May 2007 Archives

I've been writing a lot about vacations lately and posting pictures of some neat places as well as the exotic. I have some vacation time coming up in July and am very much looking forward to it. It probably won't be this year, but with my son leaving for boot camp and my daughter starting school this fall, I will be able to come up with some extra money over the next twelve months and would like to fly to Hawaii for my vacation. Just the wife and I. The hard part will be in finding someplace for the girls to stay for a week.

One of the things I would like to do is to stay away from the big hotel chains and rent a kihei maui condo or villa. Hotels are nice, most of the time, but just don't provide the niceties and privacy that I would prefer. Check out some of these pics from around the Kauai vacation rentals.

Some of the areas in Hawaii are just plain beautiful and exotic. I generally only get a week of vacation, but I also get one ten day vacation each year and would love to spend it on a Hawaiian vacation.

One of the really cool things is that the EPA has really been making an effort to help clean up Hawaii. With the amount of people from the mainland U.S. as well as the rest of the world that come to visit Hawaii each year, the help is much needed and appreciated.

I had scheduled myself to work a double tomorrow in order to save on payroll at my slowest store. I had a manager trainee work yesterday (he gets prorated between nine stores) and I am making the store manager work on on Saturday.

Today is my tenth day straight with two more to go. It looks very likely that I will be losing one of my two GOOD managers tomorrow afternoon to another district. Fuck that double stuff. I will end up staying anyway to clean up the shit-hole, but I am not going to cook a damn double as tired as I have been the last few days. I am starting to get very snappy with people as well, so I am having to watch what I say and force myself to keep my mouth shut.

One of the things that I am required to do as part of my new job is to make a stop at one of the nearby businesses before I show up at every one of my stores, every time I go there. It's called stop & recruit and is something we have done for a very long time. Even as a store manager I did it on a regular basis. Word-of-mouth advertising and recruiting potential customers and employees.

It's a bit harder right now, because I am almost embarrassed to invite anyone into my three stores, particularly on any shift other than the morning shift. They pretty much suck all the way around, although one is worse than the other two. That will get better with time. I don't expect to be able to get it right before the end of the summer, and possibly by Christmas I will have a really good staff.

Anyway, I have to order business cards and I was seriously considering some of those personalized pens as well. You know, "Hey, sorry your meal sucked but here's a nifty pen!"

...or at least I tried. I managed to get up about half an hour ago, which is fifteen minutes later than normal. I have to be in one of the stores in about forty-five minutes. Normally we have one of the waitresses in at six am every day, but the one store I have been having problems with in other areas, they also can't seem to show up on time at work. That may be because the manager is also late half the time. Being on time is one of my pet peeves. I decided that each day that the six am girl was late was a day on the next schedule where the entire shift has to come in at six. Obviously they aren't too pleased with it, but it may fix the problem...

No meeting today thank goodness. I have to work a double tomorrow, so the meeting is being held in the store where I am already going to be working anyway.

I am crossing my fingers and hoping the Oldsmobile makes it through the rest of the summer with all of the driving that I am doing. It is 13 years old and has over 200k miles on it, needs a serious tune-up, and the Auto air conditioning doesn't work. That is the only part I hate about having to drive it to work and back. If I were only making one trip it wouldn't be such a big deal, but some days I am in the darn thing all day long making six or eight trips between the stores...

My AVP just picked up nine more stores in the Atlanta area and one of the managers was promoted to the same level that I am. He deserves it and it's a good thing, but the store he was running is my old one, the busiest in the division, so they are giving me a new guy and pulling one of my two good managers next week to run it. I can pretty much count on living at work for awhile I suppose.

I came home about 1PM to try and get a nap in since I was up most of the night, but unfortunately the telephone and children don't seem to want to cooperate today.

One of the stores had me up shortly after 1AM. One of the waitresses was apparently sick and wanted to go to the emergency room. I did manage to get it covered, but it was about 3 before I could get back to sleep. I am seriously dragging here folks...

I have had to give my manage that is having a hard time some very specific instructions, and now at the end of the day he is required to bring me several pieces of paperwork that he has not been doing. Rather than going to his store to verify it, he has to bring it all to me at whatever store I happen to be in. He's not liking it, but I didn't design it to make him comfortable, I designed it to make him do his job properly.

I am getting ready to rebuild my entertainment computer (HTPC) pretty soon and I may need to get some el cheapo EMI shielding. One thing that I have noticed with all of the RF stuff that I have going on in the house is that I am starting to get a bit of interference, believe it or not, from my neighbors garage door opener. A bit of EMI shielding should take care of that pretty quickly. I may be able to rig something up myself, which would be the easiest and cheapest route.

I was hoping to have it done before Sunday as the last two Sopranos come on this week and next, but it doesn't look like I am even going to get started until the next day. I will just have to set up my VCR so that I can tape it. That or look for it on bittorrent. I haven't even run the program in months, but I am sure it will be there within 24 hours of airing.

Although I use Sitemeter and Z-Extreme counters on my site, every once in awhile I check awstats to see how people are getting to my site as well as what the searches are. I have almost as many image search hits from google as I do keyword. That is amazing.

Here are the biggest keyword phrases that lead people here.

I suppose I need to find the entries that have those phrases in them and put google ads right smack in the middle of them or something. Perhaps I will have time this afternoon. It certainly wouldn't hurt...

Here is the list of biggest referrers to my site (for the month of May) not including the search engines.

Five more days, five more days. Just keep saying it like you mean it. I don't need to bitch about it too much, I am the one who made out the schedules for my managers but I needed to make sure that they got their days off and that I was able to take next Sunday off. The only was I could do that was to work twelve days but I am seriously regretting it right now.

One of my managers is having issues with being able to perform his job to the point where all of of money is suffering. In a job like ours if you are losing money (profits) in one area and can't (or refuse to) fix it, then we make it up in other areas. Thus he and I will be working doubles and cutting some hours for a couple of his cooks which means I am working a double on Friday. That's gonna suck but it has to be done.

One of my biggest bonuses is for hitting a profit target. Unfortunately I won't and it is all on this guys store. That's close to a thousand dollars I won't be seeing on my check three and a half weeks from now and I am not particularly happy about it. What gets me is the people that steadily complain about the money they are making but can't take the time to get off their asses and actually make it. Once I have explained several times in detail exactly why and how to make the bonus and just get ignored and get asked what the problem is again and again I start to lose patience. I guess I am going to have to practice that over and over until I get it right.

But just to make up for it, here is one for the believers in the group...

Needs bigger clothes. I didn't say ALL of them would be attractive...

With the Boy leaving for boot camp in a few weeks, the wife has laid claim on his laptop while he is away. That was quick. I guess I shouldn't complain as I am going to temporarily snag his 19" LCD. I say temporarily because he worked very hard for it a couple of years ago and bought it with the proceeds of a summer's work.

Anyway, I will have to get to the laptop at least once or twice. I have some software to install, including a tracking package, and I also want to pop some extra Dell Memory in as well.

Memorial Day is a day for all of us, no matter our political beliefs, to pause and reflect on the sacrifices of our fallen service members who have died valiantly in order to uphold our beliefs in Life, Liberty and Property, those most valuable assets which are recognized in the founding documents of our great country.

Have a great day folks...

I guess I did something tonight that I have never done before, and I feel like shit right now because I know it was the wrong thing to do. I napped for a couple of hours this evening in preparation for going out tonight and checking on the stores to see what my third shift is doing. There is never enough management oversight in our stores on the graveyard shift, so they do pretty much whatever the fuck they want. If you have a good manager that has been there any length of time they mostly behave, but if you have new managers like I do or shitty managers, they rip us off blond or worse.

The first store I visited I sat in the bank parking lot for awhile spying on them with my cool little spyglass. The restaurant wasn't busy, but it was pretty steady. A full house. After awhile I drove over and parked in the lot behind the building so that they wouldn't see me drive up. I walked around the side of the building and when I got inside the only person on the floor was the cook. The few tables without customers were nasty and both of the waitresses were in the back room. Nobody even noticed. Hell, I made it all the way around the counter and had tapped the cook on the shoulder before he even noticed I was there. Scared the shit out of him. I could have grabbed the cash register and been gone had I wanted to.

