I've had something like 800 hits in the 45 minutes since I put up that Youtube video of Saddam's Execution. That's OK, I watched the whole thing too. Guess there's nothing on TV right now.
I think I will go fold laundry or something. Unfortunately I have to be back at work by 9pm.
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The girls just passed Macon. That gives me time for a wee little nap before they get here. The grease and heat at work did nothing good for how I am feeling today, so I have taken about a half dose of nyquil. That should be enough to clear my head and allow me to crash for awhile.
Some of the new folks at work are starting to get the picture. I had five people scheduled to work my second shift this afternoon. Sent two home. One was ten minutes late and the other one an hour. They are both consistently late and this "get there when you can" attitude is shit.
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...is what I am needing right now. I still feel like shit. Head cold or the flu or something. I think I will spend the rest of the night on the couch reading. There won't be much in the way of blogging this evening, or probably the rest of the weekend since the girls get home tomorrow, and I have to work 6-2, then 6-9. It's going to be a long damn day.
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...woo hoo. A small part of it anyway. Windows Vista allows you to do a full system backup, like you would get on a restore CD when you buy a computer, except this has all of your shit in it. My DVD burner is in the HTPC, so I save this one to it's own hard drive, figuring that if my system goes down, at least one of the hard drives will continue to function. It doesn't let you exclude stuff (like my 50 gigs of music) so it's pretty damn big anyway. It would probably take about 25 DVDs to back up. I really need to get some of the 8 gig DVDs to start backing my system up to.
As often as I do something stupid to my system, it will be nice to just restore it without having to go through the reinstall of all of my apps.
Still feel like shit today. I have a nasty cough and my lungs burn. Damn I wish I could stay in bed, but no, I have to go to work where I can potentially infect several hundred people with the Creeping Crud.
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...I came out of my last 70+ hour work week tired but relatively unscathed. Until I woke up yesterday. I am coming down with the fucking creeping crud again. Sore throat, cough, gooey nastiness emerging from my nasal cavity, AND I have the shits to boot. Damn. Searched the house twice for Benadryl or Nyquil so that I can sleep tonight and found neither. Just as I was getting ready to pour an awful big shot of 1800 I came across Liquid Children's Benadryl. As little medicine that I take, that should do the trick. That and the fact that I think I am going to get a shot of the 1800 anyway. It's been awhile and I forgot how it tastes, or something like that.
Damn, that was good. Warmed up the cockles that needed warming. Time for nighty night (and yes, I did find the bear goddammit)
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Damn. Charter must be having DNS issues again. Almost every site I try to hit tonight, I have to refresh at least once before it will show up. I solved that problem with Mediaone (later AT&T) by running my own DNS server, but I don't currently have the equipment. I may have to put together and old 486 if I have any left in the basement and put NT4 or Linux on it if I keep having problems.
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I've been in the restaurant industry for 20 years now, with the same company. When I first started working for them, it was because I just plain out needed a job. I was irresponsible, having had around 30 jobs from the time I was 16 until I turned 20. I couldn't even stay in the military. I had to beg the guy who hired me for a job. I went back every day for about a week until he got tired of seeing me and finally just gave me the job.
I went in on a Thursday or Friday night to watch some videos and fill out all of the paperwork. My first day was to be the Following Thursday morning washing dishes. It happened to be New Years eve. I overslept. I was supposed to be there at 7am, but I woke up at 2 in the afternoon. Damn. I called up my boss and apologized. He told me that was OK, come in on New Years Day, but make sure to call when I woke up if it ever happened again. I responded by letting him know that I HAD called when I woke up. I was not the most responsible person at that point in time.
I managed to show up on time the next day. I was sleeping on the floor of a friend about fifteen miles away, and got up on time and caught the bus to work. It was OK, but just another damn job at the time.
I waited tables for about nine months. It was good money but I discovered that I hated it. Waiting tables has got to be one of the hardest jobs that there is in the hospitality industry, particularly considering that in the U.S. the customers are expected to pay your wages, not the company that you work for.
After that I started cooking. I had been cooking for awhile anyway. I was working the graveyard shift, and the guy that cooked while I waited tables would go lay down on the back table about Ten each night, and I would cook and wait tables until Five the next morning which is when I would wake him up. After he was eventually fired, they made me the cook. I did that for about nine more months until someone decided to put me in management.
