Back by less than popular demand

Long time no see everyone. I have no idea where to begin, so I guess I will just pick a point and run with it.
June starts the celebration known as my birthday month, if for no other reason than why should I confine myself to just one day. It should be a month long extravaganza, with festivals and parades and presents and cake and lots of other goodies. But it usually doesn't work out that way, no sense planning for things that will not happen.
Still for it only being a few days into June, it has definitely been a good birthday month, even if there have been no parties yet to speak of. After all, life has seemingly corrected itself after having gone a little off course for far too long. Things between Jen and myself haven't been this good in quite a while. Not that they were ever awful, I don't want to create the wrong impression, but I think the proper adjective might be hard. Sometimes the whole long distance thing can just be difficult for a number of reasons. But, I do have her to thank for making things better, when she actually suggested that we video chat for the first time the other day. Not that we hadn't talked before, we talk practically every night on headphones, or exchanged pictures, because we both have sent numerous pictures to each other, but that first face to face meeting, while it still brought with it a little nervousness on both our parts, ended up being wonderful. After a very short while it was just like we like the video didn't matter. Sure it was nice to be able to see the person that you are talking to, but the conversation quickly fell right into our comfort zone of just us being us. It was a way of adding a little tangibility to that which we share, it wasn't a matter of guesswork as to what the other was thinking, we were seeing it on each others faces. All I can say is that it was the best birthday present ever, bar none.
Part of what made the whole video chat possible though, was I have been on an incredible run of luck recently, probably about 10 days or more right now. As some of you know, I had been contemplating getting a new laptop, the keyboard was dying a slow and agonizing death on the other one. Keys were starting to not function, or function intermittently. So in my mind I could either take mine in to be repaired, and given I bought it refurbished to begin with, I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a $250 laptop, or I could start socking away money for a new one. Because I have a few ways to make money on Amazon, I started putting money in an account there, thinking if I got to somewhere around $400 I would start looking at replacing mine and getting a new one.
As luck would have it, I was at work the other day, not really working so much as killing time waiting to use the boss's baseball tickets for a Saturday night game when I decided to drop $10 in the instant ticket lottery machine. Well I basically won my $10 back, which means I am of the mind, if I was going to spend $10 anyway, I need to make more than $10 before I am going to cash out for anything, so I take the tickets up front and Amanda cashes them in for me and I decide to by two $5 tickets from behind the counter. The first one was a loser, plain and simple but the second one hit for $500.
So I go to the baseball game, thinking nothing more of the ticket than I will cash it in on Sunday before I go to breakfast. Well I wake up Sunday morning and I am talking to Jen again and as I am typing to her my space bar is cutting out, so I go to backspace to fix some of my typos and the backspace is moving the cursor forward and I just finally went all Odin the All Father and screamed "Enough!!!!". I decided right then and there that the laptop had seen it's last day before I would get so frustrated that I would impale it into a wall at a high velocity. I remembered that you could buy Amazon gift cards from Coinstar machines. For those unfamiliar, a Coinstar machine is a machine that will count change for you, in exchange for a fee of 9 cents for every dollar it counts. When done it will print up a voucher that you can take to a register in the store where the machine is located and they will give you cash for it. The thing is, you can also use those machines to buy gift cards, and it will wave the counting fee if you are using change, or you can insert bills and also buy gift cards. So after adding a couple of gift cards to my Amazon account, bringing it up over $300 saved, I went and bought a $240 gift card with my lottery winnings, thereby giving me roughly $550 to play with when it came to buying a new laptop.
Lo and behold, I found this little beauty (
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006LX2K3A/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00) which I am typing on right now and so far has worked wonderfully, even though this is my first real experience with Windows 7 (yes I was still using XP on my old laptop) so I am still getting a handle on all of the bells and whistles. One of the features of this laptop was the built in webcam, and while I did have an old webcam here (there is no truth to the rumor that it was on the mount when Moses got the tablets) it was not very good by any stretch. And because of that feature, Jen wanted us to try our hands and video chatting and so far so good, neither one of us has run screaming for the hills.

Had that been the only bit of luck I had with the lottery then I would have said that I just got lucky and left it at that. But as I sometimes like to say around here, the mojo is indeed back. Including the winning lottery ticket that I have already mentioned, I have hit for the following amounts in the last 10 days or so, $5 ticket - $500, $20 ticket - $200, $5 ticket - $40, $5 ticket - $250, $5 ticket - $50 plus I also put $10 in the poker machine in my neighborhood bar and cashed out for $150. Again I am thinking of just retiring my job and spending the rest of my life being playing the lottery and gambling.

Truth be told though, the hits on the lottery tickets recently help to make up for the fact I couldn't to crap with the change meter the last few months. I haven't updated it since late Feb. and since then I have only added $13.60 despite finding a $10 bill at one point. Yes, that is pathetic. Still, with the new money the total still stands at $333.27. It id definitely looking less likely that I will make it to the $400 mark this year. At this rate I might not even make it there by next year.

It hasn't all been wine and roses around these parts. My favorite local dive restaurant, Burger and Rice Bowl, recently closed. It sucks because that was the place that introduced me to the Cuban sandwich and I loved going in there and getting one every now and again, or stopping buy for chicken teriyaki with an egg roll and steamed broccoli. Heck, everything I had on their menu was delicious, from the BBQ ribs to the tomato egg drop soup. It was just such a tasty eclectic mix of foods that I fell in love with the place. And the husband and wife who ran the place were great to watch together, even as they had their two young children there to care for (neither looked old enough even for kindergarten) and it just added a nice homey feel to the place. Now it is a place that just does Asian food (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai) and is run by different people and I just have no desire to go there. Nothing against any of those food options, but I can get those at a half dozen other places here in Oakland, so it adds nothing to the culinary landscape.

For those either paying attention to the Shelfari thing to the right or the Neverending Thread entries, you will see that there are two new books on the shelf, an autobiography that Jen bought me a few months ago and a Robert Parker Spenser series book, which people around here know is always a good thing to bury my nose in. I am starting to get back into a reading vibe, though the book I am currently on could take a while, as it is a book covering the defense in the OJ Simpson murder trial. Now before people go off the deep end telling me if they thought he did or didn't do it, let me just say I don't care. For the record I think he did do it, I am not reading it because I want to be convinced one way or the other. OJ was acquitted, rightly or not, it is now settled history for me, but that doesn't meant there can't be something gleaned from understanding the motives and actions of those that were paid to defend OJ during the trial. That is why I am reading it, more of a peek into a historical narrative than to re-argue the case. It is why I read many of the books I do.

Wow, I just got preachy. Damn I may just be getting my blogging muse back after all. Don't know if I like that or not. Because I don't want to press a panic button here or anything, but this site may or may not be around here long term. Not that I plan on closing my page,. but depending on what the future of Multiply is, I may not have a say in that one way or another. In case no one was paying attention, Multiply moved their corporate headquarters from here in the states (Florida) to Indonesia and have stated that they want to focus more on the marketplace aspect of Multiply. What that means for the social aspect of thios site is anyone's guess, perhaps nothing, perhaps it will mean that the social aspect will go the way of Yahoo 360, it's really anybody's guess at this point. If it does go the way of 360, I haven't decided if I want to pick up the mantle of blogging again somewhere else. If I do I think it will take on a different feel entirely, because we were afforded the luxury of importing our 360 content here, and if that option is not available somewhere else, then I may start from scratch, or I may just say "fuck it" and not blog at all. God knows I have enough on my plate as it is, blogging is a luxury, not a necessity.

Anyway, I think I have went on for more than long enough, my fingers are tired as I imagine so are your eyes, so let's just agree to call it a night, shall we?

Is this thing on?

     Miss me?  It certainly has been a while since I have been around these parts.  It is almost like opposite year, in that last year I blogged almost every day and now I barely blog at all.  Truth be told, things have been happening, but the things that have been happening border on those lines in the sand I sometimes mention here, where there are things that I just don't believe are for public consumption.  So, no you don't get the whole story, just what I want to tell you as a biased observer of my own life.

     With that being said, I will say that things have been difficult at times between Jen and I since my last blog on here.  There have been missteps on both our parts, but we seem to be working through things, which is a good thing.  But the last month could easily be described as the hardest month we have had together to date.  I will not go into details as to everything that happened because that is where the line gets drawn.  

     As for other things, well they are what they are I guess.  Work continues to get piled up on my desk at work, I am now in charge of most of the ordering at our other downtown store, which sucks because I am pretty sure I have enough on my plate already.  

