July 2007 Archives

I finally found a real-life use for twitter that I am going to start using immediately. My Mile Marker is a site that you enter a bit of data whenever you fill up at the gas tank. Right now the site is free. It tracks your fuel purchases and odometer readings. Every time you are at the pump you just enter your current odometer reading, the number of gallons purchased and the price per gallon. You can add it at the web page or via SMS with Twitter while you are at the pump.

This is cool because I have to track my mileage for work as they pay for my gas used, but filling out the paperwork and figuring MPG is a pain that I hate doing just because it's one more bit of paperwork to do.

You can also use Twitter to send you reminders (such as remember the milk) on a timer as well. Very very cool.

Crossposted to TheAppDotNet

BUM!


Originally uploaded by scienceduck

Doesn't leave a hell of a lot to the imagination does it? I will have some posts up later in the day. I ended up taking most of Monday off (as well as from real-life work) to read the new Harry Potter book. Finished it in about eight hours with a break for supper of course.

Have you seen this yet? With the release of the Simpson's Movie there is a site called Simpsonize Yourself which allows you to upload your photo and turn yourself into a Simpsons character. Some pictures don't seem to work very well, and it needs to be a photo with a decent resolution as well. Go check it out at www.simpsonizeme.com

If the damned thing ever finishes processing my photo I will upload it here. The ones I saw are pretty cool.

Technorati : Simpsonize Yourself, The Simpson's Movie, The Simpsons

Former St. Louis Cardinal Mike Coolbaugh was struck in the head by a line drive and died less than an hour later yesterday evening. Mike spent his 17 years playing baseball mostly in the minor leagues but also appeared in 39 games with the Milwaukee Brewers and five games with the St Louis Cardinals. Since then he has been coaching in the minors

Technorati : Mike Coolbaugh, St. Louis Cardinals

You know you work in hell when after asking an employee to clean the filter on the ice machine he starts his sentence with "when I was in prison..." and then goes on to tell you all about breathing freon and how it makes you go "waaa waaa" and makes your legs weak.

I think perhaps investing in a lock for the cover of my ice machine is on the agenda for this next week.

I enjoy playing a nice game of poker. I think I've mentioned that my former neighbor built his own table (it was VERY nice) and would host games in his basement. Due to work hours and such I never got the chance to participate in one of his games, which I regret particularly since they moved out of state, but my son did play with them several times.

Although it has been awhile, I never did like playing with inexperienced players. It's only partly about the money. I actually enjoy the sport of the game and it is much better with folks that also have a good level of expertise and enjoy playing the game as well. I have recently been invited to play with one of my managers and a couple of guys that he plays with but so far I have refrained. I wonder at how good of a player he is as he is always broke and has no money.

PokerOnAMac.Com has a new section on strategy that is a pretty good read, particularly if you want to learn more about the game and the psychology behind it. There are several different sections that deal with different aspects of poker strategies including Poker cash games, Poker tournament strategy, Online poker strategy, Poker theory, Poker math (a must read), and poker tactics.

My favorite is the Poker Cash Games section as it deals with what I like to play, long steady earning games that you won't bust out of too quickly or easily unless you just don't bring enough stake. Nowadays it seems that everyone is into tournament style games, but I learned to play at cash game tables and penny games. It has always been the type of game that I enjoy the most.

Probably my particular favorite which they deal with is Hi-lo or more specifically Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo. It's a nice long game and if you are patient and methodical you can win fairly often at the game. I especially like that they deal with how to play strong, even when you aren't, such as in the example that is shown with the A-2 showing and pretty much nothing in the blinds.

Anyway, it's just one more site to suck on my limited time now as there are plenty of tips to read as well as blog updates. One of the things I haven't had the chance to do much with is online poker, but I have started reading their strategies on that in an attempt to familiarize myself with it.

Technorati : Gambling, Poker

Since today is my Friday it might as well be 'thank god it's Sunday'. I'm off for the next couple of days, which is nice. I want to sleep in for a change tomorrow and then I have a ton of stuff to do. We have to go get school clothes for the girls and unfortunately I have to go to the Social Security office. I never received RePete's Social Security card, although she was assigned a number, either that or I have just lost it.

Either way I have to get a replacement card so that she can start school this year. I hate going to government offices. Might as well pack a lunch and plan on staying for awhile. It's going to take forever.

Today will most likely be a nice long day. Sunday is normally a long day for me anyway, and I am in my nasty shop as well. If I make it home before tonight I will have to consider myself lucky.

The wife has had a few issues with her computer lately. I don't mess with it anymore, thus we have less stability issues because I am not installing the latest and greatest thing. She used to have AOL on the computer with a free version of an antivirus but we aren't using it anymore so I need to install something else. With the girls surfing the net on that computer it is almost imperative that I get antivirus software on it. There are several sites that offer free antivirus downloads including the one I linked to at freeantivirusinfo.com

The offer the free Norton Antivirus download on their pages, you can see some reviews if you haven't ever run Norton, which is one of the top of the line AntiVirus programs out there. It's been updated to be compatible with both Windows XP and Vista, and now includes unlimited Virus definition updates for free. Up until recently you were only able to get access to six months of definition updates.

I don't guess I will have any free time until Monday to install it, but I definitely need to get it loaded on to her computer as soon as I possibly can.

It really sucks when people like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton are the "heroes" and role models for our little girls. Here at the Miles casa we try and minimize that by giving them other alternatives but the fact is that the females they see on television are always going to take the forefront of what they see and hear over historical or literary figures and even the ones that seem as if they might be good choices might just go out and get caught on video driving drunk or taking it up the butt in the bushes. You just never know.

At least her attorney was smart enough to get her to turn herself in rather than letting them show up and drag her self in.

link

Technorati : Lindsay Lohan

Well, only about half an hour until the Harry Potter book gets released. I have enjoyed the extra traffic this week, as well as the extra Google Adsense hits that came along with it. Quite a bit more than the normal amount that I get, mainly because of my post on the Deathly Hallows Spoiler :) Believe it or not I have gotten 2800+ unique visits today, about 2300 of them looking for a Harry Potter spoiler.

I amazes me how many people are actually staying up all night in anticipation of it. Harry Potter parties at book stores, heck even the local Wal-Mart is having one. I am truly amazed. I enjoy a good book as much as anyone and I am really looking forward to this one, both with anticipation as well as a little sadness since it will be the last one, but I am darn sure not going to be hanging out all night irresponsibly keeping my children up until two or three in the morning just for a darn book. It's not like the X-Box 360. There will be plenty of them to go around and even if there isn't haven't you guys ever heard of Amazon? I will be receiving the book in the comfort of my mailbox tomorrow afternoon when I get home from work just like 90% of the other books that we get.

BTW, this will also be my weekend Open Track-Back post for July 20th-21st.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson's Website, 123beta, DeMediacratic Nation, Big Dog's Weblog, Maggie's Notebook, Adam's Blog, The Pet Haven Blog, Stuck On Stupid, Webloggin, Leaning Straight Up, Cao's Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Phastidio.net, third world county, Right Celebrity, Woman Honor Thyself, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein... has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Pirate's Cove, Nuke's news and views, The Pink Flamingo, CommonSenseAmerica, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Church and State, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati : Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling

For some reason this entire week has been very rough. I think it's mainly a result of staying out too late the other evening. I have felt like I was behind the eight ball all week long. It was still worth it though.

I just got home from overseeing shift change at my busiest store. I had a bunch of paperwork to do that I haven't had the chance to finish the last couple of days, and I don't leave my managers without finishing the stuff since I expect them to have it complete before they leave.

Unfortunately I am at my store with the weakest manager tomorrow. He is off this weekend, which means two fourteen+ hour days just cleaning up the fucking mess that he has made over the last six days. I stopped in earlier today and the entire weeks paperwork was strewn all over the office (which is a tiny 4'x4' room) including the floor. If that shit is still like that tomorrow I am just going to throw it all in a bag and go about my merry way running cash shortages on his ass. He can figure out what paperwork he hasn't done when he comes back. I am pretty much over having to spend four hours after the end of my first shift there just putting together paperwork that he hasn't had the chance to complete.

He has serious time management issues. Actually he just has lazy running of the fucking mouth issues. I have spent the last 11 weeks trying to get him motivated and change some of his bad habits and no matter what I tell him to do he gives me the lip service and just does whatever the hell he wants. The only reason I haven't made a huge issue out of it yet is that the trainee that is next in line for a store is worse. He never shuts up and won't stop and sit down long enough to listen or learn anything. Once he gets a store somewhere else then I will turn up the heat until old dude either starts doing his job or quits. He goes on vacation next week so that will be the opportunity for me to make some changes in his store. There are a couple of female trainees that have recently started that seem pretty sharp and on the ball, and I want one of them in my store.

Enough ranting about work for tonight, I think I will go find some mindless bullshit and read about it, maybe even post it.