When I walked in the back room, it was full of smoke from whatever the fuck the two waitresses had been smoking. Damn they scrambled to hide it. One of the girls was so freaked out she was shaking. I just dilly dallied around as if they had done a good job of fooling me and acted stupid, checked a few things and walked the fuck back out of the restaurant like nothing had happened. What I should have done at that point is fire all their asses on the spot and found replacements, but the place was full and I didn't want to be out of my bed in the first place. I am sure that they will behave for a least a couple of days now, maybe long enough for me to find replacements and shit-can them, but a few years ago I would have done just as I should have and fired them all.

The other two shops were pretty good. Everyone was on the floor working and the places looked at least OK. I did find a cook to come in for one of them so they could go home, but that was about the extent of it at the other two stores.

Maybe it's not as big of a deal as I feel like it is, but I have this shitty knot in my gut because I am ashamed that I acted like a pussy and went home to bed.

Damn. Only look before breakfast...Posting a few minutes early as I am headed in to work for a couple of hours.

As a child of the seventies in Atlanta I watched all of the older syndicated on what was to be later called TBS including the Andy Griffith show as well as the offshoots and all of the other sitcoms.

I have said before that the World Wide Web is a glorious place. Where else could you find something as cool as the edited footage from the Andy Griffith show set to the tune of Peaches - Fuck the Pain Away. Sooner or later I am going to be in Washington and I am going to have to buy the Zero Boss a beer. Thanks for turning me on to the link at 5AM this morning which is when I came across it.

I found directions over at Lifehacker about how to make your own airhorn in about five minutes. Cool. I could have used one of those last night at the graduation. I was the one hooting and hollering when my son's name was called. The don't call me a dumbass redneck for nothing.

My brother came to visit this weekend and left me a copy of his new book to review. I have just started it and will post a full review later once I have finished it, but I have made it into the second chapter (which I had previously read an excerpt from) but I will tell you that right in the first it grabs you and wants you to keep on reading. I had to force myself to put it down as I have to go in to work in a few minutes to surprise some folks with a mid-shift drawer change.

If you are adventurous enough to go ahead and get it or have already heard the podcasts, head on over and purchase Republic: A Novel of America's Future at Amazon.

I meant to link Elisson's site above as well, but somehow overlooked it. Here is the link.

...not really but that is the title for the inestimable Elisson's new book! woohoo. It is a collection of 100 of his 100 word stories. If you have had a chance to read them over at hos site you know exactly what I am talking about.

Shorts in a Wad: One Hundred 100-Word Stories is the title and it's also the link to where you can purchase it on Amazon...go check it out.

There is apparently a new variant of a Skype worm that is targeting just about anyone on an infected user's contact list in AIM,ICQ,Messenger,Miranda,MSN,Trillian (which uses all of the above) and Yahoo.

Be very careful when clicking on links that anyone has sent you via IM. I use Trillian as well as Skype, but not very often.

Holy crap. I feel old now. Star Wars is celebrating it's 30th anniversary...Links found via CNET.

Apparently The Police are touring to support their new CD which comes out June 5th (NEXT WEEK!). The new Police CD is entitled simply "The Police" and marks the 30th anniversary of their recording debut in 1977. Makes me feel old...

The album itself has 28 of their biggest hits from all five of their studio recordings. Here are the tracks that are going to be on the album:

Disc: 1
1. Fallout
2. Can't Stand Losing You
3. Next to You
4. Roxanne
5. Truth Hits Everybody
6. Hole in My Life
7. So Lonely
8. Message in a Bottle
9. Reggatta de Blanc
10. Bring on the Night
11. Walking on the Moon
12. Don't Stand So Close to Me
13. Driven to Tears
14. Canary in a Coalmine

Disc: 2
1. Do Do Do de da da Da
2. Voices Inside My Head
3. Invisible Sun
4. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
5. Spirits in the Material World
6. Demolition Man
7. Every Breath You Take
8. Synchronicity I
9. Wrapped Around Your Finger
10. Walking in Your Footsteps
11. Synchronicity II
12. King of Pain
13. Murder by Numbers
14. Tea in the Sahara

I was actually introduced to the Police in 1982 or so and they are one of the groups that really mark a specific time in my life along with a few other bands. This Police CD looks to be pretty good, and while it is previously released material everything on it is darn good and will make a nice addition to my music collection.

I can remember listening to Roxanne and Every Little Thing She Does is Magic constantly when I was 16 or so. Even though I was always into Heavy Metal there are a few bands that were not that just stick in my head and make me want to sing the words.

Roxanne...You don't need to turn on the red light...

Well, you darn sure don't need to hear my singing, that's when the dogs start howling, but you get the idea.

Right now it looks like the closest they will be coming to Atlanta are two dates down in Tampa in July and the Bonnaroo festival in Manchester Tennessee next month, although that may change. I don't get to go to too many concerts anymore, but it would be really cool to go see them this summer. It would certainly give me an excuse to go to Tennessee this summer. There are something like 100+ artists performing at the festival. That would be cool.

Also included in the new Police CD is a foldout poster from 1979.

Now I feel really old. I was thirteen in 1979. I may post more about it later. I haven't checked to see if it's going to be available on iTunes yet, but with the Poster this may be one hard copy that I want to add to my collection unopened and then buy the music itself online...

I have used a few color picker programs over the years, and downloaded Ades Design Color Picker 2.0 the other day to try it out. There are a few different reasons that I have used color pickers before. One is for web pages. When I designed my template for this site, I purchased a banner and a basic template for a web page, but then I had to convert it to a movabletype template and create a few pages that of course never existed in the original template. I used my banner header to set the basic color screen and had to use a color picker to get just the right shades so that it would all piece together well.

I have also used color pickers when making new skins for Windowblinds and DesktopX. I always want to make sure that the various elements fit together properly just like I do when working on my web site.

Color Picker 2.0 is pretty cool. It is small and lightweight. It runs in the system tray, and while just sitting there it was only using 2560k of memory. Pretty minuscule with the amounts of memory in today's computers. There are several options that you can set in color picker as shown in the shot below.

While in Demo mode only RGB is available, but the program is available for purchase for $9.90 and get the rest of the features unlocked, such as getting HTML color codes.

Here is a shot of the actual program at work.

To activate the program you can right-click the icon, or use the ctrl-shift-a hotkey at which point the little viewfinder with color codes pops up. To get it to go away you just have to right-click the desktop.

Overall the program does exactly what it is supposed to and does it well. Although there are plenty of free color-pickers out there this one offers a few more options than most and is well worth the $9.90 that it costs. You can find out more information about Color Picker as well as some other cool programs at AdesBlog.com

One thing I have noticed since I made the change that sped up commenting is that it is also re-indexing MUCH MUCH faster. It used to take about three or four minutes just to post an entry and that was on a good day. Now it's more like 40 seconds. SWEET. I am very happy with that. Still having some problems with the Fast CGI implementation like I can't log into the movabletype control panel now, but I sent tech support a ticket, hopefully they can get that fixed before I get home tomorrow morning.

I am so tired that I am beyond tired. This will probably be my last post tonight, which is not necessarily a bad thing since I have been posting like a monkey on crack the last hour.

RePete has a fever of about a hundred two tonight. She is sleeping, but also congested. What sucks is that tomorrow is a blackout day for me, meaning it is an absolute NO-NO to take the day off. She is going to have to go with me in the morning, since with tomorrow being graduation it's not like the wife can take it off (she teaches). I will go in for about an hour in the morning and then head home. Hopefully I can get RePete a pretty early doctor's appointment and get her looked at.