     The only plus about work these days is that I was clued in on something that I was previously unaware of.  As you know, because I deal with so many vendors at work, there are a decent number of freebies that come across my desk.  Some of those things get doled out to staff, other things I get to keep for myself.  Well, as I am at work the other day I see that a promotion card had come in the mail from Pepsi regarding a program called Pepsi Rewards Plus.  Now I knew nothing about this, I asked around, no one in management was aware of this program, so I really didn't know what to make of it.  So I went and do what I always do when it comes to the potential of free stuff, I did some investigating.  Turns out that we were getting points for all of the orders we were making and these points were being put into an account, which could then be redeemed for prizes, or as luck would have it, Amazon gift cards.  So I managed to snag a cool $150 or so in Amazon cash thus far, which is nice.  I like when I can get free stuff from the web.  I have already bought a few things with the money I have gotten there (in addition to my giftcards from Swagbucks).  Since I have found out about this program I have managed to get a few things for Jen; a set of wooden spoons, a watch, Yahtzee and the newest Final Fantasy game for Xbox, I got my cousin a juicer for her 40th birthday and I even picked myself up a new set of Corelleware.  The thing is I still have around $70 in my Amazon account.

     Of course I could use that for books, but I still have plenty of reading material to get to, and the gods have not been helpful in that regard.  I finished two books this year and was just starting to get into a third book, the newest Stephen King ("11/22/63") that my mom had gotten me for Christmas.  I was doing quite nicely too, I had read a little over 100 pages in just a couple of days, when I was reading page 116 and saw that a sentence continued on the next page.  Except it didn't, the next page was the beginning of a new chapter of the book.  I was a tad bit confused.  Then I looked at the bottom of the page and saw what was wrong.  The copy of the book I had went from page 116 to 149, and all of the pages in between were missing.  Now because I didn't start reading this for better than a month after Christmas, I don't even know if my mom has the receipt for me to return it or exchange it for another copy.  And I am hooked enough into the story that I would like to finish reading it, so I may just try contacting the publisher first and see if I can get a new copy from them.  

     While I am catching up on things here I guess I would be remiss if I didn't do some updates around here as well.  The change meter goes up by another $1.54 and the new total is $319.67.  Plus I continue to just rock the Coke points.  After cashing out in December for 1500 points so I could get Sammy an 8 GB MP3 player, I managed to pull another 570 points together to give Jen a year's subscription to Pogo and I am already back to 126 points again.  That is due in large part to the fact I have been keeping up with taking a long walk on most Sundays, just this morning I took one where I found 62 points.  Hey, as long as people will throw away free stuff, I will gladly take it.

     Well, that is enough blogging or one day, I don't want to prattle on too long, lest you thing I actually do this regularly or something.

The new year

Good morning kids. Well I guess we got our answer, I decided to not do another Multiply 365, after contemplating the idea for a while I just decided that I really didn't have the motivation to make another attempt, and life being what it is these days, I don't want to try to force out an y sort of writing that just isn't there.

That doesn't mean the page will be empty, there will still be stuff popping up here from time to time, but those times will be based on when I ant to write as opposed to an artificially created deadline on my part.

Still, since the last time I wrote, plenty has happened and I would be remiss in not telling you some of it at least. For instance, last year I spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the register system at work, and all of the problems that went with it. For those who are new to the page, allow me a brief recap. But first let me take a bite of my lunch, since I am at least starting this blog from the Squirrel Cage, and on the menu today is a hot roast beef sandwich with french fries and gravy over everything. I do believe the word I am looking for is yum.

Anyway, the register system. The system we use at work is called Ultimate Retailer and our setup consists of 5 computers, 4 on the sales floor and one in the office. The way it works is pretty simple, you scan the barcode on the item at checkout, or you input the items identifying number (SKU) and the price pops up on the screen. How that works is that all of the product information has to put into the system, so you start by selecting a new item, at which point the system will generate an SKU for the item. If the item has a barcode, you can scan it into the system in the appropriate box, as well as adding an item description, assigning which department the product belongs to (pop, candy, groceries, tobacco, cigarettes, etc.) and the price of the item. The system will recognize a SKU or barcode only once, so you can't have duplicates in the system. As I told you previously, for those that paid attention way back when, the first problem I had with the system was that the person(s) who had my job before me failed in this task miserably, they were erasing the automatically generated SKU and in that box putting the barcode instead, then they would also try scanning the barcode into the box for the barcode. Because the system will not use the same number twice, it would then alter the barcode in some fashion, usually by either dropping a number from it or changing one.

My first task then became to eliminate all of those records that were incorrect, a lengthy process because each record had to be deleted individually, so I would work on that project whenever I had time and the store was slow, because once I started deleting items from the office, the entire network would go into a lagging state where it would take much longer to ring customers out upstairs.

We had purchased the system and software from a local vendor, SCR Systems, and when we would mention the problems we would have, they would show up to do a service call, which consisted of them showing up, saying everything was fine, and then asking for a check for their time.

Needless to say, that didn't help with our problem. So I poked around on the web and found the people that actually created the Ultimate Retailer Software and handed that information over to management, suggesting that we might have better luck dealing with people that have created the software to begin with. After contacting them, we learned of our first major problem, the software we were using was a full two upgrades behind the one that Ultimate Retailer currently offers, something you would think SCR might have told us in any of their number of visits to our store, but opted not to.

That should solve the problem, right? Not so fast Cochese. Because the actual hardware that SCR sold us didn't have enough available memory to run the Ultimate Retailer software. It would run the program okay, but we had to cut back on using some of the features. Mind you, many of those features we really don't use anyway, we don't keep an actual store inventory in the register system or anything like that, so we could get the software to run on the system we had, just not to it's fullest potential.

With the new software in place, I set about deleting all of the incorrect records in the system, with the thinking that I would delete them, then go upstairs and begin the arduous process of taking one of every item we sell, checking to see if it was in the system and scanning at the correct price, if not I would either have to add the item or change the existing record. But the process of just deleting all of the mistakes was a long one, I am not joking when I say I spent well over 24 hours just sitting in front of the office computer deleting records, one at a time, from the system.

This is where the available memory problem kicks in, while deleting items with the updated software cut down on our lag problem at check out, deleting an item from the office and getting the registers upstairs to recognize that an item was deleted was not an instantaneous thing, it would take time for the registers upstairs to recognize the changes. On top of that, in order to get the software to work on our computers, one of the features we cut back on was the record keeping aspect of Ultimate Retailer, so it would only keep a log of what took place for a day before deleting the record and starting a new one. So as I am just deleting items left and right in the basement, the registers upstairs were choking on all of the changes being made. Then midnight would come around and poof, any changes that weren't accepted by the registers upstairs were just lost to them, so now I had the office computer back to where it needed to be to move forward, but the ones on the sales floor were still replete with many incorrect records.

Again we contacted Ultimate Retailer and explained our new problem, they gave us three solutions, we could 1) buy new computers/registers for the sales floor that could actually run the software, 2) we could delete all of the data again by hand from one of the registers upstairs, basically meaning I would have to redo everything I had already done downstairs, but do it from a different terminal, or 3) do a data transfer, taking the office computers information and transferring it to the other registers on the sales floor, but to do that we would have to shut down the entire system, an idea that becomes more problematic when you are open and making sales 24 hours a day, since the data transfer would take roughly 30 minutes or so. Since #1 involves spending money and #3 involves hindering our ability to make money, management wanted me to try #2. #2 wasn't a good idea, the available memory upstairs was so slow that it would take 5 minutes just to delete one item, now figure in that the process took 24 hours when I was working on a relatively good computer in the basement and you see the problem, I would be deleting stuff forever and a day just to get the system to where it needs to be.

So Brian finally opens up his wallet and opts to buy new computers/registers for the sales floor. Of course, this story can't have a happy ending yet, so who does he buy them from? SCR, the same assclowns that fucked us in the past. They were making some ridiculous demands from the start, they wanted paid before they did anything, they didn't want to stick around to see if the system actually worked, etc. but finally an agreement was reached and they started putting in the new computers. Literally one of the first things I asked them was, when you are installing these new units, are you using the database in the office computer as the master record? Yes, yes, that is what we are doing, blah, blah, freaking blah. Except it wasn't what they did at all, they just swapped out terminals and transferred the existing records from the terminal they were replacing, mistakes and all. So we still had mistakes, we just now had faster access to them. Yay us!!!

The problem was finally solved when we contacted the Ultimate Retailer people again and went ahead and had them do the data transfer from the office to the sales floor, shutting down the entire system while that took place and leaving me to run a manual cash register for the entire time that they did it. I ran the manual register simply because I know how incompetent some of our cashiers can be, they regularly get a line running out the door with three registers, with one they easily could have had a line going around the block. So I ran a manual register for almost an hour, no one else ringing customers to help me, and ijn the course of an hour I rang almost $500 in sales. Mind you, our normal cashiers are lucky if they can do $1000 in an 8 hour shift.

But for now it would seem the system is finally running close to where it should be, we still have an issue here or there, but most of the bugs seem to have been worked out.

Of course, as I type that I realize that I am out of food here, lunch is done, I barely scratched the surface on all of the things I have been meaning to talk about, but I assume they would like it if I vacated my table so that some newer customers can have a chance to sit down and have lunch as well, so I will stop here and come back in a bit.

