June 2006 Archives

Thanks to Lisa W for emailing me the link to this news story. Personally I prefer to just make my kids walk around the back yard carrying bricks :) Save money and get in shape at the same time.

I'm sure it is a good idea and all, but I just can't shake the notion that it is more of a parenting issue than anything else. The family was all in the car sometime this week, and I was making some smart-assed comment about mommy (any mommy) buying her kids three Big Macs, or whatever the fuck they want, instead of limiting them to what they actually need. I don't feel that junk food is particularly bad for you, in moderation at least. So my wife chimes in, "Hey, how about a fat sandwich". My three year old decided then and there that she WANTED a "Fat Sandwich". Now I will never be able to go through the damned drive-through without first considering if I just want to order one.

Technorati : Exercise, Fat

I had a nice time in Savannah considering the circumstances. I was pretty quiet though, I have felt like a dog turd for the last couple of days. My fucking head won't quit pounding and that has been very distracting. I'll post a bit about the funeral later this evening. I will say that it was nice to be able to put faces with names. Some of the folks were exactly as I expected, while a few weren't even close.

I'm about two hours out of Savannah right now. Guess I will gas up and be on my way after a little pee break.

I've made my first stop just north of Macon, about two hours into the trip. Not too bad, considering Atlanta traffic and the copious amounts of coffee I have had today. Not one to be too shy about these things, they have had to evacuate the mens room.

...is not something I particularly wnat to do this morning, particularly by myself. I would just as soon stay in bed. Nothing to be done about it though, just need to get my ass moving. I should be there at some point around noon, so may have a little bit of time to look around before going to the service. I think that Zonker and Sam are already there, so I can always look them up once I get there.

Looks like the links to Rob's Music HAVE been updated. It's mirrored in several different locations in WMA and MP3. There is also a streaming link, as well as one in flash. I am listening to it for the first time right now. I downloaded it as soon as it was posted. but somehow it just sat there on my hard drive while I did other stuff. Not bad. He had a nice voice and playing was pretty good too. Almost got a little tear in my eye. Must have been dust or something :)

I am taking my camera, don't know how much picture taking time I will get or if I will be able to even post them, but it would be nice to have pictures of some of the folks that I have been talking to, and about, for a couple of years now.

One more smoke and a cup of coffee and I need to get in the shower. If I don't have a shower before I leave I will feel like shit for the rest of the day. That and there's always the fact that nobody will want to stand next to me at the funeral.

Technorati : Acidman, Savannah, Travel, music

PUSSY.

Thanks to Vo for the link.

Technorati : pussywhipped

Damn. Awakended by the intense heat of bodies. pressed upon me. Didn't we already do this once this year, I'm thinking to myself? Shit, it was the dog, and my three year old. Way to harsh my fucking sleeping mellow. Guess I'm sleeping on my couch, if I can sleep.

Just paid a visit to Stevie, and she didn't come right out and say it, but it looks like Rob may have actually done himself in after all. That sucks. Trying to find out if and when any kind of arrangements are going on. I think I may need to make trip.

Technorati : Sleep

I personally like #10.

Pretty Lady: Metaphors and Analogies

Genital delicacy on menu in Beijing | Reuters.co.uk

Good thing I haven't eaten yet. Thanks Lisa.

There are several different types of what I call computer people.

First, there are those folks that want nothing whatsoever to do with computers or any technology at all. Rotary phone types. Not really part of the discussion at hand, but I have to put them in here.

Next on the food chain are people like my daughter and grandmother. They don't particularly give a shit HOW it work, they just need it to. They are willing to learn simple tasks (like creating fire) such as opening the web browser, etc. The are the end users that create havoc. Download garbage, spyware, generally fuck up their computers within a couple of months. The only reason I have my daughter in this list is because she is eight. I am pretty sure that she will progress as time goes by. This group of people, although I end up making money off of them, is a big pain in the ass. I have driven the 60 miles to College Park more than once to fix the sound on my Grandmother's computer because the fucking speaker wire was unplugged.

Third on my list are the sterotypical Mac users. Secretly all serious computer geeks want to be Mac users. Just have the shit work right, but not be afraid to ask questions and try and fix it. They can also be pretty dangerous, viruses, spyware, but overall, they are the perfect end users. If it don't work right, pop in the fucking restore CD and be done with it. Most of the people that I do small jobs for fall into this range. My wife is one of them. Over the last couple of years, I have stopped building PCs for people, and just recommend buying compaq or macintosh. Easy to use, comes with a restore CD. Just make sure you get one with a burner and backup your important docs and pictures.