Sponsored by DietDirect

I wrote an article on another site recently on weight loss and some of the different ways that people go about losing weight, including straight dieting, drugs, homeopathic resources and even surgery. Bariatric surgery is a surgical treatment where they may do gastric bypass surgery or what's called a "lap band" (adjustable gastric band) or a fairly uncommon one called Biliopancreatic Diversion which reduces the size of the stomach.

From what I understand people that have had a Bariatric procedure has to be on a particularly high protein diet. They diet also includes protein and vitamin supplements as well. Most of the diet decisions are worked out with the bariatric surgeon both before and after the procedure.

Sometimes it is easy to find everything you need locally if you are in a metropolitan area, but in rural or remote areas it is a bit harder to find. Bariatric Choice has Bariatric diet supplements, vitamins, and other aids for anyone on a bariatric diet. If you are interested in more informations, check out Bariatric Choice, a DietDirect e-shopping site.

Technorati : Weight Loss

With the impending release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows tomorrow, even the stars of the movies don't know how the series is going to end. The book should be here tomorrow but unfortunately the wife will be wanting to read it first. That's OK though I am re-reading the two just prior and I received the latest Alan Dean Foster book in the Flinx series earlier in the week. I have plenty of stuff to keep me busy until I get to the book.

I did end up putting down the Children of Hurin though. It sucks. Put me to sleep.

Technorati : Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling

My Linksys router finally died a painful death or something last week. I don't think I took a lightning strike or anything, but I have had intermittent problems over the last few months, but I honestly thought it was Charter Cable giving me the issues. I had been using a wireless router as just an access point that was plugged into the router, so rather than going out and spending another $65 I ended up using the wireless router. to get things up and running again. It kind of pisses me off because I like Linksys and I will probably eventually go back and get another one. Unfortunately my warranty was long gone on the one that died.

I have been all over the country over the years and there are not too many places in the lower 48 that I haven't at least driven through once or twice. I have not yet been to Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont yet though and I am interested in getting up there. I understand that it is very beautiful country, and I would like to get up there at least once to see the leaves turn in the autumn. It would be nice to stay in a Vermont Bed and Breakfast and just drive around the country roads taking pictures.

I was looking at some different options for next year's summer vacation for the kids. I want to set enough money aside to take them back to Disney, but one of the things I was considering is to get an Orlando rental home rather than staying in one of the resorts in the park. I just can't decide. We had a really good time and I am kind of interested in the Tahitian resort that is pretty near the Magic Kingdom.

The kids would probably be happier staying in one of the resorts in the park, but my wallet likes the other option. I don't know if next year will be the one though. Possibly the year after that. The youngest will be almost six by then and I think we will all enjoy it even more by then.

...have nothing on my back yard. When I went out for a smoke the night before last I must have left my coffee cup sitting on the back porch. I went out again yesterday afternoon and found this lovely site waiting for me...

Is that nasty or what. There may have even been a dinosaur or two stuck in there, those damned tree roaches were so huge.

Just needed to share the love before I leave for work...

A friend of Elisson's called earlier and said that she really wanted to attend the Blogtoberfest this fall. Hope to see her soon. His question still stands though. What kind of self-respecting man can't get a date with a real sheep?

Technorati : Two Headed Pigs

Now I am really tired, as I mentioned in a comment earlier. I have all of those posts to write though, and plan on gettin most if not all of them finished tonight. It was brought to my attention in the comments earlier however, that I was remiss in my last post about the evening out. I forgot to mention that Denny was there as well. I don't know what might have come over me other than exhaustion when I got up at Five this morning. Heck, I even got to sleep a half hour later than usual. It sure didn't feel like it though. Something to do with four hours of sleep I suppose.

It was quite a lively discussion at times last night. Without going into details I was rolling several times. Zonker's barf bag. Poan Sta' Eyes. I am truly looking forward to this years Blogtoberfest in Helen. Just have to cross my fingers and hope that I can get the weekend off.

Last night at Mellow Mushroom there were a couple of really hot chicks hanging out. Of course, we had a couple of hot ones hanging with us as well but these were a couple of fine young things that were probably wearing those skimpy thongs. I don't know for sure as I didn't drink enough to ask them. Anyway, that got me to thinking. I have Monday Manboobs and Tuesday Tramp Stamps so why not Thursday Thongs. Without any further ado I present to you, Thursday Thongs...

I so didn't want to drag my sorry ass out of bed this morning. Have you heard the old saying If You're Gonna Play, You've Gotta Pay? I am paying the piper this morning. Not that I got trashed or anything. I had a grand total of one beer last night. I don't do any kind of serious drinking on work nights. No, I am just tired as hell. I was up at the usual time yesterday and ended up getting in from Atlanta shortly after midnight, going to be a little closer to one, so I have pretty much been up for two days now with a four hour nap in between.

Had a pretty darn good time though. A couple of the usual suspects showed up to observe Velociman pass through town like the migration of a rare bird, even Kelley and Key drove down. I had the opportunity to also meet John Cox as well. New blood. Good conversation, good beer, although Key had some sort of pink martini combination that I would definitely have to shy away from. It would be much too easy to slurp those down.

The drive was somewhat interesting for me as well. Driving in to Atlanta I went across the top end and cut up Roswell Rd and then down Windsor Parkway. What's interesting is the fact that there are some really beautiful houses down Windsor Parkway. The last time I drove down that road was 25 years ago. At that time the area between Peachtree Dunwoody and Brookhaven was affectionately knows as Nick St or Nicklebag Alley. You get the general idea. Slums, plenty of houses falling in. Pull up at a couple of certain stop signs and four or five black guys would run out to the car if your window was down and try to sell you a nickle bag, which of course was $5 at that time. Woe to the unwary traveler who was not familiar with the area. When you pull up at a stop sign and have several black kids run at your car from all directions the first reaction most normal people have is either to hit the gas and get the fuck out, or roll up the windows and lock the doors so quick that your head would spin. I suppose every locale has it's own Nick St, or at least they used to. I don't know anymore, maybe it's hidden a bit better now.

Anyway, all of the falling in tenements have been replaced with small fortresses and tiny mansions more akin to the Brookhaven area. There are still a few of the houses that were there two decades ago, but most of them are gone.

Heading home I took the fastest route, straight down Druid Hills to 85 South and out I-20 west. The problem with driving home late at night when I am already tired, in addition to my night vision sucking so bad is the fact that after having lived in West Georgia for 18 years I find I am scared of traffic. I grew up in Atlanta. It was nothing to run across five lanes of traffic to catch a bus, or drive doing 90 MPH around the Atlanta International Speedway, officially known as I-285. If you're not doing at least 75 you are slowing down traffic. And those fuckers don't just drive fast either. They swerve around all of the other cars bobbing in and out of lanes so close to each other it would make Don Garlit proud. Even though I spent three years commuting from out here to Norcross every day until 2003 I am not used to it anymore. I white-knuckled it the entire way out of Atlanta.

Working on my second cup off coffee now and I am starting to wake up a bit in the time it has taken me to write this and correct the typos. Spelling only folks, the grammar will just be fucked forever. Forgive me but no amount of schooling can take away from 40 years of redneck living particularly when the last 21 has been working at my particular choice of careers.

I had originally planned on staying home last night and pumping out about fifteen or twenty paid posts and twice that of normal stuff and then do my paperwork for the meeting this afternoon, but that rare bird of prey Shit Mummage Man was calling and sometimes the call of relaxation and good company just cannot be ignored.

It's now about six, so I have to hop int he shower and head my happy ass off to boss people around again. It's also meeting day for the retarded folks that I work with. I shall return, but a bit later today unless I get some good pics between now and then.

Yesterday sucked much more than I thought it would. 90% of it was my attitude I am sure but it ended up being just one of those fucking days. My cook never showed up and it was pretty busy so I was pretty much chained to one store yesterday. It did have the side benefit of making sure that I saved a bit of money yesterday which is a good thing, but I damn sure wasn't happy about it. I ended up not getting out of there until Five O' Clock or somewhere around there.

I was staffed the rest of the day but I spent several hours trying to find help for my other two stores as they were both hung on the evening shift. One of them got covered and was able to go home, but the other manager ended up having to work a double. Considering how much out of line he is with expenditures he needed to work a double anyway.

Now that I am starting to wake up I can't really remember any of the reasons as to why I had such a bad day. Sometimes life is just funny like that I suppose. It sure did seem like everything was crappy yesterday, but now none of it seems particularly important.

As I said in the last post I am in the process of upgrading to Movabletype 4 Beta 7. If this thing gets posted prior to 6AM then I suppose the upgrade went fine. I was looking through the change log and it looks like they got one of my problems fixed.

54585: Pages can not be published dynamically
FIXED: Page could not be correctly published dynamically (some conditional tags may worked wrongly). The bug has been fixed.

That's a good deal and it's one of the issues that I was having. Hopefully some of the other little nagging bugs have been fixed as well.

I am pretty much all over the place this morning, but don't really have anything of import to post, just rambling. Some days I am just not in the mood to post and it seems as though I have to force myself to sit down and write. Today is one of those. Of course I may end up posting even more tonight when all is said and done.