And we are back!!! Miss me? Don't lie, you know you did. Excuse me while I try to get all comfy under a blanket. While having lunch out today was probably a good thing, it also meant I was outdoors longer that I really needed to be, and with the weather the way it is here today (I do believe the proper word is cold), it is taking me a while to warm back up. The lunch was very good however, so it was worth the trip. Plus I didn't even have to ask, I had barely sat down and had my laptop open to begin this blog entry when glass of iced tea appeared on the table without me even asking. That constitutes a 40% gratuity right there, for any of you waiters and waitresses out there looking to find a way to make an extra buck or two when I visit your establishments.

I still have a few other things I need to get to in this here blog, like the change meter,which I haven't updated in a couple of months almost. Not that there is much new to tell, another $2.21 gets added to the total, so our first number of the new year is $318.13. Still have a ways to go to ever get to the $400 mark, but it's a start I guess.

While I did shut down the 365 project this year (thanks again to everyone that commented over the course of the last year) some things like the change meter will be sticking around for another year. There will probably be a neverending thread again, as soon as I actually finish a book. I spent the last part of last year with 4 different books open at the same time, I am now trying to focus my energies on knocking those 4 out one at a time, and so far so good. I managed to knock off 100 pages or so in one of them this week, which isn't quite my normal reading pace, but it is better than I had been doing. I will also continue to add the hockey videos, I started working on catching them up over Christmas break, and there are though I still have a few weeks worth of highlights that need to be added before I am back to where I need to be. And the BFT/TITIT blogs will be back, as needed. Just haven't really needed one recently. Then again, I have put myself in a cocoon of ignorance regarding all things political any more. There is lots of noise out there, but little actual insight.

Speaking of things political, people whop have been around the page a couple of years, or have bothered to look past whatever has popped up on my page in the last couple of entries, know that before my time at Smithfield News I was employed as a radio show producer, working primarily on political talk shows of varying philosophies. Of course I was laid off from that job a little more than 3 years ago, as the station was changing formats, going from political talk with local hosts, to a business talk format with mostly national programming, save for one person who was buying time to be on the air. Well, I think we can go ahead now and call that format flip a failure, the station has gone back to political talk (though all national programming) after spending 3 years doing business talk and getting absolutely nowhere with it. In the 36 months since I had been away, the station made the ratings book one month, when it posted a .1 rating, the rest of the time the audience was even smaller than that, so small that Arbitron couldn't measure it. Of course they still have the one guy buying time, but with numbers like that, it says more about his ego than it says about it being a good business proposition. And of course their abject failure warms the cockles of my heart, because well, that's just the way I roll.

Something I can guarantee you this year, besides there being no 365 project is that there will be no hidden blogs either. No Easter eggs as they would be called in DVD terms, anything I write for public consumption will be just that, for public consumption, nobody will get left out.

Okay, I think I have prattled on enough for one entry. Maybe this will help make up for not writing in a while. But for now I think I am going to take a nap, after all I have priorities here.

Multiply 365 Day 308 - Target goals

As many of you know, I collect some things that other people either have no use for or tend to throw away.  Me, I am all about free, so if I can get something without actually spending my own money on it, well then I will do just that.

Probably the three biggest collections I have going right now are the change meter, a running total of money I find on the ground and what not, Swagbucks, a search engine that awards bucks which can be redeemed later for prizes and Mycokerewards, a point system under the caps of all Coke products. 

The major goal for the change meter is nothing specific, just a cash total.  And in than vein, the next accomplishment will be to reach $400.  Well, we aren't near there yet, though the last month was relatively productive, I found another $5.45 so the new total is now $315.92.

I am closer on the mycokerewards front, where I am trying to get the MP3 player.  That would require me to collect 1500 points, and right now I am getting there, I have over 1320 points, but I still have little ways to go yet.

Lastly would be my Swagbucks, where really the only thing I get is the $5 Amazon gift cards.  Sure, I could save my bucks for bigger prizes, but any of those very same prizes I can buy with the Amazon gift cards anyway.  Plus Amazon lets you bank the gift cards, so you can build up a balance and they also allow you to use the gift cards for shipping and handling also.  Not many places do either one of those things, usually it is just one gift card per order and you are still responsible for shipping charges.  I have in the past used those monies to add to y reading collection, but for now I a trying to save up for a Kindle.  The cheapest one they have is $79, not too expensive but not cheap either.  Anyway, I already have over $70 now saved via Swagbucks and another $5 gift card pending, so I am about one gift card away (450 Swagbucks, I currently have 10) from cashing in on a free Kindle as well.

See, I can get a blog out of just about anything, even free stuff.

Multiply 365 Day 280 - Weekend update

The cool thing about not having much to report on a day like this is that I always have some things I can fall back on for quick blogging material. Like the change meter for instance, which I haven't updated in over a month. So I will go ahead and rectify that situation right about now, another $2.47 is added to the kitty so the new total is $310.47. So there is always that I can use.

I wish I could say there was some good news to report in fantasy football, but in my money league I am dangerously close to becoming a donation. I am now 1-4, two of the losses by 4 and 1 point, bujt they are losses nonetheless.

In one other league I have already won, I am 5-0 there and in the third I still haven't looked yet, I was trailing going into tonight, but it wasn't an insurmountable deficit. I just haven't bothered to get any updates on the Monday night game. I should on that at some point.

As for fantasy hockey, which kicked off this past week, I am off to a very slow start. The kicker is the oft injured Ryan Whitney is injured once again. I swear that man should just wear a dress at this point. I seriously think that any game Ryan Whitney misses can't be called a Man Game lost to Injury at this point.

Oh well, other than that things are pretty much good around these parts. Well, varying between good and very good, something I might get into in a day or so, time permitting. But time doesn't permit right now, so I won't.

Multiply 365 Day 250 - Housekeeping

 

It's Friday so I guess I will to a little cleaning up here on the blog. Nothing significant is going to happen so if you are the type that wants to know whether or not this blog will be significant in the grand order of 365 things, trust me it will not be.

Rather I just need to update a few things, including the change meter which has tailed off considerably these past couple of months. Only another $1.30 gets added since my last update, so now the total is $308.00. Barring someone dropping a wad of bills at my feet or me finding another monthly bus pass there is almost no way this will hit $400 by the end of the year. Not that I would have expected it to, but I guess that is going to be the next benchmark.

My aunt sent me a little box full of Coke caps the other day, which caused my eyes to get all wide with prospects of getting ever closer to the 8 GB MP3 player, but as I started pawing through the caps and entering in the codes it turns out roughly half of them were already used. Not good. Luckily my friend Phil emailed me the other day and sent along some codes as well, from his habit of drinking Diet Coke. Unlike my aunt's caps, I knew Phil didn't enter any of the codes (not that my aunt did either, but I imagine she just collected them from some friends who did already redeem them) so between the 15 he sent me and the ones my aunt sent that did work, I should still be able to max out on points this week, for the first time in ages. I am 27 points away (9 caps) and I think I should be able to find 9 good codes between what is left in the box and what I find just walking around over the next 24 hours.

I did snag another Amazon gift card from Swagbucks as well. $5 to the Amazon kitty, which is needed after I blew through about $35 in the last month or so. Between MP3 downloads and my recent book order, it is about time I start saving some cash for Christmas. Not that I will do all of my shopping on Amazon, I still have not so fond memories of the watch disaster of last year, but I might get a couple of things over there. With the cheap Kindles down to about $100, I am halfway there (I would be much closer if I hadn't went on my splurge) and I don't think I will need to buy books for a little while, I am enjoying my first read, but it is kind not one of those books that I am banging out 100 pages a night, more like 10-15 on those nights I make time for any reading at all.

See, I told you this would be an unimportant blog in the grand scheme of things. And now I am off to bed, there are rumors of breakfast again tomorrow morning. Just not sure where yet.

Multiply 365 Day 218 - Addition by subtraction

 

Let's start by getting a little housecleaning out of the way first. It has been better than a month since I did anything with the change meter. Part of that has been just other things getting in the way, and part has been that the change meter really hasn't been all that productive for me. But at some point I guess I have to add to the total, and there is no time like the present. So without further ado the newest add to the total is $2.95 bringing the grand total to $306.70. I guess the next benchmark will be the $400 plateau, but I don't see that happening before the end of the year. Hell I will be lucky to get there by this time next year.

I did pass the 1/3^rd point on my quest to get the 8 GB MP3 player on mycokerewards. The prize is at 1500 points, I am in the ballpark of 540 or so, and while I have maxed out in any one week, I have been adding decent amounts of points every week, despite the fact I don't even drink Coke. I just keep finding caps or twelve pack codes, usually I find at least one a day and I haven't taken a walk to go look for them in ages. They are just on my normal path going between work and wherever else I end up going.

