computer the other day and it wasn't recognizing a driver and it required me to reinstall Windows 10 all over again and then to redownload all of the program's I had before, including Firefox and my anti virus program.  Now I am having issues with my audio, I will be listening to something and the audio just disappears for no reason whatsoever.  Suffice it to say, Windows 10 has been a clusterfuck for me.