Last night I posted about the hits that I am getting for people looking for Deathly Hallows Spoilers. Apparently I am currently #12 for the google search "Deathly Hallows Spoilers". Not that it matters a whole heck of a lot but the extra traffic is nice because some of those folks hang around to see what the site is about and then come back again. The rest of them go to Harvey's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Spoiler page or they click on one of the Google ads

Received an email yesterday that I just now read. It's from Odiogo and apparently somebody saw my post about integrating Odiogo into Movabletype and have some code up for it now. I've looked through it and don't know how well it will work with MT 4 but I will try and implement it this afternoon if I get home at a decent time.

Hopefully this upgrade will finish uploading in the next few minutes. I have been typing this as my FTP client uploads because I have to CHMOD a few files as soon as it finishes, before I can start getting ready for work, otherwise the site will be broken until I get home. Can't have that can we :)

I use an offline editor to write up most of my blog entries, thus the fact that I can write this while it's running. I have tried the online one, and it's great for adding stuff like google ads or other bits of code that would get changed around a bit inside my editor, but for the most part I dislike the online editor in MT or with Blogger for that matter. I much prefer a text editor that will connect and upload when I am ready for it. It makes it much easier for me to write several posts and then publish them when I want. I don't guess it makes much difference either way but this is what I am most comfortable with.

Technorati : Google, Harry Potter, Movabletype

I was wondering where all these extra google hits were coming from. Apparently everyone is looking for Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Spoilers which of course I posted something about back in May. It's actually just a short post and a link to Harvey's site. Hopefully he's getting a few hits off of it as well.

Technorati : Harry Potter

Whatever. I stayed up too late last night and damn sure didn't want to gt up this morning. I've been up sipping coffee and surfing the net for about half an hour now and need to start getting ready for work soon. I've got a manager off each of the next six days so this will be another long week. One of them goes on vacation the 25th so things should be pretty interesting at his store. It's the slowest one that I have but also the one that I have had the most problems with so maybe I can get some of them fixed while he is out of town. I'm certainly hoping so. Either that or I will just end up in a big old dog and pony show and fire a bunch of people. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

It's only about 40 minutes until Tuesday and I am getting ready to hit the proverbial sack. No dammit!, the bed.

This one is pretty cool. A nice change form butterflies and tribal tattoos. I think the worse one I ever heard of was when an acquaintance told me about a girl she knew. This girl had her name tattooed on her back. I guess that way guys would know who she was as they were hitting it or something.

Thanks to Fast Boy over at Flickr for this one. More of Fast Boys photos can be found there as well. Obviously I am out of stuff of my own, now I am going to have to start hunting again, or you can email me your tramp stamp photos (if you dare) and I will feature them here.

Thanks to Kat I found something really truly disturbing. Evil. Worse than Jehovah's Witnesses coming to my door. There is a timer on the site. As soon as I copy the link location I am closing the bitch. How long can you stay without playing Van Gogh on yourself? I stayed for Two minutes, thirty eight seconds. Damn, now I will never get to sleep.

We don't go see a lot of movies at the theater anymore but we did decided to have a day out of the house (it's my off day) and take the girls to the movies and of course Harry Potter was on the agenda.

We took the girls out to eat first. Even though I know the mall is too damned expensive I was craving a Gyro, so that's where we ate. These things seriously fill me up fast. I ate two of them once and could barely move. Had the munchies though, so it was needed but that's a story for another time.

The movie was pretty good. I won't post a spoiler or anything but we all enjoyed it. This was probably the darkest feeling one they have put out so far, and of course at that time the book was as well. I can't decide if it was a good thing or not, but since the book was 600+ pages they had to cut out quite a bit of back-story which everyone already knows, as well as some of the filler stuff. Dobby was gone, as was Harry's growing relationship with Cho, and some other stuff during the final fight "scene" with Dumbledore and Voldemort. Anyway, it was pretty good and both of the girls enjoyed the day, more so because when we left the theater we took them to the build-a-bear and let them build teddy bears.

Fucking solid gold teddy bears they may as well have been. $73 on two teddy bears. I hope they have actual shit and talk action for that price. Actually it's not the bears that are that expensive, but once you buy outfits for each and one accessory, that's about what it ran me. I wouldn't let them get anything else because I am a horrible parent, or at least that's what I told them. They have enough crap around the house without adding more clutter. The money doesn't bother me too much. Things are looking up and the girls really had a good time, but I have to make sure to set enough aside to buy school clothes and supplies next week. Only a couple weeks left until school starts.

Originally Pete had the idea to get a U.S. Marine outfit for her bear and then give it to the boy, but you could tell that she really didn't want to, so we told her to get what she wanted. It ended up being a cheerleader bunny and RePete got a pink bear with all pink clothes. She's all girl. Here they are all hanging out in their coolness. I tried to get RePete to make it a biker bear but she wanted no part of that.

The camera seems to have dried out a bit. I think the big problem I was having in Hilton Head was that we were getting in and our of the air conditioned car into the heat and humidity, so it fogged up the camera. Oh well.

...

Well, I hunted down the book. I need to go ahead and reread it and the Half-Blood prince before the new one comes next weekend. I do have a bit of leeway as the wife gets first crack at it and I recently ordered a new Alan Dean Foster book as well that I will probably read first. I finally gave up on the newest Tolkien book. It sucks.

Technorati : Build-A-Bear Workshop, Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, J.K. Rowling

Just recently Verizon has started rolling out EVDO in my area. I am ecstatic. I like being able to access the internet over bluetooth when there is no other reliable connection around such as in my backyard or when Charter is down, and this is much faster.

I have also taken to watching the evening news when I am outside smoking as well. I don't watch much TV, and damn sure not the news but this is different. I used to hate the little hand held TVs as well, and even though I love gadgets I would never pay money for something like that, but watching it on my teeny tiny screen just seems so appropriate for me. I don't know what it is, but hey keeping up on current events on some medium besides the Internet is probably a good thing.

I am going to start piecing together a couple of computers over the next few months. One is going to be the new media PC for the living room and another for the bedroom, but if there is any extra left over I want to upgrade my computer. I am really interested in getting a new Viewsonic monitor, or maybe even a couple since my Nvidia card has dual head output. My old boss had a really nice and huge Viewsonic flat-screen that I want to get. Oh well, mine will be the last to get upgraded. I will probably look into getting the wife a laptop before I consider getting myself anything new. Maybe by Christmas since things seem to be going so well at work.

One of the things that most of the guys used to have to learn to do if they wanted to get promoted to Division manager or higher with my company is to get a set of golf clubs and learn how to play golf. I always thought it was kind of silly. Not playing golf because that actually sounds like fun to me, but just the fact that if you weren't part of that buddy buddy clique it was really hard to join the upper ranks.

Thankfully that has changed over the last few years and the focus has gone off of the people that just survived and hung out together to people that can actually execute a good plan and make money for us. That's one of the reasons I finally decided to start trying to move back up. Now that it is seniority and performance based, I am more than happy to participate.

I'm a gadget freak. I blog about it every once in awhile and even started blogging on a tech site because I love them so much. They don't even have to be useful things, although as I get older I tend to ignore most of the bling and other useless junk and want stuff that I will use every day. My current wish list includes a new cell phone, one of those really nice radar detectors, a new media center PC, and maybe some Bluetooth stereo headphones. I hate earplugs and those little bitty earphones that come with mp3 players, but I like a nice set of headphones that actually sit on my head. I would only end up using them here at my computer, but at least it would quiet things down for everyone in the living room :)

I just finished watching this with the girls. I have never read the book and although I was a very avid reader as a child, never even heard of it before until the movie came out and since then have heard from several people "oh, that was my favorite book". Whatever. I am a pretty big sci-fi/fantasy fan and don't think I ever knew anyone as a child that read it either.

OK, just looked it up and it came out when I was about eleven and by that time I was pretty much beyond the newberry stuff and reading Heinlein, Farmer, and Foster which might explain why I had never heard of it.

I may actually have to get hold of the book and read it after having seen the movie. It was actually pretty good. I love horror movies. I personally try to stick to horror and action. Shoot-em-up type stuff. It's because they are good for a rush of adrenaline and a laugh.

And they don't make you cry. It doesn't take much to get me weeping in a damned old sappy movie, and this one did the trick. By the end I was blubbering like a fucking baby. Thus the fact that I don't go see shit like this in the theater.

Anyhow, it was a pretty good story but like I said, not at all what I expected.

Technorati : Bridge to Terabithia, Reviews

This post got me to reminiscing about how much time I spent in those places when I was younger. I started going to strip clubs when I was 18 or so. I don't know how I managed to get into so many and not be thrown out as I was such a baby face that even when I was 30 people would guess that I was 17 or 18. Unfortunately those days are long gone and although I may not look 40 most days, I don't get that "There's no way you are XX age!" anymore.