I even picked up a new freebie this past week. I had signed up for something on Facebook a while back, a chance to be a product tester for discountofficeitems.com. I really expected nothing from it, the idea they were going to give away free stuff I am sure brought people in droves. Of course the freebies don 't come without a stipulation, that being you have to use the item and write a review of it in order to continue to receive more freebies. When I hadn't heard anything (not that I was anxiously awaiting anything) I had all but forgotten about it, until I opened the mailbox the other day and found a free dry erase marker in there. Now me being all about things that are free, I went ahead and took the marker to work (where there are a few different dry erase boards I actually do use, so it has a practical application) and have since wrote a review on it, though there really isn't much to say about a solitary marker. Unless it sucks and is all dried out when you get it, but this wasn't and it seems to work okay, so I went ahead and wrote my review and will now wait patiently for my next freebie offer.

I am still tinkering with mysurvey.com too. Not that I am anywhere close to cashing out there, I am sitting on about $2.75 right now and need $11 before I can get anything from the prize catalog. But that application is more a matter of patience, you never get a bunch of surveys to do all at once, but you can pick up a few bucks here and there, and unlike some services you do get paid for every survey, even if many of them are only a nickel or dime. I still have managed to get over $400 dollars worth of stuff from them since I first signed up many moons ago.

And lastly of course we know that I recently got another $5 Amazon gift card from Swagbucks that I gave away on the page. I am pretty close to cashing out for another one, I only need maybe 10 points or so, which I should have by tomorrow night at the very latest. Check that last statement, after doing a couple of searches I did get the last remaining points for my next gift card. And unlike the last one I am keeping this one for myself, after all I am only about $40 from a Kindle, which would make a decent Christmas present for someone, just not sure who yet. Maybe me, lol.

Okay, I think all of the requisite house cleaning is out of the way, Pandora is fired up and it is time to get to the real blogging portion of today's episode.

Today marked day #14 in a row at work, I am starting to again see the light at the end of the tunnel (though I thought the same thing last week until Thursday) but at least I was handed another nugget of wholesome goodness that made my work life a little more tolerable.

One of the guys on my crew was a guy named Curtis. The thing is, I didn't work with Curtis all that much, usually he was on the evening shift (3pm-11pm) whereas I am there from 7am-3pm most days. And on those days when Ed would put Curtis on my shift, we would almost always send him to our other store (Universal), if for no other reason that to get him out of our way. See Ed would put him on my shift in case I needed help, but in my eyes Curtis really wasn't much help. So it was far easier to send him to our other store than to have to deal with him. Because despite the fact that Universal is a small store (5 coolers, and almost no product stocking on the shelves) somehow Curtis would find a way to turn what should be a relatively simple project into an all day adventure.

Some examples of how inept Curtis is, I mentioned earlier this year that our store was reset, that is the grocery provider came in, reorganized the shelving and retagged everything. Part of my job for those three days was to help with the reorganization of the store and make sure everything went back in a manner that would meet Ed's approval. Because of the size of the task, Ed asked me if I needed any additional help, besides Sammy who is always on the same shift as me. I said not really, I was pretty sure we could manage, but he scheduled Curtis for those three days as well. Curtis spent all three days building one shelf. That, my friend's, is government work. If that were the only example I could site I am sure many people would say that I am just being too hard on him. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. On Wednesday we got paid, and as is the case usually people from Universal will be sent down to our location one at a time so that they can get their check and not short hand that store by having all of the employees show up at once. Since Ed had Curtis on the morning shift again and I had once again sent him to Universal to be rid of him, he came back up to get his check. He left for Universal around 8:30am. He came back to our store to get his check at 1:30pm, and when he picked up his check he tells John in the office that he is working on the coolers at Universal. Mind you, he has now been there 5 hours and Universal has all of 5 coolers. A fact that was not lost on John and he made mention of that very fact. And on Friday we received a couple of deliveries from outside vendors that Ed sometimes deals with, CB Distributors and Pricemaster. Well I brought both orders into the office to be checked in, the CB Distributor order I got checked in pretty quickly but while I had opened the Pricemaster order, Ed told me not to worry about it yet, he still had to get the prices for some of the items and we would do it on Monday. So I take the CB Distributor order out to be put away until it was needed upstairs and come back into the office. Curtis comes in (back from another 5 hour tour of the coolers at Universal, no doubt) and Ed mentions that some of the stuff that was in the CB order needs to go upstairs right away and he starts mentioning items to go up and here is Curtis pulling stuff out of the Pricemaster box instead. I say, “That's not the right order, I have already checked the CB order in” but Curtis just continues to pull stuff out of the wrong box. Ed mentions some things he needs, Curtis is busy pulling out the wrong shit (because it was the wrong box) when finally I look at him and say, “Do you fucking listen?” I suppose it was one of those what you would call professional moments on my part, but if it was over the top nobody said anything, other than Dee who said “Way to tell him Matt!” Hey, at least it stopped him from grabbing the wrong stuff, so I proceed to go and grab the things Ed actually asked for and take them upstairs, and since it was near the end of my shift, went back to the office to pack up my laptop and get ready to head out for the day. I get upstairs and Curtis starts this spiel about how he didn't like how I talked to him, to which I said well if he would fucking listen that wouldn't be a problem, would it?

Enter Saturday, where Curtis was scheduled from 3pm-11pm and I guess at some point Ed came in the store and wanted to work on a few projects and asked for Curtis's assistance. Now I don't know how it all played out but apparently Curtis said something smart to Ed and Ed just fired him. I have a phrase for such a firing, it is addition by subtraction. But when I came in this morning I hear how Curtis got fired and I look in our charge book (the book where we keep our store purchases to be against our paycheck) and right on the front is a note saying that Curtis is no longer allowed to charge anything in the store. Yes, it did warm the cockles of my heart. Then, after I get the bank squared away and everything that needs done for being a primary (think shift manager) the phone rings and it is Curtis asking if his charge sheet has been pulled yet and I say yes it has. Maybe he was hoping to sneak in some purchases before word of his demise got out, I don't know but that was not an issue since his sheet was already gone. So our conversation ends and about a half hour later the phone rings again and again it is Curtis, calling to tell me he didn't want to get anything, he just wanted to know if Ed pulled his sheet, because that's the way Ed is and all. And then he starts in again about how I talked to him in the office the other day and I just said, “Listen, I am working here and this isn't helping me get anything done” and hung up the phone. Other than that little bit of nonsense though it was a pretty good day, at least by me being the de facto babysitter standards. I worked with one of our newer employees, Nicholas, and he seems to be decent enough. All of the bank numbers came out okay, which is huge because any shortages fall on me for that shift, and I didn't even have too many asshole customers, at least by our standards. At one point I had a couple that Nicholas looked at me and said I had the patience of a saint for dealing with them, but that was about as hard as it got all day. I have to go over one accounting issue with John in the morning, but other than that it was all good. Curtis being gone just made it better.

Now it is time for a nap, 14 days down, 6 to go. Let's hope the last 6 were as good as today.

Multiply 365 Day 182 - TITIT #13 Fingerpainting with words

There really will be no rhyme or reason to this blog, so if someone is looking for a theme or purpose they are going to be sadly mistaken. Instead ladies and gentlemen it is time once again for Things I Think I Think

It has only taken 5 and half years (and then some) but the change meter has finally broken the $300 mark. Yes, another productive month, gathering in a tidy little $8.28 and the new total sits at $303.75.

So the Minnesota state government shut down today. Maybe it is the cynic in me, after all I have very little grasp on Minnesota state politics, but why does this feel more like a grab for an extra day off during a holiday weekend than an actual budget crisis?

A sting operation involving Chris Hansen? Excuse me if it slightly warms the cockles of my heart that this time it was Hansen himself who was the object of the sting operation as he got busted fucking around on his wife. Mr. Hansen, that knocking on the door is the Boy Scouts, they would like their morality merit badge back.

The new jobs responsibilities? All I can say is it is what it is. In the long run it doesn't look like it will be all that complicated, just time consuming. The plus is that I now get to take the laptop to work and listen to Pandora at my desk. And more money. After all, it is always about the dinero.

I am not sure I am liking the start of the free agent period for the Pittsburgh Penguins. After toying with the idea of bringing back Jaromir Jagr to the Pens, instead day one saw the Pens lose out on a chance at his services, as well as losing the services of Max Talbot and Mike Rupp, only getting Steve Sullivan back in return. Even if both Malkin and Crosby come back at 100% to start next season, the teams glaring weakness is the same as it was last year, ample scoring from their wingers and that issued hasn't been addressed yet. Sure there is still time to tackle that issue, but when your first big free agent signing is an injury prone person on the downside of his career, it is not what one would consider an overall improvement.

The baseball season is now at the halfway point for the Pittsburgh Pirates. After 81 of 162 games Pittsburgh has a record of 41-40. In most cities this would not be something to crow about, but when the Pirates have had 18 consecutive losing seasons then this qualifies as a vast improvement. It remains to be sen if they can keep this up over the second half of the season, on one hand their hitting has vastly underperformed but their pitching has overperformed, so maybe this is the year that the streak gets broken. But I am not running out to buy my Bucco tickets just yet.