I have managed 16 restaurants in one capacity or another. I was a multi-unit manager for awhile in '99, that really sucked and I quit, but they ended up giving me a job at the corporate office to keep me around. I truly enjoyed that, but it was a 75 mile commute EACH way, and with the cost of gas and automotive repairs, I just couldn't afford it anymore. In 2003 I made the conscious decision to go back into restaurant operations until I retire, unless some kick ass job comes along, but that is extremely unlikely. No matter how much I have my times that I hate my job, as long as I do it, I am pretty much guaranteed a job until I retire. We have never laid anyone off, and are continuously growing and getting better. Hell, if the right district came open I might even be persuaded to take another promotion. I turned one down about a month ago. As it is right now, I have no interest in moving anytime soon.
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When I first saw the headline to this story I thought they were talking about one of my ex-girlfriends.
Head Banging Snakes Predict Earthquakes
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A bit of nipplage. When words for blogging just won't come, show a body part or two.
You know you've been waiting for it. I know I have anyway. Bruce Willis kicks ass. The trailer for Die Hard 4 is up here. You can also find it on youtube, but the quality of the video isn't as good. The movie synopsis says:
An attack on the vulnerable United States computer infrastructure begins to shut down the entire nation. The mysterious figure behind the shattering scheme has figured out every digital angle - but he never figured on an old-fashioned, "analog" fly-in-the-ointment: John McClane.
Hell, I might even drag my ass to the movie theater just to see it on the big screen.
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I don't know what the hell I ate yesterday but it was damn sure worse coming out than it was going in. Sweet Jesus.
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Getting slightly (just slightly) older, I always worry about losing control of my sphincter muscles during that wonderful act and you are about ready to orgasm but might have to fart too. Ever wonder what it's like to get shit on? Yeah, me either, but this guy knows. Go check out his beautiful Christmas story. I will be laughing for days now. Much more fun than taking pictures of my own ass cheeks.
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On New Years Day I will have been with my company for twenty years. Damn. Some days it feels like 100 times longer, but there are days that I feel like I am still 20, just not as many. With three kids to get through college over the next 18 years, I have at least 20 more working for them. That's the scary part. 20 more Christmases at work. Possibly I will get to spend a few with grandchildren, but there won't be any with my kids.
Anyone else made fun of automated phone systems? My bank uses one. You can either punch in the selections, or use verbal commands. It's pretty cool particularly since, like a dumb ass, I tend to check my balance when I am driving. It does a pretty good job recognizing different speech patterns. Lately I have been using different voices. It doesn't do so well at Sam Kinnison (sp?) nor does it like opera. The people riding in their cars around me must wonder just what the fuck it is I am doing. The only saving grace for them is that it is cold and my windows are up.
The girls are on their winter trip to Hilton Head. They arrived earlier this evening. It's weird because my son normally goes with them, but this year he stayed home with me. He has to work this weekend, and also has wrestling practice later this week as well. Tomorrow is my only day off until NEXT Thursday and Friday, so he gets to spend it with me cleaning the house from Christmas. I will get some cleaning done, but I am planning on sleeping in until I wake up. No alarms. No children beating me on the head to get me up.
Doing the bachelor thing, Chris and I are having pizza tonight. He offered to pay for it, which is cool. He didn't want to wait for me to get home, since he got a checking account last month, he has received his fake visa and wanted to do it himself. I understand that. It is a small slice of adulthood that he can enjoy. Domino's quit delivering to my town last month (the bastards) so we order from Papa Johns. I told him to get online at papajohns.com and it was pretty easy to understand. He called me up (I was on my way home from work) and seemed to be having problems with the website and I couldn't really walk him through it over the phone, but he finally figured it out. A few minutes after I got home, he got a phone call from the pizza place, and they told him that they no longer deliver here. I told him to ask when they quit since I had just ordered from them last week. They told him four months ago, and hung up. I proceeded to call them back and asked for the manager to raise hell. After a few minutes of the conversation in which SOMEONE was really looking like a dumb ass, he said "who are you on the phone with, Domino's?" I immediately stopped the conversation in which I now looked like a fucking retard and apologized to the lady and told her I would place an order online after we hung up. My son had ordered from Domino's, even though we have not gotten a pizza from them in months. Fuck, I don't need anyone else's help to look stupid, I can do that quit easily on my own thank you very much.
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My current desktop. I like it, but it is very bright. I don't see using it but for a couple more days.
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I managed to get home for a couple of hours. I just woke up and am trying to suck down a cup of coffee before heading back. They were actually supposed to call me and wake me up 40 minutes ago, but have apparently forgotten. It was as bust as I had anticipated, maybe a bit busier, but the ugly part will begin in about 30 minutes, now that it is getting dark out.