I almost got killed tonight. That wasn't much fun. It's a good thing I got new tires on the wife's car a couple of weeks ago. I managed to get home about six this evening, and within a ten minute time period two people called in from the two stores where I have no managers today. That shit blows. I made this one girls cry. She called in right before her shift started, and I told her that if she was sick that was fine, I didn't want her coming to work, but that if she was that sick she needed to go to the doctor, therefore she needed to bring me a doctor's note stating that she couldn't work. NOT a note saying she had been seen, but it needed to say that she couldn't work tonight. She's already missed one day this week and I am getting tired of this crap from the employees when their manager's are off. My people didn't pull that shit and stay employed long. Most of them rarely missed any work, and I knew that if they were out it was because they really were sick.

That's about enough of the crack monkey posting tonight. More tomorrow...

Oh yeah, that train of thought got seriously derailed. Anyway, I had to drive to the town about fifteen mile south of where I live to pick someone up that was willing to work tonight, and on the way back I was doing about sixty, right behind another car. This dumb-fuck pulls out to cross the road right in between the first car and myself. I had to swerve way to the left to avoid slamming into the stupid fucker and if I had not had new tires I would have gone back off the road. Some people just don't need to be driving. Had I been going a bit slower and not had a passenger I might have run into him just to get a new car, but I was late and needed to get this guy to work...

Now I really am done...later all and have a wonderful night.

Earlier I was rambling on about Key West again. THAT is more my speed than flying. I hate flying anywhere. While I really want to see Europe it will be around the time that they get that underwater train working :)

I do want to take another Florida vacation soon though and Key West is the place. I was reading a couple of blog entries recently where one of the companies that I do business with took their executive retreat in Key West and it looked like they had a blast.

Perhaps in the next year or two we can get some kind of blog meet going on down there.

I would almost like to fly (notice I said ALMOST) to Europe and hang out for a while. It would be nice if I could eventually get enough time off from work to go over and rent a couple of villas in Italy, go to Germany, Britain, and a couple of other places. Heck, even though it's expensive it's more about the time factor right now than it is the money.

One of my former bosses that holds the same level of employment that I do now is getting ready to go on vacation next month. Her big thing when she goes on vacation the last couple of years is cruises. I was kind of thinking about doing the same thing once things have settled down at work a bit.

I certainly wouldn't be able to take one on the next vacation, but you never can tell about next year.

Unfortunately while all of you folks are going to be out having cookouts and picnics, playing sports and boating, I get to work :(

Just par for the course I suppose. I did schedule myself an easy weekend though, at least I hope so. One of the days I am going to have to work pretty late, but the rest of the time I should be able to shoot out the door pretty quickly.

...not from work of course, but off to get there. Fortunately my boss is taking the day off and since I have a twelve day stretch before me I may try and shoot out of there a bit early.

I managed to get out of the stores at around 2:30 this afternoon, but I feel like I have been working all day. When I got home I hung out with the girls for awhile, then had to do a few reviews over at TheAppDotNet that took me a little while to get finished thoroughly.

I spent the better part of this evening writing up a statement for an ongoing legal investigation. I was interviewed back in January and wrote a statement then, but apparently all of the paperwork went missing, so I had to do it all over again tonight. I still don't know what the status is on that. I am somewhat pissed off about it though.

For work I ended up spending quite a bit of time on the phone getting stores covered and calming people down. I have been putting out a lot of fires the last couple of weeks and just don't know if I am making an impact yet or not. Perhaps it's just too early to tell right now.

I haven't posted a heck of a lot today, at least here but I may get a chance to get the heck out of the stores tomorrow early enough to get some posting done.

You know, I just don't see chasing after my dog and shoving this thing under his butt. I would rather use the inside out bad around the hand if I am someplace that needs to be kept clean. That way it gets dumped in the trash and no need to clean up the equipment before getting back in the car or returning home...

I am tired and it's time to crash so I think I will post this a few hours early.

This is Sponsored By Villa Direct.

I was doing what I always do when I have been working too much (and lately I have been working WAY too much) and I came across a site that with listings to find an Orlando Vacation Home. What's cool is that these vacation homes are all within a fifteen miles radius of Walt Disney World. Of course there are hundreds of other things to do in Orlando, if not thousands, but for most the main attraction is Disney World.

Want to see something nasty? Really? Actually the photos aren't THAT bad, but it's just one of those things I have come across in my aimless need to entertain you...

Bernard Chan is a surgeon and he has some pretty interesting stuff up. Don't go on a full stomach :)

After posting about Harvey and the new Harry Potter book I had to go over to Amazon and make sure that I had already pre-ordered it. I have, and it is to be released on July 21st. Definitely looking forward to it. This is the cover for the new book...

Yeah, I am a big Harry Potter fan. I am itching to know which one of the main characters bites the big one in this book as well...

Technorati : Harry Potter

...Last one for awhile anyway. All of this vacation talk is getting old. I get to take on in July, starting on the 5th as a matter of fact, but I still don't know if we are going to go anywhere yet or not. I wouldn't mind going to London if we had the opportunity though. The wife has a close friend who is from England originally (she's the one that lives in Hilton Head now). I don't really know anyone from England myself, but I did make out with a Londoner of the female persuasion once though, if that counts.

Anyway, just as with any other places, if you keep a close eye on prices you can get a pretty good deal on flights to London every once in awhile, and their are always cheap hotels in London to be found. I don't necessarily mean a bad cheap hotel in London, but just one with a good deal. There are pretty nice three and four star hotels that have sales plenty of the time, without having to go broke, or stay in a roach motel.

Believe it or not, but London has been around for over 2000 years. Considering that I look at things here in the United States that are 3 or 4 hundred years old and consider them OLD, there are parts of London that are just ancient. All of that history just wows me. I think that even though it's not particularly warm, I wouldn't mind. The average high and low temperatures over there are only about 38 degrees apart, compared with a much bigger range here. Even though I like it warm, I don't like it TOO warm, at least not for an extended amount of time. The average temp in London for July and August is about 72 degrees. Perfect.

Most of us have seen this picture before, but if not, it is Westminster Abbey which is one of London's oldest and most important buildings.

And this is the Palace of Westminster, which houses Parliament now.

The twin buildings toward the right are Westminster Abbey again. This picture is a picture of the day over at Wiki, and the author is Diliff.

This one I got off of Flickr and Wiki, thanks to Dano...

Too bad our friend lives in Hilton Head, SC or we might be able to visit here there. As it is I am sure that we could stay in one of the many cheap hotels in London that I found at easyhotel.

As much as I don't want to leave the house I really have to get to the bank. Back later...

Harvey has posted a Harry Potter spoiler in anticipation of the new book that is coming out soon. Laughing my ass off...

Updated 7-22-07 I received the book yesterday but the wife has claimed it first so it may be a few days before I get the opportunity to read it and find out exactly who dies. Don't tell me if you know, I really do want to wait and find out.

Yeah, the traffic is always nice, ain't it Harvey...

:)

Now if you are looking for a good book you should really check out Republic by Charles Sheehan-Miles

Technorati : Harry Potter

Once I really got to thinking about vacation spots I decided that going someplace sunny and warm would be nice. The older I get the more I want to vacation where it's not cold. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy spending time in the mountains and wouldn't even mind going to Alaska or Canada to hang out for awhile, but thoughts of spending a lot of time? Nope, I don't think so. I used to want to move to Alaska, but all that cold air stuff kind of puts a damper on it for me. Since some of my favorite memories as a child are of Florida, I thought about looking at flights to Florida and hotel prices in Key West. I am still dying to go at least once. The farthest south I have been was Key Biscayne back when I was about seventeen and for the last couple of years I have wanted to visit the Keys.

Check out this sunset in Key West taken by photographer Soeren Rothe...

This virtual vacation thing is pretty cool, and with the hours I have been working lately, the closest I will get to a real vacation any time soon.

...and this one is the Ernest Hemingway house as taken by Andreas Lamecker...

Another warm place I would like to eventually go is the land down under. Every once in awhile I can find a decently priced flight to Australia and am so tempted to just pack up and go. One of the things that I did quite a bit of when I was ages sixteen until about twenty was road trip constantly. Even though I don't do much traveling anymore, the wanderlust has stayed with me.

