Month: April 2005

Ok, let’s figure this out shall we? It is April 26th and it’s snowing out. Did I miss some sort of meeting here or something? It’s almost May and there are white flakes and I highly doubt my extremely tall neighbor is shaking his dandruff out in front of my window. If you bitch at all about this whole snow thing, people tell you to accept it because you live in Wisconsin. Well you know what, that’s not good enough for me. Gee, maybe I should kick back with a brick of cheese and a 24 pack of Old Milwaukee too, since I am in Wisconsin and all. Maybe I can go cow tipping too. It’ll work really good since it’s all snowy out and the big fuckers will tip easier that way.

I’ve been working feverishly on making a new look for my website, but I’m kind of coming up dry. I’m also going to debut a couple new articles on the site whenever it is that I get it up… the site that is. One article that is completed is Customers Suck 3, the other one that is nearing completion is called Porn & Toons. I’ll have to let that one explain itself when you read it, and no it has nothing to do with pornographic cartoons. A few other things I’m working on but haven’t completed yet is things we will say to our kids, a spiel on the criminal justice system in our country, a few of the charities I’m part of and some things that make me happy. Of course on the other end of the spectrum, I’m trying to make some major changes to my 3rd Bass page. When I first set it up I thought it looked pretty cool, but now I’m deciding that I really hate the white and colored letters on the black background. It’s probably a minor bitch on my part but when I figure out this CSS shit, and believe me I will, I will most likely revamp the entire 3rd Bass site as well. I’m already working on a new banner for the site and I’ll hopefully be going through some of the lyrics and changing those and other things of that nature. Damn, who has time to work when you have shit like this to do?

Speaking of doing fun stuff like building web pages and all, I think I’m going to be signing up for some online courses for web design. There are a bunch of online courses specifically for what I want that start in the near future. I think I will sign up for those even though they are non credit courses just so I can get the experience I need to either make my sites better and hopefully land a good job that I might actually enjoy. In case I’ve never made it clear, my current job; don’t enjoy it too much.

Shake Zula, not Slim Shady. I finally got my Aqua Teen Hunger Force DVD’s almost two weeks ago and I’ve watched every episode at least once. The first few episodes weren’t quite as good as the newer ones, but they are still funny. Besides, whenever a show is trying to find their niche, it takes a while. I’ve got three shelves above my TV and entertainment equipment and when I first put those up I didn’t even have the bottom shelf filled with DVD’s. I had almost two shelves full, but the majority of items were old VHS tapes that I never watched. Now I’ve got both the bottom shelves filled up with DVD’s and I think I have about 4 DVD’s that have spilled over to the top shelf. My newest addition was Meet the Fockers which I picked up yesterday since I saw it in the theaters and knew I’d end up buying it.

I’ve been extremely busy doing shit at work and not doing some shit at work. Last Monday as you may have read, I kinda sorta blew up the master register. No big loss really, it was sick, it needed to be put down. Well, two days after that some big shots showed up in our store and since it was my day off I didn’t have to see them. They did however leave a nice long list of shit they wanted changed. Now I’ve bitched about Dollar Days before, but I’ll do a short review again. My gross profit is budgeted at 35% to 45% and the dollar shit is only getting me about a 25% margin. Now if I only have my little 20′ section it’s really not a problem is it? Well, on my notes I am told that I should get rid of my kitchen gadget section and replace it with dollar items. I am supposed to get rid of all my Rubbermaid containers and foil ware and replace those with dollar equivalents. All of my toys need to go away and I can replace them with dollar toys. My last remaining section of make-up which is Cover Girl has been given the axe. I was also told that I need to cut my light bulb section in half, as well as my pet section. Honestly, what in the fuck are they thinking? Gee, we’re not making nearly enough money here, let’s cut all the sections in half and see what happens.

The other fun I had is I quit doing price checks for my store. Here’s the skinny on that fun. Every week I would do a one page check. Once a month there would be a bigger list that I would have to go do, not to mention a monthly milk and bread check; these were all at competitors stores. Well, the monthly one was coming up on being due and I had asked our assistant twice when it was due, once on Friday and again on the following Tuesday. Both times I was told she didn’t know. Then on Wednesday, which just happened to be my day off mind you, I get an email from the assistant telling me that the list is due today and would I be able to do it. Well first off, I had asked when it was due and I never was told when it would be so if it was suddenly due today, too fucking bad. Second, it’s my fucking day off and there is no reason to even think to ask me to do anything for that bullshit store when I’m not on the clock; ever. I was extremely busy last Wednesday, doing yard work and doing some minor customizing on my car. Because I was actually busy I didn’t check my emails after I sent back the one to work telling her I wouldn’t be able to do that. Around 8 that night I did get back into the house and I checked the computer and there was an email from work. In the email it was telling me that someone else was sent up there and told me I needed to be responsible in the future and wanted to know if I could do that. Hmm, I’ll have to think about that later because I’m a little busy at the moment saying every swear word I can think of directed at my job. The first thing I did was print up the email and then Thursday I took it into work and showed it to my boss and told him there was no way in hell I was ever doing price checks for the store again. Then yesterday I was asked by the assistant if I did the price check for the week. I just looked at her and said I didn’t have any time for that. A little later the store manager asked me if I was sure I didn’t want to do price checks anymore and I said, yeah, I’m pretty sure and just walked away.