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Tonight was just a short preview for me of what it will be like at work tomorrow. They got hammered about 7pm, and called me at 7:30. I went in an expedited until about ten or so. I have two waitresses that are basically just pieces of shit and will be gone soon after the holidays.
Their drawer was short $68 as well, which was a nice bonus.
I have to hit the sack, 4:30 comes too fucking early.
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My son turns 18 in January. Knowing how broke I am this year he has asked for a PC game, Alien Shooter: Vengeance, except that when he told me the name he said "Alien Shooter Colon Vengeance". I about lost my cookies thinking about the alien ass munchers and where exactly they sell this game. Perhaps this is the sequel to Ass Fucking Zombies?
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Maybe I am just behind the times, but I figured out how to sync my LG VX8100 with WMP 11 yesterday. I tried the Verizon application, and it pretty much sucks, at least under Windows Vista. It won't even recognize my phone, but WMP 11 does great, and it's even faster than syncing with my iPaq. Very cool. I will post a how-to on my day off for those interested.
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...like this dumb ass who might have been the recipient of a Darwin Award were it not for a Sheriff's Deputy and a Parole Officer who put his burning ass out. Shit, let the fucker burn, seems like his gene pool needed a bit of chlorine anyway. How dare he burn a Christmas Tree. Santa must be fucking furious.
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Actually his name was Mike Evans, and he played Lionel Jefferson on The Jeffersons and All in the Family. Apparently he died of Throat Cancer at the age of 57. That sucks. Of course I grew up with early 70's TV, so some of you may not be familiar with who he is.
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My third shift cook that only works two nights a week and that hung me LAST weekend because he was in the crossbar motel called about five o' clock. He and his wife are on the schedule for tonight, tomorrow, and Christmas eve from something like 8pm-2pm. He said that his mother was flying in to Hartsfield tonight, but he didn't know what time, and his wife's car was in the shop, so they could not come in (and so on ad nauseum). He sounded drunk, but could have just been tired. They do work full time jobs during the week, which is why I let them off Christmas Day. They are the only people on my staff that are off on Christmas, mainly because they have to be back at work at 7am on the 26th.
I asked him why his wife couldn't drive down to the airport and pick them up after dropping him off at work. He started arguing with me and started coming up with reasons why not. Basically it boils down to he was either drunk, or just decided to get fired prior to Christmas. If I was going to quit, it would be now, not afterward. I told him that he didn't have a choice, it was not enough notice and he had to be there. He told me to do whatever I had to and if I needed to fire him that was fine. At that point I said "whatever" and hung up. I had to try and get the shift covered and go to bed in case I ended up working in his place. 30 minutes later he calls me back and asks why I hung up on him. I asked him if he was calling me back to tell me he was going to be there, at which point he said no, he wanted to know why I hung up on him. He was pretty pissed off. I told him that since I had to cook in his place I was sleeping, and hung up again. He has called back once, but I just let the asshole roll to voice mail, which he did not leave.
One of my two cooks for second shift just didn't bother to show up today, so I suppose I have to get that covered. I am going in to work in about a half hour to cook for awhile and see if I can cover tomorrow. The good thing is that this guy is not That good anyway, so would have been replaced eventually anyway. I just hate that it had to be this weekend. My Christmas Day just keeps getting longer and longer.
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I ended my day at work yesterday by spending my afternoon at the doctors office and then at line at the pharmacy waiting on a damn prescription for Silver Oxide. I burned the crap out of my hand at work yesterday, which is something I haven't done in a very long time. Fortunately that's what we pay workers comp insurance for. What really surprised me is that they didn't drug test me. The drug test EVERYONE for workers comp injuries now.
My personal doctor is on the panel of physicians, so that is who I went to see. There's that and the fact that our workers comp office has to call and set up the appointment. I know everyone at our corporate office, so she probably just forgot to request a drug test. It doesn't matter to me either way, but considering how many dumb asses show up to work stoned or drunk and hurt themselves, I am really surprised about it.
The hardest [art about a burn like this is that every time that I even get near the grill, my hand feels like it's on fire. That's all kinds of fun.
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In my un-natural surfing this evening I came across Sphincterine, for the next time you feel the need to "break left".
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I had a pretty short day at work for the most part. Home by 2:30, which was very nice. We went to the Christmas party my boss puts on for her three kids and had a pretty good time. A nice little covered dish. It would have been nice to have more people actually bring food, but it was still enjoyable.