Another cool place that I don't hear a lot about is Tenerife. I haven't even bothered to price flights to Tenerife as it is well outside my budget right now, but that would be a blast. Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands off of the coast of Africa. Oh yeah...

I would be much more likely to try and go to Hawaii myself though since it is still part of the U.S. Even though I want to go about a million different places I there are enough places within the U.S. or one of our protectorates to last me for quite some time...

Found this one thanks to mulletjunky.com For some reason this guy looks slightly familiar though I am not sure why, but it certainly fits the recent theme.

...the sideburns and flannel must have been my imagination. A bit of mental embellishment perhaps...

I was visiting Zonker's site reading the interview questions that he finally posted and something that I have been meaning to post about struck me right in the forehead.

The wife and I took the girls to the local state park last week so that we could walk around the lake while they rode their scooters. Toward the end of the afternoon the wife let Pete go for a swim and I took RePete to the playground. I saw the most amazing site while we were there. The whole park was pretty crowded as was the playground, but one particular family stood out. Dad was dressed in jeans and black boots, a flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off, big bushy sideburns, tattoos all over his arms, keys hanging on a big ring off of his belt, and a big old fucking mullet from 1985. Mom looked just like he did, minus the sideburns. Then their two daughters came over. There were dressed in slightly more girlie clothing but they had the same goddamn mullets that mom and dad did. It was the whole trailer park mullet bunch. Truly amazing. Don't believe me? Check out this lousy shot I managed to get when mullet man wasn't looking. This is mullet mom. Mullet dad is over to the right.

Now don't get me wrong. I wear black boots and have a couple of tattoos myself so I have nothing against them, Nor do I even particularly dislike trailers or the people who live in them. I've done so myself on more than one occasion. It is just so surreal and has managed to stick in my head for a week now so I had to post it.

Some other places that I would really like to go since I am blogging about expensive places is the Far East. Japan, Malaysia, Bangkok for instance. Yeah, I know this may be getting old but I have had a pretty cool time posting pictures and reading about some of the countries that I will end up visiting sooner or later.

When I used to commute 75 miles each day to work I listened to a lot of Talk Radio. One of the shows I would listen to on the way home in the afternoon was the Clark Howard show. Each year he takes his staff on a really cool vacation and one year they took flights to Japan. I was really jealous. I darn sure don't see my boss taking me to Japan any time soon.

This is a picture of Mt. Fuji, the highest point in Japan, with Sakura and the Bullet Train in the front.

Since I was already starting down the road I figured I would do some reading on the other places as well and price flights to Malaysia. Malaysia is a confederation of thirteen states located in Southeast Asia. It's a pretty diverse place and actually takes up two geographic regions. Malaysia gained independence from the UK in 1957.

This is A Famosa, which was built by the Portuguese in the 1500's.

This next one is the Ubudiah Mosque.

The last "window shopping" I did was to price flights to Bangkok, although in the past I generally took the train on more than one occasion if you know what I mean. I haven't done that in quite some time though.

Bangkok is the Capitol of Thailand, right near the Gulf of Thailand. It's also the 22nd most populous city in the world right now.

This is pretty cool. It is the Vimanmek Royal Mansion, which is the world's largest building made of teak wood.

...as I have to get ready for work anyway. Hopefully today will go smoothly.

I am still planning on hitting the Renaissance Festival the Saturday after Memorial day for anyone that might want to meet us there although it may be late. I still don't know what day I am going to have off although I am going to try and make sure all my managers are in place that weekend.

I would take the whole weekend off, but the Boy is leaving for boot camp on June 18th, so we are going to have a party on Saturday the 16th and I am planning on taking that entire weekend off. All and sundry bloggers are invited to this as well.

Time to go to work, maybe I will be back online later today if I am lucky enough to make it home before dark.

Yeah, this has been an extremely long hard week. All I am thinking about is vacation time. I have had to bump mine from the scheduled week in the middle of June to just after Independence Day. I don't remember the last time that I actually took a vacation in July. It's been quite a while though.

Any time that I start looking for a vacation spot I get online and the first thing I do is look at the places I know I can't afford. Stupid, huh? I have actually found some pretty good deals this way, some of them I CAN actually afford. Before the end of the year the wife and I will have up to date passports, as with the new job I will be able to travel a bit. The trick is to get the extra time off, but with the addition of one ten day vacation each year that pretty much solves the time-off issue as well.

A friend of ours from that we met back in September of last year in Helen lives in Canada. There are always pretty cheap flights to Canada to be found, particularly in the fall and winter. I tend to try and visit places in the non-touristy season because rates are always the best then. There are also some really good rates on flights to Caribbean areas right now as well, even though it's still pretty busy down there in the summer.

I would really like to get down to the Caribbean at some point, or if not, then at least Key West or the surrounding areas. What would be really cool is to have a blogmeet down there. Get some of the Jawja bloggers down there as well as some of the others that I know from overseas. It would be a blast. They should be able to get decent flights to USA airports at a good rate right now too.

...shit rises to the top. I am very familiar with the Peter Principle as just about anyone that is in any kind of management position is as well. Ron has a quick post up about the Peter Principle that I can completely relate to.

Of course since I live here I am a bit biased, but there are so many things to do in the United States on holiday. One of the places that have been to that I think any visitor to the United States should go see is New York. Right now you can get a flight to New York at a pretty decent price. Whether it is something as complicated as a two week vacation or simply a series of New York weekend breaks there is something right for you.

New York is the largest city in the entire United States. Just the city itself has a population of over 8 million people and that doesn't count the metro and surrounding urban areas.

This is a picture taken in Central Park in New York City courtesy of Wiki and is in the public domain. It is a picture of a Gothic arch bridge spanning the bridle path south of the tennis courts. When I was in New York back in 1986 I was able to do a bit of site-seeing but the closest I go to Central Park was the Plaza Hotel.

One of the things that amazed me while I was there was the eclectic mix of architecture. That same mix is also shown in the inhabitants of New York, the true melting pot of United States society.

If you are coming to the U.S. but don't want to deal with the hassle of the big city there is always the option of getting a cheap flight to Orlando and going to Disney or one of the other big area attractions, or maybe just nap during the day and lie out by the pool in the evenings for a pretty relaxing time.

People are so damn stupid. Perhaps I will wait until about 11AM today and call everyone on third shift that decided to call me last night just to make sure they are doing OK and getting plenty of sleep. Considering that I was THERE until 10PM they could have asked some of the questions then.

"Why are there three waitresses working tonight?"

It's Friday night!. One of my three managers actually called at 11:47PM to ask that.

"We dropped most of the money in the safe and don't have any fives or tens."

This is the store that sits in the middle of a shopping center, which includes a 24 hour Wal-Mart. I suggested (very nicely) that someone make a trip to Wally World.

This review is sponsored by Poker-strategy.org.

This is the second Poker site I have reviewed in the last month or two and I found it pretty interesting. It is the highest rakeback that I have seen so far for Full Tilt Poker at 27%. Full Tilt Poker is still accepting players from the United States and they are the most popular poker room that has a rakeback plan in place. Since most sites have blocked players from the United States (or at least their accounts) due to our oppressive laws Full Tilt Poker has become the number one choice for American players.

All you have to do is visit them and download the software, create an account and complete the registration process. It might ask you for a bonus code when you are registering, that is available at the Full Tilt Poker Rakeback page. Once you have gotten all set up and are ready to go, email them with your Full Tilt Poker user name and they will enter you into the Full Tilt Poker Rakeback program and give you the ability to track your daily totals. Do it before you make any kind of a deposit so that you can verify that you are hooked into a real money account.

I managed to get home from my meetings about 8:30 last night. Pretty long day. Rather than sitting up late as I do sometimes, I hit the sack by ten so that I could get at least a few hours of sleep. All was well until about one this morning when they called me. The police were at my store because the two waitresses had been fighting.

...so much for sleep.

I found this at DRC's site, who in turn got it from Tammy and she is right in that it does need to be repeated and often.