Mitch McConnell is an idiot. The Senator wants a balanced budget amendment attached to the United States Constitution. Or at least so he claims now. After all he was the Senator of the great state of Kentucky when Republican presidents were running up massive deficits (all the way back to Reagan for those playing the home version) and nary was a single word uttered from the lips of the fine upstanding man from Kentucky during those times. Nor is there even the slightest possibility for this notion passing, this is nothing more than grandstanding in lieu of actually doing ones job . Does anyone out there really think that McConnell plans to go all the way with this? To muster a two thirds majority in both the House and Senate and then take this idea on a tour of the states, where he only needs 3/4ths of the states to ratify it before it would actually be tacked on to the Constitution (see that School House Rocks stuff did pay off as a kid), or is it more about McConnell showing how “tough” he is on the administration by running his mouth for a couple of headlines, then not to be seen again until the next crisis comes along. I get it Senator McConnell, you are the guy that is going to show the administration how much you are working for the American people, but until you have the balls to see that whole process through rather than just grandstanding about it, sit down and shut the fuck up.

I think I am suffering from Cuban sandwich burnout. Ed threw me $20 to buy dinner tonight, and I went the Cuban route, yet I couldn't even eat the whole thing, so either my stomach has officially shrunk (three people in the last week said I looked like I had lost weight to which I said “Where did it go? It was just here”) or I am finally tired of the Cubany goodness. I really hope it is the former and not the latter.

Well I have a big holiday weekend, just not the vacationing variety. I have to place orders for two stores tomorrow and paperwork, lots of paperwork, plus I want to be up to watch the Wimbledon women's final so I am going to call it a night. So for now we are done here.

Multiply 365 Day 141 - Change we can and can't believe in

The title can only mean a few things, a couple of which are correct.  Those familiar with the page know exactly what they are, so rather than spend an inordinate amount of time explaining myself I will just go about the good and the bad.

The change meter total is getting updated again.  By another $2.09 to be precise.  I still haven't reached the magical $300 mark yet, but I am creeping ever so much closer.  With the additional monies the new total is $295.47.  I would like to think I will crack $300 by the end of the year, but I have experience with this thing, the first three years I did this I only managed to average around $13 a year, so I make no assumption that I can get the required $4.53 needed by the end of December, though it would seem to be almost a given I am taking nothing for granted. 

And that my friends is the good change, as for the bad, well that would be Barack Obama himself.  I don't know, I just don't get it.  I mean, in general I like the guy, but his statements regarding Israel recently leave me completely dumbfounded.  Don't get me wrong, when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians I am all for a two state solution, and I believe for that to eventually happen there will most certainly have to be concessions on the part of Israel to some degree, but the claim that Israel should begin the process by returning to their 1967 borders is just ludicrous.  We may get to the point where some of that land is used in a final two state solution (provided the process ever gets that far) but the idea that Israel should make that concession before the process even begins is flat out stupid.  Suppose for a minute that Israel were to do exactly what the President suggests, then who takes over the conceded land?  Most likely it would be the very same people that were planning to use it to attack Israel in 67.  I know, you were thinking that the Palestinians would get it, but let's be honest here, there isn't a nation in the Middle East that gives a rat's ass about the ultimate fate of the Palestinians, they use the plight of the Palestinians for their own propoganda purposes.  After all, roughly half of the population of Jordan is Palestinian, yet they are not being brought to the table in order to carve up their country as part of a two state solution.  Syria and Lebanon are home to another 1.5 million Palestinians, and again no one is asking either state to give up land in this process.  We need only look at the events of Black September in Jordan, or the expulsion of the Palestinians from Kuwait after the Iraq-Kuwait War to see how much the Palestinian people are welcomed by other states within the Middle East.  So should land become available, there is no guarantee that those nations would recognize the Palestinians right to it, regardless of what the original intention was.

Like I said, if the process is to succeed most likely Israel will have to concede some land, but the idea that they should do so before the process even begins is just lunacy.  It goes to show how weak the Republican candidates for President in 2012 really are that Obama can suggest such a thing without being taken to task for it.  If the Palestinians are to get land, it will be earned at the bargaining table, not bequeathed via some executive fiat from thousands of miles away.

Multiply 365 Day 117 - Free dum dum dum dum

The old folks home around here just continues to roll on. When last we checked with that little old thing called the change meter I had made note of the fact that if I could pull a dollar a month (which I can usually do, even in the lean years oif the change meter I could do that) the total would break the $300 mark. Well the good news is that we are definitely keeping pace, the bad news is that it wasn't quite enough to get over the triple century mark. Instead we add another $2.04 to the meter and the new total now stands at $293.38. Throw in a free T shirt from mycokerewards and a $5 gift card from Amazin this week and it has been a cool week. And the pending dumpter diving has me geeked for more goodies next week.

Multiply 365 Day 89 - Best year ever?

     Today is the day that I get to make it official.  Those of you that have been following my daily updates know that about a month ago I posed a question to the blog, hoping to get suggestions but when none came I opted to make a decision for myself.  The question revolved around the long running blog feature knows as the change meter and whether or not I could add something to the total which had a definite financial measurement, but wasn't actual cash.  The object in question was a monthly Port Authority bus pass, which I found on the first of March.  The pass allowed me as many rides as I would like (within Zone 1) without paying any additional money for the entire month.  Because I found the pass on the very first day of the month, I literally had all month with which to use it.  And a pass of that sort has a specific value, that being $90.  So I had an item and a value, and because I do not drive, it had a real world application for me.  Since I got no input whether to add the $90 to the total or not, I made a unilateral decision, if I could keep the pass the entire month without losing it then it would get added to the total, I got someone else's $90 worth of use out of it.  But if I were to lose the pass, then all the value of the pass would be stricken from the record, in order to claim it I had to keep it for 31 days.

Well today is that moment of truth, and given it is 10pm at night chances are I am not going to be running out to catch a bus before midnight, so I have gotten my 31 days of use.  That means we have a new change meter total, $90 plus and additional $4.95 in money I found for an obvious total of $94.95 gets added to the kitty and when we look at the tote board for our running count that number was $196.39 bringing our grand total to $291.34.  So I now have 9 months to find less than $9 to crack the $300 mark, after struggling for months just to get over $200. 

I like when blog entries are this easy.

Multiply 365 Day 46 - Updates

It has been nearly a month since I last updated the change meter on this page, and all I can say it the last month has been so so as far as the found monies go.  I did scoop up some cash, enough that I can add $2.76 to the total, but it seems like that $200 barrier is just harder and harder to get to.  With the additional cash the change meter sits at 196.39.  

Since I have started this blog with updates I will continue along the same vein.  I mentioned this past weekend that I was hoping to kill Baal in Diablo 2 and move on to the next level, nightmare.  Suffice it to say, mission accomplished.  Not only did I deliver the old beat down, I didn't even die in the process.  I have since started the next level, completing the first quest (I also defeated the secret Cow level on normal) so all is moving okay there I guess, not as though you are all that concerned about my gaming exploits.

And I did address one other issue.  I had purchased three books recently,. two of which I have already finished and I am about halfway through the third one, so of course that meant I had to hop back on Amazon and buy three more.  Two more non fictions and one fiction.  Actually one of the non fictions I have been waiting for to come out in paperback.  I had seen an interview with the author on TV and immediately went looking for the book, only to find it was only available in hardback, and at the time it was running like $25 or so, a little too much cash for me to be spending on one book.  But I saw that on Feb 1st the paperback edition was going to be released, so I held out until yesterday, then of course I scooped it up.  I don't want to go divulging titles, I'd rather wait and save that for the Neverending Thread when I finish it,.  I will say that I did run into the newest Chris Jericho book, and almost bought it as well, but the combined total of the two books came to $24.99.  The thing is, for one more penny I could get free shipping and handling.  So instead I tossed the Jericho book back for another day and snagged two other paperbacks instead.  Which I guess is fine, the Jericho book will probably come down in price, and it gives me a chance to earn more money from Amazon.  I cashed in one gift card yesterday before placing my order, and just bought another $5 card today, so hopefully when I run through the next 3 and half books I will have enough money saved up for another card.

And really, that is about it for the updates for one evening.  Time to settle in with some chicken sandwiches and iced tea and call it a night.

Multiply 365 Day 11 - Stuff

Today is one of those days where I can honestly say there isn't much to blog about.  Maybe that is a good thing, as I would rather be bored some days than have the events of the day dictate just what it is I will be putting on the page.  Instead, on a day like this, I can catch up on some things that I have left a little unattended recently.

Like the change meter for instance, which did not reach $200 by the end of the year.  Heck it still hasn't gotten there, with me only able to add .48 since my last entry, leaving the total at $193.63.

I have gotten some more free stuff online in the last couple of days, first being another $5 Amazon gift card.  With it and my refund on my pre-Christmas purchase that was never delivered on time, I got my Amazon account over $60, which is good because I am out of reading material to bury my nose in.  So I hopped on there this evening and bought myself three books.  Maybe I will get about another Neverending Thread sometime soon.  I actually have a desire to do some reading, by bus rides to and from work are sucking with nothing to do but sit there looking at other passengers.  

