Month: March 2004

It hasn’t been a long time since I’ve posted but it feels like it. I have gone through some changes on my site(s) in the last month.
On the 3rd Bass page, I have made it three pages. There is the 3rd Bass page, the Pete Nice page and the MC Serch page. I have also created a phpbb forum for the site HERE. Have to say thanks to Nola for talking me through the basics and some installation help getting it set up and running.

On this site I finally have a real blog (you’re reading it now). It is run by Movable type. I was able to pre date all of my old posts and put them in here, so I am whole again. The old way of blogging is gone and so is Bravenet’s free blogging service. I have a guestbook now as well, which is linkable from my main site but you can click it here incase you’ve accessed this page directly.

The installation of the guestbook and the message board and the blog was different than things I’m used to. I’m strictly an HTML guy, so the phpbb and working with cgi was a little more than I’m used to, but luckily I was able to pull it off with a little help.

Maybe I’ll get back to posting on a regular basis again.

Although you probably can’t tell just by looking at it, I’ve moved. Unless you saw the couple days where there wasn’t anything here but the good old “Service Temporarily Unavailable” page you may have not known that.

The reason was quite simple, more bang for my buck. Yahoo has been jacking me $8.95 a month for the last year to host my site. They offered me no ability to have any type of database on their server to my knowledge. My new host is offering me up to five databases and 8 times the storage space for $49.99 for the entire year, and in case you didn’t do the math in your head, Yahoo was charging me $107 a year for a lot less service.

Seriously though, no ill feelings toward Yahoo… honest.

I’m back. I was in Sioux Falls South Dakota yesterday and most of today. I left my house at seven in the morning on Tuesday and drove almost two hours to a neighboring store where I met my ride. Now I drive a Mustang and he drives a Grand Marquis, which is by any means a grandpa car. However, apparently grandpas drive in luxury, because he had shit in there that my car has never seen. One thing that stuck out in my mind was the temperature control. He sets it to 70 and the car maintains that temperature until he changes it. Now on my car it works a little different. I basically have two settings. My car is either fucking cold or fucking hot. Those are the choices, pick one. It took roughly five hours to get to Sioux Falls from the store. Once we got there we checked into our rooms.

We stayed at the Sheraton, which was hella sweet if I do say so myself. Unfortunately there was work to be done. We found out that we had our Halloween and Christmas orders done for us already by corporate, because if anyone knows my store, it’s those assholes. Last year we were dumped on horribly with a shitload of toys that were unappealing and overpriced. Due to our poor sales last year, this year they ordered nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but I’d say a little closer to some window clings, some bows, some 3 roll wrap and some votive candles. That’s all they fucking ordered for us. No Christmas lights or anything. Apparently if you don’t advertise shit and it doesn’t sell, then the next year you just say fuck it and don’t order anything. What do I know anyway, I’ve only been doing this for nine years.

Well, I see my domain transfer is still in the ass dragging stage, so I guess the move isn’t going to happen quite yet. Stupid fucking domain transfers. I am in the process of splitting my 3rd Bass page into three separate parts for this move. It is looking pretty good so far, hopefully I can debut it within the next week or two, if 100megs gets Yahoo to give that shit up.

I got an email yesterday from some dumbass about cross linking with their site. As you will be able to tell once you read this, it was definitely either computer generated or written by someone with clue fucking zero. I am contacting you about cross linking. I am interested in disgruntledhuman.com because it looks like it’s relevant to a site for which I am seeking links. The site is about American white water rafting trips. Our site provides information, which allows visitors to make the most of their white water rafting vacation. Hmmm, let me look around my site quick. Hey, I don?t see a fucking thing on here about White Water Rafting. I have gotten a few of these stupid ass emails since having my site and I just click the delete button when I see that.

Hey, I walked into work on Thursday after taking a day off and found out there was a major reset in the pet aisle. The good part was that I didn’t have to do anything with it; the bad part was that nobody fucking told me or the grocery manager that this was going to be happening. Oh wait, I take that back. One day after the reset was done we got the email telling us that in a short time resets will begin on pet sections?. Well, who in the fuck was sitting on that information up at corporate? I swear that in my company the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing? of course I know they’re both jerking off.

Tonight I have started the process of switching my webhosting services from Yahoo/Geocities over to another company. There were a few different reasons I have decided to do this. The first one is the price. I am currently paying $8.95 a month to have my site on Yahoo’s servers. The new service is only going to charge $50 for the entire year. For you non math folks, that’s less than half price. On Yahoo I was getting 5 email accounts, I will now get 15. The same goes for subdomains (see 3rd Bass Page), I was able to have 5, now I will have 15. Storage is another issue. On the Yahoo site I was given 25MB of space to put my stuff up in. My new service is offering me 200MB. I guess the choice isn’t hard to make, switch that shit. My domain name (disgruntledhuman.com) expires on 4/7/2004 so I have put in a request at my new host to renew the name through them and secure the name for another year with auto renew so my name won’t get snagged from me. Once the name is in their custody so to say, then I have to cancel my service through Yahoo. Once I do that then I let my new service to point my domain name to my new host and I start over with the websites. Actually all the sites are built and I will just FTP them up to the new site and be done with it. Here’s to hoping it goes smooth.