I am going to leave the Professionals out of this. Most of the full time pros are very good at what they do, but when they leave work, either they are the previous group that just wants the shit to work right, or they hate computers completely.

I belong in the last group. Semi-professionals who think they know everything and have to tweak shit all of the time, usually to their detriment. Recently I had a hard drive crash and had to rebuild everything. I finally got everything right, running under Windows XP, everything was moving along smoothly. Microsoft has released their Windows Vista beta 2, so I downloaded both the 32 bit version as well as the 64. I tried to upgrade to the 32 bit version and something went wrong with the install. Damn. I booted to the 64-bit DVD that I had burned and proceeded to install. Can't do an upgrade this way (it is disabled) and I don't think that I would be able to upgrade from 32 to 64 anyway. I installed the 64 bit version and found that it didn't support the 64 bit Abit drivers from XP for my damn NIC. I formatted it again, and loaded the 32-bit Windows Vista. Everything seemed ok for a couple of days, then it started freezing up on me. Then I lost sound. Dammit. Reloaded the drivers and that didn't work. I figured that I had screwed something up messing around with the Vista settings, so I tried a repair. No good. So I formatted the drive and have now loaded the 64-bit evaluation of Windows XP. Sound STILL didn't work, and after a bit of troubleshooting (which I should have done a week ago) I found that it was mainly locking up when accessing the sound hardware. Goddam onboard sound. I disabled it in the BIOS and found an old SB Live card in my basement, popped that in, and everything is hunky dory.

Now I am just waiting for compatible 64-bit drivers for my NIC and I will upgrade back to Windows Vista beta 2, haha. I am a damn glutton for punishment sometimes.

Whether it be screwing around with my operating system, or skinning my desktop, or seeing if I can run some bad-ass AS400 fans in my desktop, I am always tweaking. Sometimes it can be a real pain in the ass and at those times, I wish I were just an end user. I just want the shit to work right.

Finally was able to get my scanner to work, maybe I will start scanning all of our old photo albums again. Thanks again to those of you who supported MDA.

...Actually I have allowed myself to be sucked into the annual MDA lock-up stuff. I am supposed to come up with a crap-load of money prior to June 22nd, so if you have a couple of extra bucks and nothing better to waste it on, click on the link below. It's actually for a pretty good cause and the less time that I have to sit there on my first day of vacation, the better. If you are a corporate sponsor, I think that you get a mention on the local MDA telethon as well. I will probably post date this to keep it on top and will update as donations are received. Thanks all.

Welcome to MDA's Official On-Line Application

Updates

5-28
So far, MDA has received $25 in donations from my page. Thanks guys, and by the way, if you want to be listed as having donated on this page, just let me know and I will be happy to put your name here.

6-7
I received a couple of donations from some folks that I used to work with at our corporate office. Up to $60 now. Woo hoo. Only $2440 to go :(

6-19
I got a check in the mail for $25 from one of the guys I used to work with at our corporate office. Damn, come on ya cheap bastids, send me $2 or something. It's a frigging tax deduction.

6-22
Well, all done now, except for a couple of checks that I picked up after the thing today. I ended up raising around $450 total, which isn't too bad considering that most of the donations were in the vicinity of $25 and that I suck doing this kind of stuff. It was held at one of the local restaurants, they supplied food and drink for the couple of hours that I was there. One of the local cops picked me up from my store this morning, and then I got to ride back in a stretch limo, which is something that I have never done. I have a pic that I will post if I can ever get the scanner going. Had to hook it to my wife's pc since I have rebuilt mine four times in the last two weeks, but that is a whole nuther story.

It's been kind of quiet around here the last couple of evenings. Christopher is working 2nd shifts lately, and Stephanie and the girls are at vacation bible school. (I am sure that there is some kind of oxymoron in the term Vacation Bible School, but I have to behave myself when speaking around the girls). I have had the time to actually post a bit and check out a few blogs.