Anyhow, My roommate Eddie (the guy with the burning VW bug) and I would go out and hit the clubs almost every night if we weren't dating people and then just on the free nights when we were dating (other people). I even dated a couple of the girls for awhile. A couple of my friends worked in the business, one as a DJ and another as head of security (bouncer) for a couple of the clubs in Atlanta so we never had any problems. That may be one of the reasons I never got carded, that and the fact that Eddie looked older than he was.

I was single and had nothing better to do with my money anyway and I normally had a couple hundred bucks in my pocket. At that point in time I was waiting tables for a living and generally kept about half the cash out.

Anyway, when I was younger it never bothered why they were dancing, but as I get older I understand. Some of them feel like they are trapped and it's all they can do, while others are into some serious drugs and it's their way to get it. There are still more that have to dance because they made the mistake of having children they can't afford and have to feed the damn things. It takes a ton of money and classes to be able to adopt a child, yet everyone in the country is given free license and reign to pop out as many as they want without any kind of background check. That's messed up.

I dated and was briefly engaged to a girl that ended up dancing at the Cheetah III a couple of years after we broke up, and for her I think it was an attention thing, at least at first. After awhile she got involved in too much drinking and drugging and the clubs she danced at went downhill to evolve into places like the 24 and the Hot Spot. I don't even know if those dives are still open or not but that is exactly what they were.

Most of the time I was pretty welcome in the clubs. Unlike Nitemare I always tipped well, even if they were nasty old dogs that deserved a quarter. I have wanted to stick one on their forehead myself, but always abstained from going too far. Having friends in the business taught me to behave and after awhile the nudity was a non-issue. I went to enjoy the beer and believe it or not, just hanging out and talking with the girls and the bouncers. The couple of places I went to became just neighborhood hangouts, however freaky.

When I was drinking heavily in my mid-twenties and managing my last restaurant in Atlanta before we moved out here to go to school and clean up our lives there were titty bars within 50 yards distance in two directions. One of them was Ponytails on Northside drive. I think that one is gone now as well. A couple of my waitresses danced there during the evening as well, which was extremely weird. 2 PM would come around and I would spend most of the afternoon sitting in there drinking and watching people until it was time to drag myself home to the wife and my baby boy. It was not exactly a pretty time in our lives but it is what it is and we all learn from it.

Funny how something fun and no big deal as a teenager turns into something ugly and causes problems when you become an "adult". It was hard for me to learn that responsible adult thing, and I guess it was after our separation that I really "got it".

It's also funny how you start something like this post intending one thing and it becomes another. This was supposed to be a semi-humorous post about hanging out in strip joints but just isn't quite making it...

I am home from work now. A bit tired to say the least, but happy that I shouldn't have to worry too much about having to go back in until at least Tuesday. I'm not actually off today but since I worked last night that lets me out of working this morning. I am currently waiting on the coffee to finish making so that I can wake the wife and girls up and start getting ready to go.

...is something I seem to be having a harder time doing as I get older. The wife had an acquaintance of ours over yesterday evening so that the kids could play together and they got into a religious discussion. The wife asked her the question "what do you think about Pope Benedict saying that the Catholic Church is the only true religion" or something like that. What a loaded fucking question.

Of course our acquaintance is baptist or something like that, so they started talking about women in religion and the other lady believes that what some churches say about men having to be the leaders in charge and women doing what the fuck they are told is OK. Then she stated that Mary is unimportant and some shit about Jesus this or Jesus that. I don't remember. When people start talking about religion it's like when the wife starts talking about Math, I get this dull roaring buzz in my head and want to go to sleep.

Now there is nothing wrong with wimmen doing what they are told (let me hold on to something while the backlash hits) but I was sitting there surfing the net and all I could think was, if the flying spaghetti monster or maybe Beelzebub flew up your ass, THEN is the time to start thinking about Jesus.

Fuck all that noise.

I managed to get about five hours of sleep last night. More like yesterday since it is "last night" right now. I figured I would get a few posts up while I had the chance and try to wake up a bit. The last thing I want to do right now is go in to work, but we have really been on our manager's asses about saving money and being productive while they are in their restaurants so I am trying to make sure I cook or wait tables at least five shifts a week. It means close to an extra $900 a month for me to hit my profit goal, so a little extra work damn sure won't kill me.

By going in in the next hour I am also able to say that I worked my six or seven hours saving money that I would normally pay a cook, and still take most of the day off work, and Monday is my normal day off. I'm looking forward to meeting everyone for breakfast in Dunwoody, so this works out very well for me. Now as long as everyone shows up for the day shift in my three stores I will be out of there by eightish.

I ran across a story at The Jawa Report that is a little old but I had not read before. It's about Hershey shutting down a plant in Oakdale, California and selling off the plant and adjacent land. Apparently they employed up to 750 back in the 90's and the final 575 will be gone by January. They are also the biggest employer in Oakdale. In addition to this one they are restructuring and closing five other plants in the U.S. and Canada this year. Apparently it is more profitable to make chocolate in Mexico.

Technorati : Hershey, Outsourcing

I am getting ready to hit the sack. There are some folks getting together for breakfast tomorrow morning and I want to be there so I am going in to work around 3AM. For me that means getting up around midnight. Time for a couple of benadryl and a beer. That shit ought to knock me out for the next eight hours. I will probably have a bit of time to post "in the morning" when I get back up.

If you think you did hit the big 200k, let me know, otherwise I will just have some kind of contest for the shirt.

One of my specific job duties is the recruiting of new managers as well as hourly associates. Sometimes it can be difficult for me to go out recruiting because at the end of the day being in the restaurant I am tired and want nothing more than to go home and relax but recruitment is a very important part of my job. My company continues to grow every year as it has for the last 57 and shows no signs of stopping. Profits are great and we are ramping up on expanding again over the next two years at a little over a 7% growth rate. Sure, that's nowhere in the league of McDonalds or some of the bigger chains, but we surpassed all of our direct competition long ago and now we are starting to compete with the fast food chains and in order to do so we have to continue to have a great people supply chain.

My company obviously is not the only one in the world looking for new recruits. Most companies are because in the service industry either you are growing or you are stagnating and losing potential money and customers. Fish.Co.Uk is a pretty popular site with plenty of international job opportunities that you may be interested in if you are looking for work. You can set up a profile in minutes and upload your CV (resume) as well for potential employers to look at.

They have more than just job listings though. Fish.Co.Uk also provides links to Psychometric tests, recruiter profiles, tips on how to improve your CV, training and education, and even links to purchase your own business and finally go to work for yourself just as you have always dreamed. If you are in the market for a new job go check out Fish.Co.Uk

Some folks dance the Mambo, the Waltz, the Jitterbug. Some like the Macerena. There are even folks that dance with the stars on TV now. I don't dance.

Often.

Although today there was the Poo Poo Dance.

What's that you say?

I thought you would never ask.

The Poo Poo Dance is when you are about eight miles from the house and you have to shit so bad you are driving the car in a standing position trying to squeeze your ass cheeks together so that nothing will slip when you hit that next bump. God forbid you think you have to squeeze a little fart out and get a little more than you bargained for. Ever see anyone driving while standing, aside from someone operating heavy equipment?

You run REALLY fast from the car to the house while your neighbors wonder just what the fuck it is you are doing. Then the door doesn't want to open while you are hopping up and down and the key gets stuck in the damn lock when you try to get it back out and you finally get in the bathroom trying to run through the house with your pants around your ankles. Shit spews before you even get seated properly so as to create a mighty big splash so you don't know if you have crapped yourself or not.

Once you finally get finished with your business you have to check your shorts for chunks and skid marks in order to assure yourself that you really didn't crap your pants.

Ever done the Poo Poo Dance?

Me either, I was just wondering...

I set up an account with Odiogo quite some time ago, but even though they transpose all of my entries into audio I have never been able to find a way to integrate that into the site. It took me a little while this afternoon but I finally figured out to to do it.

1. Set up an account with Odiogo


2. Edit your MT template to include the following line <a href="http://podcasts.odiogo.com/get_mp3.mp3?f=/shadowscope/Shadowscope-<$MTEntryBasename separator="_"$>.mp3">Listen to Audio Version</a>


3. Replace Shadowscope with whatever blogname you have set up with the service. You can figure out the URL by going to your podcast page at http://podcasts.odiogo.com and just look at some of the file names on the page if you already have a couple of posts.

That's about it I think. Very simple, but it was hard to figure out at first. Odiogo seems to be kind of dragging today so nothing is playing very well. It may be because it is dragging at my bandwidth. There are a couple of plugins for wordpress and some javascript for blogger at http://blog.odiogo.com that I am going to look at on Monday. I may be able to figure out something that's not quite so kludgey to play them. The wordpress plugin uses flash and is pretty cool as is the one for the Blogger platform.

Technorati : Movabletype, Odiogo

Is that even a word? It is now...

For the time being I have taken the Twitter widgets off of my sidebar. They don't interfere with the content of my site loading but they seem to be the biggest culprit in long loading times for my page and that is just irritating as hell, particularly when my sitemeter and other counters load after it does. Twitter is pretty cool and I will still use it a bit, but until they either get a bigger pipe or speed up the service I will just have to keep it off of here.