I had to go back to work for shift change since I am off tomorrow, and then came home to help the wife finish wrapping gifts and putting one together in preparation for our Christmas tomorrow. I had just finished up about 11:15 and one of my waitresses calls and says that the credit card machine won't print.
Now let me tell you about this machine. It is literally designed for dumb asses to be able to use and not fuck up. It is a thermal printer, so no need to worry about running out of ink. The top flips up to allow you to lay the roll of paper in. No running though slots or catching the end on rollers. Just lay the fucker in and close it (the roller sits on top of the paper and is attached to the top). Designed for stupid fucking people. So I asked very specifically if they had opened it up and made sure that the paper was just laid in there and not put through, and I also asked if they had made sure to snap the top shut. Of course they had. I even asked a second time because I knew they had done something stupid and really didn't want to drive to fucking work after 11pm. They insisted that it was just not working
Made the drive and walked in. 30 seconds later I was walking back out after laying the fucking paper in that they had shoved up and around the roller in a way that it wasn't designed for. The machine was made for dumb asses and my third shift doesn't even meet that criteria. Damn. I don't think I said but maybe two works while I was in there. A couple of customers were laughing there asses off as I was on my way out the door. It is funny, and I am sure that they could tell I was pissed at my third shift. Three cretins that had to call me to lay a roll of paper in and shut the top. Real damn funny.
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It is in my house. Tomorrow is my only day off until after Christmas. I am working at least 15 hours on Christmas Day, and Chris has to work as well, 7am-9pm.
Since my children are Santa's "favorites" he comes to visit us a week early most years, coinciding with whatever my days off might be. We will get up and let them open gifts tomorrow, and then have some friends over for Christmas dinner tomorrow evening. Most years I have managed to take a couple of days off, but that's not going to work out this year.
This evening I have another Christmas party to go to, with the family. At some point after the kids go to bed we will wrap everything and get it ready.
So Merry Christmas all (just a bit early).
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Styx - Pieces of Eight
1. Great White Hope
2. I'm Okay
3. Sing for the Day
4. The Message
5. Lord of the Rings
6. Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)
7. Queen of Spades
8. Renegade
9. Pieces of Eight
10. Aku-Aku
I grew up listening to Styx and love them to this day. I didn't particularly like most of the stuff from the other arena groups such as REO or Journey except for some select songs, but I love most of the music Styx released, particularly the stuff from the early to mid 70's before they got big.
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Back in the late 90's I was a pretty big Linux advocate. I ran the strain known as Debian. It's pretty cool, but as far as actually doing any gaming and retaining compatibility with other business users, I went back with Windows.
I am currently installing Debian again under VMWare so that I can play around with it a bit. If I had several dedicated machines to use I might be willing to operate my main machine with Linux on it, but right now this is about the best I will get.
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...at work. My 3rd shift cook and his wife apparently got arrested over the weekend. I found out about fifteen minutes AFTER he was supposed to be there last night.
It took me about 45 minutes, but I finally got it covered with one of my former employees from another store. Finally got to go to bed.
When I arrived at work this morning, I was informed that my cook had called in about an hour prior and said that her boyfriend was sick and told her she could either call in OR quit. She won't have to worry about that fucking dilemma again as she has been removed from the schedule entirely. Number one, all of my employees have been told that they HAVE to call me, or MY boss if they are calling in. Even if they just get my voice mail, as long as they call within an appropriate amount of time before their shift, I will accept that. Being too chicken shit to call me and just calling work either loses you more days, or gets you shitcanned. In this case it's the latter because this is the second time in the last ten days.
I knew then that it was going to be a hard day, I was already running short one waitress but figured that we would be able to help them out. I still had my manager trainee, and while she is still slow as hell, she is doing pretty good.
About 8am some of my employees came in to get paid. I don't normally pay in the middle of the shift, but went ahead and let my trainee do it. Well, about thirty minutes later, in rolls one of Temple's finest. Apparently one of the hundreds that my trainee had paid my cook with was counterfeit and he tried to use it at the truck stop down the street. Once it was explained exactly what happened, he let my cook go, and he either made a really big mistake, or just didn't want to do any paperwork. He left the hundred with me. Good for me. It ends up hitting my unit's profits, but you can't get better proof of a counterfeit than being able to attach it to the paperwork. I wasn't very good, but even I didn't catch it when I was doing my cash audit. The paper was fine, all of my employees know to mark bills over $10 and they do so religiously.