Ever have a lot of things going on so you decide to do more? Me either, but sometimes it feels like it. Luckily for me it’s nothing I can’t handle. I am currently running both of my sites (this one and the 3rd Bass one) and starting last night I began moderating duties at the Looking Glass Lounge. I don’t think it should be a tremendous challenge or anything, but should be fun at the least. I guess I’m expanding my horizons or some shit. You can start calling me Bruce Almighty now.

Hey, another two inches of snow is heading this way. Who could ask for anything more? How about temperatures above 30 and some sun; and oh yeah, I want to see my fucking lawn again. This coming weekend is the first day of Spring and the motherfucker better show up. I know where you live Spring, and if you don’t show up at my place; I’m showing up at yours.

It’s Tuesday, but it feels like its Friday. Why you may ask, because I’m off of work tomorrow. I’m always happy when I’m not at work. Speaking of not being at work, I talked to my old boss tonight and he sounds like is really happy to be out of that hell hole. I mentioned a few of the jobs I’m looking into and I at least have a very strong reference if I need it. Maybe that will be the extra push I need to get the fuck out of that store before it destroys itself. I give the store itself one year before it is closed unless we get bought out in the near future. Let’s hope I can read that shit in the paper and not be in the middle of the goddamn thing.

In one of the stupidest things I’ve heard of, M&M’s lost their colors a while back. Now suddenly they have them back and we are supposed to give a shit about it. Do you? I know I certainly don’t. Apparently, there was some sort of contest and there were six bags out there that had colors in them and they say that Blue was the final bag of all-one-color M&M’s to be found, from among more than 37 million black-and-white packages in circulation.

37 million bags we went through since New Year’s Eve? We aren’t even half done with March yet people. No wonder we are such a nation of fat fucks. That’s 500,000 bags a day since December 31st.

Now they are coming back with a more colorful version of the candy… because that should really be a deciding factor when you eat something. Hey look at those purty colors… let’s eat ’em.

This weather needs to lighten up already. I know that winter still wants to run the show, but I wish spring would get in here and take this mofo over already. I don’t care if it ever gets hot out, but would it be so bad to get some 60’s in here. Hell, I’ll settle for 50’s at this rate. Saturday we had a little battle between spring and winter again, as the weather wanted to be spring like, but the temperatures decided it would be winter instead. What that results in is temps in the high 20’s, with freezing rain/snow/sleet and the occasional hail. It also results in lightning and thunder, which when you hear it, makes you think it’s raining outside. When you go to look and you see snow you think, that’s fucked up.

I heard some disturbing news today. The Game Show Network is going to be changing their name to GSN. That’s nice, I’ve got three letters for you: WTF? I need an explanation and here’s what they give me:

GSN is a blank slate, a name for which marketers can create an identity. There’s plenty of precedent in the television industry for initials; many people who regularly watch ESPN or CBS couldn’t tell you what those initials once stood for (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network and Columbia Broadcasting System, respectively). “MTV started as a music channel and evolved to be a youth culture channel, still music-based,” Cronin said. “That’s a model for us.”

Oh, well that explains it all, you want to model yourselves off of MTV. I don’t think the world can handle another Real World or Road Rules, probably because their bastard incarnations are running rampant around every network already. But alas, GSN will fail to heed the warning as they are looking to get into the reality TV genre now as well. First up they will rebroadcast the original mole. Well thank God, now I can not watch it a second time and feel twice as good about myself.

Shit’s been getting worse at work lately. We have been in a constant cutting of hours, to the point where some people can’t even be considered full time. This has been occurring company wide and not just in our own store. Company wide they got rid of over 100 full timers by offering them a part time position without benefits. Most probably did not accept.

Sales have fallen considerably in the five years that they have owned us. The sad fact is that they have absolutely no idea about retail and how to be successful in it. If your business is wholesale, then be in wholesale, stick to it and do it well. Don’t go sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong like into retail. The corporate stores are nothing more than bitches for the warehouse. We are the dumping ground to make the warehouse look better. Why have sales fallen so far in the past? They have an idea that they should be the sole supplier of the store. Here is a list of vendors that I’ve lost since they bought us out. I lost three lines of makeup (Maybelline, Max Factor and Wet & Wild). I lost all of my perfumes. Every Christmas we would do two pallets of gift pack fragrances and we would get credit for all of our markdowns, so we made out like bandits on that. I lost a 24′ guaranteed toy section in lieu of an 8′ non guaranteed warehouse toy planogram. I also lost all of the guaranteed Halloween and Christmas items I used to get from them also. I lost my established private label from the pharmacy supplier in order to carry the warehouse brand, which had roughly half of the SKU’s of my old brand; prices were also close to 30% higher on the warehouse brand. I used to have an electronics section where we sold basic kitchen appliances. Yep, they’re gone too. I just recently lost all sell thru video and it sounds like rental may be next to go. I currently only have two suppliers left. The first is of course my warehouse; the second is my pharmacy supplier which I am very limited on what I can buy from them.