Time for me to go ahead and get ready for work. I have two managers off today so it should prove interesting to see if everyone shows up or not.

My mechanic called yesterday. My car is finished and it's going to run me $541. Damn. I suppose it could be worse. I am going to try and get out of my stores at some point this morning and go by to pick it up if the wife isn't busy. It may just have to wait until this afternoon. I didn't get out of my meeting until 5:30 yesterday afternoon and by then they had been closed for awhile.

I was all set to come home and do a bunch of writing but it's just not happening tonight. I am pretty tired and thing I am going to get a good night's sleep tonight. A couple of drinks certainly helped me along the way to being ready to hit the sack. They damn sure relaxed me anyway.

For a first day back at work it was rather uneventful. Most of my folks showed up for work, on time even. I had one manager off today, so I spent the majority of the day in her store although I had to visit all three in order to put together the end of week paperwork that they should have all done yesterday.

It was meeting day, being Thursday, so I didn't get home from work until almost six this evening after making a brief stop at the grocery store. The wife had invited friends over for supper and they arrived shortly after the time I got home.

We had a pretty nice dinner consisting of home-made Fajitas. My tomatoes have been ripening lately and with all the rain we've had the last few days they are looking really nice. I only have one Bell Pepper plant this year, and it's not doing so well because of the dry spell we went through. The banana and jabenero peppers are looking great though. Pretty soon I will be able to start making salsa again. I don't know a whole hell of a lot about preserving and canning, so I just freeze the shit. It keeps for awhile and it's not like I am trying to store several years worth at a time.

Anyway, the wife made Margaritas to go with dinner. They were pretty good although she and her friend said they tasted funny. They seemed fine by me, but I only had one and then had a bourbon and Coke after. Can't drink much on a work night, so that was all for today.

The wife made our reservations for Helen the weekend of October 12th-14th. I still don't know if I am going to manage to get the weekend off, but the wife will be there at least. We are staying in a cabin this year. Right now the manager has set aside a couple of cabins and something like five rooms aside for us as well, all in the same general area. The rates are pretty damn good as well. There are more details over at V-Man's site. I had my next vacation all set up to be on the original date we had agreed upon for Helen in September but then the boy had to go off and join the Marine Corps. Damned inconvenient kids. :)

One thing that I think is really cool that I have not had the opportunity to purchase is a digital picture frame like the ones over at Digital Framez. I toyed with the idea awhile back of making one myself using a linux based PC and a touch screen but it is pretty cost prohibitive just for a few photos. I did use my 3Com Audrey for the same thing for awhile, but it certainly doesn't even look like a picture in a frame. Some of the digital photo frames over there are just really sharp.

Check this one out for instance,

it's a ten inch frame with remote and includes a 256 meg SD card to put your photos on. It includes a 5 in 1 card reader in case you have a different photo card you want to use, a USB post, infrared remote, stereo audio output for earphones or speakers, a built-in speaker and will play back jpegs as well as mpeg movies. There are a few different styles to choose from. This thing is pretty cool for just under $200. I might be able to put something together for $200 but it certainly wouldn't have as many features or look nearly as nice. The next time you are looking for digital frames then one place you might want to shop is Digital Framez.

Just got this one via email. Same old schtick with a new twist:

Asshats

Damn. Although I have kept up somewhat, answered a few comments and emails for the most part I have spent the week ignoring them and enjoying myself. I've just gone through the list of emails, spam track-backs, comments, etc...What a job. Now I can get some stuff taken care of.

Have to go out shortly and return the rental car as well. The wife ran to Carrollton for awhile and is supposed to call me later and let me know when to meet.

Hopefully my car will be out of the shop today or tomorrow as well. It did end up being the starter, but I also asked him to go ahead and give me an oil change and tune-up as well. Now I just need to get the air fixed. Maybe in the next couple of weeks I can get that done. Riding in a car with no air sucks.

One of the things that I have really learned to appreciate over the last few years at my job is the limited time that I get with my family. During the normal course of the year my days off rotate so that one week I have two and the next week I get one day off. Since they normally fall during the middle of the week that still doesn't give me much time to spend with the rest of them except during summer break. It makes me really appreciate the time that I do get to spend with my wife and kids on vacations and those rare weekends off that much more.

One of the things that we really used to enjoy doing was to get together with another teacher friend of my wife's and her husband and children. We would go over to their house and cook out and then shoot pool for a couple of hours. We had a pool table in the house when I was a child and I always loved getting together as a family and relaxing together over the pool table.

We haven't completely finished our basement yet, but depending on if I get promoted again this year and move or not, I am considering getting a pool table. My sponsor of this post, Boston Tables, has a really nice selection of pool tables shown at their web site like the one pictured below.

What is really funny is that as soon as I started browsing through the page the wife got up and came over and wanted to know how much they were. She enjoys shooting a game of billiards as much as I do. As a matter of fact in college we were both considered non-traditional students but even being older than other students doesn't exempt you from the physical education requirements, so she took stuff like Pool and Billiards and I took a Camping class. At least it was stuff we enjoyed. Could have been underwater basket weaving 101.

Anyhow, the prices over at Boston Tables are pretty competitive and they also carry other stuff too, like Poker Tables, Bar Stools, and one of my favorites, Home Theater seating. I really need to take a look at their stuff and do a write-up on it for my tech blog. Anyone that's hung out her longer than a year or two knows I am very much into HTPC setups and home-brew Tivos, so setting up a home theater in the back room of my basement would be really cool.

Now that I have wandered completely off the subject of Pool Tables it's about time to stop while I am ahead. There is one over there that I have my eye one though, an 8' Nantucket Walnut Pool Table for just under $1600. It's pretty sharp and would fit nicely in my basement.

Just as soon as we got the bags in the house probably the heaviest thunderstorm we have had all year hit. It didn't last very long, which is nice as my back yard already looks like a river. I think one of my flower gardens has pretty much been washed away, at least the mulch.

I am in the process of upgrading to the latest beta version of MT, so if shit acts weird it will only be for a short time.

Monday we drove into the island around noon to go sightseeing and generally do touristy things that we don't normally do while on vacation. First order of business was lunch, so we stopped at Coligny Plaza and had a bite at Steamers which I have reviewed in another post.

After lunch we decided to go check some things out. There are a couple of areas that were civil war area forts around. I knew there wouldn't be much left but wanted to take some pics anyway and have a walk around.

There first two that we wanted to see were located near Mitchelville, named in honor of Union General Ormsby Mitchel. We visited the site of Fort Mitchel. All that is left is the earthen mounds that were the walls of the fort and the moat. There are some signs up showing how everything was situated and where it was all located. It was pretty cool visiting this historic site. The mosquitos were particularly bad around here so we didn't stay very long. I did get some pictures which I will eventually post but my camera is such a piece of crap and with the humidity they are all slightly foggy as the previous pictures will attest. I may be able to clean them up a bit before I post them.

After we walked around there we drove a little ways down the street in hopes of looking at the Fort Howell ruins. They are located inside Palmetto Dunes, which is apparently a gated community. The asshole at the gate simply said that there were no historic sites there and wouldn't let us in. Not rich looking enough I suppose. The fucking Hilton Head Chamber of Commerce needs to take the shit off the map if the communities aren't going to let people in to see them. It was hot and humid so that aggravated my mood a bit I am sure.

We made good use of the Sea Pines pass that we had and drove down to the south end of the island after that where we wandered around the ruins of the Baynard plantation. Some of the tabby walls are still intact and I got some shots of them (a couple from my cell phone have already been posted). Once I get home and get time to mess with the photos I will re-post them and the others as well along with a brief history of the place. Tabby is made with sea shell, which is all I know about it right now. It's pretty cool.

We left there and went back down to the lighthouse area again where we treated the kids to ice cream before heading back toward Coligny. We parked near the Art Cafe and walked down to the beach where we hung out for awhile. The wind was pretty strong so the waves were nice. We played there for a couple of hours before meeting up with our friend and having dinner at Steamers again.

I think we ended up getting back to Bluffton around 11 last night. I pretty much went straight to bed as I was slightly toasty and very tired from being in the sun all day.

For some reason I am getting an error 500 when I try and visit the archives page or my category archives. They are dynamically generated in order to speed things up here and they have been doing a pretty good job of it. Not sure why I am getting the error, once I am back in town I will take a look and see if I can get it fixed up. I also need to upgrade to the next beta release, hopefully that will take care of it. I may also need to clean up the sql databases. I don't have the link to my cpanel and stuff on the laptop or a decent ftp client so it will have to wait until then.

Just because I am on vacation doesn't mean I can't post a bit of this and a bit of tat.

As I said when I posted this morning I got up before everyone else. It wasn't long however before everyone else crawled out of bed. Rather than make a trip to the beach, the wife wanted to go to the pool here at Rose Hill, so we loaded the kids up in the car (it took two trips) and drove over there. Sort of weird having to drive to a pool in the same subdivision, but OK. Took a couple of pictures at the pool of RePete in all her gear.

