Month: June 2005

Remember how I was bitching not too long ago how it was pretty chilly out for whatever month it was that I was bitching in? Well apparently someone heard me and decided to make it warmer… much warmer. I can handle the heat; it really doesn’t bother me anymore. The humidity on the other hand is a quite annoying. Of course it’s nothing that me, myself and my A/C can’t handle.

My schooling is finally done now, well all except the final exams. I have until July 8th to take those and I probably will on the next day I have off, which may just be tomorrow considering I worked over 8 hours today. I’m extremely happy I took the schooling because I think it has helped me a lot learning Flash and Fireworks. I’m by no means a professional but I think I do pretty well for an amateur with only 6 weeks of learning.

As of yesterday, the Looking Glass Lounge is no more. Although I was only there for roughly a year, maybe a little more, it’s sad to see it go. What did the lounge mean to me, and how the hell did I get there in the first place? I believe I was stumbling through Yahoo Chat and I was actually checking out peoples profiles looking at their web pages to basically get ideas for my own sites and I saw Nola in there and I went to her site (which was nolatoyou.com at the time) and from there I got to the Lounge. I know I signed up within the next couple days. The Looking Glass Lounge was the first online forum that I ever signed up for and participated in; and yes I’ve been online for almost 10 years now. For whatever reason I signed up and started putting my two cents in whenever I could. I met a lot of different people in there and shortly after coming in I started being a moderator and eventually co-administrator.

At any rate, it’s kind of hard to watch something you took part in go away like that, and I was for the most part just a participant. I know it was hard for Nola to make the decision to shut it down. Some people may say; well you’ve still got your other website (onlynola.com), but honestly that’s like saying sorry your dog died, but you still have the other one. Websites are for the most part unique to themselves, and to have to close down something you’ve put two years of your life into is a harder decision than most people may think it is.
So with that I bid the Lounge farewell, and as far as most of the people from the lounge; see you soon.

Oh, by the way, if you’re wondering who Willis Haviland Carrier is; Google it.

So I spent the last week of work busting my ass trying to get everything working with the whole new pricing system at work. Talk about a fucking nightmare. Thursday we had a four day sale starting and one of the items, coffee, was not working properly. Well after wasting about four hours on the phones with various tech support people; the pricing was finally correct.

Well Friday after they downloaded a new batch that ended up taking the coffee that it took four hours to put on the day before. Pure fucking genius eh? Did I mention that it took another few hours to get the coffee back on, all the people that were at corporate office that knew the program either didn’t answer their phone or were off that day… did I mention that? How about the extra eight hours I got last week? Oh well, that’s overtime and I guess if I’m going to put up with idiotic shit like that, I might as well get paid for it.

I didn’t work this weekend, but I did hear that even though our ad comes off Saturday night, it somehow came off Saturday afternoon. Oops, once again corporate office’s fault. At any rate, it seems like a giant pain in the ass program and I’m really hoping that in the next few weeks it turns into something a little less retarded or else I doubt that I’ll be sticking around for any more of the stupid shit.

Onto brighter news; I’ve only got another six days of classes and assignments and then I’ll be done with my schooling. I’m hoping that I can possibly find an entry level job somewhere doing web design. Speaking of web design and the probability of redoing one of my sites again; I recently bought the domain name thirdbass.net. The site is being hosted for free by another 3rd Bass fan and I am currently working on a new design for the entire site. I’m not sure how much Flash will be incorporated yet, and although I’m sure the entire site won’t be a Flash site, there will most likely be Flash elements. I’m thinking of putting each song onto the coinciding lyrics page on a small Flash mp3 player, although that might change in the future. Hopefully by the first part of July I will have the site up and running and the transition will be complete… then it will be time to redo my site again.

So I spent a few days in Minnesota last week. Tuesday morning I woke up about 4 am and I picked up a coworker and headed off to our corporate headquarters for three days worth of meetings. Like I mentioned last time I was here, I am going to take over in pricing in the store. On Tuesday of next week our new computer and new program will be installed and I will pretty much be the only person in the store that knows it.

The ride to the cities wasn’t bad; traffic was what traffic is in Minnesota of course. When we were almost there we ran into a shitload of rain. Rain and slow moving vehicles which makes me wonder why they call it rush hour… certainly no one here seems in a rush. Once we get to the corporate office, then the fun begins. Everyone else that was training for this new program from the stores were old timers in the pricing department; some in the area of doing it for 10 years. Of course as they go around the table on the first day asking us to introduce ourselves and tell them how long we’ve been doing pricing. I of course say I’m Dave and this is my first day. The one lady had to put me through 20 questions then asking why I was here and why someone so fresh would be in pricing etc…

When day one was finally done it was great because I had already picked up the ins and outs of the program, even finding a few glitches in it. After that we went back to the hotel and I got up to my room and flipped the TV on to check out the weather. Well I see on the news that there is a supposed tornado on the ground back in my hometown and they are basically yelling at people in the area to take shelter immediately. Wow, that’s fucked up, so now I gotta make a few phone calls. I decide to use my cell phone because even though I’m roaming, it’s still cheaper than using the room phone. I make a few calls and find out that my family is fine so then it’s time to go out for dinner. We end up going to the Macaroni Grill. That place was pretty good, especially if you like Italian Food. I’m not used to being in restaurants that don’t have paper napkins, that’s for sure. The size of the place was huge compared to places in my town and the food I had was great. Now it was time to go back to the hotel and most likely fall asleep. Around three in the morning I was woke up to the sound of thunder in the distance. Actually the thunder was right outside, but with the air conditioner going full blast I couldn’t hear it. I flipped on the TV and watched the live coverage as they were talking about all this high winds and hail, but I decided as long as they weren’t saying the T word I would just go back to sleep.