I also picked up a couple of pint glasses from Marlboro, I had a few points to burn off from their last contest and the glasses (and another pack of Marlboro coupons) fit into my remaining point budget.  It was the same contest where I picked up my new darts.  I was stuck in that limbo where I wasn't going to get enough points for the biggest prizes, like the notebook computer or the 10 speed bike, but was going to have enough to get something, so I opted for two lesser prizes that I wouldn't have bought for myself otherwise.  Darts are nice, but not a necessity.  Same for pint glasses.  But I will make use of both of them.  

I am still waiting on my prize from Scratchix on Facebook.  I won a $30 Amazon gift cards months ago, but I am starting to think I will never see that prize.  The application has been awful in paying people for months.  I would like to say I am the only one, but there are plenty of people on my friend's list that are waiting on prizes as well, everything from gifts cards to Wiis.  I am almost tempted to check with the Better Business Bureau to see if any complaints have been filed with the people that run the app, but the company is based out of Malta, so even if their were complaints I am not sure what good they would do.

"Fat Camp" is on TV right now.  One would think that would be motivation to write something witty, but I can't even come up with good fat jokes.  I guess the idea of finding humor in this show has just jumped the shark for me.  Not that all of the TV I have been watching is bad.  I did sit through the first couple of episodes of "The Cape" the other night, and it was better than okay, if not great.  It could be better, but it could be a lot worse.  And I tried to make it through an episode of American Experience on PBS the other night, it was the story fo Ulysses S Grant, but it started late (1am) and I had to be up for work in the morning, so I ended up falling asleep just before the Battle of Vicksburg.  I was tempted to look for it online and finish watching it, and I may still if I can't find something on TV pretty soon.  

Well, rather than bore you further I think I will call this a blog.  I still have a couple of other things I need to do, like putz around with some online message boards I frequent and what not.  And who knows, by the time I blog again we may have 6 or more inches of snow.  Yay us.

Quiet time

  It is one of those periods of relative calm here in my section of Pittsburgh.  Last week was finals for the college students, so most have packed up and headed home for holiday, those that are still here are less inclined to throw parties outside when the temps dip into the teens and single digits at night.  It is times like these, when the place clears out a bit that I get a little more reflective.  Things enter my head, which lead to other things, which lead to yet other things.

My neglect of the page and the site in general being one of those things.  So we spruce up the place by changing the background photo and adding a little something something called shelfari over on the right as a place to add the books I have read (as well as the Neverending Threads).  So far I have entered the 2010 entries and the 2009 entries onto the bookshelf, but I still have 2008 plus many assorted books that are laying around my apartment onto the list, so for now we will consider it a work in progress and leave it at that. 

But while on the page doing the editing I was caught up in a little more nostalgia for things that have happened this past year.  The advantage of having people never visit your site is that things don't go away all that easily.  Even though I only let my comments go 5 deep on the homepage, and since I have blocked any form of html on the comments themselves, I was nonetheless surprised to see that the last visible comment was from Donna way back on June 28th, to wish me a happy birthday.  That of course then led me to this, given the time of year and all that jazz.  I am not sure what to make of Christmas this year.  On one hand I got an earlier start than normal on my Christmas shopping, not that I am finished by any stretch, but at least I have a few things bought already.  Yet I wonder how it will all play out, I have time off from work so I am not going to be rushing around, I have a week to do all of the visiting and just take in some down time, but at the same time this will be the first Christmas without either one of my grandparents around.  There was just something about being in their house on Christmas Eve with the family sitting down to a nice meal and the kids not wanting to eat because the sooner we stopped eating the sooner they could open their presents.  My aunt Amy is trying to step into that void, doing the hosting of the Christmas Eve getogether and what not, and I truly love her for it, but there is still that void of the first holiday with grandma no longer with us. 

Okay, I refuse to let this blog be a complete and utter downer, even with the less than stellar start to it.  After all it is Christmas time and just because I have my brooding moments doesn't mean I am not looking forward to the season, just tempering my enthusiasm somewhat.  It still is what it is, and I have been listening to Christmas carols at work for better than a week now.  Not just the schlock that comes on the radio either, I have went and brought all of my Christmas CDs in to play on the radio as well, as has Sammy, so it is not uncommon to hear either one of us strolling through the basement singing along with anything from your more standard fare to me firing off a little "Santa's Beard" by They Might Be Giants. 

I'll be honest, I have become at best an influence on Sammy, and at worst a bad influence on him.  Not that I can't be a role model, I am not going all Charles Barkley here, but there are limits to what I would say is a good and bad influence out of the things I do.  It's one thing to have a similar work ethic, and I think mine is pretty good by most standards, and Sammy tends to follow suit in that regard.  At the same time, I speak in a certain vernacular that I would call unique and I am finding Sammy is copying that as well, which may not be as good.  Prime example would be this morning he and I were in to do the Saturday order, it was my last chance to train him on it before my vacation, and the process usually goes as follows.  First we will order anything that Rick leaves us on a list for the deli section, next will be the cigarette order, followed by the grocery order and last we will get a list from Belinda regarding any other tobacco related products we need (i.e. snuff, chewing tobacco, lighters, etc.)  Well we bang out the deli order pretty quick, I do the cigarettes because I am much faster at it, Sammy does the grocery order on the floor and then we go see Belinda and she doesn't have the tobacco order ready yet.  She says we got everything done too fast for her when I bust out one of my many work phrases "That is because of our cat-like quickness" when Sammy steals the rest of my line and goes "Meow".  I question how much of a positive influence that really is,

Sammy is cool though, we have continued to go to breakfast through his training, almost always at DeLuca's, where I am making an effort to see if they actually have a bad breakfast item on the menu.  I have been there four times now, each time I have tried something different; 1) blueberry hotcake special with chorizo sausage, 2) Mixed grill with eggs over easy and kielbassa, 3) Steel City breakfast, eggs over easy with a waffle and 4) cheeseburger omelet, and every time the food is just awesome.  Today was the best and worst so far, the best because the cheeseburger omelet was fantastic and worst because I finally saw one of the breakfast sundaes being made I previously blogged about, and had I not had a completely full stomach from the omelet I might have hopped the counter and stole it from the waitress before she ever got it to the table.  A waffle the size of a plate with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, surrounded with strawberries and topped with whipped cream, drizzled with hot fudge and hot caramel and served with a cherry on top.  Needless to say, Sammy and I are getting breakfast sundaes on our next visit after I get back from vacation, though I am leaning toward the granny apple sundae myself (waffle, ice cream, apples, caramel, cinnamon and whipped cream). 

Before I forget, mentioning the waitress brought something else to mind about this page.  I was sitting around the other day thinking about what I could do that was holiday related when I thought about the idea of doing a week long Karaoke blog series with nothing but Christmas carols, or at least holiday themed songs, if I could find the videos.  One of the first ones I went to look for was "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses, but I couldn't find the video to the song, instead I found this



It was just so cool that, while it isn't an actual video to a song, it is worth some form of inclusion in a blog entry.  Let this be that inclusion.

Only .76 gets added to the change meter since I last posted it, leaving the total at $193.15 with two weeks left in the year to try and come up with the 6 bucks and change needed to get to $200.  It is looking less and less likely, but as another example of my bad influence on Sammy at work, he has also started picking up change on the floor, so now it has become almost a daily competition  between he and I as opposed to my own personal little project.  It is hard enough to real that $200 milestone to begin with, now I have made it even moreso.  Why am I so cool that people wish to copy me?  I would say "Because all I do is dominate" but I think Sammy would say the exact same thing.  Actually I should have put that on my Christmas list, a  t shirt with that printed on the back.  Someday maybe I will do a blog entry that is just a lexicon of the things I say, because me typing it without going into some long drawn out explanation of what it means makes it seem like I am typing an inside joke that only I get.  Then again, that might be one more person than the number of people who will actually read this.

Well I should call it a night.  I am off tomorrow, but I have plenty of tasks that I have plans to get to (Christmas shopping, cleaning, laundry, wrapping gifts, doing Christmas cards) and Monday night is the hockey game I have tickets for, so there will be no work done then, though I might be back here posting pictures from the game (and the new Consol Energy Center where the Penguins play), but for now I think sleep is the best option.

A little bit of everything

Saturday, November 27th

I guess I am cheating a bit here, using a larger type (16) than the default (12), and while that trick works when doing papers for school, I don't know if I need to be so worried about space when it comes to a blog, after all, it's not like this is being graded for length or something. Besides, when was the last time anyone complained here that my blogs were too short? Exactly.

Instead I am just using a larger typeface because I am using Open Office, and while it is a decent enough program for shareware, I have found sometimes that when doing ye olde copy and paste thingy, sometimes part of the letters get cut off, so I just want to make sure this is legible enough. Not King George legible, that would require 48 or 72 point font, but just enough that it is readable after the copy and pasting is done. Hopefully this will do the trick.