That's some serious flotation going on there. She mucch prefers the pool to te beach. I guess at four years old the ocean is just too big and strong for her. I did manage to get her out into it a little bit yesterday, but she loves the pool. Now if I can just get her brave enough to go without the stuff...Her sister is like a fish so it probably won't be long before she is as well.

After swimming we (the wife and I) loaded RePete into the car and drove to Hilton Head. Pete decided to stay and play at the house with all the other kids, and I think she regretted it later. She ended up being pretty bored.

We drove down to Harbor Town and let her look at the boats and the lighthouse. But first we started the drive the way we always start. It doesn't normally take very long even when she is fighting it. The other two were the same way. I've been known to load my oldest girl up in the car just to get her to go to sleep.

She loved the boats. Several times she asked, no, demanded that we take her on a boat ride. I told her that next time we were in Bluffton maybe we would look up Rick and Georgia and see if they would take her on a boat ride. As I said, she loved the boats.

We wandered around on the pier for a few minutes. Here is the lighthouse from the water side...

And the restaurant at the bottom as well. I am somewhat interested in driving back up to Hunting Island again. The last time that we were there it was closed to the public, but I heard it is open again. Maybe when we come here in September for the boy's graduation...

So we hung out and had a snack and listened to a bit of live music...

After we ate we let RePete run around the playground for a little while.

All in all it has been a pretty nice day. We arrived back at the house to have ribs, which were pretty good and the kids are all chilling as is the wife and her friend. I think they may even be chilling with a bit of Goslings thanks to a friend.

BTW Elisson, I fixed the post. It's still not showing up properly on my laptop, but the embed code was stuck in there using WYSIWYG mode instead of straight html. Fixed I think. Thanks for the grossness.

We have one more day. I think that we are going to head back on Tuesday at some point. Tomorrow morning we are going to drive into Savannah, and I would kind of like to go back to Hilton Head at least once more. The next time I come I will most likely have to pay for lodging. It's nice to have people that live near the beach, although I am sure the wife would much prefer them living back near us again.

Don't know if anyone else will be posting here tomorrow. I am almost scared to see what comes next, althought they have certainly kept me entertained, as has Ms. Fab

I had forgotten what a big pain in the ass it is to upload photos via dial-up or even DSL. I wrote and extremely long post with several photos all averaging around 500k each. Once it started the upload I cancelled it. Once I get back home and can post it at a decent speed I will do so.

I will most likely make it home on Tuesday afternoon at some point. I don't know if these jokers will post any more between now and then but I have certainly been entertained down to the roots of my bald fucking head.

As usual no matter where I go I am awake several hours before anyone else. I tossed and turned until about 2AM but did manage to sleep until 8, which is quite late for me. The girls are awake alreasy as well and I have been trying to keep them quiet so as not to wake up the tribe here. Once they get started they don't shut up and the peace and quiet is nice. Altogether there are about six kids here, two of which are mine.

Yesterday we drove on to the island and spent the great majority of the day at the beach. I have quite a nice sunburn, maybe I can add to it today. My original plans were to go to Savannah today and then spend tomorrow back at the beach but those may have changed on me. I will have to wait and see what everyone else wants to do I suppose.

After the beach we went back to the Art Cafe, which is our friend's shop, and let the girls paint for awhile and the wife and I slipped away for a coffee at Java Joes, which has the best coffee on the island aside from Starbucks and that's only because I am like a crack addict when it comes to Starbucks.

Once Niqui's eldest daughter arrived we drove to the Salty Dog because no trip to Hilton Head is complete without a trip to the Salty Dog. It's actually a pretty cool place. It is a collection of several restaurants and an outside bar on the marina, with live music. Children are extremely welcome, thus the reason for the trip. Anywhere that I can have several beers while my children act like idiots is good. Normally restaurants kick you out for that type of behavior. I had also picked it because V-Man was supposed to attend, but he apparently found that he was enjoying trashing my house so much that he came up with some lame story about a check engine light. Check engine light my ass (it still aches, thanks V-man).

As soon as we got there of course it started raining but we hung in there for awhile. It fucking poured for some time and right about the time it started clearing up a bit everyone decided that it was time to go. They were all wet and uncomfortable and wanted to leave. You wouldn't think they were from England the way a little water scared them :) Actually only the mother and oldest child is from England, the rest were born here. I got my panties a bit in a wad about having to leave, but they were uncomfortable and tired after having been at the beach all day so it wasn't without good reason that they wanted to leave. I just want to get the most out of my first vacation out of town since Disney in 2005 other than going to Helen for the weekend last year. This looks to be my only real vacation for this year as well.

I will probably go along with whatever plans the wife and her friend come up with today as this fall her friend and the kids are moving to Cyprus and it is unlikely that we will see them again anytime soon. I don't particularly want to be the turd in the punchbowl just because I am on vacation. I think at some point the girls and I will drive in to the island though and do something just for the family. I have a three week pass to get into Sea Pines so might as well get some use out of it.

For those that don't know, Hilton Head is divided into several different areas. Some of it is for the plebes and rednecks that live there like you and I, but quite a bit of it is gated communities. During business hours you can get in, but you have to pay. Just to get into the South Beach area which is in the Sea Pines community, and where the Salty Dog and the lighthouse are, is $5. Not much, but if you are making more than one sightseeing trip it can start getting expensive.

Just checked the weather and it looks like it's got about a 40% chance of rain with scattered thunderstorms so it shouldn't be too bad today whatever we do. I can only hope that I am getting some rain back at the house. I went ahead and watered my tomatoes and stuff at the house before we left and hopefully they won't all be dead by the time we get back on Tuesday.

I told the wife yesterday that I didn't like this laptop thing but I am starting to get used to it and if the keyboard would act right and I could configure it the way that I like I could probably get used to it pretty quickly. It's got a nice big widescreen and I am able to set the resolution to a nice big size which I prefer.

Haven't made it to the island yet although I think we are going this morning. I'm ready to get my pale legs out on the beach. I should be able to scare us up some room with my white whale belly.

We arrived in Bluffton about 5:30 yesterday afternoon and hooked up with our friend Niqui and her family and dragged them all to some buffett place for dinner. I am usually pretty leery about eating at places like that but this was damn good. I had mostly seafood and stuffed myself. I even had the chance to try some of that low country boil that Catfish always talks about. Pretty good. It's like gumbo without the spiciness. There was spice, it's just not quite as hot as I was expecting.

Going out to dinner with her and the clan is always interesting. It was the wife and I and our two girls as well as Niqui and her five children that still live at home. Anytime you walk in someplace with seven children people scatter. Don't know what it is.

As I said, we are heading to the island within the hour and will spend the day there. We may go by the Art Cafe for awhile as well if it gets too hot at the beach. The Art Cafe is one of those places where everyone goes and paints pottery and then it gets fired. That's Niqui's place.
I got to sleep until about 7:30 this morning, which is pretty late for me. It was nice to get a full eight hours of sleep all in one shot. Not used to that.

At some point in the day I will give the VMan a call, as I think we are going to get together for dinner and maybe a few drinks. Niqui suggested a place where her daughter works but it sounds pretty nice and I don't know how well they will take to us sitting there for several hours.

We're almost to Macon. My ass hurts so we swapped out and the wife is going to drive for awhile. A little over a third of the way I guess.

Steve McQueen is a man's man, whether it was in his movies or in real life. How many of the pussified Hollywood stars do their own stunts? I was reading over at Cinematical that it's rumored Brad Pitt might have the starring role in the Bulitt Remake. Oh hell, no. I tend to agree with them that the only star I know of that might approach the man (Steve McQueen) in coolness would be Daniel Craig.

This will at least by last post of the weekend where I am actually at home. There will be at least some semi-regular brain farts though. I have a few posts scheduled for the next couple of days and as I mentioned previously there is a crack team of 1000 monkeys on 1000 typewriters that just can't wait to make me a million. I will also be bound to post lots of cell phone photos, and I am taking the laptop with me as well as my iPaq because taking crack away from a junkie is just not a good thing to do. The only promise I can make is that I won't blog while taking a shit but since I have already broken THAT promise I am not even legally liable for that either.

There is a church right down the street from one of my stores and on the way past yesterday morning I happened to look at their billboard on my way past. On the sign it had the usual stuff, pastor's name, time of services, and..."Celebrity Jesus".

Damn, I gotta catch that one.

I am looking forward to driving to Hilton Head tomorrow. We were going to leave in the morning, but I have several things to take care of in the morning so it may be after lunch before we head out. I have a few more posts to write, so it really just depends on what time I get to bed.

Spoke with V-Man tonight and I think we may be getting together Saturday for dinner. Probably going to have the girls with me so I can't get too god-awful tanked or anything. He said he would drive up to Bluffton so I am not sure whether we will meet there or in Savannah yet.

I do want to drive down to Savannah at some point in the trip as well. Even if all we do is site see, that's OK. It really depends on which children and how many are with us as to what we do. I will just wait and see on that one.