In a recent Journal & Courier article, an attendee of a local gathering in observance of the National Day of Prayer alleged, "Our nation was founded on biblical principles."

To the extent that our Founding Fathers had any religious affiliation at all, it was a tepid embracing of the philosophy of deism, a popular system of thought at the time. Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, among many others, held deist, rather than Christian, religious beliefs.

The two documents upon which our country was actually founded -- i.e., the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States -- contain not a word about Christianity, Christian principles, the Bible or Jesus Christ. Neither is there any mention of the Ten Commandments, heaven, prayer or being saved.

In 1797, the Treaty of Tripoli, negotiated by none other than George Washington, declared that "the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." Congress unanimously approved the text of this treaty, and John Adams signed it.

Mandatory church affiliation, among other factors, led to the establishment of the term a "wall of separation between church and state," allowing, at each citizen's discretion, freedom of religion or freedom from religion.

The phrase "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and our national motto became "In God We Trust" in 1956 in response to USSRs' so-called "godless Communists." It is historically incorrect to claim that America was founded upon Christianity.

Indeed, it was quite the opposite.

Randall S. Smith

Rossville

Oh my. I saw that in my inbox and had to read. I'm still waiting. Liars.

waiting....

waiting....

asshats...

I'm still not sure what to make of the new Dorito's videos. They have to be about the most ridiculous things I have seen in quite some time, but I darn sure keep going back to watch them all anyway. Check this one out.

This one has the two new Doritos, Wild White Nacho fighting with Smokin' Cheddar BBQ. I won't give away the entire video but there are Nunchaku. The premise of the whole thing is to Fight for the flavor. We get to vote for our favorite new flavor of Doritos and only one will survive, with Doritos no longer making the other one. There is an entire storyline through the whole thing, so you have to watch them all to figure out what exactly is going on.

One of the videos I watched had them going at it in the ring with Cheese Knives (my favorite), a battle ax, and even a jackhammer, until one finally picks up the referee and bashes the other with him.

You can check out all of the videos over at Heavy's Fight for the Flavor page and get to the voting links while you are there. I love Doritos but haven't tried EITHER of these yet, so now I will have to get them when I go grocery shopping on Friday.

...and I just about lost my cookies laughing when I read this post over at the Zero Boss.

I'm not entering this one, but I thought I would pass it on:

Here are a few answers to some of the creationist nonsense that goes right along with my post on evolution earlier.

I am still flabbergasted after reading that article. The fact is that scientific theory generally are proven facts. A Hypothesis is something that hasn't been proven yet, and most of the fundies basically are referring to it as the Hypothesis of Evolution, which it is not. Just because it has not yet been named a natural law doesn't make it any less true.

I ran across this link at Paul Spoerry's site the other day and wanted to post it. Apparently as scientifically advanced as we are, evolution is less accepted in the United States as it is in other western countries.

Over the last 20 years we have moved to a much more fundamentalist Christian attitude and a large percentage of people say that they don't know whether to believe evolution or not. What's not to believe and who says that God and evolution can't coexist? It's not as if it's not a proven theory and for those among us that think that the word "theory" equates with "guess", get a clue.

Here's a nice one for you guys. Thanks to boortz.com for the pic.

Lastminute.com and FuelMyBlog are holding a competition wherein you put up a blog post describing your best weekend ever. The top prize is a weekend getaway to Vienna with airfare AND hotel. Sweet. Just need to get a passport. The competition is only lasting until the 18th (FOUR more days) so DON'T enter otherwise you will lessen my chances at winning...

You know...I should read the rules...Contest open to UK residents only. They should have listed that at Fuelmyblog. No big deal and no sense wasting a good post. I am much more thorough about my posts now than I was in 2005.

Anyway, I suppose that my best weekend trip ever was the one that the wife and I took to New Orleans back in March of 2005. At that point in time the wife and I had NEVER had a vacation without our children. As a matter of fact, we have only been out of town one time since without them, and that was to the blogmeet in Helen last September.

We flew down at the end of March. When we left Atlanta it was raining and cold but by the time that we arrived, we had to ditch the coats. Even in the winter New Orleans is pretty comfortable and can be very muggy at times. Anyone that has been hanging out here for awhile knows how much I hate flying, so the trip was pretty important to get me on an airplane. If I should actually somehow win THIS competition I will have to take sleeping pills in order to make it overseas. Anyway, we decided that since we were going to go straight from the Louis B Armstrong Airport straight to the French Quarter that we would not rent a car. We caught the bus at the airport and rode it to the outskirts and walked the rest of the way. We had packed overnight bags since it was just for the weekend, so the walk wasn't too terribly awful, although it got a bit hot toward the end.

We stopped along the way to our hotel for a frosty libation and lunch at Pat O'Briens. That was really nice. I had the Crawfish Etoufee which was very tasty. The walk and flight had done us in though.

Looking tired and ready for a nap, no? I probably took this with my cell phone. I did quite a bit of blogging from my phone during that trip. After lunch we walked the rest of the way to our hotel. Part of the way there we ran into none other than one of my regular customers and his girlfriend, who were getting ready to drive back to Atlanta. Small world and all that.

I had booked our room at the Bourbon Orleans. We were pleasantly surprised upon check-in. They had upgraded our room to a two-story suite with a balcony that looked out upon Orleans Avenue, about 50 yards from Bourbon Street. Very nice. Once we checked in we immediately decided a nap would be appropriate and without children we had that luxury. We slept until dark and then wandered around for awhile. We stopped for supper at a place called Sammy's Steak and Seafood. They had one of the best ribeyes that I have ever eaten. Truly mouthwatering. After we ate we wandered some more and found our way to a blues club where we listened and drank beer for hours until we decided to head back for more sleep (something I never get enough of in my job).

This was not the best picture I have ever taken, but it is the view from the balcony at 7AM the next day. We had made reservations for brunch at the Court of Two Sisters so we got an early start to the next day. We walked through the French Market and had beignets at Cafe' Du Monde. You can't go to New Orleans without stopping at Cafe' Du Monde. I have been several times and always get beignets there. Brunch was great. It was a pretty nice experience as well as having pretty decent food (and several Mimosas!!)

Another cell phone picture. We sat right next to the fountain during brunch. We sat outside (most everyone does) and the "ceiling" was an interconnected Wisteria vine (possibly more). It was amazingly huge. I have a Wisteria next to the deck in my back yard, but nothing can compare to this one. They had lights strung through it as well and birds were constantly fluttering through as well.

After brunch we decided to nap some more (of course). We had walked most of the morning since brunch was at 11, so once the alcohol from the Mimosas had hit my blood stream I was pretty wiped out. Did I ever tell you what a cheap date I am? Very cheap. Two beers and I am ready for sleep. Here are a few pictures I took while we walked around the area.

That last one was taken in front of St. Louis Cathedral where the wife lit a candle for her mother and grandmother.

We wandered back out around Five PM and went back to Sammy's for dinner. It was just as good as it had been the night before. Bourbon Street even in March is pretty packed on the weekend, and this was no different. We started out at the Famous Door, then went back to the blues club we had been to the night before, and wandered back down to the Famous Door. I must have had seven or eight beers by then, but had decided to pace myself. We ran into one of the Wife's teacher friends at the Famous Door and off they went to dance to the pretty decent rock band. I am not much of a dancer, so I just hung out and watched the crowd. All was well until one of those shooter girls started coming around with jello shooters carried quite provocatively. That's what did me in. Several shooters later I decided I had reached my proverbial "puke point" so I grabbed the wife as I hate to stumble down the road by my lonesome and we headed back to the hotel.

We had to fly back relatively early the next day, so we packed up and took a cab this time rather than riding the bus as we needed to get to the airport by 8AM. The flight back was pretty horrible due to really bad weather over Mississippi and Alabama, but it is the only thing that marred the trip. Here are a few more pictures that I have posted here no and again. It's nice to recall what a wonderful trip we had.