Ahh, day two. By the start of day two I am beginning to notice that the person that is supposed to be training us really doesn’t know the program that well. Later that day she lets us know that they still have the old program at their store. Well what the fuck is with that? That’s like asking a blind person to teach me how to play horseshoes. Well I was there to learn and I think I found about 4 shortcuts to the stuff we were being taught mostly because the new program is a Windows based and I’m very familiar with that. After another very long boring day it was time to get out of there again. Wednesday’s weather was much better than Tuesday’s. This time we went out to The Cheesecake Factory for supper. I had a double bacon barbeque burger and fries because all the really cool stuff didn’t really appeal to me. Even though I was stuffed, I was at the Cheesecake Factory and it’s a felony to not have some cheesecake while you’re there. So I ordered some peanut butter chocolate cookie dough thing. It was damn good. It was worth it being up most of the night somewhat sick because it tasted damn good. I can’t believe a piece of cheesecake costs almost $8 but then again I wasn’t paying for it… my company was.

Day three was supposed to be a short day for us. I was learning pricing and next Tuesday I was supposed to come back down for a day long meeting to learn DSD. Well they suddenly decided that we were going to be going live with our new system on Tuesday so that put me in a predicament. I can’t really go to Minneapolis and learn DSD when I am going to be the only one that works at the store that knows the new system… I’m thinking I should probably be there. They decided that I should be there as well and thought that I could just learn the DSD stuff in a few hours on Thursday. The morning classes we had were basically just showing us how to use the email program at work so which we already have and I actually showed my former manager how to use when we got it at the store. So we get to skip that stuff and go learn the DSD stuff. Apparently I learn this computer stuff rather fast because after being kind of squawked at on my first day and getting 20 questions, the main trainer lady (not the one that didn’t know her stuff) asked me if I wanted to be a trainer. I THINK she was just kidding because I laughed her off, but I think I knew the program better than the one that is supposed to be teaching us.

We got out of there around 3 on Thursday and I was home right around 5 so it wasn’t so bad. Friday was a different story though, because I got to come to work and everyone wants to know about the new system and how is this going to work and all this other whiny shit which I don’t really have time for since it’s fucking inventory time. I managed to get my entire inventory counted on Friday and I was able to label it all so that tomorrow I won’t have to do much. Besides, I’m already doing books tomorrow and I don’t want to be interrupted by those fucking inventory people. My next day off isn’t until next Saturday either. I work at 7 am every day this week and then apparently starting in July our prices are going to automatically update at 6am every day and the tags will have to be hung by that time. We open at 7 so the tags will need to be up by then. That means that I will be getting a front door key and a pass code to the security system so I can come in every morning around 4 or so and get stuff done before the store opens. Ahh, imagine that, working in aisles and not being bothered by customers. It sounds like a dream come true.

So in case this is the first time you’ve ever read something on this page, let me bring you up to speed on my past three years of this computer technology called “blogging.” Here are the facts we’ve established: 1) My job sucks. 2) Weather in Wisconsin sucks. 3) Customers Suck. 4) I love to revamp my web pages and I am now taking classes to make my sites even better and hopefully launch a career in web design. 5) My job still sucks.

So you get the idea… After being an HBC manager for the past 10 years at my current job and being railroaded into doing books on some weekends, I think it’s all coming to an end. As much as I want to quit the store, a unique opportunity came along in the last few days.

Our full time pricing manager is leaving in the next month or so. That leaves a full time void for one job. Let me stress that part again: ONE JOB. See, right now I am the HBC/GM manager, I am the only back up to bookkeeping and I also fill in at the service counter when needed, and like this past Monday I also get to do some cashiering. Unless I sniffed too much gasoline this afternoon while I was mowing the lawn; that makes four different jobs I’m doing at the moment. That’s three too many; or four however you look at it. Anyway whatever I had planned to do next week is down the toilet now. We are implementing a brand new pricing system at our store and will have new computers and new programs to run. Since our current pricing manager is leaving and the training sessions are next week, it’s been decided that I should learn to do the job now instead of her learning and then teaching me when she leaves.

Part one of this is good… I get off from work tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The bad part is I’ll be stuck in the Twin Cities somewhere next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for 8 hour meetings each day. Of course I come back on Friday and I have to prep up for inventory and then Saturday and Sunday I have to do books. I’m hoping that job will end quickly soon so I can have my weekends back again.

Did I mention that part of it? I won’t have to work every other weekend anymore. I will have to work one Saturday a month for roughly 45 minutes. I think I can swing that.
What about school you ask? Well I’m still doing that as well and if a web design job comes along, even a very green entry level position, I’m still gone. My only plan where I’m at now is to make my time there a little easier, but when my train comes along, I’m damn sure getting on it.