We started to get busy about nine AM and my trainee gets a call that her fiance and eleven year old had driven through the front of a laundromat. Damn. That's about the time my day really started sucking bad. I ended up cooking most of the day by myself and we are fairly busy on the weekends. I finally got home from work about an hour ago, where I had planned to get home about three o' clock. I guess we will decorate the tree tomorrow night.
Oh yeah, about five one of my third shift waitresses (for tonight) calls in and quits. Stupid bitch. I had planned on replacing her after the holidays anyway, but I guess she figured that if she was gonna quit before getting fired, might as well do so the week before Christmas.
Attrition is starting to whittle my staff down to what it should be, but AFTER next week. I need all the extra help I can get until then.
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Chris has an all day wrestling tournament to attend, so I will be leaving shortly to drop him off at the school. I have stuff that has to be done at work anyway, so will just go in a bit early.
As long as I don't end up working a double today I may finally get around to decorating the house for next week as well. I have been extremely remiss in that department this year.
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Updated - I tried the Vista Easy Transfer tool (migwiz) and it works great. Transferred all of my music and email settings over without having to fool with importing and exporting from five or six different damn programs. Very cool. I still have to reinstall a few programs, but it seems to have kept the settings for the few I have messed with so far.
Originally Posted at 3:18pm on 12/14/2006
I managed to get Vista back up and running on here, but on a separate partition so that I could dual boot. I will end up slowly moving all of my apps over to it, but will probably cut out all of the extras from XP (what I am running now) and continue to use it for gaming. Most of the games that I play seem to have issues under Vista, at least right now.
It's still the last RC release, I think it time bombs next summer at some point. By then I will either have upgraded or bought a new PC (I can wish anyway) that will be faster than what I have now. I am having some problems with the hardware that I am using for my HTPC so really need to put mine back over there, which is where it was in the first place. I had to completely do away with my home automation software and am basically just using it to watch TV and DVDs and listen to music.
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Apparently starting today we are supposed to have very strong geomagnetic storming (solar flares). Sometimes it will knock out Satellites, Cable, even power grids. Since my network connection is still up, I suppose I am OK right now, but with the crappy level of service that I get from Charter, I expect an outage anytime now. Then they can blame it on Solar Flares. That was always a good excuse when I was in tech support and couldn't think of any other reason why.
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...when he was executed yesterday in Florida for a 1979 murder. His family members and anti-death penalty folks are up in arms about the cruelty and how he was executed "twice" because it took two shots.
A spokesman for the group Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty called it a botched execution and said that "They had to execute him twice. If Floridians could witness the pain and the agony of the executed man's family, they would end the death penalty."
I don't know about all that, but if everyone had the chance to witness an execution, they would probably start supporting more use of birth control.
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...even if it does mean more terrorist attacks.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/12/14/rahman.health/index.html
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Now this thing looks pretty cool. It's a homing device that lets you track where you have lost stuff, keys, etc...up to 600 feet away. I am so absent minded that something like this is pretty attractive to me.
The big problem with something like this is that I would tend to lose the main unit first. Back in the 80's my aunt gave me a key finder thing as a gift. You pushed the button and the tag on the other end would emit beeps so that you could find it. The first thing I lost was the main unit, then a few months later I lost my keys. Now if I could surgically implant a homing device in my skull that would lead me to my keys, wallet, phone, PDA, THAT would be an innovation.
Here is what I am wanting for Christmas, although NEXT Christmas is more like it, once my contract is up for renewal and I can get a good deal on it. I have looked at Crackberrys and other offerings using the Palm OS, and although there are some drawbacks to the Treo 700w, it offers most of what I want.
Built-in camera and multimedia capabilities, as well as a slot for an SD Card. My current phone uses mini-SD cards, so I don't really have any use for it. I am not in range of of Verizon's EvDO network, so that doesn't matter either. It doesn't offer Wi-Fi which is irritating, but Palm sells a Wi-Fi card that fits in the SD slot, so that is another $100 to add to the already hefty price tag of this phone.
Currently I carry my cell phone (an LG VX8100) and an HP iPaq rx3315. It would be nice to get down to one piece of equipment and still retain compatibility with Microsoft's applications and Activesync.
The bluetooth doesn't really impress me much, as I sync my PDA using the cradle, and I have a nice Jabra bluetooth ear piece that I got with this phone that I don't use. I suppose that if I started using it on a regular basis I mike grow to like it, but cell phones are intrusive enough without walking around looking like I am talking to myself all the time.