The trip itself was a blast and made all the more memorable since the wife and I never get any time to get a weekend together without the children. I love them all very much, but occasionally it's just time to have a bit of adult company.

Not literally. I have actually started to like it now that I can configure it to not look so out of place on my sidebar.

The part that is a drag is when it goes to load, sometimes it will take a few seconds and the rest of the sidebar has to wait until it finally loads. What a PITA.

Technorati : Twitter.

Once I get my expense reimbursement this week I need to go by the office supply place. I have three stores and the last District Manager was so damn cheap there are no tape dispensers on the office desks, cheap staplers, two of the stores are using $1 calculators rather than decent desktops, and no coin sorter or change rollers whatsoever. The change rollers and calculators have to be the worse though. There's nothing more exciting than having to count out $32.67 in loose change.

...to stay out of my old restaurant for awhile.

I hired a new girls for one of my stores, but rather than training her there I sent her to MY old store in Temple. I am trying to replace some of the shit that I have working and my the girls that are doing the training in my old store will insure that she gets trained properly.

I stopped in for a visit this morning after I had blood drawn and I thought that two of them were going to kick my ass before I left. Either that or tie me down before I could get out the door...although that might not be such a bad thing.

Anyway, apparently they don't particularly like the new manager, but I knew that would be the case when I heard who it was going to be. Sometimes being a good manager and being a person that everyone wants to work for are not mutually inclusive. This guy will run great numbers. Better numbers than I ever have in that store, but he will also lose a lot of people, and his standards for everything are a lot different than mine.

They can't all be as good as me I suppose :)

You can't forget about the #1 Monday Manboobs star...

This is my Open Track-Back Post for the weekend of 5/12-5/13

I darn sure didn't want to get up at 4:30 this moring. The Boy has to be at the recruiting station in 45 minutes so I guess I need to get myself moving and get ready for work. Just wanted to put up a quick post before I go to work. This is my last day of work for this week and I actually managed to get two days off.

I didn't have to work quite as late as I thought I might. My body has just about had it though. I am aching all over so it's telling me I need a couple of days rest. I almost thought that my boss was going to try and tell me that I couldn't be off Sunday when I spoke with him earlier this evening. Apparently he is taking the weekend off and we aren't supposed to overlap. I hate it for him, but he's had at least one day off in the time that I have worked over the last ten days, possibly more. There is no way that I am working past tomorrow. My attitude has started sucking and another day like today I will be lucky to wake up on time. I told the third shift crew where I am spending the day tomorrow that if they don't see me by 6:30 someone had best call me and make sure I am up.

Sponsored by Zofunk.

These iPod cases from Zofunk are pretty nice from what I can tell. They are specially for the iPod Video and are very slim, only 1mm thick. They also allow you to put your iPod on the universal dock without removing it from the case, which is an issue I have with my iPaq as well as my wife and daughter's current iPod cases. Check out these screenshots.

My eyes hurt and my head hurts and my legs are killing me. This is my ninth day of work after having only one day off the week before. I suppose I should just quit whining about it and deal with it, but this is a nice outlet. Tomorrow is my last day for the week and I only have one store to run thank goodness.

Tonight I have to go back in for drawer change and we (the division and district managers) are working part of third shift. My boss says he will let us go by ten, I certainly hope so as I have to get back up around 4:30 tomorrow morning. We have to have the Boy at the recruiting station for a mandatory training exercise. They are busing the boys out to Dobbins AFB where some Drill Instructors are going to have a bit of fun with them for the day.

I think I would rather be at work myself...

This is Sponsored by MOCOspace Mobile Communities.

I used to hang out in Chatrooms a lot on AOL back when it was the cool thing to do, and on IRC quite a bit. I have pretty much moved away from that because I am usually so busy that when I am at home I try to stay productive on my sites. If I could take a decent app with me then I might use it more often.

In steps Moco, a mobile chatroom which you can use on your phone. You can access MocoSpace on your mobile phone's web browser by going to www.mocospace.com Here is a screenshot.

It's a pretty cool little app which requires no installations and can be used wherever you go. My browser is somewhat limited since Verizon lags behind the rest of the world in web access, but I did connect to it on my iPaq. I can use it here or in the yard on my wifi connection, or away from the house using bluetooth to dial up through my phone. I enjoyed using it and the response time was also pretty quick for me, which was nice because occasionally my iPaq-Phone combination can be quite laggy..

...all this work stuff sure can get in the way of blogging...

...or a social life with the wife and kids.

Two more days until I get a couple of days off.

This review has been sponsored by Quibblo.

Before I sat down to review Quibblo I decided to take the site for a little test drive to see what they were all about. Quibblo is a fairly new site that lets you set up polls, surveys and quizzes and publish them to your MySpace or Facebook page (or any other web page for that matter). I've used a couple of survey sites here before so I figured I would check it out and see how it does.

Sign up is certainly a snap. You enter your info as well as some captcha text, which I got on the second try. I hate captchas but sometimes they are necessary. I may even be re-implementing them here again pretty soon as I am getting tired of the comment spam. Anyway, after that they send you a confirmation email where you click the link. Pretty standard stuff. After that you have to enter your real name, birth date, and where you live.

Before creating a quiz I figured I would take a look around. You can find existing quizzes by searching, getting a random pick, browsing all of them, or by tag. They have a little tag cloud with the popular keywords on the main page. They also list the most popular quizzes there as well. Here's a pic of the main page.

OK, time to create a quiz. Actually after looking through the popular quizzes I decided to snag one of the existing ones. There are options to publish these to your site as well. They have code that includes Javascript, plain old html (for non-myspace), HTML for MySpace sites, and just the link. And since it fits in quite well with my site and the posts I have been putting up over at Eric's site while he is overseas, I decided to use "Am I going to Hell?"

The site also lets you customize the style, so if that is working it should fit right into the theme of my site. I didn't bother looking up the exact color codes from my style sheet, so they may be off slightly. Over all I like the site so far. The quizzes are certainly much more customizable than previous ones that I have used where I hoped that the widgets would fit into my site design. Most likely I will be using Quibblo.com again.

Maybe this promotion won't be so bad after all. I need to get the hang of delegating duties and kicking their asses when stuff doesn't get done though. That is one thing that was a bit easier as a single store operator.

I don't really have a whole hell of a lot to post about tonight, I think I am going to hit the sack early. I have a couple of hours of meetings at the end of the day tomorrow.

I did manage to get my water back on though (thank goodness). A friend of mine is a supervisor for the water department, actually he got promoted the same day that I did and he is over public works now. I left him a voice mail earlier and he came back out and is going to try and see what happened in the morning. I figure that Monday I can take in a printout from my online bank statement just so that they can at least see that I'm not full of shit.

One thing that I can't currently get with my land-based cable deal is the DIRECT TV NFL Sunday Ticket Deal. Direct Star TV is a DirecTV preferred online retailer and they have the NFL Sunday ticket deal going on right now, all of the NFL games in the 2007-2008 NFL season for under $250. Just five payments of $49.80. That's not a bad deal at all.

You can also add Superfan to your NFL Sunday ticket and get over 150 games in HD. For a limited time they are also offering a free iPod Shuffle with mail in redemption so you'll have something to do when the season is over.

This is my seventh straight day of work and I still have three more until I get my next days off. It was pretty hard to crawl my rear end out of the bed this morning. I had fully planned on going to be early last night but I got sucked in to a movie on one of the stupid cable channels.

I haven't had the chance to watch the last X-Men movie yet until last night. It was OK I suppose, but not nearly as good as the first two were. The special effects were OK, but it was like they tried to jam way to much X-Men history into too short of a film.

I did manage to get finished at a decent time yesterday, but I had a new manager today so I was able to shoot out the door before 3PM this afternoon and pick up the girls. That was pretty nice.

Tomorrow should be fairly uneventful. I have to get all of the paperwork together from the stores for my meeting on Thursday and I have a truck coming in with a delivery, but as long as everyone shows up all will be well.