Today I went around and put in some applications. If they spaz that bad because I stopped doing price checks, what are they going to do when I tell them I’m quitting? Sure as shit if I don’t walk off the job immediately the most they will get out of me is two weeks. So if they fell apart because I quit doing price checks, what will happen when I abandon two departments, stop backing up the bookkeeper and am no longer available to give the service counter breaks? I can only hope I find out really soon.

Every night at work the closing manager is supposed to run a report that pulls all of that day’s information so the computer work is correct the next day. Well, in the last couple weeks, the register we run those reports on has been acting up and at some point during the night when those reports are being run, the printer jams up. In the past all you would have to do is hit the clear button and the error would go away and the reports would keep on printing. Well, apparently last night that all came to an end. When I got to work today the reports had still not ran. Now mind you, I wasn’t doing books today, I was doing my normal shift so I got there at 8am and the reports hadn’t finished running. I was asked to look at the machine and see if I could get them to run, because apparently I’m good at that or something.

I go up to the office and look at the master register. There is a printer error on the screen and when you hit clear you can see the print head lift up but not quite make it as far as it is supposed to. Much like a 50 year old man reading a Penthouse, it was trying to get it up, but it just couldn’t. Well, I looked at it, and it appeared that the spring that lifted the contraption up wasn’t lifting it far enough up. So I stuck my finger in there and helped it lift and it started printing. I thought hot damn, I fixed the machine. Of course the machine had a different plan altogether. After printing about 10 more lines it decided to stop and throw the stupid printer error code back up. I thought shit, just lift the spring up again and we’ll be back in business. Only problem there was I lifted the spring up the second time and it kind of snapped off the top and hit a part inside of the register. We’ll call that part a “circuit board.” Anyway, the spring hit the circuit board and the other end came off and must have hit something that wasn’t supposed to touch the circuit board and that’s when the sparks flew, followed by the master register going dead. Yes, I killed the master register at work, or so it would seem.

I quickly looked at the situation and turned the master off at the main power switch. Then we get the spring restrung in the spot where it belongs and turn the power back on. Everything looks like it’s up and running because when everything is back up the printer error code comes up again. Well that’s good, because that’s where we were before the sparks flew. Of course when I hit the clear button this time, instead of the gears turning and trying to lift something, it just made a real grinding noise… think an electric pencil sharpener when you shove a pencil in too far and fast. So now we’re sitting there, the bookkeeper needs her reports ran so she can get all of the paperwork done for the day and it makes the drawer balancing easier. At that point I think, hey why not take the printing unit off another register and put it on the master register and then the reports will finish printing and we’ll be back in business.

Just a word of warning… if you’re ever working with outdated NCR equipment and you swap out a printer, don’t forget this little important nugget of information. Turn the damn machine off before you plug the new printer into it. I know that now, unfortunately I did not know that at 9am this morning. So I go over to one of our check lanes and I pull the printer unit off of that register and drag it into the office. I pull the plug on the printer on the master and I put the new printer unit into place and go to plug the unit into the back. I did not turn the unit off first, but when I plugged it in, the unit did shut off. I turned it back on thinking that it would just reset like it did before and with the new printer we’d be good to go. Well, shit doesn’t quite work like that on a Monday. I’d say this was roughly five minutes before the pharmacy informed us that the registers wouldn’t let customers use credit cards.

It was about that time that I realized I was in a little over my head and I wasn’t going to touch anything else. It was time to call the helpless desk. I called in and told them about our master register and then mentioned about the credit card machines not working. Well, that was a mistake because when I went back to the conversation about the master register I was told that the problem with that has been sent to NCR and we weren’t talking about that anymore. Now I was being told that the credit card problems were a separate problem and we were dealing with that.

At the same time as I’m on the phone not getting anywhere, our pricing people are on the phone with another person from the helpless desk because their computers are screwed up too. Well, the person they’re talking to apparently thinks their problem is related to the master register’s problem. After talking to my yahoo for almost an hour the pricing girl comes back and says her yahoo wants to do a master reset on the master register. I mention this to my yahoo and he says… yeah, that might solve your problems. What the fuck? He talks to me over an hour going as far as getting the credit card company people on the line with us and then says the reset might just fix everything… Now that’s fucked up.

After all this we were told that NCR would be coming out to fix our one printer that from my best guess had a fried circuit board. Before hanging up we were told if NCR didn’t show up within the next four hours to call and they would see where they were. This was somewhere around 9:30 am. At 2pm they called back because some of the reports didn’t pull through because of all the problems and they needed to dial in to take them. I mentioned that NCR hadn’t shown up yet and they said there was nothing they could do about it. Luckily they showed up about a half hour later and fixed it and everything was right again.

Fuckin’ Mondays.