The other reason for Open Office is that it has a spell checker built in and if I am going to blog, given how long I have been away, far better to do it with a spell checker than for me to go back and reread this tripe. Typing it is bad enough, I shouldn't be expected to read it as well. That's your job, and last I heard you get paid handsomely for it.

Because it has been a while since I blogged, chances are that a couple of comments are going to be mashed together in this entry, not Mash-ed like that sorry social networking concept of Yahoo that lasted all of a millisecond before being rendered useless, as most Yahoo ideas are, but mashed as in I may throw in a few “Things I Think I Think” as I go. After all, plenty has occurred since my last foray into this medium, far be it from me to fail to type about those things as they come to mind. For instance.....

Titit #1 – Don't say I didn't warn you Democrats. Way back around primary season I said that the big winner in the Arlen Specter/Joe Sestak race would be Pat Toomey, because unlike Specter, Sestak had zero crossover appeal, he may get loyal Democrats to vote for him, but he had no chance of getting of getting anyone to cross party lines and pull his lever. Sure enough, during the landslide elections that took place with the Republicans taking over the majority in the House and gaining seats in the Senate, one of the losers was indeed Joe Sestak. Now Specter may or may not have won in a head to head battle with Toomey this time around, but it was just 6 years ago he beat him in a Republican primary, and he would have offered a better chance at winning than Sestak did. Don't get me wrong, Specter has shown in the past that he isn't always the most loyal of party line voters, but if having a choice between a guy who might vote with you 60-70 percent of the time or giving the seat to someone who will almost never vote on your side of the issue, Democrats would have been wise to take the 60-70 option and been happy about it, instead they get guaranteed nay votes for the next 6 years. Good job guys, real good job.

That might have been the first time this blog went political in all kind of months, not sure if that is a good or bad thing, but I suppose it is as good a place to start as any. After all, most of the other stuff I talk about is just mundane, boring as all hell, day to day stuff that happens at work, so maybe a change up was good, even if it was only for one paragraph.

I have started my Christmas shopping, probably the earliest I have gotten about it, but with so much free stuff on the web, it is just even easier for me to start now while I am at home and just doing the point and clicky thing. I managed to pick up a couple of presents from MyCokeRewards, where they have a bunch of stuff at half off on the Coke points. I finally have reached the place where I am no longer maxing out the points I can redeem on a weekly basis (120). All of the excess caps from work have been redeemed, including a bunch of Powerade caps that I save for double points day and ended up getting 240 in one week with the bonus. The last two weeks have been far slimmer pickings, 40 some points last week, and so far this week just 26. Since I am off tomorrow, I may make at least part of a day of going out and seeing if I can find a cap or two. I know I want to do breakfast again, last week was such an awesome breakfast that I need to do that again, and I need to pick up a Christmas present that I located and it is near the breakfast place, so hi ho, hi ho, it's off to breakfast I go.

Breakfast last week was part of something I mentioned in the past on the blog, where my aunt and I are going to take in a diner breakfast once a month, because we both like such breakfasts and this gives us a chance to hang out and b.s. While doing some exploring of the nooks and crannies of the region's diners. So far we have went three times, I believe when I last mentioned it we had gone to Pamela's in the Strip District for the ever so awesome banana and chocolate chip pancakes, since that time we have taken in two more diners, Jo Jo's and most recently DeLuca's. DeLuca's was just awesome, at least food wise, the service could have been better, but the food was so good. I got the hotcake special, which is your choice of pancakes (2), two eggs and meat for $6.99. I went with the blueberry pancakes and chorizo, and it was all so yummy. The pancakes may very well have rivaled those at Pamela's, and the other pieces to the meal were better. And there were so many things on the menu to choose from, that I have to make a second and maybe third and fourth trip just to take it all in. They have a breakfast pig in a blanket meal where everything is wrapped in either a crepe or a pancake, they do versions of ice cream sundaes with pancakes, mixed grill breakfasts, bionic breakfasts which include 6 eggs (my arteries are clogging just at the thought) and much more. If I get a chance I will add a photo to this blog of one of the hotcake sundaes, but for some more of the menu you can follow the link http://www.allmenus.com/pa/pittsburgh/275793-delucas-restaurant/menu/breakfast/

Hopefully that will copy and paste when the time comes, if not then I will add it late, though early experiments are not promising.

The breakfasts with my aunt haven't been the only thing on my social calendar of late. Not that I have started dating, let's not get all crazy here, it is me after all. Rather one of my friends on Facebook, Richard Goldinger, is someone that I went to high school with. Probably our most lasting memory was the night where he rolled his Camaro with a few of us in it. When the last we had hung out he was working for Alltel in Kittanning, PA many, many moons ago. Even the last time I saw him, he was seeing someone seriously, Robin, nut it was still in that dating phase. Now they are married and their oldest son is 15, so logic would dictate that it was at least 15 years ago, if not longer since we had spent any significant time together. His job took him to Ohio, compliments of the many phone mergers and changes in phone technology since then, but he messaged me on Facebook about a month ago, saying he was coming to town for the Sunday night football game between the Steelers and the Patriots and wanted to know if I would like to hook up for lunch to hang out a bit. Since they were visiting Pittsburgh, of course we had to go to Primanti's, another place that has been featured on this blog before, where I got the capacola with egg sandwich, my favorite on the Primanti's menu. And while I live here, I tend to take such places for granted and don't visit them nearly as much as I should, so it was good choice by Rich for a place to have lunch. Sadly we didn't get to catch up as much as I would have liked, they still had to go check into their hotel and get situated for the game, and getting around Pittsburgh was proving a little troublesome for them because their GPS cut out once they got into the city, so they wanted to have enough time to get find their hotel in case the GPS still wasn't working.

Sorry I took a break there, after talking about food for so long I decided that I was hungry, so off to the kitchen I went to fire up some tuna helper. Not exactly fine dining by any stretch, but I am just cooking for me, so it will suffice.

Titit #2 – Every day that Dave Wannstedt remains the Pitt football coach is a day that he is stealing money from the school. Let's not kids ourselves, this was the year that Pitt was supposed to be something. Maybe not a national title contender, but at least in a BCS game after winning the Big East. The problems started in the off season, when 4 different incidents involving Pitt players and the local constabulary showed just how little control of the team he had. This being year 6 of the Wannstedt regime, it could no longer be blamed on the fact he was using players that he didn't recruit, these were all people he deemed worthy of playing for the Pitt program. Then the season began, and a 2-3 start where the two Pitt wins came against suspect competition (New Hampshire, Florida International), while matchups on the schedule were meant to show how good Pitt may be this year (at Utah, Miami, at Notre Dame) resulted in losses, the Miami one being particularly painful, as many alumnae were in attendance and Pitt wasn't even competitive (3-31). Still, none of those games were conference games, so while Pitt was 2-3, a strong run through their Big East schedule would still get them the automatic BCS bid that comes with winning the league. And a 3-0 start in conference play, plus the rather weak competition in the conference left Pitt with a 3-0 conference mark and a two game lead in the standings, the the proverbial wheels came off the wagon, with losses in two of the next three conference games and while Pitt is not mathematically eliminated from still winning the league at 4-2 they now would need to win their last game and have Connecticut and West Virginia lose their last games in order for that to happen. This is not what was signed up for 6 years ago, when Wannstedt was coming in, saying he was going to rebuild the program to national prominence. His alleged ability to recruit better athletes has not panned out. One would be hard pressed to find a single, solitary player in the last years that chose Pitt over another big name school. And no, it doesn't count if someone picks Pitt over, say, Akron. Sure there have been a couple of players that have had nice seasons at Pitt that were unexpected, like Dion Lewis last year, but a prtogram can't be built based on getting lucky and signing guys nobody else wanted, eventually someone has to pick your school over a Florida, or Ohio State, or Penn State, and that hasn't happened under Wannstedt. Instead we see disappointment after disappointment, last year losing the last two games to miss out on a BCS bid, including the last game of the year to Cincinnati at home after having a 21 point lead, and this year blowing a two game conference lead with 4 games to play including a 35-10 loss to West Virginia at home. In 6 years Pitt has earned 0 Big East titles and at some point trips to the Humanitarian Bowl, or the Meineke Car Care Bowl can't be considered accomplishments. For all of the criticism of previous head coach Walt Harris, his last 5 teams made bowl games, including a Big East title and an appearance in the Fiesta Bowl. How good would those days look now? But as long as Wannstedt is allowed to coach the Panthers, those days are not going to be seen any time soon.

Sunday, November 28^th

Sorry, I ended up going to bed instead of finishing this blog entry, something that happens from time to time as readers of this blog well know. And worse I overslept for breakfast, at least if I wanted to go to DeLuca's. Usually if I am headed over that way I catch the 7am bus and arrive in the Strip around 7:30am. By that time many of the places in the Strip are already starting to fill up, so if I miss the first bus I run the risk of getting over there and standing in line for food, something I am not likely to do for breakfast. So instead I climbed back under the covers for another hour, the went to my corner store for a cup of coffee and headed off to Rite Aid to see what was on sale. I had a couple of things I needed as well, bread for starters, and deodorant is always a good buy, so it wasn't a wasted morning. Plus they had Christmas cards on sale, buy two boxes, get one free, so I snagged some of those as well.