My new manager is unfortunately off for the next three days, and I have another one off on Friday and Saturday but I will actually get two days off this week. W00t. If I can just make it through the next four days all will be well.

That's all I have been doing this morning. I have to get ready for work in a few minutes. I get a new manager this morning, but unfortunately she is off for the next three days after today so they might as well wait until Saturday. I may be able to get a bit of stuff done today though, which will be nice.

I still have to run to Carrollton and sign to make those changes on my car insurance this afternoon, but other than that it will hopefully be a short day.

Last night was Monday Manboobs, so today would be Tramp Stamp Tuesday?

Tomorrow is Pete's last softball game of the season. They won't be in any tournaments this year so this is it. They were supposed to play tonight as well, but one of the girls is sick, and with only eight players (counting the sick one) that means that they had to forfeit the game. Lately she has been enjoying it, but I think she is getting tired of playing.

This Post is Sponsored by Lionsgate Films.

This movie actually looks pretty cool. It's been awhile since I have seen a decent bug movie and this one looks to be pretty darn scary. Not to mention the fact that Ashley Judd is pretty hot, although that would never bring me to see a movie. Actually although I joke about it, it wouldn't. I only go to see a couple of movies each year, and this might be one of them. I need to go see something that will scare the bejeezus out of me, and I am seriously afraid of bugs anyway. Here is the trailer for the movie.

Oh heck yeah, that's going to be one scary bug movie. The posters just make it look that much more mysterious as well. Check these out.

The first one doesn't show too much, but obviously lets you know that insects are going to play a big part in the movie.

Other than the blurb "FIRST THEY SEND IN THEIR DRONE...THEN THEY FIND THEIR QUEEN" leads me to believe that they are infesting humans to make one of them the queen. I sort of got that impression from the trailer as well. I guess I will have to wait to find out about that part though.

I was hoping for at least a half day off today. I went in this morning to take care of paperworks and finally managed to get out of there at noon. Went back for the two o'clock shift change, did my banking for two stores, got home at three or so. I've been on the phone off and on the entire day trying to cover shifts and I have at least three hours of paperwork to do tonight as well. I guess it was a day off when you consider that eight hours of work will be the shortest day I've had all week.

* This Post is Sponsored by EasyToBook.com.

EasyToBook.com is a website that will allow you to book vacations in Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Rome. If you are thinking about taking a vacation in Europe or already live there and want to get away for the weekend, then you might just want to head on over to Easy To Book. Currently featured hotels include the Hotel Amstelzicht which is a 3 star hotel located right in the historical heart of Amsterdam behind the famed Rembrandtplein. Since it is so centrally located in the city it is great for tourists looking for shopping, museums and entertainment.

I ended up having another sixteen hour day today. I am very quickly getting tired of that and am ready to start bashing heads in. One of my managers started whining around noon that his entire afternoon shift had called in and he didn't know what to do. I helped him cover the shift but also suggested that it might be wise to not schedule them anymore. He knew when he made the schedule who was unreliable and who was not.

I am going in tomorrow morning, but it is my only chance for a partial day off between now and Sunday so I am going to try and get out of there by nine or ten and come home. I will just have to cross my fingers and hope everyone shows up.

I guess that they decided that no phone calls were warranted last night. Lucky me. I ended up staying and cleaning until about seven PM last night and came home. Everyone showed up for work on the graveyard shift, which is a good thing. I actually managed to get six hours of sleep for the first time this week. So far I figure I have worked 44 hours since I picked up the three stores. Since Thursday. I am trying to figure out a way to get tomorrow off right now and it just doesn't look real likely. I may just arrange to get a cook in there and take care of the drawer changes but come home in between.

When I did get home last night the wife ran me a hot bath to soak in which was nice, and the four year old decided to come in an serenade me with songs on her electronic piano. She kept that up for quite awhile, which was very cute. Something about Santa and I love you...

I've been remiss the last couple of days in posting. I can always tell because since I only keep a few days on the main page my sidebar is getting longer than the actual content. Oh well, it's not that I don't love you or anything. It's not you at all, it's me...

...working for me.

Yesterday was not quite as long as Thursday, but just as hard. I started out at my store that has no manager, got the paperwork done, had to cover a couple of waitresses, and got my food pull and banking done at which time I went down to the store that does have a manager. He was off Thursday and Friday, so I was running that one as well. The guy that they have had working as relief manager ended up calling a cook in and sat on his ass all day. The stores are still pretty nasty but I may be making a bit of headway there.

2PM and back to the 1st store. Got them going and got a bit of cleaning finished and headed back down to the 2nd store so that I could give them a bit of direction.

I managed to come home and nap for a couple of hours and headed back out around eight or eight thirty to do shift change. I spent an hour or so at the top of the hill (the store without a manager) and then went to the bottom and took care of getting them staffed and set up with a fresh drawer. I managed to get home last night about 10:45 and got to sleep about 11:30.

1AM and my phone rings. It's the retards working the graveyard shift at the top of the hill and they have done something to the register and it won't do anything. We cover the emergency releases on the cash registers so that they can't get in it except to make transactions, which means that after about 25 minutes of trying to walk them through getting it to work, I head back in to work.

One of them had left their ink pen in the drawer and the little thumb clicker thing on the end had become jammed so that the drawer wouldn't open. If the drawer is jammed it won't let you ring anything else up. Luckily the last thing I had grabbed before leaving the house was a big flathead screwdriver. No reason, I just thought I might need it to pop the plate off of the release cover. I was able to use it to get the drawer un-jammed. I went ahead and did a mid-shift drawer change just to make sure none of them were padding the drawer, and left. I managed to get home and back to sleep about 3 AM and got back up at 6.

Once I got the two stores staffed that had three people call in this morning I came back home. I'll sleep a couple more hours and head BACK in to work about noon or one. Since I will be getting a new manager for the top of the hill, there is a pretty big checklist that I have to have done before Tuesday. Cleaning, supplies, etc. All of these stores are shitholes. Possibly the nastiest fucking places I have worked at in twenty years. I have to have one of them clean by Tuesday. Needless to say I am pretty much fucked for the rest of the weekend but at least I will get a manager out of the deal. She checks into the store on Tuesday, then has Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off. That is bullshit. One of my other managers is off Monday and Tuesday and the other is off Friday and Saturday so I have to get them covered as well. I am going to try and take next Sunday and Monday off if my boss will let me.

Enough bitching I am going back to bed.

I had every intention of coming home today and posting something long and witty but I am going to take a nap instead. Running two stores without managers is a pain in the ass.

Not like Lawyers and Money.

I had to visit the doctor on Wednesday. Over the last twelve months or so I have started to notice some changes at my doctor's offices. They are no longer carrying around the bulky charts and file folders anymore. Now everyone is carrying laptops connected wirelessly. Nurses, doctors, heck probably even the janitor. You can tell it's a new system because usually it takes them longer to get information entered or find the patient than it did using paper, but that is just something they will get used to with repetition.

It's not infallible though, or at least it could be better integrated, as I posted in that last entry. My lymph nodes are swollen and I have a sore throat so my doctor wanted to prescribe an antibiotic to clear it up. At first she was going to prescribe a Z-Pack. That's that five day pack of kick ass antibiotics that kills anything. Problem is that you can't take it while taking Vytorin, my cholesterol medicine. I found that out the hard way last year. When I said something about it you could tell she was getting all flustered because the computer didn't tell her that. She found the information, but all it says is that you can't take them together but gives no side-effects. I told her about those. It was like doing a bunch of cheap speed. I felt like I was having a heart attack, got weak and fuzzy headed. A six hour head rush. It was not good, particularly since I was at work the first day.

Any way, I suppose it depends on what software you are using in your EMR (Electronic Medical Records) system but something designed to make it easier ought to make it easier for them and spit out information like that. They have my meds in the system, but not the dosages (I switched doctors a couple of months ago). I have to take that information to them on the next visit. It's about time for my bi-yearly blood work anyway so I will take that information in when I go for my return visit.