Updated - I just changed my last vacation to the week after Labor Day. I forgot about Helen until my wife reminded me. Damn, don't want to forget about that.
I just set up 2007's vacation schedule with my boss, so if any of you morons want to get together, here it is. April 2nd thru the 11th. This will be nice. I am getting ten days during one of my three vacations now and am looking forward to it. This is my wife and kid's spring break as well.
I am also taking June 11th thru the 17th and October 8th thru the 14th, but the last one is subject to change, as the Nascar race in Talladega is in October and now that I am back on I-20 I will be extremely busy that week.
Hopefully my big ass financial mess will be cleaned up by one of these. I am busting a gut to go down to Key West during one of my vacations preferably sans children so that I can stay drunk and disorderly at least some of the time. Maybe I can ship the kids off to friends in April, although that is so soon I don't know. If I can somehow manage to squeak out a tax refund (like that's gonna happen) I may be able to set aside some cash for vacation next year.
Verse 1:
My house smells just like a zoo
It's chock full of shit and puke
Cockroaches on the walls
Grass growing on my balls
oh well I'm so clean cut
and I just want to fuck some slut
Chorus:
I love living in the city
I love living in the city
Verse 2:
Ive spent my whole life in the city
where junk is king and the air smells shitty
people puking everywhere
piles of blood, scabs, and hair
bodies wasted and disease
young people dieing on the streets
but the suburban scumbags they don't care
they just get fat and die their hair
Chorus:
I love living in the city
I love living in the city
When I was about twenty, I lived with a couple of guys down near Emory University. Both of them attended, one was a poli-sci major, and the other an archeology major. Both of them real high-profile well paying jobs (not). Not that I can say anything. I slept on the couch and rode MARTA to work 30 miles from there to flip burgers.
As anyone who has read the blog for awhile nows, I am pretty much a metal head, or at least I was when that sort of crap really mattered to me. One thing I learned from these guys though was a real appreciation for other sorts of music. Both of them were very much into hardcore as well as other stuff. Some of the music that I listened to while living with them is Concrete Blonde (one of my favorites) and as referred to in the above song, Fear. I love Lee Ving's gravelly voice and over the last few years have picked up a couple of their albums, as well as MD-45's The Craving, which was an album he did with Dave Mustaine. Don't bother trying to buy it new though, it was remastered with Mustaine doing all of the lyrics. You can find it on eBay though, just make sure it is the 1996 (I think) release, not 2004.
Fear has a home page at leeving.com and fearrecords.com, but it just appears to be a place holder and no content whatsoever. Last time I was there was a year or two ago, and at that point he was at least posting a bit of news, but no more.
I wonder what happened to those guys. One was from Natchez, and I know he is married and living back there. I need to try and call him, next time I am in NO I would like to look him up and see how things are going. The other is from Atlanta and I used to run into him occasionally, the last time being at a Ren Fest a few years back. They were both pretty good guys and I miss them greatly.
...like most of my second and third shift employees. Since my food cost is so fucking high, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time checking tickets. EVERY ticket that comes through the place. Normally I would just go through and make sure that none were missing, and maybe check about five from each waitress. Since there is so much waste going on, I needed to start going through them with a fine tooth comb. I was there until after midnight last night.
My third shift is pretty slow right now. VERY slow. There's nothing here in town to keep people awake after 9PM or so, not even a grocery store or any other places, so it is pretty dead. About 10:30PM or so, my entire third shift decided to sit their happy asses down at the low counter and take a break. This is only about an hour and a half since the start of the shift, so it's not like everyone was exhausted from the five customers they had waited on. We have assigned cleaning, and prep work, and plenty of shit to do. Any we don't sit down in the customer area while on the clock. I guess they must have forgotten that I was there, or maybe they are as fucking stupid as I think they are.
I decided to clock their asses out until they got back up. Hell, about 11PM or so I got tired of waiting, leaned out from the back room and asked if they had finished their assigned cleaning. My cook says brilliantly "What?". I explained that they don't get paid while sitting at my low counter and they need to get their stuff taken care of. They were up and working at least until I left about and hour later. I'm sure that they sat their asses back down once that happened.
I went by this afternoon briefly to speak with my boss, and the ONE extra thing that I had assigned my cook did not get done. I can't wait for the holidays to be over so that I can get rid of the rest of these ass clowns.