So the other day I received and email that [name omitted] had requested me to add them to my friends at LinkedIn. I never get over to LinkedIn very often so I forgot I had a profile there. It was one of our recruiter's from work. As a matter of fact it was our area people director. Hmmm. I went ahead and added them and headed over there quickly and deleted any URLs from my profile.

Why? Well, although I post under my real name and don't really give a flying fuck who knows I don't advertise it. There are a couple of people I have worked with that know about my site but those are folks I pretty much trust. Should it become common knowledge I would have to quit blogging about work and hell, that's what I seem to bitch about the most.

I also use Facebook. That is the one that I mention in the post about myspace but couldn't remember the name. It's much better than myspace. It's a site for semi-intelligent adults whereas MySpace seems to be the trailer park of the Internet. If you hang out at Facebook and haven't added me yet, what the hell are you waiting on?

Woot! I managed to get out of there at a decent time today. I will probably post about the day later, but the girls are at a friends house until fireworks tonight, which I will get to attend since they had the ones last night in the town where MY stores are. Very nice. I think I am going to nap now...

I am running late but felt the need to verbally crap all over the place before I go.

The other day the wife made a statement that the older we get the more our shit smells. Considering that the paint is peeling in the guest bath and my eyes are watering from the nasty excretions that just issued from my anal cavity she might just be right. Damn. Why's it got to be the guest bath? Because I don't want MY bathroom reeking while I shower and generally get ready for work. It might bend the razor blades.

...for the most part. I was going to post some site reviews and other stuff, but nothing is coming out tonight, thus the lack of posting. I sat and did something I rarely do, watch TV. I don't watch a whole hell of a lot, but I do like the Law and Order series, so I watched Law and Order: SVU a couple of times this evening/

It took awhile to get staffed tonight. One of my managers called me and said, "yeah, we will be staffed when this other girl gets there, but she is going to be an hour to an hour and a half late". I have spent the last 48 hours drumming it into my new manager's heads about how important it was to be staffed tonight after the fireworks (they are doing them tonight for some reason) and he just blithely ignored me. He's in there waiting tables right now. I did call a girl in for him and she should be getting there any time. Some people just don't understand how important it is to be on top of stuff when it happens, not hours later.

My other manager decided on her own not to go in for drawer change. She has extra people working, so it isn't a huge deal but she should have gone on in.

Hopefully I can go the rest of the night with no more phone calls. One more day...

Today was a complete goat fuck. My relief manager ended up calling in. Apparently he tried to get in touch with me yesterday, so I won't give him too hard a time. His doctor had called him back to let him know that he has skin cancer, so he has to go back and I guess get a biopsy. I don't know if it's malignant or not. That would just suck. He's a pretty good guy and is just trying to get his shit together.

One of my manager apparently couldn't get his car to start last night. Rather than calling and letting me know, I found out when I called him at 7:15 this morning when he was already 45 fucking minutes late. I ran to the store to make sure everyone there was OK, then went back to the one I was at where that manager was off. I ended up sending the manager trainee and gave him very specific instructions to come back as soon as the other guy got to work. He rolled back in the store at 11:15 after I had cooked 90% of the days business. The guy won't shut the fuck up long enough to get anything done and has a shitty attitude. They are talking about giving him to me, god I hope not. I would rather have the late guy. His attitude and performance has been slowly improving since I took his store, and the evil I know is a damn site better than the one I don't.

It makes it worse that this was my eighth day at work I am sure. One more day and I get to go on vacation. Hopefully I won't kill anyone between now and then...

A while back I posted a bit about the Police, their new album, and the subsequent concert. The new album is a two CD compilation of their most renowned songs. The Police were the quintessential 80's band, and these songs show why. Here is the track listing:

Disc 01
01 Fall Out
02 Can't Stand Losing You
03 Next To You
04 Roxanne
05 Truth Hits Everybody
06 Hole In My Life
07 So Lonely
08 Message In A Bottle
09 Reggatta de Blanc
10 Bring On The Night
11 Walking On The Moon
12 The Bed's Too Big Without You
13 Don't Stand So Close To Me
14 Driven To Tears
15 Canary In A Coalmine

Disc 02
01 De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
02 Voices Inside My Head
03 Invisible Sun
04 Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
05 Spirits In The Material World
06 Demolition Man
07 Rehumanize Yourself
08 Every Breath You Take
09 Synchronicity I
10 Wrapped Around Your Finger
11 Walking In Your Footsteps
12 Synchronicity II
13 King Of Pain
14 Murder By Numbers
15 Tea In The Sahara

I'm not a huge die hard fan, everyone knows I am into metal and classic rock as well as the blues, but I do enjoy their music. Enough to purchase The Police CD and see them on tour anyway, which is a pretty good bit I suppose.

They even have a widget at their website that you can install on your page that shows their upcoming and current tour dates.

Here is a spot that has been running on TV in the UK recently.

Anyway, the CD has been out for about a month now, and along with the two CDs includes a vintage Police poster as well. One of the things for me not being a humongous fan is that I don't constantly listen to them anymore, and I was extremely pleased to listen to the album as I forgot just how catchy and enjoyable their music is.

Technorati : The Police

...ass is about all I am doing this morning. I fell asleep watching Eddie Izzard last night somewhere around ten and then didn't wake up until almost five this morning. I guess it's this week is starting to wear on me. It's not like it's my eighth day at work or something. Oh wait, it is my eighth day at work. No damn wonder I am dragging.

One of my managers is off today so this will be the only day this week where I may not get out early. For some reason the city of Villa Rica is having their fireworks display tonight rather than tomorrow, which is all screwed up. Still not sure why they are doing that. Tomorrow is the Fourth, that's when they should have them.

As dry as it is I didn't even bother to buy any fireworks this year. I'm too afraid I would set my yard on fire. That would not be a good thing for anyone concerned.

Tomorrow is also my last day prior to starting vacation as well. It's only been three months since my last one, maybe a bit longer, but I feel like it's been about twelve months already. I will definitely enjoy it even if I have to be somewhat cheap on this one.

...

That was weird. My Internet connection went down for about three minutes or so. I was getting ready to get all pissed off at Charter again. I haven't had any problems in the last 24 hours or more since that little rainstorm knocked out my connection on Sunday night but with Charter you never can tell. Shit, if I could afford it I would pick up DSL and keep cable just to have a backup connection. That's just one of those unnecessary luxuries that I am not willing to pay for though.

---

There goes the wife's alarm on her cell phone. I managed to make it into the kitchen where it is this morning, without getting injured. Didn't want a repeat of yesterday. My toe is fine, but damned if my knee still isn't hurting where I ripped off several layers of skin on the carpet. Dumb-ass.

---

I am having a hard time paying attention this morning. My mind keeps wandering. I think the wife found us a babysitter for Thursday night, so I know I am looking forward to going out for awhile. I've heard from a couple of people we may be meeting up with but I know this time of year is pretty busy for quite a few people.

---

Everyone send out their best wishes for RSM, who is going to be offline for awhile in basic training. As he says, it's not goodbye but merely a hiatus and a bit of change...Good luck buddy, although luck isn't something you will need there, just the determination that you already carry with you.

---

That's about it for this morning. I have to get off my ass and start getting ready for work now matter how much I am hating it at 5:58 this morning...

Here I was sitting and drinking my coffee. I almost forgot what day it is...

Earthfrisk is one of those Social Bookmarking sites that are around on the net, but this one also combines media with it. I just ran across it today and so far it looks pretty cool.

User post different links and other media and you pick the ones you are interested. It's a good way to check out new content that you may not have seen before. Some of the best content on the Internet can be found here. You can post links to blog entries, articles, and videos as well. There are already a ton of links there to check out and joining is easy. You can also post your own pictures as well.

What's cool is that it's not only links but an active community where you can join in on the discussion on various subjects and categories as well as vote on them. If you want other users to vote on your articles they can be posted as well.

What it comes down to is that EarthFrisk is not controlled or guided by the admins but by the users themselves. Anyway, it's a pretty cool place to find interesting topics and links, so go check it out.

Since I post a bit often I have cut back down the number of entries to four days worth on the main page again. The page itself seems to be loading a bit faster now that I have changed everything over. Still not using FastCGI though. After that last attempt I am very wary of changing anything like that. Maybe I will mess with it a bit next week.

I am also running the beta 4 version of Movabletype 4 now, oh by the way. I really like what they are doing with Movabletype although a lot of the newer features are stuff that I just will never use, or at least it seems so right now.

Technorati : Movabletype

We finally figured out exactly what it is we are doing this week. Thursday evening we will be meeting some fellow bloggers at some Indian restaurant next to a big hotel in Atlanta, as Eric explained it. Boy, that fucking helps don't it? Anyway, if I forget to email you give me a call or shoot me an email.

Friday morning the wife has to run to the doctor and then we will probably make the drive down to Bluffton and stay the weekend. We will probably be down there until Monday or Tuesday morning and hit Savannah at some point over the weekend. I would stay longer but since I have to be back at work on Thursday morning I want at least one day at home to get stuff taken care of.