Being a technogeek I like the idea behind using EMRs but the implementation seems to be difficult for some of the guys to get used to particularly in a paper environment. We have the same issue moving to a paperless environment with my company. The COO has a laptop that he has never used. His secretary prints his emails out for him daily so he can take them with him when he goes out in the restaurants. Pretty funny actually.

* Cross Posted at www.theapp.net

...this morning when I left for work around six AM. I just now walked back in the house. I guess the sixteen hour work days are for, at least for a short while. I spent most of the morning at one of my stores. I couldn't even count the cash and inventory until I had put an entire weeks worth or paperwork together.

It only took me about 30 minutes at the next one, he had everything ready for me, thank god.

The best part of the day came at my 3rd store where I charmed the manager with my wit and humor and he quit. Damn, that sucks. I will be running that store in addition to my district for about ten days before I get another manager in there. He was actually on his last week of a two week notice anyway, and I think he was planning on leaving today. There was no surprise or anything in it, except on my part. SURPRISE BUDDY!!

I only had two people call in today, plus two more I had already covered shifts because they hung the manager yesterday, and ALL of my night shift people showed up, so I consider than a win.

Once I had the banking and food pull finished for both stores I had to drive to Oxford Alabama and sit in a management meeting where I tried my darnedest not to fall asleep and drool all over the place. That's why I just got here. I don't have a heck of a lot more to post about tonight. I started about five different posts this morning but nothing more than a sentence or two, maybe I will make a collage and post them in the morning.

I am particularly groggy this morning. Enough to where I have to use spellcheck. I didn't sleep worth a crap. The four year old crawled into bed at some point and it's all elbows and assholes everywhere. I may have gotten three hours of sleep all together and I can feel it this morning. Maybe I will feel better after I've sucked down some coffee.

My doctor's visit didn't go too bad yesterday. My blood pressure, which has been high for some reason on my last two visits was back down to 127/80 which is right around what it normally is. I was happy to hear that. I think it was high on my last visit just because my back was hurting.

She couldn't find much explanation for why I broke out and just gave me some cleaning pads, like Stridex. She said it could have been something as simple as something getting onto my razor blade or face and bacteria getting on my skin. Nasty.

My lymph nodes are slightly swollen as well which I knew. The swelling has actually gone down quite a bit. She did give me an antibiotic to help finish the job though. At first she tried to give me the Z-pack but that is the one that I had such a serious reaction to last year so I told her that, at which point she looked it up. It doesn't go very well with the cholesterol medicine that I am taking. No shit. I thought I was having a heart attack when I took it last year.

...is tomorrow. I have to go through all three stores doing audits and inventories, as well as pick up all of the weekly paperwork to turn in at my meeting tomorrow. I am crossing my fingers and hoping that everyone shows up. The manager of what is probably going to be my biggest problem store is off for the next two days. I gave him a short list of things he had to do before he started his days off basically as a test to see if he would do as I asked. It is also the slowest store, so he has had plenty of time since I asked him for the stuff last weekend to get it done.

I have meetings all evening in Alabama and probably won't get home until pretty late tomorrow evening but will try and get a couple of posts up in the morning, if I am not too brain dead.

...since I have been over to CouponChief, but I always find something cool when I am there. This post IS sponsored by CouponChief.com

The reason I like going over there is that whenever I am shopping for something on the Internet, I want to find the best deal that I can. CouponChief always has great coupons and coupon codes for me to use. For instance with Mother's Day coming up I know that I need to get my something. I don't know what yet but they have some pretty good deals for ProFlowers at the site like a free vase and six free roses with the purchase of a dozen Mother's Day Roses.

One place that I like to look for stuff is at Overstock. We found a 19" flat screen for my son about three years ago for less than $400. At the time that was great. With coupons from CouponChief you can get free shipping on orders over $50, up to 75% off on watches, and great deals on jewelry. The wife doesn't wear a lot of jewelry, so that option is out but if it weren't that's where I would go.

When I went to Wal-Mart the first time this morning to drop of my prescriptions, I was in line behind this older lady. Now of course I enjoy looking at the ladies, but this one was a bit older than I was or at least she looked to be about 50 or so. At one point she bent slightly over to show me this view of her granny panties sticking out with the signature of sluttiness tattooed above her backside. I thought my fricking eyes were going to burn out in horror. Damn.

I have nothing against tattoos, I even have a couple of nicely placed ones myself. I can see where having that tattoo right above the ass could be considered attractive on a fine young thing, but even fine young things have to grow up eventually and then it becomes stupid looking.

I had this girls working for me when I ran the store in Carrollton, she was pretty young and extremely naive. She wanted to get HER NAME tattooed above her backside. I asked her if that was so guys would know her name when they looked down. She didn't get it. Last I heard she was pregnant too.

Maybe I am just getting old and jaded but I don't think so.

Speaking of the dinner shows that I want to go to eventually, there is another that looks even better than the pirates one. Medieval Times Dinner Show is in Kissimmee, Florida and it looks to be every bit as spectacular as the other one. MapleLeafTickets has discount tickets to this show as well and since tax is included in the advance ticket purchases it's a darn good deal.

* photo courtesy of medievaltimes.com

You get to feast in a castle while Knights on horseback joust to the death. I love the Renaissance festival when it comes to Georgia, and this is a permanent place that you can get to year round and visit. Very nice. The victorious knight becomes the King's champion gets to select his Queen of Love and Beauty from among the castle's fair maidens.

* Photo courtesy of medievaltimes.com

Medieval Times has several locations around the country so be sure that you know when you are buying discount tickets from MapleLeafTickets.com that you are getting tickets for the Kissimmee Medieval Times dinner show.

All of the pageantry that you would expect from a show of this caliber is there. Beautiful dresses on supple maidens, proud knights, and strong horses all combine to entertain you to the most. As I pointed out earlier, the knights start out jousting on horseback which eventually evolves into close combat on the ground with authentic period weaponry.

...in Orlando is one of those things that I found interesting but was not able to attend when we went to Orlando two years ago. Since it was us with all three kids I figured that it would be much too expensive and the youngest would not have enjoyed it quite as much as the rest of us.

Basically the world's largest and most interactive Pirate dinner show's premise is that everyone has been invited to the King's Festival and everyone is the Princess Anita's royal guests. Princess Anita is abducted by the dastardly Pirate Sebastian the Black and the adventure is in getting her back.

You eat on a model of a fully rigged pirate's galleon and there is plenty of flying and acrobatics up in the rigging, plenty of swashbuckling swordplay and dueling. There are also six other seating "ships" surrounding the main one in the "lagoon" and each one has their own pirate mascot to cheer on. You could also have the chance to interact in the adventure as well. You do have to make reservations for the Pirates dinner show as it's not something to just show up and plan to get in, even in the off-season months.

MapleLeafTickets has discount tickets for the show at something around 45% off normal gate price. That price also includes all the sales tax as well. Some of the other ticket places that I checked out don't include the tax so you may think you are getting a great deal until you get to checkout. You just have to make sure and let them know that you have pre-paid passes when you are making the reservations.

This post is Sponsored By Maple Leaf Tickets.

Dammitall. My site was down when I tried to post that last one. It was about 1:15 this morning, so I am just going to bed and will look at it when I wake up if I have time before I go see my doctor.

Looks like it's back up. That's cool. I'll post these and hit the sack.

I figured I would try something a little new here. I signed up for the free Zookoda service which lets me offer a digest of my site postings daily, weekly, and maybe even monthly. Of course RSS is available, and I am even subscribed to several different RSS feeds, but I never seem to read them even though they are right there in Outlook, which is always open.

I do however, get daily digests from a few different groups I am a member of, and I at least skim over them and sometimes actually pay enough attention to read them. The link to the daily digest subscription is to the right, along with different RSS feeds.

I think the biggest reason that I DON'T read feeds is the interaction. I enjoy going to the different sites. That is part of the blogging experience for me.

Whatever. If you are interested sign up. It will give you once per day (if it works correctly) basically what is in my RSS feed for the day in a nicely formatted email and you can click the links if you want to read the entire post.