As you can see, I’ve lost thousands of dollars in sales each month because the warehouse wants to be the only game in town. You would think that if you are going to take away all of this stuff that you should probably put something back in. The big plan from the corporate office was to raise our prices. Apparently the big idea was that if we jacked our prices up the customers would be stupid enough to not notice and continue to buy the same products at a higher retail and when we put something on an ad it would look like a really good price. Not so; apparently the customers have a brain after all and we lost quite a few from that botch. Once your sales start slipping tremendously it becomes a panic situation up at the corporate level.

Hours are the next thing to go. I have been on a 35 hour week for well over a year now, and in the last month it has gotten worse. I didn’t take the book keeping job because I really gave two shits about that position. My boss told me that shit was going to get real bad around there in the near future, although he didn’t elaborate. The book keeping position was offered to me in order to keep me in a full time position. That was the main reason behind it.

I was off of work yesterday and when I went in today I found out that my store manager was no longer employed there. Shock, disbelief, anger; and that was within the first 15 minutes of being there. Basically there is a sense of who is next going around there. My manager knew that the corporate didn’t have a clue as far as what to do in running a store, so he would usually tell them what he was going to do and how they should be doing things, which ultimately led to his departure. We were one of the only stores in the company that didn’t get roughly ten jobs eliminated at the store because our manager stood up for us and pretty much stopped that from happening. Now he’s gone and we can all sit and wonder, who’s next?

In a shocking turn of events, Martha Stewart was found guilty of all charges in her trial. I guess that means that eventually Martha will have to start decorating a cell instead of a mansion.

I believe that even if she is sentenced to many years in prison, she will continue to be the domestic diva. Perhaps she will become the domestic dyke diva or something, but she will keep on keeping on. I think this is a good thing for her. What hasn’t she done already on her shows and in her magazine? This will broaden the scope of her abilities. Think of all of the cool things she is going to be able to do now that she had no need for before. I have thought of a few show topics she can do once she gets put into the joint.

• Getting blood stains out of the orange uniforms
• Baking cakes with files in them
• Butter as lubrication
• How to make cold steel more inviting
• Making Voodoo dolls of your lawyers
• Wiping your ass with both sides of the toilet paper

Long time no blog. It’s only been five days and I’m sure that isn’t a new record by any means. I have an excuse this time anyway. I have been busy as hell the last week. I started working Monday last week and I haven’t had a day off since. I work tomorrow but I told them I would not be there Tuesday. That is eight days in a row, so I guess I’m entitled to a day off. I did find out that even though I am usually awake early in the morning, apparently I’m not exactly a morning person. Lying in bed doing nothing is fine if you are awake at 5 a.m. but getting up and showering and going to work is a different story altogether. Oh yes, driving to work which on a good day takes roughly 15 to 20 minutes was slightly complicated by my least favorite topic.

Snow. It fucking snowed everyday that I had to go into work at 6:45. On Friday I woke up to roughly six inches of wet sloppy snow. By the time I got done with work I think it had snowed another inch or two, but it was all melted off the roads. Saturday morning I went into work and there was a nice layer of ice on the roads covered with a dusting of snow. Apparently the snow removal people have a rule that you don’t need to get your ass out of bed and plow if there isn’t at least six inches of snow because I woke up this morning to about two inches and nothing was plowed in my town. It wasn’t 3 a.m. when I went to work either, it was 6. There was no reason those fuckers couldn’t have gotten out and scraped it down for those of us that had to drive twenty fucking miles to work.

It can’t be. Mc Donald’s is going to phase out their super-sized menu. By the end of 2004, Supersize will no longer be available at the nation’s 13,000-plus McDonald’s outlets except in certain promotions.

What sort of promotion would that end up being? How about the ‘big fat ass’ promotion. Does McDonald’s think they are that important in the grand scheme of things that by cutting 20 fries and 12oz of pop out of everyone’s meals that it’s going to make that much of a difference? The people that are fat and don’t care that they are will just order another fry. The people that are conscious probably didn’t supersize that sonofabitch in the first place. The food is still prepared in the same way, so eating less isn’t going to do too much for you. Does that mean a smoker can cut a half inch off all of their cigarettes and then they won’t ever get cancer? It doesn’t work that way.