The wife and Pete just went to the store to get the makings for a Greek salad. That will be a nice cool supper. Salad and bread. I am sure that I will be craving beef by the time tomorrow morning rolls around.

Just two more days until vacation. I have a manager off tomorrow but my relief manager will be with me as well as a manager trainee. I am going to try and take it as easy as possible before I am finished on Wednesday. I do have to check on the fireworks. Someone told me that they are doing them locally tomorrow evening. That may very well be a problem as I really don't have the help I need in my stores on a Tuesday night for that sort of rush. I may end up working fairly late on Tuesday night.

With the impending vacation it's only appropriate that I come across this post sponsored by DialAFlight. DialAFlight has some pretty nice destinations at a reasonable price. As hot as it is I have been wanting to go someplace that is not quite as hot as it is here.

It's pretty easy to book a flight and a great hotel and get away on one of their great New York weekend breaks. I've been to New York once but it has been quite some time. From what everyone I talk to says New York has cleaned up immensely and is once again becoming a very attractive vacation spot to visit.

This is a shot of Times Square. Man, it has changed a lot since I was there back in the eighties. At that point in time it was pretty nasty.

DialAFlight also has flights to Canada, which at this time of year is extremely beautiful. Much nicer than the 90 degree weather that I have been having. Talk about the dog days of summer. What we normally have as August temperatures moved in here last month and have yet to leave.

Above is an unknown lake (to me) and below is horseshoe falls, which is the biggest part of Niagara falls.

Although I said I want to go someplace cooler I will probably end up going to Hilton Head and be hot AND go to the beach. There area a couple of places I would like to eventually visit that are slightly warm right now and one is Johannesburg South Africa. Not quite among the coolest places around but I certainly wouldn't give up a chance to go, no matter what time of year it is. Believe it or not there are fairly decent flights to Johannesburg. Johannesburg is the largest city in South Africa and is one of the 40 largest cities in the world.

It's nice to have the girls home. I slept much better last night with them here and the wife in bed. I enjoyed the quiet time, but it is much better to have them home. Have to start getting ready for work in a minute but I injured myself this morning and had to whine about it for a minute.

Dinner last night was really nice. We were all stuffed afterward, except for my smallest girls. RePete is just one of those extremely picky eaters and doesn't eat 90% of what we fix so she ends up going hungry quite often until she gets tired of it and finally eats whatever we have made. Catering to them is not something that we particularly go out of our way to do. If they want to eat fruit or make a sandwich they are more than welcome to but that's pretty much it.

The wife does the same thing that I do in the mornings and has her cell phone set up with an alarm for the time that she normally gets up. The only thing is that she is on vacation but hasn't disabled it. The alarm went off a couple of minutes ago so I jumped up from my computer desk and went to run in there and grab it before it woke her up.

Most of their luggage is still sitting there on the living room floor, and I missed seeing a bag and tripped over it, catching my big toenail and snapping it bending it back. I landed on my hands and knees tearing off several layers of skin form my left knee. My big toe is hurting and now I have this nasty fucking carpet burn on my left knee that is oozing blood. Just what I wanted to go to work with. Heck, if I were one of my employees that would be enough to call in to work about, the assholes.

I have to go shower and I am sure that my knee is going to feel wonderful once soap and water hit it.

I will have to be careful and watch anything else I put in with Bloggerwave or any other one that inserts code. Part of the disclosure is a <div> tag that just completely screwed up my site. It's gone now but took me a minute to find.

The girls are about a half an hour away. I have the potatoes just about done which is the only thing that will take any length of time. I will start everything else in 20 minutes or so that way it will all be good and hot when they come home. It's raining right now so there won't be much unpacking of the car until later or maybe tomorrow morning. That's OK, we desperately need the rain right now.

It's ridiculous how bad my plants need to be watered. I've been setting my coolers out on the back porch when it does rain to catch it, pouring whatever is left of my water and coffee into the plants outside, and stuff like that. Hopefully we will have several good days of light rain in the near future to get the groundwater levels where they need to be. I suppose it needs more than a few days but that will at least get us started in the right direction anyway.

A blonde heard that milk baths would make her beautiful. She left a note for her milkman to leave 25 gallons of milk. When the milkman read the note, he felt there must be a mistake. He thought she probably meant 2.5 gallons. So he knocked on the door to clarify the point.

The blonde came to the door and the milkman said, "I found your note asking me to leave 25 gallons of milk. Did you mean 2.5 gallons?"

The blonde said, "I want 25 gallons. I'm going to fill my bathtub up with milk and take a milk bath so I can look young and beautiful again."

The milkman asked, "Do you want it pasteurized?"

The blonde said, "No, just up to my tits. I can splash it on my eyes."

Sometimes I just want to bash this one manager's head in with a heavy blunt object. When I am in a restaurant or when I was a manager if someone was late and had not called I immediately tried to get them covered. CYA. Our folks have to be clocked in and on the floor at ten minutes prior to shift change time, i.e. 1:50PM, 8:50PM, and 6:50AM. It's very simple. If they aren't there by quarter till I am on the phone with THEM and if they still aren't there five minutes later I start looking for replacements. I spoke with this particular manager at 2:25 and his cook wasn't there. I asked who he had called. Nobody. He said he didn't have anyone to call. He has plenty of people to call, but rather than paying a few hours of overtime he will leave the restaurant understaffed. I told him he was going to have to work it if he couldn't get someone in there and gave him a couple of phone numbers.

He keeps all these people around that don't have phones or cars and just doesn't want to replace them or doesn't have whatever it takes to get things done THEN, when it's needed, rather than his leisure. Thus the blunt object.

MySavings.com is the sponsor of this post and they are a pretty decent site where you can actually get Free Samples and Savings of your favorite products and try new ones. The site is set up under different categories such as Free Services and Software, Free Samples, Coupons, Deals and they even have a blog.

They further have the free samples divided into different categories with a ton of merchants in each. It's easy to sign up. I figured I would check out a couple, so signed up for a free sample of St Joseph's Aspirin, something that you always need around the house anyway. You can opt to NOT receive emails from merchants, which I did and then fill out a short survey and go through some of the free offers that you always get put through. Some of them are actually interesting on occasion so I don't mind too terribly. There are several pages of free offer but overall it's not too intrusive particularly considering that you are getting something free. MySavings.com recently sent out this press release:

If you like getting free stuff, stop by and give them a shout.

As much as I hate it, it's time to get off my ass and get ready for work. I can always tell when I have hit my 5th or 6th day of work. I just have a really hard time getting myself moving at all...

The girls should be home thins afternoon. It will be nice to have them back home. I missed them all. The house has been pretty quiet and boring for the last few days with them out of town.

As the tagline for my blog used to say "sleep is just a cheap caffeine substitute". I actually did get a bit of sleep last night. About normal for me anyway. I finally hit the sack about 10:30 and have been up for almost 30 minutes now. Working on my second cup of coffee. The nice thing is that with all of the managers in I won't drag in until about a quarter till seven today. I have a few things I need to do and I will end up cooking at that same store for awhile this morning. That is my most challenging one as well. It's the one where they had that guy arrested for having hidden cameras, so right off the bat I have a public perception problem that is still there several months after the fact. It's in a pretty upscale neighborhood which makes it a little harder to get my business back as well.

Couple that with the fact that half that guy's employees were either using or selling drugs on the premises and I pretty much have an uphill battle there. My sales are down something like 28% over this time last year.

The guy that IS there managing now is a pretty good manager. I trained him a couple of years ago and he has plenty of experience. His only problem is that he is scared of losing people. He will keep shit around that doesn't help his business even when there are replacements available. That's OK. I will be helping him with his schedule today and some of that shit is going to find itself with about two days on the schedule. Hopefully they will just quit.

I have been reluctant to run anyone off from that store because it is harder to staff it than the other two and also because with my vacation next week I just didn't want to jeopardize any chances of being off for a week. As a manager your time off is pretty much guaranteed but once you go a bit higher if your stores aren't staffed you are pretty much shit out of luck. That's why my days off have pretty much been cut in half over the last two months. I am averaging 5 days off per month over the first two months since I got promoted and don't see it getting easier until the summer is over. I have one other guy that hasn't had a vacation yet that will be taking it at the end of July and then I have a couple months of breathing room after that.

One thing I may do that will help out the lagginess on my PC is to upgrade the RDRAM. Part of the problem is that I always have a bunch of windows open when I am working on something, such as the webcast yesterday, and I like to multi-task. I have about a gig of memory but I am considering tripling it. My sponsors at CheapestRDRAM.com have some pretty good deals on memory at their site.

I can get another GB of RDRAM from them for about $250. It's two sticks of PC800-45. If you've never changed or added memory to a motherboard it's actually pretty easy. Not quite plug and play but just about. The biggest pain for most people, depending on the computer they have is to be able to find where it goes. It's fairly easy for me as I like to keep the inside of my case clutter free and tie off all of the cables and wiring so that air can flow through the case.

They also have a list of compatible computers and motherboards on the site so that you know if it's the right memory for you. They also have directions (with pictures!) on how to install RDRAM.