A few months ago I visited the CAIR website. Apparently if you sign up on their list they will send you a free copy of the Koran. Cool. I mean, you can't really diss a religion if you don't actually know anything about it. I know all about it's millions of worshipers, but that doesn't really tell me anything about Islam itself other than a bunch of stupid people worship, but that's not a lot different than other religions, except that they are more violent, while the other major religions of the world have evolved and let the secular governments take care of violence for them.
Damn, this thing is big and heavy. It's going to take me forever to read it. For the time being it is sitting in the shrink wrap on my floor, so I guess I am already starting out bad, at least according to the coversheet that they sent with it. Speaking of the coversheet, here's what it says.
"This is a book that We have revealed to you (Prophet Muhammad) so that you may lead mankind out of the depths of darkness into the light." (The Holy Quran, 14:1)
Greetings:
Thank you for requesting your copy of the Holy Quran, Islam's revealed text. This is an important step toward understanding and coming to appreciate the universal teachings of Islam.
I hope you will take the earliest opportunity to read its verses and reflect on their meaning, thus doing your part to promote mutual understanding and tolerance of religious diversity in America.
That certainly starts out innocently enough. Of course I want religious diversity and freedom in America. Hell, I'm even OK if the Great Spaghetti Monster takes a stop in and wants to hang out.
As you may know, Muslims regard the Quran as the inerrant Word of God as revealed to the Prophet blah blah blah and so on lets get to the good part.
Muslims are taught from an early age to treat the Quran with great care and respect. For example, Muslims avoid placing the Quran on the floor, near the toilet and sink, near the feet, or in dirty or wet areas, as this is considered inappropriate treatment of a holy text.
Oops. Since it's currently holding down the floor next to my computer desk, I guess I am already fucked. Well, it is still wrapped up, maybe I have an out there. I wonder if my mail carrier made sure not to set her mail bag on the floor today. She could already be subject to eternal damnation for that one.
Many Muslims hold the Quran by taking it in both hands as one would a valuable piece of art and keep themselves in a state of ritual purity, washing before opening the holy book.
Damn, I forgot to wash after I played with myself earlier. I haven't even cracked the book and have already sinned. That's pretty heavy stuff.
Just as Muslims are expected to treat the religious texts of others with the utmost respect and courtesy, so too do we hope that you will take the information above into consideration when handling the Holy Quran. (or we will come fuck your mothers and cut your dick off before we blow something up).
Damn. Most of my reading time for something like this is spent on the toilet, so the entire time I will be reading it, Muhammad will be looking down on me thinking what a bastard I am.
Damn it. I can't get past my router tonight. Not a DNS issue this time either, just can't get out. This sucks. That's OK, I have a couple of Cd's to burn. I think I am going to put Vista back on this thing, but on a separate partition, so that I don't lose everything if it crashes.
My brother sent me a link to this video and I KNEW that Yabu would greatly appreciate it, along with a few other bloggers.
One of the things that I am into (you know if you have read the blog for awhile) is nice desktop eye candy (on my PC damn it). I came across a link today to Otaku Software's TopDesk, which can replace the generic Windows alt-tab with something much better. Any of you that are familiar with Windows Vista Flip3D will find this screenshot very familiar:
No, I'm not currently running Windows Vista. I went back to XP a couple of weeks ago. This is TopDesk. I have not had much time to play around with it's other features or let it run for awhile to see what kind of resources it takes up, but I have it running right now in conjunction with Windowblinds, DesktopX, IconX and a few other widgets and programs, so I will update this post later to let you know what kind of resources it uses.
From the TopDesk web site:
Find windows, fast. TopDesk is a quick and easy way to switch between applications. With a single key press, you can instantly view thumbnails of all open windows, display thumbnails of windows belonging to the current application, or hide all windows to quickly access the desktop.
So far I like it and will continue to play with it.
I have probably written dozens of "TGIF" posts since I started, maybe more. Well, TGIF!! At least it is for me. The holiday season really seems to take it out of me, and this year is no different. Most years having to work Christmas is a real big pain in the ass, but one I can deal with. In the past I have always had an extremely experience staff. At my last store I had something like 250 combined years of experience. I could leave the store at 3PM on Christmas day, and although I always came back that evening between 6 and 9PM, it was more of a morale thing, I just sort of hung out. This year will be different though. I will be lucky if I get to leave the store at all, and chances are I am going to end up working my ass off from the time that I get up until after midnight.
I think that maybe I will start going through old phone lists today and try to call some of the people that have worked for me in the past, that maybe aren't working for us anymore, see if they need a holiday job or something.