Alas, but the nice evening has to end sometime. I have to go back to work in a few minutes and do cash and commisary audits and get all of my paperwork in order before I go on vacation. If I don't do it now, I will never get the chance. It will be nigh upon the Fourth of July weekend before I get back to work, which is fairly busy for us, and my boss goes on vacation the 5th which means that I have to assume her duties. Hopefully there will be a manager trainee available that week to actually assume mine, or at least be a general ass in my store.

Lisa made a comment in one of her posts that had to do with communication and modern day marriage. She mentioned BBSes and that sturck a cord. I have posted before about how my site started and just got to thinking about it.

During the time that I was calling BBSes and ran my own, I met some really nice people both in person as well as online. My wife and I both had a couple of nice friendships that started as a result of being online. I was into BBSes for several years and finally took it offline sometime around 2000. I know that the last year or two that I ran it I was strictly telnet only.

One of the things that I missed after that was the ability to converse with people online. I know that I can chat, but I hate chat. I use AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo, but prefer not to use them except rarely. I have used IRC as well. It's ok, but I lump it in with all of the other chat programs. I guess maybe there is something psychological about it, but I prefer the Bulletin Board, or blog format. I have your undivided attention (you had better be listening dammit), and you can't talk back, at least until I have had my say. It also gives us more time to think about what is going to be said, rather than having to come up with witty one-liners in two seconds flat. Not that having more time makes me seem any less retarded, give me ten seconds or ten hours, and I will pretty much come up with something related to poo.

I am looking forward to meeting some new friends soon. I have conversed online with a few of you, I have even spoken on the phone with a couple. I think that this fall, if they have it again, I am going to try to make it to the blog meet in Helen. Hopefully it won't be on a holiday weekend. Other than that, as long as I know ahead of time (at least a few weeks) I can take my fall vacation. Consider that time-frame a friggin request to the gods-that-set-blogmeet-dates. Time to have a couple of brews with some bloggers.

I go on vacation next Wednesday. Unlike what the title of this post says, I am not going anywhere :(

Christopher is flying up to Anchorage on the 3rd, which should be pretty cool. He will be staying with friends for a couple of weeks. I told him that I would send one of the cameras with him and kick his ass if he doesn't take some pics.

Stephanie and the girls are probably going to spend a week or two in Hilton Head around the same time. Gonna have to send the pther camera with her. I know they are all looking forward to the trip while they are gone.

I think that I will have a yard sale while I am on vacation next week, so that I can eat while they are out spending my money. Good thing I work in a fucking restaurant.

Actually, with everyone gone, I can sit around the house in my underwear, drink beer, and smoke. That will be cool for a couple of days, then I will get bored and start missing everyone. The hard part is at night. I have a very hard time sleeping when my wife isn't here, so I may end up being up for 120 hours straight.

For the most part I could really give a shit what my employees do on their time off. What they do at home is their business, not mine. That is pretty much my attitude about everybody, not just my employees. I do have a situation at work that is bothering me, and I am really unsure how I want to proceed.

I have recently hired a 16 year girl. She has been working as my hostess on the weekends, and now that school is out I had planned to start training her to wait tables and let her do that a couple of days a week. She is a sweet girl, lives with her grandparents, makes good grades, and is extremely shy. She also seems to have a fucked up sense of self-esteem, but that is her business as long as it doesn't interfere with mine.

I also have a group of employees that live together. Most of them rent rooms from one of the others, and they all hang out in their spare time. There is also a fair share of drinking and drugging going on there. As I said before, I could really give a shit, as long as they show up and competently perform their jobs.

The dilemna is that this girl has started hanging out with these folks (three guys and two girls) and is in the beginning stages of dating one of them, who happens to be 23 or 24. Can you say "statutory rape" a couple of times? I really hate the fact that this girl is hanging out over there, and certainly don't want my store to be considered as contributing to this sort of thing. I damn sure wouldn't let my 17 year old son hang with the stupid fuckers. I have been considering for several days calling the girl's grandmother to let her know exactly what is going on.

The only reason I hesitate is that I am afraid that the grandmother will tell her what I say, and WHO said it, and that it will get back to the employees (about 20% of my current staff). I like the fact that I don't have to work doubles and third shifts, unlike a lot of managers. I strive to take care of my employees and keep them somewhat happy, because my lifestyle (being able to go home) is important to me.

Another option would be for me to tell the girl that I just don't need her help anymore and shitcan her. That would at least remove her from being around these people (maybe).

Anyone have any suggestions?