That being said, I still could have snuck in breakfast in Oakland, Pamela's still hadn't had its line going out the door, due in large part to the students being on Thanksgiving break. But I opted against it, maybe because DeLuca's was too goo, maybe because I just decided to save money, I am not sure which. I know I will probably do a little more shopping for Christmas online today, I have bankrolled almost $80 in Amazon gift cards so I should be able to get a couple more free items. Plus I do have lots of other projects that I need to work on, like cleaning my apartment, getting my Christmas list together for my mom and for the blog page, finishing getting stuff squared away for my upcoming vacation and at some point finding something for lunch. So there is still lots on the docket today, besides finishing this particular blog entry.

I had mentioned that I needed $9 + for the change meter in order to pass $200 by the end of the year. While I haven't quite gotten there yet, $200 is still somewhat in play, as another $1.46 has bee accumulated since my last posting, so the new total is $192.39. I would say it is still unlikely, but then again all it would take is for one person to be careless with their money and I could be over the top, and given the public's need to be all sheeple-ish when it comes to shopping this time of year, finding money laying on the ground is more of a possibility this time of year. That brings me to …....

Titit #3 Let's stop kidding ourselves that Thanksgiving is a holiday for anything more than people to go shopping for two days. I know what the original premise was behind the holiday, but we have far since evolved beyond that, and what was once well intentioned day of giving thanks for that which we have has become a four day festival of excessiveness and greed. At what point was the meaning of the holiday switched to, hurry up and eat so we can get a good spot in line while we camp outside WalMart, Best Buy, Target, etc, so we can be the first one in the store once they open. I used to be upset that for most Thanksgivings I would end up working, whether it be my current job, or my previous one in radio but seeing what has become of the day, where it is less about giving thanks and spending time with family and more about a moronic attempt to see who can spend their money the first and fastest and now I can honestly say that there is no place I would rather be than as far away from such ass clowns as in humanly possible.

I will probably end up being distracted again for a while, I am watching the Steelers game, though I am not glogging it. Instead I am just posting score updates on my Facebook page, so you have been spared more of my sports blathering that sometimes accompanies my entries on this page. Instead all you have to look forward to is that I am still two Penguins videos behind, but when I checked yesterday the NHL channel on Youtube hadn't posted the highlight packages yet. I realize that the videos are probably annoying to some, but as I have stated previously, hockey has some weird superstitions, like playoff beards for example, and my own superstition is that since I have started posting the videos 3+ years ago the Penguins have made the Stanley Cup Finals, won a Stanley Cup and made the second round of the playoffs, so if it is working you just keep doing it. I will quit posting videos when the Penguins quit making the playoffs.

I should make note of the fact that Ed has officially left work to fly south (Florida) for the winter. Not that it means I have been left to my own devices, he has been gone one week and already I have taken two phone calls from him on work related issues. Plus I have an added problem, one I didn't anticipate but now have to deal with, that being I have been training Sammy to place orders for when I go on vacation. I made a slight mistake, I told him that since we are only getting two orders the week of Thanksgiving, make sure he ordered a little heavier to make up for it, get a couple extra things on those items that sell. Well he went a little bit order happy, leaving us with a basement full of products that I have to now sell. It should cut down on what we order for the next month or so, but I did catch a slight bit of grief for it. Oh well, if that is the worst Sammy does, I can live with it.

Before I let this blog come to a conclusion, I need to mention something, that being the most recent book I read, “Every Man Dies Alone” by Hans Fallada. The fact that I have waited this long into the blog entry to mention it means by now most of you have tuned out, but for those that haven't let me say this is by far the best book I have read this year, and maybe one of the best books I have ever read. Yes it was that good. I would label the bookma work of fiction, though it is based on a true story. There were a few too many liberties taken with the actual account to label it anything but fiction, but the story was fascinating regardless. The story mainly revolves around a couple, the Quangels, who are living in Berlin during the time of World War II and Nazi Germany. While originally not politically active, if anything they would be politically indifferent, they come to disapprove of Hitler and the Nazi party after their son is killed during the war, fighting for Germany just before the capitulation of France. Whether it is just anger at their son's loss, or a greater awareness of all of the wrongs that are being committed in the name of Germany, the Quangels decide to offer up their own little resistance campaign, consisting of dropping postcards in stairwells and buildings in and around Berlin, with messages of dissent written on them. The belief being that if others read the cards, the same sort of coming to Jesus moment that the Quangels had will be shared by others, and the postcards will be handed around to still others and slowly the movement and the resistance to the policies of Nazi Germany will fester and grow. The problem with their logic is that everyone in Germany is so paranoid about the Nazi party and the SS in particular that no one wants to be caught with one of these postcards, let alone share them with others for fear that the result will be placement in a concentration camp. So while the postcard campaign goes on for a few years, it becomes wildly ineffective, with almost all cards turned over to the authorities as soon as they are found, and eventually the Quangels make a mistake and end up being put to death for their efforts. It is a fascinating read of the paranoia that gripped Nazi Germany, where no one could trust anyone for fear of being turned over to authorities. Rarely to a do reading recommendations on this page, but this is a book where an exception is called for.

Of course the problem with me finishing a book is that I now don't have any reading material. I have a couple of books laying around the apartment, but nothing that I am all gung ho about reading. I tried picking up one the other day, but I haven't even gotten a full chapter of it read yet.

Not too shabby, I managed to get better than a page written while still watching most of the first half of the football game. Of course now I am getting to the point where foraging for food is starting to take up a large part of my brain, I can't decide if I want to cook, order in, or go pick something up. All of which would require me to once again get dressed, and I am hesitant to do that just because it requires more effort than I am willing to put forth at the moment. Maybe after the game ends I will get more motivational.

I have been tinkering with another Marlboro contest recently, “Outwit the West”, where every week Marlboro asks five trivia questions and you get points for each one you get right. Technically you can form teams of players, as many as 4 players per team, and each correct answer adds to the each member's point total. Of course I didn't form a team, I screwed up when it first started so I am flying solo in this endeavor, and I am sorry that I did, because some of the bigger prizes include such items as a notebook computer, which would be nice, not because I need one, but because it is free. Instead, given how I have done so far, and the fact there are a few weeks left, I am probably going to get somewhere around half of the points needed for that prize, but I am eyeing up what looks to be a nice set of darts that I should be able to get. They are only 115 points away and we are getting a bonus 10 points for every answer submitted the rest of the way, regardless of whether or not it is correct. That is good, because the trivia questions are not easy by any stretch of the imagination, usually I am spending the better part of an hour just looking up the answers, or at least the best guesses that are available to the questions.

There was the distraction I warned you about. The football game went into overtime before Pittsburgh won, 19-16. I even got some good fantasy news out of the game. I have Steve Johnson, a wide receiver for Buffalo, on my roster and have been using him occasionally as my flex player in our league, but left him on the bench today. All he did was drop 6 passes, including what would have been a game winning touchdown pass in overtime. Far better to leave that type of display off of my game day roster.

I also took some time to spend some of my Amazon gift card money on a couple of Christmas presents, nothing major, just another gift for my mom and one for her husband. I was browsing some of the specials that are on Amazon and found a couple of things that were on sale for 50% off, and since I bought two, my bill was over $25 so they throw in the shipping and handling for free if I am willing to wait a couple of extra days. Not a problem, I have a few weeks to play with yet. With all of that out of the way I walked over to the Cuban place and got a sandwich and fries so I didn't starve. Then again if anyone has seen my stomach recently I am sure they would say starvation is not a problem with which I suffer.

Well I should probably wrap this up. My first attempt at getting this to copy and paste was a hit and miss proposition, the photo didn't copy and paste with the text, so I will have some work to do before this is officially finalized. Plus I have gotten myself into another money saving mess here that I am still tinkering with. I have been using an application on Facebook called Hotspot, where as you complete offers you are awarded cash, but you can only cash out when you reach $5 or more and then it is credited to a Paypal account. Mostly the offers I do are just watching videos where you earn anywhere between .03 and .10 per video. But as I was checking out some of the other offers on there just recently I saw that they were awarding $1.10 for any album purchase on Amazon of $5 or more. Funny thing is Amazon just a couple of days ago issued a code for $3 off of MP3 purchases. So now I am getting $1.10 for spending $2. Add to that I still have $40 in free money from Swagbucks in my Amazon account so no real cash has left my hand. So all told, I just purchased “The Very Best of Prince” for .90. Now I have the job of burning it to cd, which isn't all that bad, I know I have a disk or two around here some place, but that is going to take up some more of my time this evening and I really don't want to turn this into a three day blog, so I will just stop now.