The last week has really just sucked. I have a few people that just don't "get it" and don't understand how I get paid. My profits are sucking right now, so of course I am taking a lock of flak from above, but I'm not making any money either. After six weeks of harping on Food Cost you would think they would know how serious I am. Apparently not, so over the last few days I have fired three people, but three more down to one day a week, and even had two of my second shift associates escorted off the property by the police.
That was a real fun one. At heart I just want everyone to get along and do their job. I prefer to leave people alone to get their job done, and I will just pay them. It hurts every time that I have to fire someone, which is why I rarely did it at my old store.
I went outside to have a smoke Saturday afternoon about five minutes before drawer change and what comes out of the van of one of my employees? The 26 year old waitress who owns the van, my 16 year old cook, and a bunch of smoke. It was like a fucking Cheech and Chong movie. When they walked up, their eyes were red as hell and partially closed, and they reeked. They must think I am fucking stupid or something. I went back in, called a couple of replacements in, and then called the law. It took the Temple Police 55 minutes before they showed up, so I went ahead with shift change just like normal, and when the cop pulled up, took the two employees outside and told them "this guy wants to talk to you". Damn, they were shocked as hell, and probably scared to boot. He was not particularly interested in busting someone for smoking pot, which is just fine by me. He wrote criminal trespassing warrants, made them sign, and had them leave the property.
About an hour later, the guys mother called and let me know that she had bought a drug test and he had passed, so she was going to contact the corporate office as well as the labor board. Whatever. Even if he wasn't smoking, he was aware that the other employee was and that it is a violation of our company policy to be doing that on the property, so it doesn't matter. The labor board doesn't bother me, as Georgia is a hire/fire at will state, and unless things have changed, you can't collect unemployment unless you have worked for six months.
The other will be a pain in the ass. It certainly won't be the first time that I have been investigated by our legal or HR department, and I doubt like hell it be will the last. When you do things the right way and try to take care of your employees, someone is always taking offense to the way things are done. About the only thing that I have never been investigated for is Sexual Harassment, and I don't give anyone a chance to accuse me of that one. Anything else is fair game, because people will make things up to fit what they thought was done to them. Luckily they were both white, so no one can accuse me of racial discrimination, like the guy I fire LAST week.
I don't guess I talked too much about that one. This guy worked his ass off. He really did. He cleaned all night, and didn't stop working until he got off the clock. In general anyone would love to have him, except for the fact that he was trying to feed his family for free, eating items that we are supposed to pay for, and making the waitresses cook all night so that he could clean. He refused to follow our system of cooking and at least one time told a customer he couldn't cook their food because he was busy. I have another guy that he is friends with that works for me, except that this one is lazy as hell, so doesn't even have the redeeming qualities of the one I fired. Since this other guy seems pretty honest, but just can't get it yet, I haven't fired him yet. That and the fact that he and his buddy that I did fire have accused me of being a racist. I just cut him to four hours a week and am waiting for him to quit instead.
Damn, this is going to be a long couple of months. If I can make it through the whole thing without calling someone something I will regret I will be doing pretty fucking good. I think it's time for me to retire, if I only could.
...at least anytime soon. Maybe it's just me but this seems to happen more and more the last couple of years, or perhaps it's just that it is getting reported a bit more.
...now that everyone is learning their job. Five fucking weeks later. It has taken a while for some of them, and there are a few that just don't seem to want to get it. I had to let a cook go Monday who just refuses to do things our way. He works his ass off, and cleans everything, but that's only half the job. I really hated to do it, but I replaced him with someone else.
Now that it is getting close to Christmas, I have had several ex-employees that have worked for me at one time or another over the last 20 years start to come out of the woodwork, now that they have discovered that they are going to have a hard time paying for Christmas sitting on their collective asses and getting welfare.
It really is getting a bit easier, I have managed to get out of the store by 3pm almost every day this week, and if I did not have a manager trainee, I probably would have been done by 2pm. Hopefully I can get finished really early tomorrow, as there is a Christmas parade here in town that I would like to attend.
I am having some issues with waitresses not wanting to learn their prices, but I may save that bitch for another time, as I have spent the last two weeks seriously pissed off and if I start writing about it my head may start spinning around and pop off.
...The game. Damn. This is pretty cool. Obviously from the lack of posting (as if I need an excuse) I have been spending most evenings this week playing. I think I may be getting near the end, but not sure yet.