I’m still waiting for my Aqua Teen Hunger Force DVD’s to show up. I got an email that they were apparently mailed out yesterday which puts them at my house anywhere from tomorrow to Monday. I plan on going out of town this weekend so they’ll probably show up while I’m gone. Nobody better steal them or I’ll be super pissed. I’m also still slaving away converting my old tapes to mp3’s. It’s amazing how much shit you owned that you realize you like when you embark on a mission like this. There are songs I haven’t heard for years and I’m thinking, wow, I need that song. I know, my name is Dave, and I’m an mp3aholic.

I searched online for a method to eliminate spam from my guestbook on the Cartman page. I found an article on changing a few lines of the coding and I did that yesterday. When I got home today I checked the book and alas, no spam. Honestly, everyday I would have to go in there and delete at least 15 stupid spam messages with stupid messages like “nice site, I have found interesting things on it” and shit like that. Of course all of the links they left would go back to some lame site that they wanted hits on. It’s puzzled me that the Cartman site always got hit buy even spammers don’t sign the guestbook on my site. Fuckers. Anyway, although it’s probably only a temporary solution it’s nice to not have more spam than white trash on Easter in my guestbook anymore.

How long has it been since I have bitched about dollar days at work? Too long, that’s how long. I have mentioned how everything is going to be dollar days in my store soon. I have now been told to get rid of all my toys and put in dollar toys. I am also supposed to get rid of all of my foil pans and get the dollar equivalent in. They might also do the same thing for dog and cat toys. I’m supposed to put power panels up all over the store loaded with dollar shit and I’m also supposed to put clip strips every eight feet in the aisle loaded with… you guessed it, dollar shit. All I keep hearing is how all these stores put in dollar shit and they are doing so well. Well guess what, if you put in somewhere in the area of 400 feet of dollar days in a store, you will sell a lot at first. It’s new, and it’s going to take the people a little while to realize how shitty the stuff you’re selling is. Then they won’t be back. I’m really beginning to weigh my options now. Should I stick it out at a job that I completely fucking hate and go to school this fall? Should I move to a bigger town and rent a place and get a better job. I’ve put out many scenarios to look into. I’ve got my postal application sitting here I am going to be filling out so I can apply for that. The only problem with that is what if it doesn’t turn into a full time position? If it would then I’d be set, at least until I went postal on some dumb customer.

Well, like we always do about this time… it’s time to change the clocks ahead an hour. Normally I wouldn’t give a shit about that, I would just end up being in bed an extra hour in the morning, but unfortunately this year I have to work tomorrow morning; at 6:45. Of course here I am still wide awake at 9:30 at night knowing damn well that sleep wise, technically it’s 10:30. Am I going to bed, of course not. I am going to stay up until 10 or so like I normally do when I have to work early in the morning the next day and then I’m going to probably end up crashing on the couch tomorrow when I get home from work. The upside of all this shit I’m going to have to go through in the next 24 hours, or 23 hours if you really want to get technical about it, is that we are going to gain an hour of sunlight during the evening. I fucking love that. You have no idea how much I like it when it’s light out. You would think someone disgruntled would like it dark, but not me. What do I look like, one of those goofy Goth fuckers? Nope, I like my sunlight and I like it for long periods of time. My favorite time is during mid summer when it’s still somewhat light out around 10pm. Compare that to winter when it’s dark out around 4pm and I’ll tell you what, summer rules dammit.

I can say dammit because only adults like us are allowed to say damn, bitch, ass and hell. So get your hellin’ damnin’ ass back in that bitchin’ damn room, damn it! If you didn’t get that, it’s a blatant reference to Aqua Teen Hunger Force that is on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. The problem with this show is that it’s on real late at night and my old ass isn’t able to stay up that late. Seriously, I can’t seem to make it past 10pm anymore unless I really try. So anyway, Lisa has been telling me off and on about ATHF and I usually just say yeah, whatever. I’m good at that. Anyway, one of the nights I actually did manage to make myself stay up late enough, I was told to watch it and it was pretty funny. So the next day I went to the video store and checked out to see if they rented that and they did, so I rented season 2 and watched it quite a bit and decided fuck it, I might as well just buy them. So within a week I should have all three seasons on DVD and will be able to watch them whenever I want and not have to become an insomniac. So if you know Lisa, I’m sure she will be bragging up a storm how she got me into this cult… I mean television show.

I’ve been really busy working on my… ha, you thought I was going to say websites didn’t you? Nope, I have been slaving away trying to get most of my aging cassette tape collection transferred over to mp3’s so I can burn them into CD’s and enjoy some of my favorite music in the car again. Yes I do have a cassette deck in my car, but no I haven’t listened to a cassette in my car since about 1995. If I had my way all music would be in mp3 format. Mp3’s make the CD look like the CD made the cassette look. I will soon be buying an I Pod clone, most likely from the Creative Company and then will probably buy the attachment so you can play it in your car. Damn, will I be set then. I’ve also been getting some rare tracks from 3rd Bass that I’ve never heard before. Thanks to my website I’ve been sent some real gems.